ex-priest

[ex-priest]

you know what. fuck that last post. i am filled with rage now and i think i want to kill myself and send a mob of people to his house, pitchforks and all, a beautiful act of revenge. the last thing i wrote in my list of reasons why i ended it was: remember this fucking pain. but it turns out remembering was going to be the death of me.

i tried so hard to be loved by him. i had cut myself in all the major arteries and bled right in the open. in the end, it was all just tests and games and emotional warfare. i have to walk all over the pale corpses of my old selves to get where i am today.

[ex-priest]

just one of those days again. it is almost two months since we broke up. days since my last breakdown? i am currently having one right now. i dont know why. i was feeling very good and fine. it’s the little things that set you back. like how you added a song to our spotify playlist 6 days ago. it sounds like you are letting go of me. i am relieved. but i still think of you crying in my arms. i still think of the way your voice wobbled when you told me you loved me. and i wonder how do people survive this? i have met people—old and new friends—all in the same boat as me. all of us, drowning. a two year heartbreak, a four year puzzle, a seven-year engagement, a twelve year commitment. all of us just singing our blues, trying to pick up the pieces. i miss you so much. i want to wake up to your skin on mine. i want to share a meal. i wish we had more time, too. you always knew we were going to run out of it eventually—and i knew, too, but i guess i refused to believe it. sometimes i wish you would call me up again, tell me you miss me. i know i asked you never to call. i was weeping silently on the floor of my best friend’s house, hoping you would hang up. because i couldn’t bring myself to. i would let you walk all over me, you know i would. i would let you hurt me and break me and set me back to however much you want to set me back. because i loved you. and isn’t that cheesy, letting myself be destroyed like that? straight out of a young adult novel. i wish i could read the chapter from your point of view. but now all i can do is read our old messages, obsess over what you are doing now, stumble upon our spotify playlists. looking for clues. so greedy for a crumb of what it felt like to know you again. you always said i was the person who knew you best. (you said no one knows you so well). now i guess i am just like everyone else.

once, you told me i was made of magic. it used to be enough to make me believe.

[ex-priest]

everything reminds me of you (derogatory)

once, i explained to you why i didn't like meeting new people: there is always a power imbalance, a complex layer of socialization that people like you don't understand. i may or may not have made it all up inside my head, but it is real to me all the same—when i meet people outside of my home territories, my turfs, i am a guest at the mercy of other people. one wrong move is all it would take for my sense of self crumble (/ and in one single second / you can make a decade of my efforts disappear). in my loneliness, now, of course i will try to shake off the doom and gloom, the idea that everyone is watching my every move waiting for me to fail. but every time i try to tell anyone anything real about me, it reminds me of you. and i think to myself, this is where it started: how you towered over me, made me feel small in all of the spaces you lorded over me.

i find myself thinking of the friendships i lost because of you. i can almost imagine you lording that over me, too. saying that you were right all along, that i never cared about you because i cared about other people before you. still, to this day, there is a guilt in my chest when i think about the grief i feel over losing certain people, and it reminds me of you.

i saw screenshots of the film "Mother!" in passing today—a movie i liked, i enjoyed. but again, there are fragments of you there: the weird, passive-aggressive fight we had after watching it together, how your words struck like spears, how it felt like whatever i held in my heart meant nothing to you. when i think of the image of Hell, of bodies burning and melting into one another, it reminds me of you.

somewhere on this web journal of mine i may have mentioned that the only reason why i loved you was because you had soured everything else that i considered beloved by me. or maybe i wrote it somewhere in my phone, hoping to forget such a bitter, lonely thought. but now that i am picking myself up piece by piece, trying to regain some semblance of what i thought i was before you met me—it reminds me, over and over again, of how much you took away. buried selves, suppressed thoughts, the longing to be something greater, it reminds me of you.

even writing here reminds me of you. once upon a time, i hoped you would find me here, crooning to the emptiness, waiting to be seen. to your credit, you did. but then you slashed through my words anyway and used them against me. i think there is a part of me that will always guard herself like a wounded animal, a part of me that will always see the world through a different set of eyes. and it will all be because of you.

