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[haretonmarling]

me #1001

20 something me, how many storms can fit into a decade spent yearning for a soft season, yet you’ve come out sort of numb. I guess even chaos gets boring eventually, & resilience gets strange over time. You’ve come out stranger still, which is what you once desperately wanted, remember? You’ve made it out, alright still, but confused - it happens to the best of ‘em, which is pretty much all of ‘em, but you’ll still find a way to be extra about it.

Now you’re at the sink singing little lonelies. You were always scared to take the wheel, you let the river take you where it would, & told yourself it’s better to be disappointed by fate than yourself. Then every night pull on your weighted blanket of expired dreams & resume your staring contest with the ceiling.

The curse is the same still: mourning so many lives we never could have lived, a perennial discontent gnawing at your own ankles. Stuck under the shade of a plum tree out of reach, paralysed by potential. A cartoon in a cartoon graveyard. A 29-year-old still waiting to begin.

Still, you made it out. We made it out. I didn’t know if you could. You didn’t know if I’d even want it. But we’re here now, anyways.

One month out from 30.

The last flight of my 20s.

The last kiss of my 20s.

My housemate reminds me of my mother sometimes- people with no sense of rage, & i could never relate. She’s the sunflowers to my starry night, she feels in primary colours, i’m pastel at best.

And they’re the latest fellow leaky boat, a flare of solidarity, dark humour, hope. & twice a week we get plastered & try to fix the world. spend the next day wandering around like weary tourists in our own lives.

The last run I’ll go on.

The last time I’ll call Oskar.

One week out from 30.

The world was always too much to hold so I threw it all out. Tried to give myself so many lives so that none of them would feel real anymore. Chased away what I thought was fear like a fox out the kitchen but maybe it never was that. Buried myself in lore & called it home. All these years I thought I was untangling myself, I just made a fucking mess. The cover model for a brochure on trainwrecks the patron saint of doubt with the world’s worst party trick: how I undermine my own joy.

But I’m learning to be cool about it. To love myself unfinished: the revolutionary in becoming still cosplaying as a human being.

I laugh more now Cry less but better Get overwhelmed by the decency of people, & how hope can come from anywhere like weeds through bathroom tiles. Walk around this tiny city Show god all of my favourite places.

Find grace in the suffering find holiness in the downfall find gratitude for the years spent staring out windows falling down stairs kissing bathroom sinks catching yourself saying what are you gonna do about it kid?

Lay awake thinking of Ivy’s wedding speech- words for the person who saved me & the one who saved her. Count my days without her like a plant without water.

The last time I’ll sing The Mother We Share in the shower.

The last time I’ll cry.

Wake up early enough for the new Mitski walk to the waterfront in the dark watch the waves, surveying my multitudes focus-grouping with my demons, laughing as the plums hit the ground, Silly me, waiting.

Maybe I’m as untangled as I want to be as real as I need to be as ready as I’ll ever be to let calm in & not be afraid of it. To learn to hold things lightly let them go when it’s time.

The last poem I’ll draft in an uber, running late for my own party. The same poem I’ve written a thousand times before.

Pour one out for Sinéad, pour one out for all the people I never became. One more little death.

Lay flowers down upon the body & get back to life.

.. july 29 2023

[haretonmarling]

four cities & the sky

SFO.

How many bus stops, how many airports, how far do I have to run to find a place where I can breathe easy a friend who will listen words that might finally make sense. But still somehow making it in time for the ride & never really knowing why life can’t feel like Detroit Airport all the time: running down escalators feeling free & alive. Why someone has to turn the lights back on every time I think I’m losing my misery. But I’m still making it, eyes forward, connies down, east to west, border to border, sky to land. And arms & eyes & a voice I’ve missed more than you could ever know through all of my trying. And for some nights & days there’s friendship & love & takeout to the hotel room until we remember what we’re running from the loneliness that won’t leave. I feel like I’m just treading water -- is it the same for you? Still I search through all our old photos looking for the reason everything went wrong - still I try to hold onto you, to something i was. Those photos are in the ocean now, all those happy faces drowned. But if I let go of the past I’ll have nothing left to hold onto. I’m always drunk for unknown reasons, still coming down... One day I’ll have an equal, a companion, one day I’ll know love, & home. But I’ll keep collecting ghosts til then, keep telling myself it’s enough. All I ever wanted was some high place to breathe, someone to walk me to the end of the pier. somewhere sometime a boy is listening to Coexist & trying to fall asleep. i cannot hold him so i cannot help him & we will never coexist. And she had to leave early- had to return to the world she’d earned, left me alone in mine. But I fell outside my world years ago, locked my keys inside. And running to the sea I realise I still don’t understand joy but I think it might have something to do with making yourself laugh all on your own. & feeling more than you think & dancing more than you write & loving more than you fear.

