coffeewithastraww

[coffeewithastraww]

Aliens

There are certain things I talk about until I’m blue in the face and this is one of them. How do you watch someone lose their mind? My best friend in this world, the guy who I trust with every emotion I ever possessed, lost himself when we were supposed to be found. As kids we would play soccer out in the yard and he would teach me all of his tricks never being selfish about it, never bragging. He always wanted me to be just as good as him. As teenagers we took our first drink together and laughed in the backyard about nothing. We smoked our first cigarette together, we smoked our first joint together and drank out of sprinklers. We went for walks until 2 in the morning talking about life and we talked on the phone for hours about the people we thought we were in love with. We cried about the family we lost and helped each other through every hardship we came across. A man of true genuine musical talent who inspired me every day. You taught me music is so much more than how you hear it.

I miss you more than anyone who has ever came into my life and you still walk this earth. You can argue someone with schizophrenia is still the same. It’s still the same soul behind those eyes and you’re right, but my best friend isn’t there anymore and I think about you every single day. How I abandoned you when you needed somebody the most. How I left you to be confused in a time where you needed a friend more than anything. You scared me and I couldn’t watch you turn into someone I didn’t know.

One day I asked you what you think of. I just wanted to know what you see and what goes on through your mind. You politely asked me never to ask that again and I never did. I wish I could swim with you in the deep dark place that your brain goes to sometimes and hold your hand and tell you it’s all going to be okay. Nobody hates you, you’re talented beyond belief, you have the biggest heart anyone in the world could ever possibly possess. You just don’t know how to say things, how to articulate what’s going on in your brain, the right times to talk, when to listen. You can’t help it. I wish I could have been strong enough to be there for you when you needed me, I spent so many years hoping and praying to whoever would listen that you would get better. I wanted my best friend back, but I knew and know now that it’s not possible.

I wish I could create a new friendship with you but something inside of me can’t face you. I love you forever but I can’t bring myself to constantly validate you when you used to have all the confidence in the world. I can’t be the person who explains your facial expressions to people, I can’t be the person who explains every 4 minutes that I’m not mad at you. I can’t stand the way you always think I’m depressed. How your brain lives in the past and you can’t remember what I said 5 minutes ago.

I know you don’t remember ever being mad at me but the old you would hate me right now. 17 year old you would say, how could you leave me alone? I was there for you when you got bullied, I showed you all your favorite bands, I helped you through heartbreak…

I wish life never took your mental state away from you.

I will be sorry until the day I die.

[coffeewithastraww]

Listen to the cry baby

A decade and two cents ago, I met someone who changed my life forever and what I’m about to say is so simple in any form you look at it. You might mean the world to someone you haven’t thought twice about that day. And the single most important friendship you ever created doesn’t reach for his phone to call you anymore because it was never that serious to them. I ran in circles trying to save something we both knew was over. And yet you could tell me you missed me tomorrow and I’d be back hanging over the end of the world with only your grip to keep me alive. I went to you for every piece of advice because I trusted you, I needed your honesty and brutal words to keep me going. But you never needed anything from me except for maybe a game or two when you were bored. A person I put a light so bright over I couldn’t see your toxic mindset.

This friendship evolved every single day. Teenagers, I needed a carefree, heartbeat skip a step, out of breath, crazy adventure of a person to distract me from my childhood. And you needed someone who loved you more than you loved yourself to keep a fraction of your confidence in tact in order to survive those years. We went through alcoholic tendencies together and we had long talks about wanting to be better, we told each other every single secret about ourselves because neither of us judged each other. Years later you reached your goals and I became nothing more than the person from your hometown who never left.

A stranger who knew all of your secrets.

We grew up and the dynamic changed a few times but I always leaned on you more than you leaned on me and I never would have thought it could push you away.

Two people thousands of miles away who have nothing in common. One who looks up to the other and the other always looking down. I will sit and listen to every word that comes out of your mouth so proud of the man you turned out to be, so happy for the life you built for your family. And when I look back I only see disappointment in your eyes.

I want to be the friend you speak highly of but I know I’m not.

What was our friendship based off of? because these days I’m willing to put money on the fact that we both have different answers for that and there’s only one right one. The things I cry about you have no time for anymore and I understand that. But doesn’t that make you a bad friend?

In a time where I needed you the most you left me. Again.

The end was never signified. Like a phonecall you just hang up and laugh about it separately knowing you’ll talk again tomorrow and not even mention it. This time it feels different, and I know you won’t answer.

I know I sound pathetic when I say this but I don’t care and I never have. Each time with you felt like a movie, a beginning middle and end. A conflict and resolution. You made me cry so hard I thought I might die, you made me laugh until I couldn’t even see, you made me question reality and look at people in a whole new light, including myself. You hurt me and you put me back together again, and even though we don’t admit this like a secret nobody will ever know, I know we both felt guilty for the way things were sometimes. And like the person we both knew we hated ourselves for it. I will hold on to you forever and I know you’ll never listen to the cry baby ever again.

[coffeewithastraww]

And she finally chose to love herself.

