gdwrites

[gdwrites]

i used to wake up early and encounter the sunrise but now i sleep too late and watch the black fade into light

[gdwrites]

white and pink rose petals; lilies

my grandma sat on a chair, clutching her walking stick. relatives surrounded her and gripped her shaking hand. her voice remained firm in saying that grandpa chose a good time to pass: before he was grew too thin and became unsightly. i watched her chin quiver and she roughly wiped away tears from her eyes. tears began seeping from my own eyes. i had never seen her cry. 

when we stood in a line beside his casket, i began shaking and weeping uncontrollably. i hadn’t faced him in so long i couldn’t believe i let the next time i saw him be at this point. he looked peaceful. my entire body shook as i tried to press my tears down my throat. i don’t know if i even had a right to cry but reality felt so imminent that it was all i knew to do. my mother’s wails made my stomach drop. 

we sat next to the countertop and my grandma continuously told me stories to avoid thinking that her lifetime partner was truly gone. having slept three hours the night before i felt every urge to yawn but knew that she needed my presence to avoid her own painful thoughts. we laughed giddily at small signs of my grandpa’s character in the stories she told. we both knew who he was and ached to remember him better. we were alone in a hollow house and we sat in the very corner of it trying to keep each other company before we had to face the solitude of sleeping alone. 

[gdwrites]

feeling numb is so pitiful. it’s as though i’m incapable of facing my emotions and all that it entails but also incapable of lifting myself out of sadness.

until yesterday i hadn’t been able to cry in months because whenever i do cry, the tears are violent and wretched.

[gdwrites]

i haven’t even been eating lately. just smoking a lot 

[gdwrites]

he arrived with a smile and told me he couldn’t feel his feet. i could tell he was conventionally attractive, but i was still looking for reasons to enjoy his person. i noticed a gleam in his eyes and a constant smile, but at the same time it felt worn. he emanated a sense of recklessness and this frightened me. i didn’t know anything about him, except that we were similar in some ways. that was enough at the time. as we sat atop the boat, he kept moving and i could tell he was uneasy. we laid down together and he asked me if the gently rippling water and ambient noises sounded just as peaceful to me as to him. i took a second to listen and the peacefulness settled over me. we talked about our future and about nothing. we talked with a quiet sense of desperation to reveal more to the other but were both hesitant with the fear of rejection. each time he learned something that we had in common, he excitedly smiled. he asked me what i thought about, but my mind was empty. part of the enjoyment of being high for me was to liberate myself from constant streams of thought. he asked me if i would jump in the water. he kept saying my name as my thoughts were lost into the depths of the the dimly lit sky, unable to return to reality. our hands intertwined and he told me how comfortable it felt to feel intimacy in such a raw form. he kept repeating the same thing over and over and apologized for his lack of ability to hold a conversation. finally i looked away from wherever my gaze was fixed and at him, and he kissed me deeply. i lost a sense of conscious reality and awoke to his hand around my neck. i backed away and he profusely apologized. i told him i was leaving, having lost all trust built in our short lived interaction. time felt like it was at a standstill but yet we had covered so much ground. he did seem to carry a sadness that i could perceive through his callous self-deprecating attitude, but at the same time had an optimistic desire to appreciate a moment of coincidence like ours. i later learned he was obliged to a girl at home. i try to convince myself that he chose to do wrong because of a connection we had formed. it felt right at the time not to wonder who he was obliged to and where he was from. all i knew is i wanted to be around him and to feel less lonesome in a city where people drowned their sorrows. ironically his worry was that people would only be interested in him for who he portrayed himself as. i only knew him for him and i’m not sure i truly found enough resonance within him. i’m glad i wasn’t aware of who he was beforehand to sway my opinion. 

it wasn’t a one time, casual sexual encounter; it more closely resembled a one time love. we built trust, emotions running ramped, and distracted each other from our own melancholy. we broke trust and abruptly left each other stranded with a bitter aftertaste. 

[gdwrites]

magnificent sadness

i can’t face reality and my mind is creating an alternate form of reality where everything feels surreal. the drugs are definitely not helping. i want to stave the dependency but whenever it feels like i have to face my thoughts, i crave being high. i always think getting high is the solution to the pain of being sober but as soon as i’m high, i immediately desire being in full control and capable of sober cognition. i think i’m in a perpetual state of sadness and i’m wondering when i’ll be able to face my melancholy and liberate myself. i’d like to walk in someone else’s shoes to see what it’s like to live with different circumstances and a different mindset. living is so heavy, i don’t know how to cope anymore. 

i drove to print pictures of grandpa and it was pouring rain. my clothes were drenched and i could barely see, and it was only then that i could finally cry. the hot tears combined with the cold and muddy rain. i wanted to stop somewhere and let myself painfully weep but i continued along the familiar path, which was somewhat hazy from the dreary rain. i couldn’t focus on the sales associate’s words and kept asking her to repeat herself. i don’t know what’s wrong with me anymore. i feel extremely distant from reality and undergo bouts of disassociation. i’m moving autonomously but at the same time, i feel so suffocated. i slept to the point of being tired when i finally woke up. i want incentive to go out and see my friends and occupy myself, but coming home to beijing heightens my feeling of numbness and i don’t want to put on a facade of being okay when i can barely even face reality. 

i have a photo of grandpa and i can’t bear to look at it. it’s the first time i’ve seen his face in a long time and it brings me an overwhelming feeling of guilt for denying reality for so long. i’m meta-cognitive enough to recognize my own denial but too paralyzed to confront reality headfirst, so i’m in a purgatory-like state of sadness and hopelessness. 

