Winter, The Song

Okay.

I'm thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed of this song, but I recorded it anyways, so here it is.

Listen if you want to.  

Don't listen if you don't want to.

Thanks.

#vivaparis

Something

If there were something to say, I wouldn't know it. 

I am out of time.  I'm out of reach.  There are no more words left for me to say, yet I'm still struggling to speak.  Still saying the same prayer.  

We're still trying to reach the heavens and we're still making iPhones.  

At the end of the day, I'm nothing more than just me.

Fraying hair and crooked teeth.  Compassionate and anxious.  Listening.  Watching.  Waiting.  Wondering.  And never doing anything about it.  

A Ballad For Mrs. Lovett

"Mrs. Lovett, you're a bloody wonder, eminently practical and yet appropriate as always."  

This is my final headache.  

I was not born to dote, not born to breathe for you.  

I had other opportunities, other loves.  

Other heartaches.

I get my own dinner, I clean my own space.  I take care of the dog, and I pay my rent.  I file taxes every year.  I hardly drive above the speed limit.  I have stamps.

Stamps.

An ordinary life for an extraordinary faith.  Faith that he will love.  Faith that he will forget.  

Faith for first choice.

I want to remember and to be remembered.  I am selfish, I am hasty, I am ignorant.  Praying to be better, and sleeping in until noon.  Hoping for blue skies, and wearing all black.  Contradictory to beauty, yet standing for just that.

He loved very little and I loved to pretend I was part of it.  

"How I've lived without you all these years, I'll never know."

Happily Ever After

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because my whole life I've bombarded my mind with images of princes and princesses and divine intervention and Meg Ryan seeing Tom Hanks at the top of the Empire State Building and all those gloriously inglorious musings of regular people at long tables.

They are people who don't realize what they do.  They don't know that somewhere some 12 year old girl will see their story on television and think that her future husband will run to her in an airport and tell her that he was wrong, he does want three kids and a dog and a small house in Vienna.  And he doesn't care about her insensibilities and her selfish desire to spend all day in bed with morning breath.  He doesn't want someone skinny and white, he wants the patchy yellow skinned, bent nose, chubby thighed mistake that she is.  He wants her mood swings and her high pitched chipmunk impersonations.  Her messy desk and her terrible cooking.  

No, I think I have it all figured out.  He won't see me at a party and fall in love with me from across the room, he will instead fail to notice me as I make up the rest of our lives together.  Because we are not strings being sewn into masterpieces for the gods, we are merely just wandering around and waiting for our number to be called.  And we can wait, or we can leave.  But no one will do it for you.  

Well, I'd rather be a part of something much more selfish.

Because I am abnormal and also unwanted.

So here's to John Cusack's boom box and Ducky at the prom.  Here's to Molly Ringwald's red hair, and that scene at the end where they meet each other on the ice and just know.  To the leading ladies and to their less attractive best friends, who usually end up having sex with the creepy guy.  Here's to immaculate commitment.  Here's to the end.

All I used to think about was the day he'd sweep me off my feet.  But now I'm just hoping he doesn't hit.

I Let It Go

"What are your plans, then?"

"I don’t know."

"Whatever happened with that arts school?"

"I got in...

I’m not going, though."

"Why not?"

"It's cheaper to stay here."

"That's true."

"Chicago will still be there.

I can wait."

I never figured out how to participate in class.

I plan everything I say two days before I say it.

He didn't want to talk to me after we kissed.

I laugh when I should cry, and I cry when I should smile.

Only three people remembered my birthday last year.

The cute boy in my film class didn't sit by me this week.

My older sister once told me that she didn't like me until I stopped being ugly.

My dad still hasn't gotten a job after all these years.

One day he took me to dinner and when he went to pay, he realized he didn't have enough.

"I got it, dad.  Don't worry."

I can't use a curling iron.

He didn't love me back.

I got bad grades last semester.

I go out of my way to avoid talking to people I want to talk to.

I'll probably never be a movie director.

He hated my favorite song.

We'll never move out of my grandparents' house.

What if I never meet Tina Fey?

Or what if I do, and she doesn't like me?

