4 am is time for bad poetry

do you feel like an adult vaccuuming the floor in heels and revelling in what a perfect housewife you'd be
or taking road trips calling shotgun feeling the wind through your hair and your nails tapping the dashboard are so perfectly manicured blood red
sunglasses and statement necklaces whatever the fuck that means and coffee cups because you don't need it anymore to stay awake
but you keep it for the look of it
do you like him because late at night when you are supposed to be sleeping in the quiet of his parents' house you trace the many lines of his tattoos and think you've found a man and not a girl
because why would you date a girl anyway when a woman is only a woman with a man and do you
swish the alcohol around in your mouth before you swallow it do you
grimace slightly as it goes down or do you drink it as if you've always drunk it and as if you are perfectly at ease in this world of sparkling champagne and bodycon dresses
are you totally at ease in this world of sparkling glittering iridescent champagne carbonated so much so much that the bubbles rise from your stomach suffocate you from within
and bodycon dresses tight like corsets but it's okay because that is how you like it, it shows off the cleavage well and heaven knows you are an adult
that
does
that
and
I dare you one more time to tell me to shut up because I swear to fucking god if I could I would withdraw so much into myself I'd create a black hole and drag everything into me and you too
and then maybe I will be big
enough for you

A letter to my mother

You told me on more than one occasion that you were a bad mother. These words were spoken in varying tones - sometimes regretfully, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes with the intent to seek forgiveness, and sometimes with the intent to hurt, as if it were my fault for not being content with the subpar job you've been doing. Today you told me, after I recounted a story about how Maarya's parents wanted her to change the oil in the car, that we complained about you when it could be so much worse. At first I felt bad, as if what I was experiencing was nothing in comparison to people who really had problems, but then I realised that, even if that were true (which it's not), I have a right to complain anyway.

No matter how ridiculous anyone else's parents may seem and no matter how much of a martyr you think you are, it still came as a surprise to me that despite all the times I told you I wanted to die and all the times I told you how bad I felt, you continually chose to deny what I said, tell me my life will never be as hard as yours, and ignore what I say. When I tell you a situation makes me feel uncomfortable enough to panic and want to cry and you tell me I'm making stuff up to make you feel miserable, you don't care about me. You care about yourself. You have made it abundantly clear that you don't give shit about me or how I feel. This is what makes you a bad mother - not that you sometimes get mad and argue, which I understand, but because you consistently, time and time again, show just how little you care about my problems.

So I don't care about your problems anymore. Do you remember all the times you were upset and crying and couldn't stop and I gave you a hug, looked after Sasha while you lay in bed for hours crying (and Sasha knew, so she was crying too)? What about when you were mad at papa and I listened, no matter how much it hurt to hear insults being thrown at him? Or when I helped you clean out the house, constantly cleaning up because I know it's hard for you (later you complained about how I didn't do anything to baboola and told me not to take it personally). And when I tell you if you can please not bitch about papa to me because it hurts, because I can't take it, and you tell me I'm the jerk, I'm the bad guy who contributes to your suffering, but what goes around comes around and I will eventually get what I am due? You do not deserve the effort I have put in to help you because I felt bad. You did not put in effort to help me when I felt bad.

I don't need you. I crawled out of that hole slowly, painstakingly, mostly by myself. I dragged myself up and I'm happy, god forbid! You did nothing to help me and I know now you will never do anything to help me. I am sorry for wasting your time. As long as you continue to harbour this ridiculous notion that you are a martyr constantly hurt by everyone else, never doing anything wrong, then I am not your daughter. I do not want to be the daughter of someone who doesn't give a shit about me.

You are not entitled to my love, or my respect, or my devotion. I am not a sound board for you to bounce your frustrations off of. Get a fucking stress ball, go crying to your fucking boyfriend, and leave me alone, because I am through with you and if I can solve my problems (which you don't think exist) by myself, then you can climb off your high horse and solve your problems by yourself, too.

