Inhibition Lags

All that I own in boxes and bags,
"Ship to: Anywhere" on all of the tags.
Abandoned and reset, my mind's come undone.
I know where, I know how, I know when to run.

I'm too scared to be here.
Undeserving and lost and holding on at all costs. Maybe I'd do anything for you. Maybe I'd do anything for you. Maybe I'd do anything for you... Would you do it for me?

Complexities & Gratitude

123, 123, check, check, 123, check.

In life, you are faced with options. Up or down, left or right, this or that, here or there. All sorts of options that, in the grand scheme, add up to big decisions that are lifechanging when they all fit together, and most of the time you can't even recognize them until they've passed. We're not fortune tellers, but hindsight is 20/20. You always know what you shouldn't have done. You never know what you should do next. It's all very difficult and complex. You could die tomorrow. You could live a hundred years. No one ever, ever knows.

There's a way to think about this that makes it not so overwhelming, I'm sure, but I don't know what it is. Every way I've thought of this makes it more complicated than the last. How will you ever know what to do? You just have to hold your breath, cross your fingers, and dive in, don't you? Well? Don't you?

This is me about to dive in. This is me really, really trying hard to dive the fuck in. And please, please don't let this be harder than I can afford for it to be.

Peace, love, life.

///

This disconnect, this detachment. This anger and this hurt. I've found a hole inside the mask by digging in the dirt. I've given it new meaning and I've set it way up high, so that when you try to catch me I can run instead of cry. I ran so fucking far last night and got so far away. Dropped into another world, I wish that I could stay. You held my hand and looked at me and for a second I. Was pretty sure that everything would be just fucking fine.

You know that meant the world, right? Your skin on mine for two seconds in a way that's less intimate than almost anything you've ever done? I don't know why I pulled away. Well, I do. I'm scared to take more than what's offered. I was scared of you pulling away first. I was scared to look back when you looked in my eyes. I was fucking terrified. And I had the best night of my life with the lights and the bruises on my legs and knees - I wouldn't trade a goddamn thing for that. Not one goddamn thing, do you know that? Do you know that I love you a hundred thousand? Do you know that you're the reason I saw my best friend again? And now I want to go back for her? Do you know that? Do you know that I cried for a little while just listening to you? Do you know that thousands of people feel this same way? Do I know that? Of course I do. And here comes the disconnect.

Houston, we have a problem.

This is Aly signing off happier than I've been... Well, fuck. Ever. Happier than I've ever been. And this is what really matters. This. THIS IS WHAT MATTERS. So, thank you for that. Thank you so much.

Life and Death

Everyone, everywhere, is taking their time but going nowhere.

I don't know where I'll be in 50 years or 20 years. I don't know where I'll be in a month or three months. There are only a few things that I really want to keep. The rest are fluid, coming and going, never sinking their roots in and getting attached. I don't sink my roots in. I've learned not to. I've learned that no matter what you have, and no matter where you are, and no matter who you are, you can lose it. Everything around us is reminding us of that, every day. Every breath we take reminds us that one day our lungs will be still, and they will turn grey and they will deflate and they will fall apart and turn into dust. Steve Jobs is dead. Isn't that crazy? There are homeless people that live longer than he did, homeless people who beg for money to buy whiskey for breakfast every day and sleep on concrete and here, in America, a person with billions of dollars can't make it to 60. How long will I make it? Where will I be when I'm dying?

I hope it's something hard and fast. I hope it hits and hurts and then it's gone and I hope I know it's my time. I hope I'm not begging my mind to keep holding on while my body gives up. I think, though, that's how people feel. I think people generally know, and know it's different, and know they have to give up. You don't just live and want to live and REALLY try to live, and die anyway. Sometimes it takes years for a person's mind to go. I want to write a will. Maybe I will.

If I'm lost at sea...

We're headed to nowhere, but nowhere is somewhere to me.

I Almost Told You To Make A Wish

I notice a lot of the posts I make here are posted while I'm crying. I wonder why that is. I guess hearing myself talk calms me down.

I won't let you close enough to hurt me,
I can't ask you you to just desert me.

