{ let it all out now }

i think you know
we waited too long, now i have to go
i don't know why
we break so hard

last night, driving home, both hands gripping the wheel
i thought i don't think i've ever been this sad about anything
(not even being let go and forgotten all those times)
and i felt so helpless and infuriated and silly,
trying to keep the car on the road while i caught my breath,
choking on disappointment and injustice and death.

//

i feel on the verge of snapping lately, everything so sharply and urgently in focus that i can't process it. everything pressing in, needing me, now. i feel squarely in touch with myself --- what i need and want --- and how starkly that compares to what the world is and needs and wants from me. it's liberating and jarring and terrifying, realising i'm at odds with so much. how big a misfit i am. all my life i wanted to fit in: i dreamed of having blonde hair and blue eyes, stick-like limbs, gap jeans, spray-on deodorant, doc martens. how little it all matters now, how i wish i could've understood how profoundly all that is for shit in the end. how much more it mattered that i was hard-working and had deeply private thoughts and loved to read and felt things so strongly even if my body never gave those feelings away. 

i'm sitting here with tears running down my face thinking of all that time and energy wasted wishing i was anything other than what i was. i wish i could go back and tell my younger self to get started learning how to listen to and accept myself instead of trying (and failing) to measure up to the flimsy vanilla standard being perpetually shoved into my face (that i swallowed thirstily, to be fair). it was agonizing not to look like the popular girls or wear the right clothes back then. i've always felt like an ugly duckling, the odd one out, so crudely rendered compared to the much-more-desirable caucasian woman. i think i will always feel that way. and any attention i get i meet warily, since i've only ever been of use to men in their attempts to get to my friends.

the damages that are done,

the damages i facilitated.

the aftermath.

so much to undo all the internal harm.

//

i've almost stopped browsing social media entirely --- i post to it, but i try not to peruse it. doing so tends to water all kinds of ugly seeds in my prickly soul, and i learned this in a devastating way after a breakup. thing is, i'm a bit of a masochist, so sometimes the worse something makes me feel, the more i do it (revisiting an ex's profile with newly-posted photos of his honeymoon? count me in). and although i'm a reasonably disciplined person 93% of the time, the other 7% of the time i'm a first-rate binger. so the easiest thing for me to do is stay off something altogether than randomly allow myself to hop on every once in awhile, only to emerge 2 hours later with absolutely nothing meaningful added to my life, feeling like shit.

that being said, every once in awhile the chutes and ladders of social media lead me to something that does add meaning to my life. i recently stumbled upon audrey rogers. her style and gorgeous images attracted my attention, but her thoughts kept my interest. in particular, the ones shared below:

Time – now that is something to really concern ourselves with. We don’t have an endless amount, we are all going to one day die and yet we still choose to spend entire hours of our existence internally insulting and abusing ourselves. We must be fools.

--- for full blog post, go here

woke up this morning, hating every bone in my body, tugging at clothes that all felt too tight. no matter how lovely we might look to anyone else, we all, as women, tend to prefer we believe we look completely vile. it's so sad, so terribly sad how easy our self confidence is grabbed from us on an almost daily basis. I do everything I can to resist, but still somehow falter sometimes. And so here I am, having a fucking great time in nothing more than a very tight bodice, because it's all part of the fight. Fighting to love yourself - it's incredibly hard, but to not struggle, to not resist, to not fight - well that's for the weak. And we as women are strong. We deserve to find that strength in life - the strength to love our thighs or countless freckles or round stomachs and to proudly flaunt them in any which way we prefer. One day, my body will no longer be walking this earth - I refuse to spend the days I have here internally insulting the skin I live in. Life is just too short for that shit, really, way way way too short.
--- for a beautiful, thought-provoking instagram feed, go here

//

i disappoint people. i can become reclusive. that deeply-feeling soul i've been struggling to manage all my life is sometimes easily bruised. and when it is, i am angry with myself for being so damn sensitive. so i hide. you'd think all this self-awareness would help me recognize when all this is occurring and not withdraw, but that's like saying if a turtle knows it's green, it should be able to stop itself being green. i haven't quite figured out how to fix my tendency to bruise easily and i'm not quite sure it's something i need to fix. i have attachment issues that originate with being given up as an infant and passed through the arms of strangers for the first several months of my life. it's not an excuse, it's my reality. and i'm trying to come to terms with it so i can have constructive relationships. but the reality of life is that people leave. they get married, they move away, they get busy. and we can be far away from the people we sleep next to, the people we value the most, the people we can't and don't want to live without. we can be far away from ourselves, for fuck's sake. being near to things is not easy (not for me). i have lost many along the way who wanted to be nearer, i have hurt them, they have tried very hard and still not gotten close.

i am sorry.
know that i'm struggling with it too. every day.

//

do you ever feel like just being alive means
you could be accused
of having bitten off more
than you could chew?