I’ll spend my whole life crying wondering what went wrong if I don’t just kill this bitch right here & now. Go at my life like a piñata, see what wonder there may still be beneath that bitter husk. So I guess I’m still drunk on San Francisco streets, baby I got nowhere to be. I guess I believed I could feel different in a different space & time. But sometimes the shadow is scarier than the monster. & my heart is flooded with black liquid & even if good years may drain in the stains will remain. My eyes will never see the way they did before. ...don’t hate yourself for losing, love yourself for trying... Is imagining the chains are looser than they are the first step toward freedom? Or just another way to hurt myself? I’ve really fallen outside of the structures now: you’ll never be able to reach me, I’ll never swim strong enough to get back. Maybe it’s the poison that finally heals us, maybe I just have to believe... But what am I to you? just another kid drunk in somebody else’s hotel room. I see ghosts in everyone now. I feel no less lonely.

MTL.

Seems like for 10 years I’ve either been staring out windows or else I’ve been tumbling down stairs. Was I strong or just stupid to see a way out where there wasn’t? I held on for so long only to realise the ship I was holding onto was sinking from the start. Is this how I knew it would end: ripped coat, chipped teeth, sore ribs, no sleep? Watched all these beautiful moments sweep by me while life wouldn’t let me get back on my feet. Desperate for accomplishment. So thirsty for proof of progress. I see people enter rooms I wonder if I knew them. I see people out of windows I wonder if I was them. I see sharp objects & I wish that you would call me. Lie on the floor with visions of a life happier than mine - believing that it exists, that it is lived. A life where I’m not scared of money, or counting down the days... never quite sure if I’m waiting for a miracle or a disaster. But my rose-colored boy, with love and distance apart, even he cries at his desk for 9 hours a day. With his perfect body & perfect life even he is broken somehow. & he won’t really tell me why & he won’t really tell me how & he won’t really tell me much now that we live in different countries & I feel his pain no matter the distance. Still these patterns of disconnection, still these fantasies of requitement. And I know her fingers are crossed for me, but I can see them loosening a little more each year. Still staring out that window. Still falling down those stairs. So where is my family, my soulmate, my destiny, all the things I was sent out into the cold to find? And you can say anything you like tonight except that I didn’t search far enough for it. I ate my apples I set my alarms I did the best with what I had until the days I could barely see or move or breathe came back & even then I tried to stay kind. To look for patience in loneliness. To look for holy grace in suffering. To gain wisdom in these mean mistakes. To make a home from this icy place. My last excuse, all I can really say is it’s hard to run a race without feet. And love is like chapstick: you’re gonna lose it eventually, no matter how hard you try. The snow & the squirrels & the oxidised copper, how could I forget you? And even if I never knew you wouldn’t wish I never met you. Lots of people burn away the best years of their lives. At least I burned mine in pretty places. So as I sit & fold my clothes & place them in my suitcase, as I make my way to the gate I’ll be counting up my demons, hoping everything’s not lost.

LPZ.

This chaos is so much more than I can handle, harder than I ever even knew. And now I’m crying on train platforms & airport floors. I used to love long journeys like this. I used to love a lot of things. But wasted love is a long regret & false hope even longer. A dream is good until it beats you to the ground & leaves. But not all love is wasted even when it moves away - and some love I can follow even though I cannot stay. And in this strange & lonely storm old friendship almost restores me. Days of Miracle & Wonder return, some hope, some joy, comes back. Mornings cycling around Leipzig, nights of tea & cuddles & gin. Jokes & whiskey & chain-smoking til the last train home.

Learning to feel all the love you are given. Learning not to ask for more.

