kreenicles-blog

[kreenicles-blog]

I don’t know why I still keep track of the years.

It’s not like time matters here; it’s not going to come to an end so I don’t know why I even bother tallying the days like the tally marks will eventually just disappear. Maybe it's so I still feel human, maybe it's a compulsion that I'll never shake. 

The time here is infinite, just like they promised in the book. The infinite time you spend here is perfect, just like they promise in the book.

When your existence is limited to a certain time frame, the idea of having an unimaginable amount of that seems alluring. 

It's not. 

After spending my entire life on earth clawing my way to this place: kneeling, praying, repenting, hail Mary’s. I thought this was what I wanted because in all honesty, it was everything that was promised. I guess me wanting to be here so badly was really just a soothing lullaby to the uncertain drone of existence.

It was something to get out of bed for. It was something to feel convicted about, to feel the flame of life in your rib cage burning white hot. It was something to ease the pain of limbo.

I spent all my time on earth trying to overcome my imperfections, and if I wasn't trying to overcome them I was trying my hardest to ignore them. Now that I have none left I don’t know what to do with myself. Even the bright white lights of this place seem dusty and dull, gray washed by God’s hands.

I’ve spent hundreds of years seeing landscapes painted with the brightest colors the universe has to offer, bathing in the warmest sun, swimming in the cleanest waters, tasting foods human hands could never conjure; trying to continue living life like I was still in limbo. After hundreds of years of no flaws, conflict, or hardships the landscape loses its color and the food starts to taste like cardboard.

It’s just always the same outcome. Nothing.

I don’t think I ever adjusted to this place very well, and I don’t know if I ever really want to.

I spend most of my time in the sector of this place that resembles the life I lived on earth. I soar over mountains carved from green marble with a solemn expression, I avoid my family whom I was so excited to reunite with in the afterlife. They stroll cobblestone streets licking ice cream with permanent smiles painted on their faces, like purposeless machines in a perfect place. 

I've always had to have a purpose. A reason to keep pushing on. The monotony of a world without hardships is too much to bare. 

The first time I saw him I thought it was an illusion my desperate mind had created: because here you can do that, so long as the illusion is perfection. I was standing at the edge of a massive, violently blue lake with my hands stuffed deep into my pockets, my white wings swaying like tango dancers in a gentle breeze scanning the surface for something.

Anything. 

My eyes grazed a the edge, dense with forest and stumbled across a silhouette, I leaned in for a closer look, squinting my lids together. A figure of a man in a suit waved his red hand at me, his horns jutting into the air like needles from his head. His eyes burning yellow through the distance that separated us, from afar I could see a smirk creeping onto his face.

I blinked.

He was gone. 

I didn't see him again for what I calculated to be years. Countless times I felt a looming presence lurking in the little shadows this places does have. I felt yellow eyes suggestively pressing against my back and when I would flick my head to confront the things I'd thought I had imagined I'd see streaks of crimson and trails of flax.

The feeling of danger made me feel alive, being threatened gave me purpose again. I had something to run from, or something to run to. I still hadn't decided. 

I just kept scanning the shadows searching for red. 

{The second time I saw him (bridge this better) } I was walking in a vast field of sallow flowers, edged by forest, framed by mountains that rose from the ground stretching high into the sky that yawned over the field, puffs of cotton escaping its throat. I don't know why I was walking, or where I was going. I just was. That's the funny thing that happens here. There is no point, so you wind up doing things just to pass the time that wont end. I personally will never get tired of the sight of rolling creeks and jagged mountain tops. The bottom of my pants were covered in golden dust from flower pollen, my eyes were unfocused drinking in the aged colors of the whiskey country side. The cold air stung my lungs like ammonia and the smell of pine was powerful and hazy. 

My steady one foot in front of the other rhythm was interrupted, I was so focused on making it to the edge of the field that I didn't notice my path was obstructed. My feet tangled themselves in something soft with a thud. My eyes drifted downward and met a small, lifeless figure. I leaned in for a better look.

A cherub. Faceless, buzzing with flies. 

