sorryiapologized

[sorryiapologized]

I hope I'll wake up young again

I was in my backyard and I remember it was like a switch went off in my brain. Nothing seemed to feel as real as it once did. I was aware that everyone around me had a perception of who I was, that how I presented to the world mattered. I would go to bed each night hoping that this feeling would go away, that I could go back to the "real life" feeling before it felt like I was a character on a screen that everyone was looking at. I never did.

The comfort from loved ones, the advice, all sounded the same. "Don't take yourself so seriously," but how do I not? I can't switch this feeling off. I've opened a box that can never be closed again. I know I'll never get back to that youthful ignorance before I became too aware of the way others perceive me. And is it that simple? Is it a choice? Am I choosing to take myself too seriously? How can I stop?

The anxiety leads to existentialism. If I sit for too long with my own thoughts I fall down the path of questioning my own existence. When I sit and think of my successes I find myself asking the same question. Why am I here? What is it about me that other people like? Do they only like the fake version of me I present to the world, and would they still like me if they knew who I really was? I doubt it.

My confidence is not built on a sturdy foundation. There is not a genuine self-love that enables me to step out on a stage and perform. I fake it. When people like me, when they cheer for me, when they tell me I'm good at what I do, I feel confident. But I easily tear that down when I think too hard about it. It's a never ending cycle, chasing the high of validation and trying to grasp at it as it evaporates. Those people who cheer for me, will they even think about me again in a week? Will they remember anything I said? Did I make a difference at all?

When I was a kid, I didn't care. I did what I did because I liked it, not because I wanted people to like me because of it. I didn't feel like I had to do anything to earn love. Sometimes I look at people and see that kind of genuine confidence and I wonder how they never lost it.

Keeping the act up is exhausting. I can only be funny, charming, and clever for a little while before my mind begins to cave in on itself and I start to analyze my every move. Strangers get a version of me my closest friends and family never will, in part because they can see right through it.

People love me, but it's like I can't see that. All that matters is the people I don't know, do they love me, do they like me, do they even know the version of me I want them to see? I live my life for the photos I'll post so strangers I'll never interact with can think I'm so much cooler than I actually am. Is there a way to start living my life without the desire to attract the gaze of others?

[sorryiapologized]

Keep my hand in yours

I fell in love as the world collapsed around me and nothing else seemed to matter.

Four years later, and much of the start of the end feels like a blur. I wonder if historians will call the pandemic that -- the beginning of the collapse. I grew up reading dystopian romances, dreaming about falling in love while trying to survive as though that would be the most romantic thing in the world. As a child in an abusive home, falling in love while trying to survive was the only way I'd ever fall in love.

In the early days of the pandemic, after all our other roommates had left and it was just the two of us in a creaky old house, we filled our days by watching movies. The films sparked the same feeling for both of us, that we weren't main characters. Hollywood didn't write stories for people like us. At best, we'd be the first to die in the horror movie, too trusting and not ruthless enough to even harm the villain.

We'd been friends for a few years, and roommates for nine months. Though we didn't talk about it, there was a silent understanding that we shared a connection through our emotional scars that the others just didn't get. Maybe it was that shared experience of fighting every day just to survive that made a global pandemic feel more like a vacation than a death sentence. We woke up every morning thinking about death, this was nothing new.

Without much to do, we'd go for drives. It was our code if one of us was struggling. We didn't have the right words to outright ask for help or companionship, but we knew how to say, "Wanna go for a drive?" We'd loop through the small downtown (if you could even call it that), climb toward the lookout over the rich neighborhoods. We'd order fast food and listen to sad songs in a mutual solidarity.

The signs of collapse were all there for months in advance, we just didn't see it. Just as the signs of our own fall outpaced our ability to understand what was happening between us. News outlets reported over the strange disease, but we never really thought it would cause a global shutdown. A flush of red would heat my cheeks whenever our legs brushed against each other on the couch, but I never really thought we'd take that risk, go beyond just friends.

Then, like a meteor crashing toward the earth, one sudden impact changed everything. Our lips met, our bodies intertwined, and nothing would ever be the same.

Everything was confusing in those early days.

What were we to each other? Did they feel the way I did? Was this just an end of the world fling? The worries raced through my head as I fell asleep each night.

Then, one day, a piece of paper slipped under my door. A drawing of two worms on a leaf, and in that moment I knew.

We're four years into forever now. The world is still in the process of collapsing, but for the first time I'm living beyond survival. Wherever I go it's with their hand in mine.

Neither of us can remember how those old apocalyptic books ended. It doesn't really matter who Katniss chose. All that matters is who we chose. We're writing out the pages of our story with our hands clasped together.

Someday the historians will write about this time. Will they call it the collapse of society? The end of our nation? None of that matters to us. The only thing that matters to me is holding on to this beautiful person I found though it all.

Someday they'll find our bones. Will they know how deeply we loved one another? How we grew together? Or will they simply see our bones for what they were before the world ended -- roommates. best friends. None of that matters to us. Our love was never for them, but in spite of them.

[sorryiapologized]

You and all of your new perspective now, wish I could shut it in a closet

Every time I hear this song it hits me in a slightly different place. Sometimes I'm the speaker, resentful of those who left our hometown (and me) behind to grow up and expand their perspectives. Lately, I've found I'm the subject, reflecting on those I left behind and the ways my change in perspective has irreparably changed the relationships that at one point were the most important to me.

