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[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

Atlas

I feel like Atlas holding up the sky. If I fail, everything will come crashing down. But the weight is unbearable. It sets my spine on fire and my heart wants to explode. I’m trying so hard to see the light like I’ve always been able to do but every time I look it disappears into the abyss. I just can’t take one more thing. I’m scared of who I’ll be when I’m done with this year, or better yet, when it’s done with me. 

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

I hate this stupid fucking website

this is an open letter to ***** ******* ******, because I have nowhere else to put it and even though we haven’t talked in more than two years, I still feel like there’s things to get off my chest.

I saw a tweet tonight about how we as a society have no training on how to deal with friend breakups. And how they are almost always just as bad, if not worse than romantic ones. Sadly, I have to agree. 

There was my childhood best friend that I grew apart from in high school, but that’s predictable. There was the girl who was always in competition with me, always trying to one-up me or put me down. That separation was necessary. There was my last roommate, who I thought was a friend, but it’s a long story. But then there was you. 

I think what hurt so bad, and what has prevented me from moving on, is that I never got an explanation. One day you were there and the next you just....weren’t. And we haven’t spoken since. 

I know it’s been a long time and that I was a way better friend to you than you were to me, but I still can’t help but dream about you. Just the other night, you called out to me in an empty room and at first I ignored, but the second time you called I couldn’t help myself but to fall right back into you. To tell you about my shitty life, hoping that you could provide me some comfort after all this time. Make me laugh like you used to. 

But I know how it actually goes. Last time I actually saw you, you waved like nothing had changed. And I turned around and walked the other way. I wanted you to think I was calm and collected, over it and over you. But I went to my favorite booth in the library and cried like a baby. It hurt so bad to see you there and not run to you. 

And there was that other time, where against my better judgement, I text you and wished you well because I knew you were in the hospital again. You told me you loved me like it wasn’t the first time we had spoken in a year. Knowing that you don’t think anything of me and the time we spent together, hurts so so so much worst than thinking you have some justification for hating me. I wish so bad that there was a definitive reason and that I knew it. Then I think I could maybe move on. 

But instead, here I am two years later, still writing about you into the void. Still dreaming about you. Still wondering if you’re still with your boyfriend, where you’re living, if you’re in school. Still wondering how all those years meant nothing. I can’t talk about it with anyone cause I’m not supposed to care this much. But this has been probably the worst heartbreak of my life. It has been so slow and excruciating to have to move on with my life like it didn’t affect me at all. 

But I’m still here. And I know you’re still out there, somewhere, doing whatever it is that you do these days. It just still hurts me sometimes to think that you don’t want anything to do with me. I don’t know why I came here to write tonight; Just like I said, it still haunts me and I can’t talk about it anywhere else. Lord, give me the strength to move on from this and see the bigger picture. Because I’m struggling with that quite a bit right now. 

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

this may be one of the most uneventful, forgettable mondays of my life. or at least i hope so. cause it’s midday and for the last hour i’ve been trying to read an 8 page article but my mind is filled with you. once again. its been about a year since i saw your face in person but i see it every day regardless. when i get high i think about you and get sad. apparently when i’m doing homework as well now. It’s so hard to use the willpower to stay away from you that i preach. i know your friends are out of town. Would you loathe to hear from me? regardless i know you wouldn’t put any thought into it. thoughtlessness has always been your strength. and thoughtfulness has always been mine. i should have known. 

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

It’s been a long time. I’m no longer a child anymore that spends hours trying to find words of others to fill what is vacant in me. I’m better now about filling myself up. But I’m still confused I think. I’m not sure. I’m confused about being confused. I’m doing so much these days. Is it what I need to be doing? Is it what I even want? Am I supposed to feel more sure about things? To feel more in general? I think the winter affects me more than I care to admit. But the sun is coming out this week. Perhaps i’ll wake up too

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

“People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not.”

— Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

i pretend it doesn’t still hurt now and then, but it does. it’s hard to think about how much i loved you and how much you took it for granted

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

the last time i saw you, it was winter and i called you a hurricane. i held your hand and you convinced me to take off my jacket. the cold never shook me as hard as you did anyways. you knew that.

and out of all the goodbyes i never got to say, yours would have been the hardest. yours would have taken me years. i had two weeks to learn how to collect myself, i wasn’t allowed to cry at the airport. i haven’t been back since. i think i’m just afraid it’ll smell like home.

so when i see you again, i bet you’ll have changed your hair. who knows what it’s been through since you left. and i bet you still make that face when someone says they love you, i bet you still have those sharp teeth. i bet it’ll still hurt when you sink them into me.

the hurricane series, a.m

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

“the books assigned to us don’t have any REAL meaning” 

yeah, i know. i am an author, i felt that keenly through my entire academic career; i hated knowing it wasn’t the case. that i was being lied to.

but we make meaning. the first time someone read into my writing and found something i hadn’t put there, i found myself smiling. oh yeah! it felt good. it felt good they tore it open and plucked something out. it felt like i had done my job well. and they felt good, too.

