Maybe

Maybe you were just a ghost after all, a Thanksgiving ghost in the Beachwood hills intent upon stealing lonely souls. Well you caught mine. I knew you were too perfect to be in this universe.

yes, but...

is this happiness, this feeling where i don't know what to do with myself because there's no negativity and therefore so much time? is this why cigarettes taste like ash and not-enough and i'm bored without friends?

happy but directionless. how do i not sabotage this?

i'm scared, really, i'm really scared of being happy

chemistry, part 1,000,000

uppity up up now i upped the dose and now fuck the world can't keep up with me and what the hell do I do with my time? the finches are chatting in the nightshade on the porch but i'm home alone with no one to entertain me. immense boredom. if only i were focused and not so much like a tumbleweed in very high winds. 

that being said it's really quite nice not to be a lump of lead longing to be fetal in my bed. love it while it lasts, i guess!

chemistry

coming down now, that intensity too much too strong to not have a backlash with fewer pills, and inside my bones it hurts. who are you that is crushing my panicked heart in your fist? let me breathe please, let me dance and think and please let me sleep. 

the world is closing in on me. it's time to retreat. 

except for you, you know who you are, you who need me right now. sometimes someone needing you is all you can hold onto as everything slips away. please need me now, please, if not for you then for me. 

electric fields

tinted blue glass shatters across the kitchen floor. funny how it catches the sunlight. the dogs listen for once when i yell at them. wasn't my glass anyhow. sorry, A. but i did the dishes and a million other things today hyped up on these pills meant to calm me down. i was thinking of continuing to take them against doctor's orders until this happened. i was rather having fun. 

back to normal life, tiny shards of glass in my soles. they'll come out eventually but there's no quick fix, i guess. 

you don't get to win any more

you've become the cruel one again mother and i'm afraid, i'm calling you Mommy and cowering oh the blood on your hands don't you see what you've done but you're doing it still only i'm strong now, not what you expected, is it, saying no, the fragile daughter?

i want to injure myself to take it all back but i won't because then you'd win. we're back to war again mother only this time i know it's on. 

all mothers' eve

everyone thinks that i'm fine and maybe i am. i ought to be, it's just another day another sunday another hallmark holiday for cards and candies and yes i've reduced your expectations and mine as well.

but. what you've done to me comes boiling out. i've blisters on my thighs and on my hands and in my heart from you.

tonight i smoke till my lungs bleed because you hate it so much, tomorrow i call you and make nice and say the nice daughter things and it's pain already, choking heart and nausea, blistered throat, blistered tears, but i can't not call because once again you wield the power. you're broken now, your words don't hurt, but you did that damage so long ago before there were words to matter. you don't even know what you did. 

i feel infected inside.

thank you mom.  

all we are left with is loneliness

sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more;
      men were deceivers ever;
one foot in sea, and one on shore; 
     to one thing constant, never;
           so sigh not so, 
           but let them go,
     and be you blithe and bonny;
converting all your sounds of woe
     into hey, nonny, nonny.

cigarettes are a ten-minute friend to keep company. a cup of tea will work for a while. writing into the void can alleviate but oh i do so wish for those days of large estates and at the very least someone, somewhere, if you look hard enough amongst the hedges. 

sing no more ditties, ladies, sing no more, 
     or dumps so dull and heavy;
the fraud of men was ever so, 
    since summer first was leavy. 
         then sigh not so,
         but let them go,
    and be you blithe and bonny;
converting all your sounds of woe
    into hey, nonny, nonny. 

ineptitude

trying to scotch tape the brain together today. tape is not strong enough. brain cleaves in pieces and i cannot see or drive or walk. left work early and it's not the kind of work you can do that with. 

getting seriously scared this isn't side effects but an actual inability to deal with reality.

you know you can flick ants and they keep on walking wherever they land? would that i were that resilient. i'm not here too much to learn to do that these days, these strange sunny-rainy desert days. 

confusion

can't concentrate on nothing. can't do nothing. switching back and forth between dissociated and useless and amped up and useless and i think it's these meds, i do, i don't know what to do with myself, can't sit still can't even watch the boob tube, boredom all day all the day long but i can't do nothing.

i'm so frustrated i want to explode. 

symptom or random occurrence?

i think i would feel a lot less cuckoo if my eyelid would just stop twitching. it's been three days of hell.

 three days of twitching too.

naked

they say today is a new beginning but really it's the valium sleep in between that resets, that eight hours of nothing and old echoes of dreams of thinness, and this morning i feel crazy but i feel here. 

it's meant to rain today and if it does i think i won't wear a raincoat just in case, let the cold water run down the back of my neck. i'm not taking any chances. 

derealized

nothing is real except the ice on my neck and the coldness running down my back and ice on my temples and i am trying to make the cars around me real so i do not hit them. and when the rain comes i crank down the window on the freeway and let the rain splash my face, who cares how dirty, i just want to feel present and not gone gone gone like all day like those conversations i've forgotten like how i wasn't myself

and she said maybe this friendship is triggering as well as helpful
and i heard everything you confided today was a lie because you want to be like her
and i said nothing back 
and i am angry but i cannot feel it because nothing feels real anyhow

i'm sliding back and forth, the present's a haze most of the day



and i didn't do the thing which would make me feel better because i am afraid to drive and now i am afraid to talk to you because you've invalidated me in my head or maybe in real life

but i don't remember what happened for parts of today and i'm scared, i'm so scared and you've taken my friendship away and i don't trust you there's no one to talk to

hungry eyes

i hear the old songs and someone is strangling my heart, muscle and blood pumping and panicked rattled breaths and i stumble over the dogs because i cannot think, do not see. rip the headphones out. too much comfort in those melodies, too much closeness. i lie and say i'm stronger without. convince myself. sticks and stones. 

an old photo today of someone's hand on my thigh, tattered edges. i stopped breathing long ago. i asked for it for kindness because someone else's wasn't. i can't forget. 

my hands are cold my feet are cold paralysis grips my heart and i saw in the mirror today at ballet the dead dead eyes and i don't want this i just don't know what to do with all of it, i don't want this reality but it's mine, it is mine

a rare and lovely feeling

sometimes there is one thing that pulls you out of the mire, even for a moment. or two. or the day and the morning after when you are sore in the good way where even past lives of hurt and pain cannot dare touch.

i am exhausted, and i did good work today, and i am calm.

on paralysis, of the morning variety

i want to sleep in the daylight when it's safe and stay in bed where it's safe and hold the puppy and talk to everyone i know.

but.

there's something to be said for fighting the past and being brave. i'm trying to remember how.

surprisingly

there's a 3 where the 1 was and something has shifted. but i'm not one of those who writes when they're ok. a sudden longing for my hemingway books stored in a garage in the valley or maybe they're lost forever, i won't know, and i'm trapped in this in-between place where i do not know the things that belong to me. you took so much and pretended you didn't.

i'm not living in my head but in the past again. i'm spending days fist to my gut because i want a physical reason. you ought to have socked me before i called the cops but that would've made it believable, wouldn't it?

ambiguity and lies and i'll never know, i'll never know.

who i'm talking to here is interchangeable, depending. you two are each other, don't you know. my god i hope you know who you are but you'll never read this. you'll never have the luxury.