1. 37+ on the MCAT (Study for at least 2 hours everyday)
2. 4.0 GPA Winter 2012 (Study for at least 1 hour for each class everyday)
3. Run a 5k race (Run three times a week for 30 minutes)
4. Finish Book List (Read for 30 minutes before bed each night)
5. Eat fruit everyday
6. Attend a professor’s office hours every week
7. Put away 50$ every month
8. Attend a surgery once a week
I want to say this simply.
I want to say this simply. Without tears or without laughter. With ignorance that I’ve said it before. With confidence I’ll never say it to another again.
I want to say this simply. I want to be loud and clear so you can hear me. I will not repeat my words and allow the moment to be lost. I will seize this moment with vigor. I will make us remember.
I want to say this in a way that doesn’t make you outwardly exuberant, only inwardly blissful. I do not need to see your tears of joy to know that you are joyful. I don’t need to hear your excited breath to know that your heart races.
I waited in a form of patient abstinence for this moment. I dared not even whisper it in the dark while you laid beside me. I had only fear for saying it too soon, too quickly, too harshly. This moment has come where you’re looking into my eyes, and you already knew I was going to say it. And for that reason, I can finally say it the way in which I desire.
I want to say this simply.
Without consequential doubt. Without remorse or guilt or regret.
Without the fear of loss, of losing you. Without the painful wondering of what’s to come.
Without shaky hands. Without baited breath.
Without sweat on my brow.
I want to say this without a sense of nervous unknowing. Because in this moment we both knew.
We both knew. That is which so simple. That is which so true.
So that after I say it now. I don’t expect to need to say it ever again. Because we both knew. And we will know. And silently we will hear it. Through our kisses and our touches. Through our stares and our smiles.
Through the mystery and the quiet. Moments where we wonder what the other is thinking. Moments where we inquire, because any other feeling outside of this one may lay in doubt.
But this does not. Because we both know, we both knew.
I want to say this simply.
I love you.
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
My mother and her long cigarettes in her long fingers, smoking with her long legs crossed at the knee: she exemplifies the most eloquent form of self destruction. If I could paint her I would paint her. If I could sketch her smoke lines with gray charcoal I would sketch them. And people would be so enticed by the romantic and eloquent way this broken hearted, romantic and eloquent woman so romantically and eloquently expresses her misery. She’s living art.
People have a way of seeing the best in the worst that way.
She smokes now because she’s missing her bicycle, and frankly, what’s the point in living without a bicycle, right? There is no more reason to go to the park. There is no more reason to enjoy a nice sunny day. She fills the park with smoke and she blots out the sun. Because she has no need for either now.
People have a way of seeing the worst in the best that way.
I just slouch beside her and watch the world go dark. My apathy makes me different. My apathy reveals I’m exactly the same. What am I but also waiting for a domestically violent version of prince charming. One that beats me while he tells me I’m beautiful. You do it because you love me right? I can’t feel like a woman unless you feel like a man. So do what you need to do to feel like a man.
If no girl ever grew up with a father would we miss them? Would we still find ourselves at the mercy of some thug if no girl ever knew their father? Would our mothers be capable of raising us to defend ourselves? Or is it our dad that instills in us the sense of self-esteem that makes us know that we deserve the right man. And that we are not pre-destined to be victims.
I guess I’ll never know. I guess I had a father once. I guess now I never will again.
There is a crater in my chest cavity. I’m filling it with wet sand of no formidable substance. I am princess of this sand castle. With a sand prince and our sand wedding and my sand wedding ring.
Choose me. Marry me. Protect me.
But the ocean comes and washes it all away. And so I’ll let myself float along, watching my dad on the horizon in our sailboat, making his escape.
His family was expendable after all. People are expendable.
I am expendable.
And he was the main character. And I was a foil of some foil of some other sub-character in a sub plot line that deviated ever so slightly from his path of life.
Now for the rest of my own story, I will cling to anything that slightly resembles him. A man who once loved me.
Choose me; marry me; protect me.
Where are you… Mr. Bicycle.
You spoke to me of family on every occasion possible. And I listened, with eager ears and an open heart, to learn your words and act in their nature. But you were a mighty deceiver, and you abandoned those words by the selfishness of your actions.
Where you have failed to uphold your values, I will press on. I will bear the torch of your words, though I wash my hands of your physical being, and ostracize you from my heart. One day you will look up and realize the pain you wrought, but it will too late for redemption. Live you will, with heavy feet and a heavier heart. I will bear no sympathy, but neither will I bear ill will or a black-marked vendetta.