Sometimes I wish I could just disappear and nobody would remember me. I wish I never existed so nobody could miss me. I wish I could go under the covers and not be. I’m dramatic and depressed and jealous and hateful and quite honestly the worst version of myself. I haven’t worked in months, and I avoid reality in the worst ways possible. I won’t get into the details but it’s not healthy. Everybody has rough patches but what if you just have a rough life? My life is ugly as fuck and I try to romanticize it how I can but man it’s as simple as it sounds. I’m in love with my ex boyfriend who doesn’t give a fuck. I drown myself in the same alcohol that came home from the bar every night when I was a kid. I cry into my stupid pillow and wake up with a red puffy face and put on my cheap makeup and hide behind my idiotic humor while everyone laughs and I go home and hate myself.

When does it end? When will I become someone I’m proud of? When will I take the initiative to get up and go to work and get my license and pay bills and make life easier for myself so I can be happy again? I know the motions. I know the steps. I have goals. I know how to achieve them. But I stop myself every time because this empty feeling swallows me whole.

I hold onto the emotions I’ve built around not being able to let you go and I’ve lost myself. But to be honest with you how do I know if I was ever found? I don’t know as if I’ve ever known myself and that’s so dramatic but is it true? Who the fuck is Alesha Jorges? I like books about love because it makes me feel like the hurt and anger in this world doesn’t exist. I like things that make me forget sometimes I feel like the saddest person in the world. I like writing and being able to express my thoughts straight from my head to whoever chooses to read it. I like fluffy animals, Kurt Cobain, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow’s voice coinciding together like melted butter on a pancake, I like when it snows and it’s so quiet you feel like your the last person on earth, I like thick sweatshirts, four wheelers, singing in the shower to Olivia O’Brien, saying things that are brutally honest even though I know people are judging me because it separates me from everyone else. I like guitar solos that make you close your eyes and feel like your there with them focusing so hard on the frets, I like when cats chase their tails, candles that smell like cashmere, and I don’t even know what the fuck cashmere is? Is it a nut? Is it a cloth? Who cares. I like going super fast in a car and smoking a cigarette on 39 looking at all the houses I’m familiar with. I like finding expensive shoes for cheap, walking in the woods during the day, pulling back my bow and hitting the target perfectly, sitting on a tailgate with country music so loud you can’t hear anyone talking, music that makes you get goosebumps, hearing the smile in peoples voices when they talk about something they love, I like to draw, I like being in the kitchen, I like how I feel when I’m nervous around a boy, I like telling people my whole life story, over explaining myself, crying at movies, too many pillows on my bed, expensive makeup, when it’s raining and not storming so you can perfectly hear the rain hitting the roof, comedy specials and especially dark humor, I like having a coffee at target and being alone, and most importantly. I want to love my life again.

And I want to love my life again while being completely alone and I know I can because I have the ability to give myself everything I’ve ever wanted.

Depression sits in front of me and it feels like it will never move long enough for me to see that.

I hate everything I’ve made my life out to be because I let myself go the second it sits there again.

I forget that I can work alongside the pain that’s raised me, the hurt that’s weaseled its way into my life, the heartbreak that you created, and the heartbreak that I can’t get over.

Just because you break your own heart doesn’t mean you can’t fix it.

And today I look in the mirror and I feel like I’m going to be okay.

Climb the ladder and eventually you’ll be so high the things that hurt you can’t even reach you anymore

[coffeewithastraww]

Jealousy kills

Jealously kills my confidence, it kills my mood, It drives me.

I wish you would go away and never come back. Delete yourself from his life forever. The things you take aren’t yours. The things you say are hurting the person you say you love. Take your words, and leave him alone.

I read the things you think I will never see. You don’t know I’m right under your nose. In his bed and on his chest smiling when he says he loves me too. Somebody who is mine and I am his.

So why am I jealous of someone who was a summer phase only to be forgotten some day?

Why do I hurt my own feelings by looking for the things I know I’m going to find? This toxic way of thinking is ruining everything I pride myself in and soon I will have nothing to be proud of.

The girl who came to him at the right time helped him through his sorry lifestyle. The girl who didn’t care. Free.

I want to be free like her. Confident. Never looking back at the people who watch her walk by whilst never looking down on you either. Shared love and unapologetically beautiful.

I can see why you distance yourself

I want to be someone who doesn’t care but I do more than anyone will ever know. So when I feel like exploding with rage and jealousy I just cry alone because I can’t let anyone know I wish she never existed. I can’t let anyone know I know the things I know. I can’t show you how much I care because it’s displaced. Its wrong. It’s unjustified.

I’m crazy. I’m insane. How do I let go of something that isn’t even holding onto me back but in fact pushing me from its grip. But I persist holding tighter even when it hurts because I need to know.

I hate this jealousy.

I want to know this is mine and nobody else’s.

How do I find something I’ve never had?

Let go of the thing pushing you towards a hateful existence. If it’s not meant to be it won’t be. If he chooses her I will go on living just as I had before on this huge planet filled with things that happen to us that are out of our control. Life is too big for me to cry about the things I can’t change.

If you can be easily taken from me. You were never mine to begin with.

I’m making up scenarios in my head for the time being to protect myself but for now I’ll listen to your heartbeat with my head on your chest and smile when you say you love me too fully aware that you love me more than any woman who’s ever even looked at you.

