i think i'm having a mid-life crisis.
like, i feel like when i look at myself i don't look like myself.
but i been looking at the same face for forever,
give or take the amount of eyeliner i got on.
when i was seven i had a mental breakdown
and when i was fourteen i tried to end it all.
now twenty-one is coming soon (too soon, not soon enough)
and i just feel like i feel nothing.
does this mean i'm gonna die in my early forties?
or tomorrow?
i look in the mirror and my face isn't my face,
my thighs aren't my thighs
but i feel my cheeks and it seems right.
there's gotta be a name for this in-between **** that's making me lose my mind,
lose myself,
lose my grasp on reality and
is this supposed to be happening?
my mama tells me all the time that i'm more normal than i think
but i think i feel like i'm dying and
i don't think everyone is feeling like that right now.
god i just feel like an ocean
i feel like i'm touching something, holding onto something,
but in the middle i'm huge and dark and full of everything and nobody gets me but everybody is on my surface.
when i was little i said "i feel like i won't ever be a cliche"
and here i am

Now I'll walk down that grubby old road, the same one I'd always run through when I was happy to go home, when I was free enough to be inspired by the expanse of greyed-out asphalt that led me home or away, and I'll feel nothing. I've never liked the word "nothing", because it was a useless answer to any question and a waste of a loaded word. Nonetheless, that was undoubtedly what it felt like, sliding my shoes across the pebbles, litter and pollution coating the aging path toward what used to feel like my home. Now it, and this asphalt, was a sort of limbo - a space I inhabited between paychecks and numbing social catastrophes, the place at which my deliveries of obliviously impersonal mail were dumped. When you find yourself lost (ha) in the standard crises you know every human being has tasted in one way or another, it feels juvenile, childish, frivolous. But we feel that way anyway.

i find that even when i sit down to read a book, before i begin, sometimes i’m hit with a wave of sadness, this heart-dropping feeling of loneliness, fear of the emotions i’m about to feel, the emptiness, the focus i’m putting on my own mind… allowing myself to face my own thoughts all alone as they run through my head… it’s a scary, weird feeling and i wish i didn’t feel like this... i need to stop being afraid of being left to myself, of being an individual. i need to find fulfillment in life, in things, in reading alone, in taking photos alone, in spending time alone, in going on a walk alone... in being alone. at the beginning of this year i wasn’t like this, i found happiness and made peace with myself when no one was around but it’s changed, because of /you/ it's changed, something’s shifted, and i want my old self back, i want it to shift back, can i reverse this? can i please take back my old self?...


what have you done to me???

Confined to the womb, living – yet alone
As we came, so shall we go

To this world we enter, our accounts empty with souls full of hope
We’re small and weak, then we’re big and strong
We’re lonely and afraid, but we become loved and brave
Without direction, without purpose, we find our way

As we came, now we are going – but in reverse, it’s certainly a curse:

Our accounts are empty, the optimism fades
Now are we small and weak, though we were strong
Once we were loved, but now we’re lonely and afraid
Without direction, without purpose, we have lost our way

As we came, so have we gone
Confined to the grave, we die alone

do you feel that?
the crescendo of emotion?
the crest of a wave
of inexplicable
something
that just drowns you?

do you feel it?
the weight of your own
existence?
this inexplicable urge
to lie down
and cry gently
for no reason at all?

do you feel
what i'm feeling?
an appreciation for life
whilst
hating being alive?
falling in love
with the universe
and out of love
with yourself?

do you feel that?
are you drowning in
existentialism?
does your chest
feel like it's
imploding?
are your lungs too big
for your rib cage?

do you feel it?
do you feel
what i'm feeling?
do you even feel
​​​​​​​at all?

Night is just night,
without it being told that
it should be dark
and sunless.

It is what it is,
by its own definition.
It does not need stars to shine
In order to make darkness meaningful.

Still, the stars shine.
They do what they do
Without self-acknowledgement,
They simply do.

Be.
Like night and stars
And meaningfulness
And Self-acknowledgement.

Step by step,
With a gorgeous plié,
Kick some pep
Into a battement jeté.

A toy brought to life
During a winter dream,
Wining a mice fight,
Becoming king and queen.

Graceful and white,
Perfection is seized,
A swan's flight,
Applause from the pleased.

All these to treasure,
To hope for, but first
Have the right measures
And break the weight curse.

Do not eat much
And practice all day,
Have the right touch,
Get that perfect cambré.

Pointe for pain
And chukkers for luck,
Just hide those blood stains
And redefine pluck

When all the joints hurt
And toes can't be touched,
When all one has heard
Is Tchaikovsky's crutch...

So proceed and endure,
Feel pain and relief,
Prokofiev's pitch contour
To be ones only belief.

Let all this be forgotten
When the curtains rise
And show all this works gotten
Perfection for a prize.