care

So I had some impulsive fun in my 20s, did I not? I did. I did way too much. "Hey, doc, will you prescribe me some IMPULSIVITY and FUN and BAD DECISIONS and an overall sense of IMMORTALITY?" And this metaphorical doc was, like, "Sure thing, doll."

Now I'm older. Yeah yeah yeah (still one of my favorite bands! you know what I'm talkin' about!), I am technically still in my 20s, but there is a vast valley between the early 20s and the late 20s. It is a terribly difficult transition because that prescription medication suddenly ceases to work. The impulsivity may still be there, but it is no longer followed (or driven) by fun or the comforting feeling of being imperishable. And those bad decisions? Those bad decisions tend to weigh much heavier on one's conscience and life, the repercussions more severe.

Where am I going with this? Like I know! I never know exactly where I'm going in any of my posts or IN MY LIFE! See what I did there? I don't see. Okay okay okay (still one of my favorite bands! kidding! not a band!), enough of this blah blah blah (stupid band). What I want to say is that I am ready to take care of someone. I'm exhausted from being stuck in this cycle of me me me (enough with the threes, Meg). I believe I do well when I am able to direct my attention towards making another human feel at least okay. Of course, it would be ideal if the person I am taking care of could also take care of me. I need to stop putting all of my energy into people who simply take without giving back.

Self-care. Self-care is where I'll start and then maybe the Universe will open my eyes and heart to everyone else around me. It's worth a shot.

phantom

He's just a phantom. I like what we could have been, what we were for one month. (That one month we both went crazy; one spent time in a hospital, the other with a bottle.)

So now we're stuck. In a relationship, in an addiction, in a dead end job with nothing but hours ahead of us. What's ahead of us? Not each other.

There are worse ways to spend my time.

I am going to continue to miss you because you amuse me, muse. You give me dreams that lead to poems that lead to short stories that lead to me potentially thinking that I am a writer. I am all about the potential; I will not follow through.

(I am still here, I am still here, you are gone.)

erosion

This is rough like a giant question mark. This is very appropriate. I made it difficult.

One line is unbroken and sharp.

Even rivers do not provide ways into the heart.

They drop to the oceans from what was eroded, spreading out from weak areas.

And we say our small talk words. And we repeat what we already know. And we rest our past in the sand where our head has been for years.

You are deposited into other locations, places I won't access.

You are responsible. You are the reason the earth sighs every night.

We will wear away.

you are cordially invited to attend the wedding of...

My blog has been suuuuuper depressing lately, huh? Oh wait, it has ALWAYS been depressing. Depressing and self-deprecating and full of run-on sentences and grammatical errors and not THAT many grammatical errors because I'm actually pretty damn smart and I don't give myself enough credit not that being grammatically correct automatically means one is smart and we are all just ILLUSIONS wearing masks and straight jackets!!! Did I phreak you out?

Let's care for each other. Let's stop this nonsense of holing up in our room, drinking our gin, and crying over failed romances. By the way, does anyone want any failed romances? I have stacks of 'em. I have drawers full of 'em. Wait. Not drawers full of 'em. That makes it sound like I am a serial killer. It took me THREE times to correctly spell "serial." I suppose I ain't as bright as I thought.

Imagine, if you must, that my life takes an unexpected turn and I either marry Kobe Bryant or Anthony Wiener. Okay, Tony would have to first get divorced, but that's not too hard to imagine. I mean, it's not too hard to imagine Wiener getting divorced. But Wiener marrying Wiemer? That's stretching it.

I want to move to LA. No, really. I have my reasons. I am too hungry to explain these reasons right now, though, so instead I will leave you with this picture YOU'RE WELCOME.

distant

There is a letter I should give to anyone who enters into my life.

The letter would be long-winded and a little abstract and definitely self-deprecating, but the overall message would be this:

I will purposely keep you at a distance. I will purposely push you away and close off and send happy emoticons through text to pretend that everything's okay. I will be at least twenty miles away emotionally when you inevitably decide to give up and leave. ABANDONMENT ISSUES, MAAAN! Or woman. Or whomever you are. Who are you? I'll never know.

I need to begin writing new letters.

jeanette speaks

Let's make a post full of Jeanette Winterson quotes, shall we? We shall.

"I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me." -from Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

"'Do you fall in love often?'

Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all." -from Gut Symmetries

"There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name." -from Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

"In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance." -from The World and Other Places: Stories

"To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown."

soul

we were angels we were angels we were angels

so far so far so far

away we come closer away we come closer away we come closer

touch

let me give you this let me give you

this is not the

this is not the

this is not the

i've met so many people

thin

I wonder how many other twentysomethings out there are listening to surf music from the fifties and reading about starvation alone in their room. Oh? Just moi? Ça n'est pas grave!

