Shmerry Shmissmass

"Shmerry Shimissmass," he says, rolled over to catch my eyes with his own, on today's christmas morning. This is the new year, and the new, and probably only one. The 1. I guess I can start here, at one: 

I came out of my second semester at COS alive and kicking - maybe, screaming, but I can't remember. A benzo haze, not unlike all the others has gently deformed my memories of this time period. I can forgive the familiar brownouts, in light of an overwhelming rush of novelty that left me inside out. Alex offered me a position at the Mt. Shasta Green Farmacy, halfway through the semester: a position close to him of any kind was easy to take. Following the news, I bounced back into some scum-bags car and ranted and raved about everything, but him, while secretly meaning to do so. And then the scum-bag left and it was just me and I could talk to people about this guy I work with, who I think is great, but nonetheless, unattainable. After all, these are the kinds of goals I set. I made efforts to quit the game I had inevitably lost, as a result of my accepting the position, but after I was let go all I could think about was giving myself permission to let my mind run wild with thoughts of you or sometimes better, you and I. 

Some mornings I would come in and I would see a color in your eyes I had not seen before. I would take note. Then, I would have to take another note to remember to forget what color they were. It only seemed like weeks after firing me that I was at your doorstep, ready and willing, for god knows what. My expectations were taken from me, and swallowed down with stale tasting water. Klonopin seemed like a godsend and tailor-made for me and the stammering that was sure to take place, in front of such a handsome man. Sure enough, my anxiety subsided, even in the horrid aftermath of experimenting and then briefly withdrawing from benzodiazepines that are research chemicals in the US and scheduled only in Russia. I am or was, or simply have a mess, but this mess was far from Alex's understanding of me, as a person, upon my immediate arrival. This is the way people should experience one another. In retrospect, I wonder had it not been better if I had less benzo-blackouts from our first two days together. A pattern has emerged, in which I grow weary of my present circumstances and push those close to me away, so that I can take Klonopin and experience an imagined freedom from the many expectations I have of the empty bodies that typically make up our lives. In the thick of my very real or imagined freedom, all I wanted was to get to you, so you could get to me. Secretly, maybe I had hoped he would save me by just being the amazing person I suspected he was. Without a handfull of pills I couldn't have made it to his doorstep, but here we are, again, sober.  

Alex has replaced klonopin, unnecessary food intake, and everyone that had been around me before he came into my life. However, the only compromise made in this relationship might just be my sanity (I write this lovingly). Love is dangerous like this. In my experience of love, which cannot be compared to, but provides some evidence for what I now know to be love, when it is present, so is the fear of losing that love. This is a small price to pay, and I would be smart to avoid thinking such thoughts. Still, it scares me how fast and deeply I have fallen. The littlest change in Alex's body language or eye contact is closely watched, my heart in hand. I have no choice to stalk his every move and wonder nearly every hour, on the hour, if it can be time for him to hold me again, because it's only when my body is tucked soundly into his that I feel whole and safe. It crosses my mind that there has to be something dangerous about feeling this safe, but it just so happens that a side effect of being happy is feeling happy. I can manage these fears, in light of the always present or pending happiness Alex effortlessly injects me with. Love has always been the best drug.

It feels like we have known each other forever and this makes everything easy; Everything, from arguing to sex. Somehow, we are an old couple, newly in love. Stranger, is that this should be a contradiction, but in the context of our relationship it makes perfect sense. Our high level of comfortability around one another is exhilarating, because it shouldn't really exist according to the amount of time that has passed, since we first became intimate (whatever that means). For most couples, the love has gone stale by the time they have reached the level of comfortability we have, in a matter of weeks. I don't know what this means, other than I have wound up an in impossibly effortless and beautiful bond, with the most beautiful boy I have ever laid eyes on. Surely, he deserves this, and if I bear such luck, then I must deserve it too. Life does not work like this, but it's times like this I have to stop and wonder, in the best and only good way to wonder, "Why me?". 