There's a feeling inbetween anticipation and hurt, sharp pain and intrusive deconstruction, that takes place in my mind and my chest, aching and pulling at all of my nerve endings with long claws. I can't put my finger on any of this. It's knowing that no one wants anything to do with me and being able to do nothing about it. I exist. I can't help that, because I'm scared to. And because I exist as a human being, I posess the desire to connect and love and be loved, and I'm so sorry that it's such a goddamn inconvenience to you. If I could change this, I would. If I could be content alone with my arms around myself and my face against my pillow, I would forever. I'd let you be.

But part of me is better with you. Cut out, cleaned, and put back in - and that part of me won't let this go. It's stupid. It's fucking stupid. How do you get over knowing that you haven't made a meaningful connection in years? There are no easy ways out. There are no easy ways over you. I just need to suck it up and quit turning tables.

It's so frustrating, okay? It's me beating my fists on a wall, knowing you're on the other side and can't hear. It's digging my nails in until it hurts and breaks off at the cuticles without leaving a scratch. Maybe you'll come back. Maybe you'll wait for me to. But I won't this time, and I promise. This was your fault, and you can't change that or fix it if you don't come back. And if you let your pride get in the way of this, I promise you're not worth it. And I'll live with that.

okay good night.

Something To Live For

How is it that I feel so passionately? This introspection, this fear - it's putting me in a place where the fraility of my mind and body becomes more apparent every day, and with each small change I make, I realize how easy it can be to lose oneself. Take your pulse. Check your rearview mirror. Have you ever been lost in your own mind and clawing to get out into some other place? I'm stuck physically, emotionally, financially. In all the ways that a person can be STUCK, I am. I'm staying up all night and waking up too early. I'm selling all my things and trying to get away from the sad, lonely place that I'm in. I'm begging for an out. I give other people outs, but how can I give myself one? I'm thinking back on who I was and listening to who I am and feeling all the ways that I'm not good enough. Help? I want to scream it at the top of my lungs. I want to tear it from my chest. I want to shove it in your face. HELP. For the love of god, fucking help me. Please. I don't know what I'm doing, in all honesty, and it's so likely that I never will. I'm clawing at reason. Please don't hold this against me when I'm gone. I need this from you. Keep me safe.

There has never been a time I thought that it would be like all the others. Every person that I write for and try to hold onto, I think I really will somehow manage to hold onto. I'll dig my nails and teeth in and wrap my arms and legs up tight and you'll never get away. But, somehow, there never is the right one. Somehow. Do you hear what I'm saying when I'm shouting at you, or are you like everyone else? I think you're something special. But, then again, I always do. And even if you were? You're too far out to grab.

Let's Play A Game With Happy And Sad Music

There's nowhere to start, and everything to say. I've heard people describe drugs in ways that make me nervous, make me envious, but how is it that I made it to 20 without letting myself go to that place? I don't remember everything I said. I don't remember most of what I did. I was pretty far gone. But I kept myself on earth, and it was all for him and the way when he said something, it was exactly what I was thinking. Now I'm having withdrawals, from the high and from him. All weekend, we'd stay on the same page, laugh at the same jokes, and it was comforting and crazy. I wanted to hold his hand and kiss every one of his fingertips. God, I miss being a teenager. I miss that high from feeling lust and like come together and hit you in the face. I completely reset my body and didn't eat for almost five days. I lost nine pounds. I found myself on Mars and laughed and laughed because I didn't want to come down. But the come down was so great, too. Now I've been sleeping and sleeping and missing him like I can't even describe. It's crazy, like he said. We're soul twins, maybe. I think we could be very best friends in another universe. But in another universe, I'd never be good enough. Never. I didn't want to eat, I didn't want to sleep. I felt amazing and my feet wouldn't touch the ground. And to think that he was okay with just being there with me and nothing else, that makes me happy. And to think that he thought my jokes were funny and called me pretty. That makes me happy, too. He liked my music and I liked his music and I'm pretty sure I lost and found myself this weekend. I'm pretty sure. It's all because of him. I wish I could focus on other things, on that pretty girl who makes me so defensive and angry, or on the people at work who asked me all morning if I was okay and said I didn't seem like myself, or on the fact that I haven't spoken to my mother in almost a week. I'd love to be able to focus on those things. But, really, I couldn't if I tried. I mean it when I say I lost myself. And now I can't eat. I can't, I don't want to, I just want it to be the weekend again so I don't have to think about not eating. I've been sleeping a lot to make up for it, but that's okay because no one's texting me, and no one's IMing me, and I'm not worried. Other people are worried about me, and that in itself is pretty funny. I'm not. I'm not worried at all. I know I'll be okay, and I know I'll land back on Mars in no time at all. Jesus, I love my life. And I love how easy it is to escape it. Woah-oh-woooah-oh, woah-oh~.

