Apologies.

I should have posted something in the last month and a half. I kept meaning to.
I'd open up the 'new post' page and stare at the blank box for an hour until going away.
My brain refuses to put anything into words right now.

If your boyfriend hits you, don't pretend you can handle it.

Don't stay with him to make things better.

He's not your project.

He'll only hurt you more.

Ask my broken wrist.

Space Between Us

The space between us
drives us apart, chokes out our words, blankets us with silence. Our hands, so close to touching, fold their fingers over their palms and rest on the bare skin of our knees. We are so close together, heads bent and lips pressed against the air between us. The space between us defines us, gives us that knowledge, that sense that anything we had before, whoever we were, has evaporated into that space. 


All my heart screams at me to move closer, to nestle my mouth in that perfect spot on your neck, telling you I'm here for you and I love you. It yells at me to run my fingers through your long hair, teasing out any small tangles and letting you know that I care about you. My mind stops me. I'm halted.


The space between us 
is a barrier, protecting my heart from all your poisonous lies, your vicious betrayals, and your venom-lined kisses. It forms a wall around me, keeping me safe enough. The space warms my mind while chilling my insides, a fucked up life-lesson that we only seem to love that which hurts us most.


This space is my enemy. I love you. Not your failures, YOU.

We Just Don't Know You Yet entry.

Children of the Shadows, they called us. Children who spend their time in graveyards and junkyards, finding rainbows in puddles of gasoline and transforming broken shopping carts into racing cars. 

Children of the Night, they called us. Children who darted about after the sun went down, stealing your lawn gnomes to add to our collection and taking food from your refrigerators. 

Children of the Gypsies, we were, as we forged friendships with the forests where we set up our caravans and survived off of what we could take from the locals. We brought shame onto the village, the small town, as our dirty fingers and tangled hair contaminated their school yards. We were faced with sneers and scorn as we paraded proudly about without shoes and shook our heads to make our gold hoop earrings jingle. 

We were Children, though. We were only young and we were faced with parents who couldn't read, homes that stood on four wagon wheels, countries who wanted us dead, and human beings who saw us as nothing more than a waste of space. 

We were Children. We were innocent. 

A Story in Six Sentences

Walking through the thick forest, cold fog curling up under my fingernails and settling under my bones, I approach a wooden bridge. A red coat hugs a dark-haired girl as she balances delicately on the railing, her arms outstretched as if she's waiting to fly. Miles below, liquid ice flows quickly, lapping against the jagged stones with fierce malice. I say nothing as she advances, wobbling slightly while wind slaps her cheeks. I am silent when she jumps -- something similar to falling but with less ease -- and my scream only catches up with me when her bones let out an echoing crack through the deep canyon. Water washes over her, stealing red from her blood and coat, painting her canvas new again.

Believers

I believe in those fantasy things. I believe in unicorns and fairies. I believe in trees that know everything and dragons sleeping in deep caves. I believe in love. I believe because I'm still a child, and no matter how old I get, I'll still be a child, still be believing...

You have to believe in these things if you want to survive. You shove away the fist in front of you. Ignore the insults being flung in your face. You're not really here. You're somewhere else, in a forest, on the back of a pegasus, on your way to the nearest castle to meet the princess. You can be her hero. You can save her from her mean father who's shouting at her. Because words hurt. Because words hurt a whole fucking lot more than him slapping you around and you know that. But they don't. They laugh at the words.

I believe in rainbows and fairytale endings. All the ugly ducklings turn to swans. I'll be beautiful one day. I'll break free of my cocoon, I'll transform into this amazing girl and I will be wonderful.

I believe I'll be magnificent.

Girls, all I really want is girls...

I like girls who smoke. I don't like that they smoke, but I like how they hold the cigarette just-so between their fingers and inhale with pretty lips. I like how they walk with confidence, tendrils of smoke curling up around them and anyone who gets in their way is immediately sucked into their hazy world.

