i am self destructive, good morning! 2

CHAPTER FOUR

When I woke up this morning it was from another lazy holiday’s sleep. And I really don’t  know what to say – it’s been so long since I had anything to say. The face in the mirror is like stone – a moon where there was a planet where there was a sun. So I dedicate this day to you, because since you my warmth is gone, I’m not me. I used to dream about a perfect world, the great things we could do together.
         First I found another boy. He also had curly hair and was endearingly awkward, maybe. Sometimes we kissed in his basement and sometimes in the sun, and we would talk about everything that meant nothing but nothing that meant everything, but even kissing in the sun was cold like clothes left on the floor overnight in winter. So I tried your favourite game and I got pretty good. I never missed a practice – I played so much that kicking a ball doesn’t mean you anymore, and I’m all alone on the field. So I left the me you loved behind and I was the girl in the back of the class laughing with my friends while my teachers taught – the girl who was always being separated from the boys she knew because they were always around her and always causing a disruption. And the attention was the last thing that might have made it better.
         So I made a new plan. Today it starts and I’m just going to be the best me. Because you weren’t the best me.



























Saturday
matthew, everything is falling apart. i feel like baby tree watching it’s beautiful leaves float to the ground late in its first autumn, where no one is sure if they are horrified or resigned, or what form of misery they are wallowing in. i don’t know what you’ll think of this, and since i’ve been living this new matt-less life i’ve only learned that i can’t not care, because no matter what you say, or what’s unsaid, goodbyes always hurt, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. i haven’t become a better person in your memory like i thought i would.

i mean, i’m living in my own catatonic world it seems, just waiting until i can talk to you next. you’re kind of like the proof to me that so many people were wrong. all the trends and patterns show that you hurt me and then hurt me and then hurt me again, and i know you didn’t mean it but i also know that there was a lot of pain. in the end patterns are invisible and there’s only a warm wind in empty space. what i’m trying to say i guess is forget everything i was only amazed by you, and pain is an irrelevant measure. it seems like you made the world; i just don’t know what to do without you.

there’s a huge hole and it’s swallowing us all.

you’re not at the bottom.



i feel like i owe you this i guess. i don’t know how to reach you, or if you’re right here beside me – is there a heaven for people like you? i think if there’s a heaven then yes, even you can go there. i mean if people don’t disappear into the void then why should you? anyway what can i say. i miss you a whole lot and the hardest part is i think i’m forgetting you and every minute that passes you’re less vivid to me. there was some truly great quality about you that i just don’t think can be replaced. what if you were my only chance? what if there’s only one redemption, one person who can make you whole one future one love one safety one happiness and what if you were that?

maybe when you heal you have to recover from every blow.

because there’s only so many letters in the alphabet, because some words are only mine. because it’s been a year now, and nothing has changed.































         “Life has to change. This isn’t fucking working. Nothing ever seems to happen.”























ONE; until there is a clearly defined, universal “meaning of life,” wasting  time and wasting life are impossible concepts.
TWO; because nobody experiences it the same way, and because it is a restriction placed by humans on the natural world, and because it is entirely relative, time as we recognize it is outdated and unsuited to modern lifestyles.
THREE; because people are biologically the same, discrepancies in human behavior are a result of nurture and not nature.
FOUR; since people are biologically the same, human behavior is an exterior attribute that is merely meant to express inner beliefs, and often fails – thus, people are rarely “truly” as we believe them to be, and are instead largely shaped by our own perception of the world.
FIVE; the main factors that determine the way a human being behaves are 1. expectations, and 2. communication.
SIX;  in their own mind, everyone is the good guy.
SEVEN; if two people make a conscious decision to love eachother, they will do so – to make this possible they must simply erradicate discrepancies in expectations and communication. similarly, any person, pair, or group can be on friendly or unfriendly terms, depending on how they choose to view eachother.

“Thanks, dear.”
I already know what this says about me, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie on this one.
“I, uh, need to get home…”
She motions halfheartedly for me to leave and continues sorting papers on her desk. Mrs. Randall is a nice woman I guess. She remembers my name and smiles at me in the halls from time to time – for a guidance councillor she seems genuinely cheerful. I’ve only seen her a few times; timetable adjustments, absences and lates, nothing particularly special, so I don’t really understand why she smiles at me. I guess the people she actually spends time with are usually the major fuck ups, like her life is just an extended version of that friend that everybody has. You know, the one that could be falling off a cliff and the moment you reach out to help them pulls you right down with them, and then slaps you in the face for not believing in them. I wonder if that’s what it’s like having kids.

I just lied to her. The last place I need to go now is home – instead I duck into a kind of useless side hall and loop back around to the gym and ask one of the teachers if I can wait inside. I’m coming up with a half lie to tell him when he asks what I’m waiting for but he never does, just indicates to be quiet and sit on the stage where Jeremiah Eld is… messing up his hair, I guess. That’s one of those things about young people – we’re always making up these great stories that nobody really asks about. I think when you get older you realize no one really cares about your motives, as long as it doesn’t get in their way. Whatever, though. I slip off my backpack and walk diligently around the kind of pathetically small sea of students, currently the intellectual property of the Government of British Columbia.

“Hey, Jer.”
He rolls his eyes at the demeaning of his name.
“Think you’re still sane?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve recovered from the incident.”  Sarcasm is like a lifeline for him, and me and Jer go way back, so I would know. I don’t really get his whole, essence of Jeremiah thing. He’s just such a slave to his scene, and such a hypocrite – but I like him. I’ve known him since we were just babies.
“So he finally did it, what.”
“They like to feel in control.”
We sit in silence while his siblings finish their MENTAL WELLNESS AND GREIF FORMS. The last question is, “Make a list of reflections on the nature of your life.”
What I’d give to be marking these.


letters part one


“I’m skipping social conventions – guess why.

