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!

Dear Maarya

I have been trying to write for days, aching to get my hands to a keyboard so I can type, but as soon as I get home the words that were flitting around in my head leave me and I save it for another day. Now I don't have a laptop with me, and it's so cruelly ironic, so fitting, that I want to use my words just when I cannot. So I'm writing this without editing in a scrawl I've rarely used before and it's all so different, isn't it?
Except it's not.

You know about my professed inability to accurately judge time and for a while I thought nothing of it but now I notice it more often and it really gets in the way. I don't even feel it anymore, it's as if I just popped out of whatever lines of time we were confined in (as relative as they may be, shout out to Einstein!) and now it seems so weird to think of anything in terms of past or present, anything but a direct NOW.

Sometimes this is useful. It gives a bit of perspective by removing perspective. Cry less because you know it won't matter to you later; worry less because there's a future directly intertwined with the present. But just as everything in the future is happening at once, so is everything in the past, which is why it's so difficult for me to distinguish between what happened last week and what happened two years ago. I know it's different but I feel the same. I am the same person. Time is standing still.

And we can speculate as to why this is. Is it because I haven't physically changed much since then? Is it because I've moved but not moved on because all the friends I've made here were fleeting and superficial? Is it because I was too stressed out to focus on the change in my life and feel comfortable with it? Is it because everyone insisted so much that I was younger that I started insisting it, too? But in the long run it doesn't matter why it happened because it's like this and it doesn't seem to be changing.

It's funny because I never had a problem being ~*stuck in the past*~. I was hung up on some things, sure, but I didn't really give the past as much thought as it seemed like I would. What was done was done and I have no regrets, and even back when I did regret, I wasn't too fond of gazing back wistfully. It wasted time and it made me sad and it was such a loser thing to do, I thought. I still am not stuck in the past in the way you'd use the phrase -- I don't lament my fortune or wish I had done things differently or constantly pick over the past with a fine-toothed comb. But I still can't stop feeling like my own life is going too fast for me to understand or get a grip of. I'm watching myself do things and it astounds me that anything has changed at all (has it?) because I seem to have turned away for a second and missed the next plot development in the soap opera.

Time stopped moving around July of 9th grade, sometime during NTS. Thanks God good work. It all feels so alien to me now to talk about and simultaneously very very close to home and I really don't want to get too deep into what happened around that time. I'm not writing this about time or my perception of it, anyway (maybe that letter will never be written), but to provide a somewhat succinct background so you, and I, can better understand what I'm feeling now.

Because it does not feel real. You do not feel real, and I'm sorry because that must hurt to hear. It's really nothing I can consciously control, though my particular memory of winter break is getting better. I try not to think about what we've done and I'm sure it happened but I can't bring myself to believe that I'm not dreaming it. I don't feel fulfilled. I slept through it, just like I slept through Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera, and that time we went to central park for nerdprom by ourselves. I want you back so I can make you real, because the pain of loss hurts less than the pain of forgetting, of not feeling, of disbelief. I always wanted to know, and now I do! Except I need to feel it also and how do I do that when I haven't felt for years?

It's like I've been cheated on, promised a prize only to have it snatched away. Unfair unfair. How can you talk of the future if I can't reconcile the past? How can you talk about college if I am still in 9th grade?

It's all disbelief -- disbelief that you would love me, that you would come here, that it would be comfortable and wonderful and good. Disbelief that I am here, that I am myself and I say the things I say and do the things I do. Come back, so that I can imprint your face in my memory and your heart on my lips and push push until I know that time is moving again. I'd rather lose you than have never had you at all. That was one of Becca's questions, wasn't it? I guess I never knew how to answer that until now. I don't demand of you to make me feel again, because that seems a hefty request to make and I feel somewhat self-centred and guilty and sick to make it. I'm not sure who else can help, though.

I got the clock working, if that means anything. I don't have much faith in it. Those little hands must be lying, moving forward with such confident precision and slaying time slowly, like the way glass is smoothed by the sea. How fitting that you should get me a watch.

But sometimes I wake up and I miss you terribly, and I remember you by my side, your body pressed to mine in bed, and even though that hurts, it might be a step in the right direction.
I love you.
Sofiya

For Tyler and Maarya

A list of albums I think you might like (Tyler) and because you're interested (Maarya) and some descriptions

Transcendental Youth - The Mountain Goats
An acquired taste but once you get it they're really really good okay A+

All Eternals Deck - The Mountain Goats
Not as good as Transcendental Youth but it has some good ones and overall is pretty solid. Listen just for No Children and Damn These Vampires B

Gossamer - Passion Pit
Passion Pit should never have a reason. B+

Port of Morrow - The Shins
It's angsty. It's whiny. They're teenage boys (practically men!). They're like The Smiths. They even have a similar name. You will feel whole. A

The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart
Tyler already has this but it's good A+

Young the Giant - Young the Giant
Worth having just for Cough Syrup. That's how worthy this album is. A

For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
Bon Iver before he got reclusive and incoherent. Bon Iver when he was cute and guitar-ey. Bon Iver reminds you of Twilight (and in a good way, too, which is totally weird). Bon Iver makes you love again. A+

The North - Stars
Sort of okay. Worth giving a shot if you've got money. B

Meteora - Linkin Park
JUST KIDDING.
NO.