Our house will be built from broken dreams, lost love & wasted time, & we will call it home. I breathe with more freedom, walk quick & lightly with old & beautiful friends down new & beautiful streets. And look back on all my trying to keep up with the rich kids, always falling behind. But on these days I start to think that maybe I don’t mind. And all personality differences & half-empty moments - they don’t matter now. These people are my only mercy, so much more than I deserve. But there’s so many pretty faces to know, well I guess I’ll meet a couple more still. And there’s so many pretty places to go, but I can’t keep going like this. Now that I’m in my window seat, my devices stop functioning & all my bank accounts empty & all that’s left are notebooks, the same angsty lines a thousand times:    I thought the darkness    would keep distance    long enough for me to find    something worth holding onto. Maybe there’s nothing else to say that I moved around the world a hundred times or more & couldn’t find a room I could sit down in & not want to die. Maybe there’s no-one else to blame. The emergency lights will illuminate in darkness. Love me as the world falls apart, feel me fall on you like rain.

LDN.

Back to the street where we began... it never feels the way I hope. You once said that the choice was in my hands but I cut those off years ago. Now I’m a ghost of a being in a worthy life - or a worthy being in a ghost of a life -- I never know anymore --- I never really know anything. I’m longing to be on the other side of the ice. Always wanting the nights to be more exciting, the mornings to hurt less, & the people to be more than they are. To really feel, to see me for what I am. I thought that maybe with a few familiar pieces in different places I could be happy things could be alright. & I wouldn’t still be standing on the outskirts of other people’s stories begging to be let in, begging to be cast. Things keep dying until they’re dead & you couldn’t handle the rot so you boarded the train without me. And it doesn’t matter what you text me now, I’ll still read too far into it. Find a version of the story where you hate me, wish you’d never met me, so I can cut & cry myself to sleep. couldn’t wait... cut in line... got to you, there was nothin left. Pull out my memories like hairs try to grow right this time. Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you were never a contra. Maybe it was always me.

All the gods are dead now, all our spells are broken. Our favourite cities are asleep, we are finally alone. / The streets here are so cold & still, I’m still threading together South London. Everyone went home for Christmas just like Harry Potter but luckily I’ve got you. And we’ve got kittens & mince pies we’ve got mulled wine & your saint of a mum, we’ve got british tv & video games & for 72 hours it feels almost like home. & I’m fine so long as you don’t leave me alone or sober for too long. But things don’t work that way no more. I can’t hide in you like I used to. And London, like you, like all the places & people I love, just keep moving - maybe I need to do the same. So I try being alone again, tell myself it’s a choice. Some days I’m angry & some days I’m sad but mostly I’m just tired. Staring at the houses from my southeastern train: every window a life I’ll never get to live: some of them lovely, most of them lonely, & the rest inbetween. We’re in love with what we want in others, in love with what we dream we could be. And on a cold january night in Lewisham I’m shopping for pasta sauce in sainsbury’s. Looking around around at every lost, beautiful face & thinking: maybe it’s not so strange, or new, maybe we’re all just trying to get through. And all I know now is that the people who try to tell you what they know don’t know nothing at all. Punish them all for they speak too much. Hate the world for what it did to us. But truth is I always wanted to love the world more than it would let me. But it’s so quietly vicious the way a thousand invisible forces can bring you down & you can spend a lifetime just trying to get back up. But if you spend all your energy focussing on the limits, you’ll never see all of the beauty inside them. & if this pain can feel limitless then maybe, too, can love. & I been thinking it might be worth something to try this mess again. Climb out of the coffin I’ve been sleeping in, face the wind again. Rise above the grief, above all the things that try to hold me under. Above the shame of the storm I wandered into & what it’s done to my mind. Still I can’t regret it on the millennium bridge I can’t forget that we all learn to make mistakes. That if you keep relying on the universe to put you where you’re meant to be you’re never going to get there. These bridges, this skyline, this city will love long after I am gone. & not a single soul will know what was said & felt between us. But my life could still be beautiful. Life could still be so many things if I could learn the ways. Someday, somehow, your strength will come back. And you won’t have time to be bitter, ask where & why it went for so long. You’ll be too excited about all the wonderful things you can do together. Things keep living til they’re dead.

the sky.

