Although I miss the winter city nights,

I miss the city in the terms of your hand in mine.

I try to deny the way I feel.

I'm always fooling myself into thinking this isn't real.

But the more I struggle and try to fight this,

The more I realize it's a swing and a miss.

I can't distance myself to keep you from my sight.

Not when you're still everywhere in my life.

I always feel like you're just around the corner.

Waiting outside my window, like when we were younger.

I can't step into this city without seeing your ghost.

In memories everywhere that we've been the years before.

It's become a new city with many new faces,

But no matter what changes, even time can't erase us.

It's crazy and yet beautiful,

No matter how far away I go,

I'll carry you from this life onto the next,

Like you're the best thing that hasn't happened to me yet.

If things were more simple, I'd give you a call.

But I know better, I know the way we are.

One word leads to a kiss that leads to so much more.

Then we start the whole cycle over.

I can't have a living memory.

I'd rather just live inside of my dreams.

No one gets hurt, the world keeps spinning,

Plus I'm free to express these feelings.

But writing it on paper or just in thought;

I will love you until there's nothing left to love.

I'm trying to think about what I'd say if I ever had the luxury of talking to you again. As a writer, my brain comes up with all these speeches. None would make sense. I ramble on, that's a bad habit. I can't let go, I'm even worse at that. I know the decision has been made (with you and every other man): I'm no good, I wouldn't fight that. I've never believed I should be given a chance. I think that love and happiness are for people who deserve the best. I'm just selfish and asking too much. But enough about that stuff... 

There's irony in you, this situation. You're the opposite of everything I believe in. For one, you subscribe to a whole different world. But I've always been curious about the other side. I don't date people with criminal records unless they are from political outbursts. My exes mail had to come in a zip lock bag because the government went through everything he'd been sent. I heard about yours and I didn't care. Even without the details. And I've always been one to play it cool and act like I wasn't invested. Ask anyone who ever met me - I'm a cold and heartless queen. But I felt warm around you. I felt expressive. I felt energized instead of restless. I didn't feel like I had to keep you at an arms distance. I felt like I could let you in. You have issues, sure, but no one is perfect. I saw something in your eyes the said you were worth it. "A heart of gold," you said if yourself. I honestly didn't believe you at first. It grew on me though, as I came to see that many of the problems were just me. Along with being cold to most, I've always been the first to let go. I walk away from almost every problem. I don't fight. I don't try harder. At the first sign of resistance, I'm gone. That makes it even more curious why I can't move on. 

I want to reach out, but I know I can't. I don't have anything to say even if I did. Moments run rampant through my mind. I can't control them even when I try. I'm losing my distractions bit by bit like the universe wants me to think about this. I don't know what I should have learned from this. I realize opposites really do attract. I guess that's an epiphany that I can take to the future with me. Truth be told, I'm just really sad. Not because of the fantasies I had. I know it wasn't realistic to think of "us", but there was something between us, more than lust. Or maybe I was hallucinating and none of this meant anything. The universe was playing tricks on me and showing me things I wanted to see. Now my heart is hung up on a fictional thing, I can't let go of and I can't embrace. If this is some practical joke, I don't get the punch line.

I hate when I get like this. Repeating words for repentance.

Only it's not mine I'm pounding out this time.

It's his.

I'm hoping in some fucked up way, to redeem him in the words I say.

To cycle through the bad and find the good times that we had.

But there's something missing in the batter I'm now mixing.

That says there's none to be found, and the cycle won't come back around.

That all that's here is memories, not so great of how things used to be.

And I'm only stuck living in the pastbecause there is no future to be had.

This whole journey was a waste of time, both of ours, not just mine.

Digging skeletons up in cemeteries, instead of leaving things just be.

Instead of accepting the way things were, I had to go and dig even further.

The answers to questions I never asked destroyed whatever we even had.

I've felt this way before, I know, and it was a mistake to let him go.

I know if I try hard enough, I can look past all of this.

But I don't know that I should, what else may come out of the woods?

What else do I not know about that may leave me full of doubt?

How can I trust in a future if, I don't even know the past.

Each step feels like a blindfolds on, and everyones chanting me along.

"Don't worry, just take the step", but what if it's one I'll regret?

