Problematic

The problem, as I see it, with fathers, is that they are very hard to shop for. In my family all affection is expressed through our, admittedly limited, pocket books. As such, I worry that at some point my father will feel I loved him less, when in reality I just never knew him. I love him as much as one can love a quiet stranger who wields a great deal of responsibility in one's life, but I am certain he will die having served mostly as a silent buffer for the decades long unmanaged mental illness of my mother. It's a foreseeable regret that I haven't the tools to derail. I'm not a daddy's girl. I'm not an anybody's girl, really. Still, every birthday and every holiday I engage in the futility of searching for the perfect gift. I wrack my brain for something meaningful, for a memory, for a feeling. I struggle toward the inevitability of buying socks hoping to climb out of this thoughtless routine. I yearn for something, anything, that might say "I se

I've been watching The Runaways, and it's not as good as The Gifted, but it's still a fun time. It features an English kid pretending to be American, which is always fun. I like to be surprised to find someone is able to pull off an accent. I am personally terrible at them. I think my Russian comes off a little Ukrainian, my French is spectacularly exaggerated, I can't do Spanish at all, and my Indian is just offensive. I feel like I haven't seen James Marsters since we were both 60lbs lighter, and my loss of affection for him parallels my self-loathing. Beyond Marsters, though, the cast of kids is pretty diverse - they are majority female and majority minority. It's been a marvel to witness this sea change, though in my younger days I hardly noticed the discrepancy. I have washed for the holidays and I found myself drawn to Cheri- a movie I had forgotten I had seen before. I do not regret this rare occasion of rewatching a film that's not "She's

I finished The Beautiful Lie- and now I hate Australians. Vronsky cheats on Anna. For a few minutes I was inconsolable. I think I loved his love for Anna more than I have ever loved anything in my life, and I was devastated by an interpretation in which that love was jeopardized. A world where that love is broken. So I hate Australians because it was an Australian adaptation. It was very good up until that point. The fake Vronksy was very handsome, although a career as a music producer was a little lame and not nearly as competitive as the original plan of climbing to military prestige. But he was handsome, in a pouty gaunt way- in skinny jeans and jean jackets over hoodies with shoulder length hair and a warm smile. I realized in watching the show that I would like to be an actress. I'd like to fall in love over and over again on my own terms. Knowing that the emotions were fake, that it would all end, that I could pick the story to some extent. Maybe I'll take some acti

It's finally getting cold but the trees get no rest. It's still so green. This part of the world has changed and their dead season is ending. They'll have to live year round like the rest of us. I've burnt a hole in my hair again, with my fingers. When I touch myself it always seems to cause damage. I've begun watching The Beautiful Lie. It's a modern adaptation of Anna Karenina, and I realize...I am obsessed with Anna Karenina. I have always loved it. I have always loved her. And I can only hope to live so extraordinarily tragically. So far I have lived tragically, but nothing about it has been extraordinary. Nothing about it has been passionate. Nothing has been loving. I might even settle for the secure and unrequited love of Kitty, but I just want to get hit by a train. I like to pet The Kitten's paw right after she cleans it. I like, in small ways, to disrupt her quiet and carefree life. Mostly, because I am jealous. I restarted my Netflix

I received KitKats in the mail today. Green tea KitKats that I assume come from Japan or someone in Asia with access, or maybe it's a weird black-market system and they were smuggled in from Columbia. I can never be sure. I am assuming they are safe for consumption and hoping for the best. I feel I am not important enough to be poisoned. Life is funny when it's not happening to you, I have decided. A girl crying incoherently on a tile floor with one breast out is funny depending on the circumstances around it. If the girl had proven through the course of a movie to be a complete bitch and this was the moment of her comeuppance that's hilarious, in a really terrible way. If the girl spent the whole day getting rained on and this was the shit frosting on her shit cake, that can also be pretty funny. We've all had disastrous days, and taking that to an extreme can bring things into perspective and feel relatable. It's also funny in a really sad way if it's 7pm,

The holidays hurt now. The threat of Christmas hangs over me like a specter. I wonder how many years of memories I'll have to form to forget you. I throw out little things every day to make more space to replace you. As the year closes (in a month and a half), I realize that I've learned a lot. I have learned that a clock gaslighting you can still tell you the right time of day at it's whim. Scott was manipulative. I was engaged in a much worse relationship than I realized for a very long time. I was told that I was being ridiculous when I was suspicious. That my lack of trust was going to drive him to cheat like it did with Chrysta. This is a weird existence to contend with- one where someone makes you doubt yourself constantly. I was told I should give up on art, on school, and settle into places that I hated. I was told that I was a negative force in the world. I was told I was the problem. I'm still the problem. I'm still the one that needed to be pushed awa