"Silence is making me nostalgic," it's the first line and it hits me like a ton of bricks. As a kid who grew up in an empty home as neglected as I was, silence does ring nostalgic. If I find myself alone with my thoughts for too long I drift right back into my thirteen year old body, waxing poetic about the world and worrying about my place in it.

It's the next line, "Two sizes big your shirt in my apartment. Oh, we were kids but that don't make this less hard," that sinks this song into a specific set of memories of the unique relationship I shared with my sister. The one person I will know for the entirety of my life. The only other person who saw my parent's divorce from the inside. This line reminds me of the lonely summer days spent alone at our dad's apartment. He'd be at work all day and the bars all night. There wasn't much to do, so we'd invent games. We'd create a life-size board game out of sidewalk chalk and boxes. We'd explore the parking lot and spy on our neighbors. We'd make paper airplanes and fly them from the fourth floor stairs. Our connection was formed in this experience of childhood trauma. Despite our youth, the uncertainty and heartbreak of watching our family shatter wasn't easier. Experts would say we were young and malleable enough to bounce back, but nobody else could understand the strain it took on our childhoods, nobody outside the two of us.

"If I could fly I doubt I'd even do it."

My teenage years and beyond was stained in this sentiment. I didn't spread my wings. I watched as my friends applied for colleges across the state and beyond, but I set my sights close. I convinced myself I couldn't do it, but in reality, I didn't even try. The fear of crashing kept me where I was, but at seventeen, where I was didn't feel too bad. It was my hometown, the only home I'd ever known. Even though it was broken, it felt whole, especially with my sister. There was also a tether to that relationship, the desire not to leave her behind, that influenced my decision to stay where I was.

My suburban hometown was about as far as New England as you can get, and yet this song feels like it was written with that place in mind. My community was full of liberal rednecks, semi-educated stupid people who shared their perspectives with me as if they were the only ones in the world.

My friends, my sister, and I, were the attention deficit kids in our gym clothes. We didn't live in the kind of place where dressing up mattered. We wore the clothes we could run and play in and nothing else mattered. We didn't have families that noticed signs of ADHD or Autism. They let us be, left us to struggle, and convinced us we were lazy if we couldn't keep up.

It was an ugly town, though I didn't know this until I started college. I went to a school a half hour from the home I grew up in, but I encountered new perspectives for the first time in my life. On the first day of school, an English professor of mine asked all the students from out of town what their opinion of our small town was. Words like "dirty," "dangerous," and "poor" were thrown around. After class, I looked up where my new peers were from and saw shiny California cities. Their highways were clean, they had trees and parks. For the first time, I noticed the trash, the paper bags floating in the wind, and the regrets started to set in.

When my high school friends returned for our first break from school, they were changed in a way I wasn't. They'd seen new places and gained their own perspectives on where we were from. My best friends were experiencing life first-hand while I watched it pass me by.

There was nothing to do in our hometown. In their new homes, my friends could sneak into bars, but in my hometown where everybody knew everybody else, I had no chance of even buying a fake ID. I spent weekends at Target. Target was the first taste of freedom I had. When I first got my license, Target was the ultimate destination. My sister and I were free from our empty boring apartment. We could walk up and down the aisles, try on all the clothes, read all the greeting cards and shitty romance novels for sale. But, going to Target on the weekends at nineteen felt pathetic. I scrolled through social media in the gardening section, seeing pictures of my old friends traveling abroad, attending festivals and road tripping to national parks while I stayed in the same place I had always been.

I resented the experiences my old friends were having. I skipped their face time calls and stopped commenting on their Instagram posts. I tried to fake interest when they came home for summer break and tried to share all their stories about cool parties and new friends with me but more than anything I just wanted to pull them back down into the small world we'd all existed in before they left me behind.

My second year of college, I made friends despite feeling like a loser "townie." Without even realizing it, my perspective started to shift, too. I took classes that altered the way I saw the world. I started spending less weekends at home with my sister and more on campus.

That year, when everyone went home for winter break, I found myself to be the one who changed. The liberal rednecks who raised me, who I used to admire, now felt out of touch. Just as I was growing up, so was my sister, and I found some of her opinions, some of her politics, to be reflective of the hometown that despite never leaving, I now found to be dirty, dangerous, and poor.

An unbridgeable gap began to spread between me and my sister. We'd argue about the world and I'd quote philosophers and scholars, I'd use words she couldn't pronounce. Just as I'd slowly began to resent my old friends who left to see the world, she too, started to resent my new perspective on things.

This story doesn't have a happy ending, per-se. I graduated college and finally moved out of my hometown around the same time my sister started college, just a few miles from the empty apartment we grew up in.

Now, I live in a bigger city. I see my old friends once a year. We don't talk like we used to. That small world that connected us so closely is a fantasy land in the past none of us can ever return to, yet many of them have returned back to our hometown. I hear stories about them regularly running into our old high school classmates who now frequent the bars our parents used to.

Living in a city only further altered my perspective. I rarely talk to my sister. From afar, I've seen her grow into the same kind of liberal redneck our town seems to breed. My dreams and aspirations have grown but she seems content where she is. I used to spend so many nights worrying about this very thing, crying at the thought that we may grow apart and never feel as close as when we were each other's only family. Now it's just as natural as evolution, though she'd argue against that last one.

