I Don’t Know What’s Going On With This Post, But Here You Go

The soft crunch of another handful of dirt landing on my coffin sounds like a whisper. It says “I miss her.” I say “Sure you do.” My murderers toss more dry dirt on top of my bed. They whisper about how young I was. They blame the stress. Maybe it was too much for me. Maybe I was too much for them. I requested my hands not be placed cross my chest because I didn’t want to spend the rest of time in a straight jacket. My request for cremation was also ignored. As far as funerals go, I guess mine wasn’t a total disaster. I guess that it could’ve been worse. I only wish that I hadn’t attended.

 

-AcuteAnimosity

If I Don’t Write About It, Then It Won’t Come True

I’m not going to write about how you stood me up today or how you barely respond to me anymore. If I write about how it feels to have you slip through my fingers, then you will already be gone. This isn’t me detailing how you’ve wronged me, and this certainly isn’t a goodbye. If I don’t write about losing you, then maybe I won’t.

Instead I want to write about how it felt when we were the brightest thing in every room that we went in. I want to write about how your skin burned mine while still making me shiver. I need to capture every detail of the moment you made me fall in love with brown eyes, your brown eyes, in permanent ink. Maybe if I hold on tighter, you’ll be able to feel me in spite of the distance. Only, holding on this tightly is starting to hurt. I know that I should let go, but we were the brightest thing in every room that we went in, and I just want some of that light back.

 

-AcuteAnimosity

In Defense of Those Drowning

Living is drowning.

Attacked by feeling,

overwhelmingly so.

Kicking, thrashing, fighting

for your right to breath.

Drowning is not death.

It’s the moment just before.

Death is loss.

The loss of pain,

but also drive and joy.

It’s the feeling gone.

All feeling gone.

Living is drowning,

and giving up is death

 

-AcuteAnimosity

Love Letter

Dear You

You came into my life out of nowhere. You made me an addict with just your words. Then you held me. Then you opened yourself to me. Then you gave me your truth. Now I’m lost in brown eyes, baby names, and poetry. The cliché is not going unnoticed, just unchecked. It scares me that I’m jumping into your arms blindfolded and smiling. You could take it back. You could let go. You could leave me. And yet, here I am giving you my truth. It’s a risk any sane person would pass on, but I’m not wholly sane. I am just crazy enough to give up the good for a chance of the great. So here’s the bright obvious. I’m falling in love with you. I’m letting myself feel more than I should allow. I’m afraid, and I’ve never been more excited. I’m ready for a new knowledge of reality with you.

 

-AcuteAnimosity

Kissing a Woman

The first time I kissed a woman, it was more different than I could ever imagine. Her lips were sticky with a vanilla gloss, she smelled like a too lush summer day. She was too much a summer day for me. My hands were slick, my heart running marathons, and my breath gone completely. We kissed each other and kissed each other. Never has a kiss been so cooperative. It was as if we were working together to solve a rubix cube between our lips. Her hands rested on my hips and never traveled further. Their presence was meant to ground rather than explore. My blonde mingled with her brunette, our eyelashes tangled, our legs binding us together, and we kissed until we couldn’t move our mouths out of the smiles they formed. We kissed until laughter flowed out of us and rang like bells. We kissed. Not she. Not me. But we. That’s the difference between kissing a woman and kissing a man.

 

-AcuteAnimosity

After Wallace Stevens

When blue and yellow are combined, do they become any less blue or any less yellow? They certainly grow more green, but does their greenness take away from their original shade? Or does it their greenness add to their inherent blue and yellowness? Afterall, blue is only blue if it can make green by adding yellow. In this way we may change, but that doesn’t take away from who you are, rather it adds to your our own identities.

 

-AcuteAnimosity

Love in the Middle

I want to dance with you

leaving no room for angel’s wings

between our plump feather bodies.

Let’s swirl round and round

falling to the gray concrete ground, and

when you come to rest

you’re a bold, contrasting red

in all the best ways.

 

The kind of red that blinds

and the kind of red that binds

words like aggression and sex

to your wrists, bangels

clinking their way down

your arms and making

their way to your charcoal eyes

casting red rings to hug your irises.

 

It’s a connection that becomes

inseparable like the rock and

hard place that fused together

around me, punishment

for never making up my mind.

 

How could I decide on living

in valleys and leave mountain hikes

behind all together?

Why do we ask people to settle

for either pencil or pen

when both ink and lead poison?

 

I didn’t know that I couldn’t have both

feather bodies and steel flesh

in my dreams.

I didn’t know that it would kill me

to choose not to.

Still I keep stepping

down further each time

I fail to place my loyalties,

burying myself in false pride.

 

 

-AcuteAnimosity

I Am

I am six years old, and my favorite number is seven. My mom’s birthday is August seventh. I cannot wait to be seven because I know that it’s the best number, and therefore must be the best year of my life.