I have rested a bouquet of Kit Kat wrappers at the end of my bed as a token of my love. Some days the familiarity of feeling lost feels like love. It's something I must adore because I come back to it so often. Like the perfect lover. I am it and it is me. We are one and could not exist without the other. You've been there, at some point, early in your twenties. That feeling was me. That aimless, lonely, down-trodden frustration was a visit I paid. I sweep up the open petals. The scent of their bloom still lingers and it makes me queasy. Their fruit, I have eaten too much of, makes me want to wretch. Half- priced candy- my heroin, my silky-skinned temptress, the immediacy of its pleasure is something I cannot pass down. I think this is the larger problem. I have no desire except for the moment. Even then, it's hard to pinpoint what that moment is. I'm lucky it's never linked itself to drugs. I am unlucky that it has, on occasion, been tied to sugar. Sometimes it

I don't write enough lately. My thoughts are still so consumed by things I would rather not talk about at this point. There's no point. I keep telling myself to keep a notebook on-hand to write the fleeting interesting thoughts in. There's no reason I don't. I have dozens of them. Tiny notebooks. Waiting. But I don't. I've been thinking of moving home. I guess home, now, is where I grew up. Even that is kind of tied to Scott. I don't feel like pretending anymore. I thought I grew up with Scott, but maybe the majority of my growth was in Houston. Maybe the last 9 years have just been a regression, and that's why I never seem to be going anywhere. I want to wear sweaters with icons on them, but I don't think they're allowed a work. I don't think my hair is, technically. I tried to get something kind of natural and ended up with something kind of orange. I wanted it to be more of a bronze, I think. More reddish. I guess orange to bronze

There's a stain on the table. It's raised, so perhaps a stain is not the best word. There's a spill on the table. Of something red. Maybe tea? Maybe hibiscus? It's gathered dust. Is this a table? Is it too long? Does it matter that the chairs are attached? Does it matter that it is in a classroom? Does that make it a desk? There's a spill on the desk. I worry that my coffee will be blamed, and myself by extension- but the spill is no where near the color of coffee. It's pinkish. And a little orange. Maybe a juice? Flecks of dirt are caught in whatever this used to be. It's probably still slightly sticky. There is no obvious way to clean it and it occurs to me that the classrooms, for all I am being charged for them, are not cleaned. Trash is removed, perhaps. But I already knew most of my tuition was likely going to some football coach. To build new buildings. To subsidizing people like myself, the working poor, which I don't mind. I paid 700

I don't do anything smoothly. I am, above all, completely lacking grace. I stumble down alleyways wafting with the scent of pizza and toss Starbucks cups into open dumpsters. I am finally on campus. I had avoided it "successfully" for 4 weeks. In my success I am now unprepared for a test. I have about 2 hours and 30 minutes to study for. I have taken 2 ativan. I take so many pills now. I have not taken any vitamins. I ate breakfast. I made eggs with spinach and chicken sausage that was quite savory and definitely meant for some sort of pasta. I baked potatoes last night so that all went on top of those. I decided in the last few days, as my many pills were finally kicking in, that I would start meal prep-ing. A trend as annoying as cross-fit but slightly more so than mason jars. I took a gamble at which level was the one I used to like at the PCL. I am now surrounded by books on communism. I wanted the level with comics. I remember, somewhat fondly, escaping my respon

I want to think about anything else. I want to think and speak about anything else. I want to feel less consumed. Less squishy pink and gray brain space and neurons devoured. Eaten up by the foaming obsessions. I want to think about anything else. My inner narrative is all screaming. It's a swirling, darting, overlaid shot that too pointedly tries to capture inner turmoil. It's over-done. Soundless, spinning, shots of color and a gaping mouth. Eyes tightly shut in an expression of the rawest pain, but it's not raw at all. It's over-cooked. Trapped in a story I don't want to tell that no one wants to hear. This one shot that could be in any number of narratives. It's madness, it's drug use, it's the overwhelming mundanity of a coming of age story. It's blue hues. Sickly, cinematic blue hues. The color of an urban landscape. The color of an urban disease. A cluster of noise that formed around the mind of a girl from the fourth largest city in the