Misplaced jealousy and perfectly placed confidence make the perfect delusion and I love you too

[coffeewithastraww]

A level we won’t get to

One day I’m laying in bed with the man I love more than anyone and anything in the world. Someone I care about more than anyone who has ever willingly stepped into my life and probably always will. There’s no way to formulate a sentence that even comes close to describing the way I feel when we’re together. One day I’m making dinner in our apartment waiting for you to get home so you can grab my butt and ask me how my day was and I can sit down at the kitchen table and hear about how you could barely keep your eyes open on your way to work, or the idiot in front of you who cut you off, or the people on your job site pissing you off, or how you had a good day because you listened to hatebreed in your headphones. Every second with you I got to just turn off all of the bad things and exist only in the present with you.

One day I decided to try and move on from the past and you became my future quicker than I knew possible. One day I set aside the toxic way I lived my life and something healthy and strong moved in the same day you did that day in 2021. We were happy and I don��t know why we aren’t anymore. As much as I like to use big, intricate analogies. That sentence is as simple as it sounds, why aren’t we happy anymore? My mind jumps to “what did I do?” How can I fix this but the answer is simple if I knew all the moving parts to this decision. Which I don’t and I probably never will. Love can die just like anything else.

The way we played a game for a while and then got bored of it, like level 45 where you can evolve all your eevee’s is still there but you don’t open the app anymore because you just don’t care. Or how I open Hulu to put on it’s always sunny in Philadelphia but I can almost hear your laughter when Frank says something perverted so I get sad and then shut it off. The way I tried everything to save this relationship that you willingly let die because, you lost the faith in me I never had for myself. I loved you more than I loved myself, you carried the weight I couldn’t. And none of that is fair.

Simply put, it’s a fact that kids who suffer from childhood trauma grow up with the mindset that everything will leave. That created anxiety, to which I don’t like to give power to but man it’s the fucking truth. That anxiety created a confusion in which I tried to fix for myself which is exhausting. When I realized I don’t have the ability to fix it by myself I became depressed and clung to things that made me feel good because nothing makes me feel good and when I found something that made me feel good… damn that felt good. I become obsessed. Unhealthily obsessed. Food, alcohol, boys, crying, romanic novels, being to comfortable in my own sadness and coincidentally, Donovan James Reed. At first it’s fine right? But when I started to love him more than I loved myself RIGHT as I was starting to love myself, that’s when I realized I’m going to lose this man.

If I hadn’t lost the things I have in these 27 years of my existence I would take everything for granted and I would be the shittiest human being alive because I’ve lost everything and I still don’t give a fuck about the things I do have sometimes. I took you for granted even though I loved you more than anything and that is the farthest thing from love there is. I’m addicted to the feeling you gave me but I did nothing to better myself for you because I couldn’t even do it for myself.

The feeling of waking up every day and forcing yourself to make better choices, so I’m told, will lead you to a better mindset. I’m trying so hard to wake up and do the things I need to to survive. I mean, I feel like I shouldn’t have to try this hard to wake up but I fell pretty hard out of a nest I wasn’t ready to leave yet and I definitely broke both my wings. But that doesn’t mean I’ll never fly.

Damn I’m a good writer.

I wake up and you’re not there. I wanna go home but I don’t have one anymore. I cry myself to sleep because I feel bad for myself.

And as I lay here right now I’m thinking, I cry for the people I love. Because I look at them and think they deserve so much better out of life. Looking at myself in a mirror I used to see pity staring back at me like “it’s okay, you’re mom died and you’re gunna turn into an alcoholic just like you’re dad” or “you can sleep in everybody expects it anyways” now I cry for the things that hurt me but I know my ability to move on from them.

This shit hurts because I love you. I miss you, and I want you back, but I know your silence is loud.

And I take that silence as closure as I write a new chapter in this book I’m writing. (Hopefully this is like the part after the conflict and resolution, you know like that part where everyone claps and has happy tears in their eyes?)

I write this at 12:31am and I cried myself to sleep the night before. The night before that I took a hot shower and folded my laundry and woke up with a smile on my face. The night before that I chain-smoked and contemplated giving up. I don’t know what tomorrows mindset will bring me. Hopefully it’s the perfect combination of coffee and creamer and a good hair day. But I can’t choose them all, it’s the mental illness, that’s a problem for my next boyfriend to enjoy.

If you’re reading this I don’t need you and you don’t need me, I don’t deserve you and you don’t deserve me, I miss you and I know you miss me, we are each others best friends, you created a parking spot somewhere in my head and you’re never leaving like I stole something important out of your engine so you can’t drive away. Purposely keeping you here so I can enjoy the way you made me feel even if this new era for us entails a friendship where we don’t say “ I love you because it’s too weird”

Anyway, I love you Donovan

[coffeewithastraww]

Selfishly okay

The music I write is funny to me because if people cared enough to read it one day they’d think it’s about a specific person or thing. When in reality I’m the only one who knows the true meaning. It’s like having an inside joke you can’t tell anyone because if you said it out loud the judgment on people’s faces would put me in the ground.

Now I know to you, that might sound self centered. I just can’t afford one more look like that. The fragile state of my mindset is at an all time low and I’m currently babying myself to keep sane. Which in my eyes there’s nothing wrong with. I have days where I’m proud of my transparency towards others, where I’m proud of my art and writing, when I keep a conversation going for a really long time and it sounded good coming out of my mouth. It’s like I’m hyper aware of everything I do and it makes way for people to openly poor their judgement on my lap like a newspaper they’ve opened for me that says “you’re an idiot”

But the truth is, I didn’t ask. I never asked. And I never will ask. Because even though I’m wrapping myself in a blanket and listening to sad songs in a hope I can cope with what I’m currently going through right now. I’m proud of the person I’ve grown to be. Someone who is easily inspired. Someone who doesn’t need your words to make me feel better about myself if I just stop and realize it comes from within me. Someone who will effortlessly be there for the people who she loves because she knows that love is returned.

