Peppermint Hot Chocolate

I'm scared. I'm afraid that I've lost what it means to feel. I'm so scared of this new state of being happy and supported, because I have become numb. It feels as if I've been polished and clipped and shined till my soul rubbed raw, and when a new shield of skin replaced the tarnished character of old, I think I lost some of the beauty of authenticity. I look and feel like a doll on a shelf. I'm shiny and new, but all of my depth and personality feels plastic and fake as well. I liked my sadness. I was in a relationship with pain and when we broke up I felt its absence as a scar, healed leaving an ugly reminder of not just what I used to be, and why I wanted to leave, but also of why I stayed. Without that scar, and with that pain I was real. I was raw, and I was beautiful. And now? With only content to fill its place, and joy and belonging, I feel only the restless aching of imperfection. I feel the flatness of my lost emotions in the curve of my laugh and my inability to search deeply into any conversation. I feel it in the jilt of shock when I realize how judgmental I've become, and the slap of its echo when insecurities arise and threaten to drown me back to whence I came. I feel the pain, vaguely, but different in my frustration. I become frustrated too often now, when I realize my immaturity and my faults and my shortcomings I get frustrated. I've become a maze of my own design and even I can solve it. I've become a puzzle of imperfection and entangled "shoulds", and I hate it. Now that my sadness is gone I see the true ugliness that has replaced it and whether or not it was a mask and a lonely existence part of me longs for the sadness back simply to hide behind. Because with this happiness, all I can think is what now?

Gypsy Tapestries

I have diamonds in the crevasses of my mind. They're hidden deep within the folds, capturing the light of each new idea and refracting it onto a million surfaces. I have gold within my heart. Small flakes that you could pan out of the blood coursing through the arteries and veins. I have emeralds and pearls in each tear that falls from the corners of my eyes, the sadness I carry is worth more than the possessions of the world. I have rubies at the meeting of my thighs and moonstone in my touch. My love, my thoughts, myself is worth more than the gifts you deign to toss at me. Sprawling glances and half-hearted whistles. Your package of paper and string is nothing next to the precious stones I carry within. But you, your diamond thoughts and stories of pearl, that's why my tastes crave. Your heart of gold and your rubies, these are gifts worthy of my praise, and of the unveiling of my own precious parts. If you want to make a trade with me, be fair. I won't trade diamond for stone, I won't give gold for steel, and I certainly won't give pearl for ice. So open up your arteries. Show me the gold beneath and use the light of your ideas to prove to me you've diamonds to spare, and maybe just maybe you could mine my rubies for your moonstone.

I was raised by a television

Can a person be so abstract as to lose themselves? The days drift by in a hazy lull, and each second I can feel my veins losing not blood but passion and purpose. Someone once said to me that purpose is what humans need in life, a reason to live. Work is simply a filler. But somehow I've got neither and it feels as though my mind is drifting further and further from myself- my soul is already gone. I have become an illusion. Simply a mirror image of myself repeating daily patterns and an impressionist'a print of my true self. When will this painting smudge into realism?

"It's all blood and sweat, and life is what you manage in between."

Is it stupid? Ignorant? Naive? To wish for a false reality? To want to be loved, and supported? Because my friends seem to prove it so, and my aching brain is tired from twisting into mazes without ends. My mother used to say it was okay to be average. But thats just it isn't it? okay is average in and of itself. Is it wrong to want more? As I gather my strength I'm throwing my dreams into the fates, and my friends seem to throw them back, laughing in my face. Beyond that my mind feels dull. Like a blade that's been left unsharpened for too long every thought and sentence, usually beautifully crafted down to the last wit, has become jello far too slippery to cut or even grasp, dancing blithely out of reach. I struggle with the tiniest detail and, feeling shame for my own struggle, these details each transform into pins and needles stabbing the voodoo doll I've had tucked away in place of my heart since I was 12 years old. Then on top of that she mentioned I've gained weight. That awful phrase, those awful chains. I'd only just managed to chisel through half my other pair of cuffs with another dull object constructed of my brain. And so now, I'm shackling myself back up because I hadn't yet learned how to cope with an ED and lose weight at the same time. The thought itself seems so horrifyingly oxymoronic that it has thrown yet another chink in my maze of a mind. As if They weren't enough, there's a Her to deal with too and I'm still weak. Change is what humans are psychologically programmed to fear, yet I've dealt with more change in one half a year than I thought I could ever deal with in one life time and it's hard. I'm just not sure what to do, and my own mediocrity in every way is killing me with shame. I'm hungry but yet I won't allow myself to eat because that wouldn't be "following the plan". Why does that sound so familiar?

