Today, I'm going to try.
Try and renew a broken bond
between heart, mind and the
belief I have in myself.

Some days, I have so much
to offer the world: care, love,
compassion, hope and joy.
Other days, I sink into my
blankets & sheets, praying for
some sweet release.

My heart feels like it's clutched
between loathing and defeat, but
light keeps pouring through. It
desperately pleads for unclenching
to offer more of what I have inside me.

Feeling hopeless, lost and alone...
these feelings, I don't desire. I feel
like my lungs are filled with smoke:
elusive and toxic...but inescapably
dooming. But I seek the wind. The
clear, fresh breakage from the dark.

I seek hope and promise. I seek self
love and not shame. For the skin I'm in
is entirely my own. And I should be
happy for it and for me...because no
shallow appearance change will make
me a better person. Only drive, goal reaching and love will heal what I pray for.

It's been far too long since
I picked up a hymnal, or
endulged in the physical
flesh and blood of God.

I pray for peace: among
others: friend or foe and for
me. So that I can be ok with
myself and sleep soundly.

Why am I so afraid to go back
into a place that gave me solice
in times where I needed it most?
Distance. Laziness. Excuses. All
signs that point me in the opposite
direction of where I need to be...

But if I know this and I know how
to solve it, why don't I? Why don't
I reconnect with faith? Why don't I
motivate myself to do it.

I don't really know.

It's easy for tear drops
to fall past midnight.
It's even easier to let the
raw emotions of day seep
into the darkness of night.

I don't mean to be so sensitive
or to pretend that these things
don't matter to me...but they do.

The little things, they say.
They're what **** the beast.

There are many ways to break
a person down: whether persistence,
verbal or physical brutalizations.

The worst type, by far, is the quick
lash of the tounge. "That makes you
look frumpy..." Or "You've really gained some weight." Things she
categorizes and compartmentalizations
into foreign areas of the mind.

Weight is a shallow, low blow, she thought. However, the words slice
harsher than any insult she's ever heard. ******. Ugly *****. Lonely big girl. That's the garbage thrown to her.

What she needs is reassurance. Affirmations--pretty and pathetic--
that she should be comfortable in her
own flesh. The very body she breathes in and carries is the one to be loved.

Size 2 or 22, pants and dresses don't immortalize the true beauty of being. They don't capture the heart and soul. But most important of all, they have no ******* impact on the radiance one emits.

There's nothing more luxurious
than tossing and turning with conversation between my head
and the pillow it rests on.

Sleep is a desperate cry away,
between the anxieties of the night
and causal analysis of the last
thirteen hours of existence.

I'm addicted.
Hot. Rushing. Yearning.
Every weekend is my fix.
Monday through Friday
are a mere blur.
Days & nights I
pray for, are the ones
I spend in your company.

Near 20, I was hoping for
too much, too fast. Praying for
hopes and dreams and glorious
memories that I was sure would
last.

What I've got is more than most,
I will admit unapologetically. I
guess that's just the American inside me.

I expect what I have and I'm grateful
for it, if that makes any sense at all.
I have food on my plate and a roof over head, but somehow I yearn for more...a greater call.

Near rhymes are nice, but symphonies of melodic rejoice are more my speed. Things that go together and mesh and generally agree.

I'm looking for a greater self and purpose: things not easily found. I thought I always knew what I wanted, but perhaps I'm not that profound.

I take pride in what I know and love all I can, but is that enough to save a soul? This life is only a short time coming and already partially gone; maybe there's more to this life story than racing towards worldly goals.

Two level heads aware of the other,
chasing round and round with voices.
Things said back and forth, yet nothing
different when making choices.

All for one and one for me,
inclined on being right before 12:30.
Fighting isn't new, just a shuffled voice in place of the last feud.

It comes too easy, the chase, that is.
Preying back and forth for another
opportunity rather than miss.

That's the true difference between
you and I, you see. I look for
truth: bitter and cold, while you look for sympathy.

When I think of her,
I travel back to the age
of precisely 14. Five years
pathetic from my current
life place, but I almost can't
help myself. Almost.

After all this time, it's not
you I don't trust. Really. I'd
be able to admit that. But it's
her. It's the thought and feeling
of knowing she once danced across
your skin, breathed you in and held
you so close like I desperately do.

I never want to lose this. Never want
to lose you, in my arms and I in yours.
It's inconsequential, but then again,
so were a lot of things.

Wandering mind, idle hands:
they're called the devil's playground
for a reason. I slam myself into
the over analysis of nightmares
of mid-day slumbers.

Forcing sleep upon my waking body
to numb the pain of another useless
day in another useless body stuck in
this useless state of mind. That's all
it ever is, though. Place and thought.

But I'm comfortable set in misery
and pushing away the closest things
and people to love and home that I have. Cutting strings and burning bridges were always my favorite past time.