To the people who broke me down. I’m sitting here with stress hives all over my body. A dentist telling me it’s going to cost $15,000 to fix the issues going on in my mouth. Acne on my face being worse than ever. A depression clouding every thought I possess that it chips away at my sanity every day. Being pushed from place to place knowing I’m not wanted there. Being pushed from a home. Anxiety crying out so loud in your ears the only thing you can hear is your beating heart unaware if your going to have a heart attack and suffer the same death as your mother or if it’s just an anxiety attack you talk yourself out of every time just before the room goes black. People pulling at you in every single direction because I’ve been bullied into believing my emotions are insignificant by a toxic childhood that was nobody’s fault.

Constantly feeling guilty for everything I do.

Sometimes I wish I could just fall asleep and wake up again when everything is easier and everything has color again.

It’s like a feeling right before everything shuts down I realize I am doing this alone and I don’t need someone to help me get through it. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a safety net and I’m learning to enjoy my company.

I’ll let you in on a secret only me and myself know, that song isn’t about you, and it never was. :)

[coffeewithastraww]

I won’t ask

People have been annoying the ever living shit out of me lately. I wish I could just say the things in my head out loud without being judged. When I open my mouth to talk lately it’s like every sentence is open for judgement and a complaint. I didn’t ask for your opinion and I don’t care about it. The only people I have room for in my life are the ones I know are going to let me go through what I need to go through in order to get through this breakup. Without, judgment. The one thing I used to take pride in is being so open and transparent. I mean, I’m sure if you scrolled down far enough on this blog you’d find the one I wrote about wishing I could be more open with people. Once I achieved that mindset it made way for people to constantly put in their two cents, for people to always have something to say about my life choices and I’m honestly sick of it.

Moving forward I realize there are some things I need to keep to myself. Like relationships, and places I’m going and the details in between no longer need to be a topic of discussion. I can continue letting people in emotionally because that’s the only way you can form a genuine connection these days, but my business is my own and it’s no longer open for discussion. I can’t put this feeling into words for the first time in a long time. I feel angry, and emotionally exhausted like I’ve been trying to prove something I don’t know how to put into words. I feel like I’m trapped somewhere I don’t want to be and little things keep chipping away at my sanity. I’m saying and doing things that are just flat out coming from a place of pure spite and anger and it’s wrong but I can’t stop it.

People are fucking annoying me.

As I do often I’m over analyzing this way of thinking and I hate it. Why can I never just feel something and let it be? I’m feeling guilty for acting like an asshole but maybe this is a transitioning for me. I a whole new mindset I can create by giving just a little less of a fuck about what my friends are saying. I never listened anyways. I always did what I wanted to do. I just ask people’s opinions because I know they live to give them, there’s no longer room for benefit of the doubt and there’s no longer room for letting other people win. I’m winning from here on out and this is a story I’m writing, no editors, no ghost writers, no inspiration. Well, maybe Josh but that’s IT.

Okay that was a joke but not really. I actually do value that man’s opinion, half of you are rolling your eyes but guess what?

I don’t fucking care anymore :)

[coffeewithastraww]

Night Hawk

It was time I unlinked my blog from Facebook. To the naked eye this space I’ve created for myself is no longer accessible unless you know about it and that’s how I want my life to be. I have spent so many years pretty much damn near all of them. Trying to figure out why the fuck so many people choose to be around me. Is it because I’m everybody’s yes man because I grew up with no friends and I’m scared people are going to hate me? Is it because I’m an empath who learned how to put myself in other peoples shoes when they needed someone to understand their hardships? Is it because I’m cool? Probably. Yes. No but actually, I wonder sometimes how I’ve accumulated the amazing, kind hearted friends I have now. One sticks out in particular these past few months for me and he’s someone who’s been there pretty much every step of the way. Someone I never write about because he’ll never take the time to read it. But out of the busy life he lives people coming and going so quickly in and out of his life, he chooses to look me in the eye, and nobody else. He gives me the person he wants to be on his bad days and the person he doesn’t wanna be when he’s depressed. He laughs at me when he knows I need to laugh in spite of myself to make me feel better. A man who lets things pass by in a blur his mind racing with his own demons he thinks nobody will ever understand opened the door to his mind for me to completely turn over. For me to pick apart and make a solid judgment. For me to look at the ugly and the beautiful. My best fucking friend in this life and probably the next. Someone I know confidently to be my own family. Someone who I cry thinking about sometimes because a two decades ago I was someone nobody looked at. A child with bangs covering her eyes so she couldn’t see the look people gave her when they found out her mother died. A little broken girl with nothing but a fake smile, second hand cigarette smoke, and people who bullied her for no reason. That little girl looks at her best friend two decades later and cries because he loves her too. He leans on her too. Finally. Somebody is as comfortable with me as I am with them.

And Darion if you ever see this. Just know I understand.

