the last night

so i sit on a bare mattress cos my stupid ass picked the latest hour to attempt doing all of the goddamn laundry.
im in whatever smelly clothes i remembered to not pack, surrounded by boxes and bits of dry wall from where my roommate and i tried to finagle my horribly put together bed frame down the narrow, low ceilinged stairway.
i poked my head in bubs' room.  i remember being 6 months pregnant and just moving in.  i remember seeing hope and potential in these walls.  i remember feeling bright and optimistic about my new future.

alas, as life usually turns out, it was quite the opposite of what id hoped.
instead of family there was "FUCK YOU."  instead of beauty there was "BITCH."

sitting in this empty room reminds me that this was no place to call home.
i never liked being here.
i never decorated.
i never took care of the yard cos there were so many fucking plants and i kill everything without meaning to.
i never FULLY unpacked and settled in.
i never felt like i belonged.

so, after 3 break-ins, an ex moving out and a roommate moving in.... it's time to go.
it's time to not have an overwhelming garden and 900 trees and bushes on my property.
it's time to not be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of a property while trying to work, go to school, keep up with homework, and single parent a 3 year old.
it's time to start over.

normally, i am the person that needs to know everything.
i get anxious if i dont know where things are going.
i just like preparing myself for best and worst case scenario at the same time.
well....
i used to.

lately a friend has taught me to go with the breeze and although i have my flip out moments of overwhelming stress, i can honestly say.... i dont know, and i dont care.

i feel like i have a chance to start over, to be safe, for new things to happen and new people to come into contact with.
i feel like i can decorate and have a place to call home.
i can have a record player and no tv.
i can paint whatever colors i want.
i can be loud.
i can have privacy.
i can play music next to a big open window or on the deck in my backyard or next to the firepit in my backyard.
i have someone to call when things break and i dont have to pay for it.
i have a place to call home and i like it.

so now, surrounded by boxes, remnants of tape, scattered dust bunnies and bobby pins.... i write this last blog entry from the place i lived for 3 years.  the place where bubs took her first steps, said her first words, and taught me about love and life and REALLY living.  the place where i gained the courage to say "I NEED TO TAKE CARE OF ME" and faced the cold reality of being on my own as a working parent in school.  the place where i learned how to fix plumbing issues, change an air filter, and even where i bludgeoned a mouse to death with a bottle of dishwasher soap.  the place where i mowed my first lawn and trimmed my first tree.  the place where i had to grow up and learn that im capable.

so good bye old house and hello possibilities.
i dont know if anyone will come visit my new house.
i dont know if i will unpack by july.
i just know i feel a little bit more home there than i do here and that's a good enough sign and start for me.

the overwhelming alone

maybe it's psychosis or narcisism.  maybe im on a world of sleep medication and can't think straight.  maybe it's cos my life is so consumed with making sure im always doing things for others i dont really understand how comforting alone can  really be. 

i have this horribly overwhelming feeling of being alone.
no one texts or calls.
no one tweets or facebook's me asking me whats up or how i am or if i want to hang out. 
im expected to invite myself along but then i just feel like a bother and not a friend.
i can honestly say i never really had any actual friends.
it's sad but at this point in my adult life, i am starting to realize that my life has been an endless pool of sad stories. 
but who wants to read sad things.... wait... this is MY blog.... welp, enjoy this sad story again if you feel like it's ok to read any further:

so friends.
it's a foreign concept to me.
it's like the same thing with dating a guy for me... im ok for a few months and then i do something i suppose that turns people off and away.
right now i sit surrounded by boxed up memories of a very emotional 3 years. 
everyone else i know is out and about and im sitting with boxes.
i feel like the world races on around me and happy memories are formed every instant that im not around.
and it's this overwhelming feeling of being alone.
some people are good with alone.
im not.
it makes my heart actually feel a pang of ache.

again, i think it's cos im always around people but doing things FOR them, that i never get that ability to genuinely enjoy any of my interactions.  i crave that feeling more than anything.
and then i find people that i respect and appreciate knowing and, like with my dating life, say or do something not right and off they go.  and it's overwhelming to feel so alone.
sometimes you just want someone to call you because a smell in a bar reminded them of wet chipotle fart and they thought youd think its funny.

i dont know i cant say that i know what that kind of love feels like to get.  and if people ARE showing that to me then i really wish i could know and understand it.  it sounds amazing.

so yeah... boxes.
i feel that is all i do.  pack up and move.  switch social groups as quickly as i skip jobs or apartments or hobbies.  i just ... all but one time, i have never gotten that feeling of belonging or knowing that im doing something im supposed to do.  i want to have that.  i want to find where i fit but endlessly i come to the conclusion that i am gonzo in muppets from space.  i mean yeah at the end he finds his kind which is what i hope for, but there's this deep void just wanting to know where you belong and who you are. 

