i stopped running because for 6 days i couldn’t move more than a few feet at one time couldn’t seem to lift my head put one foot in front of the other could barely stand up and even when I could, when I could do all those things when I could pretend I was healthy and shiny and new and happy because I’m always upbeat even when I was happy, the pain didn’t go away. I stopped running and that pain, that constant shooting pain, all the time, the thing I thought I wouldn’t have to feel again, well it was different this time. I know it was, even though it felt the same. It still feels the same to not be loved.

I stopped running because I know I’m always in motion, always a blur, I mess around and I flirt and play silly games I act like I’m 12 years old sometimes. That’s who I am but I stopped running because, even though I’m here and even though he wouldn’t kiss me when we slept together, even though those things; i stopped running because, for the first time really the first time I wasn’t scared. Not really. Or I was but it didn’t matter, didn’t stop me. I didn’t try to run away I stopped. and stood frighteningly still.

I stopped running because in my mind I thought about being in love. True love, marriage, having a family, true love. I stopped running because I wanted…really wanted and cared…really cared about those things and loved all of you so I didn’t run away because every time I thought about running I thought about him and he was all that mattered. I couldn’t run because I wouldn’t get to be with him. You can’t run away from the thing, the person you think you want, not when you’re ready. and let’s say I did just think it even if its not supposed to be him. Lets say he was the person I thought I wanted whether or not he was. I still stopped running because I was ready and when that happens you just know because it’s easy it feels easy. Even the scary parts are not hard and it’s taken me so long to get here but, I didn’t run away I stopped. that’s how you can tell.

that’s how people change.

Yes, I can hear you. I wish it was not the case.

As it stands, I sleep on half the bed, on two pillows, inside a folded duvet. A fan, a laptop, four books, a bottle of water, a hat, a pair of socks, some old photos, my decision coin, my phone, two pencils and a small spotlight lamp are in the (place of my (imaginary)) other half. I am so very, very symbolic

I have this dream about you where I’m with you and you take my hand and my mouth aches. I ask you questions and you look at me like you’re thinking…I can see all the thoughts inside you, which I used to wish were true.

Everything smells like you in my dream and I feel like crying. I run my hand over your skin and if feels like the inside of my heart. It feels like stars. You take me, try to guide me, but I’m the one that knows where we’re going, yet I can’t get us there. I’m white on the inside, pure white, the way not letting everything eat away was easy when I first met you. I can’t tell you how much you make my skin tingle in my dreams.

I try to tell you things but they come out in Chinese -A code I pretend works between us. Your face is dark, almost black with your rage and I’m afraid of you for the very first time. Oh, wait I’ve been afraid like this before. I know how bad I am at writing happy endings. Maybe I’ve been afraid the whole time and I only just realize because of the shadow you become in my dreams.

I follow you for old times sake. Because once upon a time I sat with you, I stood with you, I danced around a bar with you and felt swallowed by your smile and engulfed in your arms. The world swam and all I remembered were stars.

and then I wake up, come back here to this city where no one loves anyone but maybe themselves and even that’s a stretch, most of the time.
i want to tell you something.
I don’t want you to, he says. I don’t like to talk (this is a lie.)
I have to tell you something and then i’ll never tell you anything again.
He would give anything for me not to say it but i do.
It is stupid and reckless but i don’t care which is not the same as not caring.

He is kind of a shitty person. I guess I knew that.
I just didn’t want it to be true.
I thought that if I liked (loved) someone (you) enough you might become someone else, the person I imagine you to be.

People are who they are.
The trick is to try and stay away from broken people.
Or just remember to try not. Try not. Try not.
–
So, in the movie of your life, what would I do at this point? Disappear?
–
I drive away.
I won’t say another word until I see you. Let me know when we can make that happen.
–
I drive and drive until I top out on the crest. This place is perfectly empty at two am. Ditch the phone. Carry a pen and notebook to the pool. I let the stars pull away the things he said the other night. Burn me until I am shiny and new. I want to become someone else. Swim away. The cold stings my skin but I’m chest deep. The water beats and beats it doesn’t stop. I close my eyes and imagine what it is like to be part of the sea. I’ve always wanted that.

