i was 17 when he hurt me

i was
-young
-weak
-tired

and i didn't know how to say no when you forced me to say yes once

i was 17 when he hurt me and
now i'm almost 22 and
the hurt fades but
it never leaves me be

annabel lee.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe was one of my favorite poems in high school, and even reading it now I get a kind of wistfulness that is really difficult to describe. It is dark, and haunting, and relatable even as it distances itself from the reader, and it is so, so beautiful.

"My life and my bride," Poe writes, with a kind of heartache that I think only those who have loved can fully understand. I don't think it had to be a bride. I think it could have been, "My life and my child" just as easily. "The moon never beams without giving me dreams," he says, and I don't think there's anything I could say that Poe doesn't convey twice as well.

There's something kind of beautiful in tragedy.

even if we can't find heaven

the sky is soft and
the sea crashes like i did when
my first car slipped on a patch of black ice and
sent me headfirst into a jeep cherokee three times my size

my hair is turning silver at the edges and the base and
two years ago when i ran my fingers through it
it came out in handfuls
but at least then it was still brown

what makes a week?

two bags of ramen
a single box of chinese takeout
and a black hole in your chest that takes and takes and takes until
it's swallowing even your hair

my demons ate my heart but at least they
had something to feed them
nourish them
until they could climb out of my throat and
into the world that had made even my hair want to escape

the sky is soft and
the sea crashes like i did when
my boyfriend caught me holding a knife and
standing in the rain on the rooftop of our apartment complex

and
oh god
i am hungry
so hungry
more hungry than
i can satisfy even by eating my demons

eat it? ate it.

"It doesn't matter that they won't remember me. What matters is I helped."

This is a quote from one of my favorite video games, even though I didn't know it was from a video game at first. This quote is what made me want to play. It's said by a 'spirit of compassion,' a being that exists only to help.

I'm not that selfless but I think it's a pretty valid sentiment. I'm not always a good person and it's a little intimidating to think that that's the kind of mantra to try to live by, to want to do good even when people won't recognize or remember it. Of course, the character that says it is more or less a ghost, so I don't think it's fully applicable to a totally mortal person.

Food for thought.

welcome back winter

cracked lips
ruddy cheeks
sunrises & moonlight

you only broke me because i let you and
i might even let you break me again because
before you were broken glass and a fist through my bedroom door
you were a snowflake in the palm of my hand

you had my heart before i ever even believed i had one

i'm gonna let them stay

my blood pounds like a bird in a cage might sing
it's beautiful but not quite free
almost
but not quite

do you hurt me or do i let you hurt me (yes)

how old was i when i learned how to ride a bike (too old)

what's the point of waking up every morning when my caged bird blood sings with the hopelessness of a child who has already learned that their parents are human

baby girl you know we're gonna be legends

"This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it spin, flip, fly."

I just finished a book called Dare Me. It's about American cheerleading, kind of, about the darkness in the so-called All-American Girl, about the sinister undertones of how terrifying it is to be a teenage girl. These girls grow up too fast, they're cynical and detached, and they are hard as nails and too good for the world around them.

I hated myself for so long, hated being a girl, that it's hard not to put girls who are aware of their own worth on a pedestal now. These girls are like that. Even at their most evil, I want to worship them in the way they worship themselves, all glitter and sequins and spray-on tans. In my head I can wipe away the violence and eating disorders and cruelty because oh, God, are they beautiful.

Then I remember that they are just children, and I'm horrified to realize that I know girls just like this, girls who are much older than they should be, using sex as a weapon because they know sex is what makes the world go around.

They would be lovely (they are lovely) but they are heartbreakingly sad.

