Monday, December 24, 2012

She fell out of love on Christmas Eve.

She doesn't dream often, doesn't
sleep enough to miss it. She
is always on earth, throat sore with smoke she's
not quite sure if she wants,
seeing the world in purple and blue,
in strokes of seafoam as the sun rises.

She finds him like cold embers in the middle of winter,
burnt orange.
He tells her he lives in a dream that is too often a nightmare,
says one day he will get the courage
to wake up and do it for real.
She lays his dream on her tongue,
lets it melt,
wonders if it means she is too good to have been real
or not real enough to be worth keeping.

Six months later she tangles
in his brown-red forest feeling,
wondering how they traded seasons,
and when he tells her he'd rather go to sleep,
live in the dreams where he is happy,
she spends too long trying to think of how to argue,
to tell him he needs to stay with her,
when all she can really say is,
I wish I knew the feeling.

She tries to think of them as men, tries
to remember that they're all grown up,
all captains of their own ships these days, but that
means she has to think of herself as a woman and
she feels too much like a lost little girl
chasing the balloons she doesn't remember letting go.

She uses all her best words on them,
one at a time, wonders
if they realize that all her best poetry is sent to them
in the middle of the night
to minds too numb to feel it.
They drink too much to remember conversations she's a part of,
turn her into ocean dreams they say they never had.
She doesn't have the luxury.
She puts their forgotten promises in glass bottles
and wishes real life had commercial breaks.

She always wants to ask them what it means
if dreams are better than the here-and-now
and she has none—if she chose that other life
trapped behind eyelids and midnight thoughts,
would she even exist? Or would she disappear,
fading from their minds
as they woke up and she
finally
fell asleep?

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Blue Moon: A Swan Song


I wrote this for class last fall and never put it up. A few minor edits, and I've decided to gift it to the internet in honor of the impending apocalypse. xD

Trigger warning for body horror, mortal peril, and general world dysmorphia.

The moon rose full and bright blue the night it happened. People all across the globe started shouting—Look at it! You can see its face! Its dark, pockmarked grin was bare and overly evident on the unnatural glare of the surface. Everybody felt it when they saw that smirk, a pull inside their gut, as if the blue-raspberry man had sunk his teeth in just behind our stomachs. Religious fervor overtook some—they rushed to the streets, weeping, falling to their knees, crying out that the time had come. They never answered those of us who asked, the time of what? Perhaps they didn't need to. Perhaps they thought the evidence spoke for itself: sea levels rising and falling as if someone was playing with a cosmic faucet, animals all around the world howling and shrieking, flocks of birds swooping blindly into skyscrapers and rock faces. Those who doubted the fanatics screamed just as loudly as the believers; these were the ones who had been called dirty and Godless.

Except, by the end of the night, we were all Godless. It was just that no one ever entertained the thought before that God could die, and leave us all here to fend for ourselves.


- - -

Evan turned off the television after two hours of listening to horrified reporters try to pretend everything was having “technical difficulties” and they were sure they'd regain contact with their affiliates soon. After a while, it turned into static with the occasional burst of news, as opposed to the other way around. As opposed to the normal way.

“Why did you do that?” I snapped as he blackened the screen with a touch to the remote. I felt something akin to panic with the constant sound of the news gone. It had been normal, even in chaos. It had been a way to escape. We had both tried calling our families to no avail. His mother in Orlando was just as unreachable as my brother in Portland. We'd kept the broadcast playing to try and glean something about them, to begin with. “I was watching that! Can't you see that this is important?”

“You want to see something important, you just look out the window, Anna,” he said. His voice was too calm, the kind of tone that people adopt when they're just on the right side of shock, and so I followed him to our fourth-floor apartment window, hoping he wasn't going to make me look at the moon again; that horrible, unnatural moon.

The view of the street I was so used to seeing was wrong somehow. At first it was hard to put a finger on why; instead, it was just a feeling of wrongness that got behind my eyes and buzzed. But after a minute or two, my eyes adjusted, like they did when the power would go out, and I'd stumble through the kitchen in the dark.

The buildings weren't standing straight anymore, that was the first thing I noticed. There was an angle there, as if there had been an earthquake, but in the two or three hours I'd been sitting and watching the less and less reliable news, I hadn't felt a single concussion. Not one. When I looked at the paintings nailed to our walls, though, they were angled, too, as if someone had gone through and made them all the same degree of crooked. I didn't notice the people until after I noticed the way cars had been abandoned along the street, as if for some reason, they had all stopped working. Maybe they had. Still, as soon as I saw the cars, I started looking for their drivers; and when I found them, I wished that I hadn't.

They were disintegrating. Not all of them, and not all the same way, but they were. I watched a man with graying hair and a bald spot at the top of his head stumble from the driver's side door of his Volvo, and as I watched, his bald spot caved in, like a pumpkin two weeks into November. I opened my mouth to scream, but the touch of Evan's hand on my shoulder stopped me just long enough for me to whirl and face him. He was holding his right arm with his left, his right hand in front of his chest, except that it wasn't his right hand anymore. It ended in a ragged, bloodless line just above the joint of his thumb, as if something had cut it off.