It's all. Broken. In my head. Everything. Is slanted. Uncultured. Faux-etry. I live in the imposter syndrome. A year ago I was grieving. If in another year I have another reason to be grieving I don't know what I will do with myself. I bought my first laptop. With my own money. I'm writing on things I got with my own borrowed money. I now own 3 self-help journals. One that explores growth over 5 years, one that explores growth over a single year, and one that explores where I am now. Where am I now? Where am I? Am I? Are we as people forever in progress? It feels so singular. It feels so unique to who I am in a way that isn't pleasant. It's a novelty. Being unfinished. I'm told that's how everyone feels. Everyone sees what others are and thinks someone else has it more figured out. Someone else. I'm watching Catch and Release and I want to be the Juliette Lewis but I know I'm a Jennifer Gardner- without the hot guy to fall back on a

It's been 4 months since I found out you cheated on me for 8 years. It's been a year and 2 months since I moved out. It's been almost exactly a year since our cat died. I'm not sure how long any of this should affect me. It's been 4 months. I find myself thinking that when I lost what I knew about you I lost parts of what I knew about myself. I find myself struggling to hold on to some parts of our past because if everything is different in light of this betrayal, what was real in that third of my life? Is my affection for you now just in reaction to a string of lies? I never love you in the moment. I only love you in the long-term. I only love you as a memory. And memories are always deceitful. We form memories. They're not factual. I only love you as the person I thought you were because I don't know who you really are. Outside of selfish and self-serving. To which you would say "but everyone is", but are they? We're both looking fo

When I was younger, all the shows and movies seemed to be about how things would work out. People got their dream jobs. Guys got their dream girls and sassy hags found someone who could bring them down to earth. You lived in a nice house or a great big apartment in the sky. Everyone had a tight knit circle of friends. F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Now all the shows are about people you thought were going to end up together splitting up. If you haven't watched it You're The Worst has this amazing sub-plot about a veteran dealing with PTSD. I got two As and a B last semester. And really bad panic attacks. I spent last weekend in Galveston with the daughter of the love of my life so far. It was fun. She had a blast even though there was much too much time in the car. She was a good sport about everything. We never found an inner tube for the lazy river and I was too scared to go on the water slides. She did. She ran into waves. She rushed across incredibly hot sand. I got her tiny ice crea

I don't want to live my life arguing over people and objects. I don't want to live my life arguing. I guess that's easier to say on the other side of throwing away or consuming most of Stassney's stuff. In a lot of ways it's not, though. I could always find something else. I could always be looking for something else. There's infinite potential to argue. There's a thousand things a day to be angry about, if not more. Just for me. What do I want to choose? Arguing is a choice. For a very long time it did not feel that way. Even now, I'm sure it's still compulsory. I know it is a choice. In my head. I know I don't have to participate. In this one section of my brain that knows things when I am calm, I know I don't have to fight. That same part of my head knows that happiness can be a choice, too. Settle. Be humble. Sit down. Make your choice. For a very long time I believed that I shouldn't allow myself to be slighted. I shoul

"This is what I give you," he says, through a grimace of pain. "I give you this when I have nothing left. I do this. These fights, they're not for me...they're for you. This does nothing for me. This does not help me. I'm doing this for you." It's a gift that cuts. It's deep and my bones are exposed to the cold so I scream in return. I lash violently. I drag weapons out of reservoirs because I'm losing. I'll never get what I want. Just this stinging evil and the look of pain that accompanies it. All I want is love but I must not know the word because every time I reach for it this happens. He tells me he gives me this- his sorrow, as though it were something I could cherish and cradle. As though it must be what I want. It's the only thing I seem capable of pulling. It's where all conversation heads. So it must be what I want. It's not just that I'm lost in a thorny hedge-maze. This was my goal all along. Pain. Forever.

I'm eating ice cream with a fork like a savage. It's something that my father used to do when I was younger. He did it by choice. I just have no way of cleaning a spoon while my combination washer/dryer is running. Not without making my clothes smell like kitchen drain. Saying I do anything like a savage is probably so offensive. I don't know what a non-offensive metaphor would be. I should strive to find one since I know better. The taste of the ice cream is marred by the unnatural feeling of the cold cream around the tines. I had to look up that word. I don't know the parts of a fork on my own. I'm an uncultured wretch. I also learned the word brux this week. I brux often in my sleep. I've bruxed often during the waking hours. It's about grinding your teeth. Or maybe not. My memory is pretty bad. I wonder if Stosbet still reads my blog and how long that will last. I would assume not much longer if so, because they're supposed to finally be over,