Feel.

From the time you said it back
til the day my lungs turn black,
by the fire in my veins,
it'll never be the same.

There is nothing I don't want to know, phasing open windows and breathing in the truth. I take the world at face value and place my highest bet. You're too real, I'd say, before I'd tumble down onto the ground, and you're the place I've lost inside an empty bubble. Can you feel it when I talk? Can you close your eyes and pretend? And we could pretend. And I could dream. And I could taste. And I could touch. And I can feel the weight of you under my fingertips pressed down into the mattress like a lost sacred resting place, you fight to get in. There's a slow, empty throbbing that pushes nothing and takes everything with it. Draining. Dropping. Dazed. Distant. I've got miles and miles of paper wound over hills and treetops filled with the words I keep hushed under my breath when I dare to speak them, and every last letter is just for you. I've made a thousand wrong turns in this maze of life and I'm waiting to cut a corner and see more than a wall or a sign of warning. After this, let's fall back for a while. Let's extract every nerve ending and get all the sighs and the moans just right. It would come off lyrical, wouldn't it? There will never be a universe in which I am the best or the prettiest or the smartest or the only. There will never be a universe where I can pull myself away for more than a catch of breath. I'm not like the rest, I'm thorns and daggers and claws and teeth and all completely harmless somehow. You knew. You knew the danger wasn't for you, but for all the monsters you're scared of. You're learning. That you can be scared of monsters all you want because I'm different and hasn't anyone ever kept you safe before? You have lines and creases and curves and marks and stars I feel I can't ever reach. Tighter grip, dig your nails in. Hey, you. You. You. There was broken glass on the sidewalk and loud noises from the turntables near the entry way and I stepped back and covered my ears and sighed so slow I could hear the shake in my chest before I even let it out. I grip too hard sometimes, leaving damage in the wake of my fingertips and little lines and elipses of 'I wish you hadn't done that', as is customary for someone like me. But we have these things, and we're making more. Like artists in a blank room filling up the canvas from the floor to the ceiling, covered in paint and laughing and joking and sitting and waiting for inspiration to strike again inbetween, there haven't been any more before you where the wind feels okay a thousand stories up and I just don't want to jump. I don't want to jump. I liked the way it felt when I smeared the green bottle and tossed it back and felt it rip me apart and spat blood from my stomach. Then the panic set in and I saw red and thought 'Her. Okay, please don't let me never talk to her again.' and my stomach turned and blood covered the carpet. And that could've killed me, and it should've, and I'm floating. Six underground after dark in the last of the funeral songs. Hey, you? Could you be that way some more? It's pouring rain onto the houses and the streets and the sidewalks are empty and flooded so there's something to talk about in the morning. It hurts for the sake of hurting sometimes, unsuitably stupidly so, but there's nothing for it but to ride the storm out. And we could dream. And we could taste. And we could touch. And I could feel the emptiness of it pressed down into the mattress like a lost scared child. Hey, you? Could you be a little closer sometime? You're too far away for me to grab you like I want, fingertips and nails and arms with my face pressed up against your collarbone like the dream I never told you about. Hey, you? Could you be a little closer sometime?

Dystopia.

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit,
its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit,
and it's full of people who are full of shit,
and the vermin of the world inhabit it.

I walk through these streets filled with grime and dust and feel the layers on the soles of my feet. The kind of dirty layers that are so thick it dulls the feel of the cement under your feet as you drag along. I can tell my heels are black without ever looking. Somewhere, children are sleeping on the couch in front of the t.v. Somewhere, caged dogs are snarling, angry, waiting for the next chance to bite a chunk of flesh through to the bone. Glass shatters in an alleyway nearby and a group of strangers laughs to some nonexistant joke. Can you taste the arbitrary? Oh, contrary. This means everything. And the sweat is pooling on your brow before we meet, but I wouldn't know. The holes in the knees of your jeans show where you've been. Please fasten your seatbelts and put your trays in their locked and upright positions. Prepare for a bit of turbulance. That goddamn dog on the other side of the fence is barking and snarling with its teeth. There is no refuge. We were in a place once where soot danced down from the skies and my biggest fear was losing hold of your hand when we ran. And we ran.