You will be a man to me always, no more and no less. And I will afford to you the affection I would afford to a stranger.
Know that I forgive you, though you have asked not and deserve not forgiveness. Know that I respect the man you once were in my eyes, and I have forsaken him not. Know that I understand your poor choices, though I know deep down to my core that they were poor indeed.
The circle has been draw. You made me the person I am, and because of that, enabled me to pick up the shattered life you yourself brought upon me.
With you we lived, without you we will live on.
This feels like detoxing but in the wrong direction. Everything happy and normal and sane is flowing through my pores, my sweat, is escaping through any valve, and this twitching numb shell will be left behind. It’s a wonder how anyone is still alive, still happy, if they really ever go through what I’m facing now. This loneliness. This inability to feel as if I’m worth anything, to be a part of anything. To feel wanted and loved and secure. To give up on your health, plod your feet towards a future that isn’t coming. Asking myself everyday, what the fuck am I doing here. With these people who hate me. With these people who I hate. To go to bed and never want to get out of it. To sleep until this somehow gets better. Because I don’t know how to fix it.
Everything that upsets me that most people find silly:
1) I do feel like I’m considered to be less attractive because I’m not blond and white.
2) I do feel like I’m expected to be dating or hooking up with boys constantly and I’m not as pretty or cool as everyone else around me because I’m not.
3) I do feel like I’ll never accomplish what I want because I keep making terrible decisions that go against my true desires.
4) I waste my time every day trying to morph myself into someone I am not and I hate it.
5) I am too afraid to tell anyone that I am so unhappy. Most especially my parents.
6) I don’t fit in here at all.
7) I want a college restart button.
8) I feel unattractive because boys do not actively pursue me.
9) I want so badly to stop caring about what anyone thinks and just be happy with who I am.
10) I wish I had the courage to run the fuck away.
Are you listening? Because I can’t do this without you. Give me good reason to take this empty threat to its full potential. Make me painfully aware of what needs to be done.
I can no longer be a prisoner of my own intelligence. My own mind, so aware of how different and powerful it is. So aware of how I am not a contributing factor to my ecosystem - that of a sorority house.
So cliche now is to recognize that you are a cliche. To say, I’m sure you’ve heard this story before, is the story we’ve already heard before. And I am grinning through tainted teeth at your attempt to stand above.
Let me focus with a new lens, on the disturbed internal perspective of my existence. I am dragging my feet. I am in neutral. If I could only focus my efforts on something my own finicky pride could be proud of. An entity that needs not the evanescent admiration of all who peer and don’t understand.
Mad scientist are mad because they don’t allow the sanity of life to get in their way.
I hope I die to the song Unforgettable by Nat King Cole, and its videotaped.
Life has become a short series of 30 minute time slots and commercial breaks. I find myself constantly flipping channels because nothing is captivating. And if it may be, the actors cannot express the reality of emotions behind the jaded plot twist.
Every time I feel this way, all I think about is the comfort of your passenger seat and the way everything feels alive when I’m in it. Talking to you, the conversation is painfully authentic, and I know that I’m not just playing nice.
But then the credits roll, and I blink into the stiff light, pulled through airport terminals and several cups of coffee, I find myself wondering if you really are just a dream.
In the same way I wake up, and the beauty of my nightmares retreats into my bitter subconscious, you’re existence does the same now. And I reach to recall, details and tangible signs of our connection, but I am so gravitated towards the dull ache. This ache, my life without you. A blinking husk of a person. Performing her duties like an arthritic ballerina, I am spinning in place.
Please, bring this slow dance to an end.
I can feel us pulling away. Like the tug between two magnets, distance has an amazing power on our attraction, but as magnets, I can always still feel you. And its torturing in its comfort, that small fact. You have left a print on my mind like footfalls in the snow. The sun may never shine, and you may remain in my mind forever.
I don’t feel the outrage of sadness now. I don’t even cry. I just think of you, and reminisce and I am longing. And I am yours, even when you aren’t mine. Even when you belong to another. And I don’t mind.
I am happy for us, and our futures. I think they will be brilliant and cunning. We will achieve all that we desire. And in everyone’s eyes, we will be successful.
But I will always turn my head over my shoulder. And resist the urge to reach for your heart and hand.
I am optimistic that the cup is half full. But I know that once, it was overflowing. And it may never be again.
