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.