[ex-priest]

there is a version of you and me still frozen in time. my lover boy, your lover girl. the last thing you said to me was hello, my love. and then there is nothing else.

i think i get wistful in the evenings when my bed is draped in the soft orange glow of our balcony night. it is a scene that reminds me of you: of lying together, staring at each other in the dark. the romance in the way it plays out in my head—and then, the bitterness that comes when i remember why we were laying there together. the image becomes clearer: there are tears in our eyes, there are cuff marks on our skin.

this is how it has always been. when i think of you, it is with moonlight and the soft twinkle of a city skyline. even after everything we've been through, the version of me that saw stars in your eyes is still here: sitting on top of my ribcage, looking mournfully at the sky.

but she does not know how to survive anymore. so i will do it for her.

i keep a note to remind myself of all the reasons we broke up, all of the memories that i kept distant from your lover girl so i wouldn't break her heart. even then, it never worked—you and i tried, with glue and tape and promises, to patch it up again until it was unrecognizable, a ship of theseus refusing to set sail.

but you still have that version of me frozen in time, your lover girl. it is in the notes i left on your desk, the neat tidbits of trivia that left imprints in your brain, the keychain of your dog hanging from your carabiner.

i mourn her, just the same as you. maybe even more. but i always knew—one day, when we end things—it was never meant to last.

[ex-priest]

devastation

to think that he will never truly love me. me, the person that i know myself to be. who talks to herself and sings out loud and cries when news reporters die. who can name celebrities as they appear on screen, who can rattle off facts about bands and musical feuds and ancient lore from 2005. who likes to write fanfiction and short stories and poems that he will never read. who commits herself to tv shows and books, who feels aches so deep in her chest from ideas and nostalgia and the longing to be Someone. who, as a teenager, thought she could save the world.

most of the time i think he doesn't love anything about me. i have asked him, of course, as most girlfriends do – what do you love about me? he says i am kind, and i am smart, and that i notice things other people don't.

but the other day he also said i'm not a very observant person. i let the world blur around me in a way that so obviously irks him.

so that leaves me with being kind and smart – two traits that are so painfully un-unique to me that i wonder if kind and smart just translates to meek and interesting enough to have a conversation with.

i try to put myself in his shoes – what do i love about him? i love the way he lets bits go on far too long when he notices that i find it funny. i love how good he is with meeting people and making friends, and i always wish it would rub off on me (but it never does). i love how he loves his dog.

i wonder if he knows that i love these things about him. i wonder if he knows that my favorite memory of him is when we were tipsy and stumbling through the streets and there is a palpable relief in both of our sighs when he holds my hand for the first time.

devastation. i feel it every time i tell him i love him.

[ex-priest]

it is a terrifying loss to no longer be shiny and new in someone’s eyes. there are no pictures of you in a wallet. your name no longer passes through their lips. you are a far-away being, more abstract than anything: a title, not a person. and it makes you wonder if you are even alive. you clap your hands until they are cracked and bleeding, screaming i do believe in fairies. but the glow fades, the glitter fizzles, and you are left with a frail corpse of what/who you used to be.

you wonder if they realize. when they are lying next to you in the same bed every night, do they notice the light has gone out of your eyes? or are they too busy gazing at their own reflection staring back and them? you will not know unless it is too late, and so every sunrise that passes is another death you have to mourn after you wake.

you are a god in that you share the same agony that the heavenly father has endured since the beginning of time. to have a taste of devotion and love and worship and then to be forgotten. to sit in the altar of an empty church, burdened by the thick silence and the echoes of rats skittering across cold, shiny floors. to be everything and then nothing but a plastic figurine nailed to their attic wall.

one day they will stumble back and be shaken into remembering who you are, and you will fall to your knees from the warmth of their voice that once again speaks your name with reverence and awe.

and then they will forget.