The stench hit me hard enough to bruise my nostrils.  The quintessential cherub features had been gnawed down to bleeding flesh and bone. Its wings fluttered in the soft breeze. The formerly plump little angel appeared to be drained of blood, skin gripping onto its bones like a lover latching to teeth and lips. It was a curious sight to see in a place so beautiful, a morbid contrast. 

I spent what seemed like years staring at that poor little guardian of the good. I was compelled to shed tears for it, but the river in my soul had dried long ago. The sound of rattled breathing awoke me from my hollow trance; I flicked my vision upwards to frame the shot. 

There he was.

His face mere inches from mine.

 Jagged little yellow teeth lining his blackened guns. His eyes were yellow as the field with small dark slits, catlike. Heat radiated off of him, pulsing, radioactive onto my skin.  

"Who are you?" my lungs, tongue, and lips managed to heave out. My fingertips buzzed with uncertain fear, eyes darting back and fourth. 

"Oh please." He rattled, the corner of his red mouth lifting to a half smirk.

"Don't play games." He lilted deeply, "You'll always lose." like a father cooing his terrified child to sleep. 

"Did you do this?" I exhaled waving a trembling finger towards the cherub. My stomach writhing, spit pooling in my mouth as nausea set in.

The smell seemed to have deepened with his arrival.  

His ivory, bowed horns followed his eyes in a dance downwards. His lower lip shoved out in a pout as a "tsk" sound escaped his wet mouth, I swore I saw bits of flesh gripping his gums, his tongue stained as red as his skin from blood. The air around us was becoming hot and thick.

“I was hungry.” He shrugged “Dreadful flavor, those little guys, you’d think all of the fat would make them taste nice and rich.” 

[kreenicles-blog]

Unpacking the trash.

I’m trying to figure out how to resolve some of the issues I wrote about yesterday. Not the falling in love with every boy i meet part. I’ve decided it’s okay to fall in love all the time, so many people are afraid to let themselves feel anything these days that i feel almost unique to be able to openly express feelings that aren’t just resentful and angry. I know i’m not special, I know people feel the same way I do. I guess what I’m saying is that’s okay to let your heart be broken, as long as you allow it to be healed again. 

I was thinking about my dad. I was wondering why it’s so easy for me to forgive people who have physically and mentally broken me, why I can just accept that they’re people and people have wounds that haven’t been addressed. I guess i haven’t really been able to understand people who use resounding silence and absence as a coping mechanism. I know it’s a byproduct of fear, but i just want to understand what they’re afraid of and i’m not able to do that if it’s shrouded behind a hard impenetrable emotional wall. I wonder if he was afraid of being disappointing as a father and just did’t even try to because he was afraid of inevitable failure. 

I know that’s something I do. Maybe it’s genetic, maybe it’s ingrained into my personality. Fear. Afraid of not being good enough so you don’t even attempt it in the first place. I’ve done this my whole life, I do it about almost everything. I have to battle that shitty little voice in my head that’s telling me I’m not deserving of success in any compacity. I don’t want to be that way, I fight so hard not to be. I don’t always win but at least I try. Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time with my dad. Because I know how hard it is to fight that voice. I’ve noticed he runs away a lot. He pretends that he’s creating emotional boundaries, that he wont be spoken to or treated in a certain way. But i know what he’s doing. He’s self soothing. He probably tells himself that he’s not good enough a lot. That he deserves loneliness and solitude. Or maybe he likes it? I don’t think he does. He seems supremely unhappy. Maybe I’m so mad at him because I want to help him. I want to help everyone. I need to fucking help myself. 

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m sitting here with a laptop and my furiously moving fingers frantically typing up strings of conscious thought to cope. I’m running away. To help myself. Does it help? Would it help him to release the blackness in his mind and observe it? Does it help me? Do I feel a sense of relief when it’s glaring back at me on a lit screen? I guess after reading it back it kind of does make it a little more real. Instead of a hamster wheel of jumbled anxiety floating around in my head without any way of organizing it. It’s like I hoard thoughts. They pile up in my mind, I keep them. Even if they’re rotten and old. Even if they’re seemingly insignificant. They form into towers in my heads home. Piling higher on foundations built strong. Maybe those foundations have valuable thoughts in them. I don’t remember if they do or not because I've built a sky scraper of trash on top of them and i can’t even see what they are anymore, i can’t see what’s holding all this useless shit up. So maybe that’s what this is. A hoarder looking out onto her home. Sifting through trash, wondering whether or not to keep it. A place to start. An overwhelming feeling of “how did i let it get this bad?” and “how do i fix it?” or maybe even “where do i start?”. 