I know you think you’re alone sometimes in your way of thinking, I know the frustration of how your own mind can’t just be normal I’m return makes you lash out at the people close to you. I know why you push people away. I know you can’t turn down the volume in your mind and why you can’t sleep at night. I know you look in the mirror and the people who have wronged you took your self confidence and never returned with it. That confidence derives from yourself. The look on your face when you kiss your two sons before you leave for work. The smile you give across a room full of people. The way you crack a joke and everybody laughs and your face gets red. You can’t even see how people would kill for you. People would drop anything on a dime for you because you would do it for them. YOU built this lifestyle. YOU built these friendships. YOU are raising these boys. YOU are the voice inside your head. You can get through anything because I’ve seen you do it. You are stronger than you think you are.

A man who inspires me every single day because it really is just that simple.

Please never loose sight of who you are. Please give yourself more credit.

I love you more than you will ever know.

[coffeewithastraww]

I miss you.

I miss you but I know this is for my own good. What would happen if we got back together? That’s what I think I want right? You? Well. My toxic mindset created a wall between us that I built out of jealousy. I built out of anxiety. I built out of not being able to let go. How do you fully trust someone who never opened up to you? Who turned to alcohol every time something didn’t go their way. Just like the man who raised you. You choose the people who you surround yourself with and you choose the ones who bring out your insecurities the most. Is that a me problem? Yes. I worried about having the perfect life for so long I just looked right past the fact that I don’t even know if you were what I wanted. Maybe you were what I needed at that time in my life. Someone to love me right as I was learning to love myself but I lost it along the way. I lost that love for myself because I focus so hard on that insecure anxious mindset that came along with your silence. Am I blaming this on you. Not entirely because that is not fair. But will I take all the blame here? No. Because that isn’t fair either. Growing up and moving on isn’t just about trying to get help with the things holding me back in this life. It’s about giving myself credit where it’s due and owning up to my mistakes and only try to become a better person in the process.

I think I miss the back rubs, the lazy sex, the way you made fun of me all the time, the drinks at the kitchen table, laughing at Bert’s comedy specials together. There was very minimal moments in our relationship where I was completely comfortable with the fact that one day you and I could potentially bring another human in this world or I would have the same last name as you one day because I knew deep down you weren’t comfortable with it and I lost myself trying too hard to hold onto my first relationship. I feel like that is redundant with people who love too hard. I know I’ve heard that in a romantic comedy once or twice. It’s always the same. You meet a guy, you fall in love, he can’t open up, you become too clingy and then you break up.

Looking forward I just want to find someone who loves me so much they would do anything for me. Not someone who rolls their eyes every time I ask them to scratch my back. I want someone who has goals and actively achieves them. Someone who tells me the things I need to work on and honestly wants me to achieve them for my own well being. Someone who wants to go and do fun things with me out in public and doesn’t swear in front of little kids. Someone who holds love in their heart instead of hate and spite. Someone who comes home with flowers for me just because. Someone who will look at me like I’m the only girl in the world.

I remember when that look left your face.

Flowers die you said.

[coffeewithastraww]

The narcissist and the cry baby

Something I’ve never thought of is the correlation between the way I grew up and the way I handle situations currently in my life. Bless my dads heart, he tried so hard, but at 39 years old a man who had almost everything handed to him other than his work ethic was left blind sided with two little girls all alone. So you gotta give credit to where it’s due before the shit talking if you will. That being said, my childhood was something I didn’t talk about because why would I want to remember that lost look in my little sisters eyes after she realized our mom would never come back. The amount of brain power it takes for a 4 year old to comprehend death is next to impossible. Things came together for me like puzzle pieces back then. Like I didn’t wanna ask questions because I knew it was a sad situation and if I brought it up all the adults in my life would get teary eyed and cry to me saying “oh honey you don’t deserve this”, I knew if I brought it up the strength I stole from the tall figures around me would no longer be something I looked up to but down upon. Simpler put, adults crying made me feel uncomfortable because they were supposed to be the ones being strong for me. I needed someone to be strong and in that time I don’t think anyone could be and honestly I don’t even blame anyone. Although in return it created a mindset for a child that made me feel like I always needed to be there for everyone when I didn’t even know how to be there for yourself. I feel like most people that have grieved a loss of someone close to them create that mindset as well.

Time went on and my sister and I got the “oh honey” look everywhere we went. Our whole family did. My dad and sister I think took that as a personality trait. They enjoyed having attention from others because it made them feel good and there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe I could have benefitted from letting people in every once in a while back then instead of waiting for everyone to leave to feel comfortable again. Like you were holding in a breath you didn’t know you were holding. My dad took to a whole new lifestyle that would shape us into the people we are today. Alcohol consumed him overtime and there was nothing we could do besides watch his black truck pull out of the driveway from the top bunk of our bunk bed and cry knowing he was going to the bar and would come back a whole different man.

The same man who screamed at two teenage girls for eating his bag of Cheetos or leaving a few forks in the sink with a piece of food on them would wake up the next morning crying when he remembered how he scolded us last night. How does a child develop a sense of respect for someone like that? The same man who drove us to summer school and made us do our homework and encouraged good behavior, asks you to come have a drink with him every night. How do you not get a little whiplash from that? I don’t want to say it was all bad. Like I said before he tried his hardest and is still my best friend to this day and my own father is and forever will be the reason I believe that people can change. From someone who had little cares in this world. Someone who had it all and when he didn’t he knew that he could get it with enough confidence in himself and his work to power him through life leisurely. To a man who had the people he loved ripped from his arms in a matter of seconds, grief changed him to an angry man, but what else can you expect? Healing from that grief, quite possibly the wrong way (but who am I to judge) made that anger slowly fade and in its place he finally started taking help from others, a proud man who now knows when he needs help back on his feet and can ask for it.