"If it hadn't been what it was, it would've been beautiful."

a song for midwestern nights

i’m from softball fields, dusty and dry, kicking around some old man’s empty budweiser can when i’m barely as tall as my dog

i’m from cold water and pine trees, cut up feet on the rocks near lake superior

i’m from car rides with a boy who doesn’t love me but says he does. i’m from weak enough to believe him

i’m from falling in love with my best friend and not realizing it until she moves in with the boyfriend who has never held her hair when she’s sick, never picked her up at midnight when her parents made her feel unloveable

i’m from glitter pens and sneakers, joysticks and stickers

you caught me off guard

this is a list of some of the food i love to eat

macaroni and cheese
spaghetti
danish meatball things (frikadeller they don't translate)
pretzels
hearts (lol)
lasagna
fettucine alfredo
tomatoes
tacos
carbonara
steak
mashed potatoes
scalloped potatoes
baked potatoes
french fries

i eat too much pasta and like, wow, potatoes

two drowned girls

I fell in love on the water
serene blues and rippling waves and
a water strider skating by like I always thought I’d do someday

I fell in love on the water
under sun and sky and
with the wind by my side

I fell in love on the water
and I’m not here anymore
but

I fell in love on the water
and on the water our love will stay

another high, another low

this is a list of some of my favorite words in danish

forgaars (the day before yesterday)
laekker (delicious, attractive)
hils (give my regards, say hello to)
at blive (to become)
skuespiller (actor/actress)
hygge (a feeling of comforting coziness - more or less untranslatable)
uhyggeligt (a modification of hygge - expressing disgust or contempt)

you'll become one freaky creature

I have a scar on my leg from a time someone hurt me. Most of the time I can wish him away, forget it all ever happened, but then I see the small damned  scratch that will never heal, right where my knee hits my calf.

I can't repress that scar, but god do I try. It feels okay to hurt sometime, but only when it's on my terms, when it's catharsis and not trauma.

He hurt me and the scar doesn't hurt but what that scar means still does and I don't know if it will ever not hurt.

i'm well-acquainted with villains that live in my head

i've been trying to decide what it is about witches and dragons that is so attractive to me. the idea of an outcast with inimitable power? something so strong that its power is its beauty?

i've always wanted to be that, to be above, to ethereal, to be better, to be unattainable and envied. a dragon sits atop their treasure looking out at everything else in the hoard, and a witch watches those around her, cursing and blessing and hexing as she sees fit, needing no validation but her own.

i have dragons in my belly and witches in my head, and with all that magic in my veins, who am i to deny it?

i'm not sure where church members come in but i know that i'm not a mouse but a dragon, a witch, and i spent far too long discounting myself to not believe now.

got yourself a beauty queen

You’re three.
It starts with pink ribbons and bows
pushing away boys who
giggle and laugh
and get too close again
already aware that our desires pale next to theirs

You’re six.
those boys from the park who always got too close
sit beside you and fingerpaint
and still don’t listen when you want to be left alone

You’re twelve.
that leotard from gymnastics feels even tighter when
you’re walking to the bus stop
and the jacket’s not long enough
and they are animals

You’re fifteen.
there’s no way to win
too much make-up makes a slut
and too little makes a prudish shrew
and you’re always picked last when the boys are team captain in gym class until you finally convince yourself that the short-shorts are alright

You’re eighteen.
and it hits like a wall of bricks
sex is the greatest (only) weapon you have because it’s all you’re worth
You’re twenty.
and it doesn’t feel like anything has changed
but when little boys get too close to little girls
it twists something in your gut until there’s no choice
but to go back to when you were that little girl

you do it to me so well

People bend over backwards to call me straight, and frankly they can all go to hell. I've been bisexual as long as I can remember. Now that I'm married to a man, people jump through even more hoops to prove that I'm heterosexual. I'm still not. If I was with a woman, I'd be a lesbian. I'm not either.

I'm valid and I'm real and I'm in love with a man but if he had been a woman I wouldn't have loved that woman any less. I can't think of any person in this world that I couldn't fall in love with based on their gender. People forget that how they love isn't any better than how I love, and I have the capacity to fall in love with anybody, regardless of how they identify.

I love girls and I love boys and I love everybody else, too.

i'll put my armor on

Last night I blew my hair dry for the first time in four years. It's bad for it and I have a history of damaged hair, so I'm pretty paranoid about it, because my hair is the thing I'm most vain about. I only did it because my time frame was much tighter than I thought, and I felt strange after.

My hair was soft. My hair is never soft, at least not the way I want it to be, and today I got that result on accident without intent. Only through damage could I get what I wanted.