a lot of books assigned in school won’t have something you see yourself in. they’re general books, or they’re forced in by how cheap they are, or they are just good examples of one type of writing. it is frustrating writing essays about them, like pretending you are panning for gold while you are ankle deep in a plastic pool. these are things that were made for other people, for another time, for a different set of hands. we cannot force ourselves to be kin to what is unlike us. our skin rejects it.

but we make meaning. there will be books - and maybe some will even be assigned - that will not be intentionally written for you, but they will feel that way, down in your ribs, like when you catch your reflection in a store front and for a second don’t recognize who you are. there will be art and dances and songs (god, so many songs) that will do this, over and over and over and over, because our hearts are these big things that love to grab onto any sign we are not alone. that our pain and our losses are not unnoticed. they will be the books you hold differently and the songs you scream along to and the art you cry about in the middle of the museum. and these same books and songs and art pieces will be looked at by other people and those people will say “there’s no meaning here. i don’t get it.”

sometimes, sometimes, i do have a meaning i tuck into words. and sometimes even if i think the meaning is one thing, someone will tell me: here is another. and every time this happens, i am 13 again, and i feel good, and i know i made something worth loving. worth looking at. people come to me and they say: i know you don’t know me, but you know me. and i do know you, because we know each other, because a piece of writing is a two-way looking glass, where you see me, and in that honesty, i hope you get to see yourself, too.

somewhere, tucked into this, chewing on itself, is something i like to remind myself. when i am at the end of the rope, when i am scratching old wounds, when i am trying to untie my tether because none of it matters, i say: we make meaning. and i think of the books that i love that others do not. i think of the flowers that mean things to me that i cannot spell and you cannot know. i think of what i have given meaning to, and who has given me meaning. and i tell myself. yes, this is a dark time. but we will take it and we’ll put it on a loom and we’ll weave ourself something out of it, and we’ll make meaning from this life. i will give meaning to others when i can and i will write and hope others find meaning and i will live like i am meaning to, because if i’m stuck here, i mean to live. 

no, maybe it doesn’t mean anything. but maybe it’s just the wrong book. go on. keep looking.

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

it doesn’t matter how good you’re doing, those sad nights will creep up on you from time to time and that’s ok. doesn’t mean all your progress is gone

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

it’s strange because you don’t realize how far you’ve come until one day while you’re laughing you realize: wait, i’m actually laughing. 

that’s hard to explain, you know. that the numbness effects your humor, too. that, sure, you’ll laugh at things, but it feels tight, tiny, like you should be happy but you’re squeezing joy through a pinhole. sometimes you look at things and think: i should like this. i should feel good when i look at this. i should find this cute or funny or heartwarming. but you feel nothing.

it’s hard to track recovery. we live by the day. measure only how well we did in 24 hours. sometimes look as far as a week. we just keep walking. the first thing i got back was crying. you wouldn’t think you’d miss crying - painful, ugly, draining, plain annoying - but i did. i missed crying. for a long while i was sort of grateful to be crying over any small thing.

but the flood is stopping. and today i caught myself actually laughing.

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

here’s the stuff my mama taught me: there’s iron to bind the fae, throw salt  over one shoulder  and never wait for a man to fix you -  get AAA but know how to change a tire, use tape or a knife or running water to open jars, stand on whatever you need to in order to reach the top shelf or else just don’t put things up there, and never put your man above your friends  or soon you’ll have neither, baby

i wrote you love notes in sugar packets,  told her i was so crazy for you i’d cut my hair off  she said god i hope not i tore open the jar of my body and carved out whatever home you’d lick up, crawled on knees and changed myself until i was flat by the roadside, hated the cliche but called the devil to me

my mother picked me up off the kitchen floor. she said: here’s where to put the spoons  but maman my heart is in his hands and he is a vice and i am the moon put salt on watermelon and brown sugar in tuna but maman i taste nothing and this world is nothing without him here’s how to fold a napkin  but maman i can fold into nothing but him and him and him

she shows me how to sew. how to leave out milk. how to set a smile.

she presses the handle of a knife into my palm.  “And when all else fails, my love,” she says, “Chop something up and move on.”

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

watching you love someone else feels like the time i sprained my ankle at age 7. My father put me at the top of a large hill, told me it would be fine, and pushed me down without showing me how to stop falling. and it wasn’t his fault.

just like it’s not your fault. i knew it was up to me to put on the brakes but i didn’t. i crashed and now i’m in pain. my ankle is throbbing and so is my head and my thoughts of you with him, if you can’t cope with you being exclusive then i certainly can’t. 

afterwards my father told me to walk it off, that i was faking the pain. so go ahead, look at me like you don’t understand what i’m saying to you, like you can’t tell how you’re hurting me. 

god i just wish i had the chance to make you love me. i wish i had the chance to be half as important to you as a significant other. i just love you so much, but i have to fight tooth and nail to get a night with you. the others, they just don’t get how lucky they are to spend so much time with you. i don’t even have to know them to know i care about you more. and maybe thats really selfish of me to think i’m who could love you best, but we both know it’s true.