Around the Well - Iron & Wine
Iron & Wine is one of those bands that you forget exists and then you're like, "Hey, I forgot this band exists!" and then you listen to all their music and you never hate anything again and pass all your classes and walk around in a totally zen mood and do meditation for fun. A+

Bon Iver - Bon Iver
One of my favourite albums so go for it bro seriously you will not be disappoint A+++++

Mirage Rock - Band of Horses
Pretty chill B

Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes
Feel-good music. A just cause it's so cute

Narrow Stairs - Death Cab for Cutie
Not one of the best but it's in the running up. A

The Whole Love - Wilco
You either get it or you don't B

O - Damien Rice
I already have this one and I can say with certainty that it is the bomb especially if you like soft, angsty, brooding vocals (RICHARD WALTERS COUGH). A+

Underwater - Joshua Radin
Just including this cause hey Joshua Radin! Where ya been Joshua Radin! Disappeared off the face Joshua Radin! More like Joshua RadOUT amirite B

The Shepherd's Dog - Iron & Wine
Better than Around the Well but not by a lot A+

Time Without Consequence - Alexi Murdoch
Just look at that face. All around quiet and pensive and not in the way Iron & Wine is (hint: in a worser way) B

Civilian - Wye Oak
I just really like the song Civilian. The rest of the album is good too I guess. Buy for the cover art. I don't have a problem shut up B+

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning - Bright Eyes
If you can stomach whiny white boys crying about how hard life is then this is your lucky day because that's all Bright Eyes does. But seriously it ain't half bad. B+

Half-Made - Ben Sollee
Oh Ben Sollee you sex bomb you 10/10 would bang to this album

Harcore Will Never Die, But You Will - Mogwai
It's post-rock so make of it what you will but personally I'm a fan of Mogwai and post-rock so it's a pretty good deal for me A

Tamer Animals - Other Lives
MAN OH MAN HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ALBUM TO BE IN MY POSSESSION SO I CAN STROKE IT KISS IT LOVE IT A+++

American Nomad - The Apache Relay
It's missing a certain something but I don't know why so B

The Lumineers - The Lumineers
I think we all have this CD by this point but can we just take a moment to appreciate

Night Visions - Imagine Dragons
A cute fun ride B

Using my very detailed methodology and criteria for selecting grades for each album, I have narrowed down the list to:
(for Tyler, in order of cool)

• Bon Iver
• O
• Tamer Animals
• The Shepherd's Dog
• Transcendental Youth
• Around the Well
• For Emma, Forever Ago
• Half-Made

If for some reason these don't tickle your fancy move on to (in order):

• Port of Morrow
• Narrow Stairs
• Helplessness Blues
• Young the Giant

and, for myself:

• Tamer Animals
• Half-Made
• The Shepherd's Dog
• Around the Well
• Port of Morrow
• Transcendental Youth
• The Head and the Heart
• For Emma, Forever Ago
• Young the Giant

oh I can't afford all . . .

hmph

Is it all so very simple and horribly complex?

Horribly complex or awfully complex

I'm feeling particularly pensive today and I'm trying to ignore the one thing I really need to write about, so here have extra fun posts because I haven't posted in a while anyway.

The song originally goes, "Is it all so very simple and horribly complex?" In terms of blog titles, I prefer awfully as the leading word over horribly. Purely an aesthetic reason. But there is some difference in semantics which might be interesting to delve into.

Horribly, though overused a lot, connects to the word "horror", which holds a special place in my heart just because of its attempt to describe something so terrible. Awful, on the other hand, is more annoyance-based than fear-based (or disgust-based), at least for me. Awful is less strong than horrible. This may not actually hold true but it's always the impression it had on me. It's less of a dramatic word. 

Horribly complex is more right than awfully complex.

But we try to keep a cheery attitude here so.

Anyway it's not the right blog title anymore. I still hold that line close to my heart but it needs to go.

In a cold little mirror you were grown, by a black little wind you were blown.

Black, black sheep boy,
blue-eyed charmer,
head hanging with horns from your father.
In a cold little mirror you were grown,
by a black little wind you were blown,
alone, alone, alone.
Cold smile on your lips,
you shake and shiver.
Some animal slips
where the river flows
from a black little crack in a stone
to the crackle in a radio song.
Sing along, sing along, sing along.
Warm light when your eyes
fill with laughter.
Some animal lies
in the pasture,
holes in its throat
where the blood was drawn,
in its mouth where the tongue was torn
by your claw, your claws, your claws.
I rose from  dream.
We were running
from every being
that was hunting,
but we let them get ahead of us.
We let them lie in wait for us.
We're fucked, we're fucked, we're fucked.
I rose from a dream.
I had just destroyed everything
with one crushing blow,
and I woke up and watched it go,
and I woke up and wagged my tongue.
So long, so long, so long.


I had a brief stint with Okkervil River, which, at the time, would have seemed like a really amazing idea had I the capability to think through my actions at all. I mean, as far as bad decisions go, indulging in depressing music is hardly the worst thing I could have done, but it seemed (still seems) like the lowest I could sink. I have done worse out of desperation, but this included words. This summed it up. Everything else was just a buzz in comparison.

I'm not quite sure why words matter so much to me when I'm judging the importance of things. There are some unspoken things which are horrific, but words aren't any less so. Just because a person is indulging in words instead of actions does not mean they're immediately off the hook, clean, fine. It doesn't mean they're okay.

Furthermore, I'm not sure what I see in Okkervil River that's so threatening -- in specific, their album, Black Sheep Boy (the other albums are alright). It's a band that reminds me of Tool, not because of the sound, but because one time Zaineb showed it to me and said they were her favourite band and I was horrified by how dark it was. The thing is, Tool isn't actually that dark, but it seemed it at the time. It seemed like I was opening up some pit of horror and despair that previously had not been opened up by anything else other than cage beds and Chinese foot binding (both pretty bad things I had nightmares about a long long time ago), and I did not want to delve into that . . . at least, not when I was 14.

