08.01.17

I feel like I’ve lost a few best friends in the span of a few short years and it sucks.

One of them disappeared from my life, one of them made me say “enough is enough” and one of them kind of just drifted away.

Thinking about this makes me sad, because I can still taste the honey-golden sweetness of every reckless summer night – the feel of water against naked skin, a day when every chance encounter led to almost perfect bliss, hysterical, senseless laughter over something that was nothing at all, every teary-eyed secret, every quiet heartbreak, every whispered name – all those little adventures that punctuated our lives and wrapped us ever-closer together.

I spent my whole life believing things like that were invincible, but people can surprise you, and things can quickly change.

07.28.17

I was reading old blogposts and wondering about truths and untruths, and about the words I weaved together to tell myself stories – but about what? Things as they were? Things as I thought they were? Or things as I wanted them to be?

This is the drawback of memory and time, coupled with the ever-shifting headspaces and emotional landscapes that mark the territories of our lives.

07.26.17

I feel like I’m constantly waiting for something – like I keep making excuses to not be doing the things that I’m meant to do. “I have to find another job first,” or “I need more spare time,” or “I need the right equipment” when every speck of sunshine is just waiting for me to reach out and take it.

But I guess I’ve always loved the night.

All those sleepy hour, moonlit walks with my headphones in my ears and some melancholy song coursing its way through my reveries. I’ve always had a penchant for melodrama - I’ve always wanted to play the part of the tortured visionary, shackled and waiting for forces beyond his control to grant him every wish and pave a golden road. Teary-eyed and hopeful, but resigned to the current state of things – the “this too shall pass” stage of life. But it never passes. And it won’t. It’s not an active thing. I must do the passing. 

01.30.18

A boy sits next to me and we watch TV and sometimes our limbs graze half-accidentally. I feel warm, and I feel okay, and even though I’m trying to take care of myself and to protect all those delicate things, I can’t help but be swept into his orbit. He compels me and draws me near him, and I find myself thinking about him throughout the day, besides my better judgment.

Every night I tell myself I need space, and every morning I wait for him to say hello, and by the time the sun sets, I wonder all over again about the things that might be but aren’t, and the things that could be but won’t. And I always feel stupid for feeling more than I should, but at least I’m aware of the issue. I know of all these games and traps, but the thrill of them consumes me – the sheer possibility of a life made fuller by some mess of a broken boy.

12.27.17 – cont. 

You feel like crying when you finally step out of the haze, because you know you’ve lost something in it that you’ll never get back, and some things that happen simply can’t be undone.

Something has changed, and when you feel it you force yourself to say goodbye to something that never was but maybe could have been, and perhaps this was all in your head, but the thought of it breaks your heart anyway. 

It was in a clothing store, I think, where I caught your ghost again, lingering somewhere in the air with a face I can’t quite remember.

You gave me a shirt that morning - the morning I stayed - so I wouldn’t have to walk in shame, and I still have it.

I found it lying in a pile of dirty laundry the other night and I pressed it against my face and it smelled like you - stale cigarette smoke, something musky and effortlessly protective, endlessly comforting.

And I sat on my bed, just like that, with your shirt in my arms, awash in your scent and absorbed in a world of whatcouldhavebeens.