ME :-)

May your week be filled with good thoughts, kind people, and happy moments.

but when i shut down, i make sure i shut down good. i board up all the windows, lock every single door, barricade after barricade. i will make sure there is no way to get in. and when someone does, when they slip through the cracks and find the keys i left under the welcome home matt, i will run. because that’s what i do. i shut down, beg someone to come in, and then run at the sight of them because i fear every hand outstretched to me is the one i used to hold, the one i miss, the one that’s no longer in my reach. and so maybe they will follow, or maybe they don’t. but all i know is that i never know when to get close or when to back away so often times it takes so much time for me to come around because i am scared that no one is going to be able to figure me out.

I want to tell my future kids about you. I want to tell them about the way I would feel your eyes on me in the middle of your favourite movie and the way it made me shift my weight. I want to tell them that love sometimes means being uncomfortable. Sometimes love means stepping out of your comfort zone. I want to tell them about the times I cut your hair and you never cared when I fucked up the back. Or the times we would say “let’s make dinner together” and you would smile over the hot stove while I sat on the counter and watched. I want to tell my future kids about the things you taught me. I want to tell my kids that their first loves might not be their best, that they won’t know their last love is their last love, that they won’t notice when the person they love is settling for them, that moving on sometimes means moving out and changing their number, that seeing the person you love cry feels like being punched in the throat. I want to tell them about the way you loved me so hard, every time you looked at me it felt like an echo that’s still vibrating through my bones today. I want to mention the way it felt to hold you when you cried in my arms. You shook so hard I glanced over your shoulder, out the window, to see if the trees had noticed the earthquake rocking your entire body but they were still as death. I remember wiping your nose and you apologizing, saying you felt bad that I had seen you “ugly cry” and, although your face was red and your eyes were swollen and your jaw was quivering so hard your teeth kept knocking together and you couldn’t look at me, you were the most beautiful thing I had seen in my entire life, because you were mine and mine alone and you being upset just meant I had another reason to tell you I loved you and that everything would be okay because we had each other and having each other meant having everything in the world. I want to tell my future kids about that. I want them to know that love can be pure if they let it. I want to tell my children about you, and then smile and say, “Go wash your hands for dinner. She’ll be home any minute.”

You will never be more in love with each other than the moment when you want to stop loving each other. She’ll make the basement in your chest feel like Madison square garden. Every time she smiles at you it’ll feel like she’s kissing you on the cheek. Every time you hold hands you will be dancing badly on the line between almost and always. I’ve never done drugs but I know addiction. It is her laughter quenching all of California’s thirst, it is her stretchmarks painted like river streams on a map you’ll never want to stop exploring, it is her constant summer fingertips in a world of Antarctic winter. She will find every nightmare stalking your synapses and shine a light on them, you will not be scared! She will kill all the monsters in your closet and then she will become one. She will teach you that love and fear are as close as light and shadows. Love is sometimes a chokehold waiting to masochistically squeeze the life out of you, love is also a warm embrace filled with the softest forgiveness you will ever know. Love is the strangest tightrope walk imaginable, one where it’s harder to fall off than stay on top. Do you ever wonder why it’s called falling in love? Is it because eventually we always need to hit the ground? I want love to be like the butterflies in my stomach, what I mean is, I want love to seek flight! Because aren’t we all awaiting wings that never tire and a view of the city where all the memories live that we have yet to create? Take me to your hilltop cathedral. Crucify me in the name of the fallen, the smitten, and the heavenly heartbreak. I’ll smile and take in the sight of all of our tomorrow’s and I will collapse onto my knees at the altar until the only prayers we left are our voices. You’ve made this atheist heartbeat sing a choir of amens and hallelujahs that still echoes inside my chest. I want to know which prayers are enough of a poem for you to love me as recklessly as your god loves you. I spent so many nights thanking you for teaching me what love means and now I want you to hear me say “I love you.” over and over and over like a lingering voicemail that you still can’t bring yourself to delete. I want you to say it with me until words don’t sound like words any more, until we forget that we ever knew what it meant.

I think of the good and beautiful times we shared, memories inked like unforgettable tattoos, on the deepest parts of our souls. There was a moment so pure when you were holding me when I thought I was done. I was done looking because meeting you meant I was done. You were it. Then you pierced my heart with a sword so easily and now you know I’ll never come back. You’ll never be able to think that I’m pining over you or that I miss you, you’ll never be able to see my tears or hear my voice again because you made your choice and I wasn’t it.

