My thoughts won't grace the computer screen any easier than they will paper.  What I am feeling isn't something that is easily passed on to an audience.  It's a sadness that is hard to describe without the look of pain and emptiness in the eye of its beholder.  It's hard to examine without a chart of all the wounds that have graced my heart in the last few years.  you get stabbed in the heart enough, it's bound to break.  There are stitches, sutures, and miracle cures found through the hands of honest lovers, but nothing touches the crack that's permeating to the center of me.  Nothing can erase this pain, this loss, this emptiness.  My father is gone, but he very well may be watching over me.  It's becoming more and more apparent that my views on life, and afterlife are slightly flawed.  what I wanted to believe and what I realized I actually took to be the truth were two seperate things.  I didn't believe in god.  I didn't believe in angels or ghosts.  and now i have reality staring me invisibly in the face.  i cannot see him.  but for once i believe he is there.  he loves me.  he watches me.  and it hurts like hell that he could be inches away and i can't sense him.  i can't hear him, or smell him, or see his silhouette.  It hurts deeper now.  I need to face something.  i can feel it.  heightened perception perhaps from my life of misery, or maybe simply just negative melodramatic thought.  i live for this.  i love for him.  is he proud?
living the life he never would have wanted,
J-L

running away without a step to take

I must relate my experiences of the last few days in a flurry of disarray, and miscomprehension. Every thought has been slashed to pieces, every mind-numbing accusation has been muted to a single dull roar. My realizations of life are rather gray. My theories of the world are even more broken, than the broken days I’ve lived before. Love is not unending, it is forever. Love is not unchanging, though. Those are the two honest answers I have found in the field of lies I’m trying to sift through. Love is all consuming, and painful, and it never ends. It’s that sick sort of torture we like to bestow upon ourselves far more than we like to wish upon others. We like it, hell we love it. We feed off the feeble feelings, and we think ourselves to be invincible when we are knee deep in its aftermath. It’s the fakest fucking feeling in the entire world. It’s the biggest lie the human race has ever dreamt up. A lie that has engulfed us all so rapidly that the majority of us never find the falseness in it’s mysterious depths. I love David. I will love him until the day I die. The love is real. What I feel is the lie.
Love changes, it grows and grows until it hits that point where it can’t possible get any bigger or the fragile little bubble housing us both inside will burst. It hits that point and that is exactly where it stays. Frozen in time. Frozen in our hearts. Our hearts don’t listen though. We wait for the love to become more, to be more, to mean more. And when it doesn’t, it hurts so badly that we simply want to run. Run straight out of this safe little bubble and pop the lie we’ve been living since day one. We want to just keep going, keep running, until the pain wears off and we can be whole again. Whole…. And inevitably alone. So is this what I want? To be alone? Just the thought scares me to death.
I’ve dreamed of what my life would be since I was a little girl. I never knew what I wanted to be, but from the time Ken made his way into my Barbie’s world, I knew that’s what I wanted. I wanted a man worthy of my time. I wanted the prince from all my Disney movies, someone to sweep me off my feet and catch me each time I was about to fall. I wanted a man that would cherish me, and love me, and never be able to bear a second without me. I wanted every happy ending all those movies sold me. There would be heartbreak, I knew that. There would be sadness, and tears, and fights. I also knew that all of this would only bring us closer together. I knew that our hearts would only grow more dependent as the hard times took their toll. What I didn’t realize was that my life was no movie, I was no princess, and of all the men out there, not one of them was a prince. I also didn’t factor in human choice, and the variety that we have waiting beyond each step we take. Some from a thousand steps back, and some from a single step forward.
Where am I going with this, you know I’m not quite sure here. What I’m try to say is that love fucking changes. One day we grow up, and we realize that what we thought we wanted and what we really want are two separate things. Who we want, and who we thought we deserved from day one are not the same man. Our dreams are far more
complicated in the real grown up world than we were ever ready to realize when we watched those princes back in grade school. Life is harder than we were told to believe. There are roads, oh so many roads. There are consequences as well. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. For every decision you make, every action you take, or decide to walk away from there is a consequence. There is a what-if and a could’ve-been years down the road that you will by no means be ready for.
And that love you were so sure of. That man that you are so set and ready to marry, will make a mistake. That love will be tested. And every what-if and could’ve-been will rear it’s ugly head. It will be when you least expect it. It will come out of nowhere and slap you in face, leave a sick sensation in your stomach, and make you call someone you haven’t spoken to in far too long. It is in these moments when you find out who you really are. It is in those seconds, or minutes, or hours that you are lying in bed trying your hardest to sleep but can’t get the voices of years past out of your head, that you will find out who you are. You will know if your love is strong enough. You will know if it’s time to pack your bags and walk away.
The decision will be made, you might even get halfway out the door. You will look back, at him, and wonder how life go so fucked up so fast, and you will go running back to him. You will see that glimmer in his eye that made you make the biggest mistake of your life in the first place. And nothing else will matter. Not the lies. Not the pain. Not even the boy you think you could have loved somewhere else, in some other time. This love. This life, will mean more to you than anything in the entire world. I know the feeling. The feeling where all you want to do is walk away, maybe just to see if you can stand without him. If you can laugh without him, and cry less. I know what it’s like to want nothing more than to escape the life you are living and hope to god that you don’t ever have to come back.
What I know even better is the truth. Love is an ever-changing illusion. Happiness is too. And his, meant more to me in those 2.3 seconds that I thought I would be okay walking away than anything else. His eyes were bluer. His smile was sadder. His hair was sticking up in just the right, wrong way. I fell in love all over again. I fell for his realness this time. Not the fronts, or the sarcasm, or the hero I thought he could be. I fell for him. All my movie endings faded away, and I was left standing with simply tomorrow, and maybe the next day, and maybe even possibly the one after that. I was left with him. And all his mistakes, and all his lies. But I was okay. For one more day. And for once, that was enough.
Loving the lies, and the illusions, but hating my stupid self.