This is all very hard to word because I am not actually sure why I feel so strongly about Okkervil River and Tool. If you've seen the "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" video, it's the same feeling.

I remember sitting in the corner of my room and just streaming this CD over and over while staring at the computer screen blankly and I thought, "Yes, I relate to this.", when I thought at all because thinking was difficult. On some level, it still is, but I think I've somehow climbed out of that pit. Or maybe I've crawled so far in that I can't see the outside to make comparisons anymore. Regardless, it was not a good time for me and I channelled my feelings through that CD.

Black Sheep Boy documents the thoughts of a heroin addict, which is a weird start because I have never harboured any desire to try heroin and I probably won't because if this was my low point and all I did was listen to music then I'm a pretty mild person as far as acting out goes. I guess what drew me to it was the desperation of the whole thing, and the ease with which the singer narrates his plans to steal away someone he knows so they both can live vicariously through heroin before they both die, the pale, broken way in which the reclusive, animal life of the Black Sheep Boy is led. The entire thing, despite not really resonating with me literally, was what my vision of the world was. "I can barely whisper, it's like dying."

That wasn't too long ago, though: only around a month. It feels so much longer, though, as I listen to the songs again and feel that unease building up. It comes up now because I was scrolling through spotify and looked at the song and thought, "Hell, I'm in a bad mood, let's give this a shot." but I realised soon that this was a heartbreaking sort of feeling, completely teenagerey and normal. Black Sheep Boy delves into a void deeper than that, and it's a void I'm not going into again.

So instead of writing my English essay I decided to write a blog post because I have so many feelings and nobody to gesticulate wildly with so you know how that ends, with my overloading.

I don't really have a point in writing this, either. Nothing really happened in the past two days worth writing about and for quite a long while I didn't feel like writing something formally would really help how I felt or how things were doing. It used to have purpose, some sort of solidity, but now there does not seem to be a point. Like this is so pointless that I don't even have a clever song title for this yet. I'll probably come up with one later, though.

But there are still pretty things and as long as there are pretty things I'll be around to talk about them.

First we have winter, and I know that there is in general a lot of winter love going around in the friend group, but I really really like winter. Mostly because of Christmas, because somehow I'm one of those people that gets unusually cheery and happy around the holidays. Everyone loves to hate those people but I've ended up as one of them and I'm not quite sure how but there it is, I really like the holidays. We haven't even gotten snow yet but I'm sure that if we did I'd just be off the walls insane because that would be so perfect. I think it's the weather and the snowflakes everywhere. It's just a good time and I like it.

Also things have been weird but we can for the most part ignore those except to acknowledge that they're there and weird and making other things weird.

I dunno I just feel really good today but that's subject to change and tomorrow I might feel horrid but that's just the way it is and I'm not sure what my point in making this is except everything is simultaneously the best thing ever and the worst thing ever and for the same reasons too not different reasons it's all beautiful because it all sucks and the air crystallises it so everything is wrapped up in a nice neat bow and wow isn't it so strange how it is isn't it so strange how things work out

15 songs - July

This was my favourite song list from July, but the list has changed quite a bit -- I Still Care for You, The Conductor's Regress, In Our Bedroom After the War, and Everything is Ending would probably be taken off. I'd replace them with Florence. Lots of Florence: All This and Heaven Too, Never Let Me Go, Only If For a Night. The Illusionist CD. It would actually just be 75% of that CD. That CD burns and trembles with the same thing Bon Iver's CD did exactly a year ago, and it's almost like reclaiming the perfection of last November without getting lost.
But this isn't a rant about how perfect last November was, because that's a whole thing in and of itself. Hopefully, looking at this list of songs, I can channel July and feel what I felt then long enough to write about it.

1. I Still Care for You, Ray Lamontagne
This is almost a precursor to Bon Iver's album (and it comes right before Bon Iver's song, too! That wasn't an accident). This song was the first time I got a glimpse of this achy, moody, flowy sort of music style that I've come to love a lot. The song itself is really simple, and the lyrics aren't really that extravagant or poetic, even though the song feels like it is. The music carries the message more than the actual words do, because this is a song about sadness and being left behind and having to pick up the pieces but not being able to, so all you can say is, "I still care for you." You're so shell-shocked and frozen that you repeat the same thing over and over and the waves of all you feel rushes over you, but it's tender, too. I still care for you.

2. Holocene, Bon Iver
One of the most famous Bon Iver songs, along with Skinny Love. This used to bother me, especially when people wouldn't understand the meaning of the song. Whereas a lot of Bon Iver songs on his newer album are open to interpretation (by design) and even the same person does not see the same things on every single listen, I think the meaning of this song is the clearest out of all the others in the album. I should mention that the album's concept was an emphasis on sound over lyrics, which is why a lot of the time the lyrics are nonsensical. They're not cryptically trying to convey a deeper meaning; a lot of the time, a word is there just because it "sounds right". The repeating phrase in Holocene, though, is, "At once, I knew I was not magnificent." and, "I can see for miles, miles, miles." Literally, I envision hikers finding themselves on a mountaintop overlooking the land beneath them, so high up that the curvature of the earth is actually visible (I have been in a somewhat similar situation climbing a very very tall Mayan pyramid two years ago), or a pilot when he journeys up on a cloudless night, the land beneath him ablaze with tiny pinpricks of light (I have seen this, too). It's an awe of everything in the world and how spectacular it is, and acknowledging that in your regular, day-to-day life, you do not realise how wonderful the world is. You need to be reminded.