There are things that help & things that hurt. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference until you’ve almost bled to death.

Self-raised. Unfocussed. Capricious. Hollywood-infected. Hours and hours in the sky til I fall into the sweet delirium where I can’t remember why I let my life upset me so much. maybe I just got too attached. Is that what it was? That I cared too much about it? Still looking for something to blame, still crying. Still starting it over again, still trying. When it all fucks up, it’s in my head, in my hands. my heart my burden when it all scuffs up. Maybe it’s nobody’s fault. Maybe nothing is caused by you as much as you believe. These days I forget to take off my makeup the colour & length of my hair what county I’m waking up in & what I’m waking up for, but still I can’t forget you. Funny how that works. Still I see a boy on the rocks by the ocean, still I see a girl in the snow. Still I see a boy cross a river on a tree branch, still I see a girl working & crying all the time. Wonder what all of it was worth. Was it all just worth the wondering? All my spells are broken now, all the magic lost. But I’ll find more. Somehow somewhere someone. I’ll find more & I’ll keep going. It’s the only function I have. And they won’t be there: the snow, the waves, and all the tight arms & lovely faces. They won’t be with me anymore. But I will be alright.

[haretonmarling]

thanksgiving

i didn’t know hope could shatter so suddenly, didn’t know i could splinter like this, and find nothing underneath. i guess some things really don’t have a reason, guess some things just hurt.

no parent or teacher, no lover or keeper, could have warned me of this. crying for six weeks without stopping and screaming myself to sleep. 
they say these years are for fearing and failing, say these years are for breathing and breaking, say these days are of miracle and wonder, say you’ll make it out alive.

but on the concrete, all my blood out, don’t tell me not to ask you why.

when i thought i was finally growing up, growing out, i thought i was on my way to believing.

that i could be real, that i could be more, that i could be wonderful: that i could be yours.

tell me not to ask what all of it was for.
 maybe this is holy suffering or maybe it is hell. maybe it’s the story of every prisoner, cursing the window of his cell.

but i love you, beautiful, unreachable as you may be. i’m just happy that i knew you, that i know you’re out there. the pain of potential is one i bear, and i will never take it back.

so i’m staring out that window again, stretching out my arm, desperate for it, for life, for you. be mine. be here. stay with me.

and i tried every hour to get into the world to come back to life and come back to you. more than you could ever know.

the getting lost part, well i got that bit down, just never worked out how to get myself found.

i took photos of my half lives, wrote poems with my half emotions. i told myself they were worth as much as being a real person.

but chaos isn’t neutral. chaos is chaos. and he beat me real bad when i only ever tried to be tender.

blame the winds or blame my sails, it doesn’t make much difference now.

if this was youth then i can’t say i’ll miss it. still i’ll always mourn what it never could have been.

so this is the end, this is the death. but i’ll almost live through it, like I did all the rest.

and give thanks every moment that my face is dry and alive jumping down stairwells singing down streets dreaming, somehow, even after all this time

that you would be there when i got home. that home would be there when i got you.

lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

and i’m broken and defeated, still, and worse, but vital and pleading, still, and worse, to find out.

the cold heart keeps calling.

[haretonmarling]

to the people i love about a year that i didn’t.

Through the fire and through the flames, you won’t even say your name, only: I am that I am. But who could ever live that way?

Ya Hey, Vampire Weekend

It’s 11:53pm in England right now, the 31st of December, 2016. This time, 365 days ago, I was walking around Plymouth, carrying everything I own. My boyfriend had kicked me out of our home in Cornwall, and in the violence and confusion of it all I caught a train from Penryn to Truro, then another to Plymouth, and I waited for the 2am bus to London.

Sometime a week or so later, staying on a friend’s couch in Woolwich watching my bank account steadily empty itself, the breakdown hit. I was done being sad. Done being homeless. Done making bad decisions. Done feeling sorry for myself. I had friends. I had skills. I was in my favourite city in the world. I was going to write my novel. I was going to get better. This time, it was going to work.

Except it didn’t. I got a bartending job in Battersea, and started to get back on track financially, but emotionally I was worse than ever. But the strangest curse was physical. I couldn’t sleep, my knees were always sore, and everything I ate made me sick.

