umbrellafree

[umbrellafree]

maybe in another life

you get to arrange sound how you like

even though you can’t see how you light

up when your song is on,

“You’re like a different person,”

lucid, linear, with logic and reason.

Times when I wonder

if the you I remember

was truly ever,

then you resurface,

friend that I miss,

please stay like this.

You don’t get to choose

how I’ll cry at your use,

abuse of blow and booze,

white lines of white lies

so I only see you wasted and high,

and you insist you’d rather die

and you will - anyway;

should I watch without a say?

Not that you’ll ever be swayed.

So do something different or don’t.

[umbrellafree]

At the wedding I was just at, my friend’s dad officiated and went to give a little speech during the reception; he started by saying we should acknowledge and give respect to the grandparents and everyone cheered for the grandparents present and then he said “there’s one grandparent who couldn’t be here today” and his voice broke and went all squeaky; he’s like a 6’6 or something army vet; and he covered his face and took many tries to compose himself and his voice never went back to normal and when he came back to the table he wept for a few moments in his hands. It was his mom who couldn’t be there and his wife, my friend’s mom, and Hope, my friend’s wife and mom of their toddler, they both went to comfort him, and I said gesturing to the women, “What a testament to the power of motherhood,” and they both said some variation of “I hope my kids miss me like that some day” and I felt heavy because I don’t know how to explain that I won’t miss my mom and I also already do and have for a long time ; so idk I want to see her and I really don’t; haha I’m connecting your comment about you dating emotionally unavailable men with my constant ambivalence in relationships

[umbrellafree]

I am so lonely without you.

[umbrellafree]

There will always be this story:

Somebody hurt me,

Will you do the same?

It will repeat and gain strength.

It does not get undone.

Shall it indefinitely

Grow inside me

And keep me from you?

No,

I am a variable.

[umbrellafree]

Where did I go

Who am I looking for

Will I know her

If I meet her

Is she waiting

Or is she gone

I had a dream I was sitting at a table with friends. Someone named Abby, I knew her briefly years ago from summer camp, we weren’t close, but she had a specific way of grinning. I don’t remember who else was there. I poured my grief and fear out. I apologized. Someone said, “That’s just the way it goes. You feel it, and you feel it, and you have to keep moving; one day at a time, the feelings will change.”

People come and go. People stick and fade. I wonder what arrives and leaves from me, what stays or is forgotten - I mean I wonder how to be a person, not just a setting, a sticker sheet, a collector. It’s not that my connections are a collection as in possessions, but that I struggle to understand my agency.

What do you mean not everything is about you, how it is like you or unlike you, how I am at a loss for opinions that I’m sure are wholly mine.

I’ve done this before, recorded thoughts that feel insurmountable at a time, only to look back later and no longer relate, only hold my past self with some mix of sympathy and pity. Is that hope? That one day I become a stranger to today?

Even strangers are people. I hope to find out what kind of person I am.

[umbrellafree]

When a dog bit me in the thigh I insisted I was already late to work, I couldn’t go to the ER. Then it was, okay so you’re telling me I must go, its ok I’ll drive myself (but let me text my coworker). Then, in the passenger seat of my friend’s sedan, oh, it hurts, a lot!

He said I’m slow to be honest with myself when something bad happens to me. It was the first time it was told to me so clearly, and I truly understood it, but that doesn’t mean I remember it when I need to.

Five years before, I was ready when the police came, clothes folded neatly and hugged to my chest, shoes dangling from my finger, I even greeted them in the hallway from the top of the stairs. It wasn’t time to go yet, they wanted to have a look around my apartment. “That proves something happened to you,” said the woman I’d grown accustomed to calling ‘My Best Friend’ since 6th grade. There we were on opposite sofas, much like I remembered being on opposite ends of her old twin sized bed, she had happily married and their rental home was adorable; “You don’t ask for help like that.” In some way I already knew and in some way this felt new. I became shocked at my own eagerness back at my apartment and then I grieved.

Last night I paralyzed myself with the knowledge that someone who had done something so painful to me had also been of great help to me, had also cooked food with me, shared laughs with me; of course I didn’t see it coming; of course I anger at my naïveté, question my softness - I wanted to preserve something sweet in myself but perhaps I have instead stagnated in vulnerability! I wonder if there is something I fundamentally misunderstood about human connection, and if so how do I correct it?

It’s slow, how it sinks in, how it rose up, how I sink still, how it leaks out. Are these different methods of honesty with myself? Slow to be honest with myself when something bad happens. Something bad.

On November 13, 2023, I was assaulted, again. Again. I told people, but not as many this time, not as quick this time, last time taught me better, their blame still stamped in my brain. But again, the defense stand. The interrogations. Same thoughts, different word choices:

Emily: He didn’t make you drink. He didn’t make you go out lol/Skyler: He didn’t twist your arm.