3. Welcome Home, Radical Face
We're keeping the airy feel but it's slowly moving toward ground. This is less idealistic than Holocene and I Still Care For You. While the song initially captured my attention because of the melody, the lyrics matter in this one.
It's simultaneously sad but confident; life's been bad but it's going to be okay because he's safe in the familiarity of his home, even if it's a meagre existence. He's entirely committed to getting through it and moving past all the bad things that have happened, but sometimes the resolve falters and he falls: "All my nightmares escape my head. Bar the door, please, don't let them in. You were never supposed to leave, now my head's splitting at the seams, and I don't know if I can."
In the end he resigns, admitting that his ghosts still haunt him: "Here, beneath my lungs, I feel your thumbs press into my skin again." No matter how determined he is, the ghost doesn't leave, but they don't slam, screech, break things. They press into him underneath his lungs, where he can feel their gentle yet persistent force every single time he takes a breath.
It's important to at least note that in the album by Radical Face, a major theme is being haunted by ghosts (in that particular album, the ghost of one very bad and abusive relationship).

4. The Conductor's Regress, The Winston Jazz Routine
This one starts off slowly but the strings slowly build underneath the brass until they burst out above the dominant melody, making the song more complex but still calm.
And then there are violins and they're slow and you'd think they'd be sad but it's more nostalgic than anything. Crisp autumn leaves and the past remembered with a bittersweet taste in your mouth, but you're left feeling like the future is just as rich as the past is.
I asked for this CD for last Christmas and that's what it feels like. I listened to it a lot around that time because it seemed perfect. It still seems perfect, except now the songs are too slow.

5. No Children, The Mountain Goats
So after the last song you're expecting something happy BUT NO because I'm cruel. This is an abrasive, scary, and chillingly relatable song (although I have no idea why because I've never been in a bad marriage). It reminds me a bit of friendships and relationships that have ended less than favourably and that time right after when all I wanted was death unto the other person for being so terrible, and unto me for having to deal with the aftermath.
I don't know how much I have to say about this song except that it's right because it's exactly as angry as it should be.

6. In Our Bedroom After the War, Stars
I don't know what it is about the song which makes me feel very okay. It's France streets bustling with a very French crowd: pleasant and soft and lovely. It's the love that makes it rain. It's the contentedness you feel walking by the bay by yourself in the early morning. It's those very special conditions where it can be sunny and happy without being despicable and lifeless and fake.

7. Everything is Ending, Chameleon Circuit
I'm not an Amy/Doctor shipper. This song is good for every reason the dynamics of their "relationship" is in the show - Amy feels connected to the Doctor, thinks their meeting to be fate, is convinced that they're supposed to be together forever. She's desperately in love with the man she's known since she was a child. He attempts to extract himself from this because he doesn't want to get into any sort of romantic relationship with this girl; all he really wants is her friendship. As her friend, he wants to help her, but sometimes her depth and complexity astounds even the man of the stars. So how could she, confusing and tragic Amy Pond, his friend Amy Pond, suddenly be coming onto him, a genius who hides behind childishness to avoid feeling pain?

8. A Un Autre Comme Moi, Laurena Segura

Je croyais que j’avais trouvé quelqu’un qui était comme moi, mais non, ce n’est pas toi.
Je voulais être en amour, oui, et je veux toujours l’être.
Non, tu ne m’en empêcheras pas.
J’ai déjà cru appartenir aux personnes qui pardonnent, qui oublient puis fredonnent, mais quand les mensonges se multiplient, mon cœur perd des couleurs et puis je m’assombrie.
Je marche à l’école quand il fait encore noir, dehors, et le soir même, j’étudie, je fais mes devoirs.
C’était très bien d’avoir une distraction de temps en temps.
Sans tes niaiseries, les journées passeraient lentement.  
Et si je t’aimais, me parlerais-tu pour autant?
Et si je t’ignore, est-ce que ça te blesserait facilement?
La météo n’est pas fiable, mais pas autant que toi, non pas autant que toi.
Les nouvelles du jour me font pleurer, mais pas autant que toi, jamais autant que toi.  
La météo n’est pas fiable, mais pas autant que toi.
Je voulais être en amour, oui, et tu ne m’en empêcheras pas.
J’ai déjà crus appartenir aux personnes qui pardonnent, qui oublient puis fredonnent 

I used to think that I found someone who was like me, but no, it's not you.
I would like to be in love, yes, and I'll always want to be.
No, you won't stop me.
I once believed I belong with people who forgive, who forget and then hum, but when the lies multiplied, my heart lost its colours and I grew dim.
I walk to school when it's still dark, and at night, I study and do my homework.
It's great to have a distraction from time to time.
Without your silliness, the days pass slowly.
And if I liked you, would you still talk to me?
And if I ignore you, would you ignore me easily?
The weather is unreliable, but not as much as you.
The news makes me cry, but not as much as you, never as much as you.

Basically the song is Robert (am I allowed to say that?). It's not really accusing anymore, just stating sadly. "Je croyais que j'avais trouve quelqu'un qui etait comme moi, mais non, ce n'est pas toi." I used to think we were a thing, that you understood me, that you were like me. You're not, though. You never were, and now I'm alone and your words hurt me more than I ever thought possible. Do I mean anything at all to you?
It's just overall sad and very, very resigned.
It also, for some reason, reminds me of something but I can't remember what. It's nostalgic for everything that's ever happened and ever will happen.

