Brighter Discontent (Listening to: How Can It Be, Forever Thursday)

Rereading some of my old work (something I only do at those times when I seem brimful of emotion but unable to express it with words due to a lack of creative or poetic inspiration) I was forcibly reminded of a song by The Submarines called Brighter Discontent.

The song itself doesn't quite describe the same feeling, but there are snatches which are really dead-on. I can give some examples from the song but I think they will be more in context if you've read my writing first.

These were the days when she lay in silent repose in the corners of her white-walled haven. The days when she tugged the shades apart and threw open the windows, when she wore ball gowns she had no use for. These were the days she fit her feet into velvet pumps, when she rouged her cheeks and painted her lips. These were the days she stopped pretending not to care. Sometimes she’d play quiet love songs from years past on an old and wheedling phonograph, others the faint anthems of robins were all she needed to dull the sharp silence. In the evenings, sunlight would leak through the trees, drenching the wooden floors of her room. She’d lock the door; trace the golden baubles of light with her forefinger. On blank and snowy pages she would record pieces of her life. At times they took the form of meticulous figures, shaded into the perfection she had always lacked and riddled with her doubts and love. Most were sheets of innumerable ciphers, slanted and flowing in rivulets from the ink pen she handled as delicately as the stem of a rose. There were some hours when she’d simply leave the pages white, agreeing with her cautious consciousness that some moods were not meant to be described. Yet it was these pages she always returned to in her islands of calm, when she remembered the storms which at times afflicted her. It was at these pages she could stare for hours on end, discovering subtleties within herself that she hadn’t known existed. She would marvel at how many emotions these formless vessels could hold. She imagined them as invisible glass, brimming with substance-less liquid. These silver thoughts remained nameless to her and to the world, remained shadows on the borders of acknowledgment when she could not bring herself to admit them. Sometimes they took the form of faceless ghosts that bobbed and nodded at her until she forced herself to look away. She could neither escape nor define the sepia-toned whispers in the air which surrounded her then. Instead, her eyes nearly always found the naked windows framed with emerald leaves and pink bursting blooms. She would lightly finger the honey wood molding around the glass, unable to shake the tight feeling that she was trapped in a transparent vase of her own making, that she could at any moment become a ghost in her own world, indiscernible and thin as air.

And that's exactly what it was:
A Brighter Discontent. A breaking heart in an empty apartment, the loudest sound I never heard. And I will be fine if I don't look around me now too much for what's gone. If only I can wait here just a little while and let time pass in my room.

How Can It Be that These Things live in Me?

Locking the Doors Isn't Enough (Listening to: All Downhill from Here, Amy Kuney (feat. Tim Myers))

This isn't something I've written, because honestly I don't know if I will ever be able to write about it. Well, I guess technically it's something I'm writing because it takes the form of text that you or I or anyone else is reading.
But it's not like the others, I guess is what I'm trying to say. The others are almost never over a page, they have a definitive start and end, and they capture a moment I want to remember, be it sad, happy, lonely or beautiful.

This is not a moment I want to remember.

I want this moment, stained with shame and humiliation to be a repressed memory I have absolutely no recollection of.

I want this to have never happened.

Most things I tell my friends. Boys, my feelings, I like to share them and feel that I am not alone. This is my only secret I consciously keep. Natalie knows because she was there and she saw my face afterward, the one that refused to acknowledge what actually happened.
And I have to tell the secret to someone else, because someone else out there has to understand what is going on right now. I need to vent it out to you. Because he's back.

The amazing song I have on repeat describes parts of what I am feeling perfectly:

"I have a headache in my chest from all the chaos that you left."

And that is exactly how it is, that aching in my breastbone like a fist against my lungs. It drags down my shoulders in lines that ache. I can feel the cold sweat in the small of my back and the hot blush over my cheekbones. I feel faint. Like I can't quite breathe. It's a feeling of dread, of fear, of embarrassment and shame. My vision clouds a lot, so even my own eyes aren't reliable.

This is the part I have trouble saying. Natalie was there, she knows. I never even speak to her about it in concrete terms. I just say his name and she knows.
My dad's friend, white beard, awkward mannerisms. I know he didn't mean anything, but it was still a physical violation of a boundary. My boundary. Molestation feels like too big a word for it, but I suppose it is a crime of perception. My perception. And that's how it felt to me. I didn't ask for his hands there and yet there they were. And there was my dress....or rather there wasn't my dress, and it seems so trivial when I try to tell it but it was my birthday, my sweet sixteen and all the sugar he drained out of it and all the bitterness and cold that remained.

My dad knew. He made him apologize. He did. I went home.