I had accepted it for what it was. Then, last Christmas, my sister called me. Maybe it was the holiday that left her nostalgic, or the fact that she was spending it with her boyfriend's quiet family for the first time, but she called to tell me she missed me, and to thank me. We reminisced on our shitty childhood for an hour. I didn't think she was paying attention, but on the other end of the line she reminisced about our empty childhood together. She thanked me for the trips to Target, for keeping the illusion of Santa Clause alive for her, and for inventing all those dumb games during our lonely summers at our dad's apartment.

Back when I felt lost and aimless, when the world was only as big as our dumb suburban town, and when I felt left behind, watching life pass me by through my phone screen, my sister was the person who made our apartment complex feel like central park. Our perspectives are different, we don't talk very often, and when we do, it's a 50/50 chance we're going to argue about something stupid. But on the phone with her, tears came to my eyes, because I realized despite it all, I brought central park to her, too.

We'll never be those kids we once were. We'll never have the relationship we once did. But, somewhere deep down, those kids still live inside us, and it's nice to think that there's a small perspective we'll always share.

[sorryiapologized]

If I could leave, I would have already left.

I was gonna leave as soon as I could. When I turned eighteen I watched my friends one by one drive out of our town for new adventures. Their rearview lights disappeared over the mountains as they set off to start their own lives. I couldn't leave.

I often felt like Rapunzel, trapped in her tower. Something kept me locked away from the rest of the world. I'd meet people who had traveled to my small town for their first taste of adulthood and I'd avoid the conversation as long as possible, embarrassed to let them in on the secret that I was just some loser townie who couldn't get out.

I blamed my family for my inability to leave. Their dysfunction was the main reason I wanted to leave, and yet it was the tether keeping me there. I had to stay, to give my younger sister some kind of stability. I had to stay for my aging childhood dog, who my drunk father had no ability to care for. I resented the other kids with stable home lives, the ones who knew they could go away and have something to come back to.

The truth is, I was keeping myself there.

When I turned 21 my dog died. My sister graduated high school. I met someone who was willing to skip town with me. There was nothing else keeping me in that town, and still I hesitated. I lamented my decision to leave.

Now, it's been three years since my rearview lights disappeared over the mountain range. It's been three years since my dad cried and begged me not to leave. He's called me about four times since that day.

I've become a distant memory in the lives of those I left behind. Aside from my mom, who calls me often, nobody else thinks of me much now that I'm gone. In a way, it's like I disappeared, but in another way, it's like I never existed to begin with. Their lives have all moved on without me. They don't need me anymore, and so they don't think of me. I think that's why I stayed as long as I did. I wanted to belong, and leaving was a concession that I never really did.

I used to resent my friends who had stable homes, who knew they'd be able to leave and still have someplace to come back to. I used to think if I left their lives would burn down. Now that I'm gone, what hurts is seeing how well they're doing without me. That I actually could have left all along.

[sorryiapologized]

This place had a heartbeat, in it's day. Vail bought the mountains, and nothing was the same.

This line catches me every time I play Paul Revere. It's an experience as exclusive to growing up in a small town as having at least one racist uncle and always running into people you know at the grocery store.

The place I grew up in isn't the place I visit as an adult. I cross the mountains and the wheat fields and drive down that same familiar hill, but nothing is the same. The people have changed. Maybe they've gotten more conservative, or maybe the politics of that town just bother me now in a way they didn't when I was a kid. The shape of the town has even changed. A car dealership popped up a mile from my house, acres of pine trees I used to run around in were carted off to make room for more duplexes. Even the middle school I hated was torn down years ago to make room for a nicer hellhole.

There was a heartbeat to my town that flatlined after the 2010s, after I grew up, after everything changed.

Even the house I grew up in seems to tilt in a different direction. It's still standing. My dad still lives there, but the marks on the wall I made, the plants in the yard I tended, even the back porch my childhood dog scratched up are all gone. My mom doesn't live there, hasn't since I was 11. Now my dad's new girlfriend places images on the wall. The aforementioned childhood dog is a pile of ashes in a mahogany box. Now they've got a $500 golden doodle imported from the midwest with not a thought behind his eyes.

I say I'm from here, but I'm not from the here that still stands. I'm from a place painted in pastel colors that sounds like the giggles of first friendships. I'm from a place that isn't plagued by wildfire smoke every August. I'm from a town where it snows on Christmas and the summer sun warms the lakes in July. My town feels like green grass under bare feet, the soft fur of a bouncing dog, and a cool breeze. It's not those new apartment complexes along the highway, it's the spinning view of the tops of trees as you spin in a circle with your head held back. I'm from a place that only exists in my memories. I will never be able to show it to the person I love. I cannot travel back to that place. It's gone. I hope someone else misses it. I hope someone else knew it the same way I did.

[sorryiapologized]

One day I'm gonna cut it clear, ride like Paul Revere, and when they ask me who I am I'll say I'm not from around here.

It was a dream of mine that started around the time I turned twelve or thirteen. Up until then I had no desire to leave. I would stay in that town just like my mom had and my grandpa before her. Just like everyone did. Maybe I'd get a teaching job, get married, and have a few kids. I'd stay close to everyone I'd ever known, just as everyone I'd ever known had done before me.