When it comes down to it, the first time I wore a short sleeved shirt around papa, he instantly recognised the scars and asked me where I got them. I can't say the same for you, no matter how many times I've told you.

songs

1: A song you like with a color in the title
Blue Ridge Mountains, Fleet Foxes

2: A song you like with a number in the title
Dust Bowl III, Modern Lives

3: A song that reminds you of summertime
Kids, MGMT

4: A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about
I Don't Want Love, The Antlers

5: A song that needs to be played LOUD
Only If For a Night, Florence + The Machine
(this is a pain to capitalise correctly so I give up)

6: A song that makes you want to dance
Party in the USA, Miley Cyrus (duh)
Hips Don't Lie, Shakira
Bet On It, High School Musical
La Vie en Rose, Edith Piaf

7: A song to drive to
Young Blood, Naked and Famous

8: A song about drugs or alcohol
The Next Four Months, Okkervil River

9: A song that makes you happy
basically everything that makes me dance + Stubborn Love, The Lumineers + the gilmore girls theme song
also Harbour Lights, sung by like 10000 different people
also Le Festin by Camille and I just have a lot of songs that make me happy I guess

10: A song that makes you sad
ugh so many
Never Let Me Go, Florence + The Machine
Phantom Of My Organ, SlowBlow

11: A song that you never get tired of
Get Lonely, The Mountain Goats

12: A song from your preteen years
Chemicals React, Aly & AJ

13: One of your favorite 80’s songs
When All Is Said and Done, ABBA

14: A song that you would love played at your wedding
???????

15: A song that is a cover by another artist
???????

16: One of your favorite classical songs
Canon in D Major (played by Jacques Loussier because he makes it jazzy)

17: A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke
??????

18: A song from the year that you were born
??????

19: A song that makes you think about life
I Like Giants, Kimya Dawson

20: A song that has many meanings to you
Elephant in the Room, Richard Walters

21: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title
Bukowski, Modest Mouse

22: A song that moves you forward
Carry On, Fun.

23: A song that you think everybody should listen to
London Iona, Sylvain Chomet

24: A song by a band you wish were still together
I don't have this problem???????

25: A song by an artist no longer living
La Vie en Rose, Edith Piaf

26: A song that makes you want to fall in love
Come On Get Higher, Matt Nathanson
Yellow, Coldplay

27: A song that breaks your heart
Garden Song, Richard Walters

28: A song by an artist with a voice that you love
The Escape Artist, Richard Walters

29: A song that you remember from your childhood
Listen to Your Heart, Roxette

30: A song that reminds you of yourself
All This and Heaven, Too, Florence + The Machine

All of the ghouls come out to play and every demon wants his pound of flesh, but I like to keep some things to myself

10th grade started off being angsty. I was mad that I had to move and hated the school and hated the house and hated the neighbourhood and pretty much felt weird and out of place everywhere I went. I was still upset over Tyler. I prayed a lot, and then forgot to pray, and then prayed more because I felt bad for not praying.

In December, Tyler wrote me a really long email that made me both furious at how victimising it was and thrilled that I had elicited a reaction. I replied, being dramatic and theatrical because I knew it would hurt. He didn't respond and we didn't talk. I think I was over it at that point.

During that time I joined winter track and it was cold but I was excited. I was good at the 300m (it still remains as one of my best races which is so weird because I can't imagine running the 300 now) and I had become acquainted with people. There were still times when I felt like the world's grossest and most awkward person and these times were frequent and intense but at least things were improving.

Things continued that way. I was good at school. I still felt socially inept and like there was a lot I could improve on but I was getting there. I was starting to fumble with words a lot less. We went to Mexico and I wrote a paper on fascism for Euro and the weather was nice and I had started doing long distance, a thing I've wanted to do since I started track that one time in 5th grade.

Sometime around when grades come out I found out I had an 83 on the trig regents and a 600 on the chem SAT II. This did not bode well. I felt sick. The whole summer felt out of tune but I'm not sure whether it was because of this or because my cousin from Russia came to visit and it still feels like yesterday. There was a lot of frustration.