I like girls in leather jackets, with braided hair, and bright red lipstick. I like girls who wear a thousand bracelets all up their arms and run their fingers along the jewellery when they're nervous or bored. I like when they fiddle with chain necklaces or their watch or a strand of their sweet hair.

I like girls who wear their shirts tucked into their jeans, suspenders, and those thick black nerd glasses that seemed to have popped up everywhere. I like when they strut around in cotton and denim, their Converse making scuff-scuff-squeak noises on the cold linoleum. I like their smiles, the easy ones that seem to wrap you up in warmth and tell you -- without words -- that you're accepted.

I like nice girls. I like bold girls. I like confident girls with insecurities and I like girls who struggle with something. I like girls I can fix, girls who can fix me, and girls who seem to have broken the world.

I like lips and hips and eyes and thighs and everything, absolutely everything, in between.

45 Reasons Why

One
Two 
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten 
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty 
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five


Forty-five reasons why. I could name them all, I really could, but I'll leave you with the numbers and you can make up your own reasons why. Why? Why is this? Why do this? There are forty-five blank slots for you to fill in. All your reasons will crawl across the page. Like all of mine, only mine are invisible. No one can see them except me. 


Why, though? Why?

Secrets and Bricks

Fill the room with secrets. Fill it with... secrets.
I was sexually assaulted by a homeless man as a young teenage girl.
I hate my scars and love my scars.
My dad touched me. I tried to forget.
I'm afraid of toothbrushes.


Hold these secrets close to your heart, so much that your chest swells with each tha-thud and wait  until the thickening silence fills the empty space between you and those who used to know you. Cover the gap in your skin with a trembling hand, so maybe they won't see as your secrets bleed out and trickle into a puddle of letters on the floor. When they look at you with forced concern in their eyes, tell them, "It's fine, everything's fine" and wait for them to believe your words. Of course they will. Why wouldn't they?

Take your secrets in brick form and lay them down to build up a wall to keep you protected.
Brick one: the hunger in his eyes you try to ignore.
Brick two: the bruises you tell them are from clumsy accidents.
Brick three: the empty vodka bottles that sit soundlessly under the table.
Bricks and paste and secrets and fears and everything you keep hidden, covered up, tucked away... Let it all surround you so you'll never have to face the world. Let those little words pierce the skin of anyone who dares come too close, let it prick the pricks, and be gone with them.

But you're so afraid... so afraid they'll find out, and who will you be if they know? How can you stay yourself when these secrets that shape you have bent you out of proportion? 

Words.

It's true; I hide behind my words so I won't have to face reality. I cover my emotions with letters and sentences and paragraphs hoping no one will notice that between the lines, I'm crumbling. I'm sobbing. Writing helps me focus, helps me calm down long enough to actually gather my thoughts and try to make some sense of the situation. If I couldn't put words to paper, I'd be completely lost. Not that I'm not lost already.

One day my hands will stop doing what I want them to do and I'll have to put down my pens forever. I won't be able to write a single word and that will absolutely kill me, but I have to accept that fate. I cower in fear until that day and every moment my fingers flail, as they attempt to grasp hold of the pen but it slips away, I want to put the gun in my mouth and pull the damn trigger.

Words are all I have. They are my mask, my shield, my invisibility cloak... my everything. Without them, I am pure nothingness.

Oh look, Oh look, I broke.

I am terrified of falling apart. Breaking into pieces. Not having the solid body solid soul underneath me, that foundation to support me...
The irony is I fell apart years ago and have only been holding the pieces in place to pretend I'm okay. Duct tape failed me, as did super glue and thumbtacks. I'm not a puzzle because my pieces don't fit together properly. I'm not even Mom's favourite broken vase that's been placed in a baggie to be "fixed" later. Though you can't fix broken memories.

No. I'm a handful of crooked thoughts, mixed in with several odd socks and lost earrings, thrown in with the aiglet you lost in second grade. Pieces that don't have edges to match up, but they make up a whole, a whole mess, and it's fine. It's all peachy.

