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.