into the depths - poetry for the few

A skyline is etched into my thoughts
i miss you
i stare out windows
hoping for your scent
deaf ears cannot feel or bleed
with an early morning and an empty voicemail
silent moments
so solid beside me
i call a name to the night
but it is morning
complete with faulty window
and heartless ticking
of moments alone
my heart throbs
realizing its use
and aches
after this marathon we've run
my thoughts are lost in this
dew clinging to my ankles
wading too deep
in such a shallow pool
a pale imitation
makes its entrance
expecting awe
i cannot pretend any longer
for i've seen the original
its mold
my life a lie before your face
my efforts in vain
before attempting you
and i yearn for it
as i do air after a breath.

this is what makes life divine

I had an odd conversation with a friend about love over the weekend.

Me: "But why aren't you out there trying to find someone to fall in love with?"
Mr. Friend: "I'm not sure I even want that"
Me (thoroughly confused): "What?"
Mr. Friend (patiently): "There are plenty of guys who have gone on being bachelors forever. That life is just easier."
Me: "But don't you want to be in love?"
Mr. Friend: "I've never really wanted it."
Me: "Because you've never experienced it?"
Mr. Friend: "yeah, i guess."

To some people, this might not be strange. To me, it was like two squares talking about possibly never wanting or needing a square shaped hole to fit in. (Wow, totally sounded naughty but not going there, we're talking about love peoples) I realized an extraordinarily long time ago that I was addicted to falling in love, being in love, searching for love. Its just one of those odd things I found intoxicating and easy to do, like Bejeweled 2 on yahoo games (the downfall of my anti-procrastination efforts). Being in love has the same nasty effect on me that buying something on Ebay does: giddy satisfaction. But this newfangled idea from one of my best friends was shocking to my system: no hope for romantic love? It consumes my thoughts and guides my actions, because it is the goal at which I aim with every inch of my existence. And for him, this doesn't matter at all. It sounds like the classic shock kids brought up in Christian homes face when they meet the aetheist's kid for the first time: how can something you've always known to be true, right, and worth pursuing over everything, mean nothing or even be a nasty thought in someone elses mind? Something tells me that he'll find someone amazing, that is the perfect fit in his life, and he'll see the value of loving her, and wonder what he did without it.

And then again why do I have to be right? Maybe my addiction is really that: something harmful that eats away at all other aspects of my life. True I haven't been single since the beginning of 8th grade (a good 5 years back), but why would i want to be single? I know plenty of people who would argue independance, freedom, less turmoil in life, but i really don't crave any of those things, because they exist while out of a relationship just as they do in it, just with a slightly different spin on them. Detremental as my addiction is, the worst of it probably comes with the fact that I hang on to relationships longer than I should, even when all the happiness has been sucked out and the only good that is left is shallow and hungry. The fear of being out of love, the possibility that I'd be giving up the one I'm supposed to be with, as well as the thought that I might not find one better, cripple me. Current circumstances prove to be challenging in this way, and the 2 year relationship with a boy that once resembled all my happiness is hanging on my love of love, not my good sense. Advice on this matter would be extremely helpful, for I am a fool in love, and a bigger fool out of it, so my addled brain can't think on this subject any longer.

higher thoughts (don't bother if you don't like religious babble)

i've been thinking about everything Paul said to me on that very unexpectedly long phone conversation last weekend. After a 5 hour phone call I was left with a list of verses and a very warm feeling of love and another of cold uncertainty and instructions to take time out of my day to think about God. Its useless to compare him to human circumstances but its all I know, and so it feels like he's my soulmate and I've cheated on him. Even though i know he'll take me back in a heartbeat, i feel too guilty and ashamed to accept. How can so many wrongs be forgotten? Of course, being God, He isn't barricaded by the blindness of human nature, and can forgive and forget what He pleases, but it is unfathomable to my mind and therefore I feel more guilty than I have will to be relieved from it. Sick, painful waves crash over my thoughts and my heart whenever i have the slightest thought of attempting to talk to God about anything, or even admitting that his presence is always with me, because that would mean that he witnessed everything my naiive mind ignorantly believes is so hidden until divulged at my will. How vain is that? Plus i cannot bear the thought that he already knew i would fall, and yet gave me so much joy so short of time ago. If I knew a friend would betray me.... well then again i dont' know what i would do. probably sulk and accuse them of doing terrible things before they happened. and again i remind myself that God cannot, will not, and never will be anything so tainted as a human.