Winding, winding... bring me home

Every road is winding. Every window is cracked. Every path I seem to take, doesn’t ever lead me back. I’m disoriented, disillusioned, and entirely disguised. No one knows me, no one sees me, and unfortunately no one tries. I’m confused, and falling apart at such a speed that I’ve lost myself before I even knew the pieces were out of place. I’m a puzzle, without the edges. The song with a tune that’s not quite right. Everyone can tell, but by some grace of god, no one cares enough to listen. The world is strange in this light. Off kilter, and desolate. I don’t know where I stand, if I’m even standing. Those who were witnesses to my destruction, have wandered off. Those that loved me, continue to love me in the eternal sense, but still not the everyday. Love’s an odd concept here anyway. It’s sarcastic almost, on the edge of being serious, but not quite. We all feel it, we all make fun of it, but it’s not quite real to us either. It’s an inside joke, the very core of every reason that any of us have ever been broken in the first place. Love, the double bladed sword. Friendship, the dagger to the heart. Each inflicting a wound that will heal, scab, but never go away. Old flames will not be stifled. Old friends won’t stop grabbing the attention of my nerves. I’m been broken. I’m still breaking. And those that cracked me to begin with haven’t even noticed their impact on my life. That’s what hurts the most, I think, when so many can walk away without a thought. When so-called family can forget you. The wounds are all there. And if my father could see us all today he’d shake his head in remorse. We’ve fallen apart without him, let ourselves be spread across the country, soon to be across the world, without a second thought. We are here, we are there, but none of us are together. It’s strange sometimes to look back on mere years, and think it only minutes, or on the other extreme, think it to be centuries. I’ve lost all memory of him, most of it anyway. His smell has been lost with the smell of the one I love. His laugh has been caught in the winds of time. And his voice, his voice was silenced a single month after his passing. I fear he has disappeared from this world entirely, his mark never making it past his forever tainted eldest child. I remember him, everything he stood for, but nothing he actually was. He loved country music, but I’ve forgotten the tune he used to always hum. He was a fantastic cook, but his recipes were lost in his jumbled memory those last few years. He was… my father. He was normal. He was also broken. So maybe that’s what’s living on in me. His brokenness. His inability to be complete. Always searching, always failing, always wondering what else this world has to offer. He wasn’t fantastic, he didn’t change the world. He wasn’t a saint by any means. But he was a good father. He loved me. And the thing that hurts the worst is that in my times of trouble, I can’t call on him. On the days when nothing in the world makes sense he can’t tell me to shut the hell up and keep going. He’s not here to tell me to stop being a fucking little girl and just grow up. He’s not here to look me in the eye and tell me that I can be better, that there are better things in the world than misery. And I have a feeling that his voice is the only one my heart and soul answer to. Tell me, where the hell am I supposed to go when no one else’s words matter, and his are gone?
Forever listening for the words of wisdom that were caught on his last breath.