[ex-priest]

IN THE DARK TIMES, WILL THERE ALSO BE SINGING?

from Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence (via)

“Grief will come to you. Grip and cling all you want, It makes no difference. Catastrophe? It’s just waiting to happen. Loss? You can be certain of it. Flow and swirl of the world. Carried along as if by a dark current. All you can do is keep swimming; All you can do is keep singing.”

from How Beautiful the Beloved, Gregory Orr (via)

Lev St. Valentine (via)

letter to Gustave Flaubert, 27 June 1870, George Sand

from Collected Poems; Horses at Midnight Without a Moon, Jack Gilbert (via)

from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong (via)

Snow and Dirty Rain, Richard Siken (via)

YES, THERE WILL ALSO BE SINGING. ABOUT THE DARK TIMES.

[ex-priest]

I wish i loved myself enough to leave you.

[ex-priest]

i think i want to live again

yesterday i was on the bus and there was a girl with apples painted on her cheeks. she was looking out the window, listening to music, cheeks bright red and beaming. last night i played card games with my friends and talked about the past four years, books and music and big-girl purchases like phones and mattresses that are good for your back. this morning we made sushi rolls and ramen. i had two meetings with my teammates and the client loved our pitch. afterwards we sat on the rooftop, wandered to a cafe, and talked about living by a beach facing east so the sun rises over the horizon.

sometimes i get so lost in my own head that i don't realize just how the world passes around me like a beautiful staccato. i love my self and i love my friends and i love to wake up every day not knowing what kind of thoughts will be clinking around in my pocket. sometimes i have to remind myself that everything difficult will soon just be a memory. i will get through this, i always have. even when i think that there is darkness blurring the edges of my vision, tomorrow i will wake up again and the sun will be where it always is.

i want to live fully and dive headfirst into whatever it may bring. i want to laugh and make friends and sing at the wind just so i can hear my own voice sing back to me. there may still be loneliness and heartbreak and poverty wrapped around me like vines – but what does it matter? i am ancient, gnarled, and powerful. my roots are too deep in the earth for me to fall.

there will always be enough love to go around, and so there will always be a tomorrow that i can look forward to. one day, i shall make a home for myself by the sea.

[ex-priest]

how do you stand it? it's so lonely.

how does anyone stand anything at all? this is the reality of growing up: we fade away into obscurity. we lose touch and lose friends and lose ourselves. or maybe it's just me? every day i pine and long and yearn, while everyone else seems to be doing just fine. i'm desperate to travel back in time, when i had friends and hobbies and a purpose in life: to get drunk, to smoke cigarettes after my 4pm class, to have dinner with my people, to paint and draw and go on walks. nowadays i have nothing but to ponder exactly what i'm asking myself now: how do you connect with people in a meaningful way? how do you stand it? it is so fucking lonely. and i say this as someone who spent the weekend laughing and talking and feeling loved and missed. the moment i step back on a bus it all fades away like a dream, and i am left to my own sorrows once more. how do i stop all of this self-loathing? how do i stop all of this longing? i wish i could be a kid again.

[ex-priest]

there was a time when i thought of you in reds and golds dandelions and pink wine  and chests pressed in a slow dance. lips raw and tingled — upturned marks of hunger and yearning and ache swimming pools and setting suns and a  grief that i thought would eventually fade away.

pressed flowers. sewn frogs, lazy days, warm underneath a navy blue duvet your laughter. and how it feels when it is pressed against the skin of my neck

chores. restaurant lists and  staying up until the early mornings playing games and blowing kisses and  falling headfirst, halos and pure skin. 

purple night lights, a heavy silence – sacred, like a religion. a devotion. knees on the ground. eyes looking up. prayers muffled with pillows and sheets. 

in my old dreams, you were sweetness and when i woke up you still were.  my darling, my muse,  my lover. 

now i long for empty spaces in my bed –  so far from when i sought out your warmth when i sleep.  and the grief that used to plague me is now  grieving its own death –

i loved you. please come back to me.