I am seven years old, and I hate all numbers especially seven. The doctor says that I have a kidney infection. My cousin has had more kidney infections than I can remember. My uncle has my aunt’s kidney because his didn’t work right. Do mine not work right either? Kidneys become my least favorite organ.

I am ten years old. I have my birthday party at the movies, and we go to see High School Musical Three. I even have a pinata with all the characters doing the classic High School Musical jump on it. I lay on the floor that night in between my cousin and my best friend. I don’t sleep because all I can think about is how I’m a decade old now. I decide I want to have seven more decades at least. I’ve gotten over my hatred of the number seven. My cousin doesn’t sleep either. She takes my arm and leads me into the kitchen were we mix sherbet with Sprite. I drink it all even though it’s the worst tasting dessert I’ve ever had. My cousin likes it, so I do too.

I am twelve years old. My cousin has moved into my house, and it’s the best thing that could’ve ever happened. I learn how to remove the window screen so that I can crawl out onto the roof and watch four am approach to the sound of The Pursuit of Happiness. My cousin always has friends over, and my mom can’t know. My cousin teaches me where to hide things and how often to change up hiding spots. We crowd around the family computer, and she lets me pick out the pictures and captions to put on her Tumblr, but tells me that I’m too young to make my own. She gets a concussion the same day that I break my wrist. We call it fate and spend the day at home listening to Incubus in her yellow bedroom.

I am thirteen and my cousin no longer lives with me. I spend the summer sleeping in her bed and waking up crying. This isn’t when the night terrors began, but this is when they became permanent. When I stood in my own room, it felt abandoned. It was an empty, lifeless room I stayed in my cousin’s room because bits and pieces of her were still there: the hole punched into the door, the loosened window screen, the rock on top of the roof. There was no life in my bedroom, there still isn’t. I learn that I’m not the only one in my family who’s like this. I don’t visit my aunt in the hospital, but I learned the definition of suicide that summer. I didn’t know it was possible until then. I still thank God everyday that she went to the emergency room and not to the funeral home. 

I am fourteen and I sleep in my own room again. I find new ways deafen the silence inside of it: my earrings, Breathe Me by Sia, and my boyfriend’s depression. I preoccupy myself with thoughts of only other people. I’m no longer a human, I’m just a vessel. A way that people get from point A to point B. I sail people from depression to happiness and back again. Just before four am has lost its magic, it’s just after that that gives me hope. So I turn in my night owl’s card for one that reads “morning person.” I throw out my black eyeliner pencil because it’s too obvious. I buy clothes with color, and I keep myself so busy that I can’t think. My boyfriend needs me to happy, so that’s what I do. I smile way too often. I laugh at jokes I don’t find funny. I funnel all my feelings back inside myself. I greet my law guardian happily and lie about everything I’ve learned as I always have, as I always will.

I am seventeen, and I’ve just downloaded every Incubus album onto my iPhone. I no long feel sad when I hear those melodies. I remember my cousin, but I don’t think about the nights I laid in her bed willing myself to disappear. I lose all but one of my friends because I break up with the boy who has depression. Turns out his depression was mine. I’m a hot air balloon after that, I rise higher and higher until I can’t tell my hometown from the town next to it from the town next to that one. I graduate high school. I donate pieces of my heart to all my classmates in a commencement speech that spells out my forgiveness and my solidarity. I decide to go to some college four hours away from home because the thought of being any closer makes me sick.

I am nineteen, and I am impossibly happy during the day. My life is full of learning, leadership, and advocacy. I do only things that I want to do which includes never looking back. I miss my mom at all times. I feel my future at all times. I am transitioning from the taught to the teacher. It’s wonderful. I never stop moving, ever. I take more credits than I need and join every club I possibly can. My life is a bicycle, it must be kept in motion to keep from falling over. I smile, and it’s real.

I am nineteen, and I am impossibly terrified at night. My dreams are full of faces I left four hours behind. I only half-sleep because their memories claw at my brain. They interrupt the normal dreams flowing through my synapses. The only time I stop is at night. I wish I never had to sleep because I’m sure that I could find things to fill the time. Why do I keep reliving my life at night? I thought that I had left it behind. It makes me wonder if I haven’t really moved on. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever move on.

 

-AcuteAnimosity

Ocean

Ocean

It’s 9:13pm on a Monday and

I feel like I should cry

But I don’t and instead

I wrap my arms around myself

And fold my knees up against my chest

While the waves keep crashing in my skull

Dragging the sand away from my shore

Tearing it up bit by bit

Chunks ripped out of my sunny paradise

Some vacation

I want to go home

The thought is my ocean

I want to go home

But here I am

Sitting at my dining room table

I’ve realized that

Home is a feeling

And I don’t know what home feels like

 

-AcuteAnimosity

Boyfriends

Well someone asked about my boy drama, so here it goes. I’ll admit I’ve been avoiding it for a while. So I’m going to talk about the last three guys that I’ve “dated.” I put quotes around it because one was never official and one was really too short for it to be noteworthy. I’m going to go in reverse order and start with the guy I was just with (Evan/ the online guy), then the one before that (I think I referred to him as poem guy), then finally Lewis (if you recognize Lewis, you’ve been around since the way beginning or you’ve done some considerable reading of my blog, and I’m impressed).