I miss you. There. I said it. I know it’s wrong. You’re still real and alive to me, and I can’t help that. Jesus, you were just, the most poetic thing in my life. I know that’s selfish and it’s just a stage of greiving.

You left one day and I cried and I laughed and I cried some more, and for the first time it felt right. If you add up all the time I’ve spent crying over you it’s probably days, weeks. The amount of time I’ve tried to convince myself that you weren’t why I was crying – astronomical. But what the hell, you’re gone now and finally I can say it. You were my entire world, and I was just coming to realize it. I know there’s this saying, that you shouldn’t make someone your everything because when they’re gone you have nothing. And I have more things now that somewhat filled the space like sand slipping into a hole youre digging in the beach but it’s not you. That saying is wrong. You have to make someone your everything if you want to live, and it hurts like hell when it’s gone but it’s worth it. So I think you should know that it was entirely worth it. I like to imagine stories about why you  “left” – I can’t even admit the truth about what happened to myself anymore, because I prefer to remember you as who you were for all that time, not the sad puppy you were reduced to. In my mind you’re still distant and strong and independent. The thing is, I can hardly remember you. And it’s not the same, you know – a million grains of sand can fill the same hole that a rock can, but it’s just not the same. Maybe it’s better, more normal, the have just sand sand sand. I have my friends, I have my cat, I have my boyfriend, but jesus christ, I don’t have you. And I think I’d still give it all up to have you back, which is wrong. I need to move on, I know. I’ve heard though, that it takes half the time you were with someone to get over them and even though I was never with you, I did love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else, as a friend. My surrogate older brother, eh. I know you have more than me but hell, I was lucky enough to have the rock! Moreover, because I lost you, I can face anything. I’ve never felt this strong before.

That kid in the story was you, of course. And.. probably tons more. Probably everything I’ve created since last August has a part of you in it. Which means that nothing is truly pure? But maybe even better. Even if I can’t remember you, I am you.

Listen, there’s no way to appropriately emphasize this;
you made me. And now I know I need to live up to that in every second of my life. I need to live completely. Love completely. I need to be the absolute best that I can be. FOR YOU.
The secret love of my life. As long as I’m breathing I can’t forget you.” 

if you boil your life down to the basic facts, you will always see a trainwreck.

The city is dead, or slumbering. Some kind of awkward funereal hush like the sound of the house that you grew up in when nobody’s home, and I’m sitting on the front lawn just waiting for those absent souls to stumble back home and repopulate. So now I’m thinking of the feeling of coming home late, after a long long car drive or plane ride which is making me realize that home for me will never be a place, or at least not a house. I think for me, and for the rest of the nomads and army brats, it’s a collection of ideas and memories that makes us feel a bit more comfortable in the scary, scary inconistent world we were raised in. The special love we are allocated is the love of home, I’m thinking. An extra special kind of appreciation for the person who becomes your home – the things that make your home, and a certain creativity in finding home. We’ve got this special ability even when we are very young to recgonize that the house we live in will never be home, and the only things we can hold on to for that security will be different from what we had expected. I guess I am blessed because I’ll never have to go to my parents house and realize this is no longer home.

Now, this has me thinking some more. Wondering what my home is. Here is my brainstorm list;

my mattress, crocheted  blankets  from my grandfather’s house, the neighbourhood where I had my first kiss, autumn, country songs on local radios of town whose names I don’t even know, talking to Lou at 3 in the morning and feeling pure, Ameilia’s family, favourite sweatpants, sleeping in my clothes so I could wake up at five in the morning to move again, Lou, Amelia, very favourite songs, someone else’s mother telling me the patterns on  the window are paintings and notes from jack frost, counting state license plates, talking to younger kids on the bus, teaching at the pool, people who smile at you for no reason.

We’re all so goddamn sad, aren’t we?


   































THE QUIETEST PLACE ON EARTH

         And I’m convinced I live there. We live there. Scott killed himself, is the point. I can’t think of a blunter way to put it than that. Maybe we sound callous, but really, it’s a whatever thing. It’s not even a thing. Scott has been dead for years. No one knew Scott, because he was a fucking ghost. I’ve seen Scott in class a total of four times this year, and he left before the end of class three of those. And Scott’s always been trying to off himself. I don’t know if he ever even wanted to live in the first place. My only regret was that I didn’t ask him if his first thought out of the womb was “fuck this.” I thought it would be cruel, actually. Might’ve been crueler not to. Either way, I wrote “not getting to know him better,” which is not true, because he was an ass.  Honest. Don’t look at me like that. I wouldn’t care if he was born with no limbs into an orphanage and got beaten by evil nurses and fed cat shit every day of his life, or something. That’s not a get out being a dickface free card.
         No, really.
         But it’s been cold lately. And some time has passed – it’s August again and again and again. September again and again and again and again. I’m  not even sure what to worry about now – who even knows where to go from here? Maybe some day time will settle down, I’ll be exactly where I want to be and everything will slow down. Or not, how should I know? For now I guess I’m sitting tight and letting all the crap pass by. What a waste. The thing is, life is boring. People are boring. The people I used to have fun with, I don’t see them anymore. And when I do, its just depressing.
         Winter creeps in like a disease, rotting away at the last signs of a stunning summer. Every morning on my way south to school I’m accompanied by flocks of screaming birds, who I guess  have better places to be. Sometimes as I wave them goodbye I wish I did, too.
         Sometimes