No Regrets, just Retrospect
It was my seventeenth year and the year I learned that nothing is permanent, everybody lies, power is an illusion, and that an entire life can crumble with a single phone call.  It was the year I learned that people will forever judge you through a fucked up sphere of outside influence, and not for your soul. That intentions don’t matter. And that jealously creates an army with a single target. And sometimes that target is going to be you. That sometimes you have to find a cellar within yourself and wait for the storm to pass.

I'm finding it especially hard to stand today. To breathe or do ordinary things. Music makes me angry. Words make me speak. The light brings out all the faults in my fucked up face. I think I'm going crazy again but really I forgot my medicine. So I struggle to think or move as I struggle to sit the fuck still. I need some Xanax just any goddamn pill- look at least I can fucking rhyme.

fade into darkness

I live for both the beauty and the pain in poetry.
I love language, and art. I love the magic of nature. and the raw dangerous beauty in love and sex.
I work very hard to see myself, Everyday i fight against a darkness that sickens me. Ten years ago I was infected with a lie that has been trying to kill me. 
It began with a friend who, until recently, I often called my best friend. And ten years ago, she fed me a lie that infected my soul. She began by telling me my mind was full of fairy-tales and fiction. She explained the darkness of theworld in a time where all I saw was it’s light. I was fifteen and she said with command “Be Realistic.” 
i remember her words crawling up my spine, contaminating my vision and melting my mind.
It took years of her poison influence for my bones and my soul to fully decompose, to strip of all the nourishment, and bury the light that had created me. And soon, my corrupted figure, that was once whole and full of hope,  became that of a defiled cynic who believed in nothing.

I will spend my life as a mother protecting my children from this infectious lie.
Because the day I stopped believing, the day I started seeing all those damn trees, once all my radiance was gone and i was left with only bone, drowning in a poison that forever ruined my belief in love, the hopeful child in me died.
And I’ve been trying to find her ever since….. 

“People will kill you. And the way they'll kill you is with phrases like 'Be realistic'"

Embers from a fading fire still radiate powerful heat even after large flames are gone. Their unique heat creates a spark that can ignite its own fiery glow.
                                                                ----
I am not a smooth morning wave, or the calm of evening rain.
I am the rain turned hurricane and the chaos in a fire’s ember.

And though others have tried to destroy me,
tried to run me out of town with fiery torches of hate,
They could not compete with my resilient heat.
A fire was sparked from an ember in my heart that has fueled my freedom. 
It is from my own fire I learned to battle any storm, escape avalanches of pain and to re-build my life.

There are times I still find myself trying to solve the mystery of the monsters who tried to destroy me. 

But it is for them, and for me,  that I will always be thankful for my golden ember that sparked a new light so that I could see.

So a hurricane I may always be,
but the fire in my chest gave life to me

No Regrets

"I knew that I was dying.
something in me said
go ahead die sleep
become as them
accept.
then something else in me said
no
save the tiniest bit.
it needn’t be much
just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on fire.
just a spark.
save it.
I think I did.
I’m glad I did.
what a lucky
god damned
thing."
-Charles Bukowski

So here I go again writing about how my heart being broken was some kind of blessed lesson. How this is what I was made for as though im some kind of super hero and heartbreak is my fuel . It happens every time. I become irrevocably attached to people. I become someone else’s and lose interest in myself and in the world. I get tunnel vision but there is no light at the end, only a single person. It’s a desperate plea for love and a jarring fear that it is not there and never will be. That I will have to go through this insufferable pain again. Every time is harder and worse. Before the power of the pain materializes into fuel. There isn’t one thing that gets me here and starts me writing again, sewing my super hero heartbreak cape, or thinking normal thoughts. It just happens eventually, after endless nights of self-torture and constant re-evaluation of everything. Everything must be torn apart before I can rebuild it. Even now, as I write this epitaph of rebirth, I know this is only the first step of many. Tonight I will probably crumble again. But right now, for the first time, I don’t want to or feel like I have to. And that’s a big deal. I don’t want to be in love with places and things forever. I want to find a person who I can love and can love me. but for now I have a whole new city and world to fall in love with and passions to explore. This is New York City bitch.and everyone is different. i should get a cape.

I can hardly breathe. Im 26 and this heart break feels as common as a cold. I realize now more than ever the factual truth that someone may never be able to love me. I need to be rewired. And I’m disconnected so deep I don’t know when I’ll be whole again.

Sometimes I just feel like a pile of words and phrases
Summoned by fear and depression,

Diluted by alcohol,

Indulged and abused in seizure.

Words always seem so important. I wish i could just learn to shut up and live.

Every Sunday my head and my heart break up with every idea of you before you can break up with me. The week begins and you find your way back to me with bouquets of freshly cut faith.