It’s not worth quoting and recording every severely injurious response and how they are burningly comparable. And the differences, they sting too! There is no Colton. There was no demand for proof the first time, no accusations of unfaithfulness.

Oh, is this what Connor meant when he connected my guilt to recent events? I didn’t understand how they were related. I have renewed appreciation for how Colton supported me, and with it renewed guilt for how I was difficult for him.

It hurts. It hurts.

I’m trying to do better, be better, so I don’t have to carry comparable regrets into my next future. I don’t want to be hard. I don’t want to fight. But I’m also no longer sure I can protect my softness, or if I should. I feel I’m in danger by the nature of my desire to accept others. I feel at the inevitable mercy of either others’ opportunism or skepticism, or my own loss of principle. I feel lost in so many ways.

[umbrellafree]

when I would rather eviscerate need

where we gather obliterates me

can hardly fathom soul surgery

tear asunder fused journeys

feeble stumbles fearful, weak

sleepless wrenching, gritting teeth

what remains in rubbles, grief

pertains to past explicitly

“it” forbidden memories

split twin burdens heavily

witness wanted readily

won’t you hear this, this fully

can I bear this, this solely

how to breathe

with the ghost of lungs,

legs left behind,

slowly folding

fingers to palm -

mine;

my own power -

find?

[umbrellafree]

Here

Is a good place to be

The Aurora of my

Closed eyes

You sigh

Asleep

[umbrellafree]

Why did I say

Wait

When I meant

Hurry

(and sometimes I say hurry when I need wait)

[umbrellafree]

Keep something to yourself not because something is wrong or others can’t be let in One way to start trusting yourself It’s safe to tell yourself and only yourself You can be trusted to be the one to know Especially about yourself You can stop cornering yourself into being forced to confirm the danger of others because that is familiar and every prediction is an addiction You can Choose well for yourself For Yourself Try And Remember I don’t have to love everyone

[umbrellafree]

If I asked you

What are we alive for

You would say

I don’t know either, Julie

I am not a whole

Person

[umbrellafree]

I don’t have to wonder what if but unfortunately I get to know that the state of Indiana will keep my stuff but let him go.

[umbrellafree]

heard about your spine miss the spikes of it would you believe you’re beautiful wishing you’d spare your hair or spell it out for me to receive or maybe we might share a chair or see a show or give up some guilt and get down with glee training me to receive gag after gag after gash on my leave bleeding please I said please I screamed peel back the person I used to be not just be used fused refused or your muse but a mouse swear you’re not mad or maybe we were many more things and much less missing

[umbrellafree]

we watch the moon grow fat like feelings fed full moon full month full loop red hoop rising rosy ring face filled with holes far from fear finding me here finite resource of real love fail rough feign run fade right find wrong with me something wrong with me something wrong with

[umbrellafree]

palm of my hand, branch

tangled leg, wave along

me; tree;

stab my own hand, sand

mangled flesh, pave upon

sea; heave;

moon over land, can

wrangle death, save above

be; leave;

nails in my hand, damned

dangled depths, gave one

belief.

[umbrellafree]

I miss my tumor.

[umbrellafree]

I feel like we’re the first people, in a garden, in a way. I feel like everything is new and I don’t know who I am but I know I’m here for you and that is right. I feel like we must have come from each other’s ribs. I mean that we are made of the same Stuff. I mean that I might not have quit believing in God if I had met you sooner, because the Start of his whole story is Adam and Eve in love, Adam and Eve breaking it for the rest of us; either love isn’t real or it was and we have no hope; what meaning did the rest of the story have? The Book said I had a Savior so I shouldn’t need a Person, but god I wanted you. And if God was real he would conspire to give me you, if only because letting me meet you was letting me meet love, which I’m told suits his goals in the end. I mean I want to be in this world with you. I mean even if we ate an apple that broke the universe, I would still reach out for your hand. It’s the hand that was made to fit mine. It’s the hand that was made to touch me with all the care I always craved. It’s the hand that feels like a prayer on my form. A prayer I can answer myself, with myself. “Amen” means “Let it be so” and before you I thought that was solemn, dooming; but now all I want is to let us be so.

I mean that I love you.

And I think I can dare to think that I love you more than Adam and Eve loved each other. Because their suffering came after their love, but our love came after our suffering.

I mean that you’re my person.

And when I say I love you, it isn’t the anxious call begging for a response that it used to be. I say I love you to My Person and My Person simply is and My Person loves me back and that just Is and we just Are “in love,” as in encased, surrounded, contained by, within; if god is love then thank god for you and the Body we are blessed to be cells in; the one who is quoted as saying “I am that I am,” and I love whom I love, and it’s you in so many ways.

One time I asked someone I don’t even know very well, “How do you know when you’re in love?” And he said, “You just know,” and I thought that was thoughtless, but I do just know with you, and that is by a great measure of thought.