All I ever did was hang strings of twinkle lights from the beams on my ceilings. It was my twenty fifth year and the year I learned that falling in love with moments can be a stronger more resilient love than falling in love with people. People lie but moments are always yours as you see them. As you felt them. Those lights on my ceiling used to make me feel unsettled. The dim light made me feel like a secret. I wanted to live illuminated. But for the last several months and as I took them down this week, they have made me feel home and special. As though the dim light forced people to really see me without words. The twinkle lights filled the silence, as the city lights do in the city I will soon call home. I will have to remember who I am again, all the things I’ve wanted to do but had to suppress lately. In New York I can be free. I will not be fearful. Life is for living.

Though it will be slow, difficult and inconsistent I think I am beginning to like myself. As new york has begun to settle into my bones, Im feeling more alive. I can almost feel my heart beat. And its to the beat of my own drummer, finally.

So there was this day, let’s say it was a Thursday, and it felt like any other day:  both blessed and burdened with mediocrity.

And that’s just life, because sometimes I wrestle with my demons and other times we just cuddle.

 Our generation grew up being told we were supposed to go to college, get a job and start a family. But by the time we grew up, just a decade later, we were being told by the media to be free of society’s handcuffs, to travel the world balls out. It’s confusing.  and for those of us who went to college, and got a job like our parents said, it leaves us with a haunting fear of our own stability.

Well this morning was just like every other morning, It wasn’t the morning I would finally take off for San Francisco…so I woke up and went to work. Work is work, and I sort of love it. It keeps me here. After work, instead of following the freeway home, I set sail for the unfamiliar. I didn’t know where I was headed but my music reminded me that it didn’t matter. I read once that “The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.” And sometimes, when I listen to my parents talk about the 70s when they fell in love, or when I talk to my sister and watch her dance…sometimes I actually believe that all problems could be solved with music and an open mind. And well, it’s nice to believe in something, even if you know it’s not true.  Anyway, as I drove further away, the world around me became more beautiful… the way things do when you don’t know them well enough to see their imperfections. To me, in new places the trees always look greener and the music always sounds better.  The drinks are stronger and the wind blows harder as my heart beats faster, and I breathe in deeper. Days like these, of peacefully escape as a runaway, are rare but beautiful. And I try never to forget that it is a blessing, not a burden that these days are rare. Because in order to find peace, we must first revel in chaos.  And in order to seek the unknown, we must first walk amid mediocrity. It isn’t extraordinary events that bring us closer to who we are. But instead our everyday lives that fuel our fire to explore the unknown.  And it’s in these times that we get lost and find ourselves.

This week has been all  Fiona Apple and Radiohead. Im on the plane to Phoenix. 
I'm going to New York in September.
I got a new tattoo last night. The pain is one of my favorite parts. 
It wakes me up.  Even reminds me that my skin is thick. Its my get away.
My nails are blood red.
I want whiskey. 

Today was about ending the search for the forest, and enjoying the trees around me instead.

I got my fourth tattoo tonight.

I learn a lot about myself during these times. during every time the needle paints my skin. i keep falling in lust with people and then searching for parts of me within them. i need to instead only fall in lust with people who i truly share interests with. Not find commonalities. This is settling. And i think i have spent the last couple years telling people almost everything about myself, even little things such as vague details about college like how thaat man got shot on my drive way or a generic but still detailed description of “count them three”. When i give this information away so easily I’m doing just that, giving it away. to people who don’t have a place for it and who don’t intend on keeping it safe. i give parts of myself away every time i share. And it is this that becomes all too much and not enough at the same time. I find myself feeling like people know me so well when in fact i am doing all the talking without ever really knowing if anyone is listening. I try so hard to be interesting with these little facts that i become so basic. so normal. so boring and typical. When really, i am anything but boring or basic or normal. I am so beyond all of those things. i am incredibly unique and my reasons for doing things are worthy of story telling. my movements are curious and my sarcasm is contagious. my stories of my past are hard to believe and dare i say impressively overcome. all of this i belittle to small comments or even drawn out rambles about myself that really make my life seem to be confusing and dramatic and just, a mess or even worse, normal.

