Wake Up To Color

One day, you will wake up, and you will know.

You do not love him anymore. Not in that way, at least. You may love the memories and you may love the experience, but you do not love him.

You will look at photos and see not just the things you loved, but the things you hated as well. You will see the fat belly and the unkempt hair. You will see the stupid drunk smile. You will not find it endearing. You will be repulsed.

You will read old letters and messages and you will cringe at your own vulnerability. You will read his one-word responses and his inability to recall simple facts about you, and you will not miss his absent-mindedness.

When you think of calling him again, you will shudder. You will imagine the long, awkward silences and they will not strike you as romantic or comfortable. They will just bum you out.

He is not a part of the present and he is definitely not a part of the future. He is a figment of the past.

You do not love him anymore.

And one day, you will wake up, and you will know. And you will be okay.

Waxing Poetic

I’m allergic to Novocain. You know, that stuff they shoot you up with at the dentist? And you come away poking and prodding your lips because they’re totally numb and it’s an awesome feeling?

They gave it to me once, and my lips swelled up like balloons. I couldn’t even speak. I had to miss a day of school.

I can’t feel numb. It’s just not a part of my repertoire.

I feel things. It’s what I do. I feel it when a stranger trips and falls and flushes red from embarrassment. I feel it when a singer closes her eyes and leans into the microphone. I feel it when a boy dumps one of my roommates.

I felt it that day we walked in the rain. I felt it when my best friend forgave me. I felt it when the kids at school wrote me a hate note. I felt it when he stopped answering my messages. I felt it watching the moon rise.

I don’t do numb.

What happens if you fall in love with a writer?

karenfelloutofbedagain:

Lots of things might happen. That’s the thing about writers. They’re unpredictable. They might bring you eggs in bed for breakfast, or they might all but ignore you for days. They might bring you eggs in bed at three in the morning. Or they might wake you up for sex at three in the morning. Or make love at four in the afternoon. They might not sleep at all. Or they might sleep right through the alarm and forget to get you up for work. Or call you home from work to kill a spider. Or refuse to speak to you after finding out you’ve never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. Or spend the last of the rent money on five kinds of soap. Or sell your textbooks for cash halfway through the semester. Or leave you love notes in your pockets. Or wash you pants with Post-It notes in the pockets so your laundry comes out covered in bits of wet paper. They might cry if the Post-It notes are unread all over your pants. It’s an unpredictable life.

But what happens if a writer falls in love with you?

This is a little more predictable. You will find your hemp necklace with the glass mushroom pendant around the neck of someone at a bus stop in a short story. Your favorite shoes will mysteriously disappear, and show up in a poem. The watch you always wear, the watch you own but never wear, the fact that you’ve never worn a watch: they suddenly belong to characters you’ve never known. And yet they’re you. They’re not you; they’re someone else entirely, but they toss their hair like you. They use the same colloquialisms as you. They scratch their nose when they lie like you. Sometimes they will be narrators; sometimes protagonists, sometimes villains. Sometimes they will be nobodies, an unimportant, static prop. This might amuse you at first. Or confuse you. You might be bewildered when books turn into mirrors. You might try to see yourself how your beloved writer sees you when you read a poem about someone who has your middle name or prose about someone who has never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. These poems and novels and short stories, they will scatter into the wind. You will wonder if you’re wandering through the pages of some story you’ve never even read. There’s no way to know. And no way to erase it. Even if you leave, a part of you will always be left behind. 

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die. 

(via juneandafter)

I am free.

There’s not much else to add, except that I am frightened and I am proud and I am convinced that life gets better than this.

I’m mostly okay now.

But there are times like last night when someone says something that hurts in a way they might never imagine it could, and I feel like I’ve gotten a punch straight to the gut, and my mind is left reeling from the memories that pour through the floodgate.