The outcome of the screaming, the narcissistic behavior, the tyrant of the household, the misplaced anger I think created somewhat of a hypersensitivity to life for me. I don’t want to blame my issues on that, because I don’t want to blame him for anything. Simply put I feel like an asshole. Or like I’m making an excuse for the way I handle things like I’m just a pussy or a fragile little piece of nothing on this earth who always thinks every single person around her who looks at her wrong is mad at her and nobody will every genuinely care about her as much as she cared about them but the truth is. My self esteem was knocked out of my head a long time ago. Beaten down until there’s no way for me to recover it. I’m scared of everything because I never had to face anything head on. And the times that I’ve had to face reality, calling 911 at 9 years old because your mom had a heart attack in your front yard, sitting on your staircase crying because your cousin died from a food allergy, hearing your grandma fall out of bed and calling 911 again only to realize it was more serious than anyone knew and pretty soon she was in hospice and you couldn’t bring yourself to go see her in her last days because you chose to not feel that feeling ever again to now only have the biggest regret in the world. Watching your own best friend lose his complete and utter mind turning him into nothing but a stranger. Falling in and out of alcoholic tendencies for the last 10 years. Every single time I looked in the mirror and decided I wanted to work for something whether that something was happiness, a job, my self worth, confidence, a love life. Whatever it may be. I eventually lost hope again because something happened to make me give up again. Like nothing mattered because the pain that raised you, read that again, The Pain That Raised You turned you into someone you don’t recognize because you don’t want to recognize her.

Now like every blog entry or journal entry I need to end this on a happier note because what’s a story without a happy ending? Coming from someone who sometimes can’t finish romantic comedies because the conflict makes me too frustrated (did I mention that I’m a pussy?) I grew from the sadness I surrounded myself with it almost feels like something that will always follow me but something I won’t let control my life anymore. Do you remember when you were a kid and there was a spider on your wall or a monster in your closet and your parent would kill the spider or explain to you that there’s no such thing as monsters? Eventually making you feel at ease and it was enough for you to comfortably go back to bed. That feeling of love you had towards them like wow I have something that can pretext me from the world. I think that same feeling of comfortability can be found within yourself. I’ve been fighting this sadness or fighting these demons if you will, for myself. And I’m proud of how far I’ve come after everything threatening to break me down, the wall might be very thin sometimes but I’m still waking up every morning and if nobody is proud of me for that then I understand because we all have to wake up every morning but I’m proud and that’s all I need out of life.

[coffeewithastraww]

This past year I’ve learned a lot of new things about myself. I try to stop every once and a while and make time for myself so I can do that but I feel like these last 6 months have been very eye opening, significantly more than the past. When I moved to Wisconsin I isolated myself to a point where I didn’t think about my friends or the people I left behind. My thoughts were clouded because I only thought about how I was going to better myself and “this time was going to be different” when in all reality I focused on that mindset I wanted to be in so hard that I lost sight of the things that actually mattered. I wanted something so badly I stopped caring about the steps I needed to take in order to get there I just tricked myself into thinking I WAS there.

Looking back I think that was a step I needed to take though in order to make myself realize that my friends aren’t my whole life. I was always so reliant on them and every choice I made wasn’t my own, every thought I had, every opinion. Living with my boyfriend who is very independent has taught me that I need to be as well, I need to ask myself if I like how I’m handling a situation and if I don’t then I change my outlook. Or I change the way I’m doing things because I’ve learned to value my own opinion which is something I’ve never been able to do before. I look at each person who I’ve looked up to in my life and am so grateful. Randi taught me self discipline, if I spent too much money I save it next time. I’ve learned to tell the truth more often and with that, I like myself more. Josh taught me to have confidence in more things I do so I don’t ask for opinions anymore and I do what I want, to an extent wasting no time in between. Aunty Linda taught me to take no shit from people and life is too short to worry about whether or not people like you. She taught me only god judges and there is love everywhere you look. I find art and beauty in the world again and that’s because of her. Autumn taught me that if you want something you have to work for it and it doesn’t matter how others see you along the way. Haley taught me to quit apologizing for the things I love. My dad taught me how to control my anger and irrational way of thinking, sometimes things just are the way they are and you can’t change it. Donovan taught me how, and still is teaching me how, to overcome my fears and let things go that are hurting me. Without even trying he taught me how to love someone so unconditionally and so healthily without any toxicity once so ever. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Riley taught me how to stick up for myself and be the person people come to for advice instead of the other way around.

Each person I have in my life has a significance to me. Each person has taught me a new thing, showed me a new song, gave me a memory I hold close to me, changed my way of thinking. But when I really stop and think about it I need to give myself a little more credit where it’s needed. I’ve built this lifestyle and these friendships and this way of thinking. And most of all I’ve built these morals that have made me who I am and that alone is something I am proud of. I’m done asking for validation I trust myself again. All that needed to happen for me to open up that part of myself is to take a little break up here living with Donovan and away from my friends to be able to give myself that credibility.