If the only reason they want me is for my body, then ill destroy that too. Turn them on and take them down
why is it getting worse

date uncertain

 I need to be honest, Im terrified of getting close to you and I can feel it happening and it scares me and at this point I always become suspicious/distrusting and uneasy and subconsciously fuck things up. I don't know what to do but tell you, because I don't want to push you away

I try to rush the inevitable because I already feel the storm of you from a million miles away. The way you make me feel is such a passionate rush, I am numb without you. I don't want to let you hurt me because even if you don't see it coming, I do , I know you will leave me. the only ones who don't leave are the desperate ones who never really love me but instead confuse obsession and addiction for love.  And therein lies the irony- because I'm one of those desperate addictive ones who doesn't know how to love. I become addicted to the adrenaline, the closeness, the attention, the sex.  I find stuff out about them and say "hey I really want to be with someone like that, so this is pretty great" but it's more about feeding the addiction. reasoning myself out of desperation and into believing that this could be the real thing. And then suddenly one day it hits me that it's not. I panic and realize I'm spiraling and I freak out. I begin to sabotage everything by questioning their every move convinced that everything they do is proof that they don't love me. 

Sooo wanna date?

I spent most of my childhood asking for stories about my parents trying to build a picture of them I could live with. I didn’t know I was doing it at the time but I became so hooked on these stories they became reality to me and they would be the things I would tell people when asked about my family. The fact that my brother was a dead-head traveling the country, not that he was never around. As I got older my mom would tell me random horror stories about my dad that I learned were true and explained the gaps in all the other fatherless stories. I remember assuming that all dads were bad. That it was somehow so normal that I didn’t need to talk about it

A rant after being a seventh wheel for new years eve, and a way to say no to online dating:

I don’t want to just be with someone. I want to feel them, inexplicably attack them with hugs. and be attacked with love.
Be pulled up to dance and listen to our music. To watch your favorite movies, and i want you to watch mine. To do things together with a purpose and not just waste time together never knowing why or where we are going.
I want to be loved passionately. Someone who wants to show me both sides to the world, the small things, the things that you don’t think anyone but me would understand, in the way that you never thought to share with someone before. I dont want you to brag, i want you to tell me stories about times you were weak. about how you learned to be strong. Because those are my most important stories too. Anyone can be boastful. You will be special. Unlike anyone else.  I don’t want to get to know you on paper I want to get to know you at 3am when your eyes are heavy and your voice gets low. This is how I’ll know im safe, because ill be your safe place too. Past the hours of sense or reason but because we dont need one.   when you’re with me you’re all there. Nowhere else.
And it’s all these small ways you show me that the other part of your soul you found in me.  If something is scaring you or making you mad I want you to run to me. I want to be your souls counterpart. We have lived our lives till now as our own , we've made all the mistakes, we found each other as individual people ready to share who we are with one another indefinitely. the good and the bad. I want to be your cellar in a storm, your partner in chaos,  and the party in your celebration.
I want a partner in passionate life and someone who sees me for who I am and isn’t concerned about why I am this way but instead is able to hold me tight when I’m about to run away or calm me down when I want to fight. I want you to be my strength when I feel weak so I don’t have to worry about being alone.
I want there to be madness and sweat and tears and above all love. because its messy as fuck but its ours and we cant fucking get enough.

I’d follow you into hell just to get my fix. The craving is always the same, the “you” is always changing. Let’s destroy voids and make bigger holes in our hearts together. Shh don’t tell. Just find a way to silence my screams and use the word “we”. Pass the poison.

I used to have an anchor. Something that kept me feeling safe in all of lifes uncertainty. It has been two months and two days since i left behind every anchor i have ever known. All of my friends and family, my dog, my home, my ocean. This last year has been one so full of change that if i hadnt lived it myself i may not believe it could possibly be real. Last year i defined myself by others. And now, I’m just myself. im more scared then ive ever been . but im also more alive. and even though i was surrounded by more people last year, i think i may have been more alone.

12/10/14

I never took any credit. I didn’t do things for credit. I did them because They had to be done. It took me years and endless un-diagnosed self inflicted punishment before I realized what I had accomplished. I fancied myself dependent. It was the easiest explanation for why I was so afraid of losing people. So I’ve convinced myself that I’m weak and I’ve created a wreaked partner in myself. But the truth is I’m strong as fuck and independent as fuck. I do all things on my own and can put together anything on my own including a life. At 25 years old I can still only say the words though. Living it as truth is much more difficult. Living with strength and swallowing the fact that I don’t need anyone else is so much harder because all I’ve ever wanted was someone. My whole adolescence it was a father and the moment guys, well, Kyle, began to look at me it became a man that I wanted. I thought i needed one to be whole because I felt so empty. I wish I had been more empowered about my individuality from a young age but I was punished for it. And all the things I did on my own we’re in a scramble to save face in front of my dad or to calm a storm he or I created or to avoid creating an issue with him. My independence was to please him I guess. And I suppose the “reward” was his physical presence. So I desperately long for someone’s physical presence beside me. And I don’t really care who.

i feel like i am in a constant state of being alone. And i wonder if everyone feels this way. Its hard for me to believe that everyone does because i never used to. I always used to feel like i knew i wasn’t alone. But these days, or years, i feel in a habitual state of loneliness. As though there is no one who really understands me or would accept me, all of me, for who i really am.