I want to be able to move through my mind without having to climb over the piles of shit. But like the hoarder I have to throw it away. I have to put it hours, days, weeks, maybe even years of work to let go. It’s scary. It’s fear. It’s useless fucking fear. So maybe that’s what he has. But maybe it’s gotten so bad that he’d rather just live with it that begin to throw his trash away. When I think about it that way the anger i have towards him dissolves into a sort of sadness. I mean, i’m 31 years old and what’s done is done. I’m sure that’s how he feels about it. We’re already so far apart, and the trash in our mind has built so high that it’d take a massive amount of strength and time to even be able to see each other again. Like really see each other. I have to accept the fact that sometimes people give up. I wont, however accept me giving up. But I can’t be angry with the people who don’t want to fight. It isn’t my responsibility or burden to carry their hurt with me and sadly i think that’s what i’ve been doing with my dad. 

It’s okay for me not to take everything fucking personally. I think that’s the biggest take away I’m getting from all of this. That it isn’t always personal. I know that sometimes when I neglect someone it’s not directly related to me wanting to cause anyone pain. I think most people are that way. I think we all just get so wrapped up in the trash pile of our own minds. I just hold on to those little micro-aggressions and let that anxious energy leak out into my reality. I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t have to be my reality, I am perfectly capable of fighting that fear and moving forward as the confident and self loving woman I know that I am at my core. 

Okay it’s time. It’s time to stop putting other peoples perspectives and reality’s in my own and head and to just live mine. To be understanding. To understand that we’re all just people trying to navigate the human experience. It’s beautiful, and ugly, and painful and fulfilling and it wouldn’t be human if there wasn’t any hurt. But i do deserve not to make it any harder on myself by causing myself pain with my own made up perspectives. Perspectives I haven’t even confirmed for myself. It’s not that easy. To just make up an idea about what someone thinks about you and that’s what it is. There’s so much more complexity to it. 

I’m going forgive him. I will. I want to. Before I didn’t but I want to now. I think it’ll be the first pile of trash I have to sift through to be able to see what’s at the bottom. I hope it’s a little bit of self worth. I hope it’s a little bit more trust in men. Not even men, just love. Whatever kind of love that may be. I hope it’s understanding that sometimes people let you down and it’s okay. I hope it’s understanding that just because someone leaves you it isn’t your fault. That there isn’t anything you could have done to keep them. That you don’t have to compromise who you are in order not to lose them. I hope it’s the understanding that even if people abandon you that you’re not alone. That there are other people still standing on the sidelines holding you up. Those people are probably upset that you’re so fixated on something that hurts you so much. They watch you fret over not being loved and they’re there loving you. I hope that there’s self love that will hold me high like a tower, so that when people leave I wont even feel that pain as deeply because I wasn’t using their love to replace the lack of love I have for myself. I think I deserve that. I think we all do. 

I’ll forgive you someday, Christian. I promise I will. And I’ll love you even if you’re scared. 

[kreenicles-blog]

This is not why you’re here.

I don’t know what my problem is. I don’t think I’m chemically wired to just have casual encounters with anyone. I don’t know if it’s this weird sense of desperation, this wanting to be loved. I’m perfectly loved by the people around me, but it’s a different type of love that I’m longing. The kind that twists your stomach into knots. The kind that makes you feel like you can’t breathe, where your mind is so thick with the thought of that person it almost makes you anxious. It does make you anxious. It makes you crazy. 