11th grade started off normally, with nothing eventful really happening. I took driver's ed and felt adult and felt like I could do things. Strangely, I felt more adult concerning driving then than I do now, but that's time for you. Robert and I became friends. I lost touch with a lot of my friends, both through willful separation (on my part) and not having any classes together. I found several new friends. I did things.

Maarya started panicking around February, which invariably led me to panic on my part because I didn't know what to do. I spent a very awkward and angry vacation in Jamaica with way too many people, studying for the SATs and trying to convince my parents to let me move out after college because if I don't I might die. I spent a lot of time joking about dying with Robert, which scared him. Track was not the same that spring. There was too much drama.

Then there were tests and stress and I hooked up a bit which was gross but whatever and then I tried to read but I realised how alone I was and what's the fun in going out if you're going to the same place to do the same thing at the same time every day. I started cutting sometime around May and Maarya came to visit which was stressful but also nice and new, really new.

The summer was a mess. My parents split up and both of them were mad at me a lot of the time. I visited Maarya and that was nice, but still stressful, and I missed her a lot when I came back. I tried out for track but it was the morning after I came back from Buffalo, after I came back from camp, after I had spent two weeks furiously packing. My throat closed up in the middle of a timed mile run, I stopped because I was terrified, my coach yelled at me for not trying hard enough and coming up with excuses, I cried a bit and quit.

Robert and I have a falling out. I thought the coming of school would make things better because at least I'd have stuff to focus on, but there was suddenly an influx of stuff to focus on and I did not have the energy to expend on all of it. People were yelling and my head was exploding and I really had nobody to tell this to because I didn't want to bother Maarya, since she was not too well off herself. I had no room to hide away in, not even a corner or someplace quiet where people wouldn't barge in on me and I could let my guard down. I spent a lot of time panicking, a lot of time lying in bed under the covers with my ears to my head to drown the noise out and maybe if it was dark and quiet I could pretend I was not surrounded, not intruded on and degraded. It was hard to breathe again, but this time all the time. I found myself gasping for air.

Then there was Sandy and I got a breath, if only for a moment, though it should have been longer seeing as we were out for so long. School started again and I fell back into it. I wanted to die. I tried several times but I was much too much of a coward to ever carry through with it. My mum took me to a therapist once, who told me my problems were small and I did not need help. I exploded on my mum a couple times in December, and she apologised. Then Maarya came, and it was alright, and how dare anyone make me think it won't be, or that I deserved any of what happened.

I love love love love love you so much sometimes I don't have words for it and even when I do have words for it I feel like I've said the words before because it's such a rarity to find words that express your feelings exactly that when you find them you just stick with them.
And I know it upsets you a lot when people say that the things you've tried to change aren't changing and I'm letting you know now that even though it's not perfect whenever I think about who you are now and who you were then it's a really big difference. You're mature now, I look at you as a reasonable, rational adult who can (most times but you have slipped up) solve problems through communication, and you believe in the future and that you'll last more than a few months and you believe so much in it that you hope and dream and your capacity to love has grown and you have really matured a lot since even just this summer.
And I love you loads.

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the side of the road and run and jump into the ocean in my clothes. I'm smaller than a poppy seed inside a great big bowl and the ocean is a giant that can swallow me whole, so I swim for all salvation and I swim to save my soul, but my soul is just a whisper trapped inside a tornado, so I flip to my back and I float and I sing, "I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything."

There's something so desperate about it all, and I'm not quite sure what it is. But, wow, it's been a year, and I've somehow changed, somehow grown, since last I saw those two faces standing on a stage, and their faces never seem to change, but everything's so different.

Between the drinks and subtle things and the holes in my apologies

I can't honestly say that I understand both points of view, even though I usually pride myself on being able to take both sides into consideration. I think I might be closer to understanding than I was earlier, because earlier I shifted from thinking you were completely unfair to thinking I was completely unfair, and between the highs and lows of pride and guilt I seemed to have lost the detachedness necessary to make proper decisions.