I always say leave no stone unturned, but this is a lesson I've long learned.

If you've turned the stones but turned them back, the outcomes won't be any different.

Yes, new stones appeared this time, but out of context, they weren't mine.

Yes he's different, he has learned, but from the past I'm still being burned.

And I can't move on, I can't let go, I can't continue down this road.

Not when I don't know what follows, and what might show up tomorrow.

The future is not bulletproof, and the past so easily gets through.

The damage was done, long ago - but I can't forget if I didn't know.

And the wounds feel like their brand new. So fuck this/it/me/you.

Disclaimer: This post was NOT written by me. This is an excerpt from "Fall Out Toy Works: Tiffany Blues", a graphic novel by Pete Wentz. The reason I am sharing it is that it captures exactly how I feel, how I've always felt. The uncertainty that lies at the base of every single human being. We are all lost and looking for someone to feel connected with. We are all wanders, looking for a purpose. While it feels lonely, and the world can be discouraging, we have to remember that we are all in the same boat. Regardless of status, money, choices, childhoods... We are all missing a vital piece, something that just might have the answer. Ask yourself: What makes you feel alive? What will/has saved your life?

Can a robot cry?
Can it feel alive?
Can a robot love?
Can anyone? 

I always said I danced because it made me feel... I don't know. I guess I lied and said "alive". When you start out around people who pray that a neighborhood bar will close down its most popular bar, you can't help wanting to - or needing - to uneath that world for yourself. That's the romantic reason. I stayed because the people who drank stayed. Before that, I had no way of knowing, aside from that old show [Cheers], that people don't flow in and out of bars like they do restaurants. People crawl into bars and hide there like they've found the bedroom missing from their own homes. Turns out I'm somewhat of a voyeur.

How could I not love my front-row view of people at that moment where they don't pretend to love their awful jobs. People who don't pretend to love their fucked up spouses. It's not that the bar-people were negative, it's that liquor showed them that honesty is worth so much more than phony happiness. What good are all those picket fences, anyway? If the raw, broken creature inside you really just wants to meet one other person who will look you in the eye and say, "I can't fucking stand this either."

It's like this: Maybe we can't stand homeless people because we're somehow jealous. They answer to no one. They aren't tied down to places. They do find community, but in the strangest of places. Except, they're not forced to make conversation with all the fuzzy background people we secretly wish didn't exist. Their lives are the epitome of honesty. And that's the best thing about the bars - They are all just people. The same. I had regulars who were prostitutes. Regulars who were homeless... Or attorneys, fathers, whatever. Girls with PHD's who wanted nothing more than to fuck somebody and not tell a soul the next day, just to see if they could. But unless these people told you whether or not their whiskey made them, you really couldn't tell the difference. There was no way to know who was the whore and who was going to hand you three books about Jesus on your last day of work.

My world, worlds, have been filled with two kinds of people. One group telling me over and over how non-existent and manmade God is. That's how I knew that God was real. There's no sense why we cry and break and hurt and love and kill ourselves trying to find "family" in the deadest of places unless we subconsciously know we are missing something bigger.

So in my opinion, getting bloody Mary's on a Sunday morning with a deeply hungover friend is far more important than going to a church service. And God is the only one who seems to get that.


Really, it's amazing how normal I turned out. Here I am, so incapable of living a relatively sheltered life. I started writing as a survival skill. I had to write so that I wouldn't forget. And I started to think of it as a kind of dancing. Dancing because I don't want to forget everything I'm starting to remember. I'm afraid of losing my thoughts. I'm afraid of forgetting everything I know now. Because even though today, God is real, tomorrow, he is not. Even if I feel loved today, tomorrow I will believe that I have never been loved at all. So, if before, I was dancing to express things I didn't know how to make into words yet... Then maybe now it's a way to hold on to memories. And maybe, writing isn't the only kind of dancing that can save my life.

She read right through me in a way I think only people who have gone to school for decades can. She saw my soul as though my body was nothing more than a panel of glass and the making of my being was on display inside a glass case at a museum. And I've never met, to this day, someone who had me pinned quite at well as she did. I've never met someone who tried so hard to learn everything about me in only a few hours. And she did.

