Pause

You must know by now that because you've taken her, she needs you.
She waits on you.

I know you're looking for the same to come from where you once had been.  I know you're taking your time and being reckless.  Maybe you're killing time.  Maybe you're bored.

I know you're disinterested.
But I depend on you.

Unseen voices will come undone, and lower me down into my shallow grave.  Taunting me into the comatose fate I knew I'd always have.  Separated and detached, just like I always allowed myself to be.

If I wanted to, could I ever be more than what I've resigned myself to be?  There's so much still that I haven't known.  So much that I only think about when no one's listening.  They are the secret revelations I keep between me and the window well.

Romance never was my only option.  Yet it's the only thing that seems to make a difference anymore.

Will there be a way out for me, if I so desire one?
Or will it be too late?

Give Out

Oh dear.

I think I've done it again.

I tried so hard to be better, because I knew that better means happier.  I knew that perfect means success.  The closer I get to it, though, the more I realize how similar it feels to normal.  The longer you look at me, the more I want to leave.  The harder you try, the more I dislike myself.

I don't know what it is.  A combination of bad self image and the stomach flu, maybe.  Or misguided passive aggression.  Cuban cigars that smell bad, but are passed around like the neighborhood harlot.

Oh dear.

I was expecting it to be much harder to figure out, but it was as easy as stepping off the roof.

One step is too far, but three steps and I'm flying.

One day, I'm going to look back and know that no one will ever really understand what this all means to me.  No one will hear that song the way I do.  They won't care about the tree.  They don't get it.  How nothing really happened there, but that's why it is so unmistakably pristine.  That's why I can't love you.  Because of that tree, which means so much because it meant nothing.

Well yeah, a year from now, I know we'll all be in different cities.  Missing each others' calls and avoiding chance encounters in the supermarket.  If there are even supermarkets anymore.  Maybe we'll just be downloading virtual carbs from our super iPads or something.

This isn't what I wanted to talk about.

I wanted to talk about making out and not liking it.  I wanted to talk about not the first guy, but the fourth.  The one who actually made an effort to not be an idiot.  I wanted to talk about slow music and perfect moments that were ruined by a never-ending girl brain, but instead I think this is all about missing you.  Even though you haven't left yet.

Because I know that alcohol is promising and cigarettes are your mistress.  I know that your one true love is the back of your jet black motorcycle, and that I am someone who stands with both feet firmly on the ground.  Too afraid to do anything bad.  Watching you suffocate yourself because being young and free and careless is your only wile.  Because we are supposed to mess up right now.  Because that's what being alive means.

I miss you already, and oh dear.  I think I've done it again.

In my own way, I'm trying to tell you goodbye.  Because we used to talk about never growing apart, but I think it's about to happen soon.

Unpeeled, Like a Thread

I keep waiting for my big break, but now I think that maybe I've missed it.

I didn't need to do it.  I didn't want to either.  I had passed the point of desire and hate, and I was moving on to being more weightless and acceptable.  There were no more missed phone calls.  There were a lot more nights out.

We were choice examples.

Maybe the past is forgotten and the flowers are dead, and maybe I wait up too late.  I always was the more sentimental one.  And you think it's childish and juvenile to cling to remnants and pieces, but I never knew how to leave them behind.  I carry them with me wherever I go, picking them up off the floor and placing them in glass cabinets when you're not looking.  I'll always be too attached.

I'm terribly sorry for the things I pray about.  Forgiveness and cheap tickets to concerts I'll never go to.  Headaches and rose petals, heart strings to be untied.

I wish I knew how to get better.

I wish...

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.