I think you owe me.
You never took the time to know me.
Never figured out just how to touch.
Always reminded me I was just too much.
I think you owe me.
Couldn’t ever make me blush.
Always in a rush.
I found my voice to tell you,
but you said baby, hush.
–S.
I’m a book you put back on the shelf.
Didn’t catch your interest, not worth a second glance.
You’re leaving the store in a hurry, not even worth a chance.
I’m waiting for the next patron.
Yearning to change from single to taken.
I’ll see you in my imagination.
–S.
I could cross the universe a million times in hopes of a love greater than yours and never find it.
Unconditional love is what you provide and I want to spend the rest of my life paying you back for that.
I owe you all of the seeds yet to be planted, every seed currently taking root in the earth and all of the plants and flowers blooming.
–s.
The most interesting thing about me is that I lost you.
The second most interesting thing about me is that I’m so blue.
–S.
Crush,
I’m a lush when it comes to you.
You make my blood rush, it’s true.
Crush,
I wonder if you notice me too.
–S.
2013.
I think even when you turn 36, or 82, or 117, I would still call you baby.
You were born the day before I started eighth grade.
I was worried about which of my best-friends were going to what high school, my whole life ruined and in shambles. How was I ever going to pick where to go?
Mom already told me that she wouldn’t fill out the transfer papers. Do you think I could have forged them?
And then there was you. Little, but big at the same time.
With a head full of brown hair. You peed on the nurse. That’s when I knew you were going to be trouble. You were so…so baby. And I was scared to hold you. What if I hurt you? Or if I didn’t hold you correctly? Or you started crying?
In time, you became my little, but big at the same time best friend.
I think the most important thing that I have learned from your nine years on this earth is just to breath. Life isn’t about marking up a calendar to next year and back of things that need to be done. Life isn’t about constantly making lists. Life is just about living.
Sometimes you take fifteen minutes to say something that could have been said in one sentence, and you remind me of our mother.
Sometimes you get frustrated really easily and shut down, and you remind me of our father.
Sometimes you nod your head to a song you don’t know the lyrics to and you close your eyes, and you remind me of myself.
I know that there will be a day when mom and dad won’t be on earth with us and it’ll just be the two of us. Life won’t always be fort building, ramen making at midnight with melted slices of cheese, waking up to Nerf guns, cannon balls in the pool, ice cold cokes on a summer day, Halo 4 campaigns before going to sleep, Teen Titans at 3 am, or scavenging the refrigerator for two items that are possibly edible together.
People move away. They have their own families. They stop talking. They start again. They love. They get hurt. They love again. They never stop loving. These are also parts of living.
These are things we don’t write on our list or our five-year plan.
I remember when we had to put Whoopie to sleep, I think that was your first real loss.
You lost your best friend. The dog that you’d known since birth. You were eight. For a long time we were worried because you were really sad, and you stopped telling jokes and laughing as often as you used to. Your spirit wasn’t as bright as it had always been.
And then we brought Ringo home a couple months ago, and you didn’t want to tell mom and dad, but you whispered in my ear that it made you sad although you really liked Ringo – he just wasn’t Whoopie.
My heart broke baby.
I want you to know that if I could somehow ensure that a part of you stays innocent forever, I would. That a part of you still cries when Sarah McLaughlin comes on and they show the commercial with the animals. If I could somehow make sure that your heart is always big and always full of love and that you never get tarnished, I would do that for you. Even if it meant sacrificing any amount of happiness of my own. I want you to never be afraid to be yourself. Even if kids laugh. I want you to wear clothes that don’t match, if you want to. I want you to do the robot to a song that the robot ‘shouldn’t’ be done to. I want you to mouth lyrics you don’t even know. I want you to still hug mom and dad and tell them that they are your best friends. I want you to keep laughing. Keep dancing. Keep dreaming. Keep loving. Keep smiling. Keep hoping. Keep wishing. Keep being goofy. Keep telling stories. Keep telling corny jokes. Keep living. It has been an honor to help raise you, to love you, and to take care of you.
I hope you always remember a time when we laughed and played together, and the world seemed a little simpler.
–S.
Terrifying.
That’s the word that comes to mind when I think of telling someone my deepest insecurities. You’re basically giving someone the power to turn your heart into ground hamburger meat. Although terrifying, you feel such freedom having spoken those insecurities out loud – as if you have given them over to someone else to care of for a while.
You’re somehow lighter.
So, I tell you.
I tell you and I close my eyes really tight and no explosions go off around me. The world doesn’t collapse in on itself. Volcanoes don’t erupt. Streets don’t cave into sink holes.
Everything is still okay. You look at me the way you always have. Nothing seems to have changed.
I’ve lightened my load – unzipped the backpack on my back entitled ‘childhood traumas, bullshit I deem necessary to carry, and emotional baggage’ taken out a few items and handed them over to you.
Nothing seems to have changed, but really – everything has changed.
How could it not have changed?
Not only do you have the power to break my heart, but you have the power to break me.
But I trusted you with that power, A.
I really thought you would never use it. Never wield it against me.
But you do.
And if I could sum up in four words how it made me feel – I would say,
it
blew
me
away.
Into another universe. Completely obliterated me –
blew
me
the
fuck
away.
But if you wanted to know a more detailed explanation of how it devastated me –
I would tell you to imagine a glass castle.
A castle where everything is entirely made of glass.
Mirrors line the glass walls in every glass room.
The day you wielded my deepest insecurities against me like a sword,
all the glass and all the mirrors shattered at the same time.
I imagine you snapping your fingers once and the castle is in shards at my bloody feet.
–
It took me a long time to find the words to say how you hurt me, how you devastated me.
To this day, I still don’t understand why you picked up that sword.
Do you know that it is impossible to rebuild a glass castle from nothing but piles of glass shards?
You have no choice, but to build yourself back up, but stronger.
–
I don’t wish you great pain like the pain you have shown me. I simply wish you whatever the Universe feels you deserve in this life. Whether that is great pain or great joy – is none of my business.
–
You should at the very least prepare yourself for emotional sword-wielding monsters.
Because the Universe’s cousin – Karma, is a motherfucker.
–S.
The Messy Middle 🖤 