We got to that Starbucks at around three in the morning and ended up leaving just after noon. By then, her band was worried they hadn't seen her all night. Michelle was panicked and said they needed to talk. And even my brother was worried when I didn't come home from work. But, while we sat in that Starbucks, nothing else mattered. I could have listened to her talk, forever. But, then the phone calls started coming in waves, and, we came back to earth to deal with our responsibilities.

Sam walked me to the apartment I shared with my brother. She hugged me and said "don't be a stranger", with a smirk on her face that said she knew what I was thinking. Even if I wanted to be nothing more than a dream to everyone I ever encountered, Sam knew the difference. She knew I was real. She could see the desperation behind invisibility, having felt it at some points herself. But what was worse about her knowing I was real, was she made me want to feel it, too. I cite that conversation, that 2 am latte, as when I knew I was in love. I didn't see it at that point. But looking back, that morning I fell in love with her. And I never recovered from the impact.

(Excerpt from "Three Tales of Not Quite Romance")

Sometimes the person you love more than anything
Can be the same person who drives you insane.

The love-hate, I want you near, but want you out of sight.
Addicted to passionate sex and fist fights.

Bipolar romantics, and screaming at midnight.
It doesn't always have to be a bad thing, if you can see it in a good light.

And you always looked best standing on my porch in the moonlight.
I remember how you wore those sad puppy dog eyes.

And I thought to myself you were just full of shit.
But I was addicted to believing what you said.

And you always said you loved me but I "fucking drive you mad".
And I always knew I'd never replace what we had.

Now you're in the same boat that I'm in.
We're sinking down fast, and neither can swim.

But I'm not afraid of drowning with you at my side.
We may have been fucked up, but we were well worth the ride.

After you've spent enough time swimming through memories, you start to lose grip of reality. You begin thinking of possible futures with faces that no longer look the same. Your mind is playing tricks on you, convincing you of possibilities that never existed to begin with and certainly couldn't be created out of thin air. Time distorts our memories of even the things we are most sure of. Fact or fiction all blurs into itself in a beautiful dance the two perform on stage together. There is no reality. There is only perception. Perception changes with the way we grow as individuals. Each day, our trials and tribulations combine to create a wiser and older version of who we were yesterday. Tomorrow, you will not be the same person you were today. If you are stuck in stagnation it's only because you're not learning or growing. You don't need a change of scenery or new faces to be a new person. You only need a fraction of new information to change everything that has been. You will not remember today the way you are experiencing it. You will remember yesterday as the person you are now, with clear changes to the way you perceive each event. A mistake you made yesterday might have been the start of a beautiful tomorrow and you'd never know it. Today, you're filled with regret, pain, and a constant sense of the unknown. A week from now all the pieces could fall into place. Will you still see yesterday as a mistake? No. We remember everything only in terms of how the future allows us to see actions/words/thoughts of the past.

Yesterday you were a beautiful moment. Tomorrow you will be a secret. Today, you're just another regret on a long list of those that have come before you. How was I to know the action-reaction? How was I to avoid a mistake I didn't know I was making yet? We can't. We can't avoid what we don't know and we can't let the fear control our lives. Whether we have a future together or not is irrelevant to today. Tomorrow and yesterday mean nothing. Today is all that matters. The feelings and the plans and the actions and the reactions. Only of today because no one knows what version of themselves tomorrow is going to bring.

If you're questioning a decision, a part of you has already made up your mind. We don't walk in random directions, even it feels like we're going blind. There is always a purpose. Maybe not to who we are today, but who we're going to become. Nothing we are today is a reflection of the decisions we made yesterday. The past doesn't have that kind of power until you allow it to be the deciding factor of your future. The joy of being a new version of yourself every day is you can make a different choice today. Yesterday, you may have let the past control your actions. Today, you don't have to. You can take control. It doesn't take weeks, months, or even years. It takes today. So before the day is gone, use your wisdom wisely. Use your voice to speak the unspoken words. Use your senses to experience the world around you. Use your memory to store those moments. Use today to forget yesterday and prepare yourself for tomorrow.

If we truly do only remember in terms of how the future worked out, how do you want to remember today? Was it an anchor or wings?