That was when I started screaming.

- - -

I stayed locked in the bathroom for a while, back against the flimsy wood of the door. I could feel Evan's weight pressing on the opposite side, but some providence was on my side. He didn't ask me to come out. After the silence started getting comfortable, he broke it.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe. I don't know.” I paused. “Are you? I mean, is your hand...?”

“It doesn't hurt,” he said dully. “Doesn't even itch or anything, the way amputations are supposed to. It's like it never existed.” I waited for him to say more, but he didn't.

“What's happening, Evan?” I asked him.

“I don't know, babe,” he said, and I heard him sniffling. I unlocked the door and pushed it until he moved so I could step out beside him. I sat next to him, leaning against the wall, and let him wrap his arms around me. I tried not to think about the way his right arm seemed to tremble against my back, and when he kissed me, I kissed him back.

I wondered how many more times I'd get to do that.

- - -

I don't remember who the first person to suggest it was, only that it got into our heads and spread like a wildfire crossing California, or like the abhorrent disintegration that was striking people at random. The news anchors must have heard it whispered in their ears before the TVs stopped working, because they relayed the words in wide-eyed surprise. Nietzsche was quoted with shaking voices. God is dead. So was Shakespeare: Hell is empty. All the devils are here. I heard people on the street below shouting of the End Times, and I listened the way I had been absorbing everything since the moon rose: under a feeling of numbness that refused to lift, lest my mind crack under the strain. “Do you see now?” someone was screaming from the street, their voice tired and bleeding at the edges, like a scabbed wound scratched open. “Do you see where our evil ways have led us? God will come down and he will give us all what we've earned with our wickedness, and he will take those who are worthy away to our promised land!”

I didn't see Evan come up behind me. I only felt him shove me roughly aside to reach the window and yank the curtains all the way open. He pressed himself against the screen, shoving at it with his good hand, and he shouted back down to the sooth-sayer, “God is dead! Don't you see it, you crazy fuck? This isn't a test! It isn't punishment! No one is coming! Your god is rotting away, and this is what he left us! Your god is dead!” Somehow, in the blue moonlight, with the right arm of his checked flannel shirt now flattened to the elbow and his face contorted with something I at first thought was despair, but then realized was closer to insanity—well, he was hard not to believe.

- - -

Time was hard to keep track of. The clocks in the apartment—all digital—had ceased to mean anything. Some of them moved too fast, and others flashed impossible times in useless neon lines. Sometimes the power went out, but it usually came back, bringing the whine and static of the TV with it. I kept it on anyway, just in case.

Some hours after the candy-coated moon had sunk away, and the sun, blazing orange and just barely too big had risen in a sky more green than blue, I stood at the window, watching the riots and the screaming in the streets without really seeing anything at all. I was trying vaguely to count the number of dead people when Evan called my name from the couch, his empty right sleeve dangling like a dead thing over the edge of the cushions and trailing limply onto the floor.

“Anna,” he said and he waited for me to turn around before he continued. “Anna, what was your mother's name?”

“What do you mean, what was my mother's name?” I asked, annoyed.

“Anna, what was your mother's name?” he repeated, and as I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to spit her name at him like a projectile, I found myself choked.

“I don't know,” I told him finally, the shock of the statement numbed by the concept itself.

“I thought so. Ask me what two plus two is. Go on. Ask me.”

“What's two plus two?” I repeated mechanically.

“I have no idea,” he said, and he laughed, a horrible, broken-off sound. “Do you believe that, Anna? I don't know.”

“Five,” I said with certainty. “Two plus two is five, Evan.”

“Is it?” he asked me, and he held up his cell phone in his left hand. I leaned forward to see the screen, set to the calculator tool, and read off the display: 2 + 2 = 4

“It must have messed with the electronics,” I said as he pulled the phone away, but my voice was hollow, listless. “Like it's messing with the clocks. It must have.”

“Sure, Anna,” he agreed, but the words were reflexive and empty.

“This is it, isn't it?” I asked him.

He didn't ask, This is what? only repeated himself: “Sure, Anna. Why don't you come sit down?”

“Okay,” I agreed, and I decided not to tell him about the way his eyes had turned black, pitch black, and that his smile somehow was starting to stretch from one eye to the center of his neck, because that couldn't be right, it couldn't; or maybe it was, and I was wrong, and this was how he had always looked, his face dripping over itself like wax.

And so I went over to him and sat down, and I closed my eyes and thought of strange things, like the way Evan's eyes had been brown once; the color of bright green grass in the summer; the shape of the man in the moon.

They were such strange and lovely dreams.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

On Recovery and Serenity


Trigger warning: Self-harm, mentions of addiction

My phone went off at four o'clock today to remind me to do something important. I paused the video I was watching and went to the window sill, where a small army of plastic bottles with childproof caps sit in the winter sunlight: melatonin, for insomnia, which I will leave untouched until somewhere around midnight so that I can maybe get to sleep by two; a plastic jar of Vicks, for when my sinuses decide the best thing in the world is to stop working, usually when I already have a migraine; Excedrin, for aforementioned migraines—it isn't my only bottle, either. There is another in my backpack and probably a third in one of my purses; vitamin D, for the severe and long-lasting lack of sunlight in the middle of Minnesota/Wisconsin winters; a multivitamin to try and make up for the foods I never remember to eat; and a small, orange bottle of antidepressants, newly prescribed to try and cure me of both my unending anxiety and my frequent loss of hope in the world.