and maybe this is normal and it never goes away- that questioning ache inside of the depths of your inner self... at your wit's end, hair between your fingers, violently attempting to pull the folicles from your scalp, doubled over on the floor.  it hurts so much tho.  it hurts to miss a place you don't know and people you've never met.  it hurts when you feel like maybe you found it but in reality, it was all in your head and you're not what you thought you were.... the rug pulled out from under your feet and down you go through the floorboards to a concrete demise yards below.

so yes, this is what alone feels like... the overwhelming alone that is slowly taking me over.

im sorry for the scary things inside of my brain but this is me ... for now.

i really wish it would all just dissipate into the vast blackness of the night sky.
the thoughts are so so loud again.
if i wrote them all down you would probably find me insane and check me into a hospital.
the fact that im aware how awful they are and how wrong is ok for a little bit, but...
im a soldier with a gaping hole in my armour and no weapon for attack.
im standing at the battleline with a napkin and wearing a dress.
ill prepared for what is going on.
all i have are these words.
these half-assed attempts at making sense of what i want to be rid of.

i hate that i cant just walk into a room and feel like i can have happy times or at least blend into some piece of furniture around me.
no.
instead i hear voices saying how much they hate me, eyes that burn holes right through me with stares so murderous, smiles masking canibalistic urges to tear me apart...

i wish i didnt see the people around me as vicious, carnivorous beasts out for my blood.
people care and give a shit about my well being and shit, even about my bubs and i cant see that.
i see walls that ive built because trusting people can care about me is scary.
what's scarier still is that i dont even understand why a person would even give a shit about me or bubs anyway...

and therein lies the heart of it all.
maybe i see monsters because i live in that realm.
i live in the realm of dark and scary and surfacing to the light of day where people smile and laugh and are careless is so foreign to me.
but that is where i want to be.
away from it all.
away from all of this.

simply... it's beautiful

so i have a fascination with space.
not to the point where i know galaxies and stars and real scientific shit.
it's a fascination that is simply an intense admiration.
i look up at the infinite expansion of dark, beautifully and intricately decorated with stars and...
i feel so small.  but small in an amazing way.  i feel awake yet finite.
it's a small reminder that ... well, im small.
so often i take the smallest hiccup in life and turn it into some earthshattering, soulcrushing weight...
when it's really the size of a pebble... and just.... get lost.

but it's that bad kind of lost.
the kind of lost where you need to get home before it's useless to get any sleep and youre not enjoying your predicament and your phone is dead and you have no means of gps so you're driving aimlessly to some sort of interstate only to find you drove 45 minutes north of where you need to be.... equalling no sleep.

the small i mean comes from a different kind of lost... the lost i mean lost where you are so captivated by sight and sound and the overwhelming complexity of existence.  where your mind is so full and amazed that it simply can not hold another bit more... and you shut your eyes and revel at something you just learned that didn't come from another person's findings or research, and wasn't another man's opinion.... it was an awakening all on your own.  and it was beautiful.

life lately has been full of those brief moments where my mind is so overwhelmed with awe that i have to shut my eyes just to keep it in and hold onto the little bit i have just gained.  then there are days, like today, where my brain is all askew with the unraveling and undone and my mind tailspins at illegal speeds down a dark rabbit hole of illogical conclusions and fun house mirrors... i hate those things- always distorting and horrifying the truth.  but that's another issue i have....

anyway, days like today- i had to take a step back and lose myself... lose  myself in the shocking reality (i type that as sarcastically as i would be saying it) that the world is bigger than ME.  my problems and issues and worries and chaos- it is so small in comparison to all that is going on around me.  it is a fraction of a fragment of the greater whole.

sometimes you need to take a step back and see...
and again, it's being awake...
before i thought i saw everything how it was and is and that was that.
and it was ugly.
life wasn't very enjoyable and i didnt really like living it.
then there came this moment where it was as if my mind became aroused from some hibernating sleep, turned on, and in it was the most blinding light.  suddenly things made sense.  suddenly the world turned on and i saw it and though situations on it were horrible, outside of all of that... in and of itself, the world is remarkable and intricate and complex and detailed and simply... it's beautiful.

not to say im going to play passive ignorance to injustice or personal responsibilities, but... that consumption of pain and self and despair... the world is bigger than that and sometimes stepping back to appreciate it and see it for what it is, it's like that push to keep going.  sure, some shit may be super wrong and ugly, but it has the potential to be beautiful and amazing and it can get there.  there's little reminders of how beautiful life is all over.  it's just about stopping, stepping outside of yourself, and seeing them.

