i can feel it starting to happen again and the middle of my chest is on fire and all i want to do is resist. a constant flame that’s building and building and all i want is to push it back down and pretend that nothing’s happening. i trained myself not to feel for so long that i don’t even know how to handle myself. i can feel myself starting to trick every bone in my body and slip beneath the cracks and it’s killing me. i can feel it telling me to stop now before the real hurt happens and i hate that. i hate it. my head hates being scared and my heart hates the possibility of shattering even more. i’m the happiest i’ve been in such a long time and that is the scariest thing.

I miss my house up north with the walls made out of wood. I miss the smell in the air when autumn is almost here and everything gets three shades crisper. I miss walking up hills with the skeleton trees fencing them in and crunching blankets of brown and yellow beneath my feet. I miss hearing nature’s playlist of the birds blending over the wind and the sky being that perfect shade of marmalade. I miss making coffee before the sun has even kissed the tallest mountain outside of the A-frame window. I miss the creek down below the bridge and I miss sneaking into the stranger’s yard to borrow their swingset for a few quiet hours. I miss my favourite corner just above the snow slopes and watching all of those people trying out their ski legs like newborn bambi’s. I miss being isolated from all of the noise and frustrations that come attached to living in a city that’s too big and too small all at the same time. I miss fall and everything stapled to it.

I want someone to make new memories with so I can stop dwelling on the old ones and even tricking myself into thinking that I still want them. I want to stop feeling so exhausted from all of this anguish that keeps lingering around my shoulder blades. I want to forget and I want to learn how to let someone else in. I want someone who sees that I’m broken and isn’t going to just try and patch things up nicely and pretend they don’t exist. I want someone to care more about being honest with me than just placating my feelings. I want someone to laugh with. I want someone I can talk about my day with and just go get food together. I want to be able to trust someone with my heart and know that they’ll cherish it. I want to stop crying over some asshole that never even deserved me in the first place. Mostly, I just want to feel love again.

It doesn’t make you weird or abnormal to want to be alone once in a while. It doesn’t make you strange if your heart swells up when you see the sunrise or a low and full moon. It doesn’t set you apart if your mind wanders off to the lives of strangers and what they ate for breakfast or how they’re going to pay their phone bill next month. It doesn’t make you creepy for being fascinated with how people use their hands and it doesn’t make you awkward for wanting to keep looking. It doesn’t mean you’re off kilter just because you get attached to things and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you when it takes you three years to let go. It doesn’t make you weak when the sound of a name can send you spiraling or a simple phrase makes your lip quiver. It doesn’t make you weird when a song makes you cry those deep heavy sobs no matter how many times you’ve listened to it. It doesn’t matter if you get flustered and overwhelmed or forget how to cope so you just start screaming. None of these things make you wrong, they make you human.

Sometimes, I just like to sit in my car for twenty minutes. Sometimes, I like to blast sad songs that make me feel something, because I can’t handle the robotics of it all. Sometimes, I just need to see the moon. To know that it’s still up there, because everything else always ends up leaving you. Sometimes, I need human touch and sometimes, I just need total solitude. Sometimes, I need nothing and want everything. Sometimes, I feel like screaming and just going limp to it all and most of the time, I’m just exhausted. Sometimes, I just need a minute. Sometimes, I just need to breathe.

felonymelanie:

Once you wash away all of the fluff and surface dust, things become a lot more black and white. If you’re patient and you dig your way through the rubble, you begin to see the small pieces of human that were lost along the way. Beneath all the metal and clockwork, beneath all of the frustrations and tough exteriors, you find flesh. Flesh that’s real and fragile, flesh that’s been bruised and broken. Flesh that’s rough and calloused from being ripped at the seams and stitched back over because sometimes it’s just easier to hide the ugly parts than try to explain them. It’s easier to pretend that nothing ever happened because the minute you crack, the gates drown you in salt, and your flesh is raw and screaming and everything is smashing right up against you and it’s like it’s happening for the first time every time. It hurts and it hurts and it feels like forever and all you can do is let the waves take you. They toss you in and out and twist your heartstrings to a point where you just go limp and wait for low tide. But sometimes, and only sometimes, after the wounds have been flushed out and every grain of salt is gone, you remember what it’s like to feel real. You remember how to breathe and breathe full. You remember what it’s like to have flesh.

I need to start writing again.

We always tell each other to take things one day at a time and that the wounds heal as time passes but it never really feels that way. It’s like it gets worse and worse and all you can do is sob your heart out until you think there’s nothing left. You’re restless as hell and your eyes sting shut until the morning. The sun rises and for those first few seconds you’re fine. You think it’s all over but then you rub the sleep from your eyes and you breathe in a few times and it’s like everything crashes into you ten times harder and you remember. You remember that death has touched you, you remember that your mind is still shattered. You remember that things hurt. You look down and you see that the hole is still gaping in the middle of your chest and the entire world is caving into it. It’s like god turned the lights up and everything is harsh and bright in all the wrong places and your vision goes fuzzy. Small memories flash by that you never even thought twice about before but now you know you’ll never shake them and you can’t even make it four hours without collapsing. The sad songs are amplified and everything is just way too relevant. Your skin feels three sizes too small and you’re beginning to think that these holes are never going to heal themselves. Your body is drained and everything is way too close for comfort. Your thoughts go into overdrive and your voice shuts down and all you want is for the days to stop blending. All you want is for the pain to be over.