I moved to a new pub, and a sharehouse in Southwark. The work and the company helped, but my body was still doing strange things, and no doctors seemed to be able to work out why. My mental health followed my physical health, and I discovered new and really really really really not fun depths of depression, anxiety, and something else that I can only really describe as madness.

I kept trying to eat, kept trying to sleep, kept trying to save money, and spend time with friends.

I lasted until April, when the real breakdown hit, in a bathtub in Dover.

It was finally a kind of rock bottom, a kind of turning point, if only because I tried to make it so. I posted this to Facebook before deactivating it and instagram.

I guess it was me sort of coming out as weird. And I guess like a lot of people who reveal their sexual identities, it wasn’t a surprise to the people who knew me well. It felt self-indulgent, but necessary, too. This post kinda feels the same.

Anyway, I bounced back, the same way I always do. I continued to try to get better. I continued to fail to get better. And I continued to move.

London to Ios to London again.

Montreal to Toronto to Montreal again.

And now, here in this room, I have nothing to prove I’m any safer or stronger or happier than I was 365 days ago, leaning my head against that bus window. I have nothing to hold up to the world, or to myself, to prove any progress.

I thought a year without social media, and without a relationship, would focus me. But I just got more dizzy and confused.


When you’re hiding, you’re safe, because people can’t see you. But funny thing about hiding: you’re even hidden from yourself.

Joy, David O. Russell

I still feel different to people, same as always. But I don’t think hiding was the answer. It’s hard to exist in a media filled with nightclubs and memes, when that doesn’t connect with your own struggles in any way. But it’s harder to be far away from from my friends.

I’m still constantly questioning how real my misery is, or if it’s a self-inflicted curse, that could evaporate the moment I will it. But if that’s the case, why would I not have willed it away by now? In that bathtub in Dover, on that churchtop in Ios, in that blizzard in Ottawa, it felt pretty fucking real.

It’s a part of me. My homelessness and my depression (no doubt partly connected) have been defining factors of the last 6 years of my life. They form the way I view the world, and I don’t really have a lot else to talk about.

I know I’m not the only one who’s struggling to keep up, especially at this age. I guess there is part of social media culture that expresses disappointment and angst, however vaguely or flippantly. I rediscovered this article a couple of days back, and it was a good reminder to try to be more patient and grateful.

I know that a lot of people feel the dark stuff as well. We just don’t know how to talk about it outside psychiatric wards, and that sucks.

And maybe the internet acknowledgement of 2016 being a universally rubbish year should ease my sense of alienation.

Maybe some years you can’t learn or grow at all. Maybe some you just have to survive.

But if I can survive 2016, maybe that should give me the confidence to excel in 2017. Guess we’ll have to stick around to see. Plus, it’s gonna have a fucking rad soundtrack: Vampire Weekend 4, Paramore 5 (!!!), Laura Marling 6.

All that I know at the end of this year is all I knew at the end of the last: I want to come back to life. Whatever that means, however I get there. And sometimes that seems impossible, when I’m still so unsure of pretty much everything. What my name is, what my gender is, where I want to live, what I want for a career, what colour and length I want my hair to be, who I want to be around and who I want to be around them. But I guess I’ll start, again, with the basics. Sleeping more, shaving more, drinking less, eating better, finishing books, finishing my book. And maybe staying in one place for a while will help. And maybe social media, in moderation, will too.

So, that’s the dedication I’m making to myself as I enter another year in the world. I’m sharing it with you because I want you to be a part of it, because I love you, and because I hope you find a way to express whatever things you’re dealing with, through exercise or music or travel or friendship or damn hard work or super long tumblr posts.

Finally, looking back on all the terrible awful rubbish gross things that have happened this year, I find myself missing so many moments of it. Because between all the doom and gloom and sickness, I hung out with my favourite people in the world. So some quick thanks are in order.

Jamie, for the cigarettes. Nat, for the wine. Ross, for the brunches. (sorry I was always late) Cameron, for the pizza. Oscar, for the vodka. Amelia, for the equality naps. Ivy, for the skateboarding. My sisters, for the card tournaments.

thankyouiloveyoupleasecomevisitmeetc.

Okay, that’s it I reckon.

Safe, inspiring, happy new year.



Love Patch

31.12.2016