i need to do that more.  it makes me feel my kind of normal.

they're baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaack

it's like im waiting for some subliminal message to be made loud.
some landmine warning signal to tell me the way to go... to show me what the fuck it is im waiting on and for and where im headed to.
today is the first day in a while the thoughts became too loud and muddled all sense of logic and coherency.
they are still loudly raging and racing.
and oh how i would love for them to be silenced... with some proverbial duct tape or cholorformed rag.
i hate how easily they take over with their slick enunciation of thesaurus ridden speech.

these thoughts are so loud even now.
racing at speeds i cant clock.

they tell me im too big.
they make me feel bad for having eaten but tell me to eat more.
then when ive eaten more than i probably should have they begin the guilt cycle again.
they tell me no one likes me.
they tell me im a waste.
they tell me i am boring and useless.
they tell me i am ordinary and dull.

they tell me all of the things i know are false but somehow can not see past.
blindly and numbly i accept these things as truth and allow them to shackle my hands to weights no human could lift.

so i just sit.
i sit and i sulk and im miserable.
but the rest of you are happy.... so that's all that matters, right?

it's just like waking up

so a friend and i were talking.
i mentioned how i feel like im being woken up for the first time... and how in the same moment of enjoyment, i hate it.
i hate that it has taken me so long to get to this place where things are clear in my vision and in my thoughts.
we were discussing how some people cant see that way.  how they just stress and strive for money and things and more of some obscure lifestyle.  they see no one but themselves and seek their own benefit and gain.
i mentioned how i was there once.
this angry little shit.
an angry little shit so hellbent on making everyone else suffer because i was in pain.
and the reason i was in pain and feeling suffering?
i was misunderstood.
i had no one around me to let me know i WAS in fact normal.
i may not see the world in "9-5's" and "401k vision,"  but im normal.
there are others.
there are others who have been woken up.
there are others who are wide awake.
we see things so much differently.
it's a different i dont even have the words for anymore.
it's like trying to explain the feeling a painting or a song gives you... some people will merely see splashes and scribbles while you see existence and beauty and an elation that you can not find words for.
there are times when people are so close... so close to being woken up....
but the sound and the feeling of being uprooted from a ground you cling so tightly to for security and safety.... it's unsettling.
it's scary and most would rather shut their eyes and burrow their roots even deeper than take the risk, the leap across the canyon and trust that what is will be a safe place for your feet to land.
i can understand tho.
the ability to bury my roots in "safety" kept me asleep for far too long....
sometimes i can still hear the roots being torn when some new change is taking place to wake me up even further.
and then he said something.
i dont really remember exactly what it was....
but it was this level of awareness i know is there but i would rather, for right now, stay ignorant too.
it is where i shut my eyes and bury my own little tiny roots in this level of awareness where i am right now.
but there is a higher place i want to visit and more than i want to experience.
im not fully awake yet, but having been woken up has been an amazing life change that i so desperately needed.
so while there is no certainty or security, it's amazing to be woken up.
it's amazing to let those roots just tear and allow yourself to be transported to this new place of living- this awareness of others and self, this appreciation for beauty in things seen and unseen, this ability to be empathetic and loving, this fascination with the simple and the vast....
wake up.
life's much better outside of hazy dreams.
this world can be pretty damn beautiful sometimes.

a fraction of stories ive never told a soul

i hope one day to be able to live so far outside of myself that i can see what people really see.  it doesnt happen all the time, but in various incremental moments, usually when i open my mouth and say something, my brain conjures up all of these ludicrous ideas.  every person in the same building that i am in or reading a tweet or seeing an instagram or facebook post in their feed... i find myself thinking im being laughed at.  i find myself wondering what horrible things are being said.  i hate that i can believe i am so small.
i hate that i can think people waste energy to hate me, verbally abuse me, or think anything of me other than i am just me.
maybe the reason my brain can travel distances farther than it has the energy for is the past.
the unglorious trauma known as my past.

so a while back i'd read "perks of being a wallflower" after my younger half sister quoted it in some facebook post.  i dont remember reading a whole book in a day, but something caught me and i read until the room was dark and evening had snuck up on me.  charlie, the main character... he's a lot like me.  he has scars.  he has stories he cant tell a human face, so he writes someone a letter.  he lost his best friend to suicide and is wandering his freshman year of high school alone.  then he meets sam and patrick and they invite him into their circle of friends and he finally feels like he belongs, like he's home.  he's amongst his kind and for once... he's happy.

i know we all have scars and stories and sad things, but i can honestly say to whatever wandering eyes are scanning this page for some outright idiocy or paraphrase to raise an eyebrow and scoff...i never really had friends.  i never really felt home.  i never really belonged anywhere.  at least that's what i thought.

