Friday, October 18, 2013

You Know Who You Are...

Oh, my psychoanalyst friend is really trying to get me in trouble...I don't know how to say the words I need to. I wish I could be brave, let you see my vulnerable side, and tell you...everything. God knows I am a coward when it comes to you. God knows you scare me shitless. I want to be so perfect for you, so wonderful that you can't possibly ever say no to me. Here it goes, and I hope, like I think you do, that you read this, because I am too afraid to text you or email you. I don't have Erik this time to pep talk me into sending you another email,  who is so sure that you want me too. Good kid, he is. I am too afraid to say it to your face, and I am sorry for that. You deserve better, a brazen beauty that I have only ever written about. Please forgive me if this isn't what you want to hear. I only think you should know...


A quarter after one in the morning, like the song, and I toss in my bed,
pacing from my covers to my computer, to write about love that other people have,
thinking about the one I want to have.
It hurts, being so far from you.
My mornings starts with thoughts of you.
My slumber starts with your face teasing me,
but it is never a perfect likeness, though I know the face I see
is meant to be yours.
I strain to remember how you inflect the words you say,
elusive syllables that I once mocked mercilessly.

I miss your smell, clean and male and subtle enough to draw me in.
I miss your voice, mellow and strong.
I miss your eyes, two storms on the edge of the sea.
I miss hearing your singular footsteps behind me, the knowing of precisely who approaches.
I miss your laugh, my reward, my cookie, for being witty.
Most of all, I miss the way you look at me,
as if I was the only woman you'd ever seen before.
Maybe it was a lie, a figment of my imagination, but others saw it too.
They saw the light in your heart for me
and sang your praises to me, furthering my admiration.

I tried, I promise. I tried so hard not to love you.
From the beginning, it was a losing war I fought desperately.
I cried endlessly, for fear that I was walking into a trap,
and I would have to forsake my heart again in order to walk away.
But, for every doubt, you countered me,
setting my weary, restless mind at ease.
You saw through me, like a glass rose ready to shatter, and you saw that too.
So you withheld from me, fearing just as much as I.

No words can express my gratitude
for how well you have guarded my heart from yourself.
I ask, no more. Let me say the words I need to tell you.
Let me, please, tell you how I miss you,
and how much I need to see your face again
Please, please, let me tell you that I need you,
that every day away from you is a sin and a mistake.
Every day is a countdown to the joy of return.
I miss you, son of the earth.
Let me come back to you.
Let me find a love in you.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Advocacy: Stop Trying to be Who You Aren't

Life is hard. When we are young and naive, we don't need to put up walls. Our only defenses are our parents and our teachers who look after our own well-being. We are immune to the effects of tragedy far away, and we are too young to understand tragedy close to home. then we grow up, and we begin to comprehend the world around us.

That is when we start building our fortresses.

A friend of mine thought it prudent to psychoanalyze me one night. I wonder if it was just because he saw my pain and wanted me to know it is okay. I haven't felt pain in a while - just numbness and refusal to register the lack of emotion I feel for most anyone at this point in time. I will be the first to admit that I read like an open book. I am not hard to figure out. I am, for the most part, as transparent as anyone can get. For this reason, I make a very terrible liar.

I stood at the counter of the desk that he works, downstairs in our residence hall, and he sat at the desk, watching me as he listed off so many things I didn't believe were obvious. It scared the shit out of me. For all my armor against the world, it does me no good when people can see me for what I truly am: a romantic, a girl who desires love and who desires to give love tantamount to that which she receives, a girl who is afraid of making connections, but doesn't want to be...how did he know all this?

I kept my brave face on as he continued, but I knew in my heart that once I was alone, I would break down. So I did. All that effort, all those prickly barbs I had grown to shield myself, they were all for nothing. They were nothing more than a waste of time. I still am the naive little girl with rose-tinted glasses, praying for someday to meet someone to share a life with, and despite trying to groom myself to be otherwise, it has all been in vain.

The point in all this? You can't change who you are. However, you can learn to do with that person what is best for you. God knows how I am going to make this work for me, but I will try...

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

At Least Derek Kilmer Has Vowed to Refuse His Pay

To the crackpots in Congress: thanks, guys. Now I can't do my Earth System Science lab because you couldn't get it together. Now the NOAA, NASA, USGS, and all those other websites we use for our work book are down. Don't worry. My teacher is scrambling to figure something out for us. And, hey, once you get your rears in gear, you can send my dad a big bonus for being cool about you cutting his employment. Oh, and I didn't need that government money for school anyways, so its cool if you lay off all those people who would be taking care of my application. You guys are stellar.

WTF?!?!?!?

Come on, guys! How hard is it to be real human beings for once? How hard is it to look for a good compromise? Stop sticking to your party lines, stop worrying about getting re-elected next year, because at this rate, I don't think it will happen anyways. People cannot live off of their savings for long. People cannot just stop using money. For one thing, we just got out of the Great Recession. We don't need a new one. For another thing, it will come, one way or another, to bite you in the ass.

Good luck getting re-elected. The only one of you who will is Derek Kilmer, and that is because he is giving up his pay until Congress gets back on track. Meanwhile, I am going to continue fuming and wait for everything to cool off while I look for a new job...something that has absolutely nothing to do with the government shutdown.

Opposites Attract...And Then the Relationship Commits Seppuku

As I gradually make more friends here in Bozeman, and my view of the people here goes from rose-tinted to dark and angry, and gradually lightens again, my world rocks once more with drama. DRAMA, DRAMA, DRAMA.

I will be the first to admit that I am not very emotionally available. There is one person of non-blood relation to me who has ever gotten past my walls, and he is two states away and doing his best to forget me, which is fine...because I need less people to count on, I guess. This leads to a very flighty, flaky individual who gets nervous when the progression of a relationship takes off at speeds that move too fast for her to examine the person she is interacting with appropriately. My latest realization: not only does my new friend attract drama, but she creates it as well, and it is annoying as shit. The best part: the more she makes, the more inclined I am to retreat into myself.

As much as I appreciate how welcome she made me feel, I do not need a rerun of my last "great" friendship - a big cluster of "I love you"s and a whole vat of passive aggressive remarks from one party to the other (me) to result in me feeling like I am insignificant, like my feelings are insignificant, and like the whole world of details that I forwent in the process of going with the flow are greater than the sum of the whole. Does that logic seem a little unsound to you too? It does to me. And I am female, last I checked, so, despite crazy coming with the territory, I am left feeling like the calmer, less unsettled party.

Sometimes, Letting Go is Best

Rush of water - you get caught up.
You get caught up in flows and flux that you don't know the end to.
You think it is fun. You think that it's a game to play.
But when we hit the wall, and the water falls from beneath us,
you will cry for help.
How can I help you
when I'm drowning just the same as you.?
Why do you shout at me, looking for attention,
when I am swept up in currents too strong
to swim against, to catch you and save you from yourself?

You wanted this - you yearned for the thrill of new faces,
new experiences, someone to give you vent.
Now we're headed to the cannery,
and you claim I held the gun, safety off, trigger loose.
Did you look at the fingerprints? They look like yours,
but they could be mine.
Still, I wasn't drunk enough to forget.
I wasn't the one who wanted to chase white rabbits down black holes.
I wasn't the one who pushed the boat into white waters.