I miss peace in myself. when trying to convert or "save" people, many evangelists look to scripture to prove their points through logic, or point out that hell will burn you in more ways than are consiously fathomable to scare some into faith, but for me it was the feeling of letting go of the worries of life, completely existing in joy, and feeling a warm calm in my heart, instead of the dead weight that sits there brooding now. Ian touched on it my sophomore year, when he made it his life's goal to convert me. It was fire and brimstone most of the time, which i recoiled from, but then he touched on the amazing freedom from stress, from jealousy, from the tendrils of society that wind their way into what we think we need, and from everything that had ever plauged me since i'd cut my wrists in junior high.

i feel as though i was walking such a straight path, and then suddenly was tossed across the expanse of the earth to lie in a gutter, and there is no one to blame but myself. the love that i once felt so purely like snowflakes on bare skin had been replaced by hail that only pounds until all you can do is hide from it and take comfort in more meaningless things.

i never loved before i loved God. and i have loved a great many times. my life, my self, my meaning is lost without it. what can i do but run back into the arms of the only constant source of that which sustains me and beg for forgiveness. like begging for air to come back into my lungs or feeling back into a numb leg.

I don't know where to begin, but i guess that is silly, because here it is.

love is a little splendored thing

It seems as though my mantra for life, the thing with which I understand my God, my friends, my parents, my boyfriends... is now suddenly more multi-faceted than the special menu at In and Out. Love has always been a thoughtless thing for me, I find myself in love more easily and naturally than leaves find themselves falling in autumn. The excentricities and complexities of other people's personalities are so intriguing, they never cease to capture my heart, and in that I find fault in myself. And today I opened my eyes and didn't see the man in front of me. A chink in the system, a crack in his wonderful exterior now swims beneath my devotion and causes so much doubt I no longer place my future in his hands. How can one boy not be enough for me? Everyone preaches soulmates from soapboxes and true loves from rooftops, but experience contradicts it so harshly.
All passion is gone from my love, and love without passion is nothing in my book. Without wanting, how can we have?
I'm wearing black today. Everyone says it brings out the blue in my eyes, like putting diamonds on velvet at Tiffany's. I feel thinner in black, like the excess worry inside, bloating my happiness to unrecognizable proportions, can show itself on the outside, soaked into the blackness of my clothing. This is too depressing. Later.

flooded

Friends are idiots. As soon as you let them within an inch of your emotions, everything is black until you wake up with everything in shambles. The more south you go in California, the faker everything is- the people, the smiles, the building facades, the morals, and everything else in between. Not that north is much better, but its calmer and more secure in being honest, even if it means pissing someone off. Here, it seems, pissing people off is the game of choice, and everyone plays it under the guise of sincerity. People are just too complex these days, like a simple looking song with five flats sandwitched between the lines. Beautiful, intriguing and intoxicating as these complexities may be, I would much rather have a beginner's nocturne- simple, sad, and stunning.

My mother always tells me that grounded people attract the crazies, and that, unfortunately, I'm one of the grounded people. I'm quite sick of the crazies. Unbearably Loud Suitemate #1 pounded on my door this morning and bellowed, "It's 8:30 in the morning; turn your music down." I had a million responses for her that were centered around the sex that you can hear anywhere within a mile radius every time her boyfriend comes to town, and her own loudness at all times of the day, but instead I shut the door and turned down Jack Johnson, who by the way is the most mellow artist out there, and one more turn of the dial made the volume turn completely off, so it couldn't have been that loud anyway. Those are the kind of people that make you want to bang your head against the wall until part of it is dented, then confront them with "YOUR IDIOTICNESS MADE ME DEFORMED!" but unfortunately i like my short term memory. Its the long term i could do without.

All of the above rudeness that came from Unbearably Loud Suitemate #1 came only a few nights after another anger-inducing evening.... friday i believe it was. An 80s Pj party was planned in honor of Unbearably Loud Suitemate #1 and the "stress" she's had to deal with. I was to be included for whatever reason, but was completely ignored throughout the grocery shopping and the primping periods by her, and only recieved giggles and odd comments from Southern Cutie Suitemate, to my profound confusion. I tried to be bubbly and participate in the drunken revelrie, but its hard when the am I wanted question is thudding around in my head. Then as a crowning glory to the night, the suitemate that had ignored me all evening suddenly burst out with a monologue about how great it was to be friends with me and my counterpart Christof. Hurl? por que? bah.

Thoroughly depressed and flu symptoms aren't a good combination. Plus its raining outside. Could it be a more dreary day? I wish I was winnie the pooh, because then i could sing fun songs about it and eat honey and be lovably round, instead of attempting to conform to society's twiggy-esque craze. I need a new pair of gaudily colored socks. That might transform this mood, but not today, because i might sneeze on them.