Pristine condition marble-laced floors, can't you smell the paint? Fresh and new. Deep and blue. Like me and you. She is fading so far from me. Sitting in my bathroom, dying her hair that black, black color that it was until that last day, and when I told her that the shower wasn't working, she said, let's take a bath. Nudge. Me and you? Smile. It'll be fun. And I ran my fingers through her hair to get all the black out, and it stained for weeks, under my nails and in my cuticles, the way blackness can linger in the cracks of your soul. But this hurt wasn't risidual, no sireee. Because we kissed and I let her find the shampoo on her own while those bouncy red curls and crooked buck teeth watched us from behind the video camera, with the water so black it looked like tar and her knees far enough apart to touch the sides. And I watched that video back a hundred times before I finally deleted it. I watched the part where she whispered to me so that the camera couldn't hear, her lips turned up and slow-moving. What did she say, anyway? What did she say?

Dragging myself up out of this shallow grave and shaking the dirt out of my hair, I'm not a fucking phoenix from the ashes, but an old patchwork quilt, sewn and torn and stitched and mended to keep you warm. You don't always have to have new things, do you? This could all be just for you. Every breath you breathe. Can you feel the chills and the knots in your stomach? Haven't you EVER tried and failed? Believe. Pockets full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Pretty Pretty Please 2.

This is the one I wrote last night that I wanted to show you but I didn't. Have to before I get too scared.

A lovestruck romeo sings the streets a serenade,
laying everybody low with a lovesong that he made.

Sometimes I get ideas in my head that make my eyes blur up and my chest tighten and I start to feel like maybe I'm not one of the lucky ones. Can I just take a second to tell you that it's not about how things go so fast in my head that I can't even grasp it sometimes? Because they don't usually. This is just with you. I know I've never told you that, and I know you think that this is just how I am, but I'm just scared to tell you that I'm as scared about it as you are. And I'm typing this just crying and sniffling and crying and thinking and playing things through in my head. I can't put all these feelings into words and it's so frustrating. So, I'm trying. I can't be patient in all the ways most people can, and maybe it's because I've been through this in and out so many times that I know what to expect, or at least I feel like I should. The catch of breath before the first kiss and the butterflies from the first 'I like you' aren't foreign to me. And that's another thing I haven't told you, that I'm not really proud of that. That I don't want these things anymore if they won't last. And maybe you should try to trust me for that? I don't trust myself sometimes, but I'm trying, and if you're trying, it's okay. Life is mostly about timing. I just watched this movie, one of my favorite movies, actually, and there's this guy who is so in love with this girl... He writes her a letter, telling her how his heart stops when he sees her and how he thinks she's more than what people see in her... All those things that she needed to hear, and he's just too scared to give the letter to her. It gets to her on accident, and she reads it, and she doesn't know what he looks like. So she's going to find him and all these other guys are coming up to her, telling her all these things about wanting to hook up and how hot she is, and she gets fed up, then he finds her. And he tells her, but she's upset from all those other guys and yells at him. It's not until later, after he's gone, she realizes it was him and... in the end, he's about to leave and they walk away from each other, but he stops himself and goes after her. And I don't know how to describe this, just that I haven't cried this hard in a long time. But I guess, if that letter somehow never got to her, or if those other guys never hit on her and made her mad, or if he didn't stop and run after her in the end and instead just kept going... All these small split seconds change our lives, like you changed me somehow? So, I guess what I'm saying is that life is a lot about timing, and a lot about coincidence, that if certain things happen at certain times in your life, they can mean every little thing, and at other times wouldn't have meant anything. And both people have to be in the right timing at the same time, and how you and I even started talking, when other people in that community, Spencer-shaped for example, has had lines with me for over a year and doesn't even know my name. So this is just us, it's not everything else. It's nothing else. I'm so scared to say all these things to you because I don't know how you'll react and you still intimidate me even if you say you shouldn't. That's another thing that is only you. I'm so brave. So, so brave. And lately, since I moved, I've been so static and scared of risks and scared of life and scared of friends. I guess you never know what that's like until you've done it. Like when you came to the states and all, except if she had just gone away and you had no way of getting home. You'd be scared, right? And alone. And... that's how I am. I'm just waiting for this to feel like home, I guess. So I'm rambling and trying to find the way to say all these things. These things. It's okay not to trust me. It's okay to be slow. It's okay it's okay it's okay. I make you feel like it's not sometimes and I'm so sorry. I guess just because I can't wait to get past the point where things are scary. And for you to get sober and then to see how you are then, I can't wait for that, either. And all the time we talk about seeing each other, how it would be and how I would make you french toast and I don't know for sure if that will ever happen. I know I want it to. I know I've never wished for a teleporter this much before. But I can also tell you that I am a lot easier in person, you know? When there's not just text and I'm frustrated and you can see. I think you probably know that from Skyping with me, that I don't get mad when I'm talking that way. I calm myself down. It's when I'm alone and there's just text and I'm not focusing the way I should be and there are other things on my mind. And, anyway, I watched Sweeny Todd and I liked the part at the end where, after he'd killed the beggar woman, he goes down and picks her up when he knows it was his wife, and he sings to her, and thinks of all those things. I just... I guess I'm really stuck on love tonight. And how it's such a big, big thing, and everyone in it is just so small.