The older I got the more that dream turned into a nightmare. As a teenager I used to feel as though I was living through my prequel. Like my story hadn't even started. The story wouldn't start until I got out. I felt like I was in the first few chapters of a good memoir I'd share with the world someday once I became something important. I started to realize I would never become important if I stayed.

I dreamed of moving to New York. I wanted to get far away and go somewhere where big things happened. I wanted to change the world. I didn't know how I'd do it, but I just knew I wanted to leave.

Now I have left. I didn't make it as far as New York, not yet. As it turns out, no matter how big the dream of cutting it clear was, it is damn hard to do. I got to the closest major city. Far enough that anyone who wants to see me has to be determined to get here, but not too far that I can't drive back there in a day if I need to. I haven't needed to yet. When people ask me where I'm from I'm vague. "The east side," I say. That could, and often does, mean many different things to people. If someone names my town outright I'll confirm it. To know its name is significant. These people who know, they give a nod. They understand that desire to leave. Often they've left too.

I worry about the curse the town holds. I've heard about it from teachers, burnouts, and even my own mother. A traveler got caught up in some kind of illegal business and before the carted him out of the courthouse to jail he declared that nobody would be able to leave our town. Everyone who tried would return within a few years, a failure. As far as I've seen, the curse is pretty accurate. Every friend of mine who left for college returned before their graduation day, transferring to a smaller town school. Family members have tried to move, gone to New York, Seattle, LA, and all come home within a few years with their tails between their legs. Even my cousin, who moved to the same city as me, has returned home since getting out. Maybe that's why I don't tell people where I'm from. I don't want it to be true. I don't want it to pull me back in.

I dream about the day when I'll be far enough. When I can tell people I'm from this state, not even have to specify the region. Maybe I'll seem different then. Maybe I will matter once I really make it out. But to make it out I know I'll first have to dig out the roots that are buried under my skin. I'll have to purge this town from my veins. How much of me will be left once I'm done? Will I still be me?

[sorryiapologized]

Yes, the boys are drunk the sun is high. Their license plates "live free or die," but it just ain't that simple.

This line always transports me back to the lake. My summertime haven. I was thirteen when my dad purchased a 1996 trailer in the lakefront trailer park. It was more than just a beach escape, that small park was a community that eventually formed a family. We were a rowdy band of kids running around the grass barefoot, swimming, fishing, and competing in made-up games. When we were kids it was that simple. We'd all wear our red, white, and blue on the 4th of July and sing "god bless America" and "take me home country roads" under a painted sky of fireworks.

Though we were different ages, we all seemed to grow up in synch. The only kid the same age as me who went to my school when summer ended never talked to me much at the lake. I didn't care. As we got older the differences between us seemed to become more visible. He was popular and always inviting kids from our school up to the lake in the summer. I had very few friends and was always hesitant to invite them up to my summer haven. The lake felt like a secret place where I could be myself. Nobody cared that I was still running around and playing kid games with my younger sister. I was free.

The boy my age was the party kind of kid. He didn't even need to sneak beer. When we were fifteen he looked like a man. I remember my dad handed him a bud-light once. When I told him later we were the same age my dad just laughed in admiration for him.

Our differences came to a full head-on collision when we were in our junior year of high school. It was the year everyone seemed to learn about politics and where they stood on these issues. I hadn't been that political up until then, but now it was 2016, the precipice of the Trump election. We'd have weekly debates in my APUSH class about issues like immigration, women's rights, and the separation of church and state. I'd get heated arguing with all the guys in my class about these topics. Even though my lake neighbor wasn't in a single AP class (go figure) he caught wind of my liberal leaning politics.

The thing was, my ideologies didn't match my dad's. I knew that. What I didn't know until the next summer was that they didn't match anyone in our trailer park. The boys I'd grown up fishing with were now running around with Trump flags. The fourth of July didn't feel like a celebration, especially not with everyone's dad in a MAGA hat. I kept quiet as my dad and his buddies got drunk and joked around.

Every 4th we had a community corn-hole tournament. I was playing with one of the younger kids I often ended up babysitting while the adults got day-drunk. She would always follow me around. Even back then there was some unspoken connection between us. We were the same. Our competition was my classmate's dad. He stood next to me and nursed a beer while we waited for our teammates (a nine year old girl and his drunk wife) to huck their beanbags at us.

"Are you a liberal or a conservative?" the dad asked me. I don't think he knew my name, but maybe he'd heard about me from his son. I didn't want to get into a fight with yet another idiot or give the community reason to find pitchforks and tiki torches, so I just shrugged. I played dumb. I acted like I didn't even know the difference.

"I can see benefits to both," I lied.

"Well, do you like Lincoln or JFK?" he asked. I didn't know where to start. To inform this adult man that Lincoln was not a conservative, but more of a modern day neo-liberal who was actually still a major racist? Should I talk about the imperialism the Kennedys were responsible for? I just stayed quiet.

That was just a moment, just a snapshot in my childhood. There were hundreds more, tiny instances where people would say things like this to me. He didn't care what I said. What this dad really meant by his question to me was, "are you like us or not?" The answer was always "not." Whether it was my perceived sexuality and gender expression, my tomboyishness that lasted way longer than it should have, or my political beliefs, I didn't belong.