I am okay with this, though. Mostly. I can't spread myself too thin (PUN!) right now. People aren't the problem. They never were, aside from when they molest me. The problem is that I shy away from myself. Or maybe the problem is that I am always looking for a problem? It would be completely zen of me to say that there is no problem, huh? There is no problem and there is also no-no problem. There is no duality and there is also no-no duality. Zen is fucking frustrating. I feel like a dog chasing my tail and my no-tail.

I start too many paragraphs with "I."

I gave up on picnics.

My patience for picnics is high, though. I love 'em.

It's all missed connections. That's both the problem and the answer.

fade

I practice selective fading.

I will fade away from those who no longer serve me. Have I really gotten that self-absorbed? Self-loathing is just another way to say self-obsession. I want to fade away from both.

"The signal arrives at the receiver by two different paths."

One path leads me to me, the other path leads me to you. I don't want to be led anywhere.

I will catch your signal. I will tune in and then drop out. I will try so hard to echo.

match

I know no one knows what to do. I know I am throw-hands-up-in-the-air frustrating. Dare I say "hopeless"? Maybe I just have yet to meet my match.

He and he and he and even she gave up too quickly. They live their lives inside an exoskeleton. Is it time to discard?

I hear pianos and smell cigars and am delighted and upset that I am stuck in a fantasy. They are expatriates and they have no skeleton; they stay up, tweaking, writing poetry with blood. My match, their matches, both burning fingertips.

So I'll wait. So I'll vacillate between disinterest in others and disinterest in self. So I'll keep carving lines into imagined bedposts. You are not yet what I want; maybe one day.

decompose

You and I were a process. We were broken down into something simpler, something essential. We occupied space together, but not in the same way. Give me your tomorrow, I'll give you my marrow.

"The fresh stage begins immediately after the heart stops beating."

I hated the way your hats looked on the wall. They looked so lonely. Sometimes you wore them when we went out and we pretended to be fancy. Don't step on the cracks, you'd command as we'd stand waiting for the bus. I'm not even walking, I replied.

"Once the heart stops, chemical changes occur within the body."

Once you told me that my face was too big for my body, for the sky. You said I could light up the whole solar system with just one look. Did you understand how space works? Do you now? It was nice to hear, though. (I'm sure my face would eventually be erased by a black hole.)

"Autolysis may cause blisters to appear at the surface of the skin."

The sun doesn't set when it's alone. It will melt your bones in the middle of the night; it will trap your breath under the sheets until you blink yourself awake.

Our bones are exposed.

amoureux

I want to write a poetic and pretty post, but when it comes down to it, all I really want to say ("get to the point!") is that I

really really really really really really really really oh so much miss you.

I miss you. Je suis amoureux de toi.

sad sad songs

I know it's stupid, but I just want to text you something. It's a picture of me that looks cool even though it's supposed to be "not cool," which makes it that much cooler. You make me nervous.

I just watched the way my fingers type. They are not coordinated. I have lost all of my ability to finish this sentence. I ain't lying... I'm a fraud! You are my sunset!

disassemble

I continue to disassemble that night in order to determine a structure that I know will never exist.

There has to be a beginning, middle, and end, right? What if the beginning is left out in the sun and fades? What if the middle and end blend in such a way that suggests a faulty memory? I can create what I can't live; I can remember what I can't conceive.

In the sky the moon was hidden by clouds and I almost blushed at how perfectly fitting it was. I tripped over a sprinkler and made an obscure joke in hopes that it would be a distraction. What were we distracting ourselves from that night? What did we refuse to observe?

There is a practical impossibility of dissecting what has died of natural causes.

Your fingers, the branches; The moon, so small with my one eye closed. I could crush it if I just tried.

observe

I sat in the back of the room in order to observe. I have been observing the way people interact with one another ever since I opened my eyes. Occasionally I will wear non-prescription glasses because it makes people treat me better and with more respect. This fact feels significant somehow, but I doubt that it is.

I observed the way your teeth looked. You said you had them fixed earlier that morning and that they felt weird against your tongue. I asked if it made the roof of your mouth raw and you just answered, "Tongue." I grabbed the side of my neck and left it at that.

There was something tragically beautiful about the way the gravestones were left invisible that night. I didn't want to know their names, I just wanted to know their entire history and who they loved and why they were so sad that one Christmas and what their dreams were when they were younger than I am now.

Are we all now ads instead of friends? What has the screen done to us aside from drastically disconnect?

I am going to figure it out. I am going to figure out the way the dollar works and how to exchange numbers and how to fix a flat and how to deposit and dispose and possess and obsess over anything other than this scene from the back of the room. I am hungry and I have forgotten how to boil water. It has really gotten to that point.

