The Thoughts of the Sleepless

Hours slipping away with the folding of towels into neat little corners

Hands brushing away lint and stray strings

Serving up lunch with a splash of Sriracha

that the wind in my hair would feel so good that I would forget the chill on my frostbitten cheeks,

that somehow, the pursuit of what we collectively call success would shelter me from the hurt that came from within and around me.

But slowly I am learning that although we desperately seek validation and companionship, many of life’s truths and adjustments are a decision of the self.

That growing older and becoming an adult is not about taxes and homes and babies and marriage,

but about shedding a skin, peeling back a layer that reveals a sense of comfort with what is,

losing what does not matter,

losing what does not lend pleasure,

losing what does not bring joy,

allowing the rise of a one-woman revolution of enthusiastic “Yes!”

Resting without the compulsive need to accede to exceed to succeed,

but to merely be

Not even the ocean can wear down the gravitational force that brings us back together time and time again.

Tides coming in like we’re coming home,

Each time returning to a slightly different shore, weathered by the ways we’ve grown.

And yet, the sand feels soft between my toes,

And the sea glass ever more beautiful.

Don’t you see?

The waves may crash and sting salt in our wounds, but I will gladly lie beneath the beating sun with you -

The rays turning the water into minerals,

Tiny specks to match your freckles,

I see myself with my head on your shoulder, wanting a little bit more warmth than the fire can give me.

mind hollow

eyes tired

little whispers

eat eat

little fingers creep.

brain abuzz

neurons numb

look to run

shadows hiding

sleep sleep

too far gone

Trying to escape the smoke entering the world

Trying to escape the world

Trying to escape

Breath hot on mine in the back of a taxi,

It’s been a year, and I miss you.

But now it’s not one, but two, then three,

Years, and partners and degrees of separation,

Now it’s not just us – you and me.

It’s a memory, another experience alive in my mind

Killed by reality, untapped potential

Burrowed in unspoken whispers in kind.

I feel it in your blue-eyed gaze

The recognition still there, the feeling simmering

I think back to a time when I had no responsibility, when all I was required to do was stay alive and be curious and learn. When did we lose this part of ourselves? When did I become an adult, responsible for all parts of my existence? When did I lose myself – the part of me that was free and unadulterated? Even that word – unadulterated – not being an adult. To be adult, to lose a part of you, to change. Sometimes I see that I have changed so much I barely recognize that my eyes are green or my face smooth or that my hair now falls to my collarbones. The qualities I most identified with exist no longer. Who am I without them? Who have I become? Where is my music, my poetry, my free spirit, my joy? When did I lose them? How did I miss it as they became detached and trailed behind the freight train of “success”? 

I want to tell you: I was depressed.

I want to tell you: I went out drinking and the next day I didn’t have a hangover per se, but I felt like my soul had been ripped out of me.

I want to tell you: My mental health has been rough and I can’t escape the brain that’s been given to me and it’s feeding me in circles of hate hate hate until I’m empty.

I want to tell you: Yes, I’m busy. But the busy is welcomed, it’s wanted, because nothing can keep my mind off of myself better then the distraction of neverending work and goals and progress.

I want to tell you: I don’t know how to talk to you. When you ask me what’s wrong I can’t explain that you’re the only one I don’t want to talk to.

I want to tell you: I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, so I say nothing.

I want to tell you: I hate that you love my curves. I wish they would melt off my frame, they are not welcome in my brain, I wish I just had the wherewithal and perseverance like I used to.

I want to tell you: I want to recover, but I don’t, so I can’t tell you.

I want to tell you: I love you, but I can’t fully love you until I tell you my whole truth but I can’t because it’s much too scary a reality for me to face.

I want to tell you: It’s not about you, it’s about me. It’s a selfish self-perpetuation of not wanting to give up on my reckless habits because they’re the only thing that has been steady since I was 16 years old.

I want to tell you: Stop therapizing me. When I tell you I want space I mean it. 