[coffeewithastraww]

I feel like this blog is hiding in plain sight. A gem I’ve hid so effortlessly in an attempt to show people my pain, my love for everyone, my creativity, and the things that genuinely make me happy without actually showing them. I like to update this ever so often when I feel the need to express myself but honestly I haven’t felt very creative lately.

One time Kurt Cobain said “thank you for the tragedy I need it for my art” and for some reason that really Resonated with me. Because pain is the only emotion I’ve ever really felt in an abundance, like excessively. So when I was hurt I put it into something else I liked more than crying. Writing, singing, drawing, painting. Because there’s no rules to art, if you like something you like something and you shouldn’t have to explain to anyone why you do. I know I’m not the first person in the world to make this astonishing realization that art closely relates to pain, but channeling a healthier outlet is something I’ve had to work in my whole life.

Move to a new state, bury it all in alcohol, become sober for 9 months, confide in the people you think you can trust, nothing helps unless you help yourself. Choosing between creativity and happiness and alcohol and pain is a choice from an outside perspective, seems so easy to choose from but how do you let go of the thing that built you?

How do you stop making excuses for your behavior? It’s become so easy that I’ll convince myself in my head that it’s okay to do the things I do sometimes.

Anyways before I let myself get too deep, I also have a tendency to overthink behaviors and mindsets so that being said, being jobless for these pst couple months I’ve let myself fall back into some old habits, all in all I’m working on myself before anything. I need to learn how to save my money, I need to create healthier lifestyle choices for myself, like eating better and stop chugging tequila when I go to the bar, and maybe not stop smoking cigarettes because that’s just too far but I could take a walk on my morning cigarette breaks.

I forgot to remind myself to not get too comfortable and here I am. 40lbs heavier, in credit card debt and barely hanging on financially but the one thing I’ve kept with me is the happiness I’ve worked for. I will never lose that again.

And with some work I can make myself in so someone the old me would not only be proud of but truly look up to.

Now, to fight with myself about my alcoholic tendencies! 🥲

I’m just kidding

Am I?

Yeah.

What?

Okay bye, love you

[coffeewithastraww]

Good afternoon coffeewithastraww it’s been a while. I wanna talk about trust for a second. Remember when you were a kid, let’s say 7 years old and you’re getting into your parents vehicle for a grocery store trip or going out to do anything with them? And there’s really no thoughts going on through your head. You just smile and look out the window thinking about throwing a box of fruit snacks in the cart when your moms not looking. Or how you borrowed your favorite necklace to your best friend for picture day and you wanna ask for it back, maybe you scraped your knee riding your bike and you’re mindlessly picking at the scab while singing along to rascal flatts coming from the car speakers. Your not thinking about how the car could flip on the highway or how you’re mom could run that red light you just trust that they know what their doing and you are along for the ride.

I think we lose that trust over time. You are in these situations over time when that trust that you gave out so easily as a kid gets harder and harder to give. Your best friend stole that necklace. You’re girlfriend cheated on you and your in a new relationship and there’s just that thing in the neck of your mind telling you that the new person your trying to let in will break you like your ex did.

Look, I’m no fucking expert but man, didn’t it hurt when you gave out that trust finally after having so much anxiety about it and they just ended up doing what you expected them to do all along? How do you prevent that pain? By never handing out that trust again. By keeping it all to yourself because the only person who can’t hurt you is yourself. You know every move you’re going to make because those thoughts are all in your own head, one foot in front of the other you know which way your going to turn next. You trust yourself to take you on the correct path never scraping your knee along the way. But your not inside someone else’s mind. You don’t know what their up to behind closed doors. Will they betray you? You don’t know. There’s something I think is so beautiful about a child giving that trust to you so easily, they haven’t endured the pain we have and lost the friendships and relationships we have.

And what I’m about to tell you seems so simple. The solution to it all, isn’t the solution always simple? How do you give that trust out again? Each time you get hurt you instantly think of how your never going to allow that to happen to you again, right? Each time you allow it to happen you only get hurt more. So instead of closing yourself off to everyone and worrying every time that door is closed you reverse those feelings. “Your only gunna get hurt more” right? Wrong. “There’s nothing that could hurt me more than it already has” why not start that healing process in the mist of yourself growing. In the mist of yourself lending out that small amounts of trust again. Your healing. Your reversing those feelings. Instead of the pain you think is going to unfold. Just trust them, and if it so happens to sting you in the end you know what? Nothing can hurt you more than it already has. Because remember when I said that you can control your own path? One foot in front of the other? Who’s to say you can’t control your own emotions.

One step at a time you grow. Everyone does and the only way you can train your mind to grow and let people back into your life without those anxieties is to find it within yourself to have that confidence that you cannot be hurt like before. Now that doesn’t mean you’re never going to make a genuine relationship again because most of the time when you think your letting someone in you are to an extent. But on a deeper level you aren’t fully opening up to them which can cause frustrations within yourself causing you also in return to revert back to those old ways of isolating yourself. Before I get too deep into using an array of big words to make you think I know more than I do I want to tell you one more thing.

It’s easier said than done but you have the capabilities to get there again. Take a page from the old book you wrote as a kid. Each time someone takes that trust you gave and stomps on it right in front of you, you brush it off, pick the scab, let it bleed and forget about it because there’s so many other things in your life that matter much more. Once you find that you’ve made such genuine friendships and you’ve let those people in eventually, the ones who don’t belong in your life will find their way out of it. Walking in through the door that you held open for them and walking out through that same door your still holding.