I break things. Mom's vase. My sister's art project. Hearts. I break a lot of hearts. My own, mostly. I build up empty promises in my head and I let myself get too into someone and Heart 2.0 dies within weeks, whereas Heart 3.2 shatters instantly. It's not horrible, breaking things. For the most part it doesn't get worse than breaking it, and then you can only put it back together or buy a replacement. Breaking things, falling apart, it's really not the worst part.

The worst part is being whole again and realizing how very scarred you are.

Breaking, Breaking, Broke

Hearts break. They aren't immune to pain, nor are we. Illusions fall apart and leave us with preconceived misconceptions of how love works, that we're all rainbows and puppy dogs, when the exact opposite could be said. There are thunderstorms, huge ones that fill the sky with booms and jagged flashes of light. There are vicious guard dogs ready to tear us apart the first wrong move we make.

It's inevitable, you see, that with all this "happiness" we will find sadness. There will be sorrow. There will be pain. If you open yourself up completely to someone, you reveal to them your most vulnerable parts and trust in them that they won't stab you like they should. Humans are very "me first" thinking, so anything acutely selfless is nothing short of a miracle.

I want happiness. I want to find love. I want someone to accept all my flaws even if I bug them about theirs.

With all of this negativity surrounding it, why do we fall in love? Why do we risk getting so hurt we're barely able to function? Because if you can find that happiness, if you can hold onto it for three months, a year, twelve years, it changes you in positive ways and things you can't take back. You're morphed into a gorgeous butterfly with smiles and hand holding. You can't take back metamorphosis, though it's one step closer to death.

Paths, you see. We all walk along one or two or seventeen, and inevitably things happen on these paths, but it's good. Even if it's bad, it's good, because it's something to overcome. Pain makes us stronger. Pain makes us... happier. We recognize the good once we've truly seen the bad.

Fear

I'm afraid of the little things. Of ants crossing in front of me and my large feet accidentally crushing their tiny bodies. Of the sun slipping behind a cloud and it never coming out the other side. Of tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and accidentally falling into another universe completely, another dimension, where nothing's the same but it isn't really different.

I worry about my skin bunching up like too-long sleeves. I worry about ideas falling out of my ears when the sticky on the back of their paper wears off. I worry about walking too far along the side of the road and never being able to find my way back, even if it's just a this-way-or-that-way situation.

I like when trees whisper secrets to each other as I walk underneath their green leafy canopies and pretend I'm anywhere but the city. I like how the sky never ceases to provide me with the comfort that there's blue underneath the grey and all I have to do is wait for the clouds to thin out. I like that I can move all my toes individually because it freaks out my little brother and it makes for a great party trick.

I love smiling. I love sunshine. I love laughter.

Laughter

I'm afraid of laughing.
I'm afraid of opening my mouth too wide, letting out too much sound, allowing those bubbly rolling giggles out into the world so they caress others and spread a little bit of smile. I'm afraid that as soon as I start to laugh, as soon as it's okay for me to be smiling and grinning and feeling all this happiness, the worst possible thing will happen and all my laughter will be taken away.

I have so many smiles inside me. So much I want to share with the world. So much I'd love to say, to share, to give to others. But I can't. I keep my lips pressed tightly together in a thin line and I keep my eyes focused on the tiled floor below me and I keep my head bent down so no one can actually see me. No one can see me trying to see them, and it's good that way, it's nice, but it makes me all so very lonely.

I'm afraid of loving people. I'm afraid of sharing my heart with them, of letting it beat in their hands and pulsing energy into their body. Because as soon as you put that trust in someone else, they hold you captive. They can kill you, eat you alive, or torture you. They can keep you living just so you can watch them destroy you bit by bit and they'll keep you living after that just so you can stay in that realm of pain.

I am not a people person. I am not someone to talk to or someone to hug. My hands don't hold anyone else's but my own. It isn't how it works. I am a lonely girl and no matter what I do, it won't change.

I live in a self-made existence that isn't truly real but isn't truly fake. I'm half in your world, half in mine. I'll stay this way forever.