it's only slaughter, we're only liars, it's only blood

Standing in the center of concerts you realize how shottily put together the human body is. Clumsy feet, elbows that prod much too far outward, the inexhaustible scent of human sweat clinging to your clothes as the crowd ebbs and flows with the guitar pulses. I struggled against the shoulders pressing into my back and against my head, imagining my head popping like a grape in the center of the crowd. They'd find you absorbed into my brain matter.

Standing in the back of concerts you realize how much you miss the hair you've yet to touch; the hair you watched the wind explore and tug at.  You realize how wonderfully a gin and tonic would burn down your vocal chords that are already shot from shouting lyrics. You grab your best friend's hand and pull toward the fresh air like children pulling kites across fields the color of his hair and feel that infinite feeling creep into your toes again.

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injection

I missed him the way you miss Novocain after the dentist; I didn't miss how numb I felt, how odd my own tongue felt in my mouth. I didn't miss anticipating when the numbness would end. But I did miss the lack of pain. The ability to chew my cheeks to ribbons without feeling a thing.

There were days where nothing made sense but to lie in bed and let the power of him drown me, covering my head and running down my throat. It was in those chokingly silent moments that I'd feel his hands around my neck and around my chest, pressing the air out of me until I thought I was nothing more than an empty bag of bones waiting for this Frankenstein of a man to spark me with seeming life again.

But that love was a lie, a masquerade I created for myself out of whimsical girlish fantasies and vinegar lies that dripped from his incisors. The blades at the ends of his fingertips cut one time too deep and suddenly the numbness left and I snapped awake. People will tell you that being numb is better than feeling too much. But why would you choose a prison of paralysis when the kingdom of consciousness is trying to welcome you home?

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still I rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
- Maya Angelou

I was writing a paper about her when I heard the news. Rest, dear heart.

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deviation in the fates

"I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen "King Lear," never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen."

-Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

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Impulse

A few weeks ago I read an amazing book by Ellen Hopkins, a long time favorite author, called Impulse. You can read the review I wrote for that book here. (Also... take a peek at the comment section. Yeah. THE AUTHOR COMMENTED WHAT IS MY LIFE!?)

This book is about three teenagers who end up in a medical rehabilitation center after each trying to end their lives. All three characters struck me deep in my heart. They were so hurt and they all felt so alone. I loved each of them but today I was reminded of Vanessa.

In the book Vanessa tries to slit her wrists. Luckily her brother finds her and she is rushed to the hospital just in time. She's been a cutter for some time and it is hard for her to shake that impulse to feel the blade ease her skin apart even in the rehab center. She even goes to such extremes as to hide a paper clip in her room to prick herself with if she needs. It made me so sad that she felt so alone and that there was no other option than to let her troubles bleed through her skin.

One of my favorite parts of working in the cafe at Barnes and Noble is the opportunity to develop relationships with some of the regular customers. They are so nice and they remember me from when I was 16 and working there. They get the same drinks every week, they are so sweet and polite, and they also tip pretty well usually.

There has been one couple that has been every Sunday for the past few months. The boy is a huge teddy bear with a kind scruffy face and big open arms and an even bigger smile. His girlfriend is gorgeous. She looks like a gothic snow white. Her face is a cameo pin framed by her onyx hair and apple red lips. Her skin is perfect like porcelain and her style is flawless. She always rocks a stunning black sun dress, a different dress each week - each one better than the last. She wears shoes Lady Gaga would be jealous of- high black boots with studded heels and killer height. She has the deathly hallows tattoo on her arm and wears Bellatrix Lestrange's animal skull pendant around her neck. She's amazing. I wish she was my friend. She also has amazing taste in books. She's always reading a superb novel each Sunday, different each week as well.

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They are an odd pair, the two of them. But you can see how much love constantly passes between them. He's her protector and she keeps his life vibrant and forever changing. I love them. Guys. I want to date this couple. They seem so happy every time they come in. They chat with us and always leave a clean table.

Then a few weeks ago, Snow White wasn't wearing her jacket. The white skin across her arms was covered in red exclamation points and angry red raised mountains. They cascaded across her forearms and up to the top of her cap sleeves. I was amazed she would even let them show since there were so many. I was shocked someone as kind has her was hiding a secret like this. Many of them had faded a bit but the cuts were deep; these scars would last her a lifetime.

I hid that I was looking at her arms and made them their drinks and took them out to the two of them as they sat holding hands and reading. She looked up at me and smiled a closed mouth, but no less warm and open smile. "Thank you so much," she whispered. I smiled back and left them to their Sunday date at the bookstore.

It broke my heart that a girl that sweet and lovely was ever in a place in her life that she felt so alone and so in pain. It's clear from the scars that she's lived with pain for quite some time and is just now getting better. I am so sad that she ever felt the need to call on a blade to be her only sense of relief and comfort. She's such a beautiful woman, just like Vanessa in the book. No one deserves to feel that amount of pain alone. No one deserves to feel alone period. 

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Even through how sad I felt for her past, I smiled for her future. The fact that she isn't hiding her arms means she is a fighter. She is healing. She knows she is loved and she loves deeply. You can see it in her eyes. She has seen Hell and she has returned from that visit a stronger person. She's a warrior and a saint. It made me love her big scruffy boyfriend even more. He cares so much for her. I can't help but imagine him holding her when the nights get long and hard and the metal starts humming in her heart again. He will cradle her and absorb her tears and she will do the same for him. Love is so beautiful and so cathardic. I'm so glad they have each other.

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It still breaks my heart to know that not all of the people who struggle like Snow White are able to heal the way she has. I hate that there are still people who feel like they have to face this life alone with nothing but a razor at their side. I am so sorry if anyone reading this feels this way. There are people in your life who love you and even when life seems unbearably hard, the sun will rise in the morning. The long nights will pass, even if it takes years. The bully's will leave and you will be left standing strong.

Please reach out if you ever feel alone. There are people who will listen, I promise you. Never feel so alone that you feel like you can't come back from it. Fight that impulse to punish yourself and instead use your arms to embrace each other, not to harm yourself.

Stay lovely, everyone. You are loved. You are all loved. 

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