I’m mad that you’re right.
I’m mad that I’m wrong.
I’m mad that I’m sad.
I’m mad that you ruined my favorite song.
I’m mad that it’s all taking so long.
I’m mad that I zigged when I should’ve zagged.
I’m mad that I bobbed when I should’ve weaved.
I’m mad that I still believe.
I’m mad at her,
and at him,
and the moles all over my skin.
I’m mad at mother nature,
and father time.
I’m mad that none of it is mine.
–S.
Around the bend.
On the horizon.
Over the hill.
After that turn.
Change.
Growth.
Birth.
–S.
Writing about 2018 and going into 2019.
There are some years that break your heart.
Then there are years that break your heart open.
This year broke my heart open.
Sometimes you love someone who doesn’t love you back. Sometimes you never receive the apology you think you deserve. Sometimes you wake up and life chews you up and spits you out before you even get to start your breakfast taco.
Sometimes a person you trusted, disappoints you or burns the bridge of trust. Sometimes you don’t get picked. Sometimes the thank you never comes. Sometimes you get overlooked. Sometimes pain you thought you got over or you buried bubbles to the surface. These things you buried, they took root and grew – into things you maybe weren’t exactly ready for. And you face them.
You don’t get to know.
You don’t get to know the whys or the whens. So, you make your way through the only way you know how, graceful some-days and like a train-wreck on the other days. You live your way through it. You grow your way through it.
So, I stand away.
Better than I was before, I think.
Despite all of the things I thought unimaginable and hard to get through.
I don’t know the whos or the whats or the hows or whens or whys of 2019. But it’s coming anyway. We’re never really ready for it, are we? As much as we plan and wish and hope and dream and fantasize – life never turns out how you think it will.
–S.
I’d hated their width and length most of my life. They were anything, but feminine in my eyes. I never got to be obsessed with high-heels or sandals, the way some woman are – because they were so difficult to find.
Now I realize how far they’ve carried me.
How they never failed me.
No matter the circumstance.
–S
I’m not wearing pants. I have lacy panties on sporting holes on both sides because I’m anything but careful. Always getting dressed in a rush or running late.
My hair is greasy and lays in a fallen bun on the side of my head, not even the top, and my face needs to be washed.
I’m wearing a crop top yellow Wu-Tang shirt that is flecked with oil from the pesto pasta I ate earlier and no bra.
I am anything but flawless.
Which is why I have been avoiding writing a list of things I love about myself all week. I just figured that I wouldn’t have much to say, but I’m doing it as a practice of self-love.
I assume I’ll have ten nice things to say. I can manage ten.
I imagine myself opening the Word document and staring at the flashing cursor as I struggle to think of likeable qualities, I can’t even touch any loveable ones. I imagine feeling embarrassed as ten and twenty and thirty minutes pass and I’ll blank by five likeable qualities.
But I surprise myself. The loveable qualities pour out of me, until I’m up to fifty. I keep thinking, okay, that’s probably it. But then there’s another, and another, and I don’t even touch the likeable ones.
Because I’m focused on the loveable.
Focused on the love.
Focused on the self.
Focused on me.
–S.
An excerpt from a letter that I wrote years ago to my then best-friend who went into the Air Force.
First and foremost, I am a writer. I think that my best writing comes from the darkest of places, and sometimes I have dry periods where I am not motivated to write any words. It has taken me a long while to share anything because rarely do people care about one another on that deep of a level.
Sometimes you don’t even want to heart your own voice. Not because I have been depressed or anything. I’m okay. I’m good. You just get tired of it – as with all things. The day is July 8th and the time is 1:31 am. Like the summer nights that have come before this one – I can never go to sleep before three or four in the morning.
My apologies. I feel that we left things in such an awkward place that sometimes I think – will we ever come back from that? I know that you have bigger things going on in your life and it doesn’t really compare to what friendships are going to survive or not. That’s how we are, I know. You’re with me or you’re not. But I also know that sometimes we have to swallow our pride, a million times over, and just speak.
So, here I am.
I’d like to tell you about myself. If you ever start feeling like you’re in a prison – I hope these words help you find a way out in your mind. I hope you find it in your heart to smile while reading my words and maybe even laugh.
Lord knows we need all the laughter we can get,
but I’ll probably be doing a lot of crying.
–S.
That summer, he shaved his beard off.
She cut her hair.
Running his hand through her short hair, he said ”I loved your long hair, why did you cut it?”
She laughed and said, ”I tried to cut you out of it,” with sad eyes.
And he stared at her – like he’d tried to cut her out of his beard, too.
–S.
The Messy Middle 🖤 