The lake still remained my safe haven, although I found I loved it much more when it wasn't full of people. It was the nature I enjoyed, the solitude, and the community of kids who accepted me despite the differences I showed.

We're in our 20s now. I don't live in my small town, I try to make it back once a year to see the lake, but never on a big weekend like the 4th. My classmate still lives there. He still brings his high school friends up to get drunk on the weekends. Maybe for him it is just that simple, but for me it never was.

I think about the kids I left behind there. The youngest are just now starting high school. They know more about who they are than I did at that age. They know life isn't as simple as a can of beer and a political party. I worry about them often. I hope they become good people. I hope they can get out too.

[sorryiapologized]

County line, I'm counting down mailboxes until my house. This place had a heartbeat in its day.

There aren't the words to describe the ache of nostalgia that gathers in your chest swirling around the pain of trauma until it becomes one all consuming tornado. That's how it feels when I drive back into the small town I grew up in. It's a town I didn't think I'd escape from, a town that became me as much as I became it. When I drive back home I drive backwards through my life there.

My chest tightens as I come down the big hill and see the downtown buildings come into view. I drive past the college I attended. Memories of shame fill my brain as I remember trying to hide the fact that I was a "townie." I felt like a loser compared to all my peers who were experiencing freedom for the first time.

I keep driving north. I go down the hill where my dad witnessed a car crash that left a sixteen year old boy dead. The boy was the same age as me; went to my rival school. My dad stood out on the side of the road and watched the life drain from his eyes. The boy was hit by a drunk driver. My dad called me to tell me he'd be home late. He didn't rush home to his child to hold her. He rushed to a bar to drink away the trauma.

I drive past the grocery store that was just a little too far to walk to when I was growing up. That store was the first sense of freedom I had, the first time I felt pulls in two directions. I could finally drive, I could go anywhere. I had a little bit of money. Unlike my friends who would drive to make-out spots or the one bar in town that let underage kids in, I spent my time and money driving to that store to get food for my family. I paid for my groceries at the self check with my "coin sock." I'd collect every penny I found and hope that it was enough to cover the bread and milk I was bringing home. My dad always said he'd pay me back, but never did in full. He thought I was lying when I told him how much I spent. If I didn't have enough for everything I'd secretly leave my abandoned items at the self-check avoiding the shame and judging eyes of a cashier.

I pass the horizontal road that every public school I attended is on. My elementary school and middle school share a yard. A turn to the right and I'd be back there. A turn to the left and I'd be at the high school where I spent four years worrying about fitting in, fretting over every tiny social interaction. I thought I'd miss school once I left it. I was the kid who used to cry on the last day of school in elementary school because I was going to miss my teachers. On the last day of high school all I felt was relief. A sense of hope burned in my chest, even though I knew I'd spend the next four years in that town, I still held hope that someday I'd get out.

I take the curve under the bridge that my sister used to call "the high road" when we were little kids. Mom would ask us which way we wanted to take back from the store, the high road or the low road. I always said the low road just to be contrary.

A left into the neighborhood. Past the church that looks like a frog. Down the street where I used to speed when I was running late. Past the house where my dad's best friend lived. He died of COVID a few years ago. It finally inspired my dad to get the shot. A left at the mailbox. One year my sister and I made an igloo there on a snow day. When I was four my mom and I used to walk the dog down there to get the mail. I couldn't reach the box back then.

We pull up the street. The street where I learned how to ride a bike. It was a pink princess bike and I hated it. Dad said he picked it out for me because it had animals on the seat. It's the street where I used to go sledding. My dogs would pull me in my little plastic green sled. My cousin once laughed so hard she peed in that sled. Its the street where I'd pull my sister around in a green wagon. Its the street where we'd do our snow dance and pray for a white Christmas. Its the street where I met my childhood best friend. Where we'd play soccer in the road, where I skinned countless knees, where I invented my own version of baseball.

I can no longer park in "my spot." In high school and college I'd park my car on the right side of the driveway. Now my dad's girlfriend has claimed the space. I park in front, where guests used to. The purple bushes that turn red in the fall are gone. The green shrubs where I lost my favorite stuffed animal for years has been replaced. The big tree I helped my dad plant in the front yard was cut down years ago, now. Even the front porch is different. No more hanging flower pots.

The house doesn't smell like me when I walk in. And I don't just walk in anymore, I knock. There are portraits of his girlfriend and her kids up along the walls. The walls that sat bare for years after my mom left. There's food in the fridge, now that a woman lives there again. My bedroom walls are no longer the bright robin egg blue I painted them when I was eleven.

On the outside, the house doesn't look much different. The town isn't much different. But I can hear the heartbeat louder than I ever did when I lived there. It's the same heartbeat that echoes in my ears when the anxiety rises. No matter where I go, no matter how it changes I am still a version of this town. I am a version of this town that does not exist anymore, a version I may only remember. There's an ache in that, an isolation, to know a place that nobody else has ever seen so intimately.

[sorryiapologized]

"Son, are you a danger to yourself?"

*TW - Suicide.

I used to think adults were crazy, emotional, borderline psychotic for the ways they could destroy themselves for the people they love. Many of my parents own horrible life decisions -- ones that put me and my little sister in danger and through countless years of neglect and abuse -- stemmed from a desire to be loved by someone who couldn't care less.