I take one of each of the last three, and two Excedrin. The pills leave a tang of aspirin and pill-forming jells in my mouth, and for a moment, I'm filled with distaste. How can it be that I live in a world where I need to pump myself with chemicals just to function? I wonder.


But I'm quickly brought away from that idea by the thought of how much better I've felt for the past week. I've only been on my antidepressants for six days, and already, I can tell they're working. There is a good eight or nine inches of snow on the ground, and the temperatures have been easily under freezing for two days, but I don't feel like curling up into a ball and either crying or sleeping, the way I normally do when winter hits. Finals week has not driven me to frustrated tears or anxious pacing. I've been smoking fewer cigarettes by half.


It has also been four years today since the last time I cut myself.


It's surprising to me how easy that is to think about. There was a time when elevenths—monthly anniversaries, celebrated ecstatically by my best friends—made me uncomfortable and unhappy. They reminded me of how messed up I felt I was, and how little I could do about it, since I'd lost my most effective coping mechanism. There was a time when every eleventh made me feel unstable and on the cusp of a relapse, the thoughts of hurting myself brought to the forefront of my mind by the celebrations of my friends—well-meaning, but the last thing I wanted.


It's also interesting to me that I can no longer remember the reasons I stopped. I remember the decision, and the subsequent relapses afterward, and I definitely still remember the self-injury itself, but my original determination has faded from my mind.


I still struggle with it. There are times when I fight with it almost every day, and when I still need to go to my friends and literally ask them to keep my away from anything sharp enough to hurt myself with. At any given moment, I can inventory nearly everything visible in a room that would be capable of drawing blood. I still keep my nails short—usually bitten out of nerves—so I don't dig them into my hands or my arms when I have moments of roiling anxiety pop up out of nowhere. I'm still triggered by images of injuries that bleed. On the bad days, even Tumblr-artsy bloody nose pictures can make me feel tilted and shaky. (I still don't know why people like to post bloody noses and skinned knees, either, but to each their own.)


There are moments when the only thing keeping me anchored to safety is the ring I wear on the middle finger of my right hand. It was a gift for my two-year anniversary from my best friend, and engraved on the inside are the words Arise and Be. At the worst times, I take it off and watch the light reflect off the engraving. I think of the first time I heard the song, in a mostly-empty bar at the album pre-release party with my best friend, tears rolling down my cheeks and powerful shivers running up my spine. I think of the time I heard the band play it live, at a concert we drove four hours to get to, standing in the front row. Tears rolled down my face then, as well.


On the windowsill where my pill bottles sit, there is another memento, taken from my jewelry box a few nights before, and as I went back to my computer and started playing the song from my ring, I took it with me. Two years ago, a friend I still think of as my older brother went into rehab for drug addiction. The first time I saw him after he got out was my 21-month mark. Out of nowhere, he took something from his pocket and tossed it at me. I dropped it, and when I knelt down to pick it up, I saw it was a coin. About the size of a half-dollar, and bronze in color, it had writing on both sides—Physical, Mental, Spiritual on one side, and the Serenity prayer on the other.


“I got it when I got out of treatment,” he told me, and when I held it out to him, he shook his head. “I want you to have it. I want to give it to someone who knows how important it is.”


I kept it. I never went through treatment for my own addiction, and while I will never say I did it by myself, I can say I went through much of the worst of it alone. The coin has become a symbol not only of him, and the struggle we once went through side by side, but also of my own healing. I consider it now as much a symbol of my own recovery as it was supposed to be of his. I've often thought that someday, I will find someone close to me who deserves it, and I will pass it on. But until then, I keep it with me, occasionally taking it from the recesses of a box or a drawer and spending a few days flipping it between the fingers of my right hand. When I remember, I make myself read the prayer on the back—really read it, as if I had never heard it before. And when I do, I am nearly always struck by its truth.


God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Even the brightest blazes end as smoke.


The small of your back was a candle flame
the place where my eyes went in the darkness and I
can't remember the color of your eyes but
I can remember the sound of your voice
when I drove you home,
talking about cartoon cities and sea monsters. I
wonder if your Irish girl holds onto you
the same way I used to.

You talked about shaving your beard again, said
it made you look too old,
said the only pro was that it kept you warm.
I started knitting you a scarf for Christmas, realized
I'd never have the balls to send it.
It's hidden under my bed with all the letters I never finished.
I wonder if you still have that dreamcatcher,
the one I made for you when a part of you
was leaving me like the tide
I never got to watch with you.

I wonder
if I will ever kiss you again. I wonder
if it matters.




Wednesday, October 24, 2012

How to fall in love with your best friends.