I want to tell you: One day is not enough space.

I want to tell you: I’m not ready for this level of attachment.

I want to tell you: I want to be alone and I want to live alone, but right now I’m struggling, and I need to be with you.

I want to tell you: I need help, but I’m not exactly sure how to commit to it.

I am negative energy,

Expending more than I consume

I float above the surface of the earth gaining power with each step.

I am a tsunami,

Say your sorrows to those who fall in my wake.

I am Jezebel,

Watch me devour my hellish dominion.

I take no prisoners,

They are only fleeting bodies that crunch beneath my tender soles.

The wind whimpers when I cut through the concrete antebellum,

He is half of my being. He is the dark clouds that cover my judgment and tell me to not eat. He is the one I come home to at night when no one else is around. He is the one that tells me I'm unloved and wills me to cry to let him out of my burrowing sadness rooted deep in my gut and He is the one that never seems to leave no matter how hard I try to push him away, even though my tactics seem to work on every other person in my life.

This injury has made me hungry.

Aching to run, or walk, or crawl to the start line

to sprint to a destination other than the depression in my mind.

Hungry.

Left with emptiness that I have tried to fill so many times, 

I am greedy.

For validation and love and the feeling of my emotions slipping out of me with each step

I long for the feeling of weightlessness, painlessness, the feeling of success,

Hungry.

When at night I stuff the hole that is left, 

I want to feel empty, but full.

The dichotomy is not lost on me but how can they both coexist?

I am fraught with the sides of me, 

but who am I without the other, 

the dark that consumes me,

I think about you a lot.

The way you drift into my mind like the ocean tide as easy as gravity pulling you close to the earth, organic.

Sometimes it catches me by surprise that you so easily come into my mind without me noticing, creeping back in, familiar as a neighborhood cat on the doorstep.

I want to curl up in the moments I have preserved in my memories but I know that things are not the same, that we have changed and grown and shifted.

I long for the impossible day when our young love, frozen in time, comes back around in minutes and seconds, finally concurrent in the same location, wrapping itself around whispers and touches.

When the wind makes your hair stand on end out of pleasure, out of a yearning for sensation it does not stop and wait, it simply blows.

Cries into dark tunnels of cement will always bounce back because the laws of nature bind it to be active, reflecting, responsive. The wells of honesty come smooth and easy, they feel no dam. Words spill out of your mind like heavy raindrops when a cloud is too full and you just can’t keep them in any longer, even though they may be splattering and sputtering as they hit.

Every morning your name enters my mind, springing up in fits in every action that attempts completion or comes to fruition you are the reason I keep responding.

Passive

An object at rest will stay at rest until an outside force is acted upon it, but my god for some reason the laws of nature do not apply to your love or perhaps I didn't provide enough force. When you are left alone you will sit at the bottom of my stomach pitted against my will for you to leave. I want to ignore you, but you sit far too heavy. 

Feel your feet with each step as your heel strikes the pavement inside your boots

Feel the fabric of your socks slip down the insole down to your toes rubbing together

Remember the sand moving with every step feeling the ocean water move beneath you and the wind whip strands of hair around your face as you pick razor clams out with silly laughs 

Feel your leggings against your calves, the seam up your thigh and the band hugging your hips 

Remember the gentle touch running up your back, the legs intertwined and warmth of your chest

Hear the cars drive past and the wind in the trees, rustling dead leaves and bringing them to the ground, crunching underfoot as you walk East-West

As we imagine the sun did that evening we missed the golden setting behind the swaths of clouds stretched across the sky, but barely looking between stolen glances, no, stares, unable to keep our eyes off of each other for more than a minute

Is it still abuse when you give consent?

When you woke me up in the morning in the dark with your body heavy against mine and I told myself

It was normal

When you said the song was so relatable because Haven’t we all settled for less when what we want has gone away?

I waited until the words bubbled up so strong that they spilled out my mouth

Did you settle with me?

You stare straight ahead at the highway racing underneath