It's time to do that writing thing again, but not because I'm full of thoughts I am unable to sleep with or because I need to assure myself of my conscience.  Today is the 4th of July, when far too many people are guaranteed to be downtown, munching on dead life, and waiting to blow things up. I am comfortable not being apart of this, and all other community events that arise in this town that represent how a city this poor can just barely stay afloat. If you've seen one street fair you've seen them all and if you've had the pleasure of being around one annoying kid you know them all. As far as I'm concerned, this is just a day four days before my birthday.

I am more than excited to do the remaining Molly, which I cannot believe I had the will-power to save for months until my birthday came. My birthday seems surprisingly meaningful, considering the lack of meaning in the number, itself. Two years prior my birthday was spent in a psychiatric facility after being picked up for having a panic attack in the mission district of San Francisco, drunk and on klonopin. The polaroids I took in the ambulance are now stuffed between pages in a book I have not opened since moving from Chico. My last birthday was spent at home in my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering with tears in my eyes why I had made it another year. This birthday is a celebration of survival, rather than a day to mourn for the first time in years.

Of course, this is because I am doing more than surviving. To survive another year, despite my dissatisfaction with both myself and the world, speaks to weakness. In surviving I was not making a choice to live, simply too frightened or lazy to do anything better. This summer, however is lively. Everything from blossoming flowers to growing wild-strawberries encourage me to seek the aspects of life who's growth cannot be contained, the way I wish my own to be.

Summer has brought so many wonderful things to light, and it is a light I am willing to step in, while still feeling secure. After feeling lonely and lost for far too long, I finally feel surrounded by love once again. If I didn't know any better I would say I'm having too much sex.

"The funny thing is I don't need you like you need me."

This sentence from my father, first heard at age 10, reverberates, like a sad and sorry tune, in my empty mind and apartment. I hear it every few months, or, rather, I call it into place, to dig at wounds that will not heal, and find proof of my pain. When I hear my words the way you hear them I know that they are irrational - maybe, even sick, but I have no other place to put them and if I can't set them down somewhere, they will surely fly away in a gust of wind to be taken places I'll never come out of alive. How I feel about my co-dependent nature is somewhat of a joke.

I am a strong believer in human connection, and my father has indirectly proven to me how important real connection is, by showing what happens when there isn't one. Distance between people is something I attempt to fathom, but often fail to. I feel disconnect too strongly to participate in truly anti-social behaviors, regardless of how frivolously I judge the human race. As a child, I can remember thinking I always needed a best friend, with my father's notion in mind that I would inevitably love them more than they could ever love me. Somehow, this seemed ok. How this still seems ok is beyond my ability to reason.

Maybe, I believe that it is ok, because I know I am safe in the arms of an emotionally inaccessible person. With even the most isolated of human beings, this indicates it is not I that is needed, but it is they who secretly need to feel needed. Of course, this is a trait of theirs I play no role in and, thus can do no damage to. The only damage to be done is symbiotic, and with very little effort I slip under the skin and suddenly I am not alone. I may not be needed, but SOMETHING is needed, and I can be that something, even if it requires the absence of my soul.

I am psychotically devoted. Willing to do anything and everything for no reason and every reason. If I admit this to myself then I admit not only a serious lack of judgement, but a battered understanding of true love. At this point, who the fuck really cares what it is.

chapters of this life don't deserve a title

When my last words to you (something about unintentionally and subconsciously being aggressive) were left to hang out to dry, I had to wonder if you no longer supported the happiness I have recently experienced. My personal freedom, self-respect, and responsibility must all be taken into account. The very core of my capabilities have been called into focus and questioned, for not only my benefit, but for your sake, as well. It is part of my job, as a friend to care, which is not difficult. Without any guided intention, I care; however to respond properly, to any given situation is not my nature. Like you in your moment of confusion, anger, and other feelings, my nature responded to your nature. My nature is to emotionally tense-up and protect all that I believe I am good for in this world, because sometimes it's hard for me to believe it, myself. I can not hear you, when you yell this loud.

