l's blog

all aboard

i had a dream i saw you last night. we were on a train together, not speaking. just sitting next to each other, our hands in our laps. you and i on the train don’t speak. in a life before this, i would have been so fucking angry, maybe. instead this time around i am sad to my core about things. i try to shift people more tenderly these days. i actually turn out to be shit at setting boundaries, but i am getting better about being open. about honestly. i probably owe you an apology. i don’t know if i do, or if you owe me one, or if any of this actually matters at all. there has been a lot of endings this year. i have killed about a third of what i planted. i have learned how to find the gentlest places. my new resolutions are simple and incredibly strange- to allow myself space. to take more joy in waiting. to share more moments. to hold nothing sacred except for each other.

i didn’t pick up any new hobbies, like i told you i would. i haven’t really been productive in the ways i have imagined. i will be mad at myself about it, in due time- i am always historically mean to myself about terrible awful things. but right now i feel sort of at peace. i am just here for a ride, like you are, and the train is moving.

the little things

i joke that i have bad days and worse days. that nothing really matters anymore. this world is held in the hands of people who like to break things, so if nothing really matters, might as well give nothing meaning. live for the little things that don’t matter much at all in this broken world. that’s all that i’ve been telling myself lately. the little things the little things the little things.

smelling the perfume your mother used to wear when you were little on a passerby. the curly-cues your little sister puts on her letters even though they don’t teach cursive anymore. hot showers. pablo neruda’s 100 love sonnets. brightly colored hair. finding something you thought you lost. a good night’s rest. flowers growing through cracks in the sidewalks. someone telling you their favorite color is the same as yours. strangers smiling at you. taking off your shoes after a long day. the moon shining on your wall through the blinds of the window. flipping through old picture albums. freshly washed hair. holding hands with someone you love. warm clothes out of the dryer. the fast ‘l-m-n-o-p’ part of the abc’s. almond blossoms by vincent van gogh. songs you get stuck in your head. jokes that still make you laugh two years later. crinkled well worn paperbacks. earthworms on the pavement after it rains. your best friend’s crooked smile. new socks. knowing all the words to a song you hate but secretly love. the smell of your house after a long time away. cheesy broccoli. balloons that have floated to the ceiling in stores. your favorite pair of jeans. a full tank of gas. crunchy leaves. cool shaped rocks. having your back scratched. passing a test you studied really hard for. skinned knees but getting back up anyways.

the little things the little things the little things.

-l

all wrong

i think that somehow, someplace, i got it all wrong.

i’m young and i’m dumb and i know nothing to such a multitude that i don’t know what i don’t know. but, i think, that’s kind of the point.

i continuously find myself imagining a future of being settled down and knowing what the hell taxes are, of having laugh lines around my eyes as deep as my knowledge of the world and as deep as my certainty of my place in it. i keep on thinking this will happen 2-4-6-8 years down the road and that will be that. i will have a career and a family and a place to call home and i won’t be as clueless as i am now.

i don’t quite think i’m hitting the mark there.

why am i skipping to the part in my life where i’m no longer young and naive? like it’s a bad thing, to live and think and know as i do now. why do i spend every week looking forward to friday, to saturday, like today’s so bad? like it’s something i have to force myself to get through, hold on to until the time i really wish it was?

i want to hit pause for a second. just one. maybe two, if i’m really lucky. convince myself that it’s okay. it’s okay to not be all that i can every waking moment. it’s okay to forget a promise, to flunk a test, to be in young and dumb and in love. i’m still learning. the only life long job i will ever have is to continue that of education.

i keep on thinking that because i’m young and dumb and in love, that it isn’t real. that i’ll get my heart broken and do stupid things because of some pretty girl’s smile, and yeah. that might happen. i can’t say it won’t. but that is such an awful way to live, and i refuse to abide by those rules. i can’t keep waiting for something good to end, i can’t keep waiting to one day know what i don’t now, i can’t keep waiting for friday. these feelings are real and valid and i’m going to hold onto them with both hands clenched and shaking. they’re mine, and i won’t let tomorrow take them.

-l

hello, moon

bus rides that are too entirely long are the bane of my existence. i guess an hour and ten minutes isn’t much long at all, but i think that bus rides early in the morning are almost a different plane of reality altogether. you can watch the sun rise and on the way back home you can watch the sun set. my head feels weird in the way only getting up before five am lends to it, and i’m wearing more than one pair of pants. the moon is swollen high in the sky, and when was the last time i really looked at the moon. how often do i say hello, anymore? feels like stolen moments in time, here in this world somewhere, but not really. who could ask for more than that?

-l

pen to paper, perhaps

i’m not great with words. never have not been bad at them, and i’m already proving it to you. you had no reason to disbelieve me in the first place really, as trust should be given and then if broken, earned, but i felt i ought to displace any doubts should they exist right from the beginning. i’m about to leave, start a new chapter of my life or open a new book, or maybe what i’m doing truly can’t be quantified in literature analogies because this is my first time ever putting pen to paper, but i’m about to leave. i’m leaving behind everything and everyone i know, and although that makes me want to scream incomprehensible things at the sky because of the unjustness of it all, it also makes me want to shout while naked from the rooftops with joy.

it’s scary, feeling like i’m a baby thrown in the deep end, but i know i’ll float.

i’m going somewhere no one knows my name, or remembers that time i mispronounced ‘organism’ in front of a bunch of middle schoolers. (must i specify in which way said word was mispronounced?) i can tell anyone and everyone i meet i’m an only child or that i don’t have a middle name or that i was born in the deep heat of july, under cloudless blue summer skies.

i won’t though. none of these things are true, but i could. i could and no one would have any reason to think i was lying, that i wasn’t something other than what i am. i guess what i’m getting at here is that i’ll be able to be me without the idea of being known as someone who isn’t me. that probably doesn’t make much sense to you, and it doesn’t really to me either, but i want to know myself in this new place and time as i know myself here, in this place and time.

i think often about having a true core, something that is undoubtedly me in any universe or lifetime. would i know myself? no matter the circumstances of that life, would my beliefs and ideals still be the same? would i still love with the all consuming ferocity that i do now? would i still know pi out to the sixtieth decimal, because at one time that felt like the only steady thing i could ever count on, numbers and my inablilty to sleep? i don’t know. i’m terrified and excited and hoping that soon i’ll find out.

i’m going to try out the new craze sweeping the nation, i’m going to be honest with myself and everyone else for this new chapter, this new book, this new page, this new time and place. perhaps not brutally, because baby steps are still steps, but i’m going to put one foot in front of the other no matter what, and soon i’ll be walking out the door.

i hope, if you don’t mind, that you’ll join me.

-l