[gdwrites]

6/11-12: thomas. walking around norreport drinking beer and smoking cigs. he kept looking at me and it made me feel wanted. he wanted to kiss me but i couldn’t stop talking. down to earth, humble, cute, sharp. 

6/17-18: salad bowl. amsterdam has the fucking strongest weed. rolled in a coffeeshop, used someone’s light, and accidentally stole a grinder. got lost while walking home and made it to a large and central road. couldn’t locate apartment and tried key in every keyhole. used wifi signal and eventually gps.

6/18-9: jake. welsh. cute. interesting. fidlar, stick and pokes, glass coke bottle, skater. reckless. wild. always smiling. snuck into a boat. started flying. held hands. made out. he choked me. i left. i went home, i hallucinated, and had a panic attack. the rest i don’t want to talk about. 

6/20-21: thought i was done with strangers but daniel was cute and had good music taste. picked me up on his scooter. later messaged me saying he wished he had kissed me. i’m glad he didn’t. 

[gdwrites]

i’ve resorted to drugs as a vice for avoiding discomfort and unhappiness. rereading these old and outdated poems/letters makes me realize how unhappy i used to be. nowadays i counteract negative feelings with substance and avoidance. i’m definitely in a better and happier place, which i guess comes with age, but the cost is a sense of lightness and ease arises through alternative means.

[gdwrites]

i’m so proud! i was ranked as #190 in poetry yesterday which is so huge for a newbie like me. 

check it out!

[gdwrites]

goodbyes are the hardest

dear vi., to this day, i still don't know how i feel about you. it seems like we waver like turbulence and my feelings seem to match. so far we've been on a long march of others and avoidance and mainly avoidance but our time is running out. i won't make the same mistakes i made year after year and lose the one person that started to matter as the year began to end. i dont often learn from my mistakes but me and you, we're encouraging each other to grow. right now, today, and for a long time before, you were the only person who could bring me out of the hole i so often found myself in. i know these feelings come and go because they have come and gone time and time again, so i'm taking a step back to realize i can change the way things end. i know there's always the possibility our fate will be different but i haven't had the best of luck and i'm doing this for myself. please promise me that i won't regret this decision but part of me knows i will, and i have so many times before. but i won't convince myself you are different simply because our time is running out. i'm sorry that our time is running out, and i hope you are too. but if you're not, I'm trying to understand that that's fine too. i will miss you, but if we do have feelings, everything and anything is too much of a mess and i don't have the capacity to untangle something we tangled together. i wish our conclusion wouldn't be like this, but i'm changing my story. thanks for teaching me things about myself i couldn't find on my own and pushing me to change. thanks for the months of laughter and thanks for making me forget about all the others who wronged me in the past. i'll remember you, not as the one that may have gotten away but as the one who told me i can be my own individual. thanks for keeping me company because i don't know where i would be without you here. i wouldn't trade anything to change what we had. i think this is a good place for not just the letter, but for us to end.

best regards,

grace.

[gdwrites]

you can’t say i’m all you ever wanted and not expect me to get hung up on your words because they sweep over me like the tide and they course over my skin and send shivers down my spine but they’re also the sound waves from the thunderclap that comes after the rain that washes down from the grey cloud and you’re on my mind and sometimes i think to myself that it’s been a while that i’ve thought of you until i realize that i am thinking of you and i have been thinking of you

[gdwrites]

this time last year, you stayed awake until 3am and sent me a long birthday message. this year, i stayed awake until 3am trying to find the words to say to you. 

[gdwrites]

sixteen candles

i wish i remember the day the world stopped looking beautiful and pure

i entered this world on june 1st, 1999 and it seems that since then, the world has lost the luster 

first you realize the sun stops shining every morning

and when you see the rain, beneath it, the world begins to resonate self-loathing and gluttony and fear and trembling 

and you start to wonder if waiting to grow older becomes waiting to die

[gdwrites]

5.30

my birthday is in two days and i’m pretty happy! (i didn’t smoke all of those, only two)

[gdwrites]

skin deep

he ran his index finger along the three inch cut along my thigh and asked if it hurt, and i nodded yes. not because the missing skin exposes my nerve endings but because this may be one of the last times we touch and my mind can’t fathom that

[gdwrites]

slipping through the window (27.5.15)

i’m slipping through the window with the synthetic, pastel rainbow of whites and blues and pinks in my hand, the cylinders and the flat little circles and the fucking powder that tastes of chemical toxicity

it’s one thing spending the night forcing the plasticky pills down the folds of your esophagus and another lying about your sickness to your own mother

it’s another thing walking into school the next day and having to laugh that same laugh and upkeep the same facade, all the while your mind and your intestines and your fingers ache for the next time they can meticulously count out those pills and count them again

i know he sees the purple bags under my eyes and the throbbing veins on the side of my neck, but i also hope he’ll understand the sweet relief and accept that we find pleasure to our own rhythm

and there comes a time when not seeking pleasure or an escape is foolish, especially when they’ve become so familiar

i’m slipping through the window through a way i’ve never been, since before it’s been either out the door or not at all

but the difference is the window doesn’t close like the door once you’ve shattered the glass

[gdwrites]

on the edge

i can’t tell if you feel the way i do

because it feels as if we’re bordering affection 

our feelings are misconstrued 

and tossed as reckless havoc over our hearts

which feel like empty rooms

and while i feel the electricity when you touch my knee or graze my thigh

i wonder if you feel it too

is there room in your heart for me with you?