Stosbet says she thinks I never loved him. I couldn't if I see my inability to make him happy as a loss. Like the most defiant Princess she insists he is not a prize to be won. I'm tired of all the conversations I have been having lately. I can't imagine my partners enjoy them anymore. My mother's head was shaved this morning, July 8, 2017. She told me yesterday that it was coming out in chunks the size of loofahs. She forgot the word, briefly, and called it "that thing you scrub with". I am attempting to get over you to the detriment of everything else. You're in my lungs. A cut torn and hot red bleeds into every breath so that I spend all my time out of water drowning. My blood is fire. I don't have the time to love you and I don't have the time to love someone new to keep myself from loving you. I know I should want to, but I don't know why. I do know why. Both options seem irrational. I have midterm in less than 24 hours. It has bee

What do I look for in a vindictive act? Something quiet and meaningful mostly to myself. The trouble in my life is always at the cross roads of logic and desire. Logically I won't love Myex forever. I won't want him forever. I don't love or want him now, I just hate losing. And my desire is a flicker in dry California heat, just waiting to erupt. My desire is fury and holy vengeance. Lust. None and all of that is true. Some days I live in a dimly lit, cluttered room and want for nothing. The next episode. A little rest. A nap. But nothing. Some days emotions grab my chest and pull it up to my throat, leaving it there to slowly block all the air and life from my body. These days cause the tremors. I'm a dying eye. Teary, blurred, red, hot, glassy, foggy, taught and covered in the sheen of a dull discomfort. I look at the things that got me to this state and wonder if there is anything that can repair my soul. Did any of it really matter? Does it now? I could die

My parents' home is unbearably hot. It is my parents' home now. It has not been mine for a while. I don't know if I've mentioned this. There was a time, when I first moved to Austin, that I had no real home. I wanted to come back to Houston all the time, but that was because I missed​ having people. I missed my friends. I missed the guy who said we'd get married at the time. I missed having a social circle I could depend on, people I could talk to, a support system. And then I found Myex.  And he wasn't home at first.  But when I wake up confused in the middle of the night I think I'm with him, at home. I never think I'm at my parents house. My apartment is more similar to their house at this point, but I look around and expect to see a door I can enter to find him playing games in the living room. A game on one side and whatever show would keep me up on the other. Sometimes I'd be angry. Sometimes I'd keep myself awake to sp

I look at pictures of her several times a day. I search her face for answers. For a sign of where I went wrong. For a greater depth than I am capable of- grace and serenity. The ability to make someone happy. The lack of a compulsion to fight. She wants to be a librarian. One of my dearest friends wants to be a librarian. She's kind and she's happy. She knows religion. She settles into things gently. She wears her hair in beautiful braids. Are you like her? Is that what makes you more worthwhile? Are you more worthwhile? Is that even a concept? Can one person be more worthy than anyone else? Is the standard the ability to glow with happiness? To emanate peace? To curb ambitions? Am I truly less happy with myself or is it just that my mask bears imperfections? Am I just more foolish? Time will tell. Somehow he makes people foolish. I've only known one person to escape this, and I think it was in part my fault for driving her away. She's married now. Will you be marri

My mother and I have never been close. For a little over a month she shambled around the house in a hospital gown. It was the only thing she was comfortable in because they still had tubes coming out of her from the hospital. Thick plastic making a nuisance of itself. Making her look like a very poor cyborg. Tubes that drain. Probably so that her body doesn't poison itself while trying to heal. Bodies can become angry. Bodies hold grudges against being tampered with. Bodies self-harm. She couldn't shower for the month so she complained, calmly, quietly, much less that she should be allowed, about how it bothered her that she could not wash her hair. That was the worst part. She would find ways to make her body feel a little cleaner, but there was no way to wash her hair. She couldn't move her body over the sink. She couldn't get the angry tubes wet. Her doctor recommended dry shampoo, but that would only have aggravated the situation with the build-up. She couldn&

There's something therapeutic about the destruction of property. Ripping totems apart can be so soothing. Engaging in petty things can be comforting even if they're probably not necessarily good for the soul. Sometimes it's harder to move on from something without acting out. After a break up you delete pictures. After a friend break-up you unfriend, regift and throw things away. After learning someone cheated you find all the things you can of significance and tear them to pieces. Things you shared or things they shared- whichever annoys you the most. Sometimes we tear people to pieces. I don't know if I would recommend that course of action, it may be a step too far. I have put all my hurt and anger into these gifts and I am throwing them away. I don't want to hold on to these feelings forever. It's not healthy for me. It's not healthy for our friendship. Whether our friendship is healthy for me remains to be seen. I'm giving myself time. If th