today's fears, tomorrow's repercussions

A new day dawns, with an old heartache. A new month begins, with the same distance that engulfed me the month before. A distance, not measurable my centimeters, inches, feet, or even miles. This distance I speak of is metaphorical, psychological, in all accounts, not distance, just merely difference. This is a distance from me, from who I really am, and who I’ve become as each monotonous day has dulled me. Who am I, if I am not who I thought myself to be before? And when exactly is before? Before what? I can’t remember a day that marked this change, I can’t pinpoint a minute, or even a second in time where I lost myself. It happened suddenly, and yet so slowly. I am not who I always was, nor am I the person I am meant to be. I’m stuck in the in-between. I’m striving to be this person, this professional, this adult. I’m being forced by society to fulfill this role, that I’m still not sure I believe in. I find so many cracks in the ideas that I’m supposed to fulfill that I’m not sure that I want to be that person anymore. Go to high school, graduate, go to college, and start over. Why? Take the same classes every other psych major takes, and become a brilliant psychologist. A brilliantly normal, and by all accounts identical psychologist. We’re sheep fulfilling the criteria of the professional. I don’t want to be a fucking sheep. I have my own ideas about people. We don’t all fit into this criteria we’re forced to judge sanity by. If I were to measure myself on the scale of mental illness, I doubt they’d allow me to pass my judgment on to others. A self-diagnosis I’ve revamped day by day as my symptoms worsen to the point of breaking. Dependent, fearful of rejection, introverted, highly distractible, unable to develop concrete goals…. In all reality, a completely normal, yet uniquely complicated college student still getting a handle on the world that is changing more and more everyday. I learn what I have to, I do what I’m told, and I turn around and the world is different. I went to grade school learning Pluto was a planet for Christ’s sakes, my child years from now will look at me like some moron when I tell them that. “Pluto isn’t a planet, mom, don’t be a dummy.” I can just hear it now. Professor’s spew data like it’s scientific proof of the world, but it’s not. Today’s facts, are tomorrow’s faux-pas moments. We have no idea what tomorrow holds, we can barely uncover the truths of today, or even a thousand years past. Dinosaurs were rendered extinct millions of years ago, and we have yet to uncover a single clue. People die of unknown causes every few minutes, and we don’t even bat an eyelash. The future will slap us in the face one of these days, and all we’ll be able to say is that the red mark that ensued resembled very closely a human hand of today. So where does this leave me? In between. All I have yet to figure is in between what? Will I be the perfect psychologist my degree is molding me into? Will I continue down this path, the path a thousand others have taken, and are taking with me? Or will I stray? Will I find who I really am? Some days I wonder if I even want to know who I am, who I was, or who I’m supposed to be. Life confuses me, death confuses me. Things were so easy in the beginning. Friends were plentiful, family was tight, life was sunny. Twenty years later I look back and wonder how to survive without all that. Without a father, or a best friend, or a proper family. I wonder if life matters without them. I wonder if anything will ever matter as much as things did back then. Everyday I search for my answer. Everyday I get a little more frustrated about the world, and myself. The lights dim, as day turns to night, and the thoughts intensify. The nights are the hardest.
Tonight is the worst. His arms are not around me, though they will be when my head hits that pillow. He loves me, with everything he is, and I know that. I am absolutely sure of his devotion to be with me for the rest of our lives. I tell him I wouldn’t but if he asked me this second to marry him, I wouldn’t hesitate. He would never leave me. And yet, I hear myself each time he tries to leave. I hear the crack in my voice as I choke back the tears, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me. I try to quiet my fears, that he’s not going where he tells me he is, even though I have no doubt in my mind that that is exactly where he is. I’m just afraid, terrified by all accounts that I’m not enough. I never was enough. Everyone leaves, everyone made excuses, and everyone always told me they loved me. So how do I stop this? How do I believe that he’s not going to end up like all the rest of them? I bore them. I don’t do anything spectacular. I can do math at an unrealistically fast speed in my head, but there are geniuses that can do it better. I can write a well-developed paper for class in about an hour and get an A. I can study for 10 minutes and pass my final exam like I will tomorrow morning. I can read disgustingly fast, which allows me to always, always finish first, but only turn my paper in second, because I’m a little unsure of myself. I’m not special. I’m not different. I’m not who he thinks I am. That’s what scares me the most on these nights, that he’s finally realized I’m not that girl he has in his head anymore. I’m not that writer anymore, or that genius, or that fantastic cook. I burn toast, I can’t flip pancakes, I can’t form a coherent sentence half the time I try to write anymore. I’ve spelled 7 words wrong in the last 2 sentences I’ve tried to write. I’m falling apart. I’m disintegrating at a rate so fast that I might lose myself before I can tell him any of this. I’m just so fucking lost. I need my best friend, both of them. No matter how broken he is, or how busy and still somehow disappointed in me she is. I need them. I need a glimpse of what was in order to keep going towards what will be. I’m broken, and bleeding, and no one’s holding the wound anymore. No one is dealing with me anymore. No one cares. And it hurts more that I ever thought it would. Numbness is appealing in situations like today.
I hope that one day I can get over these ridiculous fears. That one day, or year, or month from now I can be okay. I hope it happens gradually, and shows up all of a sudden, just like how I got here. I hope this in between will disappear exactly as it came, without recognition. I do not want to remember these days. They are monotonous, tear filled, and hard to swallow. The one sadness that only strengthens when you try to drink it away. It tries to choke you, and drown you in everything you can’t be. This world is fucked up like that, it tries to kill you in the most ridiculous fashions. It tries to kill you on the inside, so the person on the outside dies as well. I won’t let that happen. I used to love who I was, what I stood for. I don’t stand for anything right now, I can barely stand on my own to be honest. I’m tired of it. I’m scared of it, and it’s going to change as soon as I can find a breath of reason.
So fuck the world’s ideas of what I should be, because tomorrow, they’ll only want me to be something different anyway

