Maybe

Ghosts.
Empty footprints of where I have walked.
Phantom outlines of where I stood in smiling photos surrounded by people I used to know.
That was me.
I used to be her.
The broken pieces still lay abandoned on the floor, I remember, I know how, I could glue them back together. But an extended arm and five stretching fingers later, my hand jumps away quickly, retracts from that invisible fence my mind installed months ago.

I miss her, that person I used to be. People liked her and now it's just lonely.
My thoughts run around in flurries on days like these when I wonder in vain if anyone else misses her, too.
But I know better.
They can't miss her when they don't even realize that she's gone.

It's ok.

"Maybe you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be."
--Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City

I'm trying to believe in that and I'm trying really, really hard to let go.

Honesty: Take 6

If you asked me but only if you asked me, I would say that I really want to play the guitar.

(via) Tumblr

I'd tell you that I want to sleep in the backseat of a moving car but only if I can keep the windows open. I would say that I want to go canoeing but I don't want any oars and I want to be ok about it. That I want to write song lyrics on post it notes and leave them on car windows because I think that someone's looking for me like I'm looking for them and I want to guide them in the right direction. I want to have a room with floor length white curtains and pale blue walls and hard wood floors and a book that I can read just because. I want to memorize quotes so that I always have something to say because sometimes, someone else has said it better than I ever could. I want to sleep in the afternoons beside warm tea and wake up sometime after midnight when I can't tell the difference between late night and early morning. That I only like the taste of ice cold water after something sweet. How I once poured ice on green August grass and tried to pretend that it was fresh snow but it melted and turned into rain and for some reason that made me want to cry. I would tell you that breathing is only easy when I forget that I'm breathing and it's hard when I have to keep reminding myself that I have to live through the present to get to the future. And that I'm only lonely for 8 hours, 5 days a week but the rest of the time I'm alone and I'm ok.

This is what I would tell you but only if you asked.
But you probably won't.
And I won't ask you anything either and we'll leave it at that-- you'll never know me and I'll never know you. You'll look at me and I will smile because everyone seems to need more smiles these days and then I'll turn my head back towards the window and I'll stay silent and I won't be smiling anymore because yesterday I thought today would be easy but it's not.
It's hard not knowing anyone.

Orange

September by Voetmann / © All rights reserved

Reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Listening to Bird of the Summer by A Fine Frenzy. I'm saying goodbye to summer--it's taking a while.

Loving the color of the sun and sky.

Drinking Welch's Orange Pineapple juice

Happy Weekend

"I hope you spend your time with someone you love, even it’s just you.”
--(via) I Wrote This For You

I guess

(via) from StumbleUpon

Tomorrow it'll be a different story.
I'll have another question. I'll go out searching for another answer.
I'm convinced my inner being is a lava lamp-- it's just changing all the time.

Not for her

"Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time."
--from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

This is my attempt at optimism

(via) from Tumblr
Hello, Fall.
Hope you don't suck.

It was impossibly hot. Hot in a way that it made me feel stupid for wearing warm clothes on the first day of fall. I got to thinking about all of my self-destructive tendencies and how sometimes I feel like I'm wading through a dried up lake full of wreckage. I saw the quote "To create is to destroy" written at the top of an index card. I understood. I'm destructive. I like to pick up the ruins and create things, things that I need to breathe easier and somewhere along the way, I start to think that maybe if it helps me, it can help other people too. Then there's nothing left for me to do but destroy all the things that litter my insides bit by bit, tear down the walls encircling me and make something good from the bad. Or at least I try to do that. Nothing ever make any sense but when I'm writing I understand things. But since I can't write all the time, I get lost a lot, the bad piles up on top of me and I feel like I'm going to suffocate and end up lonely and sad and rolling around in ruins and wreckage for the rest of my life. So I'm learning to trace the words on invisible sheets of paper inside my head and remember to always create and destroy the bad a little at a time.

Today

On days like these, my memories are re-runs of my old life that went off the air seasons ago.
They play on a HD wide-screen tv, inches from my face.
Only I'm watching them upside-down, the volume's turned up but I can't hear anything, everyone's speaking in a language I can't understand--nothing has subtitles.

And then before I get afraid that while running to the future I accidentally ran back into the past. It's gone like smoke and the present blurs back into focus.

Honesty: Take 5

Nothing makes any sense to me. Honestly,

(via) From iLove

Wings to fly

"You need to fly" {EXPLORE} by JessicaOssa {Sunshine Photography} / © All rights reserved

Somehow you'll escape

The Waiting Place…
… for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying…

--Excerpt from Oh, The Place You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

Overall

Overall, I'm feeling lousy.

Watching the afternoon fade through to evening.
Closed curtains glowing orange.
Tired.
Bored.
Stuck in an incessant pause.
Playing the same song on repeat.
Failing to fly away on clouds stuffed with music notes.
It's lousy.

Honesty: Take 4

I am nothing, only me.
I could have been something, anything.