I decided to start wearing less obsessive makeup, darker lines around my eyes and more rouged lips. I started wearing more rings letting go of my obsessive superstition that some of them hold curses. I started to wear outrageous colors of nail polish like metallic silver. Because I realized bad things happen. Despite how perfect my make up or hair is. Despite my nail color or my cursed rings. I decided to be nice to my ex who I’ve spent the last four months hating. Because a part of me hated him more since I thought I had found someone who loved me and treated me right, even if it was just as a friend. But yesterday I decided to be nice to him because bad people are everywhere. It wasn’t just him. And now I’m choosing to excuse him on the basis that all guys are assholes. Its almost like a disease of our generation and he really couldn’t help it. No one ever taught him. Just like no one ever taught me what love should feel like and that it shouldn’t hurt.
Its awful, how powerful someones love can be, but how even more powerful hearing someones lack of love can be. We fool ourselves into thinking there is a gray area of some sort but the truth is, this part of life is pretty black and white.

Last night you and I walked across
wooden stairs and over the bridge
 draped in shadowed branches.
You led me to the beach where
we stood for a minute to take in the beauty
of the full moon shining on the Malibu coast. 
You held my hand going over that cliff
and we laughed and fed our fears,
 pretending we had none
the bonfire made us feel the magic
of the storm and for a while we forgot that
we were all just blurry shapes
as the tide came in closer and closer toward us. 
In our altered state of mind we were invincible. 
all searching for something and finding it in each other. 
When the tide put out the fire
we piled on each other in the car
back to your house where we laughed
and sang while we drank from bottles, 
shared cigarettes and told stories. 
I woke up with your arms still around me,
 sand in my hair and tangled in your expensive sheets.
 I watch the sun creep up over the Malibu coast, and I said goodbye.
 

Freedom is terrifying as i continue to feel trapped in a life that is comfortable. dammit how the comfort makes me cringe. but without it i yearn for the closeness, the love, the loyalty. i crave the constant. i need and beg for it. without it i am nothing. i am an empty shell of myself. a few whiskeys in, all ready and alone, these are my pivotal moments of awareness. and in these times i come a few steps closer to breaking free.

i loved my first apartment with a love that was more than love. That tiny ocean-side apartment, with dirty walls and cracked windows. With room enough for one, but i would always squeeze seven. with rusty doors and mirrors, my perfect hiding spot. i love that i loved it so much, that i didnt see even one flaw. And, i appreciate my friends for letting me believe it was a palace until after i left, so that it could stay my perfect tiny ocean-side apartment for as long as it was mine.

I get all made up hoping my beauty will blind you and that I can still be my crazy self and you will love me because I wore the right dress

i got what i wanted, to be desired by many. but i havent got what i needed, to be valued by one. 

i just want to feel normal. and to no longer feel the haunting pain of the demons in my head. i cant concentrate, or do anything. i also cant do nothing. i just want peace in my life. so i can stop running around trying to find different people and poisons to make the pain go away.

if i were to be truly myself i would be one of two people. i would be stuck in bed, tears running down my face, screaming and crying, with a punching bag and a teddy bear. or i would be laughing and loving with a cigarette, writing and drawing at the beach with my friends or alone. If i were to dress truly myself it would be in one of two ways. i would be in a short loose-ish dress with skyscraper heels on and my hair all beautifully done with specks of glitter on my face and body. or i would be in ripped tights, leather boots, spandex short shorts, an over sized t-shirt and a beanie, my hair would be messy and long, id be wearing all black. these people never meet. or if i were to be truly myself it wouldn’t matter what i was doing or what i was wearing, i would be sitting on the floor or on the grass somewhere with my best friend, who is just some body i used to know.