There comes a time when you realize that your life is the weirdest thing that will ever happen to you. The moment you think this thought, you must do three things: find a mason jar; fill it with lights; and admit to yourself that you have no idea what you're doing. Trust me, it's better that way.

I think that everyone should spend a day writing the names of the people they love on the sand, and watching as every single letter washes away with the tide. After all, it's only an echo of the way those people will someday leave you. This is the truth: no one can every really stay.

A boy once gave me a dog collar. It was the sweetest gift I ever got. I sometimes wonder if he gives his girlfriend roses, and if she liked them quite as much.

One night in mid-October, I slept with my boss's boyfriend. Don't worry, my boss was there, too. No one ever teaches you about post-threesome McDonald's runs—you have to learn them on your own. It's also your job to reconcile yourself to the fact that chocolate and condoms will never be the weirdest things you put down together at a Walmart checkout. The six feet of rope, PVC pipe, rubber bands, and clothes pins with condoms will be weirder.

There comes a time in your life when you're forced to realize that you are nothing your ten-year-old self could even have imagined. It's not your fault—no one ever teaches you how to deal with falling in love. Even worse, they never talk about what happens if you don't. Or if you suddenly find yourself head-over-heels for no less than four people at once.

When I was young, I once asked my father what to do if I liked two boys equally as much. He said, “Choose the one who treats you most like I do.” He never mentioned what to do if I discovered I liked the boy who hit me in the bedroom, or if the person in question was actually a girl. He never taught me how to be good to a woman. He never said what to do if I found myself as a welcome third wheel amidst a couple so in love, it sometimes made me sick, in the best possible way. I guess these are all the things life gives you to test if you're going to go crazy.


These are the moments I hold on to: the time we lay by the lake for hours, doing nothing but running our fingers of each others' skin.
The way the scar on the back of your hand felt when I held it.
Kissing you as you sat on the curb, hoping I could do it again.
The way your hand once found mine on the console of your car, driving one-handed through the dark.
The curve of your back under my hand as the streetlights shone through the living room curtains.
The rough fabric of your gloves, tracing hard lines along my jaw.
The time you carried me down the hallway, legs around your waist, and I wasn't once afraid you'd drop me.
Your profile in the half-light, freckles shining like constellations.
Your hands on my tattoo, the only one to understand why it was really so important.
Bird-like kisses melting into something that felt closer to home.
Your hands on my skin in the firelight, losing time after midnight when we should have been sleeping.
Your body under mine as I saved from the cold night air of late August
The way you said my name, half-laughing and half-begging me to follow you.
Your hands on mine, mirroring movements, as if maybe you already knew I would never remember you if I couldn't feel you in my head.

These are the things they never teach you, the things that you find behind your eyelids in the dark. They never teach you how to fall in love.

And they never teach you that it's when you love the most, with all you have, that you realize how alone you really are.


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Blank Dictionary


I collect words and phrases the way some of my friends collect bottle caps—sporadically, slipping them into my pockets when I remember and throwing them out when I don't. Sometimes, the expression itself eludes me, but the meaning remains, a loose definition like a  taste more remembered than actually tasted. English words, French words, Latin and Greek roots, words from books that are not in any dictionary—I hold onto them and use them inside my own head to put things in order, to remind myself why I love the things I love and hate the things I hate.

petrichor – the smell of dust after it rains

sonder – the realization that everyone is living a life as full an unique as your own, and that you appear to them as they to you

hypnagogic – relating to the state of being that is between awake and asleep

I place these words in small corners of my memory, to be called up and used in bits and pieces, when they are just right for something. I love the feeling of a word slotting perfectly into place, describing the intricacies of a situation, like the whorls of a fingerprint pressed lightly in ink and onto paper.

But there is no word I have ever read for you.

There is no word, no poetic turn of phrase, to tell me that another soul in world understands how it feels to be so inexplicably and inextricably linked across miles of distance and months of time. How it is to knot our thoughts together and untangle them over and over, while trying to pretend that we are not pulling pieces of each other away every time we have ever embraced and gone our separate ways. No book I have ever read speaks of soul-mates the way we are, eternally denying the very existence of the bond that pulls us together over pixelated airwaves and unseen thought-tides.

I think of you, and you talk to me, without fail. I never even have to move—you are already there, speaking.

Giving your heart away to someone who has done so much more to deserve it.

And there is nothing I can do to keep you but try and find that word, those letters typeset on a page, hidden somewhere on a shelf that I will never have the pleasure to see. I hope that if I can find the right shapes in black ink that I can unlock this riddle from the inside and tear away the fences and the miles, and pull you to me, like a kite on a string. Like the moon to the sea. Like the way you used to pull me to your chest in the middle of the night.

That word is a phantom, a trick of the light, a whisper half-heard. It will never be found, and one night, mornings and evenings and full moons from now, I will realize that I have spent my days searching for a ghost, and you will be playing that song that blossoms in your lungs to someone else. I will have lost.

I am still searching for that perfect word. I will wrap it up in sheet music and give it to you, to bite between your teeth on your wedding day.




I have already lost.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Regarding anonymity and respect.