Here is what I do understand: I understand sometimes you have to say things and get them off your chest and you're relying on me to hear those things and not make it about me. I understand a lot of the time that I was not able to hear what you had to say and not take it out of proportion or panic about it and that probably made you feel worse. I understand that I have done some pretty crappy things that hurt you, too, even when we weren't dating, or official official. I understand that sometimes miscommunication happened and sometimes I overreacted and sometimes I did not think about your feelings before acting, and I'm sorry about it. Really truly.

But I've apologised and I think we've moved past it, as I have moved past the mistakes you made, even without lengthy and deep apologies. I don't need you to retract everything you said, or beg forgiveness, or cry because you're sorry. "Father I have sinned" but who the fuck cares, it's over and I never held it against you because I understand everyone is allowed to make mistakes and what kind of a person would I be if I jumped on you every time you made one? I thought we had gone on. I thought my stating my ideas and how I felt the other day without panicking would have made you understand how I feel, and maybe the proposal to change how we communicate would actually work, because I thought it was a good plan and it was better than nothing. But you dismissed it and moved on and then did the same thing that I do that you hate.

I don't like hypocrisy and now I'm wondering whether or not I should have held anything against you, because I forgave and forgot and moved past, understood that the grievances you held against me were also grievances other people used to hold against me and that maybe there was some legitimacy to your point so I conceded and let you be right. I read your letter and I felt sick because how, suddenly, is it all my fault when you're upset. How is it all my fault when you're telling me something I really can't handle and I say something like, "I know you're upset, but can you complain to someone else about how pathetic you think you are when you got 4s on your APs because you're making me feel like shit about myself." Is that unreasonable? Am I always supposed to be there, an iron wall to absorb all the flames you throw at but never growing hotter because that would be stupid, metal doesn't do that, why don't you just shape people into what you want them to be because they're not good enough by being human and fallible. Are you the only one allowed to be fallible?

And I can never ever tell you anything because you get mad at me, or you get angry, or bitter, and you leave and then write hysterical posts about how you cut and how you're so desperate and I do not want to do it anymore. You are doing with me what you do with everyone else, except you deny that you do it with me. How many times have you said, "I try to compete, but not with you. I can't compete with you." and I believed it because I have always been the exception to all the hate and disappointment that you have given other people. But you do compete, and you do it subtly, in blog posts and tweets that slowly make me feel worse and worse about myself and more and more sorry about what I'm doing to you. But every time I panic you make it about yourself. Can there be one thing in the world that is not about you? 

Three years ago, since Tyler said the same words you uttered just a month ago, I have been trying not to blow things out of proportion, to act mature and calm down and think through things rationally. I am a hypocrite! I know! I do these dumb things and panic and I expect you not to, and I am trying to change! I have been trying to change, for a really really long time. But I can't be the only one. I can't be the only one to blame.

I don't want you to apologise; I want you to listen. If I'm crazy and insane and self-centred and a bitch, okay! Okay! Leave me and don't look back then, if I do cause you that much pain, if every time I panic you feel the need to leave and make the problem suddenly your problem, because nobody is more of a martyr, nobody is more hurt, not even in a moment.

All the while this scene has been playing through my head, of the one time I was panicking while you were here and I felt like I was going to die or cut myself open right there with whatever sharp object my hands could reach first and you just lay there and stared at me and I made desperate appeals to try to get you to understand but you didn't and I was shaking and finally I got up and started putting things away because I needed to do something with my hands because I knew they would kill me if I didn't and half an hour later I returned to bed still shaking and about to cry and only wanting someone to understand how horrible I felt but you were asleep.

I wish that I were scathing and witty and devastating so that I could do something to retaliate and so that my words would hurt you. I want you to hurt like you wanted me to hurt, like I'm hurting, like I'm going to keep hurting for years. I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all. I shall tell you all!