I feel like I fall in love with every boy I open my legs to. I hope that by opening my legs to them, that by having them cradle me with their wet skin and heat for the night they might get drunk on the smell of my hair and have to take another sip after we’ve parted ways. I know that’s never the case though, which is why there is this sense of sadness surrounding the experience. A wanting. I wish to stop time and be held by someone who cared, even if it was just for a few hours. Even if it wasn’t real. I find myself laying next to them, half asleep, while they snore carelessly wondering if i’ll ever see them again. If they’ll think of me again. I wonder what they thought of my body, I wonder if I was active enough, if I made the right noises, if I said the right thing. None of that fucking matters though. Because if they gave a shit they wouldn’t be thinking about my body or the noises I made. And if they did think of that it would send a jolt of electricity down their spine like it does when I think about any of them. 

Why though? Why is it with every single one of them? Why is my mind an emporium for unattainable stories of romance and affection? Why does it have to spiral into my thought playing tricks on me, dreaming up these shimmering scenarios where i’m loved and adored by these beautiful men only to later tell me that I am undeserving of that kind of story book ending and inevitably having the circumstances in my life confirm that? Why do I love every single one of them to the point where I cant sleep? Where I barely know anything about them but the curvature of their back twists around behind my eyelids, their weight feels like a ghost on my body, I feel empty without that weight.

It’s fucking pathetic really. I know why I love them all. I know why I crave their weight and the curves of their backs. It’s because every man that was supposed to love me has disappointed me. Has left me broken. It might not even be fair to blame them all for that, but it does feel like I’m never quite enough, even the men that I hold in high regard are relatively hands off with me. 

It started with my Dad, lets not even call him that. Let’s call him my sperm donor. He doesn’t really deserve more of a title than that. I loved him. He was so handsome. He had the jaw of roman, peppered with stubble, his eyes were deep set and blue. Hollow. A field of flaxen hair sprouted from his scalp, swaying wherever the wind would take it. He was long and loose like braided rope, he would slink about in his shorts, hunched with a little pot belly. I thought he was so cool. I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to listen to underground music and cuss when I got mad. I wanted to drive fast and recklessly, to shoot guns and get tattoos. I haven’t seen him physically in 5 years. I talk to him maybe twice a year, and it always ends with us screaming at each other. 

He hasn’t  been there to watch me grow. He hasn’t protected me from these boys that I love so much. He hasn’t pet my hair when I’m crying, heaving loneliness out of my eyes. He hasn’t told me he’s proud of me. He doesn’t know what color my car is. He hasn’t seen me evolve and devolve. He doesn’t give a fuck. Not one single fuck. I like to say that I don’t give a fuck either, because I know if I hold on to the hate for too long it’ll permanently rot a piece of my heart. I’m afraid it already has. I’m afraid this rot is the foundation of of my hatred that I mistake for love. A hatred that breeds codependency. The need to be saved from my father by a man with a beard and pretty back muscles. I feel like I’m that little kid looking out the window waiting for him to show up, in any sense. In another man, in myself. He never does. 

My grandpa is another one. Although the way he loves me is honest and pure, it’s far away. There’s an entire ocean separating that love. They’re other grandkids in between that love. They’re in front of his face. His stoic love is carved from marble, it’s white and clean, it’s visible, it survives the elements and withstands time. It’s stands tall even when no one is around to witness it, but it’s cold to the touch. It’s can’t wrap its arms around you to keep you warm. It’s just there. The way I love him isn’t the way I love my dad. I want to be like my grandpa but I know I never will. It’s a gratitude towards him, a silent respect that lives inside of me. Because I know that he is one of the last few honest men, that would do anything for his wife and his family. He hasn’t disappointed me, my life has put us in circumstances to be disappointed by each other because of the millions of ocean waves separating us. 

My step father is probably the most complex of all of these men. The pain he caused me was real, it was constant, and I hated him. People wonder how I can even stand to be in the same room as him, i’ve wondered the same. The difference is, he’s been there. Physically. And he’s had to witness the disappointment first hand.He’s had to watch my heart break over and over. He’s seen the loneliness leak from my eyes.He’s watched me evolve and devolve. So much to the point that it actually caused him to change his actions. There is a special kind of love I have for him. Like a ghost. It’s a whisper, we both know its there but it scares us. It’s complex and enduring like the story of someones life. It shows up in the darkest hours, and it never leaves even when we don’t see it. 

