It's happening again:

I don't feel a bit of anything, I feel nothing.
I'm numb and I'm empty and I'm a hand that's fallen asleep, tingling only as a reminder that I can't feel a **** thing.

I hate this feeling.
It scares me.
I don't feel love for the one that won my heart. I don't feel guilt or pity or happiness or curiousity.
I fear that I will spend the rest of my life in the black-and-white fuzz on a tv screen.
I fear that I will die unfulfilled, feeling nothing and saying nothing.
I stare into the empty mug and I am an iced injury, cold and stiff and callous.

I hate this and I keep hating it and fearing it and suddenly the fog lifts, the hum of radio static dies and I can wiggle my fingers once again and--

I am left with anger.
I am left with sorrow.
I am left with an aching dullness in my lungs.

I am left with the unshakeable desire to drink until I am full, until my heart bursts with songs of lost emotion.

It's cold in my chamber of fear and hatred, but my stomach is warm with another, another, another...

day number 365 plus a few
and i still don't understand it

i'm just a tired girl with skinny arms and a drinking problem,
a sad sack, a sorry *******, a poor unfortunate soul

you are electricity in a nutshell, the very face of exultation,
the greatest thing your small town has ever seen.

i look at your face and understand why storms are named after people: you are the prettiest **** hurricane i've had the pleasure of meeting

god felt bad for all the **** that happened so he sent you to me, an angel if i've ever heard of one

you're imperfect in the best possible way,the  iridescence in a soapy puddle, the gold chain on a sinner's neck

maybe my shell-shocked love is why i'm sabotaging my own wretched heart: after it all, i cannot believe you'd love me back

so i'll stab my own back and break my own soul because i'm just me and you're..... you

why would a king look twice at a pauper, much less take her into the folds of his bruised heart and love her as an equal?

i'm still trying to figure it out, so until then, i'll write and second guess and drink and laugh bitterly

I'm having doubts again. See, I don't last very long with a good thing before I overthink and over analyze and over anticipate and overwhelm and suddenly it's a poison that's eating me alive. I felt alive and that was all that mattered, feeling love and loved at last, after time and time again where my heart and brain teamed up to destroy my iridescent hope and it was so good that I didn't even see the flaws, looked through them like glass. Except now, his glass is half empty-- but only for a split second before its half full and then totally full-- and he's not a mean drunk but he drinks so ******* much that it makes me sick and I'm sick of my own hypocrisy because God knows I drink more than I should but I'm not throwing my life away with every shot. I know we have a shot at fixing our problems before I let this love spiral down the drain but I just can't seem to make it out alive because self sabotage is so much easier. Maybe I should stop looking around, maybe I should wear blinders when I walk so I don't see potential replacements with "no flaws" and of course I know they're all flawed but... But... I didn't lose my train of thought I lost my conscience because how can I look elsewhere? I spent so much time wishing I would be loved back and now that I am I want nothing more than the freedom of watching a different back walk out my door whenever I want. It's just a real chin-scratcher, how on one hand I want forever with him-- his drinking problem and his floppy hair and his long distance and his standoffish-ness-- but on the other I want out.

blessed are they who are left behind, for theirs is the kingdom of sorrow

the only omniscient  thing in this world is my sad, drunken state

God cannot possibly  be real, because why would he desert me? i turned my life into a song of prayer to Him

but my song has become a wilted requiem and i see no proof of heaven

i cry out in the chapel abandoned and scream into the confessional, all the names of my sins and i beg for forgiveness

my priest is afraid of me. when i cried onto his white sleeves-- too pure for me-- when i cried out he whispered that God had yet to create a prayer that would absolve me, that there weren't enough Hail Mary's in the world to reconcile my broken bits

so i sit in the pew and i let my tears fall to the stone floor in hopes that the salt will burn a hole that'll lead me to hell

because clearly i don't belong here, not where a man on a wooden cross is staring down blankly and not helping

deep down, deeper down than hell, i know in my battered heart and fickle soul that no matter what, i believe

faith is what has kept me alive through thick and thin, through threadbare afternoons and thorny thoughts and were i to give up now, to give in to an assault of cynicism and disbelief, i would fall (and faith is the only thing that kept me on my feet anyway)

so i walk a hypocritical tightrope: how do i question everything and remain devoted? is my trust in my faith really my own, or do i have generations of guilt-dishing irish catholics to credit? am i religious or just spiritual?

and i teeter, and the tempestuous winds blow at me, and i lose my footing

and dear god, do you know how ******* frustrating it is?
cat's got my tongue and she's never giving it back,
but maybe she'll be able to speak the words that are stuck on the tip of it
the "no"s and the "come back"s and the "stay here"s

the wind doesn't have a problem speaking her mind
because she's always been round and she always will be and some loud words won't end her
but i
i
i am not the wind
i am not so fearless and casual and trusting
i am in pain, i am stuck in a barbed wire cage of writers' block and separation anxiety

when you leave a piece of my sanity falls away like cigarette ash and i watch it build a mountain at my feet
we've gotten to the point where  i can't even tell how much i love you, it's drowning my chest and turning everything into a sea of heartache and
and
and we know each other so well, it's a shame i see you never
we have our toes dipping into the same ocean but we live on different shores

maybe in the grand scheme of things this deafening longing doesn't mean anything
but god this shitstorm of love and desperation and distance and lust means everything to me

isn't it sad how your friends aren't your friends anymore?
how the people you spent every moment with are now nothing more than distant stars,
how your memories and inside jokes have sunk to the bottom of the ocean,
how--
how?
i didn't mean for us to grow apart. i didn't mean to stop calling, to stop loving you all
you made me feel whole and confident and able and funny and wanted
and now we're nothing more than ships on the same sea waves, sea floors,
see, it just doesn't feel right because one of us is missing,
and we never thought that "till death do we part" would ever come true.
come on, did you expect us to last forever?
i did, if only because endings rip my heart in two
two months can make the whole difference and we haven't talked in forever and i barely know you anymore
i know that this is life and i should get used to it, but
somehow, after all of the storms i've-- we've-- weathered, loss still hits me like a ship to an iceberg
and i'm sinking, and all my friends are dead and gone