So, a few nights ago, I wrote this post. Like most of my posts on this blog, it is a short snippet of prose about my life. Also like most of my posts, it revolves around sex, romance, and relationships.
This morning, I woke up to an anonymous comment that said this:
"You are cordially invited to shut your dirty whore mouth". You really didn't try to conceal his identity very hard sweetie. Also, don't publish shit like this on facebook where it can hurt people.

Signed,
that "most beautiful" Man's Honey
It took me two hours and a 500-calorie workout to be calm enough to reply. I ended up saying this:
So, I'm not sure if this comment comes from misdirected anger or a misunderstanding of what I intended in this post, but there are several things I'd like to address.

1. The last time I slept with the Fool was something like December 10th of last year. At that time, both of us were single.

2. I have no intention of trying to sleep with him again.

3. Any romantic inclination I may have towards him is minimal. He is a friend, and while I'm drawn to him as a person, I understand that A) he has no interest in me and B) is otherwise involved with other people (or person, as you've just informed me.)

4. The point of this blog post was that I'm trying to sleep with the girl in the rainbow necklace. Not him.

Obviously, you know me somewhat personally, or you wouldn't be able to see my Facebook posts. In this case, I invite you to message me so we can discuss this further if you so desire. But please understand that I mean no offence or imposition on you. In fact, I have no idea who you are; I wasn't aware he is currently in a relationship.

Also, when upset, it is most often unproductive to begin the explanation as to why you are upset with a (stolen) insult.

Cheers.
I also made the decision to remove anonymous commenting on this blog. You may now only leave comments if you have a Google account or an OpenID (livejournal and dreamwidth count), and all comments will be moderated by me before they are either posted or deleted. I respect your right to comment on my work; I hope people will respect my right to choose which of those comments are suitable to be displayed.

Anyway, while I was calming down and while I was writing my response, it got me thinking about why I was so upset by it. And the answer, to my surprise, was not because I felt guilty whatsoever for writing, posting, or linking the piece in the first place. Instead, I realized that I was upset by the fact that this person didn't have the respect to identify themselves while hurling (admittedly bad) insults at me.

My name is attached to my blog. My Tumblr, my photography site, and my Facebook all link there. It's assigned to my main personal email account and has several photos of me. I will never and have never tried to deny the ownership of anything I've written, despite the fact that several posts have bothered people. (I have only once taken a post down due to conflict, and it was because it was a bad decision to post it in the first place).

If someone has a problem with something I've written, I expect them to confront me, just like the Anon above did. But I expect them to own up to their problem or criticism. Discuss with me why you're upset. Throwing your anger at me like rocks through a window accomplishes nothing.
No, I will not apologize for writing or posting it. No, I will not take it down. No, I will not try and tell you I meant someone or something other than exactly what or whom I meant. But I might apologize for hurting you, or showing you disrespect. I might apologize for making you uncomfortable.

But only if you have the balls to tell me who you are, and the respect not to call me a "dirty whore" in the first sentence of your comment.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Of lip-gloss and one night stands.


The night my little brother ends a five-day stint in the hospital, I find myself in a friend's room with the most beautiful man I've ever met. He is the personification of Bill Weasley, lithe and freckled, with beautiful red-auburn hair in a low ponytail. I met him last year and slept with him twice. For reasons since forgotten, I call him the Fool.

This is maybe the second time I've seen him since he left my bedroom just before Christmas, and I greet him with a hug that is a little too exuberant. He smiles at me, and I take refuge in his energy. He is one of those people whose aura I want to crawl inside of, an eye amidst a hurricane. We banter like old friends, and though I'd like to think I'm a special case, I know I'm not—he's that kind of person, comfortable and safe. At one point, I make a comment about going insane, and he tugs one teal-and-purple curl and says, “Yeah, and you dye your hair to match.”

Later, the girl with the rainbow necklace joins us, and as people begin dissipating and sliding into sleep, we decide to wander away. I say goodbye to the Fool, jumping up and hugging him fiercely. I would give anything to kiss him again, and as I pull away, I swear he reads it in my eyes.

“You little troublemaker,” he says softly, and it feels like somehow he has given me both approval and permission to take the flirtation and the energy, the banter and the smirks, and use them. I know I'm probably reading too much into things, but his fictional approval touches something in me, and I walk out with the girl with the rainbow necklace, smiling.

Half an hour later, I find myself on the grass of the soccer field, the girl wrapped around me. We speak of stars and childhood friends, and I find myself kissing purple gloss from her lips. An hour later we are tangled in her sheets, and when we are interrupted by a knock on her door, I leave with a sigh.

Walking across the grass to my own room, I wonder if I will ever have the capacity to love anyone again, or if my heart will always be haunted by the ghosts of old soul-mates and one night stands and people I never had the courage to fuck.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Functional and beautiful are a Venn Diagram

So, I suppose this post could be seen as a companion to this one, as they deal with similar things, but really, it's just what's been on my mind lately.