[kreenicles-blog]

Missing the rolling hills and wheat fields.

[kreenicles-blog]

[kreenicles-blog]

Burial.

I had always hated hospitals, the smell, mostly. I hated the cloud of impending doom that hung over its patrons and warriors. Doctors with frown lines deep as the Grand Canyon delivering bad news day in and day out. Sadness following everyone like a sterile shadow, hiding in the corridors, lurking in I.V. tubes pumping false hope into patients.

When I took the job I was desperate.

I kept telling myself I had come to terms with death.  The sadness that hovered over the bright white halls was mine to dust away. After three years I graduated to bleach after realizing dusting just aggravates things, causes things to spin, and then settle back to where it was before. Like nothing ever happened in the first place.

 I had to kill the sadness – for everyone’s sake.

For the first two years I avoided the morgue. If I was assigned to clean it I would feverishly beg one of my co-workers to trade me, they always surveyed me cautiously while I anxiously pleaded.

I never gave them a reason.

I just told them I couldn’t go down there.

Sometime not too long ago I didn’t have a choice.  

I thought death would smell different, I thought it would be sour. The death I knew was putrid; it smelt like iron and plasma. That wasn’t the case here and I was pleasantly surprised. The room was small but the ceilings were tall; I was standing in a stainless steel cathedral, rows of body drawers as far as the eyes could upwardly reach.

I remember just standing there, my brows working hard to keep nervous sweat from dripping into my eyes. My hands clammy like luke warm milk. Without my permission they reached out to grab the handle of one of those smooth, silver body drawers and pulled.

She was 12.

Maybe 14 at the oldest.

Her face resting in an effortless expression of peace, her cream complexion still glowing against the stale florescent lighting. Her locked hair spun from the Tuscan sun tossed around on the stainless steel bed where she was temporarily resting. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I’m sure they were big orbs of salty ocean water, or maybe even green as the Pacific Northwest.

It didn’t matter, though.

She was still beautiful, just like Adela.

Cherub faced, and dead.

Just like Adela.

I gazed at her for what seemed like years. I lost time somewhere in those years that I stared at her, I might have even lost a few pieces of myself. Or a few pieces of me reemerged, broken ones, the ones that I had buried.

 I can’t remember.

I went to visit her for a week. I read her books, we laughed together, and I sung her lullabies that Adela had always loved. I could have sworn a couple of times she smiled. Every time I went down there the hands on the clock spun like they were having a seizure, time spasmed and foamed at the mouth. Every time, I lost myself until one day I went to pull the handle of her drawer and she was gone.

I knew then that everything I had worked so hard to overcome would reawaken in me. My heart was black, and I wanted her back.

I overheard whispers in the rooms where nurses and doctors could find a minute to converse. I heard them whispering about a missing body. I heard them speculating it being misplaced. I found a qiuet place and wept, I knew that someday she would be gone. That she would be given a proper burial and her family (if she had any) would lovingly admire her beauty the way I had, but she was missing.

This couldn’t happen to me again.

First Adela, and now her.

Not again.

That night after work it was raining. I trudged through sludge and rain with my head hung letting my eyes leak with the rain. The sky as sorrowful as I was. When I finally reached my front door my nose was greeted with a familiar fragrance. It was putrid. It smelt like iron and plasma. My stomach sunk.

When the lock on my front door clicked and it swung open, I couldn’t believe it.

There she was. Slumped on the couch, reeking like maggot food still as beautiful as the first day I saw her. I sat next to her, hugged her tightly, and when I opened her eyes I saw the forests of the Pacific Northwest alive within them even though the girl behind the green had died long ago, with my soul. 

#shortstory #horror #surreal 

[kreenicles-blog]

And i love him all the same. 

[kreenicles-blog]

[kreenicles-blog]

he just gets me. 

[kreenicles-blog]

Soaring one hour, and perfectly dead and silent the next.