Now, as an adult, when I hear this song I don't see my father disassociating with alcohol to forget his divorce or my mother ignoring the red flags in her pedophile boyfriends. Instead I see the time love knocked me off my feet and left me chasing after someone so hard I didn't even realize I was running away from myself.

I was 20 and in love with my best friend who at the time I thought was a girl. Everything I had been taught growing up told me this was wrong. I tried to push the feelings down, I tried to forget them. I drowned out the love I felt just as my father had done years before. But I found in the same painful way he did that there isn't enough booze in the world that can make you stop loving someone.

Eventually I gave in to the feelings. Not all the way. Not enough to physically kiss them, but enough to crave their presence, to smile at my phone whenever they remembered to text me. It was a wild rollercoaster of emotion. The high I felt when we would hang out couldn't even compare to the low I'd fall into when they'd start talking to some new guy on tinder.

I couldn't really blame them, though. I didn't come forward and tell them how I felt. Doing so would make it too real. If I confirmed my queerness with words I worried I would never be able to take it back. And if they didn't love me it would be all for nothing.

They started getting more serious with this one guy. Messaging every day. They would giggle at their phone. They thought he was so funny and so hot. They made plans to meet up with him in person. I begged them not to go. I couldn't say why. I made up some dumb reason like how meeting a guy from tinder was unsafe or something.

They left to get coffee and shared their location with me so I'd know they were safe. I watched them arrive at Starbucks, then eventually their location shifted to the guy's house. I knew what was going to happen. I became sick.

My love for them had consumed me to the point where I was very much a danger to myself, and I couldn't so much as even explain why. I hated myself for loving them, but more than that I hated myself for being a coward who couldn't tell them I did.

I drove to my dad's house. He was passed out hungover on the couch from the night before, watching the news coverage of Kobe Bryant's death. I tried to sooth myself with a bath, but ended up only crying naked on the bathroom floor. Every few minutes I would check their location. Still at the guy's house. They stayed there for hours.

It wasn't just the lovesickness that deteriorated my brain. I had been struggling for years with depression and anxiety. I had become an emotional punching bag for my other closest friend at the time. Mostly, though, I had no idea who I was. I worried whoever it was the hid inside of me was someone I never wanted to meet.

I went out to my car and sat with the exhaust running. It could have been minutes or hours. My dad never came out to check on me. I figured it might be kind of nice to die on the same day as Kobe. I took a handful of Zoloft pills and swallowed them. I waited in the car long enough for the pills to enter my system. Long enough that doctors couldn't purge me. I'd been through this before, I knew how to finish the job this time.

I didn't want my dad to find my body in the car so I drove to the hospital, where I could get attached to some good drugs and die in peace. I wasn't totally thinking clearly at the time I got there. They hooked me up to machines and I kept processing how it felt to die. Except I didn't die.

They sent me to a facility. Nobody contacted my family. I was gone for three days. If my friends and roommates noticed my absence they didn't care. Only my little sister started to worry on day three. She figured out where I was and my mom came to spring me out. They took me back to my grandmother's house to watch me and make sure I was no longer a danger to myself. It was a question I heard time and time again. From my mom, from my therapist, my psychiatrist, the police who escorted me to and from the clinic. I would never admit that I was. I think they only asked to legally clear themselves from responsibility when I did ultimately kill myself.

I remained dangerous. My best friend told me about how they hooked up with the guy. We got in a fight about it. I still couldn't admit why it bothered me. Instead I returned to my grandmother's house, waited until midnight, then walked down to the icy river the flowed just beyond her yard. I flung my body off the dock hoping the cold water would submerge and drown me, and wash my remains away from this world. Instead my adrenaline kicked in and I pulled myself out of the chilly water.

I understand, now, how love can make us dangerous. I understand the all consuming nature that comes with infatuation. Everyday I fear heartbreak will come back into my life like a dangerous wave until I no longer know who I am again.

A lot has changed since I tried to drown myself in the river. I found my courage and told my friend how I felt. They learned to love me, too. Maybe if I had grown up in a world where I wasn't led to believe loving someone else would make me a monster I wouldn't have turned into one.

[sorryiapologized]

I ain't proud of all the punches that I've thrown in the name of someone I no longer know.

Every time I hear this verse I think of someone else. Does that make me a toxic person?

Sometimes its a friend from college who used me to carry the weight of her mental health issues, then left me behind as soon as it was convenient to do so.

Right now, it's my dad, however. Maybe that's because it was just Father's Day? Maybe it's because he butt-texted me last night?

I was so close to him. He always told me he was my biggest fan, and I had no reason to think otherwise. He taught me about life in his own fucked up kind of way.

I became protective of him as I got older. When my mom left him I realized I was the only family he really had left. Maybe that broke me more than it broke him?

I looked out for him. I cooked and cleaned for him. Just like that college friend, I took on the weight of his emotional burdens.

I was an angry kid and for many years I was willing to throw punches for my dad. When they said he was an alcoholic I defended him. When they said he was a narcissist I defended him.

The divorce was all my mom's fault, I'd say. I'd throw verbal punches at her whenever I could. She said I'd know more someday. That I wouldn't think in such black and white ways.

My dad thought in black and white. Things were good and things were bad. He taught me which was which. As I grew up I started to recognize the parts of me that he would think were bad. I thought they were bad, too.