Lots of the people that I know are very into body positivity, not necessarily as something they actually feel, but as something they want to feel. And I completely understand that, and why you need to immerse yourself in something in order to help yourself embrace it. I've struggled with both physical body image and non-physical self image for a long time. But while I was in the shower today, I found myself thinking of all the reasons I actually love my body, and realized that few of them are at all related to appearance.



I thought to myself, "My body is so incredibly functional, but only parts of it are beautiful. Still, all of it is valuable."

And here are the reasons I've discovered I love my body.


It heals quickly

My dad's side of the family has always healed quickly, and I tend to take that for granted. But I inherited my klutziness from my mother, and I realized recently that I'm lucky to have the two of them together, because I frequently end up hurting myself. But because my body heals, like all bodies, that doesn't stop me from doing the things I want to do. And because it heals quickly, I'm able to do those things without having to wait around to stop bleeding. Which, in my case, is a very useful trait.

It lets me modify it.


This is something I wasn't really able to do until recently, but once I started, I was hooked. My body is flexible and able to adapt, and incredibly tolerant of the things I decide to do to it. Some of that goes with healing quickly, and some of it is just because I was lucky enough to get a body with minimal allergies and intolerances. But my body is mine, and I'm able to add things to it to make it look a certain way, and I think that's fantastic.

It may not be strong, but it's capable

Photo by Max Pittman
In the past few years, I've come to learn how very privileged I've been to posses a body that does all of the things a human body is "supposed" to do. For someone who was born nearly three months premature at a time where neonatal care was good but not great, this is another one of those things that I take for granted but shouldn't. 

When I was born, I had a heart murmur and lungs that didn't know how to be lungs yet. I grew out of both those things, and even if I hadn't, they were minor complications for someone in my position. The doctors warned my parents I could be blind or deaf, have learning disabilities or developmental delays, or possibly even have physical disabilities. 

I am extremely fortunate to have missed those possible outcomes, and to have come into a body that lets me do things like hike the buttes of Montana, paddle thirty miles down a river in a day, bike to my friends' houses, and stand front row for my favorite bands.


It lets me experience the world.

Photo by Madison Rae/Withered Flower Photography


This is another thing I never stopped to realize until recently. Everything I've done in my life has required me to have a body to do it. All of my art needed my body to bring it from my mind to the rest of the world. My photographs only exist because I have eyes to see them and hands to use my camera. My writing is incredibly dependent on what my body has been through and can imagine going though.

My body is housing to my mind, but it's like a lens on a camera--the mechanism of the mind will work without the lens of the body, but there will be no experiences. No photographs. My body is what has enabled me to be alive. Without it, I wouldn't even exist.





I feel incredibly blessed to come to these realizations two days before I leave to spend my summer at a summer camp as a counselor for kids with special needs. I will meet so many people this summer, and each and every one of them will have something new to teach me, from what they've experienced within the scope of their own mind and body.

No two people will ever look the same, but sometimes, we can lay beside each other and compare the things our bodies have given us--the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful--and all of the lessons we have learned from every scrape we ever got and ever scar we have.

I am so looking forward to this.


Saturday, May 26, 2012

She stepped off of a cameo carved into a mirror.

I watched her undress with the light of the moon
painting stripes on her skin as it fell through
the slats in the blinds like
dust motes.

She started at her shoulders,
digging fingers beneath her collar bone,
slitting flesh along the bone-line, folding it down
like the collar of a dress,
wet to her chest.

Her arms bent behind her neck,
grasping the vertebra, pulling
down to unzip her spine
all the way to the small of her back, letting
the bones fall to the floor with a clatter
like windows in a storm,
just about to break.

She dragged the skin and muscle from her legs like stockings
without garters, exposing the knobs of knock-knees
while stripping away the scars
of bike crashes and road rash.
She lifted her feet from heels 
sharper than the edges of her
broken ankles and bruised pride.

She pulled the ribbon from her hair
and it tumbled down to tangle
at the inside of her ribcage,
knotting in the backs of her lungs.
Her breath became a whisper and a
guess, passing through blood-red
lipstick meant to seduce.

She came to me in the dark-light-dark
of the moonlight in my bedroom, all the layers
stripped away, begging me to love her
from the crown of her head to the bones
she worked so hard to expose,
and I could tell in her eyes she was hoping I'd say
no, your bones are not enough.
Show me more.


Thursday, March 8, 2012

"You're not pretty enough" is basically a compliment






Recently, someone very close to me told me I was “not pretty enough.” Now, I can't go into detail about the circumstances or the situation, but I want to make two things clear: One, I hold no grudge against the person who made that statement. They were in an unhealthy, unsafe mental place and what they said had no more meaning that what's said when someone is drop-dead drunk. Two, I agree with them. I'd even go a little further in that statement.

I am not pretty at all.

Before you go to rant at me about anything, please hear me out. Look at that definition.

I am not delicate. I am short and stocky: five-two and fluctuating between 150 and 160 pounds. I wear a US size 13/14 jeans most of the time (though some 12s fit, and some do not). My hips measure 40” and my bust is a 38. I don't even care to know my waist number, to be quite honest.