It's been a month. He came walking up the path when my parents weren't home two days ago. He let himself in, made himself at home. I've been hiding in my room for two days. When I leave to use the bathroom or get some food, I walk on tiptoe. I know it won't happen again but there is a heaviness to the air, to my voice and that fist in my chest when I know that he is here, in my house, because my father let him in, gave him a key.
And I don't want him here.

It wasn't alright, and I....well I'll be alright, I was alright, and I just really can't take this leaden fist and this crawling skin for much much longer.
And I know he's my dad's best friend....but how can he leave him with me alone after that? How can he do that? How can he sit me next to him at dinner? How can he ask me to join the conversation, how can he ask me to GET OVER IT? How can he do that?

Tender Layered Subtext (Listening to: Good Friday, CocoRosie)

I wrote this a little over a week ago, after one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Art School Boy had a nine hour layover in my city on his way to Vegas to visit his sister in college. He caught a cab downtown, and I grabbed a bus over to meet him.

These are paths I have traveled many times before. The corners and angles are familiar to me, and the sidewalk-squares and benches hold faded memories of my touch, my passing. These are the streets of my hometown. But they are somehow warped, twisted, made strange and foreign like reflections in a funhouse mirror by the simple presence of your footsteps next to mine. The words from my mouth sound as if they are coming from across a long distance. My thoughts turn towards the bizarre jumble of different facts, different days of my life which have been compacted into this moment. And I feel very much alone, walking here next to you. We are deep sea divers who fly to the surface when we see our air supply deplete even the littlest bit, and I hate us for it. Still, the conversation flows between us with few halts, and I find myself acknowledging that it could be worse. So much worse. The sun beats down upon the pavement and our backs. I catch you looking at me every now and again in a way which makes me shiver. In the movie theater, you put your arm around me. I don’t know what to say to you, so I keep quiet. I snap rigid when you take my hand in yours. I am brittle as your nose ruffles along the nape of my neck. Something breaks, with a gasp of breath and a quickened heartbeat, and I lean into you for shelter. I forget for a moment that I resent you for coming here, to my home, my sanctuary. But ever-present lurks that sinking feeling of dread. We leave the theater. You walk me to my bus stop and we hug. It transports me back in time to what is now over a year ago. You say goodbye, and lean in for a kiss. My hands between us form a barrier. I don’t think that’s – and you agree, of course, I am so sorry. I hug you. Goodbye. On the bus across town I struggle not to cry behind my shaded eyes, knowing that I know you and can predict your inevitable mistakes. You’ve undone all my work. My weeks of effort to wipe you away. We should have gone drinking; the tender layered subtext of sober conversation is too overwhelming.

I feel like this needs some explaining. I feel so stupid sometimes, like I'm some freak who has no idea how to react in situations where you're supposed to know what to do. I've always told myself that no, I won't do anything with him, I can't, not after all that he put me through after the first year. And then I completely disregard that the second I'm in the real-life situation of seeing him. I know I sent him some pretty mixed signals by letting him put his arm around me in the movie, and then by not letting him kiss me. I didn't know what to say, I guess. It would have seemed so petty.
But I was able to say no this time because I knew what would happen beforehand, and I could make a decision before the actual situation manifested itself. When he put his arm around me in the theater, I knew that he thought that day was something other than what I wanted. I made the decision then that I would stand up to him that time, that I wouldn't just bend and buckle and give in like before. And it's not that giving in before was wrong of me, or that he won in some way, it just meant that this time was the first, and what distinguishes what we had from a girl just doing what a guy says because he says to. I proved I had a will, I guess.
It's also easier for me to forget him and leave him behind if we don't kiss, if we don't undo all that work I've done forgetting him. And I want to remember us as a sweet first relationship, not as a random hookup whenever we're in the same city. That's all.

I Guess I'll Tell You About Art School Boy (Listening to: "Come On Petunia", The Blow)

According to a friend (Salamander):

“Mostly, I'm kind of sorry for you. Maybe that's weird, but so much of you is wrapped in this boy who you only see once a year.”

I guess I’ll start before the beginning, because who I was before he happened to me is so different from what I have become.

I’ll be quick; this story has been told many times. It can get tiresome and I can get verbose. (Note: quotations like “this” are excerpts from writing I’ve done before.)

Freshman Year: I was quiet, with almost no friends outside The Group of ten or so girls who I’d been friends with since middle school. None of us had ever had a real boyfriend, and drugs and drinking were things we whispered about. I was every parents dream, and I didn’t really know then that something was missing. My friends all loved me, there was no real drama, I had a perfect 4.0, and back then I thought that was enough.

That summer I went back to a two week art school out of state. It was my third year, so I had a few friends there already. I was the only one of them who’d never had a boyfriend. I was the only one of them who was there mostly for the classes.

