it’s getting chilly in Manhattan

I’m sitting here and it’s stuffy, I’m stuffy, but I’m happy. I can’t wait for all the newness in my life, everything unfolding messily but sweetly. All I want is my ring, my flat, and my skyline………

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.

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.

insurance/assurance

Natasha Beddingfield ‘Angel’

Framing Hanley ‘Alone in This Bed (Capeside)’

Which is scarier, never finding someone, or actually finding them? That one person who stops time, the one you’d give anything/do anything for, your port in the storm…are they your saviour or damnation? After all, you don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve had it and it’s gone…

There should be some kind of insurance for breakups, or broken hearts. You’ve invested so much, you need it protected.

In all my overthinking, I know I don’t need insurance, I have assurance. I have a warm embrace and promises, all kept now, and ever. I have sparkling diamonds that flatter and remind me mostly, not of fancy things and money spent, but of the point and purpose: it is all love.

little black dress

I was restless, surfing youtube, when I came across the new video Katy Perry put out. To shift my focus briefly, I will say I’ve always admired the style and times of the 1950’s so the video itself had a particular charm and draw for me regardless of content.

The video is for Perry’s song ‘Thinking of You’, for reasons of my own (tenfold perhaps) I relate to. It is a touching song and a meaningful, sweet, and nostalgic tribute to the wives and girlfriends of their men. Rarely do I cry (though of late my frustrations and silenced thoughts spill over) but the portrayl of affection overwhelmed. I remember the days, and every evening of my torn emotion and regret, waiting for him to come home.

There were days I’d wonder how he fared through those conditions, surrounded by heat and foreign soil. Over the summer I found myself crouched in the sandbox at the playground in my neighbourhood pushing my jeweled finger in the hot sand until it all but scorched. All I could do is wonder how he was after his letters and satellites stopped coming through. All I could do is pray when the death toll rose, and as the car pulled into the Matthews’ driveway, all I could do is don black. It’s a dress I’ve not since worn, the whole outfit infact, which is a shame–even in her grief, his mum told me what a vintage doll I looked to be. Now, years later, all I can do is remember, and be thankful for being able to remember him at all.

do you get what you pay for?

Rachael Yamagata ‘Reason Why’

The gaps are getting bigger, the happier I become.

Like I’ve said (but in my usual form of beating a dead horse) I almost enjoy being miserable and alone more. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I’m guilty of missing him a bit. Is that wrong?

I like to think all my time with Auto wasn’t a waste, and he came away with something from it all as well. Maybe it wasn’t a love unrequitted and a heavy heart like me. Maybe it wasn’t a new-found truth, or a better love. Maybe it was nothing more than a loss and a dash of bitterness. Even so, I’d like to think all the things he’s said to me since then are true. I’d like to believe he is sorry, and that I am a good woman.

I’m not always as good as I look.

There’s always this odd guilty feeling when his face drifts through my mind. I look at my new flame, buring bright and flickering. Sometimes, I believe he’s shining so as to demand my attention and consciously keep me close. Other times, I believe it is just his passion incinerating all sensibility to expose him wholly infatuated. I return his longing, affectionate gaze.

I could back-date this

Aqualung ‘Easier to Lie’

He didn’t know what I hated, and didn’t know that my nose gets cold and red. I know who does, all my ghosts.

As I look down at wrist, hand, knuckles, skin stretched taught and pale across the surface, I realize I don’t need a ring on that all so important finger. I’m not entirely sure I want to be happy, all barefoot in the grass chasing butterflies and shit. Why can’t I be angry, remorseful, crying and shaking my head? Why is it we all want to be so fucking happy? Is it really that spectacular not just being alone?

do we really understand?