What will we make of ourselves when we create the mold? What will freeze and what will crack?

depart

I wanted to name the dog that we would one day eventually adopt "Ginger" in a nod to the cafe where we fell in infatuation with each other. I wanted you to cook me salmon and tell me about the different kinds of beers and maybe even introduce me to your siblings over a plate of sushi at the restaurant across from the canyon apartment you shared with your estranged wife.

I wanted to be every beautiful cliche.

One hundred and ten feet up in the sky you took up smoking. I don't blame you. At such great heights and in such oppressive heat, who wouldn't take a smoke break? The way to survive is through our lungs sometimes.

I won't go back to the place where we stayed the night I paid $140. I won't go back because I have no reason to. You gave up halfway through and I drove home in your truck looking out the window at the blurry streetlamps, frozen.

Sometimes I think about your thumbs. You'd press them against my temples and claim relief. I think I could have done it myself with similar results, but the outside touch was preferred.

We were always outside, we were always watching neon bugs land on pages.

These are just notes, just glimpses, just corridors leading away from cliches.

web

I rearranged the furniture in my room and now I have no idea who I am.

My desk faces the opposite way, at an angle; my mattress is still on the floor, but this time it is pressed against the wall with the window to my right (depending on how I sleep and what I consider my "right").

I vacuumed. It's spotless.

Now I have no idea who I am.

The light coming through the blinds is flickering on my wall. I would have never noticed this if I hadn't rearranged.

It's flickering as if it's a fly caught in a spider's web. The other day my leg caught what was left of a web. I was on a walk to clear my head and all that resulted was further entanglement.

I don't know who I am anymore (ever since the shift).

He became visibly uneasy when I asked him to say "the most real thing." He changed the subject, he grabbed my face.

How can an entire night be full of jokes and ghosts? How can an entire lifetime be full of nothing but furniture?

I rearrange to get lost, I turn around to look at what I've missed.

I don't know.

scoop

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you." -Jeanette Winterson

Ms. Winterson always gets it soright. She's who I read if I feel like quietly crying in my bed at night, only to fall asleep and dream of failed romances. But is there ever a "failed" romance? What would make a relationship successful? We are all just a bunch of weirdos who... Who I dunno. I think I'll just leave it at "we are all just a bunch of weirdos."

I miss him.

(But who is he?)

clasp/detach

I spend too much time in my own head SURPRISE SURPRISE. I am worried I have become more shallow than I realize. What can "cure" this? A month alone in the woods? A severed limb? Drugs? Should I even be concerned with finding a cure? How many times in my blog posts have I typed the all-important word "I"? I suppose this is a personal blog, so I'm bound to, you know, talk about me from time to time.

Still. Still I feel like an idiot. Maybe the preoccupation with worrying about being too self-absorbed is in its own strange way another form of narcissism. Who cares if I fix my hair and put on makeup occasionally? Who cares if I like to, according to my definition, look cool? CLICHE ALERT: My life is my art. If I am criticized for how I look and behave, then so be it. Art should be criticized.

Okay, but STILL. Still I want to be more giving and able to detach from my cuckoo ego when needs be. This is possible, I promise. I've experienced it before. The first rule of caring is not to care. The second rule of caring is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The third rule of caring is to... cuddle? Are we all going to cuddle now? I think at this point in my life I'd finally be okay with that. Cuddle me!!!

venture

If I study art, am I selfish?

If I postpone getting a job because I want to make art, am I selfish?

If I relentlessly pursue him despite the fact that he ________ and __________, am I selfish?

I accelerate only to break.

(Gotta be cool now, power shift here we go.)

If I write with whiskey, am I selfish? Am I stupid?

I abandoned acting because I believed I was no good; I still mourn what was. I buried my future under a pile of shoulds.

You should write, Meghan. You should.

You should be meek. You should give. You should never keep for yourself. You may trip over what you've accumulated and fall on your face. Your face is full of lines that map your ancestors. Don't disappoint.

Am I selfish to take? What will break if I do everything in my power to remain without fracture?

The earth naturally shakes and so shall we.

scuba

I dwell on what could have been, what was missed, what never was.

He wants to take pictures of the Milky Way out in the desert. I decline. I want to sit home and deny myself of what I crave -- and I want to do it alone.

Is it company that I crave? I never would have thought. I miss being close with someone. I miss the trust that they will be readily available. Everyone seems so distant, myself especially.