A few days in, a boy asked my friend Miss Mermaid to make out with him so he could beat his friend in a game of who could hook up with the most girls. She said no then, but by the 3^rd of July, they were sucking face under the fireworks.

Then he turned to me. And I told him no. He asked me why. I said I just didn’t want to. He started following me after classes, learning more about me, talking to me, being sweet, becoming my friend. He found out I’d never been kissed, and then things changed.

“I understand why now,” he said.

He was almost two years older than me, and he was a year ahead in school. He was even older in years. His sophomore year he’d been addicted to cocaine. He played drums. He was in a band. He wasn’t a virgin. I was completely overwhelmed by the situation, scared of him, scared of letting go, scared of something I still don’t understand.

At the dance, he kissed me on my cheek.

The next day he kissed my forehead and then my lips at the foot of the steps up to the girls’ dorms. The next day he asked me to be his girlfriend.

The rest of the two weeks, the most we ever did was kiss. He was sweet, he held my hand, he picked me up and spun me when he saw me. He was perfect.

When I flew back home, I wondered

“Can you define the final moment mathematically?

In a repeatable equation?”

Afterwards, he didn’t call. He didn’t talk to me at all, and I couldn’t figure out why. I missed him for months. I knew it was stupid, that we were a fling, but he was my first boyfriend, and I couldn’t just let go. I cried myself to sleep for weeks.

“Maybe you don’t understand who or what you were to me. Maybe you don’t see why what you’ve done is wrong.

I’ll tell you.

For three months, I had myself persuaded that you were the best thing to happen to me in my entire fucking life.

I remembered each specific moment of our parting, and I remembered when you said you’d call me.

You never did. I wasn’t worth a fucking phone call to you.”

And then I stopped worrying about it. I liked a different guy. I moved on. But then he sent me a note saying he missed me, and something in me exploded.

“What makes you think you can walk back into my life after you chose to leave it and tell me of all things that you fucking miss me?

If you missed me, you’d have called.”

I focused on who he’d been before he changed for me, on the boy who kissed girls for points. And that made it a little easier.

Sophomore year, I was focused on forgetting him. My friends resented me for talking about him, maybe even for having had that experience when so many of them were still trapped in how things were freshman year. They started talking about me when I wasn’t around. My best friend stopped being that to me after five years of perfect friendship. I made other friends. I pretended nothing was wrong, that we were all just growing up and that I didn’t care. I cried. I got drunk for the first time, for the second time, third time. And I wasn’t really happy then either, but I still thought it was better than freshman year.

This year, the summer after my sophomore year, I went back to art school. I knew I’d see him, and I dreaded it. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get back together with him. I couldn’t, not after he’d hurt me like he did. But a few days in, I found out something that changed my mind.

“The hardest and most lovely part of it for me is that you kept the pictures.”

And he had. The same black and white photos I’d hid in my drawer, he’d saved and carried back. I understood it. I could relate to it. I mean, I’d saved mine too. I think that scared me more than anything. But it changed my mind, and before long we were back together. And it was different that time, less pure, but somehow more real. It was tainted with that guilt and that hate and that fear and the eventual forgiveness that had been my life sophomore year.

I made up with my friends, but there is still that subtle undertone of fear and pain and love that was also my life sophomore year.

And I flew home again. Forgetting him was a lot easier the second time around. I don’t think I cried once.

I’m a different person now than I was before him. I don’t recognize the timid girl who didn’t know how to express what she felt, who was so reliant on such fickle people, who was so vulnerable and weak. And when I say I don’t know who I am yet, it’s because I know how much it can change, and how one event can shape a whole year of them.

Who I Am (Listening to: Dog Problems, The Format)

I have no idea yet.

My life began before I got this blog, so I guess if you're reading, you've started in the middle. I may fill you in as I go, but the stories take too long for me to tell you all of them. Besides, how can I show you who I am in writing?

I am an artist. My painting and drawing is what saves me. Recently I've started working with photography, mainly using a Holga (a low-tech plastic camera prone to light-leaks which produces slightly warped, very dreamlike photos). My writing is a quick fix for a problem that only drawing or painting can completely heal. My friends are the most important people to me, but due to recent occurrences I can't even trust them all the way anymore. It's pretty screwed up.

I tend to be bitter about this sort of thing.

I've only been in a relationship twice in my life, and it was with the same guy. Another pretty screwed up situation.

Another thing I tend to be bitter about.
My feelings extend to nostalgia and sentimentality on this particular subject.



This is important: I don't want anyone I know to read this, ever. I've shared some of my writing, which I haven't posted here yet, with a few friends, but this is going to be less censored, I guess. This is everything, this is me. And even though you are starting in the middle of my story, the view you will get will be more complete than any of theirs. I don't need anyone to read this. I just need to send these pieces of my life out into the world.