Certain things chase you, memories, ideas, failures, and no matter how fast you try and escape, they find you.
You think: If only I had done that differently.
You think: If only I had said something else.
You think: If only I had tried harder!
Stop it.
You can’t outrun the past, or your mistakes, or anything that made you who you are.
So hold on to the good memories and maybe, just maybe, the bad ones won’t hurt as much.
She knows she’ll die there. As soon as she hears the rotors of the planes and smells the gas in the air, she knows they will die there. Near the ocean and the waves, lapping at their feet, the squishy sand between their toes as they dance to whatever God rules the sea.
The planes weren’t supposed to be that far out, but she can see them, she can hear them, their loud entrance overtaking her daughters’ singing voices to the sea as they play in the sand and squeal at the chill of the December ocean.
The approaching planes disturb the wildlife and the skies, spitting out black trails of smoke, making the clear sea air smell of death and destruction.
She screams and so do her daughters.
No sound comes out as the sea and sky turn orange and black.
When you tilt your head forward enough to see the world upside down, everything looks different.
The trees are brown at the top, tapering into green points at the bottom, the sky is green and the grass is blue. You notice people’s shoes more rather than the lies they hide on their faces.
Even your own head begins to feel fuzzy and you forget what right side up is.
Things are easier if we forget which side is right side and which side is upside down.
Isn’t it?
But everything will be ok, won’t it?
The dance isn’t one you expected to know. It was a dance you didn’t even know existed until it was shown to you and you woke up from the dream.
It was as if the ribbons were cut away from your eyes, and your hair as it all fell to the floor under the attack of the scissors, that you realized it all, like a complete flash of lightning.
You can dance along with the dance and not make waves, or you can start your own dance and lead others.
Will you drop your ribbons and fake smiles and take up the cause?
Or will you forever be viewed as a little girl?
Puberty is waiting for you.
You take a deep breath and stand before the mirror. You see a stranger, someone wearing your skin that you don’t recognize. Someone whose face is too long, whose hair is too short, whose bones take up too much space under the too tight skin.
Do you know what I see?
A warrior, whose face grew long fighting too many battles, coming up with too many strategies for escape against the tyrant of time.
A warrior, who sacrificed more than just her hair to save herself and the colonies within her body, even if it meant she would have to kill part of herself to live.
A warrior, who won the battle and wears her skin and bones like armor against the judgemental world.
That’s what I would tell you if you had made it out alive.
But you didn’t.
You think he’s the most beautiful thing in the world, with his golden ringlets, his light eyes and those pouty pink lips that are almost criminal.
You don’t see what hides underneath those icy blue eyes. The pain and intolerance he’s seen, the tears he’s shed over those he truly loves.
The things you can’t feel, the things he can’t see. You think it might be love, but you’re unsure. You’ve never had what you classify as feelings. Where he seems to feel too much.
What a perfect couple. The blind and the insincere.
At least he can’t see when you lie.
Give me Life, Give Me Pain, Give me myself again- Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes.
The big quakes we can prepare for. The upheavals we expect, the ones we know that are coming, the big changes we make ourselves ready for.
It’s the little tremors that take us by surprise, create enough cracks in our gentle shells that let enough light, or sometimes darkness in. It’s the little tremors that change our ways and make us see the truth.
It’s the Little Earthquakes that make us better, even though we never really realize it until much later.
Enough Little Earthquakes, enough cracks, and a whole new person emerges from what we all thought was wreckage.
As I navigate this forest of life, I am reminded that there is not just one path, but many. For me, following someone else, wanting what they have, what they have earned is pointless.
I am my own me, and I will work for what I want. I will chase my dreams, make my own choices, and form my own path through the trees.
I will light my own spark. My own light in the dark.
And the results will be beautiful.
I see you everywhere and I don’t like it. In the most obscure things, the smell of a patient’s soap, the way the yellowing grass looks like your hair, the disaster that some patients bring with them.
I can try and hate you, but it doesn’t help. Your memory, your ghost never gives me peace.
When the moon gets tired, she curls up in the clouds and takes a nap, the fluffy white leaving her dreams soft and gentle.
What does she dream of?
Perhaps the glorious sun and when he will notice her…
This is an except from a 2011 journal I kept where I wrote each entry as poetry.
No one knows how he became a captain.
He certainly didn’t go through the ranks,
Or start out at the bottom,
That was for sure and for certain.
He just was a captain,
Strong and true.
A real presence
And definitely used to the loneliness of the sea.
Waiting for a port,
Any port,
To allow him access,
To all of the jewels it could,
Or could not contain.
He was a captain,
Of both the seven seas,
And of the flesh.
The earth is a big ball of blue,
Like your eyes, or the sea.
My eyes are green,
But you assure me,
You would love to get lost in the forest.
I think you might need a map,
No one comes out alive.
I watch me be this other thing and never know- Purple People (Christmas in Space) by Tori Amos
Who knows who I really am? I mean everyone sees me as someone different. The student. The daughter. The perfect little specimen of perfection and light.
Who don’t I see those things?
Who am I?
I think there’s a flaw in my code- Gasoline, Halsey
The others all are rushing to the altar, quick to pair off and complete their duties to society. I think I am the only one with sense.
Don’t they know how much they are giving up? Their freedom, their hopes and dreams, their future!
They think they are climbing up the steps toward the altar, but they are really climbing toward the noose.
If it makes me flawed to run, then maybe I am the only one with sense.
If I am flawed, at least I still live.
“Do you trust me?” He asked, the slight smile on his face making her stomach do backflips. She nodded before she even had to think about it. “Then close your eyes.”
She closed her eyes without a second thought.
That would turn out to be her downfall six months later.
Where have I been all your life? I’ve been there, but not there entirely. When I was born you were nearly thirty and had already lived so much life without me.
We had a few years together, just you and I, but I was too young to remember them. You hold the secret to what my first word was, where I took my first steps, and how I was potty trained. You hold so many secrets, but I never got to ask you about any of it.
Those secrets went with you when you left us and I can’t help but lament the things I’ll never know.
I’ve got 100 resolutions but none of them are what I want to know from you.
Our time together was never resolved. We didn’t have the resolutions I wanted.
We’ll never know each other as well as we wanted.
There were no hospital visits for you. No loud sweeping exits, no shrieking machines to tell us that your heart stopped.
It just did.
Home, surrounded by all of your friends and family, you just left peacefully.
I would have wished nothing more.
Except maybe to talk with you one last time about all of the mysteries of the universe.
But that was too much to ask, I guess.
The photograph is old and faded, but she can see that they love each other. The photograph from years ago, and she doubts her parents would even recognize themselves after all the years.
Time is a bitch.
She hadn’t expected that she would feel so light after her trip.
When he had called her after years of radio silence, begging to see her, she had expected the worst. What she had found when she had arrived back in New York was the best thing she could have hoped for.
Her trip hadn’t been a round trip as she had planned. She smiled as she unpacked her suitcase, the clothes and the shoes, and placed them next to his things in the dresser.
That was the last thing she expected. How easy it was to be close to him after years of nothing while they found themselves.
“Babe,” his voice came from behind her as his hands wrapped around hers gently, the familiar scent of his cologne clouding her senses. “Unpacking can wait until tomorrow.”
She couldn’t help but agree as his lips crashed against her neck, making her forget about their previous baggage entirely.
Unfortunately, my blog has become somewhat neglected lately.
I am going to fix that.
Starting tomorrow, I am going to write and post something creative daily.
Stay tuned for more!