It was a choice.
A choice.
A yes. A no.
A box to fill in with an X, two small lines crossing somewhere in between reality and the truth.

I could have been something, anything.
But I'd rather be nothing than be something I'm not.

Never Came Back

"And the people said...
'Oh, she's not beautiful at all.'

And they took her from the beautiful house and they drove her into the street.

And she went away... and she never came back."

--Quote from the movie Gia

I am warm...

This is dedicated to a glowing reader who really liked a post titled "I am cold" from my old blog.
She inspires me to keep blogging like no other.

Morning crept up on me. A long night of sleep felt like a 15 minute nap.

I used to sit by the window every morning and just stare out into the yard...
The cold used to sting me to numbness and I loved it, I stayed there for months unmoving and immobile. Frozen.
I'm not like that now. I know better.
The cold inches in anyway but I try not to feel its bite, I try not to shiver at its chill.
Still the frown forms when the image jumps in front of my eyes.
The tree has grown taller, its few bare branches have spanned into many.
Into hunching, curving, draping limbs that drown the entire yard in their shadows.
And with their sun eclipsing leaves, casting only sparsely sprinkled drops of light onto the grass.
But still, somehow, shards of sunlight manage to slip into the room, stride across the floor to me, bringing heat that cuts and blinds.
They leap off the walls and bounce back out the window, slip under the thin air and then dissolve into nothing, leaving me to defrost--warm and all alone.

Today

I feel awful. I've been sick all day.

(via) From signs and wonders

Lonely

"Where are the people?’ resumed the little prince at last. ‘It’s a little lonely in the desert…’

‘It is lonely when you’re among people, too,’ said the snake."
— excerpt from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Honesty: Take 3

You're obsessed with finding a new brain
But what you need a new body
It feels your brain has lived a thousand lives before
And the skin you call your home holds a heart that quits
And knees that buckle in and lungs that can't breathe when they're alone
And the days come to you like sailors, you watch them as they drift away
They meet the sunrise out at the horizon
And it's neither sink nor swim. At least the water's beneath your chin.

Lyrics from the song Accidntel Deth by Rilo Kiley

Song lyrics stay trapped inside my head.

The words swirl around my head and sometimes they float to me on music notes, carrying with them melodies. So I write them on post-it-notes and on the backs of scrap pieces of papers and in the margins of my old notebooks and try to trap them in between the cramped spaces.

I seem to leave them behind like bread crumbs.

Honesty: Take 2

I have debates with myself at 3 o' clock in the morning when I can't sleep.

Sometimes I think that it would just be easier to settle with this cup of loneliness instead of venturing that long journey in an attempt to find happiness only to end up with a banquet of sadness and disappointments. 

My mind always concludes the debates:

I'll never be brave enough to try. I'm going to drown here all alone in this cup. 

The discussion is over. 

But my heart wants be brave and wild, wants to know happiness and take chances. 

The truth is, I've chained my heart to an anchor of pain and heartbreaks that have infiltrated my past and I don't know how to free it. 

Photo Credit

(via) For Stars Will Rise Again

Honesty: Take 1

I was given the Honest Scrap award by the fabulous Jennifer from I know, right? (thank you!) and I have to share 10 honest things about myself but I decided to do things a little differently. 

Hope you like it.

It's easier to hate you.

Someone once said if you hate another human being, you're hating a part of yourself. It's true. Those parts of you that I hate are the same ones that creep inside of me, I've tried to kill them but still they lurk and shift around inside my head when I find myself gazing out of windows or dreaming for too long. 

I want us to be best friends. I want to love you. I want us to be close. I really do. 

But those parts of me that I hate are only half-dead and will come alive if you get too close. Even now they stir at your scent and transform into that parasitic beast that still haunts my insides. 

So I have to keep my distance for now. 

I will fade slowly into the background and try to forget. 

Don't remember me. 

I won't. 

Tired but I'm trying

“I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
--excerpt from Looking For Alaska by John Green

I'm dripping back into my old ways. I know it. But it's hard being here, stuck inside this box marked off with pencil. They're meant to fade and smear with time but I hardly notice any changes. Freedom only comes with a sprinkling of dreams, painting the future inside my head, imagining a life outside this box...

But dreams are always batted away by waking eyes. Reality always reappears.
My body is glued here inside this box, my body is imprisoned and yet my mind is free to wander.

Gone

I'm afraid that the words will leave me and can at any moment.
Instead of them unconsciously finding me, I'll start looking for them and they will hide. I'm water evaporating from sight and rivers rushing towards oceans, I'm in the words that always find a way to escape. But I fear that one day, I will dry up like a well.

Postpone

(via) iLOve

Okay

(via)

Once

Once I bit into your soul and bled.
My mouth went up in flames and my lips burned.
I shoveled in your soul and choked on it.
It got lodged in my throat, too big, too small for that space deep inside me.
My eyes watered, so I spit it out and cried.