There is an empty sea with so much underneath. The surface is just that -- the surface. I crave the caves, I crave what can only be reached by depth, by masks.

grasp

This explains everything!

another page

He stood in the doorway of a jewelry store that was neither open or closed because he said he likes the way it makes him feel. He said his voice sounds different in that small space. It did sound different, slightly. I looked at a ruby ring shaped like a snake in the window. I hissed to hear my own vocal cords play tricks on me. I felt the same and remained stagnant in the doorway, taking up space.

Precision and pleasure will continue to build a life I might one day claim.

What might one day mean something is presently formless; without form, the sky opens up and what I call "me" finally rests beneath a sea of stars.

reliable, dammit!

In order to recover, I need to become even more boring than I already am. I need to follow a fairly strict schedule (with eating and waking/sleeping). I can't put myself in situations that will likely trigger me... Which means no hipster indie concerts/events, no bar hopping, and definitely no mall shopping (no problem there). Get ready to go with me to the library and read silently, friends! We can also grab tea and draw. Better yet, let's get outside.

I also need to be surrounded by reliable people. I use the word "reliable" because right now that's what I need more than even compassionate people. A mini-breakthrough that I recently had in therapy helped me to see that reliability is something vital to me, something that went missing often in my past. I myself need to be more reliable, too. I "flake out" and cancel plans and make up excuses and disappear. It's my "thing." Thanks to my eating disorder, I have become a perfect hermit. Is food involved? I most likely won't go. Do I feel "fat" today? I most likely won't leave the house. Will this interrupt my exercise schedule? No thank you. So when I finally DO feel like doing things and interacting with the human race, but then someone either cancels on me or forgets our plans, it puts me right back into hermit mode. I realize that's a lot of responsibility on various shoulders (various shoulders?), but... Oh well.

So I need to eat regularly. Like, at 8am, 12pm, and 6pm. And I want to be asleep by 11pm. And I can't really be drinking caffeine or alcohol anymore. If you are also up for eating at 8am, 12pm, and/or 6pm, let me know. But let me know at least a day in advance! And when we are eating whatever it is that we are eating, please do not say that you are going to be "bad" and have the fries or that you "can't possibly finish the whole thing." Just eat your damn food and let me eat my damn food and let's have a damn pleasant experience, dammit! Whoa. I am so aggressive! Psych. I am super passive, but I'm learning to assert myself more. Kinda.

grief, dreams, and conjunctivitis

I will save myself a lot of grief realizing that he'll never change. He loves me in his own unique way and I know that. I really, really know that. I can't keep trying desperately to make him stop doing this and start doing that because it will wear both of us out. He will trigger me and I need to learn how to deflect. He will leave me feeling hungry and I need to learn how to nourish myself. He may not listen, but I will (to myself, to him). Letting go of a relationship I wish I had with him will help me to appreciate and accept the relationship that we do have.

I continue to have dreams about my exes. Dear subconscious, stop being cruel. The dreams make me miss them, but then I remember something Meg pointed out about missing people... Do you actually miss the person or do you miss who that person helped you to be? If it's the latter, then that gives me power. I have the power to feel and be a certain way on my own, without becoming codependent. Still, these dreams derail me. I wake up in a haze, wondering yet again: "If I had only done this one thing slightly different, would that person still be around? Would they have not left and would they love me? Would we be married and have a child and would I be a Mormon Mommy Blogger?" I really do wonder all of these things (and more) far too often. There's no point in wondering and regretting aside from torturing myself. I wish I could dream about ice cream cones instead.

Today an old man patted me on the bare back (thanks for the no-sleeves, tank top) without my consent and I was like, "Ah hell no!" But of course I remained silent. Don't touch people if you don't know them -- and you probably shouldn't touch them even if you do know them because, well, the bird flu or pink eye or something. Anyway, I'll end this post on that bizarre note. Take care, sweeties.

stranger

A woman just smiled at me, a stranger, and I wonder who's the stranger? The woman or me? Would any of my neuroses be alleviated if I viewed myself as the stranger? Abandoning the self, detaching, a vital removal. I wish to embrace this woman. I wish to cradle her head and bless her for being so familiar.

My cravings have taken a strange turn. I want seaweed and ice and lately I've been drawn to rattlesnake meat. I withdraw from all so I can live out these fantasies within my room. My window leads to a brick wall. I am not satisfied.

A man just smiled at me, a stranger, and I'd like to keep it that way. He is a stranger eating salad who smiled at me and I feel violated. The woman -- I will fiercely protect. The man -- I will protect myself. Myself -- maybe I'm the real threat.

There is not much we will complete today; There is much to delete, but the pull to be full is enough to derail. Stories left to tell will fall halfway through while we wander around the backyard looking for a patch of dandelions to drown in.

The woman left and returned with not a salad, but fried chicken and strawberries and she's eating both with a fork and I love her nameless self so much that my nose itches.