I had to hurt myself to get the softness I desperately desire. How sick.

i'll show you how

today i made a list of everything i paint my face with before i went to work

i started with primer and concealer
followed with a liquid foundation which i sprinkle powder foundation over. if i just use liquid my skin gets greasy.
eyeshadow was next. i use three different colors to contour my eyelids.
after that i used eyeliner. i have liquid eyeliner, but the crayon is easier to use.
eyeliner is followed by mascara. i use two kinds of mascara, but first just the one for my eyelashes.
my eyebrows are afterwards. i start with a smudger to fill them in and follow it up with the second kind of mascara, which is supposed to give them a sleek look.
my lips are last, but they're almost as difficult as my eyes.
first i began with a red lipliner. i always draw my lips a little fuller than they really are.
i layer a bright red lipstick on after, and a dark nude lipstick on top of that. i haven't found a lipstick in quite the color i like so i have to improvise.
lip gloss goes on top to give sheen.
the last thing that happens is i hold my breath and close my eyes after taking off glasses and douse my face in hairspray so none of it falls off.
none of this takes into account the forty-five minutes i spent on my hair.

the next time someone asks why i don't wear very much makeup and they don't believe me when i say i use a significant amount of a day on it, i'll show them this list.

this is what makes us girls

I don’t know which is more bitter
the taste of being tricked into feeling respected
or of letting myself be tricked

dark chocolate
ten kind words
sixty soured by spite
and a hundred thoughts of how trying so hard can still get you nowhere

Amy Dunne said it best when she denounced the Cool Girl but
I know too many girls like me who will turn themselves inside out and hand over their own beating heart to the devil
for just a taste of acceptance
before being ground back into dust and dirt and eyeliner

They say they want natural girls, real girls
never mind that they only want real if it fits their reality

black coffee
addictive like those kind words that you left claw marks fighting for
not good for you
but something the day seems impossible to face without

I’ve known this for years now but I still suck on lemons like I did when I was fifteen

round and round

My mom and I are watching Dawson's Creek from the beginning again. This is probably the sixth time. I think I like it so much because when I was little my mom always used to tell me I looked a lot like Katie Holmes. I look significantly less like her now, of course, but if I ever have children I hope that they're as cute as hers and Tom Cruise's.

I like television. It seems silly, but it's a form of escapism to me in the same way that a good book is. The only difference is that television is easier because I don't have to see it in my head. I can see it right in front of me.

I never know what to write on this blog so it's really just whatever I'm doing or thinking in the moment.

it's not typical

I don't always like being on Trine campus. I'm a commuter, so even if I have as much right as anybody to be here, it's really easy to feel like I don't quite belong. I don't think I've ever been to any of the parties on campus, and I don't go to very many events either, though Nickolai has convinced me it might be a good idea to get out of the house this Friday night for the MSO celebration of Martin Luther King Day. I'm not super personable and anxiety gets the better of me, so we'll see how well that goes.

I'm a bit of a loner by nature, and I said that in my last post. This isn't really any different. How do you fit in when you feel like you don't belong by default and you also aren't willing to leave your comfort zone enough to make yourself belong? I don't lose much sleep over it, but it's certainly something I think about.

whatever you've been dreaming about

I don't have very many people that I would really count as friends. It isn't something negative; it's just the way I am. It's hard to let people in, even when I want to, and I have always had my family who knew my good and bad without even having to ask or look very hard. I was never without friends, I just never had very many. Calling my friends an inner circle seems cliche, but I don't really know what else to call them.

It's hard to be friends with people when I'm abrasive as a defense mechanism and defensive in the most passive-aggressive of ways. My husband has gotten over this, but that probably has a lot to do with how personable he is. He's friendly to a fault, and I am distrustful and consistently scared the world is out to hurt us. I still haven't decided if it's healthy or not.

how could i ask for more

I love my job. I complain about it a fair amount because no one really wants to go to work, but I really don't dislike it. I dislike working in general (I guess?) but I don't hate the job. The women I work with are great, and so is the one guy that's there. Maybe I love it so much because I've kind of always been a girls' girl. I feel safe around other women.