6 Things I’ve learned from my break up’s (1.) You can’t fucking fix people. Sometimes we believe that when people are broken it is our job to fix them, but you can’t fix a broken person with another broken person. You can’t make yourself feel better or deserving of love by trying to make another person feel deserving of love by loving you. People are not problems, they are not lumps of clay that you can mold and sculpt into whatever you desire. People are not welcoming to change. It takes the right person to make someone want to and no matter how hard you try sometimes that person just isn’t you. (2.) It’s true what they say about being unhappy. If you don’t feel the same about a person anymore or feel like you’re constantly looking for something you used to find in them in others all you need to do is leave. There is no point in staying with someone out of guilt, or loneliness or the feeling that you are trapped you are not. This is always been two sided. If you feel that they are not showing you the same effort and you are tired of being let down or making excuses as to why you are treated the way you are to others then leave. If you feel like you just don’t want the relationship anymore then leave, If you feel like you are just taking it day by day then leave. You are not just hurting them by staying and cheating or staying and waiting for a change you are hurting yourself, there is no need to keep a relationship if you feel that it has ran its course when the love just isn’t there anymore. (3.) It is never wrong to put yourself first when you are the one hurting. You should not ever feel guilty about leaving someone when the love is not the same for you anymore. You should never let yourself be sucked back into a relationship just because they’re tears were louder than your heart telling you that it was okay. It was not okay, you were not okay, you gave so much of your time to someone who thought it was a right to have it and not return it to you, you were not wrong. A relationship is an equal two people giving each other they’re time and love. There is no percentage of amounts of who gives who more because at the end of the day, how you’re feeling about them is what shows you how much you love them, not the numbers in your head or the times you counted them telling you “I love you” you are just as important, you matter. Your feelings matter. You are allowed to leave to better yourself. (4.) People can’t be crutches. People are not things to love when you are lonely. People are not things you can hold onto when you need something to release sexual tension. You can’t keep someone around for your pure pleasure when you know that they would almost do anything for you. You can’t keep someone around like that just to make you feel like you have power over them. That kind of hold on someone will blow up in your face and you will break, they will break, and they’re heart will break into a million pieces and that person will never be able to love the same way again. All you are doing is breaking a loyal person who wanted nothing more than to be loved by someone they thought put the stars in the sky. (5.) Sometimes the “forever” you promised is just a number of days.  nothing is eternal unless it is meant to be and what is meant to be will always find it’s way, but sometimes it gets caught in a little detour along the way and people fall in love to learn lessons. I’ve learned my lesson. Seeing a future with someone can go one of two ways. One, you either see a future together and you make it happen, Or two you see a future together and you fall in love with the idea of a future together. This is something I’ve fallen victim to, many times. Don’t feel discouraged that it didn’t happen. This is just another step closer to finding the real forever. Just remember you’re almost there. (6.) Sometimes shit just doesn’t work out. Relationships come and go, people find love everyday but just because it doesn’t work once doesn’t mean it never will. You don’t need anybody. You are independent, you are strong, and you are worthy of love. Remember to always keep your head high and you mind open, love will find you someday and when it does the wait will feel like just another amount of time that was worth all the heart break.

why can’t i write about you? why aren’t the words spilling from my fingertips? normally i can’t help but write and write and write especially when i’m in love i catch myself narrating; cataloguing the cut-scenes of our own perfect love story, during those savory-sweet moments that always pass too quickly poems burst forth in my mind beautiful and waiting to be shared but i’m never quite able to get them down and by the time i’ve got a minute to spare it’s vanished never to be known maybe we’re too good for this world to hear maybe our love is so explosive it would decimate the entire human race maybe it’s so sweet that everyone would get cavities and every dentist in every corner of the globe would be so overwhelmed we’d run out of the stuff that numbs your gums but what if i’ve just misplaced the poems? maybe my words are left with all the cigarettes we’ve shared caught between the filters the ashtrays and garbage cans exchange their favorites when we’re not looking they meet in the shadows once a week when the sun has finally gone down the idea of trash talk taken to a whole different level and the only thing they talk about is us the cigarette butts and plastic cups discuss our lips and the kisses they’ve shared the plates and plastic forks get together and tell stories of our hands how they fit together so perfectly maybe one night we’ll catch them while we’re weaving zig-zags through some dark alley in some bright city our only destination where the other is going and maybe they’ll be waiting excitedly gathering all the notes and things we’ve never said aloud but there’s no need to stick around to listen for every word that they’ve kept every love-letter they’ve found hidden between cracks in the pavement every thought of you i’ve never spoken does not need to be shared because i know without a doubt you’ve already memorized the words behind my eyes you absently move your feet to the beat of songs saved inside my mind theres no need to speak when we communicate through touch and our eyes have had conversations longer than this god-damn poem why cant i stop writing about you?

Why didn’t God take away the scars? Because it was the most powerful story. Jesus didn’t even cover up His scars. They were healed wounds. Our scars are a witness to the world. They are apart of our story. Healed wounds that are symbols that God has restored us.

Dear person reading this,

The first thing being loved by God does is remove fear, all fear. And anything is possible where there is no fear.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Jesus your the one that awakens the deepest parts of my soul. I hear your voice and it calms me.