~~
I made a wrong turn once or twice,
dug my way out, blood and fire.
Bad decisions, that's alright.
Welcome to my silly life.
Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood,
Miss 'no way, it's all good',
didn't slow me down.
Mistaken, always second guessing,
underestimated,
look, I'm still around.

Pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel
like you're less than fucking perfect.
~~

All I do is miss you. All I do is think about how gorgeous you are. And how I feel like we could talk always. The way you blow kisses and the way you said my name. You're so good at writing and drawing and all these other things I feel like I'm only semi-good at. Not the way you are. I don't want to... I don't ever want to say that thing that she said, that you're 'perfect'. I don't ever want to say a lot of things she said, I guess, but that 'perfect' thing, you know, I know you're not. But I feel like maybe you are the closest thing I've ever seen to it. I feel bad for all the times I made you upset. For not listening and for yelling for you to go away. You deserve better than that, right, and I'm good enough not to be that low if I try. Maybe things will change and maybe I'll fuck it up and maybe we'll fall out, or maybe this will keep working up into something spectacular, the kind of thing people will write stories and scripts about. I'm so guarded. I told you how no one's ever touched my sides like that. Not because they don't want to, but because I don't let them and I guess you say you can't understand sleeping with people you aren't in love with, but I'm just saving a lot of different things. Not that one special thing. But a million other special things. No one has ever slept over and had breakfast with me. I have never cooked for someone. No one has ever put their hands on my sides and held me. No one's ever played with my hair with their hands. No one has ever kissed all my fingertips. No one, ever, all these things, hundreds and hundreds of things. No one has ever kissed the back of my neck or put their arms around my shoulders. And I guess I'm just in this weird mood and I want to tell you before I fade out of it, okay? All these things I normally couldn't. That all the time, I think about you. I wake up thinking about you. Lately I wake up and check my phone to see if you're around and go back to sleep if you're not. It's that bad, huh? You're a lot more guarded than me so you don't randomly stick your foot up on the webcam or tug at your shirt or things like that but I wonder all the time, how your hips look, how they feel, how your skin feels. All the time and I think about that shy smile you do when you're feeling nervous or shy and I want to see it always. And I want this to be everything, okay? And I want to stop crying right now because I'm scared you'll read this and I'll be saying everything too fast. I don't want to ever have to have what-ifs about you. I don't ever want to regret. I don't ever want to not know what your hands feel like and what your lips feel like, even in my dreams. I want to tell everyone else no. And I don't want you to worry about that, no matter what, because I don't think anything could make me feel like I need something else. If it takes ten years before you trust me or before we get to that special kind of thing, then okay. I can wait it out. And maybe one day you can be sure and say the L word back? I can wait that out too. But mostly I can do anything as long as I know at the end you won't leave.

Pretty Pretty Please.

Dear Aly,
Every time you think you've got a grasp on something, even yourself, it slips out and turns around and hurts you and tugs at you and gives you that sinking feeling. This isn't any different. You can watch all the love movies in the world and you'll never be that girl. You'll never be one of the lucky ones. That you think she cares like that is the funniest part. Give up, please, before there aren't enough pieces left to fix you.
~ Logic