I’m not that weak

Barenaked Ladies ‘Call And Answer’

I can’t sleep. I’m happy, right? Got a new haircut, on vacation at home, secure, money in my checking…

I’m happy right? There isn’t enough space in my bed so I move to the living room. It’s stuffy but I’m too attached to the computer to turn a fan on. I’m startled by the beer bottles shifting in the garbage. I kill a bug flying around the light, and I turn the light off. My eyes hurt but it feels better. I’m alone. I hate my job. It’s killing me to save up money for all the responsible things, and I beat myself over all my unnecessary purchases. I’m afraid I’ll never finish school. I can’t breathe. Fuck. FUCK. Everything important to me ends up being shoved down someone’s throat and gets lost. I feel like I’m turning into a huge bitch. I have to stop myself from being mean for the smallest reasons, or no reason at all. All the things I should do make me want to run away.

I want to outgrow all this.

swallow

Just Jack ‘Spectacular Failures’

I’ve lost fifteen pounds in just over a year. What does that mean? I ask. I am comfortable in my relationship, I should be getting fatter, not thinner. I wasn’t fat to begin with, but I look down at my frame, one hundred and nine pounds of unsatisfactory goods. The circles under my eyes crinkle as I struggle to gasp in. I’m staring at the pills and bills for them and it’s just worrying me. I am happy. There’s something though, holding me back but I wish it away with a gulp of water, washing it down for all the reasons I have to leave the house. To the doctors, to work, to the grocer’s. It’s all I do, and I swipe that fucking plastic card, for what? To smile, and nod (gasp), and wonder what the hell I’m doing. I snap, I feel guilty.

Just Jack ‘Eye To Eye’

I flash back to the last time I used that song, and it worries me more. Breathe in, breathe out. More worry. I stare at the ring on my right hand and smile, play with the back ’cause it’s a little loose still. I am happy. I assert this but I wonder why we’re fed all these fairytales about how planets align and everything falls into place when you find what you need. I don’t see that happening for heroin addicts, and I don’t see any happy endings. Have I ever been the exception to the rule? I don’t worry anymore, I just hope so.

you could hear a pin drop

Just Jack ‘Lost’

Should I feel guilty, wallowing in my solitude here? I’m relishing it, more correctly. My sister lives one floor below me, and invited me down for a delicious lunch. She said she they were about to sit down for the meal and she thought of me alone in my apartment. It touched me. As thick-skinned as I may come off, abrasive and worn (worn-out), I need people too. However, right now, at this very instant, I love being able to sit here, rocking back and forth in my chair, face illuminated by the screen, and having a view of each empty room.

I think everyone should experience it, and not just for an enjoyable block of time alone. It’s about being able to pull yourself up by your own boot straps and stand alone. Even if the ones you love are close by with ready hands to catch you may you fall, you can say you’ve done something incredible for yourself. For the first time since infancy, you have roamed about and tended to yourself by yourself.

It’s the quiet I think. It’s the lack of interaction. When I first moved in, the only noise inside these four walls were the television, and thrice-a-week sex sounds. If I’m not ready for the next step of relationship chores, it is no reflection. I just love being able to hear a pin drop.

And I was never an exemplary student of adequate social interaction. In other words, I’d prefer to stay behind most times if you’d ask me. I can’t drink anymore which drastically reduces my patience and limits in a different environment…more on that later. For now, the clicking of the keys echoes in here and it’s getting too loud.

virgin pages

Mouthwash ‘Kate Nash’

So I’m watching this television show, a difference from my normal SATC addiction, but it still comes back around to slap me in the face. Should I take the easy way out, or should I do what I really want to? Can I do both?

Can I raise an eventual family and hold a full time job, and write?

Should I ditch everything for my passion?

I know these rambling pieces are mediocre and juvenile, flawed in every way and possibly quite boring, but I remember a time when I didn’t want to give up and my reader was in tears, or gave me a standing ovation at the end of the chapter. I miss it, and I wonder what judgement everyone else will cast. Will it still be total shit like it is to me, or noteworthy?

I’m back in Kensington and Chelsea and I’m reading the last paragraph and I see someone shoulder through the crowd. He looks like a familiar face, perhaps one I have seen in the mirror or in my own brother’s face. In fact, he is my Father. His eyes well up, and he starts the crowd off with his own applause. I know immediately who he is and nothing else matters, though I did gain more material from the time I knew him. It’s been almost ten years.

a weighted question?

Evans Blue ‘Q (The Best One Of Our Lives)

‘Would you ever come back?’ It was the hardest question I could come up with, but it held true. I could never ask it now, even when a wanton thought of life alone and content passes through, fleeting and foolish.

I wake up this morning and look at time. Suddenly, I flash back and it is the exact day, the exact time two years ago. I wake, but not in my own bed, and sneak out to a sofa that isn’t mine, enjoy the early morning sun rays splitting through a window in someone else’s house. I start to cry. How many times I’ve wanted the upper hand and end up on the bottom of the shit pile. I could never ask such a weighted question, no one would ever agree to it. If I left it would be difficult to beat them to it. And look where I am now I think…I pick up the cd he bought me and I spin it around on my finger. Everything on it pertains to me somehow, in a heavy sort of way. I don’t want to leave, but I can’t stay.