Running Away, or simply being run over?

It's one of those days.  Not again, though, just still.  I'm stuck in this place where I don't know where to go and I don't know what to feel.  I don't even know if I can justly explain the emotions swirling inside my heart.  Maybe that's my problem.  My emotion has settled inside my heart, and my head can't make sense of it.  My heart and head are unattached, growing still, but separately.  My heart's growth seems to be stunted, a step behind everything my brain and body is telling it to do.  The step is more like a mile.  A milestone.  A moment in time, I can't get past.
If there's a song that describes this state of mind I can't place what it is, who sang it, or when I heard it.  I know it exists though.  There is a song that I want blast from my car radio driving down the highway without a destination.  There's a song out there that I know would tell me exactly where to go right now.  And I can't past the feeling that I just want to get away.  Anywhere but here, never seemed so true as in this moment.  Everytime I'm in my car driving, I have to stifle the feeling to just keep driving.  I've never been here before.  I've never needed to just escape everyone and everything.  And I'm not sure that it is that drastic.  Maybe I just need a break.  From life. 
 I just want to get in the car with my boyfriend and never stop driving until I end up somewhere and know exactly why I started driving in the first place.  There is a place, out there somewhere.  It's a place where I'll feel again.  It's a place where my heart can heal, and my head will finally clear.  It's out there.  I feel it.  It's humming in the back of my head, it's drawing me nearer to the edge everyday.  Do I jump?  Do I drive?
 That's the hardest part of the journey of life, knowing when to silence those feelings, and when to follow them wherever they may lead.  I think I just need to drop everything and not look back this time. 
 My biggest fear is that when I actually get to this place, when i follow my heart ignoring the consequences, that I'll end up in a land far darker and harder to navigate than the one I'm in now.  I'm afraid I'll get all my answers, and it's all the things I never wanted to hear.  I know what I'm searching for, and I know what I'm hoping for, but the truth is... no matter where I end up, he's not going to be there when I arrive.
He's not going to be standing on the edge of some nameless town, pointing to the reason I've been driving for hours, days, more precisely years.  He won't be driving next to us on the highway, no matter how broken down or how disgustingly maroon that Chevy truck is.  That long haired man with the ballcap and  flannel shirt on isn't him.  And it won't be his driveway we break down in.  Because someone else is driving his faithful truck with his smell still embedded in every inch of the interior.  Someone else is sleeping in his bed.  Someone else parks in his driveway.  Someone else's kids curl up in those bedrooms.  I know where he isn't.  And as much as I don't want to admit it, I know where he is as well.
 It's cold there, and dark, and bottomless.  And the fact that it slices a dagger through my heart to enter a world where this place is a reality, isn't fair.  If memories could kill, I would be in critical condition.
 Does he know?  Can he see?  is it his voice in my head urging me to just drive?  and if it is, what is he trying to tell me find?  I can't make myself believe that it's him.  but i can't turn the thoughts off.  My brain won't stop.
 I can't sleep anymore.  he's everywhere.  he's everything.  He's every reason I ever ration.  he's overtaking, and it hurts.  it just hurts.  which makes me want to run.  That used to be my answer to everything, just run away, leave it all behind.  Don't even pack a bag, just go, and when you get there you'll know.  You can build your life back together, and everything will be okay, but for some reason I can't even make myself believe that.  Everything will not be okay, ever.  I cant save myself
 but i can run...