Liking girls, that was bad. It was something I held close to my chest and hoped would stay a secret until I died. I prayed for death to take me before my desires did.

I learned more about the world as I continued to grow up. I questioned the things my dad had taught me about it. If God was all good and all powerful, why would he create evil?

He couldn't stand my questions, so he left me alone more and more. I started to notice the smell on his breath when he's come home late and fight with me. He'd find any reason he could to kick me out of the house -- a towel on the floor, a missing phone charger.

Everything changed when I finally left. I went to college. I learned to accept the parts of myself he wanted me to hate. Now I live in a different city. I talk to him maybe three times a year. He has a new life and a new family.

The last gift he gave me was socks with horses on them. He thinks I still like horses like I did when I was 12. Maybe that was the last time we really knew each other.

I'm grown now, and a part of me will always regret the punches I threw for that man. I don't know him and he doesn't know me. Maybe we only ever loved the ideas we had for what we wanted the other to be? I wanted a dad who would love me, protect me, and accept me. He wanted a daughter who would obey him, respect him, and make him proud. Now I think we're both disappointed and embarrassed at all the bloody knuckles we received in our mutual misunderstanding.

[sorryiapologized]

You see a friend, see a ghost.

[sorryiapologized]

You'll always be a flower on my skin

God, this newest Noah Kahn release feels like it was written for my life.

"Your Needs, My Needs" always reminds me of my best friend. She was exactly what I needed, we were so close. Some of my happiest memories are sitting out under the stars with her in the summertime. We'd talk about who we'd become, imagined what it would feel like to be drunk. I told her I think I have the personality of a high functioning alcoholic. She laughed at me.

She was the first real person to choose me. To see me as I am and say, "I'd like to keep her around by my side." By her side was my favorite place. I went with her to visit her grandmother at the hospital. We'd do boring things like grocery shopping together and she always made it feel fun.

Then college came. I stood in her driveway and cried as she drove out of sight. I took her little sister out for ice cream and tried to convince myself that things between us wouldn't change.

That was the hardest part of my freshman year. We were both growing up at different rates and not congruently. All those things I wanted to experience with her for the first time were happening separately. Our environments, our classes, our new friends were all shaping who we were becoming. We were becoming people with separate needs and lives.

Things got even harder when she moved back to our hometown. The hometown I never left. She got a boyfriend right away and I hated him. She found out and iced me out. Two years later when he cheated on her I was there to answer the call with ice cream and our favorite shows.

At one point in my life she was the person I would share everything with. Three years later I had a mental health crisis, overdosed on my Zoloft prescription and kept our snapchat streak alive without so much as saying a word about it to her. This song explains exactly how it feels to have someone who was once so close now linger like a ghost in your life.

Now I'm the one who is gone. My needs called me far away to a bigger city. Her needs seem to keep her in our hometown. I talk to her everyday, I listen to her stories about working in the ER, I've met her new boyfriend (not a fan but I've learned not to say that out-loud). I still love her so much and feel her presence in the memories I hold dear, like a flower on my skin. But we're not those kids who sat under the stars anymore. We're the adults we imagined but never really thought would be real.

[sorryiapologized]

Why can't I just be an aesthetic little thing?

I just want to live in a little Pinterest board or an Instagram feed. Somewhere where everything is always clean yet cozy and personal where my face is always nice, my clothes are always cute, and I'm always smiling.

But I have to make money. I have to make money to be able to buy those nice cute little things. And I spent all my time and energy trying to make money that I don't have any time or energy left to clean the little spaces that I have, so it is always just a little bit messy. And I certainly don't have the time, money, or energy to travel to cute countrysides and beaches and lake getaways.

There are 168 hours in a week. I should spend about 56 of them sleeping, but I'm a little depressed, so I sleep a little more than that. I spend 40 hours of that working. When you add up the sleeping (8 hours) and the working, that only leaves 72 hours every week. 72 hours for fun times, 72 hours to clean my home, 72 hours to spend with my dog, 72 hours to spend with my partner, to cook, to grocery shop, to make appointments, to see friends, to exercise, to read, to see my family.

I feel like everyone is always grasping for more time. Just a little more time so we can do it all and fit everything in. Maybe if I had a little more time, a little more energy, and a lot more money, then I could be a Pinterest girl or an Instagram girl. Maybe then people would see me, maybe they'd want to be me. Maybe then I'd be happy.

[sorryiapologized]

Why is everyone getting a masters degree and a six pack???

I don't know what it is about May, maybe because it's graduation season and I'm seeing all these people graduate with masters degrees, or maybe it's that the warm weather makes people want to wear less clothes so I'm seeing how fit everyone looks, or maybe it's just the same old shit of seeing my friends books shows and seem to elevate themselves in their careers while I feel like I'm sitting on the sideline. Whatever it is, I'm feeling a little shitty.

I know I've been trying to tell myself "I'm okay" and not give into the anxiety that I'm not where I'm supposed to be, but with all these people around me seeming to succeed everywhere I look it's hard to believe that I'm okay. If anything, it feels like I'm failing.

And how do they all do it? How do you make enough money to keep a roof over your head and food in your fridge and have enough time and energy to better yourself physically and to find a creative project to engage in? I'm exhausted by just waking up in the morning. I don't know how to get out of this doom spiral. It's like everywhere I look, every media I consume just reminds me that I'm not doing anything good enough.