i got bullied and although i love to share my triumphant stories of tackling two guy bullies down with physical force, no one knows how much it really hurt.  no one knows how id be too afraid to die cos i was scared into religious beliefs saying i would be damned to hell for a life of imperfect curiosity, so instead of cutting, i would just claw my arm up with any dull object i could find.  i never left any scars.  i would just watch my pale flesh begin to tear, layer by layer, growing more and more pink, til finally little specks of blood would appear.  that shook me back into reality and i felt alive again.  somehow seeing my own blood was enough to remind me i was feeling something other than the constant weight of being alone.  i would hide in playgrounds, in the closet of my room during college, in bathroom stalls during lunch.. all to find a way to feel.  it escalated to the point where i would fall asleep with knives and wake up wondering what brought me to that place.  i ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills washed down with a lot of captain morgan and .... i woke up with a stomachache.

even before these physical acts occurred, i remember asking for help.  every hand i aimed to grasp would just slap me in the face or push me down and away.  every face i sought some sort of comfort and understanding from turned the other cheek.  more than anything i just wanted someone to just be there, however it looked, and just let me know i wasnt alone.

i walked in on so many people talking about me.  they didnt think i heard, but i have a severe talent for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  i know too much of what i was never intended to hear.

after J i lost nearly everyone.  the "family" at the gym i trained at for 4 years was no longer there except really for papa.  and J had pretty much taken everything away from me since i allowed myself to be controlled and manipulated by another person all to simply feel and not be alone.  he was a mess too.  he had similar issues i did and for me, it was enough at that point simply because i wanted to be understood.

then there came this moment.  this moment where i wouldnt realize it until many months later, that that feeling of being exactly where youre meant to be, i was there.  i, like charlie, stumbled upon my patrick and sam, and they brought me into a world so different from the cloudy gray existence i had been sleepwalking through.  they exposed me to life and family and friends and.... acceptance.  sam says a line that someone said to me, "welcome to the island of misfit toys."

it's funny walking through life alone for so long, even under the roof where your bed and green day posters are and where your scribbles that pass for artwork grace the refrigerator door, held on by magnets once meant to teach you something important, you always feel this sense of vacancy.  it feels hollow and cold and irrelevant.  you just want to take flight and run.  your spirit, this restless nomad, on the hunt for a place to call home...

i feel like i finally found it.  but ...

it is so hard to let go sometimes.  it is so hard to let go of the defense mechanisms that just helped me to survive.  i was on a planet not my own with foreign air my lungs were never meant to breathe.  but i learned to survive.  and now that i find myself home, i find myself unsure of how to walk and breathe and speak.  all of the horrible feelings come back.  memories of being bullied and beat up and made fun of and talked down to and talked about... they seep through every porous membrane, like dry  soil in desperate need of a drink.

i still feel so small.
i still feel so unsure of who i am and why the fuck these people even give a shit if i drive home drunk or pass out on their kitchen floors.  i have no clue why they want to give me hugs and sit down and eat or drink with me.  i dont know how to accept being accepted, especially when im not sure what there is about me to accept.

and this is where i began.
i wonder who i am.
when all the thoughts silence....
when all my preconceived ideas about what anyone else is thinking or saying slow down and fade into elevator background sounds.... who am i....?
i know the superficial shit but i wonder what about me is worth knowing and liking...
i wonder what the fuck i am even here for....
i wonder what im good at...
i wonder if anyone looks at me how i look at them...
i wonder if anyone thinks about me and smiles like i do sometimes....
and sometimes, i wonder if anyone else has these same thoughts that i do...

cos i dont feel so abnormal anymore.
i dont feel like gonzo in the beginning of muppets from space.  i feel like charlie at the end of perks of being a wallflower... let go of all the painful memories he has never told a soul, and free... free to be infinite and no longer a sad story... free to experience life and live and just be happy.

well maybe not entirely charlie....i hope to someday get there.
but for right now... i really want to know what people see and think.  not so much that their opinions will make me change, but i think more than anything i really have no clue who i am or if im good at anything or smart or fun or ... likeable.  i know this sounds so pathetic and high school but this is how i think because for 25 years of my life i have been instructed to hide my feelings, not to cry, and that no one wants to be around someone that has something to say that isnt happy.  every time i reached out for help before i was called weird, told i had issues, called crazy and insane, or blocked/deleted/ignored/left to eat lunch by myself in the bathroom.

so im learning now that it is ok to be human and to feel things, happy or sad.
it is ok to have flaws and want to fix them.
it is ok to make a mistake and try again.

what i really hope to learn is that im probably a lot bigger than i give myself credit for.
if i could just actually applicably grasp this concept, i can  only gather that i would be unstoppable.