...someone catch me,
Jenny Leigh

My Face of Darkness

Middle of the road,
center of the highway,
waiting for traffic to come
and sweep my worries away.

Ventilators are far easier
than trying to find reasons for every breath.
In, out, in, out, in,
hold it until you burst.
Brighten the walls if not the world.

Some say I’m depressive,
I prefer antagonistic.
Try to outdo me.
I dare you to loathe the world
as much as I wish I could love it.

We’re opposites, attracting,
and it’s about time you realized
We’ll lose interest before
We ever figure all this out.

Broken, blistered,
healed, and tainted.
But still wishing on the stars
that have already burned out.

Ever notice the ones that burn the brightest
are the first to fade away?
I was bright once too,
that’s what they’ll say.

What they won’t tell you,
is how I got here.
You’ll learn though.
This road, it’s contagious,
and you may not know it yet,
but you’re only a few twists and turns away.

Life’s ironic like that,
you just have to learn to laugh.
Laugh at the heartaches,
the losses, the pain,
and maybe someday it’ll give up.

Life gave up on me a long time ago,
I have a slight case of ignorance
So this is me holding on,
this is me not letting go.

This is me in the truest, barest,
most disgustingly honest hues.
The truth may be ugly,
but from far away I look beautiful.

The scars are minute,
the darkness shadows all truth,
and you’d come running
if you ever saw the paths I took.

They’re beautiful, and dangerous,
and in the end you’ll see
why your darkest moments,
Are equally as enlightening.

If you can look in the mirror
and accept your face of darkness,
I applaud you.
I can barely manage to glance at mine.

I'm the splenda in your sickeningly sugar-coated world

Who am I to assume that my fucked up existence even matters in this world? Who am I to judge what will one day prove to be important? I’m nobody… but in the same respect I am somebody. I am a blip on the radar, a face in the crowd, but I’m different. I feel this fact every single day. I don’t fit in, and I used to hate that fact, now it’s simply there. I don’t know why, but I think it was supposed to be this way. I was supposed to be different, not better, simply different. It’s kind of like sugar and splenda. I’m the splenda, but even though I’m “healthy”, someday they’ll discover that I’m only slowly killing you. I wish my mind would work. This life is getting me closer and closer to the nowhere I’m destined to end up in. Middle of the road, center of the highway, waiting for traffic to come and sweep my worries away. Ventilators are far easier than trying to find reasons for every breath. In, out, in, out, in… hold it until you burst. Brighten the walls if not the world. Some say I’m depressive, I prefer antagonistic. I’m out to show the world that they’re happier than at least one billionth of the population. Try to outdo me, I dare you to loathe the world as much as I wish I could love it. We’re opposites, attracting, and it’s about time you realized we’ll never figure all this out. Broken, blistered, healed, and tainted. But still wishing on the stars that have already burned out. Ever notice the ones that burn the brightest are the first to fade away? I was bright once too… that’s what they’ll say. I was full of life, and reason, and goals. What they won’t tell you is how I got here. You’ll learn though. This road, it’s contagious, and you may not know it yet, but you’re only a few twists and turns away. Life’s ironic like that, you just have to learn to laugh. Laugh at the heartaches, the losses, the pain, and maybe someday it’ll give up. Life gave up on me a long time ago, too bad I’m more stubborn than anyone realized. This is me holding on, this is me not letting go. This is me in the truest, barest, most disgustingly honest hues. The truth is ugly, but from far away I look beautiful. The scars are minute, the darkness shadows all truth, and you’ll come running if you ever see the paths I mistakenly took. They’re beautiful, and dangerous, and in the end you’ll see why your darkest moments show you who you truly are. If you can look in the mirror and accept your face of darkness, I applaud you. I can barely manage to glance at mine.