This place is my secret. This is how to stay alive. I imagine drowning, just for a second. I think, wouldn’t it be lovely to be inside this sea of stars. To disappear here. Weightless in the water. Isn’t that the point? To sink into the night sky and be forever cold, frozen?

I return to my car my phone my life. Alive. I’m alive. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so dramatic.

I still have nothing from you. Why why why do you think that you have to hold back the one thing people want from you in order for them not to stop caring? I am still lost and I haven’t had any help from you. and i cry. right then and there. because honestly…I GIVE UP. I don’t know what else to do. I CAN’T FEEL LIKE THIS ANYMORE so, option A) I won’t. There is not option B.

I drive toward home freezing and shivering in my underwear with the heat cranked up in the 90-degree heat of the night. Wondering how the EFF I managed to screw it up. Yet again. Wondering how people like me survive without drowning. and I remember I don’t deserve to be happy. Look at the things I’ve done…

(I didn’t want everyone to be right) (about you)
I need you to prove them wrong…

My heart beats against my stomach. beat beat beat it beats all night. It’s impossible to sleep. beat beat. I will the heart to stop. beating. It’s impossibly loud. beat beat it hits the wall, trying to break free. I imagine the heart, bursts through the inside. The heart weighs very little. It bursts through, into the heat. My heart in the sun, burns until it stops. I sleep.

That was how the night that was reserved for recuperation started.

I had brought up a pile of sheets from the laundry in the basement and placed them on the foot of my bed, having no other place for them with the books and fan and magazines already crowding out (my other half of) the bed. I planned to read and drink tea and fall asleep like so many erudite singles I know who ride high horses but, the unfolded sheets bothered me, nagged at my attention.

I can’t stand staring at an unfinished task. So, I got up and folded the sheets. Then I had to turn the light on so I could see to fit them into my cedar chest. They wouldn’t fit there so I had to put them in the hall closet. Walking back to bed with a big humpf ready and waiting to accompany the motion of plopping back down, I noticed that my phone was lit and vibrating. Apparently at some time during the weekend I’d switched off the ringer. So, here was J calling to pull me out of bed at the last minute.

I debated not answering but like unfolded sheets, I knew that not knowing what she wanted would bother me more than having to say no. J wanted me to come to a ‘great party’ that one of her salon friends was hosting in a bar downtown. It sounded fun but I was exhausted from the whole boating weekend and so I demurred with the usual Sunday night excuse.

In the end, she had a friend pick me up on their way to the event. At this point, I was trapped. I knew that there was no way I would be getting home early and back to my nice, cozy bed (made so in part by the piles of books in place of another). Considering my choices, -cozy bed and sleep or possibly amusing evening out, I have to say that the first option sounded better, even if alone, but somehow the second overwhelmed me so I had to make the best of it. This wasn’t about revenge or ‘getting back’ at someone. It was about me and J and how much fun we have together.

First, we started with a bet, who could get a guy to give them an article of clothing. We were in a night club so there were no hats or easy targets to be found. J took the sexy/charming approach and I took the so ridiculous it had to be true approach. This is my hobby lately, lying to people, testing them by making up dubious answers to commonplace questions just to see how people will react and how far I can stretch the lie/truth before it becomes transparent.

I walked up to the typical night club type – fancy t-shirt and designer jeans, hair gelled and spiked into a faux-hawk. This one wore a particularly fancy brand of shoe -well, at least they were really ugly, so I hope that they cost a lot of money. I decided that I’d get his shirt because it looked like something I saw my nephew wearing earlier that day. I wasn’t really sure what I would say to the guy so I just smiled brightly at him on my first pass and ducked into the ladie’s room. I thought to myself -donate your shirt for a cause? Spill a drink on him & offer to clean it. Your shirt is on fire -quick take it off! My dead brother used to have a shirt just like that one -may I have it? Your sweat is needed for a scientific experiment…

I finally settled on a plan -well more of a notion of how I’d do things. I started dancing with him and everyone else around. It was silly, forced, but the guy was fairly deep into his cups so it didn’t matter. He kept trying to grab me around the waist, which I absolutely loath, so I danced around his grasp a little to the left and the right. The next time he tried to touch me, (and I have no idea how this looked from afar -but I am sure it was bad) I pulled a swing dancing move and dipped and rolled, letting him just grasp the strap of my shirt before turning away, screaming in anguish.

