asliceofbreath - Tumblr blog

[asliceofbreath]

Why is pasta so fucking good?

4 / 30 / 24, 6:44 p.m.

[asliceofbreath]

I was considering writing this about you, love, but I think I've decided to write about myself. Usually, I type these out when my head is full of words I can't say to you or anyone else. This time, there's not many words. There's a couple 'why's and a little bit of 'how much' and some 'if's when it comes to thinking about you, but today it's mainly just feelings.

It's our anniversary today. And the day we've felt the most disconnected in a long time. I'm not sure where you are in the house right now. Maybe you're finishing up your sandwich that you made without asking me if I was hungry, despite how I made the both of us food for breakfast automatically. Or on your phone you spend the most time with, the most time talking to. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you don't miss me.

I've spent a lot of this relationship wondering what I was doing wrong. All the ways I look wrong. Sound wrong. I've analyzed every inch of myself while trying to come up with a reason about what it is that makes it so hard for you to properly love. That stops now.

This is an ode to my insecurities. You will always be with me, but I'll no longer blame you for others' disinterest. What someone chooses to give me or say to me, or to take with no warning or neglect, is not your fault. Someone else sees us and decides to do those things. Whether good or bad. It's all up to them.

No more wondering what I'm doing wrong. I'm an anxious yet hopeful romantic. I look at everything I do and wonder if it's okay, or should I do more or less. Clearly, you don't have much thought for me at all. From now on, I live for me, dependent on the care I have for myself. I'll no longer remind you of what I need or what not to do. Everything I've already told you, its up to you to listen and remember.

You can do whatever you want. If that includes me and treating me well, that's fine. If it doesn't, it will no longer be my problem.

Love you more, hun.

5 / 21 / 24, 5:20 p.m.

[asliceofbreath]

Since around a year after everything happened, I think I started getting what I can only describe as flashbacks. They haven't really been of the accident much, that was in the first couple months, but they're usually really old memories.

The majority of my childhood is blurred to me, I can't remember much at all besides a few key points. But I get flashes of people and places now that feel like I'm remembering them for the first time since they occurred, 10+ years ago. Since my knowledge of my home state has expanded from experience and driving and trips, I'm able to recognize some of the places. They aren't just little magical places that spawned out of nowhere for kid me anymore. The back of the Renaissance Festival, staff tents behind some county fair, the wooden boardwalk somewhere around my grandma's.

But all the places involve my mom. Getting a turkey leg at the festival with her and surprising her with how much I ate, trying to find some family members at the fair and getting lost, walking around the outside of the aquarium with her and my grandma. All the memories I was so scared I'd never remember but didn't think I'd be able to since the good ones are spread so thin over the cavern of bad ones, slowly coming back. My childhood is unraveling both when I am too late to change it, and too late to prevent anything. Too late to change the outcome.

They hit me while driving in a car with friends, watching movies late at night, listening to music half asleep, under the sun, talking to strangers. At any given moment I go from present and engaged to thrown into my 10, 8, 4 year old self's life. Like I have to play two roles at the same time, split between two different universes. One where I have to struggle to find housing and food and a job, and one where nothing bad has happened yet(that kid me is aware of).

But it's always happy or peaceful memories. All the ones I could never remember before. All too late to recognize them in the face of my mothers wrinkles and greying hair. All too late to change the true loss. All too late.

I am in the passenger seat on the route through my childhood, and the accident is driving. And it is taking all the dirt roads, tunnels, and reversing backwards it feels like. But we are getting there, and for now it keeps me company in this long drive. It holds my hand and makes sure we never crash, and suddenly it's no longer the road you're crossing, it's the story you've lived and choose to continue.

5 / 20 / 24, 8:15 p.m.

[asliceofbreath]

I watched Maid on Netflix recently, rewatched it(would recommend), and she gets recommended to try meditation in it, so she does during a difficult time. For her, it's on a kayak in a lake surrounded on all sides by big spikey northwestern trees, and the sun is out and reflecting off the lake, and there's a light breeze. It's the epitome of summer.

I'm not sure how to meditate but sometimes I listen to songs that take me away for a bit of time. One of them is Grouper - Poison Tree. It's darker and has nothing peaceful to it. It sounds empty, and disgusting, and cold. And it feels like home. When I listen to it I feel like I'm sitting on the porch of my moms trailer like I've done only once since she's been dead, and it's nighttime, and close to storming. I'm curled up leaning against the shitty thin metal siding, and I'm wearing a tank top and the gentle coolness of the trailer is bleeding into my side. The wind is harsh and I can feel it cutting against the side of my arm and thigh, and it's making my hair messy, and it's loud. I can't hear much over it at all.

And it's home. And the wind feels like the walks I'd take every night, and the siding feels like when I had to fix the front door far past 12 am on a school night, and the wooden porch feels like what met the soles of my feet every time I got back home. The wind is loud and harsh and unforgiving as it hugs my sides. I can faintly hear the highway just behind the tree line surrounding the park. It's busy, and angry, and there's honking every once in a while. It's dark, and the streetlights are on in the park, but they don't touch me in the too-close next door trailers shadow. It's fall, and cold, and the very surface of my skin is numb and the coldness of the siding is soft and the wood under my feet is warming up.

I can't hear my thoughts. I can't feel anything touching me except the familiar cold wind and the siding and the wood. Nothing else can intrude in on my space. Nobody knows where I am. Not the magnitude of cars on the highway, not anyone in the trailers awake or asleep, nobody in my phone. The time I take to rest my head against the siding of the trailer and have tears run down my cheeks is only between me and the wind that dries them.

My happy place is loud, and harsh, and cold enough to bite into your skin, and completely isolated from everyone, and it is home to the most awful things I have seen with my eyes. And it is home. And I'm locked out of it.

5 / 16 / 24, 12:52 a.m.

[asliceofbreath]

I keep forgetting to keep you at a distance. Then, I keep wondering why I love you more than you love me, and why that seems like that will never change. I keep forgetting every argument, every disagreement, how it ends with the same feeling of despair and isolation. I keep forgetting to watch how I breathe around you, what words to say, what to allow myself to feel with you, watch where my hands end up. It's not your fault, you love me and I believe you when you say that. But you are more to me than I am to you. I need to learn how to be alone better, not be so interested in how you are every day. I need to keep my hands busy and my thoughts distracted. Maybe it'll change how you see me, would make me easier to swallow, maybe it won't.

But it might help me breathe easier, albeit more hesitantly. Et voila, here I am. And there you are. Here's to a thousand more capacities. Good luck tomorrow, my love.

5 / 15 / 24, 3:11 a.m.