If I had left then I could have come out triumphant. It’s not about winning or losing we’re told as children, but we’ve all watched our parents, our friends, our neighbours pushing and shoving their way to the top. I stayed down, but I stayed humble.

I reminisce now listening to the same album and I honestly don’t feel anything at all. I don’t feel like a winner or a loser. I am slowly letting go to the feeling of failure, and getting back to the place I should have been in the beginning, and all along since: indifference. There is always going to be another obstacle, I only struggled to climb over this particular one a bit longer.

The feeling hardly lingers now, but listening to the lyrics, I wonder if I might make the same mistake again, but in a modified capacity. We always say always and forever, but how often does that turn out? How many people, like my own parents, love each other, but something just separates them from a life of unity and endless happiness. Do we hold people we love too highly? The danger of putting someone on a pedestal and raising them up is not the realization they are not what they seem. Perhaps they are so, but what do you do when your arms get tired?

‘You can sew your lips shut with your heartstrings cause god knows you don’t need them to hold yourself together. But don’t look down because I don’t know if falling is fatal from this height I know I should have never held you up this high’

It has nothing to do with love, with devotion, it’s only another fleeting thought. What if your perfect world comes crashing down? Will you make it out alive or will you wallow and dramatize your predicament? Love is powerful, but do we give it too much credit, or not enough? How much are we responsible for events due to our own actions, or is it really from the power of love? And if so, where is that power when you think you need it most to harness and win someone over? Love is omnipotent then, like a deity and we can do nothing to stop it.

I roll over in real-time and smile. Power or not, I feel something right when I need it. I do not retreat to my own sofa and cry for what I will never have. I sigh and wrap my arm around him instead.

the rock and the hard place

Dave Matthews Band ‘Under The Table And Dreaming’

My heart hurts. My sister, where is she? I remember how sick I always was and how she cared for me, brought me back to life and sheltered me when I needed it most. Now stuck herself, how can I pull her free with no leverage? I know she doesn’t need advice, she already knows what is best for her, but I see her unhappiness and frustration mount and the only words that form are run.

?

Again, I find myself woozy and out of sorts. The pill bottles are lining up again and they’re to calm me down, but I panic. I need support and I have it, but somehow my psyche doesn’t allow me to use it. I open all the lids, take everything down, and I don’t have any pride left. I’m staring at my fat bank account and map out it’s dwindling demise. I breathe in and gasp. I want another pill and another pillow. Instead, I’m off to work. I’m breathing, and I’m figuring it all out.

Thank God I have someone to pick me up if I’m too disheartened or too drugged to do it myself.

last call

Sara Barielles ‘Between the Lines’

My friend D saw Auto at our favourite apple martini bar. He was with someone I’d imagine, but D withheld the information, I suppose assuming if he told me Auto was with a girl I’d go fall-apart-crazy. I wouldn’t. I never did the whole time we were semi-sort-of-together. I waited. So I waited for D to finish telling me.

He didn’t, so I had to phone him.

Here’s the story he says

‘Auto comes up to me and he’s actuallly not drunk at all. He says hi and asks if I’m going to punch him in the face cause if so, he’ll need a shot of Jack first. I tell him no and he says nice. He asks how you are and I tell him you’re great, no, even better than great, so in love and going back to school, buying that car, just enjoying her own time, and of course, being in love. He frowned and I added that it was a nice change of pace to see her so happy.

He asks if I think you’d want that piano, his mom is getting a new grand. Now is my turn to frown. He tells me how your hands flew across the keys unaware of your surroundings before you looked up to see him staring at you, and nothing else. He tells me how you’d make up stuff off the top of your head and how it was haunting and now how he tries to pluck away clumsily to imitate your sound. I tell him I didn’t know any of that, didn’t know you could play, and that I understand.

He offers me a drink, and I take it. We sit down. I tell him how much you loved those caramel apple martinis and how it is a very good thing you can’t drink away my problems. Problems? he asks thinking I am perfectly fine. I say no, remember, she is perfect. Just pretend she is dead I say, because she is long gone. He shakes his head, tells me all about his girl and her problems and I tell him I don’t care. He nods, takes it well and moves back to you. She’s really not ever coming back he says, half question and half declaration. I say if anything, you’ll end up alone, but not back where you were. I remember how much you loved being alone when it was your choice, but how much you love being loved. He says he wants you to be happy. I don’t know if that’s true, or if he wants you to be happy with him. Like settling or something. I tell him you are still the same person but you are very different. You are not exposed anymore and you like it better that way. I tell him if he keeps fucking with your head, and calling you, I’m going to bust him up. He sizes me up and agrees. I shake his hand and toss the bartender my tab.

Right before I’m out the door he says ‘you know I loved her.’ I said he shouldn’t have been such a coward. I said he could love who you are all he wants but he can’t push himself out of the way to really love you. I told him to add it to his list of mistakes. He raised his glass to me. I left.’

Well. There’s nothing like being vindicated, annoyed, and hurt all at once. It’s true if I hadn’t met my Italian boy I would go back to him. Why? D said so himself…I love being alone. It’s no reflection of my status or anyone elses’ it is just the way I am. I’m a fool, and if you agree, I’ll take it on the chin like everything else.

All this whole thing really made me want was an apple martini and some different keys besides these at my fingertips. What would I say to him without D as my spokesman? Stare at me while I play all you want, but that is all. I was never yours.