Notes App I

Table For One 

My emotions are wired like a light switch, with an invisible hand that likes a game of flipping it in my oblivion. 

Craving time alone, where I feel I can finally breathe, to being suffocated by my loneliness and desperately searching for somebody, anybody, everybody to feed my appetite for living. 

A perfect balance, never simultaneous, but somehow symbiotic. 

Penciled in between the lines of my solitude is a reproach for the stillness and a longing for shared moments. I can’t help it! I am lonely and I love it until I can’t stand it. I am surrounded by others and it brings me to life until it drains my very being. 

It is the most black and white thing you will find entangled in my emotions. 

Flu Season

I think I am drowning in this city. 

I think I watch too much television. 

I think I won’t make it past 25. 

I think I hate my job. 

I think I think too much, it makes my head hurt. Headaches are the worst but they’re better than being here and it’s winter and I miss my mom. That will go away soon enough but I miss being young and feeling beautiful for myself. 

It’s all so hard here, but I think this is the place for me, because I can never have an easy life. I wouldn’t be able to stand the easy life, it would bore me to death and so I choose to suffer everyday because at least I’m feeling something even if it’s just seasonal depression. 

Maybe that’s what causes the flu. 

Open Houses 

Insecurity leads me to open houses where I imagine a life where I am boring and happy. I would do nothing all day and dream in black and white. I would know nobody and nobody would know me, but I have brunch on Wednesday with Sarah and I talk on the landline with my mother in law. I would do yoga in the morning and tell myself I am happy over and over until my lips turned blue. I wouldn’t know anything about myself and then I remember and I am thankful I know who I am now and not a version of myself who dwells in a five bedroom craftsman.  

Woodside 

Maybe we all have something we regret but I am Thankful for our time and I will see you soon!

Childhood

I remember it in the way I remember summertime. It feels the very same.

You will miss it when it is gone, but oh how infinite it remains to you!

I worship it like a religion and carry it in the esteem of a loved one. 

I hold it in my hands and close to my heart. 

I drink it in my dreams and let it run wild through my being.

Lighter, lighter it floats away until you can no longer see it but I will remember it, that beautiful golden summertime.

Sunscreen 

Grief is a funny thing to feel when you’re sunburnt with the ocean in sight. You walked with me but it felt like you were already gone. My lips were sealed but I was saying goodbye. There was an inch of space between us and I missed you like a child. 

Come back, I’m scared, your hand is on my back, it says you are here, but you’re not, you can’t be, because why would I feel this way if you were? 

If only I had worn sunscreen.

(I guess I wouldn’t Know) 

They say good things will come but perhaps these things skip a generation.

I miss you, but you must’ve heard 

Summers at a standstill and this is my way of telling you everything I never could. 

I regret you but you are still the one I wish to come home to. I wish you would come back to me but maybe it is better for you to stay away. 

Let me feel this earnestly so that maybe I can reach you again later in life when we are both better and fuller and lighter and easier to love. 

My afflictions are as temporary as my very life, but my conviction to you will not waver, though sometimes I wish it did.

I wrote this on a Wednesday

There is hair in my shower that is not my own. I wrote a letter to my mom with the things I was too scared to say in Ohio. 

A month has gone by and I feel the same. I feel guilty all the time, for there is a part of myself I can’t accept in my body. I long for simple days of jellybeans and bare feet, somewhere in the parts I let eclipse me. I fear for the things in my life that feel replaceable. I want to tether them to me with words that have more weight than before. My world grows silent and I find it harder and harder to breathe through it. 

These are not Monday’s words and they will not be Thursday’s either. 

Perhaps it will be better if I wait it out. Perhaps the words will be of things that remain beautiful while everybody is looking the other way. Perhaps it will be the things that are beautiful to me. Perhaps one day I will be one of those things. 

But not on Wednesday. 

New Orleans 

I’m alone here on the other side of the country but I close my eyes and I can see my grandmother making tea. Why is mom always crying? Why is my brother so mean? I’m spiteful of what’s in my head but I guess I am selfish too because I stay here often with my eyes shut tight because if I open them and see these strangers in this strange city I think I might scare myself to death and I’m only 19 and I haven’t even gotten to see New Orleans yet.