I mean, I sell handbags, so it's at least more glamorous when I used to come home smelling like butter every night. No matter how many times I washed my hair, I always felt like I could scrape a film of grease off my skin with my fingernail (I wasn't allowed to bite my nails either when I worked in food. As soon as I stopped working there I picked up the habit again.).

I'm sort of an apathetic person, so I'm pretty happy to have anything that makes me a little happy. Work doesn't make me happy, but the people I work with do most of the time.

under a pale blue sky

I love mermaids. I love everything about mermaids, although today mermaids are often called sirens. Nowadays, we don't much care about the difference, and I'm not one to argue semantics. Other creatures similar include undines and nereids, but nowadays I'm inclined to think them all synonyms, for the most part.

There's something romantic and dangerous about belonging to the sea, and the first story of a mermaid reflects that. A goddess fell in love with a mortal, and killed him without intent. Ashamed and heartbroken, she threw herself into the sea, but her beauty was so divine that the water could not hold it, and thereafter she was woman from the waist up and fish from the waist down.

Mermaids belong to no one but the sea. Ariel didn't know how good she had it.

the fear in your eyes

I spent too much money on these boots. Their retail price was almost $600. I got them for $168, including tax. People say things can't make you happy, but where do they get off pretending that they understand what brings me joy? It's not like I only enjoy things, but even if I did, what gives them the right to criticize a person they know nothing about?

People only know what I want them to know about me, and maybe little tics and quirks that I can't quite hide. Most people wear masks, and I am no exception. Maybe my boots won't make me happy, but they're part of a mask, and the mask isn't completely false. The mask is something I created of myself, a caricature of something I already am, exaggerated to give myself a sense of security. I'm told boots and handbags and earrings and dresses can't make me happy and maybe they're right, but maybe they're not.

Maybe I get to choose what makes me happy and they can remove their noses from my business. I don't wear the mask all the time, and even when I take the mask off it isn't all the way gone. My masks are all parts of me, expanded and glued into place, and they never really leave, they just shrink away until I have to play the character again.

I love these boots.

don't feed the flame

When I woke up this morning, I was even more exhausted than usual. Wanting to sleep is a remnant of depression that I've never quite shaken; as horrible as it was, there was still something immensely satisfying about doing nothing, about having no motivation and feeling no guilt about being able to find no obligations whatsoever. Eight hours of sleep seems like so little to me as I stare up at the ceiling while the cat paws at the door, begging to be let in because he knows it's time for me to move even though rising is the last thing on my mind.

On the days I feel tired, tired is more than just what my body is. It is an emotion, a state of mind, an inescapable sinkhole with no solid edges for me to grab on to. Exhaustion is a monster that creeps out from underneath my bed, slithering up onto the sheets and drowning out the cat that wants nothing more than to rub his face on mine until I give him the attention he wants. Fatigue is a nagging thought in the back of my head that whatever needs accomplished that day can wait; after all, haven't I earned a day to slip away from all the anxiety, to give in to the monster that wants to keep away the people that love me?

When I look at the clock, it is seven in the morning, and I don't know how I'll make it to eight without losing my mind.

darkest before the dawn

When I came home today, I stood in the yard for a moment, schoolbag on my back. I live in the middle of the woods, and there's always something special about when the snow is hanging off the branches. It is cold and quiet and white and my cat always takes great pleasure in rubbing against my legs for a moment until I bend down far enough for her to hop up on my schoolbag or shoulder. The winter is hard on her; she curls up and sleeps for hours, even more than usual, and although she is always happy to see me she is especially glad for me in these cold months. She snuggles into my neck like a scarf and when I look out at the yard, I am excited for spring and then summer and then fall. I do not profess to love winter. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. However, if winter is what I have to live through to get to the times I love most, I am glad I can find at least passing beauty in its chill.

The cat whines when I put her down, flopping over in a display that I know is meant to attract a bit more attention, and, like always, it works. I laugh and scratch her stomach and then the top of her head, though she doesn't get the same enjoyment out of it that she would were I not wearing gloves, and with a shiver, I walk into the warmth and away from winter, almost wishing I could hibernate the season away.