Evan and I “dated” for a few months. Considering I dated Lewis for three years I find it hard to really consider Evan and I fully dating even though we had made it official. So I met him online (League of Legends), by some miracle he ended up only being 15 minutes away, and we met. During the summer I would get one 24 hour break a week from work, and I always went to see him. It didn’t take long for us to think we were in love. When we both started the new semester, I learned a lot I didn’t know about him. He was an engineering major at a fancy private school for technology, and I interpreted that as him being a very hard worker. I was so very wrong. He did nothing but complain about his school work, he skipped class all the time, and he was doing poorly in all of his classes. I just couldn’t see eye to eye with him on all of that. Hard working to me doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing very well in all your classes and you’re an engineering major. I just mean someone who works hard and gives everything they do all they’ve got. It doesn’t even mean being in college, it just means always doing your best. I was sick of hearing him complain, giving him advice and encouragement, and then him not taking the advice and just doing poorly because he was lazy. On top of that I am probably the most independent person on the planet. I do my best to do everything on my own. Because I’m so strong, I attract dependent people who think that I will be able to take care of them and myself. I was sick of being his mother. I was more mature than he was. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t a great person who is kind and funny and sweet, but it does mean that we were drastically incompatible. He was incapable of giving me space, and I was incapable of giving him the constant attention that he needed. I don’t regret our time together, but to be honest if I could go back in time, I would not have dated him. We were good for a time, it was all good fun, but it had an expiration date.

Time for poem guy, and can I just say I have not thought about this kid for a while. We had a summer fling, but really the same thing that happened with Evan happened with him. He didn’t complain or anything, and he was a very hard worker which is why it was really really great for a while. Nevertheless, he was a project person. He wanted me to fix him, and I thought I could for a while. He’d tell me I was helping him with his (undiagnosed) depression which made me feel good. It just came to the point that he was leaning on me way too much. He needed constant attention and reassurance, and I needed space. I’m starting to sound like I’, afraid of commitment, but really I am just highly introverted. I like to be alone, and I don’t always need to be hugging, cuddling, and kissing. I am the opposite of clingy, but somehow I attract clingy people. So it just didn’t work out, and we were never official anyway.

Where do I start with Lewis? We started dating late freshman year of highschool, and we dated for three years. Lewis was the ultimate project person. He also claimed to be depressed and told me that I was helping him to be happy again. However, he was a lot more dangerous. Lewis was manipulative. He guilted me all the time. If we hadn’t hung out together outside of school for a few days, he would accuse me of all sorts of things. He didn’t like that I had online friends, he got jealous of my best girl friend, and he drove away every other friend of mine until my only friends were his friends (except my best girl friend who I’ve never talked about on this blog, but I really should because she is one of the best people in my life). I thought he loved me, but really he just loved having me. I thought about breaking up with him so many times, but he said over and over again that he would kill himself if I left him. He would often tell me that if I didn’t do something that he wanted me to do he would cut himself, and he really did cut himself when I upset him. He has a scar on his left wrist that is wide and purple and will never ever go away. He cut himself down to his bone, and then he sent me the pictures. I started just doing what he asked of me. If he would cut himself so deeply, he might actually kill himself if I left. That was my thought process anyway. Before our senior prom, it became too much for me. I couldn’t handle his mood swings, his attachment to me, or his manipulation anymore. I made sure that one of our friends would be there for him to convince him not to commit suicide if he had really meant those threats. With encouragement from my best friend, I broke up with him finally. I never told anyone why though. I told everyone, including him, that he was a great person and I didn’t regret our time together. I said that I was just unhappy, and I didn’t want to have a long distance boyfriend in college. Because of that I looked like a monster, and all of our friends sided with him. I was the villain who broke his heart. It was lonely at first because I only had one friend, but I’ve always been independent. I was also going to go to college soon and make all new friends, so that helped me get through it. However, in the months that followed our break up, all of our mutual friends who had begun to hate me, saw the real him for themselves. Without me to manipulate and lean on, he had turned on them for everything I used to provide him. They all came back to me and apologized. They couldn’t believe that I had stayed with him so long and didn’t trash his name afterward. These days I don’t think about him much. His mom still messages me on Facebook to tell me she misses me, and that he was such a better person with me. In her mind, we will get back together someday. That will never happen. This isn’t everything, I obviously couldn’t fit three years into one post, and there were happy moments too. However, I do regret that relationship. I wish I had been single in high school honestly.

That’s my boy dilemmas. It doesn’t seem like a happy story, but what I’ve learned from all this is that I’m strong. I have survived 100% of my worst days, and I consider that a good track record and a victory. I hope you all have had better relationships than me. Feel free to ask my advice on relationship stuff, I have had a lot of experience. Thank you guys for listening. Have a great holiday season.

-AcuteAnimosity