9. Stubborn Love, The Lumineers
Beautiful, gorgeous song. My favourite on the album. Something about it feels very much like me, which I know is weird to say, but it feels like it could encompass my life. It would be on the soundtrack because of its feel.
I'm not going to lie, much of the appeal of this song is because of its sound. The lyrics, save for, "It's better to feel pain than nothing at all, the opposite of love's indifference." and, "I don't blame you, dear, running like you did all these years. I would do the same, you best believe. The highway signs say we're close, but I don't read those things anymore. I never trusted my own eyes.", are almost irrelevant.
When you listen to this song don't try to find a meaning in the progression of the melody or the lyrics. Don't try to make historical references or appeal to a sense of aesthetic appeal. Close your eyes and go with the music and maybe you will feel like it's completely you, too, and that it doesn't need to be anything else to be right.
Tyler showed me this CD several months ago. I loved it when I first listened to it. There have been very few CDs that I have accepted with as much enthusiasm.

10. The Trapeze Swinger, Iron & Wine
The most lyrically heavy song on this CD, and it seems almost too much. I don't know where to start describing this song.
You're pleading with someone you were once close to that they don't forget you, or that they remember you fondly. You're reliving these memories and suddenly just get so lost because it must mean something, right? There must be some common thread there, something to learn about humanity.
There are a lot of things to take from this song, especially if you isolate the lines. In the end, it's a person remembering and reminiscing and saying, "Can you remember? Look at all we were!" because life went on but he's not quite ready to move on with it.
But there are so many memories, see? If you remember too much you're lost in all that's happened, unable to make your way, confused and searching for meaning where there isn't any.
I remember listening to this song on the LIRR with Elana, heading to nerdprom. She looked fab as always and I actually wore a dress and matched it with stuff. I thought I looked uber cute but I don't have any pictures so just take my word for it, okay? We sat at two chairs right by the door and she said, "Do you have music?" and this was the first thing that played and we just sat in silence for the entire 9 minutes of the same melody over and over. Later that night, I ate the world's largest burger and made plans with people that were never fulfilled. I felt okay.

11. Civilian, Wye Oak
I can't write about this song. I know for some of the other songs I said I can't word it but for this one I'm not even going to try to write something. I got this song from a playlist Emily made of music Nate showed her. I try to disassociate this song from that because Nate always made me mad and Emily makes me feel mixed things, a lot of which are not good, so I'm going to just leave it here. This is a good song. When I forget about this song it always comes back just as good as it was the first time.

12. Hummingbird, 41st and Home
One time I was telling Maarya about this song and how excited it made me, but I think she was scared that it was angry and I liked it, so she didn't share in my enthusiasm.
I had a phase in which all I listened to was this song. I think it was something about the melody of it; I'm not a terribly deep person sometimes, I can be obsessed with a song just because it sounds good. I even made a spotify playlist dedicated to this song.
It hit me one day what he was saying at the end: "You'll make a fool of us all."
This is important because the whole song he's saying that the person should go and leave and it'll be okay because he understands, but in the end he screams, "You'll make a fool of us all, you'll make a fool of us all, you'll make a fool of us all."

13. Morning Song, The Lumineers
There seem to be a lot of Tyler songs on here, which is weird because Tyler was the last thing on my mind in July (sorry, Tyler, for both those statements). This song reminds me a lot of Waves, by Richard Walters before he was cool and put songs on CDs and sold them and stuff. If you're not familiar with that song (Tyler is), here.
This song stands out on The Lumineers album because the rest of it is relatively jovial. Even sad songs like Charlie Boy are just sad, and that's it. This song, though, is explosive. You think it's just going to be sad and quiet and slow while he's singing and then you get to the louder parts and you realise it's not all sad it's angry it's weeping it's tearing your heart through
Something about the juxtaposition. I think there have been attempts at scientifically proving that sort of thing. I'd go into that science but there are already so many things I want to do.
"It's a shame that it ends this way, with nothing left to say. So just sit on your hands while I walk away. It's a shame, it's a shame when my hands begin to shake, when bitterness is all I taste, when my car won't start because I cut the brakes. I hold on to a hope in my fate."

14. Along the Road, Radical Face
I had a very big Radical Face phase during the summer, which is funny because in 9th grade I put the exact same album on my iTunes wish list. Funny how things work.
This song is best listened to with earphones with your eyes closed when you lay or lean against something and remain still. Or looking up into the night sky ablaze with stars. Then you hear the creaking in the background and the tiny details, all the intricacies of the pattern the music paints in front of you.
This is how I felt when I stargazed at camp, laying out in that basketball field at the top of the hill with my arms oustretched. We, being new staff, were more scared of the night patrols than we should have been, and hid by the church-turned-theatre with our backs flat against the building and our breathing heavy. We thought maybe Eileen in the golf cart wouldn't see us, and we stood there like that for a long time, too afraid to peel ourselves off the wall and venture into the open air in front of us where we would be vulnerable. Finally, I disattached myself from our line and went into the centre of the basketball field, where I lay down and stared at the stars above me. Everyone else whispered behind me, saying things like, "What is she doing?", "Is she insane?", "Why did she just go lay down?" And then the whispers grew quieter, more scarce, until there was silence. I had my eyes closed, but I felt the person lay down next to me. "Tell me about space." Sarah said, so I did, and they listened, and I felt like this song.

