As artists often times I think we’ve taught ourselves to think like a median for things

Like if we see something beautiful or feel a strong emotion, we must always translate it into art

And i realize it takes away from basking in it for ourselves

Almost like if we cant find something to say or do with it, our souls aren’t at ease.

Today I sat in awe of a field, the sound of nature, the smell of trees and I fought my instincts to make it into poetry

But then again, here we are and perhaps I did it anyway.

Today I thought about burning the tapestry we bought together, but that required fire and a pit and piling wood together like a tent, and I realized that the small wavering thought of you wasn’t worth all the effort.

I get it now, I’m driving home at 2 in the morning, listening to a song that sounds like sleeping in the back seat of a pickup truck while the music hits the cracked windows. I’m folding laundry, and there’s the smell of evenings spent at the laundromat with my dad and sister when I was a kid. The sight of an empty fridge, the taste of cereal with water for breakfast.

And In all of this, I realize that there was probably never a moment when you wondered where your next meal was coming from. With your heated floors and financial security. Me, a silly kid of merely 18, head over heals in love with you, couldn’t have been bothered to think of cultural divide, or how our childhoods never made sense to one another.
So I think of all this and I get it. She’s better for you. She makes more sense to you. Both of you growing up within 10 blocks from each-other. Neither of you followed around a store that you grew up around the corner from, because once gentrified, brown becomes suspicious. Neither of your parents freshly 18 and vomiting prayers as they walked home from work, through places that without a guardian angel, you could end up in pieces or splattered on the floor. Neither of you were nine, and filled with panic at the thought of your dad bussing home from working nights at a casino. Cleaning floors or windows or toilets. I bet you never saw your dad cry with anger and swallow humiliation watching all those people gambling away money he could of used to patch up the cracks in the walls of that one bedroom “apartment”.

You make sense together.
I tried so hard to make you understand me, and see me.
I took you to my roots and you scrunched up your nose at them.
I should have known. When you refused to delve in my culture and instead bought pre packaged noodles.

So yeah, when I think of you guys together, at home spooning on a couch or bickering over dishes, I get it. It doesn’t hurt. It just makes sense.

I’m afraid to say i’m back because the darkness that follows me might hear me be too cocky in my recovery and try a little harder. or perhaps i’m afraid to tell my friends i’m making progress and then regress. I want to be back so badly. I keep going back to 3 birthdays ago. fresh buzz cut. last time i felt truly calm, even though there was a tornado ripping trees from the ground outside, i felt good. waking up in a familiar place, with people who loved me. so much possibility. i suppose it’s all about habits, and the habits I’ve developed have become something hard to let go of. harder than that, it’s like they’ve become part of my inner voice and they’re so good at convincing me that, maybe just one, maybe this time it’ll be different, Maybe this time they won’t leave. And i’m scared to begin because i’m scared i won’t be the same i was last time i tried. What if I can’t face the failure? my therapist says that’s a good thing. not being who i was. but who i am isn’t somebody i like.

I was born into chaos.

Birth isn’t a steadying experience, it’s a mess of screaming and tears. Mine, my mom’s, maybe even my dad’s because he really wanted a boy.

Same as I was born into chaos, I was raised by it. People say ‘I was born and raised here’ and I wonder how that feels. Chaos has always been my friend. So now, when something feels too steady, I rock it. I really wish I didn’t.

I wonder how it feels to enjoy the calm. I just keep seeking out the storm. Storms like way too much whiskey, and the fact that I haven’t had sober sex in maybe a year. Storms like why ‘does emotional intimacy feel like opening a door during a tornado?’

Like there’s pieces of me in all the places I’ve been.
I remember writing a poem once, to a girl I was in-Like with
It asked how she gave herself to so many people and didn’t loose herself in them.

That poem became just another letter I never sent
Because too many times I sent too many texts and that’s not something people like too much and
I’ve been told
obsessive behaviors are a symptom of anxiety

And anyway
I always worried about that
giving so much that I ended up empty
or filled with other people
And now I’m pretty sure I am that
the least bit myself

Like when we met that night and she threw up in a cup,
drunk on mimosas, laughter, and possibility
She left me with pieces of her that I never quite shook

So maybe I feel like I became her
When we stayed up all night kissing/ deliriously laughing at things that weren’t funny
I felt how free she was and I ached for it, badly.
And now I am it
Free
But I never knew free would be so lonely

She found somebody and they’re In love and do yoga and own a dog
and I’m wondering if It’s because I gave her that piece of me
The one that always wanted the love that she now has/

anyway
I feel scattered.

 

Today there is no cadence to my words/or my thoughts. Today I woke up feeling empty, so I drove to a friend’s house and filled my cup of coffee with their thoughts. Last night I filled my body with so much beer and wine that I think I overflowed. and this morning, I felt empty. A few nights ago I stalked your instagram, knowing I would make myself sad but I think what’s worse is that I wasn’t. I’m happy for you.
I am empty, or I feel empty. I am scared that even though I was filled with all the wrong things before, I was at least full of something.

I think often times I try to stretch people to be more than they are. I try to bring round characters out of flat ones, out of ones that should have only had one purpose in my story.  I try to make everyone as complex and multi faceted as i am inside my head. I want to show people that the world is composed as much of Beethoven’s symphonies as it is of music some guy made in his basement about a woman he saw in passing at a dive bar in New York City.
This is why I get stuck in the past and give way too many chances, because I am intoxicated with the possibility that this person will come. the one who understands the fun and madness of being everything. Like playing with gender and fashion and music and being broad and wide with it all.
A few people have presented the possibility of polyamory to me. That maybe I shouldn’t expect everything from one romanticized individual, who might never come, and instead find the different things I want in different people. Even not in a romantic/ sexual way but in a community based way that I have never had the privilege of experiencing. I like this concept. Expecting what takes a village to be accomplished by one individual seems irrational and also like a lot of pressure.
However, just because toxic monogamy is a leg stemming from the very dysfunctional nuclear family dynamic etc etc, and I can recognize it, it doesn’t mean I am not in awe when Ryan Goslin and Rachel McAdams are dancing with no music in the middle of an empty street. Or when Holly and Gerry fight In P.s I love you. God, I love how they fight.
I guess I can enjoy the romcoms and understand that life doesn’t come in a two hour, well polished, 300 take, movie. It’s so much better than that, because it’s long enough for so many different stories, the romcom, the regular comedy, the one about breakups and how to piece yourself back together after, the one about the guy going into the woods alone (that one doesn’t end too well).
So many people will come who will be “the one” and that concept is both scary and exhilarating, depending on how we look at it, right? that everything is fleeting can be terrifying and also very freeing. That love will manifest itself in so many different ways and we just have to be present enough to see it, recognize it, and enjoy it, no matter how brief (although hopefully not so brief). But it’s hard, to not want to hold onto it till our knuckles are white, because nothing feels better than true connection with another and to know that it might only be here for a little while can make the soul sad, at least it does mine. also, not taking it personal when these people leave, wow yet another hard one, breaking the ego and the ‘I’ concept, Buddha really had it right.

I’m tired of writing letters I’ll never send to people who don’t care.

End letter.

I’m not killing myself out of spite

I won’t climb up to the top shelf and

Drink it dry before jumping off.

and if you haven’t figured out that I’m not myself lately,

Then you never knew me.