10/18/14

A year ago today I was in so deep the future seemed…road blocked by myself. I never could have imagined that i would be where i am right now.
Ive been to hell and back during every major change in my life. As the end of middle school approached my entire world fell apart I lost friends and family, everything changed.
The end of high school, my senior year started with a blow that lead to years of isolation and self torture.
When I graduated college, I moved right away to another city where my ex had started dating a girl with my same name. My best friend flew out and drove me back to college where we spent the spring of her senior year playing and planning our lives together. That summer she grew distant and after that summer, from the day i moved out of her house, without explanation she chose never to speak to me again. A heartbreak that i believe still haunts me now.
So, if someone had told me, that only 2 years later,  i would be where i am now, i would probably have crumbled in paralyzing fear.
Its not that i wouldn’t believe them. i think i would have known i had it in me to make it, but the paralyzing fear would come from all those visits to hell. And 2 years ago I would never have believed  that i could ever be so lucky for all my dreams to come true. And in some ways, i was right. Because it wasn’t an easy two years leading here. I learned to be who i am now by making A LOT of mistakes. But i have also worked really hard and never gave up, even when I thought everyone gave up on me. During these years trying to find myself as a post grad i was wild and didn’t care about many things except sex, drugs and music. and when i would dream, i would imagine my life a million different ways. But no matter who i was with, or where i was, i never stopped feeling alone.  I had my heart broken worse than it has ever been broken before during this time and I spent two years simultaneously building a life at work and destroying myself after. My job was where i found myself day after day. And through work, I taught myself how to live life as a twenty-something who- maybe can’t look herself in the mirror-but knows she can make a difference.
I became strong. And after time, i had begun to build a new life with all of the broken crap that had crumbled around me. At the end of it all, when it came time to move away, i was really ready. I had figured out all the mysteries of myself that belonged in California. And suddenly, the past two years filed of days that felt like they would never end felt like a blink of an eye.
I have been thrown a lot of curve balls. Most of which have hit me right in the head, and knocked me to the ground. But i believe i have been blessed with this burden of having been knocked down so many times before. Because all of my scars have led me to here. And all the fires built around me were never a match to the fire inside my heart.  I was born a fighter…a warrior. Out of oceans breath, with a fire in my chest.

Saying goodbye
At first I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe it was the weather or just my mood, but it just didn’t feel the same. I could hear the noise around me more than I used to and I wasn’t sure if the beach gave me the same comfort anymore. But as soon as I finished the thought I knew it wasn’t true. And soon, I felt my breath catch in my chest and my face tingle up the way it does right before I cry and as the ocean settles back into my bones. I know the truth is that this is where I feel the most raw and real. This is where I find myself. I also realized that is probably why I’ve been avoiding coming here. I’ve kept incredibly busy so I wouldn’t have to face the fading of the ocean as it left my windows view. My faithful partner, my forgiving friend, my warrior soul. My ocean has been the blood in my veins that kept me alive. I will take the ocean of my hometown in my veins on all my adventures. So long dear friend, you have brought me peace and comfort, showed me magic and soothed my pain. You allowed me room to survive. I am oceanic.

in a weird way I feel like everything in my life has prepared me for this. As if I was destined to have all this heartbreak and spend many of my early years searching with a broken heart. It allowed me to learn to fall in love with other things. And it’s something that many people never learn. How to love moments and places more than you understand yourself. And to go to them for comfort instead of people. Because they last. Like the ocean, cities, being surrounded by strangers and letting that be comforting, the absolute greatness of doing things on your own as simple as going on a run and as big as moving to a new city. To have the strength, to build the strength to get up every time you fall or are pushed. All my experiences, even the ones I thought might kill me, blessed me with this love that a person never could have given me. 

I’ve always wanted to grow up, Only in the way that I thought it meant we finally would be treated as we should, we would finally find our forever friends and in the way that it would all look like the picture in our heads, the one we’ve revised a million times. And that one day, with warm hearts and arms around us we would finally be happy. But as I grow up, life happened and at times i grasped harder to the photo in my head because i knew it was just fiction. As I’ve grown up I have been hurt harder and more often. And the only thing really different is the lack of excuses. When you’re younger you can blame being naive and immature, and now I have to wonder is the world fucked up or am I?