15. We Love You So
9th grade

Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out across the sky (nanonotnano #2)

Amidst some hasty talk of you and me and everything in between, it suddenly dawned that I, lazy beast of the deep, could roar no more mightily than the mice I used to abhor. Do not pity this change in me, though for it has been thrust upon my shoulders, I can assure you that I am in no way incapable of self-correction.

I have reviewed the matter at hand and decided that though this may be the death of me, it'll be the death of my accuser, too. Just you wait! Revenge will take its toll and I, the civil servant, will walk patiently onward till my feet give and I collapse, the apex of my existence reached.

Or not. Or I will grow old this way - not obliterating in a torrent of hellfire but expiring slowly, my skin, over time, becoming laced with varicose veins. Perhaps I will not have my revenge. Who am I fighting, anyway?

But damn you, you who made me this way!
The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, by T.S.Eliot. This has hardly anything to do with the actual poem, but the poem put me in a mood and I wrote it down. The mood is much closer to Damn These Vampires, by The Mountain Goats, but I put Prufrock here because it was the initial inspiration.

The bittersweet between my teeth (Nanonotnano #1)

I revised the original draft that I posted on Facebook, just to get the sentences to flow a bit better because I'm bad with that on first drafts.
This was based more so on the sound of the song than the lyrics, though the lyrics may or may not match up well, according to your interpretation.
 

Perhaps it was something in the way the leaves fell from the trees and littered the streets with flaming orange and red, or perhaps it was something in the way the waves lapped at the shore, pulled by the moon overhead. Perhaps it was these things that made her fall in love with the idea of life, but it could just as easily not have been anything. She could just have been reacting to the way the molecules trembled in the air around her, unable to control being pulled in different directions by the shifting of objects around her - objects making dents in space as they moved along, curving time, and she was sucked in.

She spent a lot of time looking for nooks and corners and tiny places where she could hunker down . . . just as much time as she spent looking for open spaces where she could break open. She liked the ocean a lot; the predictability of the constant circular motion of its waves was a reprieve from the anxiety everything else instilled in her. The thing with nature, though: it never stood still. Even the ocean was moving.

This was a horrid feeling, in the end. Despite the never-ceasing drone of everything buzzing around her, it wasn't a feeling of moving forward. If anything, it was more akin to feeling as if the world was going to be okay, finally convincing yourself of that fact, when suddenly you look down and your hands are shaking, but you don't know why.

She was not glad at all that, in her search for a nest, she had dug herself so deep a hole, cornered herself so readily. Something was beginning, but something was ending too, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out why everything was always ending and beginning. She couldn't see why nothing could just stay still, but she supposed it must somehow be related to the curvature of space and time. There was no other explanation for such constant throbbing.

There was only one time she did not feel like the earth was spinning madly in circles and everything was buzzing alive - when she slipped from the refuge of her bed at night and made her clumsy way through the dark to the dock whose rotten wood she had treaded on many times before. It was different at night, though: the dark made her rely on her feet, and she walked slowly, sensing the vibrations in the beams beneath her sneakers.

Suddenly, without warning, there were no vibrations, no blasting music in her head, no pounding and shaking and stirring. It was still, and the waves ceased their endless spinning momentarily. The still water reflected the moon hung high in the sky devoid of clouds. She wished she could hold someone close, but that might have ruined the sanctity of the moment. This was hers alone, this miraculous stopping of all the forces of the universe long enough to take a breath and whisper, "I'm afraid."

She expected her hands to be shaking this time, but she looked down upon the pale, thin fingers and they were steady as a rock.
Young Blood, by The Naked and Famous

We wake up with pounding heads, bruised down below. I should've built better walls, or else slept in my clothes. So when I see you again, desperate and stoned, keep your prison locked up and I will leave my gun at home.

It seems silly to put a trigger warning here, because there's like a grand total of, what, two people who read my blog? But I'll put it anyway just incase.

So yeah this is a not okay thing, I'm just trying to figure everything out, and I don't think I was ever confident enough to write or even think about this because it seemed like everything was my fault and if I felt violated it was just me being oversensitive and dumb. Because we know I overreact. This has been acknowledged as a basic part of my personality since forever ago and only until 10th grade did I stop telling people, "No, this isn't overreacting, this is appropriate." and just accept that it's going to be that way. I guess with Robert it was the same thing - I must have been overreacting, because I always do. Because that's me. Even now I don't know how much into detail I can get, and not even for the sake of Maarya and Tyler; I just seriously don't know if I can think about it at length without feeling guilty or somehow wrong again.

But the idea to write this originally came because Maarya asked, "Do you know the feeling of wanting to lay and cuddle with a person but explicitly not wanting sex?" and I was going to say, "Yeah, that's Robert." but it seemed extraneous to say that so I didn't, but the idea stuck.

I mean, yes, there was a time not very long ago where I was not happy with anything that was going on and the only person who seemed to care enough or understand enough was Robert (because he did care, then) and I genuinely wanted him to be my best friend forever. That was the only thing I wanted, though. There was no romantic interest at all; I was perfectly content just sitting there and talking about whatever came to mind, because it put me at ease, if only just for a little while. He was my best friend and there was a time when I thought about why we would ever not be friends and genuinely could not come up with an answer. I couldn't understand why we'd argue. What would we ever disagree on, and why would it matter so much that we'd stop talking? I remember where I was when I thought that - ironically, only across the street from the bench that Maarya and I sat at when she lay her head on my lap. It seems so weird that that happened only two weeks after Robert happened. I think of the two events on separate timelines, and they don't intersect anywhere except the nights when I made the mistake of introspecting.