I pick my words carefully: more carefully than I have ever done with any other person in my life. I do this, because I fear your knee-jerk emotional reactions to the most intimate pieces of communication, that only a writer could innately and instantly interpret. Maybe I don't understand, but sometimes when people speak it as if I read them in a book. If I am feeling particularly disturbed, their words come on fast, as though I was skimming a page, with too little time to consciously develop an opinion of their words, while attempting to at every angle. Ultimately, I fail to see my perception as situational and irrelevant to forever-changing environmental factors. As a result, the means, in which I express myself become flighty and unreliable, to the point where I'm not quite sure if I believe what is coming out of my mouth. It is ok to feel passionate, but all passion is tempting to get lost in. In order for any kind of communication to occur there must be comfortability and openness between both parties. I was open at the beginning of our conversation, but I quickly felt shut down, as a let-down. If only I had the power to calm you with the words you want to hear, but as close as I feel you I remain without such ability.

I also try to listen to the best of my abilities and attempt to put myself in your shoes, because empathy is what occurs when love or understanding is present between two people. Today I tried to put myself in your shoes to understand your sorrow. I hope tomorrow you can put yourself in my shoes to understand my happiness. If you don't want to lose me you have to want to not let me go and if you want to let yourself go, you are going to lose me. Your array of emotions is both startling and reassuring of your humanity and permanent place in my life. I appreciate you for your honesty, I just wish it hurt less.

Part I

When I woke up this morning, still half attached to the night before, I was not sure what to expect from the day.  At the halfway mark of each twenty-four hour time period, I beg to stop the irrelevant pursuit of understanding life.  Despite my deer-in-the-headlights look, which comes as a result of your own stale stare, the inner-workings of our relationship are not so complicated (yet). Waking up next to you has been your saving grace. The simplicities that make this love beautiful leave me in a fog clearer than anything I have ever known.

Angelea and I beg to pick up the pieces of our relationship, as we are both conscious of our personal past mistakes and sensitive to each other’s potential future mistakes. Gradually, and without much hesitation I am able to claim a place for you in my life, while simultaneously chirping musings of our quirks and characteristic stark differences.

Usually, when I write blog entries I use the pronoun “you” to represent the main character of my closest relationships and it’s consequential ramblings; “you” refers to the person who holds the greatest influence over my life, although at times I have avoided the issue altogether, considering what I must admit to myself, in the process of this style of writing.  For the first time in my six years of having a Xanga, I am having a difficult time, maybe even a moral dilemma, when it comes to using this impersonal pronoun. In doing so, I deny the possibility of devotion to two separate strings of consciousness: fluid and reflective of the bond I share with two, equally important people in my life.  It is strange to have more than “you”.

Part II

I am going to turn off my phone, get rid of fb, and watch a world, oblivious to my pain, turn without me. I am not enough for anyone. I am not enough for myself. Bloated with bad ideas, and a bitter taste in my mouth I wish to sleep for the rest of summer. My loneliness goes untouched, and I with it. Every other hour I lay down, pretending I am asleep or dead for hours until I can no longer keep my eyes shut. It is the most painful daze: walking around your empty apartment with no purpose or promise. No one is coming for me, not even me.

I hate you, like I hate myself. I fuck you, like I fuck myself. I can no longer afford to love, like I love, or fuck, like I fuck when I want to die like I want to die. Remnants of my past lives as a daughter, a mirror reflection, and a dope fiend float to the surface, when I am without you. Looking in the mirror alone, has been akin to shaking hands with the devil. From this point forward, like many points before, I will rip at the seems and make myself sick. I will lie there for you, open for infection, waiting for the instant it is too much for my body to bear. This is a new chapter of loneliness disguised as a social life.