[ex-priest]

heartbreak log # 2

my presentation went really well. exceedingly well. my first thought is to share it with you. look at me, all grown up. moving on from the demotivated, ambition-less girl you once looked at with disdain. i want to share this win with you. all of this joy is undercut with that grief again, that you are no longer by my side. i can imagine your grin, how you would tackle me to the bed and envelope me as a warm congratulations. i knew what i was going into, ending things so abruptly like that, but i guess i didn't think of all of the happy times we would miss out on. too focused on the sadness that always seems to prevail. i feel the need to apologize, again — this is my fault, i chose this, i wanted out. because i said i no longer needed you. in retrospect, that wasn't true. i did need you. (maybe i still do). or at the very least, i needed something from you. but i rarely got it.

[ex-priest]

heartbreak log # 1

it's been a year since i've been on here — i think i've lost all of my words. i have tried to write, but all of my poetry fell to deaf ears and the void known as my iphone notes app. so let's cut to the chase: i have loved and i have lost, just like i always wanted to. if you have been reading along all this time, you might have seen both sides: the excitement of falling in love, the happiness that comes from someone else's fingertips running through your hair. and then there is the opposite of it: the misery, the loneliness, the agony of being tethered to someone who does not make you feel loved. this is officially my first heartbreak log. today i pose a question: is it a heartbreak log if i'm the one who broke our hearts? what else do i call it, if my chest feels empty and every movement aches? i see him everywhere now, more than i ever did when we were together. in my dreams, in a song, in a random guy wearing a basketball jersey in the mall. every time i step out into the world, i half-expect him to be walking towards me, nodding to me in that half-hearted way i eventually came to resent. (i resent that i resented it). some part of me wants to see him again. some part of me thinks i will run away if i do. that's what he thinks of me, after all. (a liar a cheat a manipulator) always running at the first sign of distress. i don't think i will ever grow out of that impulse. i tried and failed. over and over and over. and then it became the death of us. even at the very end, he painted it as me giving up on him. i did give up. i did break it off, just like i always knew i would (in the most intimate of moments, i think about ending things), and yet i still feel like the world is caving in on me, like i can't breathe without blinking back tears, like i am so fucking alone and no one will ever love me the way he loved me: the whiplash kind of love, so saccharine that it hurt, so painful that it circled back to devotion. (i kind of understand catholicism more). and yet — i still love him, deep down, buried in all the built-up resentment and the screams stuck in my throat. what do i do with all of this? where do i put it now? i want to run to his arms and feel the dimples in his back again. i'm sorry, please don't leave me. i should've waited for you. you should have met my friends that night, they would have loved you. but every time i am on the brink of doing so, i get flashing red, violent visions of sweat, raised voices, and fingers around our throats. you are not good for me. i am not good for you. so why do i keep scrolling through our old messages, inhaling all of your sweetness?

i miss you. i think i miss myself more, though.

[ex-priest]

when i’m with(out) you i don’t want to be with you

i have a confession to make. sometimes, when i miss you, i go back and read our old conversations. i especially love the ones where we’re both hurting: you screaming and throwing every insecurity i have against me. me always starting out strong, desperately trying to plead, but always ending deflated. a sad unforgotten balloon at a spoiled child’s raucous birthday party.

before you say anything, let me clear my name: yes, i love you. and these fights are in the past. but reading them again—i feel every bit of pain and resentment and anger just as i did the first time you told me all of the sick, twisted things you thought of me. i remember all of the tears, the agony, the phone slipping through my fingers because my hands were shaking too hard. i remember lying down on the bathroom floor, saying over and over again: i have nothing, i am nothing. i remember sitting on the grass, both of us in the rain just like a romantic movie except instead of whispered words of admiration it is you telling me that i deserved to be treated like i am not someone you love.

i wonder if you remember any of these, too.

like that time when we were fighting by the highway, when i told you that the reason you were the only thing i love was because you took away everything that i used to love before i met you.

do you remember that?

what about that time you called me just to watch my every move? we were a thriller movie, you and i. if i listened close, i could almost hear the haunting soundtrack of shrill violins, the sure sign of impending doom. i guess in this scenario i would be the victim, but you’d laugh if i ever said that to you.