Jimmy Eat World ‘Carry You’

I can’t sleep. It’s not 3am, so I should be thankful. The sun is out and there is no work, but so much to do. I wish I could articulate just how I feel, waking up to faith, every morning and not understanding why I’d rather live alone. Sitting by myself, I’m torn. I miss him, and I don’t understand exactly how I wound up attached and still feeling so cold. My hands are numb. I don’t get me. Someone does, but I’m not sure he deserves this. I made a silent oath to myself and a verbal one to myself. He made one to me, as he played with my ring finger. The cynic smiles and nods, saying as a snide aside that we’re kids, and we all say things we don’t really mean.

just the way it turns out sometimes

Seether ‘The Gift’

There was never anything to do. It was always the same routine, day-in day-out. He felt pathetic. It took everything he had to get up every day and go to work. He hated that fucking place, always doing their bitch-work. Grin and bear it again. He showered, and left. On the drive to work he saw her, ponytail swinging, highlighted by interrupted streams of orange morning sun. He wanted to slow the car and watch her, drop gears just to enjoy her alone for another few seconds, but it would ruin everything. She would see him, and it would be her and him again, and not just her. He sped past and left her behind, and she didn’t seem to notice he was ever there in the first place. The feeling passed as it always did for him, and he went about the rest of the day loathing and embittered.

She felt something. That shivering sigh of a feeling you get after she made love, er, fucked. It was there and then it was gone. Through the nose and out the mouth, she thought, can’t loose sync breathing while I’m running. Too tired already. The truth was, she’d lost it in each moment with him that didn’t seem to matter. She saw his best and his worst, the way his face changed when she walked through the door, and the glassy-eyed, faux admiration after a few hours of drinking and pointless television. She saw how lost he was, and as much as she wanted to waive her hands, take his and make him feel her heart, see that she was living and breathing in front of him–with him–and she wouldn’t leave her position, she couldn’t. You can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do. You can’t make someone love you. She was tired, she couldn’t breathe. She was gasping and her sides hurt. She was crying. She went home and spent the rest of the day letting it linger.

He locked eyes with her, studied her until he broke concentration and flipped her over on her back to finish the job. She’s a sweet girl, he thought, but she’s not mine. He watched her squirm in her ribbons and lace, and he felt like a little boy again. There’s nothing like this after eight consecutive hours of eatting shit and pretending to love it. It wasn’t even worth the money. He thought this was definately worth money, and how amusing and offensive if he offered. She wasn’t his whore. She was more like his concubine–not quite the same, but somehow he knew they both felt the only thing missing was a payment. He wondered how–if at all–offended she would be if he jokingly offered her money. He imagined her face crooked with a playful, wry smile. He smiled at the thought. He was always relieved and ashamed that she left without argument or apparent guilt. He’d let her be for awhile after this though. He could see the reflection in her eyes, see what she saw, and he knew it was best to cut her loose. His self control was slipping and he wanted both arms wrapped around her, so instead, he’d push more distance between them and try to wean himself off his whole life here. He was overwhelmed, and right then and there, between her legs, he decided to get the Hell outta Dodge.

She watched him look at her, then look away. She didn’t wonder what he was thinking, she wasn’t overtaken with emotion, and she didn’t want to stay. She knew better. She knew she couldn’t say I love you either. She felt she was owed him saying it first, but he wouldn’t, and that was alright too. She saw him crack a smile, not hidden quickly enough by a rough kiss below the collar bone. Just then it was a good night but it wouldn’t last. She’d love to stay if she was welcome, and not just the night. She’d love to make him feel connected again, but it was a lost cause. Right then, with him above her, she decided she’d let him go since he wanted it so badly.

He didn’t, and he did. He pushed her away all the time, but he never let her go. Even ten hours away, he still tried to hold onto her, silently, subtly, and still without emotional involvement. Finally, he had to say it, but he wouldn’t say it. He’d only go so far–out of respect to her, and personal pride. He was sorry, and he was regretful. He was tearing her apart, and he knew they both felt the other one was the one who got away. It was too late. He didn’t want to talk to her anymore. He ended it like most of their endings at night, when he was back home; he did it with a song.

Trapt ‘Who’s Going Home With You Tonight?’

keeping up my end

I’ve woken up every morning the past week with faith. It has stared me in the face, literally, reminding me I need hope, strength, and love. Everyone needs a little faith, some more than others.