Mattering.

I think its time to talk.

It was mid-September. There wasn't a single week since the summer in which there was a night that I didn't cry myself to sleep. Every day was an argument, a fight. He called me names I never imagined. While I waited to hear him speak again, he came and left and came and left. Midnight was punctuated with meaningless apologies. They say (and by they, I credit C.S. Lewis) to love at all is to be vulnerable. I was undoubtedly shed of every protection I ever knew. Parts of me were completely foreign; I made them up, so I could construct more love, more desperation. I expected weakness to become strength, but instead, it destroyed me.

I fought it. I begged. I have never begged before, but now, I was pleading on my knees.  I drew copies of Bone and Calvin and Hobbes, pictures of immortalized friendship. They are still tear-stained. I sent unreturned messages. Everything I did was through a blur of tears. I went to school every other day with my eyelids stuck, still swollen. At assemblies, I sat, immobile. Then I got up and cried in the bathroom. I begged, come back. Please come back. Then it was the only thing I ever heard. I sat in history, English, physics, math, hearing only one thing in my head. Come back. And all he said was go away. For every go away, there were a hundred come backs.

He said he was lost, lost without me. Lost because we used to know each other's deepest secrets, and now we were afraid to share. Lost because we could pray into each other's shoulders. Lost because after a long day, we were each other's light, a little comfort in this phony world. But boys are so dumb. We were lost a long time ago.

One day, I woke up, and I was done. In a split second, my heart closed. My emotions froze. I got up and smiled at my teachers' jokes and appreciated my friends' love stories. Slowly, I started throwing things away. I shoved clothes into the basement. These belongings were forgotten, because you do not belong in my life. The pain all but disappeared, because you no longer matter.

We talked recently. You shafted me, again. You said you cared; you said you wanted to be friends again. But in truth, I could care less. Do you remember when I begged you? I'm sick of you.

Here's what matters now. I'm also sick of relationships. I barely believe in love. There's no couple in this school or college or world who can convince me that something deep and genuine can result from romance. There is no man of any stature or intelligence or suavity that can steal my heart. But here's another matter - I love all relationships. Without so much expectation, they are so easy. My friends, a great deal of them, especially, hold a standard of the golden zero. Disappointment is replaced by careless acceptance. I find a great deal of meaning in friendship, in chilling. I am done lying and hiding.

Spaces

I was unashamedly reading Shob's old blog post today. It was called "corner" and in it, she describes the Big Sad.

Here is the thing with the Big Sad, as she put it: we are stuck because we know how to be stuck. Our gluttony and starvation and full mouthed binging and purging and maniacal wakefulness - all are an accumulation of something wholly familiar. I'll stop speaking for her now, but for every stomach wrenching year of sitting in the stench of disappointment, I know it all so well. I was afraid that I might enjoy the pain, but this kind of demented torture is just unrelenting sin. I regret it and I beg to be freed and forgiven. Still there is no relief, no victory, just as there never will be. I know everything about winning and losing and playing, and I hate everything about it, save for a few teary conversations.

And beyond the Big Sad -

Nothing feels better on a Tuesday morning than a good hour of punching the crap out of a 100 pillar of sand. Feeling my sweat slide off my skin and my body propel itself straight off the floor... seeing my knuckles peel behind the thick boxing gloves... There have been few times in my life where I felt such a restless anger. There have been still fewer times where such has been used so arbitrarily, yet in such a way that not a single person, not even myself, was hurt. If you have $60 a month to spare, check it out.

In Frozen, Olaf says this rather profoundly: "Oh look at that! I've been impaled." I'm afraid to impale someone. Well, cheers to cowardice and young perplexity; here it is, misplaced conjunctions and semicolons alike. I can't stand the way it perpetuates intimacy on such a shallow level. I can't stand our broken resonances that frequent side by side, clashing at every wrong period, every mismatched amplitude. I hate the feeling of disorientation until the moment I step away, the stumbling restraint that bursts forth and recedes into contradiction. The Matrix is playing in the background, so excuse this..sullenness. But let me make it clear that this is no result of love or infatuation, but some gross play of experimentation and thoughtlessness.

Until it isn't. And so it is that when that space can no longer be filled and the glass shatters, over, and over, and over again, the sparks still fly.

And for you, my dear readers, artists, friends - during this indomitable trek of loneliness, I haven't really been alone at all.

Closed.

He asked if I was disappointed.
What could I say, but that I'm a disappointment too. No one ever believes it the first time.

And you thought this would be another depressing post.
Oh wait.

In one sense, nothing has changed. Being admitted to the only college I could imagine truly loving did nothing for how badly I look at myself, how horrendous yesterday was. That insensible hope for a revolution vanished in last night's crawling self-disgust. But now, it hangs, useless, spent – no, it is not spent. I am.

At the same time, I'm so relieved. Those four B's didn't mean I was stupid. Dropping AP French was more than just an act of hot indignation. National Honor Society, WYSE, JETS, who needs those? I didn't have to be a DECA champion or a prodigal student. I could just be me. And some part of this ingenuity got across, and somehow, they accepted it.

...

The darkness really does hide a lot of things. That old vanilla twilight didn't have a single star... there were so many unfilled spaces, so few of those kind of whispers. But maybe this is the way its supposed to be. Maybe this way, I have no mistakes, past to hide. Maybe this way, when I'm hugging my legs to my chest and sighing at the princesses breaking out into song, I'm not thinking about roses and pillows, but a very lucky friendship.

But the darkness also creates closeness, and when the closeness becomes paper thin, shimmering like broken glass, its breaks against the rocks and rushes up the shore. And now, once again, there's no darkness to fill at all.