Yuliya and I were at the library studying for APUSH when I texted Robert and asked if he could come, because Yuliya was starting to get grating and I didn't think I could handle the constant criticism anymore. He came, we sat around for a bit, then moved to the dock, where Yuliya eventually left because she couldn't handle the outdoors. It got cold. I had a jacket. Things unfolded and we were hugging and it was okay because he didn't bother me like the rest of the world did. He asked if he could kiss me and I distinctly said, "No, that would not be okay.", so he didn't.

I mean, it did start innocently enough, and nicely enough, too. I actually cared. He actually cared. I loved him, although not in anything beyond a close friendship. I reckon the problem was that he loved me in a sexual way as well as a platonic way, and I was loose enough with my inhibitions that I was okay with whatever.

When did I even have my first kiss? I can't remember; I think it was the afternoon after the APUSH exam. It was exciting then, but the walk back was bitter and wrong, because that was not what it was meant to be, at all.

See, it was always okay while it was happening, because the line between friendships and relationships are really blurred for me once I get to a certain point. I end up loving anyone I am close enough to, it's only a matter of whether the love is reciprocated or not. And as soon as I walked away I felt a weird unease in my stomach, like I was not heading where I wanted to be heading, even though everything during the daytime pointed to the opposite. I was sad when he asked out Jordan, or demoted me to a second choice, or stopped talking to me altogether. Perhaps that was a pride thing; I don't like being second-best.

Would it have been worth while, to have bitten off the matter with a smile, to have squeezed the universe into a ball, to roll it towrd some overwhelming question, to say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all!" - if one, settling a pillow by her head, should say: "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all."

And there was the week in late June/early July that was perhaps the worst week in the world, not because it felt horrible while I was doing it, but because in retrospect I really was acting rashly and not thinking through my decisions. This was not a peculiar thing only I noticed, either; he pointed out several times, "I would continue sexual relations with you, but I'm not sure whether you're going to regret it later because you always end up regretting it later." But the worst thing was that I couldn't say, "Yeah, let's not. That's a bad idea." It was this really complicated mix of coercion and actually wanting sex because I'm 17, goddamnit, and really loving a person so much that I wasn't sure what I wanted.

Every single time there was this theme of me saying, "No, I'm not sure this is what I want from this relationship." and ultimately breaking down because I wasn't actually sure what I wanted from this relationship.

The last time he tried to kiss me, I ended up forcing him away and walking off.

I Don't Want Love, The Antlers

At once I knew I was not magnificent

There's this one feeling that I've been chasing since as early as I can remember, and I can't describe it at all, so here is a list of things that give me that feeling. Maybe someone will know what I'm talking about.

• Holocene, by Bon Iver
• Smoke Breathing Monsters, by Desert Noises
• Down in the Valley, by The Head and the Heart
• Ho Hey, by The Lumineers
• Stubborn Love, by The Lumineers
• London Iona, from The Illusionist soundtrack
• Glory of It All, by David Crowder
• A note about this song and the following song: they still give me the feeling despite being religious songs (or maybe because they are? I dunno, I don't really understand the feeling), and I kept them on my iPod because for some reason I can't part with them. It's as if deleting them would be forgetting that ninth grade happened.
• He Loves Us, Kim Walker
• All This and Heaven, Too, by Florence + The Machine

• The Illusionist (movie)
• Catdog: The Great Parent Mystery (movie)
• I Remember You, a recent Adventure Time episode
• All of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but particularly the end of the first season and all of the second season

• The Edge Chronicles, by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
• The Most Beautiful Book in the World, by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Probable Future, by Alice Hoffman
• The Romantics

• The Oregon Trail
• Salons in the 20s
• C.S.Lewis and Tolkien arguing about religion
• County fairs
• Apple picking
• Villages in France
• Particle colliders
• Quantum physics
• Hitchhiking across the US
• Old-fashioned diners
• Churches

. . . Along with some experiences, most of them visits to parks in my childhood that I've sort of idealised (the 5th grade trip to Alleghany State Park, for instance, or that time we went to a tiny town in Pennsylvania for my 11th birthday, or when we spent a weekend in Westchester when I was in 2nd grade). Some stand out that aren't from a long time ago, though: when I went to Jett's house for her birthday and we made rice krispy treats on sticks and played apples to apples, that one time we walked to Paradise Park after school and ended up in Josh's backyard, trick or treating with a bunch of people in 8th grade, Snow Camp and the sombreness of self-revelation (which didn't last long, let me tell you, but I can write thousands of words about how that delight in being sombre felt), once when I went to Maarya's house in 8th grade and it was so weird because we had been slipping away and it was like a last attempt at piecing things together before they inevitably fell apart, NaNo last year.
An aside: perhaps that's why I want to do NaNo again. I have nothing at all to write about, but I just want the feeling back. Some part of me recognises that I can't have it back, though. Nothing is ever the same twice, so instead of reliving you have to find new things.
Finding new things is worth getting that feeling, if only for a moment.

Holocene, Bon Iver

In the silence it became very clear that you had long ago disappeared, and I cursed myself for being surprised that this didn't play out like it did in my mind.

I think it then just finally hit me that no matter how much I or Maarya want to, I'm not ever going to be there. Even when I am there, I'm catching up. There is a group and I am not part of it; worse, Maarya is completely invested in it. Actually, no, it's not worse for her. She's better off having people she loves (or loved) and cares about and likes to spend time with. Maarya's involvement in the group is a major part of what she is, and if I can't join in that, I'm just kind of lurking around on the sidelines and jumping up and down when she mentions, "Oh, Sofiya, I love you, too." but it's not that, not really.