I want to believe I'm special. I think we all do. But the fear that keeps me up at night is wondering what if I'm just one of 7 billion people who will never do anything to be seen, who will never connect with the world, or change it. And God, why do I care about that? Will I ever be happy with where I'm at?

I know, at the core of it all, I just want to connect with people. I want to create stories for people to see themselves in so they don't feel alone or weird. In a way, I want to make stories about me and put them out there so I can see that I'm not alone, that I'm not weird. That other people get me, like me, want me. I think that's been the whole struggle of my existence, and the more I feel like I'm failing the more I wonder if there is anyone else out there like me, and if not, what does that mean?

[sorryiapologized]

I am okay.

My therapist called me out last week. Every week I complain about the same thing over and over. If you've read my previous posts you probably can tell. I'm worried about failure, about making the wrong step, about not going anywhere in life, about wasting my brief existence. And in a way I am wasting this brief existence every time I let myself get caught up in those worries. But the part of me (the clinically diagnosed anxious part of me) feels as though those worries somehow push me forward. I believe that it's the constant voice in the back of my head telling me I'm not good enough that's motivating me to be better.

And it's not. It's actually holding me back.

She told me I need to counter those toxic thoughts when I get them, but because I believe they're helpful, like a strict coach pushing me to be my best, I don't. I listen to them and think that hating myself is the best strategy toward changing myself into someone I like. But the thing is, I'll never like myself if I'm always striving to be someone better, and I'll always be striving to be better.

She told me to challenge the thoughts I have, the ones that say, "Your friends are all better than you because they're booking gigs or getting new jobs or buying new cars." And I thought this meant to tell those thoughts outright lies.

I'd say to them, "No, I am better than them," but I wouldn't believe it.

I'd look in the mirror and see the round shape that gathers above my hips and remember when I used to have a six pack, I'd see how my arms jiggle, and the thoughts would say "You're so ugly."

I'd tell them, "I'm beautiful." But that didn't work. I knew I was lying. And I'm not George Santos, I can't lie to myself.

So my therapist told me I don't have to think I'm beautiful. I don't have to think I'm successful or better than anyone. I don't have to complete the race to be proud of my progress. I just have to look at myself and say, "I'm okay." That has made a world of difference.

Now, when I see my friends having successes, yeah, I'm jealous. Blame my zodiac sign or whatever. But instead of thinking, "I suck because I'm not doing that," I think "I'm okay." I am satisfied by my desire to improve and that makes it so much easier to start. When I look in the mirror, I still don't like what I see, but I don't hate it anymore because I'm okay. I'm not gorgeous, I'm not as fit as I once was, and my legs are stubby beans, but I could be worse. I'm okay.

I just wanted to share that so if there's anyone else out there (maybe someone else in their early 20s like me who feels steamrolled by the world) you can try to remember that you're okay too. And that being okay isn't an acceptance of failure, but a well deserved compromise.

[sorryiapologized]

I'm actually happy today

I'd like to take a break from only posting rants when I'm stressed or upset or stuck at home with COVID. Today I'm happy, and I think I'd like to write about that.

So often happiness is seen as a weakness. I feel guilty for being happy, especially in this time when there is just so much misery. But today I'm going to just let myself be happy and present, so this is why I'm happy today.

I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop. It's Monday, and I don't like Mondays, but today I don't feel overwhelmed with my work load. My boss had the week off and now that they're back in the office they're less stressed and more chill. Our meeting this morning wasn't awful like it usually is so I don't feel completely torn down.

I ate a chocolate donut and drank a hot coffee surrounded by books this morning while I did my work. That was nice. I walked my dogs and it's warm enough to go out in just a flannel.

I'm listening to a playlist my partner made me for Valentine's Day. It's full of songs that remind them of me and our relationship. It makes me so happy to listen to each song and realize the see me this way. They always make me feel so loved. And we just spent the whole weekend together.

I cleaned out my closet yesterday. Isn't that a weird thing to be happy about. It totally took my whole day to do, it was so overwhelming and it made my apartment so dusty that my partner had to leave. But now that's it's done I feel so good. I have more space to store things, I'm excited to keep cleaning and I feel proud of myself for getting this big task that had been looming over my head for so long done.

[sorryiapologized]

Back on my capitalist bullshit

Should I just throw away social media??? Just found out that a girl that graduated with me and went into the same career field is thriving. She's been published in big magazines writing silly "fluff" articles that I would lowkey kill to write. Meanwhile I'm over here working my ass off every week to research boring and depressing news stories that I don't even want to cover for a newspaper nobody's ever heard of that might not even be around in a decade.

I just feel like I'm floundering. It feels like I can't keep my head above water. This girl is doing it. She's in New York and she's a real writer, getting published in big places, and what have I done? I've written for only one publication in the last two years and I occasionally do stand up comedy but that only ever pays in free drinks.

The little Bernie Sanders on my shoulder says not to worry about it. That this is just capitalism at play, making me feel like I'm worthless because I haven't achieved as much in my two post-grad years as this girl who I guess just knows what she wants to do. I've always been kind of a late bloomer anyways. But then there's this little Jeff Bezos demon sitting on my other shoulder whispering in my ear that I'll never be good enough, I'll never achieve my dreams or be successful. And like the rest of America, I feel compelled to listen to Jeff Bezos.