I live my life comparatively. It used to be that I lived competitively. Once you recognize you're not competing on the same level it becomes comparative. Neither way is healthy, but at least I had some pride before, I guess? I'm out of my latest depression but I find myself in a world of listless confusion. It's constant, but not agonizing. My existence is a dull migraine. I'm wearing my hair too tight. The problem is that I don't know what I want. I've said this before- but really the problem is that I don't know what I want within the realm of what I can get. Is it enough to be two people, who were always afraid of being alone, relieving that loneliness a little? Comparatively, I didn't get to play house. I didn't get the same kind of manufactured romance that borders on ridiculous because of how close it is to the type of manufactured romance you'd see on TV. I didn't get any grand illusions- just a thin screen of reassurances hidi

I don't think anyone is as adept at doors as they believe themselves to be. We are all deceived at some point. Today is my last day of sweets. I am far too into sweets as an adult woman. I would keep a Baby Jane drawer of chocolates if I could afford to do so. I can now make those references because I saw Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? last night. It was a very strange film. I would recommend it if you're in a patient mood and would like to watch Bette Davis unhinged and abusive. I have come to see that every day is charming. Every day is an unmanageable love story. Things start quietly, crescendo toward turmoil and ends harmoniously with sleep. Perhaps this is just the charm of my own life. I am sure there are people who live in a different type of story, but I am pleased today to see that everything is beautiful in it's own way. The love I feel makes every day a love story in the Shakespearean sense which drives toward tragedy. I love so very much. I love your impe

I occasionally become aware of what a truly disturbed human being I am. One such instance occurred today as I lay about bemoaning my illness that is just compounded by the malaise of desperate loneliness. Earlier in the day, recognizing that Nyquil just was not cutting it, I decided to pull the trigger on a refill Walgreens told me I had on promethazine w/codeine from my last bout of terrible coughing. On my way home I checked my phone to see if the prescription was ready- it was not, obviously, or the story would be a short one. It probably will be anyway... So I grumbled to myself and cut across a few parking lots I to get home because it was the shortest route. It would make a lot more sense if you understood the lay out between myself and the Walgreens. There's a stretch of parking lot in front of the Walgreens, a road, a Dairy Queen parking lot, and then my street, so it would be ridiculous, you see, to go out of my way to get on the main street to turn down a side street

I don't think we can escape the decisions of our past. We can try not to repeat them, if they did not yield good results, but I don't think we can walk away from them. We can't pretend they didn't change us. I can't pretend they didn't shape me. The narrative of a novel can drastically take a turn in the middle, but the reader is going to remember the earlier one. And all novels prior to that novel shape it. Our parents' histories shape us. There's nothing that is not connected and will not carry into the next chapter of our story. All the trees I didn't climb, all the parties I missed, all the drugs I casually took, all the nos, all the yeses...everything I've done to another person and everything that's been done to me: I can't avoid carrying any of that into my future. We're carrying on the metaphor of pulling myself out of a car crash. A stone was thrown by someone who just got out of their own crash to try to spin Myex out of c

My jaw hurts. Last time it hurt this way I had my wisdom teeth out. There's nothing inside me that I can remove. Maybe love? As I am coming to terms with the ending of my favorite series and what this new spin-off means I am clenching my teeth too hard. I am biting my tongue, although I honestly wouldn't know what to say. I am pulling out clumps of my hair again. I keep thinking of all the times I was told that I should trust more and I laugh to myself to keep from breaking down. I am alone in all of this. He's got too much going on to deal with my emotions in the aftermath of his decisions. He's unable, or unwilling, to make space. An irony that does not go past me. Is that irony? To be unwilling to make space when the problem stems from making space for someone else? I'm not sure. I'm not that smart. Obviously. Every day is a new battle. Every day is a new series of questions with the final looming problem being: What do I want? What do I want? What

Every hour my mother has to blow into this thing that looks like what I used to measure liquids in biology. With a tube to blow in attached, of course. She's been awake a few hours. We all took a nap shortly after she was moved. We spent a couple of hours watching SVU, and my sister is very gentle about taking care of my mother's needs. Ordering her food, checking her catheter, she is the perfect doting daughter. My sister excels at a lot of things, but she has a method for caring for others that verges on artistry. She's been taking care of others her whole life. First me, then her ex-husband, then my nephew, and now it's come back full circle to her caring for our parents. I drove away the next morning with the sun at my back and she stayed. She's cleaning her wound. She picked her up from the hospital and talked to the doctors. She was planning how to help her eat because we predicted my mom wouldn't be capable of cooking for a little while. My mo