Once you wash away all of the fluff and surface dust, things become a lot more black and white. If you’re patient and you dig your way through the rubble, you begin to see the small pieces of human that were lost along the way. Beneath all the metal and clockwork, beneath all of the frustrations and tough exteriors, you find flesh. Flesh that’s real and fragile, flesh that’s been bruised and broken. Flesh that’s rough and calloused from being ripped at the seams and stitched back over because sometimes it’s just easier to hide the ugly parts than try to explain them. It’s easier to pretend that nothing ever happened because the minute you crack, the gates drown you in salt, and your flesh is raw and screaming and everything is smashing right up against you and it’s like it’s happening for the first time every time. It hurts and it hurts and it feels like forever and all you can do is let the waves take you. They toss you in and out and twist your heartstrings to a point where you just go limp and wait for low tide. But sometimes, and only sometimes, after the wounds have been flushed out and every grain of salt is gone, you remember what it’s like to feel real. You remember how to breathe and breathe full. You remember what it’s like to have flesh.

felonymelanie:

You build this sort of detachment from everything and you never let yourself get too close in fear of not being able to make the break when necessary. You keep your heart guarded because you don’t think you can handle feeling that broken ever again. You build up walls and you keep the people out that you need most because you hate feeling vulnerable. You hate showing that you’re human, that you’re fragile. You throw yourself into songs and the words of fiction and poetry and you immerse yourself in those feelings and memories even though you know that you should be learning to let go and move on. But then, for just the smallest of minutes you wonder ‘What if’. What if you could go back? What if you could just let yourself fall back into those old familiar dance moves that once kept your heart so warm? What if you could forgive the past and push it aside and try to make new things with old souls? What if you could feel whole again? You wear yourself out with what if’s until you can’t even think straight and your eyes are clouded with tears of last years faults and errors and you don’t even know what to do anymore. You know that those things aren’t good for you and that you need to keep those parts of your heart closed off because they’ll never be the same, but you can’t help but wonder and it twists your mind in circles and you’re exhausted. You’re exhausted from crying, you’re exhausted from thinking and speaking and yelling and hurting. You’re at the breaking point and all you want to do is be able to breathe again. You’re up countless nights overanalysing actions that shouldn’t even matter anymore. You grab onto new things even though you know your heart hasn’t recovered from the old ones and at this point you feel as if they never will. You tell yourself its okay and that you have the will to move on, but really, all you want is to feel alive again.

Twenty has arrived, but the taste of nineteen still lingers and the world is insistent on never leaving my shoulders. The first of the seventh peels back a new layer of skin, exposing more and more of my soul each year and I’m not sure how to deal with that sometimes. I’ve been running for miles and my legs are tired. My eyes are tired and swollen and the pit of my stomach is tired of trying to stay strong but somehow always coming up short. I can delete the songs and destroy the photos but I know they’ll never fully leave me. I need this year to be filled with fresh winds and new directions because I don’t think I can take it anymore. Nineteen shattered my insides and Twenty is working its hardest to glue them back together, but nothing like this is ever easy.

You build this sort of detachment from everything and you never let yourself get too close in fear of not being able to make the break when necessary. You keep your heart guarded because you don’t think you can handle feeling that broken ever again. You build up walls and you keep the people out that you need most because you hate feeling vulnerable. You hate showing that you’re human, that you’re fragile. You throw yourself into songs and the words of fiction and poetry and you immerse yourself in those feelings and memories even though you know that you should be learning to let go and move on. But then, for just the smallest of minutes you wonder ‘What if’. What if you could go back? What if you could just let yourself fall back into step of those old familiar dance moves that once kept your heart so warm? What if you could forgive the past and push it aside and try and make new things with old souls. What if you could feel whole again? You wear yourself out with what if’s until you can’t even think straight and your eyes are clouded with tears of last years faults and errors and you don’t even know what to do anymore. You know that those things aren’t good for you and that you need to keep those parts of your heart closed off because they’ll never be the same, but you can’t help but wonder and it twists your mind in circles and you’re exhausted. You’re exhausted from crying, you’re exhausted from thinking and speaking and yelling and hurting. You’re at the breaking point and all you want to do is be able to breathe again. You’re up countless nights overanalysing actions that shouldn’t even matter anymore. You grab onto new things even though you know your heart hasn’t recovered from the old ones and at this point you feel as if they never will. You tell yourself its okay and that you have the will to move on, but really, all you want is to feel alive again.

It’s weird, growing up. Your bones grow and your skin stretches to close the gaps and your heart takes a beating. The things around you begin to morph and those old familiar smells are pressed between the pages of your childhood where they become distant memories for you to casually flip through. You stick things on shelves and hide them in corners and everything just seems so foreign. Your thoughts develop and you begin to have opinions apart from the ones your parents had for you. You see and feel things differently and you become attached and detached from the ones you love and you fuck up beautifully. You learn from things and you build new parts of your soul to bandage the old ones. Your hands become calloused and weathered from clenching the necks of your demons and you find peace in the oceans. People fade away as the others burn brighter and somewhere along the way, the sky opens up, and you feel it all in the center of your chest.