Even if I weighed less, I would never be thin, not really. My hips are too wide. My legs have too much muscle. My thighs will always touch, regardless of my weight—they curve that way, the same way that my knees knock together and make my clumsy. It's just the way I'm built. I will never look delicate, and if I'm healthy and taking care of myself, I will never be delicate. To be delicate would mean that something was wrong with me—in my case, with my build and my health needs, to be or look delicate would most likely mean I was terminally ill or had an eating disorder, neither of which, I hope, ever comes to pass.

I'm also not traditionally attractive. Like I said, I'm short. I'm overweight—maybe not fat, but heavy, yes. My nose is long and hookish. My face is prone to acne and is always too red. I wear glasses because I don't like the effort of contacts every day. There's a bend—almost a hump, really—at the top of my spine. My shoulders slope. My stomach—already big—has extremely evident red and pink stretch marks, to the point where, when people see them for the first time, they tend to ask if I've hurt myself.

My hair, dyed (imperfectly, I might add) green and blue in places, is curly, frizzy, and unruly to the extreme. My nails are bitten and I very rarely wear makeup. When I do indulge in lipstick and eyeshadow, my philosophy is “the more and brighter the color, the happier I am,” which has led people to snicker about me being a clown behind my back. I tend to lean to the hippie side of things, and while I shave, I don't do it often—not my legs, my underarms, or other places. I don't shower every day or even every other day, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm really not.

But wait for a second, please. I have another definition for you.


I've pretty much already been over the first definition; I've long since accepted the fact that I'm not very pleasing to most people's senses. That's fine. That's honestly and truly okay. It's the second definition that I'm interested in.

Look at the definition of pretty again for me. It's a purely aesthetic thing, and it falls short of being beautiful for that very reason. No, I am not pretty, but, contrary to the popular use of the term, pretty is not a lesser-level term that precedes beauty. I can be beautiful without ever even touching pretty.

I'm not saying that I am beautiful. I don't think I can see myself that highly, even in moments like this. What I'm saying is, I can make my goal to be beautiful, to be excellent, without ever once aiming to be attractive of aesthetically pleasing. Yes, I'm short and heavy. Yes, I look even more Jewish than I am. Yes, I eat more than I should and exercise less. But, as much as those things may or may not be good things, I am still more than that. I am a writer. I'm a photographer. I'm a dabbler in most other arts. I am a friend, a sister, a daughter, a confidant. I try and help people. I am a part of this world and this Universe.

If I ever am truly beautiful, it will be those things that make me so. Not my appearance, and certainly not other people's perception of it.

If anyone tells me in the future that I'm “not pretty enough,” my first question will be, “Pretty enough for what? To be found attractive? Good. Start looking past that, and onto the rest of me. Onto the part that matters.”

Which, I can say for certain, is more apt to be found in my head or my heart than on the outside of my very flawed, very un-pretty body.


Tuesday, March 6, 2012

What not to believe when speaking to Death through the airwaves.


Ah, who are you
who comes creeping up behind me in the dark,
sending your tiny fists against my back? Who sent you?
Who called for you? Leave this place—I have work to do,
and I work alone. Step back!
What I have in my hands doesn't concern you.
What do you care for its cries? I'm leaving you
in its favor. Don't try to look—
I promise you, you won't like what you see. This thing
is too broken; see the blood staining my fingers? No,
it wasn't my doing—I found it like this, I promise you.
I'm only trying to help.
Keep your mouth shut!
Nothing you can say will help it. Only I can do this.
Do not reason with me. I cannot be swayed.
So what if this beautiful thing twined between my fingers
is a soul?
Do not call for it. Do not reach for it.
Above all, do not love it in its suffering,
for it will not—it cannot—
love you in return.

Now, I really must be going,
I have a soul to—what!
Tell me, did you see where it went?
And what is that beautiful glow in your hands,
flowing up your arms
to touch your heart?

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Six ways to understand that the one you love cannot love you in return:

Do not be angry. Your anger will only burn your skin as it spills from every pore, to scald your nerves and make you numb. And while numbness may seem tempting, it will only be a prison for you, in the end, when all you want is to feel the touch of another person's heart, and you cannot.

Do not blame their actions on their sickness. Everyone in this world has been sick, in one way or another, and everyone who is heartsick can get well. Being sick or wounded is not an invalidation for their actions, and while there are things that may creep into their veins like stone and make them heavy, this is not their death warrant. This is not anyone's promised doom--not theirs, and not yours.

Be hopeful for them. If they are low, and they are winded with the effort of keeping themselves going, they likely don't have the energy they need to hope for themselves. Send good energy into the world for them, because they need it, and they likely cannot find it.

Don't let their words scar you. If they are angry and confused, they will confront the world with razor blades and fire. Realize that you did not make this happen; that you did not create these things within them. They are struggling, and they are hurt. The things they say and do are not reflections of you, but on them, and on the real and true condition of their soul. Be kind to them in these moments, for their armor is missing and their heart is raw.

Do not try to fix them. Whatever they need, you can't give them. You love them, and in doing so, have done as much as you can. They must do the rest. Your love does them no harm, but it cannot solve the riddles etched on the inside of their skull.