That type of self detriment always comes easier than dragging some sort of blade to idle flesh. Starving your body from life is much easier than
purging dinner from my swollen stomach. Full and "happy" because I live in America.

I tell you this: there are other ways of
hurting oneself that don't involve physical infliction. I find that of the mental and emotional type much more satisfying.

What if the hardest thing
was waking up in the morning?
Begging and pleading with your
body to release you from your bed.

The blankets grow from warm
and comforting to a shield from
the light outside. Pillows embody
the brick wall you build around.

You don't want to move...don't dare
to disturb the shaking peace that you've accomplished by remaining
motionless: the stage of least resistance.

Who the **** wants to hear
another sob story of a girl all alone,
bored with her thoughts or the
agony of being home?

How the light of the sun casts
out all her faults, or simply
pretending that long, hot
June days are soon to be lost.

Summer is choking in more
ways than one, forcing relations
with those whom you'd rather
be done.

Lost friends we call them, those
from your past. But truth be told,
everyone knew we'd never last.

**** foundations split sooner
than hoped, but what was lost
to her then was more than just most...

Most of what she clung to from
days of old, where the glory of
embroidered polos signified gold.

But here, two years later from the
grim summer of '12, she closes old
books and shoves them back to their shelves.

Banished are the memories of these
days from the past, and cut are the ties from "friends" who'd never last.

Here's to the ones that deal
with the annoyances of every
day life. To all who choke down
the pounding alarm of morning
and avoid falling asleep on the
highway to another day of mindless
"living life." No questions, please.

No interruptions in the routine. No
radical injections of new ideas or change...but most importantly, no criticism of the daily dose of life here, in the Valley of average and desemated.

To those who fall in line with the rest, hoping that this morning's coffee is the last they'll ever sip. Or to the paper man driving and praying today's the day his car will finally slide off into a ditch of peace. Some type of homicidal heaven to escape the suffocating grip reality seems to hold...to break free of the fleeting expectation of greatness, when all you have to offer is yourself.

Tonight, I poured my
emotional mess on the sidewalks.
I watched it splatter onto the brick
walls next to me and into the cool
cement below my feet.

I let the anxiety take control, again.
I let it feast on my sadness and spew
out manifestations of angst and pain that only a mind such as mine could. But I suppose that's not the worst thing.

I feel like I'm failing again. I feel like I'm losing a piece of myself. I'm losing grip with what I need to be doing.

But who the **** even knows what that is anyway?

I sometimes wish
I could simply light my
life on fire...a bursting,
roaring eruption of power.

I search for strength and
opportunity, naturally. But
it doesn't feel like enough
anymore. Not for me.

Maybe it's depression, they
say. It's a phase, a bad day,
a road bump in the path.
But what if it's not?

What if it's perpetual?
A continuing state of on
and off...slowing coming and
going from emotion to emotion.

I guess, in a way, that's
life, right? Uncertainty.  
Madness. Destruction and then
rebuilding from what once was.

Life is a perpetual state
of confusion, along with
a few other ingredients.

It's hard to nail down
what my personal recipe
is missing at the moment.

I feel as though if I were to
enter into the oven as is,
I would be the throw away batch.

You know, of course:
the brownie pan with the sunken
warm goo center.

Not bad, just ill formed
and underdeveloped
like myself.

But each day, I walk
and take one step
like mom always says.

It seems as though those things
I took for granted so much before
are the things I miss the most now.

Like waking up next to you
for nearly a week straight,
hair a mess, but heart in place.

Or you. Your stupid, ******* humor
which made me feel just a little more special than anyone else here.

I could write lines and lines
about different yous and she's,
but then it would lose track.

It's about me, finding my place
somewhere other than in sadness
or work or in being busy.

Because there's so much more
than that to this story.

You ask who's around
and who I should go and see,
but it's time by myself and that's
all it really ends up as: me.

When you're not around
and I'm away from home,
I stumble through each day
wondering why I'm all alone.

There are a few here and there
that I spend some time with,
But it's really only you that
I care to be around and kiss.

Don't get me wrong, my work
means so much to me.
But how can I possibly be happy
when one is my army?

Cliche and unimportant:
the worries of a perpetual
spaz who cannot let go
of "her control" of the world.

Because, for her,
reality has a firm place
in her calloused palm,
while she truly plays
puppeteer to the hand dealt
to her each day.

With every interaction,
emotion, situation and the like,
she's pushed farther.
Farther away from "the plan"
and closer to where
she should be.

Why, then, is it so bad?
Why, then, does anxiety creep?
When control, fickle like the weather,
escapes so easily from her grasp.

Is this the story you want to be a part of?

All of the mess
the upsets
the tears and tissues
the irrationalities
the humanness and flaws
that stitch together
this imperfect person.

I am me.
Unfortunately.
But it is who
I will always be.

I'm hoping you're okay
with this humanness of me.
The awful and beautiful things
that make me the girl I was
and the woman I hope to be.