The Cat's Meow

Your cat calls are like sirens. Police, not mermaid. Your grating threats are whispered promises. Your simple joke impales the rights my ancestors fought for, and yet you have the gall to get angry because "friendzoning" is "cruel". As if a woman has no right to be uninterested in a man sexually. As if a woman has no other purpose to her life than to be appealing. Well stop. And think. Because you argue that not every man is rapey or misogynistic, but you can't leave that past in the past if you insist on reenacting it. Especially in odds that reoccur every two minutes in a first-world country that declares itself above rape, but then turns around and reprimands a woman for wanting to take control of her body when intelligent enough to know that pregnancy is not her thing. You don't live in a world where your enemy and your friend look exactly the same. So please, for the sake of proving that not all men are what feminists fear. Lead by example. Because us women will stop complaining when there's no reason to complain.

Revealing Shirts

We stay up all night holding a stream of possibilities and watching our reflections in our hands as they act out different scenarios that trickle slowly through our fingertips; we age. As frost closes up the windows of our bedrooms and leaves blow through our minds, we let the last drops trickle away and stand to leave. Possibilities blossom into realities and spring blooms.

Scattered Puppies and Blue Green Skies

You can do anything. That's the lie my generation was nursed upon. You can do anything. Our parents fed us the breast milk of Olympians and sent us off to achieve well-rounded and prodigious feats all before the age of four. Or at least, that's what they'd like us to believe. Because these days, life is competition. Only the strong thrive, and the meek just survive because in the end you can tell when you're mediocre and these days? mediocre is simply not enough. You have to have not only played a sport in high school but become a master and every team needs 50 leaders right? because who isn't co-leader of their team these days. Oh, and don't forget to add the fact that they were student president, master chef, brilliant pianist, made headmasters list every year, in the GSA HRA NHS FHS and all the other acronyms you can think of. These days? that's just the beginning. If you've invented something that has saved over 50 third-world countries world wide, well you can just suck it because that guy you're sitting next to on the metro every day on your way to your second full-time job at a fourtune 500? yeah, he invented something that saved over 60. And yet we wonder why depression and anxiety top the charts of everyday american problems.
Our world is sick. And you want to know the scientific name of the common cold virus that has us each coughing up pain and exhaustion day in and day out? Human nature. You see, what they didn't teach you in school is that evolution didn't do a very good job at preparing us for the society we went ahead and built anyway. It's still catching up far behind us in a marathon where apparently our bodies were driving cars and our instincts and sometimes minds were simply stumbling along, well-equipped and walking with a broken leg and wobbly crutches. Here we see the lesser-awknowledged Amazing Human Invention: insanity.
 Its all a conspiracy. Our society is covering up the truth and the truth is it's okay to not be "enough".  What they don't want you to know is that sometimes just living is enough. And getting through the day is an achievement worthy of 70 countries saved. Because in the end there is no definition to the word "mediocrity". You just are. And when you slow down and stop banging at the door of fate, trying to nudge it in your direction you may just meet happiness. And damn son, is he nice.

We all have marks that will not fade, despite the Neosporin we so generously glob into the cracks and creases, and despite the many bandages that hide our sins and our pasts-- the stains that once tried to prove to us that we were unworthy. We all have places that are sore to the touch, and shadows underneath our eyes that tell the stories of the times when there was no sun to warm us up, to fade away the demons of the darkness. You, and you, and you a thousand times you have molded me. Shaped my mind into a place where i must tread with careful steps, afraid to step on an old bruise or wake the angry voices and unlock the shadows. But i am breaking free. I am being brave and loving myself. If i am worthless as you have told me, so many times, to you-- then i can be so many times more worthwhile to me. I am putting down the weapons i clung onto for so long, not knowing i was going into battle with myself and causing wounds which even the slightest brush of someone else's gentle, loving fingers could not heal. I was turning to the pain of myself, and wondering why i was becoming pinpointed to so many labels while screaming out that that was not me, and binding myself ever further into them. So i finally stopped. And you, and you, and you who no longer know me, cannot harm me any more. I have built a shell of love, my own, because i am my own heroine, my own heroin, and my own Neosporin. and no longer will i display my weakness for sale, like a prostitute on the corner, begging for a quick fix. I am strong. and i am finally free. i don't care anymore.

 But even as i know that. there will always be those nights. When even my own salve won't fix the throbbing of those wounds. because gauze has to be removed to be changed and when the pain of myself is revealed again, i will always remember. And i will always be sore. And though, i may heal myself, you can rest easy knowing your mark has been made. is your legacy one you're proud of i wonder, as i change my bandages, and feel the waves rock me once more away.