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

oh, friends can use you. when you’re sitting drunk in someone else’s apartment with three people you’re not really comfortable with and a party full of strangers, you think about him, and how he used to be your friend, and how the two of you used to plan a future, not an end. you two were going to explore the world or be each other’s roommates or put on a two-person play. 

what do you say about that, about why you’re upset. “oh it’s just a guy”. but not a guy like that. it was just a friend that you used to share secrets with who left once he got his dreams, his house, his girlfriend. you’re not jealous, you’re happy for him - but you wish he’d write you, now and then.

once in middle school you had a best friend, and she was gone by the end of high school. like, still there, still someone you saw in the hallways, but not someone you felt close to. which was fine, you told yourself, people grow apart, they live their lives and expand like suns. it just feels like everyone is trying to grow apart from you, to reach until they escape your orbit.

you can’t say “my friends use me when they’re sad and then leave when they find happy” because what, are you going to be mad about someone else finally getting out? you can’t say “i’m lonely” when you’re just incapable of letting more than two people close to you. you can’t complain “they left me” because they didn’t leave you, did they. they’re just. not your friend anymore. and it happens. it’s not like you were in a relationship.

but stuff happens and you think - he would love this. or you go through your pictures and he’s there and you think - that’s the end of that. or a song comes on and it was your song - and you know, in your heart, if you played it for him, he wouldn’t even remember the tune of it. but what are you going to say? are you going to imply friends need to stay with you? that your life is sad because you’re easy to leave? that you’re hurting because of something so small as “my best friend moved on”?

you’re really good at giving. so people come to you, and you give them advice, and you give them time, and once in a while, when you’re feeling silly, you try to give them a spot in your heart.  

and you always wind up back here. back where you are.

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

We’re sitting on opposite ends of my kitchen table and i could stay here for a lifetime but you’ve been looking for any excuse to leave.

You tell me I can kiss you before you go and obviously I comply but it’s not enough. it’s not enough for me anymore. 

Our tongues touch and I’m just thinking about all the things I could do to you with mine if you’d let me. but all i can taste is what i know will never truly be mine. 

It’s just something in your eyes that makes me think I could listen to you talk forever. like any thought you had would make perfect sense regardless of how ridiculous it was. does that make sense? does it make sense to love someone so much that you’d believe the impossible if only to see what they see? 

“I’ll see you through the loneliness of one more, cause in the end it’s only you and me and no one else is gonna be around to answer all the questions left behind and you are I are meant to be so even if the world falls down today you’ve still got me to hold you up and i will never let you down” 

“I was your starry-eyed lover and the one that you saw, i was your hurricane rider and the woman you’d call. we were just two moonshiners on the cusp of a breath, and i’ve been burning for you baby since the minute i left” 

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

i’m so embarrassed by myself. to think i got excited for something i should’ve known wasn’t coming. i don’t know why people are so uninterested in me. and i don’t know why people aren’t as courteous as me. i would just appreciate a heads up when you’ve decided alone to cancel plans. i’ve been anxiously waiting on my couch for about 7 hours now and i’m just crying cause i got hella stood up. i’m suddenly remembering why its been so long since i’ve had a stupid fucking crush on someone. god i feel like such a child right now i’m fucking going to bed 

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

i didn’t even have to write this text post. you wrote it for me when you said you don’t even remember the fucking KD names. how am i supposed to respond to that? why don’t you treat me differently than you do them. why am i still on your back burner when you say i’m one of the people you can’t live without. why do i STILL care 

you are so fake it kills me. we’re not friends, we haven’t been in a long time, but its just so convenient that you asked me to hang out for the first time in months right after you realized i deleted you off snap. do you just need absolutely everyone to be your friend? everyone says that a few quality friends are better than being vague friends with everyone, and thats a concept you haven’t seemed to grasp yet. these KDs that you -lOvE- don’t know the first thing about you, yet they’re your bffs that you hang out with every night. i’m just saying i was there for the bad parts too. when others weren’t. and you gave me nothing to show for it. i’ve worked really hard to get over things, and the reminder of what a fake asshole you are wasn’t doing me any favors. 

[sleepingtodreamaboutyou]

you are so fake it kills me. we’re not friends, we haven’t been in a long time, but its just so convenient that you asked me to hang out for the first time in months right after you realized i deleted you off snap. do you just need absolutely everyone to be your friend? everyone says that a few quality friends are better than being vague friends with everyone, and thats a concept you haven’t seemed to grasp yet. these KDs that you -lOvE- don’t know the first thing about you, yet they’re your bffs that you hang out with every night. i’m just saying i was there for the bad parts too. when others weren’t. and you gave me nothing to show for it. i’ve worked really hard to get over things, and the reminder of what a fake asshole you are wasn’t doing me any favors.