and what about that time when i locked myself in your bathroom? you left me a water bottle outside of the door. i kicked it on the way out. i can still hear the crack of wood against the floor when i screamed: i don’t want to do anything just because you want me to. and then i sat by your front door for almost an hour, just staring into space wondering how my life had come to this.

sometimes when i am lying down alone i think of you lying next to me, half-asleep in the morning light. i whispered, are we breaking up? and you said, i don’t know.

we morph into a nighttime struggle: your rugged hands on my arms, pleading with me to stay until you got on your knees. i was wearing your red jacket, i think. seems ironic now when i was so close to giving you up then.

then it is me, drenched in rainwater and tears as the 8:00 bus chugged down the highway, taking me miles away from you after what seems like the worst fight in the entire history of you and me. (to be fair, every fight seems that way until the next one.) i was freezing in my wet clothes while i sent you what i thought would be one of the last things i’d ever say to you: i can’t do this anymore.

funny. after remembering the greatest hits of all our worsts, i’m still here. still reading our old conversations because i miss you.

i don’t know why i’m here writing about it—it’s not like you’d ever read anything on here.

at least, that’s what you said the last time, but you and i know what happened next.

[ex-priest]

i am such a fuck-up. can’t do anything right anymore. i feel so worthless. what good is being seen if all anyone can see are the faults? there is no redeeming anymore. all i do is ruin. people. days. moments. my words are simply apologies. all fillers until the next shaky i’m sorry. i’m sorry i can’t do anything. right. or good. or worthy. i’m sorry i’m giving up on you on myself. it’s only a matter of time until i go. for good? maybe. maybe one day i can finally do something right even if it’s the last thing i do.

[ex-priest]

i feel like i don’t know how to talk to anyone anymore. so i don’t. i go through my day, smiling, nodding, furrowing my eyebrows when necessary. (in my head, i do everything right.) i enter the stage, say my line. exit, stage left. i leave all my asides unspoken because i know the audience won’t understand. or care. what significance does the rambling of the miserable fool bear when there are more important soliloquys to be heard? the last time i tried, my voice came out as a squeaking echo that you never noticed. or maybe you did, but you didn’t think it mattered. so i didn’t think it mattered. so i didn’t think i mattered. sometimes i wish you said all the right words, too—just like the way the scene plays out in my head. that’s unfair, i know. i never gave you the script. i guess i just wish you knew my heart well enough to know the lines anyway. i’ll say, i’m lonely. you’ll say, let me be lonely with you. and then you’ll ask me about my day, grand to miniscule—what did you have for breakfast all the way down to what do you think about when you’re lonely? but it never plays out like this, and it wouldn’t make sense to be upset that you don’t know the words to a story i won’t even let you read. it’s probably my fault anyway—i’m breaking my heart on a different act, you’re still scenes and pages behind. for now, i say nothing. better than saying something and getting hurt when you go off the script i’ve written in my mind. so i will smile, nod, furrow my eyebrows on cue. i’m good at this—playing along, losing myself to a character that looks and sounds like me. but when i’m alone on stage, i’ll keep all of my depths and worries to myself even if it means losing my limbs and stitches. i’m more afraid to open my mouth and be met with an empty auditorium at the end of my speech. the fool, after all, requires an audience.

[ex-priest]

when it’s good

it’s good

i am invincible. nothing can hurt me

it is a thousand

burning suns,

red hot but new

springtime and boiled tea

and this heat against my skin

is so lovely and i feel i

am so lucky

to have these golden pools of light

snug in the spaces between my fingers

but

when it’s bad

this heat turns into

a misplaced hand on an iron

(and how can i stay angry

when it is never the iron’s fault?)

but it is also

breathlessness and panic

a submersion into the deep sea

where i always come out shaking

wobbly, watered-down from

(crying on the bathroom floor so no one can hear me)

a wet, written down list

of all my faults and flaws

the ink has seeped into my pores

that i bleed blacks and blues

no longer golden

unless i turn my cheek the other way

yet

even then,

when you smile

it makes me forget

that i was ever in the waters

or that blood should be

red

when it’s good

it is so,

so

good

when it’s bad...