Everything is what you make it. Might as well make it easier than it has to be. ❤️

[coffeewithastraww]

I feel guilt, I feel anger, I feel distrust, I feel like a fucking idiot.

Alcohol has ruined my life and built it at the same time.

When you build a foundation from something that is already broken how do you expect it to stay.

How do I expect myself to have good days and choose to live a healthy life style when I bury it all in the dirt when the weekend comes along.

How do I take myself seriously when everyone sees me and the way I choose to live my life as a god damn joke?

How do I move on from anything if I keep going back to the pain that fucking raised me as a child?

Alcohol ticked me in at night. Alcohol taught me wrong from right, alcohol yells at me and alcohol is proud of me, alcohol makes me wanna be just like them. I look up to alcohol.

I want more than the judgement I’m getting, I want more than a $17.99 case of beer and a headache in the morning.

I hate my life. I hate my stupid fucking life. And I hate that I chose to let myself fall into the ways of the ignorant minds that I surround myself with. I hate my choices and my mindset and the outcome and effect it has on me.

I hate that you have so much control over my thoughts that I’m sitting here typing this wondering if you’ll every look at me and be proud.

I’ve never lived a lifestyle where I’ve chosen to help myself. I always burn the bridge and I always kick myself when I’m down.

How do I stop when it’s all I know. How do you learn how to have a certain level of respect for yourself to where I can choose to better my life.

I can’t fucking do this.

I need the one thing I love more than alcohol.

I need you here.

[coffeewithastraww]

“It’s not that deep”

I think the definition of emptiness is being happy and depressed at the same time. Somewhere right in the center. Because honestly the reason I haven’t wrote anything in here in almost a year is because I haven’t thought deeply enough to write something down that I cared about. I don’t stop anymore and think of the importance of anything because what’s the point in taking a break and looking out the window? What’s the point in stopping and looking in the mirror? What’s the point in sitting down and taking the time to think about your words and your actions and how they might effect the outcome of your life and your happiness in the future? How do you stop yourself from floating through your life one day after another and going to work coming home and having a drink or watching tv numbing your mind in any way that you can just so you don’t have to think about what your going to do next in order to better your mindset? I used to feel things so deeply, especially love. Being in love took up most of the space in my brain, I felt that love so strongly that it was enough emotion that it literally fell like 12 different emotions at once, happiness, anger, distrust, sadness, anxiety, a sense of -being full- a feeling of just having something that’s right there with you throughout every second of every day. Like a friend you know really well that makes you feel something so deeply that you don’t know whether to love it or cry because you can’t quite read how it’s making you feel. Now that that love is gone I don’t know what emotion is going to take up it’s space that it left. I’m left with a depression that makes me not look forward to anything but at the same time I know I’m happy to where that depression is almost insignificant. Both levels being the same Im not just empty.

Some day I know I will feel that strongly again.

How do you feel things deeply when you don’t take the time to?

[coffeewithastraww]

You know one thing I’ve never understood?

The level of insecurity within yourself that possesses you to search for reasons to make others feel sorry for you.

I understand being there for someone when they are in a time of need and asking for help when you need it but when you’re constantly searching for the attention of others in every situation life throws at you it begins to be a little accessive.

I’m all about being there for someone but one question I keep asking myself is, how the hell are you supposed to be there for someone that you are almost certain doesn’t even possess the proper emotions to feel grately about something? I mean, how are you supposed to help someone that has a new life problem every week?

It’s obviously not your job to help everybody but when someone comes to you with an issue or a hardship their facing once a week that grately effected somebody else exponentially more than it should have effected the person looking for attention it’s hard to find the simpothy they are looking for.

I’ve always been one to preach the whole “never underestimate someone else’s pain” thing. Because it’s true, never overlook the suffering of others because you technically aren’t in their head feeling their emotions. BUT when it comes down to it when a person is wining about something so constantly how are you supposed to feel bad?

I know I just drug out that question into several paragraphs using an array of big words and versatile analogies but it’s hard to explain this one thing properly.

My advice? As I like to throw out there quite often, is, keep the things that are menial to yourself and talk about it but move on. I know that might sound stupid but trust me life finds a way of breaking your heart more than once and if you are overly hurt over every little thing than you won’t learn from any of it.

The attention of others shouldn’t be your main priority because that just goes to show your lack of self respect. Don’t show others your lack of self respect. Find it, and kill it, and find it within youself to learn to love who you are enough to grieve the situations that are meant to be cried over.

[coffeewithastraww]

Where do you start

When people look at you, like when people really look at you, what do you think they see? Sometimes my hyeractive anxieties tell me that people see someone who can’t ever move on, someone who hides behind their humor and never stops to look at herself in the mirror. Sometimes I stop, and when I do I realize that life doesn’t revolve around the things I wish it did. I can’t be comfortable forever. I can’t stay under the covers forever. I have to move on and I have to shut the fuck up about the struggles of life and quit wasting my time writing about how hard it is. I want something more than this. I don’t want a cup of ramen noodles and crumbs on my feet and dirty laundry and a fucking hangover. I want New York City and long black bell bottom pants that say, I’m a bad bitch and I’m proud of all I’ve worked for, and a sky rise appartment looking at the city. I want the things most people don’t have. I’m sick of wanting and dreaming.

Step one shut the fuck up and move the fuck on.