I don't want to get married.

I don't want kids.

I don't want to be happy.

I don't even think I'd let myself.

I jut want to eat food forever.

I hate my nose all the time.

Marla West once said it was beautiful, and I laughed at her for saying so.

I will never be charismatic.

I'm not fun enough at parties.

Or sexy enough to be liked.

Or really anything at all.
I spend a lot of time trying to be someone other than myself.
And I think about it way too much.


I realize that none of it matters.
We'll all be dead soon, anyways.
I'm going to be just fine.

I took a deep breath, and I let it go.

I let it all go.

I'll Never Be The Same (No. 10)

My boy loves me.

My boy loves me.

I'm sorry I keep talking about it.  I just feel like if I stop, I won't ever figure it out.

He loves me, he does.

I guess I resign to never seeing that side of life.  I resign to all those things we shoved aside.  The ones we put in the dresser drawer at night, saying we'd bring them out again when the time is right.  Then he locked it tight and put the key in the medicine cabinet.  Right where I'd never see it.

My boy…

He told me small lies and grand truths and I called that love.  He gave me reality and cynicism and I called that chivalry.  He threw everything I knew into a jar and shook it up and when I got it back, I couldn't tell the difference between heaven and the word "up."  I put my hands on the floor and walked on the ceiling and claimed I was just doing what I was supposed to do.

He loves me.

I got tired of saying it.  Of reminding myself.  It became the only thing I knew to be true.

He loves me.  My boy, he loves me.

After the river incident of June 2013, I was worse than ever.  I was trying to erase imprints of his thumbs on my forearms.  I was trying to sever the ties he had roped around my ankles.  I had cowered in his shadow for so long that I was afraid of my own.  I was expecting 6 more weeks of winter.  Turtlenecks, tights, and gloves in 90 degree weather.

He hated himself, he hated what he thought about, and he despised what he became.  He left little notes on the floor, and cleaned out my bedroom closet, and never once questioned the things I had collected over the years.  He made me breakfast.  The eggs were cold.  But the bacon was perfect.

The eggs were cold, but the bacon was perfect.  The days were fine, but the evenings were fragile.  The parties were long, but the walks home were lonely.  And I'll never forget the day he left drunk and I had to carry his shoes.  He never asked me once what I believed in.  He always assumed that I would leave him.  He was right to worry.  He was wrong to believe it.  No, I was too afraid.

My boy.  

I have no doubt.  

My boy will always love me.

Existentialism (No. 9)

(I like this video way too much.

If you watch the whole thing:

marry me?)

_______________________________

Here lies a hiccup, a hunger, a love.  

I wanted to do something that deserves to be talked about.  Because I'm a bad sister and a bad lover and a bad student and writing was the only thing I thought would redeem me.  It's my last plea for guidance, my last second chance.

I'm afraid that my lack of a past is a sign that I don't really exist.  My mind is plagued by snapshot images of nights in front of the television and folding laundry with my mom.  Movies and car rides and sunset colored walks through trees.  The haunted playhouse and Hilary Duff.  I'm afraid that I made it all up.  Because I can't hear anyone, and I can't remember what they look like.  I can't see more than 5 seconds.  I can't find what I should have never forgotten.

I'm afraid that you'll tell me the truth about everything, and I won't be me anymore.  I'm afraid of waking up one day and looking 60 years old and not knowing how I got there.  Not knowing why I can't run as fast as I used to and why I never had any kids.  

I'm afraid that you'll forget all about me, like I have forgotten you.  So easily.  So shamelessly.  

I think that even if I do end up with my handprints in the sidewalk, I'll still feel this way.  No matter how many vague metaphors I make or how many songs I listen to.  Even if I do end up making that movie about the girl who doesn't fall in love in the end.  Even if I do end up giving that acceptance speech.  I'm not ever going to move on.  I'm not ever going to be satisfied.

What I'm trying to say is that I wanted to be fixed.  I wanted to be able to get up and out and not stress about making small talk.  I wanted to make you laugh.  And I wanted to exist.  

But I guess writing is better than existing.

You get to pretend to exist.