It's hard to explain because I don't actually hate that Maarya is friends with other people or that they take up so much of her time and energy. I'm glad she has friends, and I don't necessarily care about stealing hers. I don't necessarily care about being with her friends.

I guess what bothers me is that I can not compare to what they are, or what some hypothetical new girlfriend(/boyfriend?) will be to her in the future, because they do not have these problems. Hell, she gets along better with Tyler than she does with me, and I'm not quite sure why she keeps insisting that she loves me.

I mean, it's gotten to the point where I'm actually shipping her with someone I used to "date" (I use quotes because it was really just intense hugging that one time), and, although I've felt that way for a long time now, it's never been so immediate. And, get this: it's never been so okay with me. I have sat down, reviewed the situation, and decided that it is honestly more rational for me to back off and let them be super close platonic friends again like they should be, and I'll take my sex and my love and go inward. Or outward. I could go outward and meet new people. Just friends. Just new people. I need those. I'm not needed here.

And that's why I think I need a break. I never thought I'd be the type of person to say that -- I'd always assumed that I was the super clingy person who wouldn't let go, and I was the super unreasonable person who would freak out if someone else were doing anything even remotely resembling distancing themselves. I never thought I'd have the common sense and rationality to be able to do something like that, but I guess I do.

I need a break, a place to think, a place to sit, people of my own. And maybe those people won't include Maarya, I dunno. I really don't know what will happen. I need a week, at least, to focus on other things. A month would be better.

Ultimately, I've got to come to terms with the fact that I am not a major part of her life and that's okay. We don't talk much and there is of course a reason for that (being far away and knowing each other well does not help for conversation topics; what is there that's new to talk about?). If I get myself and my thoughts in order and we see each other and it's still this discomfort (I tried to explain the discomfort to her and she couldn't understand. Perhaps she was upset it wasn't pretty enough) then it will come to an inevitable end.

I don't think I've thought so rationally before. At least, not in a while. Not since Robert, and that took every ounce of energy and self-reflection and determination that I had. This is easy, like dying.

This is only a fraction of the problem. There are many, more than enough to fit on two hands.

Bixby Canyon Bridge, Death Cab for Cutie

I titled this "Florence'

It's peaceful here in the dark,
safe finally from the sirens' wails and the never-ceasing drone,
my only friends the flighty black shadows which extend their arms
and envelop me without ever making contact, their fingers slipping off my skin
like oil, or an eel eluding the touch it desperately wants.
Am I alone?
I used to ask the question often, but the answer seems hardly relevant now --
what would I do with the information?
Here among the shadows I make my temporary nest
out of bricks and mortar and fairy dust.
Call the mortician, the detective -- I've got a case!
Oh, but whatever you do, love, don't alert the relatives:
they're not ready to brace the cold autumn winds that you and I know so well
but that they never truly felt underneath their layers of cow skin and pig fat.
Now, with our numbing fingers, we've been given the opportunity
to chuck it away, peel apart the layers one by one.
Imagine that -- our crummy fingernails in a clean, sterile place like this --
what would the shadows say?
Dear, darling, love,
let me be.
There is time yet in the morning for stories and plans and responsibilities;
meanwhile, I relish in the twilight that's slipping from my grasp,
gone too soon and taking hope with it.

Magic isn't real and anyway, it doesn't matter, because no matter what I conjure it could not help me deflect the angry death of every hopeful thought - that I might be a lover or a fighter that I'm not.

I'm not sure what brought it on but that's not the problem. It always comes strong and fades away into dullness and then comes strong again; none of that is peculiar. It's not even worth wondering about.

What's interesting is that Maarya sent me some links to songs and Ugly Story was one of them. Usually, I try to stay away from anything Homestuck related because I can't stand Homestuck, but I listened to it because I liked the way it sounded, at first, and the second time round I liked the lyrics.

Except they've quoted it before, many many times. Too many times to count. And they've quoted it because they relate, because someone can be the Eridanest, or the violentest, or the angriest, saddest, okayest, winningest. Someone has taken something up to be theirs - Maarya has her grief, writing, constant self-doubt, angry lashing out, her search for identity. Trisha always wins. Trisha is red and angry. Trisha wants to kill everyone. Tyler wants to be the most helpful, and in his need to help people he over-exceeds himself and is left dry and shaking. This need to selflessly help people all the time makes him seem perfect, because how could a person like that do any wrong? Jenny tries to be a good, stable person, but her parents tear her apart and she can't confront any of her problems. Ben has his persona, because being himself makes him too vulnerable. Emily strives to know everything, Yuliya strives for perfection, Robert strives for every decision he makes to be rational, to be a philosopher king.

And then there's me. Or, more accurately, and then there's not me, because, listening to that song, I thought, "Yes, yes, I agree, yes. If only I could write like this and put my feelings into words like this."

I remembered, though, too soon, that they quoted this song a lot, and they must quote it for a reason - clearly they must relate. They'll always relate more than I will, so it's okay, they can have the song, it can be theirs. They can have the Fun. album, too, and The Division Bell. I don't need those, because I don't really relate. Not really. You are all the est. I am just there, and that's okay, but sometimes I want to be something. Sometimes I want to have a thing. I told Maarya about this a while earlier and she said, grasping at straws, "But you can be the Sofiyaest!"

Yes, I suppose that's true. I'll settle for being the Sofiyaest, although that isn't much at all.