Little Bird with the Big Brown Eyes

Last christmas, I bought bracelets for my two best friends and I. They were beautiful; straight out of my favorite art museum in downtown Charlotte. The bracelets were handwoven and fair trade. When I brought them to my friends, we had a mock ceremony. All three making our wishes, we tied them on each other' wrists, sealing the most closely-knit friend group I'd ever had. There was a legend surrounding these bracelets. It said that if you made a wish while tying them on, then as they god frayed and fell off, your wis would come true. Our friendship dissolved halfway through the semester. I kept my bracelet on anyway--a reminder of love. I wished to find my true love. Recently, I've lost hope in the possibility of true love. First, I tore off the woman on one end of the bracelet. Pulling her apart, thread by thread, I felt the magic of the bracelet fall away. Today, I tore the bracelet off. I started taking it apart while sitting, mind-numb, in class. When I looked down at the tattered yellow and while pieces of my broken wish in my hands, I finally understood. I had lost love of every form, and it was my own doing. I wanted to cry. No tears came. My chest hurt.

Tear-Flavored Gelato

He asked who it was. I didn't know. All I knew was that I loved him. I was fifteen. I didn't know what that meant. He never hit me. He wasn't mean. I was hurt. I am scared. I will always be. I pull inside. I wrap up. I want to be alone. He wouldn't leave me alone. He called me names. He was mad. I could tell. But, I could''t tell him. I didn't have the words. I didn't have any words. How can a pain cut so deep it takes your breath, heart, and stomach all-in-one? I was a buffet for the sadness so it feasted. She heard me crying. I'd been so careful. It was in the shower. She couldn't see my tears. Water is always the same. Two hydrogens and one oxygen. Water is always the same. He was next. He was ugly, then, in my eyes--because he was mean. Another called me fat. He couldn't figure me out so his sarcasm, aimed to peel back my layers, made me cut my skin to see what he was looking for. He didn't want me. He was a dick. Literally. I can't remember his face, but I remember the feeling as it hit the back of my throat. As I gagged. As he held. He was polite. He didn't even make me get my own toilet paper. and as I wiped, he left. It was the guy's bathroom. A true patriarchy, I guess. I wonder if it would've been the same had I asked to use the girls'. They asked if it was true. How far I'd gone. If I knew. It wasn't, I hadn't, I didn't. He said he liked my boobs. I guess he liked her personality more. I wonder sometimes if I even have one. Then he came in. I was 18 now. I loved him. I knew what that meant. We slept together the first night. He cheated. I dumped him. I got a tattoo. I moved on. He came, then. I didn't. I didn't want to. It was a grey area. Not a lie. Not quite the truth. It hurt. I asked him to stop. He didn't want to. I offered something see. He took it. He stole it really. I had offered five. He took twenty. I smiled sadly. I wanted to please and leave. He didn't even get me toilet paper. I felt his hands that night. Sometimes I still do. I didn't want them. Every part of me vehemently rejected them. I wanted them gone. He got closer. He whispered. I got scared. I pretended to sleep. He gave up. The next day I ran. He still doesn't know. I met two more hims. I didn't want them so I left. I met a third. He didn't want me so he left. This is it. I am alone. A matriarch now. Next time, I'm taking the girl's room.

Misinterpreted

When you flip a magnet over to the other side, it repels the magnets it once stuck to.
I've flipped my magnet over 4 times and each time, I've repelled another magnet.
But yet, despite the act of losing others, I have not yet found a single magnet to which I long to stick, whose side matched mine.
Ghosts of my past haunt me. I am strong but not strong enough. I have flipped the page and started a new chapter and yet I cannot justify the societal laws I broke when I decided to be happy. Because happiness has come at a cost and it is not possible when loneliness comes into town on it's horse. My lonely horse was disguised as a white steed and it told me that contentment was possible, yet because I broke so many laws in becoming content I have been thrown in jail, alone to rot. Tell me, is it better to be alone and sick or alone and healthy? In which case does the pain end quicker? Pretty hurts. So does loneliness. Would you rather be fabulous and sad or ugly and sad, either way someone else says you're happy. Who do I believe when I cannot trust myself. 

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?