Above all, do not wait for them.  When they heal, they may be different. And though you may love them, they may not ever return your emotions. To wait for them is to imprison yourself. Instead, cut yourself free. Realize that your love is valuable. Remember that it is a beautiful force, and that, while they may not treasure it, someone will, the way you treasure this person now.

Souls do not inseparably bind--and while this person may leave holes, another person will come along bearing patches. And the love you have for them, waiting in the future, in no way diminishes the love you held for this soul who cannot love you back. Remember that--there is always room in your heart for more love. Always.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

All the things you need to know and refuse to see.



Here's the thing. When I met you, I didn't love you, the same way I didn't love him when I met him. It doesn't work like that, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that everything is destiny. I'm not saying that everything is cosmically important. What I'm saying is that I can't love you—and it isn;t because of him. It's because of me and how I work and what I need. But mostly, it's because of you.

I'm telling you that there's a difference between where we are and where we should be.

There was beauty in your brokenness on the night we first collided. There was mystery in between the tremor in your voice and a space for sympathy in the tiredness resting in your eyes. But the deeper I dug into the gaps in your skin, the more I learned that the space inside was made up of walls and metal spikes—defense mechanisms I hadn't known were there, and that you had no intention of letting go.

You have a habit of closing in around me like a box, like you're trying to keep me within reach, and the inside of that box is painted with all my favorite colors and all my favorite words. But they don't mean a damn thing.

I should have stayed away the first time I left, but you called me back at my weakest, and I went, because I had nowhere else to go. Because I guess I thought I owed you.

But I don't owe you, because you never gave me anything I needed. You sing your flaws from rooftops as long as it will tie me closer to you with tattered strings of pity and guilt for breaking you.

Here's the thing: I'm not breaking you. I'm trying to separate myself from what you want from me. I am trying to unstick your eyes from my body. I'm trying to get the smell of your alcohol breath off of my lips.

Nobody deserves to feel trapped around another person, and while I may not like myself, even I know when to run.

You sealed my choice when you ignored my voice in your face, shouting no.

I am more than gone, and I refuse to say I'm sorry.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

The world is a web.


I have always been both a firm believer and a staunch critic of the interconnectedness of people. There are times I believe we are all strands on a cosmic web, and times when I feel as if I know for certain one human being can never truly touch another.

On Wednesday, I was the closest I have ever been to killing myself.

To anyone other than myself, those two paragraphs seem completely unrelated. But I promise you, they aren't.

About six thirty Wednesday evening, my best friend texted me, saying she felt weird, and that she was worried about me. I told her I would call her later, and continued to fight with the dark cloud that had settled over me, my mind, my heart, and my senses.

While I did that, a girl in Germany, aged 17, saw the cry for help I had posted online. While I wandered dorm hallways and leaned out of third floor windows, she posted on her blog, asking for help on my behalf. She called and emailed my school from across the world.

Around seven, I logged into my Tumblr, looking for distraction, and saw over one hundred messages asking me to be safe and alive and healthy.

By seven forty-five, I had talked to two different friends on the phone—one 200 miles away, and one approximately 1,000—who told me they felt weird and were beyond glad to hear that I was alright.

At midnight, a friend I had kind of lost touch with said she had heard what had almost happened. She confessed to me that she's had a nervous breakdown at work earlier in the week, and she had tried to kill herself. She was now in counseling and on medication. She said she wanted to make sure I knew I wasn't alone.

Around twelve-thirty Thursday morning, I found out a friend on campus had hit his worst mental state in a long time. “I don't want to talk about it,” he said. “I'm going to sleep.” And I let him, but only because something in me said he'd be there to talk to in the morning. (He was.)

At one in the morning, I got a text from the man I still think of as my soul mate. I didn't read it until I woke up, but when I did, I cried. “It scares me how much we still sync up. I hope you're doing okay.”

I awoke this morning (Thursday) to my school counselor knocking on my door. Since then, I've met with her, set up future appointments, and begun talks of therapy and possible medication. I called my mother and cried on the phone to her, and tonight, everything is alright. For me, at least.

I hope I don't lose sight of this—of the way I am inextricably bound to these other souls, some more closely than others, but all of them bright and beautiful and on fire.

If you're reading this, I love you.
If you're reading this, thank you.

Monday, January 23, 2012

The marks you leave are harder to see.

There are lies spilling over your broken lips
like the blood from between her legs--
you've forgotten what it feels like to be happy
and she's forgotten what it means to be loved.

The alcohol in your bloodstream is your motive,
your vice, your struggle, and your pride.
You whisper the secret into the hollow of her throat,
laying the words into her skin like henna ink--
"You're the only one who knows."
And now she's bound to you with cords of loyalty,
cursing your name the same way she blessed it in the dark.

You made a space in her solar plexus for your heart,
and, in leaving, left her only with a hole,
the kind that slowly fills with all the reasons she has ever had
to wish to die.

Count your luck--
the only person she hates more than you
is herself.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Sorry for the hacking, guys!

Password has been changed, and hacked entries have been deleted! If you see anything else wonky with my accounts, please let me know!

Much love <3
://Sarah