“natures first green is gold”

the buds of a willow tree appear gold before they turn into green leaves. Like the waves in the sea tell us, life is full of ebb and flow. whats gold will be green and eventually be gold again

I am not sure i ever really knew how incredibly invisible my strength has been every time i look in the mirror. i have seen anger and hate. i have fought with passion and fear. I have seen tears and confusion. But today my soul decided to feel strength as i am now. i have gotten myself through everything. i have been the one to pick myself up, the one to rescue myself. i always attributed my rescue to others because i was so unaware that i was capable of self repair. I have never really had someone ask me questions, or want to listen. Not that way. And if i ever had, i was afraid to take advantage of it for fear that they would stop listening. for fear that they were not real. and for fear of their knife hovering at my back. Thus, i did create my own world in writing. but away from the paper, i was their's. i was everyone’s anything. and i got thrown around, broken and left…and it was in these times that i would concede to my journal. that i would be my own best friend. but it was never a choice. i didn’t care about my own world as much as i cared about the worlds of so many others. Because of this, there is no one who knows the depth of my soul and my heart. I fear so many things. i believe in no truth enough to let it be part of me. i am sensitive. i am in need. i am terrified. but i have been the hero of my story, and though i have always wanted to be saved by another,  i have been my own solid ground to stand upon, my own anchor when no one came through. therefore i must remember to conclude, that i am my anchor. i am my hero. i am my truth. i am my strength. and no matter how weak i may feel, or how much doubt fills my eyes and lips, i will get through this without you. just like i always have. and i must remember to be honest. remember to be me. remember to choose very carefully, but to someday let someone into my world. to be a part of my story. to know the depth of my soul. I must be unapologetically me and no longer fear the opinion of my family. even as i write it, it feels like a trick, like an impossibility. where as some people find it difficult to fit into a mold, i find that it is easy. i find i can fit in any where and be whoever you want me to be. for me the difficulty lies in letting go of the rules and the roles. i have no idea how to be me without trying to imitate someone else. but everyday is better than the one before,  at remembering who i am in the midst of who i am supposed to be. i am the ocean, the cold, the long drive, the live music, the cuddle up, the drink, the group, the photo, the sand.  and for now that is enough.  

i cant figure out how to live in my own world and I keep getting lost in so many others.

3/23/13

I can hardly move

i dont want to feel like this any more

i want to be free

i want to get the devil out from inside of me

i carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. that’s my everyday battle. i carry the guilt and the fear my parents built, i carry my sisters insecurity, i carry the constant pressure i feel to make everyone’s problems go away, and the overpowering desire to scream and pour my heart out to people and share with them all the painful beauty i have carried inside me for all of these years in my writing.

It wasn't romantic love. Though,  I think the fundamental nature of this love came from the intimacy in our once romantic relationship. Last night burned with raw love. Not love as in lust, not the kind that’s arrogant or fleeting. This was the totally exposed, deep in your soul, dirty kind of love. It's the way he looks at me, the way he leans in close when he wants me to hear him. The way he grabs me to dance when no one else is dancing, whirling me around, so proud to have me in his life in the way he does. As though no one could take me away from him. It's love fueled by unequivocal respect and acceptance without the pressing need for understanding. The electricity. The already fallen. It's when there's nothing left to wonder. 
We weren't falling in love, we were feeling its bliss and power.

Sitting outside on the old warn steps that lead up to my ocean side apartment, smoking and wearing that same huge sweatshirt, listening to the fountain next door, cars driving by and distant doors slamming…i can see the stars. i realized this is where i have always wanted to be and yet i spend so much of my time feeling insecure and not creative. I don't have an image of what i want to paint and i usually really hate whatever i end up painting. i don't have a dream. well to be honest, I'm living it. but i somehow always forget to remember that. maybe because it doesn't seem big enough somehow, or loud enough. at least according to what i was raised to believe. There is this boy who has captured my heart and who i never stop thinking about. I spend most of my time feeling terrified of losing him and not enough time being happy about it all.