He rushed over to my bent form in the (semi) corner and enquired what the matter was. “You ripped my blouse!” I said angrily, gripping and twisting the front strap, then I laughed and relaxed. I smiled, “It’s no big deal but may I borrow your shirt? I’m not wearing a bra underneath and I’d rather not expose myself to everyone here.” His eyes got wide and without a second thought about the fact that he’d be exposing himself to everyone at the club, he valiantly spilled his drink and then pulled his shirt off over his head. Still crouching, I put the shirt on over my own. Then, I said, “I’m just going to go to the bathroom to see if there is any way I can fix my shirt.” He offered to go with me and help, still trying to grope my arm, but I pointed to a random girl across the room and said that she was my friend and that she would know how best to help me.

He watched me all the way to the bathroom so I almost had to go in but I heard the bouncer accost him and tell him that he needed to wear a shirt while in the building. As soon as he began to explain his case to the bouncer, I ducked down the back stairs and went to find J in the reserved seating. I found her and showed her the shirt. She had one too. I wanted to give the chivalrously drunk guy his shirt back so I went to find him but they had already “escorted” him out. Apparently, he had tried to kick the bouncer, which is never a good idea, even for a sober knight. The bouncer told me not to bother going outside to look for him as his friends had left when he did.

The world will continue as it does, with the people I love in the worst kind of pain – a kind they think they need and therefore won’t work to remove – the people I desire a Tantalus-style distance, out of reach, and nothing I can do about it. What’s to write?

What’s to know or ponder when it is all beyond my control? What would be the sense in wanting or needing events to occur and someone to end all doubt, someone to run away with me, someone fun, who will make me laugh and create a soft crevice in my facade? Wouldn’t you call that a smile?

WORLD CONTINUES. STOP TWO. FLIP. STARS STOP. SEND FIREWOOD. SEND RESCUE

The decision coin is essential because it allows me to laugh off this cosmic impotence. Everything is so spectacularly arbitrary – good things happening to bad people and vice versa, Martin Luther King dying at 39 and Milosevic living to 64, for instance; good lives coming about through bad decisions and vice versa (I know the friends I know, which I value more than anything, because I live in Denver over Berlin or Amsterdam, or any other place. Even with prior knowledge of all, it was a decision I gave up on when I was forced to realize that some things in life aren’t up to me or my neurotic coin; but then again, having never known my probable other friends, I don’t miss them). What isn’t funny about that?

There’s so little in your life you can control – nothing, in fact. You can create illusions of control, but if you’re aware they’re illusions, what are you left with? You could try your hardest and fail or worse, succeed and experience the full force of how little success is worth. You could pursue your dream and despise it or coast through and wake up with everything you’ve ever wanted. Nothing is fair or even comprehensible. You might as well give things up to the flip of a coin. What is there to lose?

Without a coin to represent the funny side of this situation, I must confess I have trouble seeing it. I must buy a new coin.

.I.am.real.I.am.
people want to take you
people want to take so much from you
it’s bittersweet to think
these are the things
that make me feel real

.new surprise. ;-p
he watches me, wondering. his new surprise is
i don’t care.
watch your girlfriend ass hole. isn’t she standing right over there?
He still looks
at me
as if
he can’t believe i am really there. That’s fine for you, but I will look away every time.
And i no longer play. by your rules.

.try not.
i am.
so much better when.
i stay.
away from. (you)

it feels.
right
not to speak.
to. (you)

Because I know you’ll ask.
When I speak to u
I want
u.want
something
from you.
you take
something
from me
and I let you.
you give back
nothing.
You are dangerous
this is why I don’t
speak
to (you).

.happy. :*)
I want to make people happy and this is a mistake. always.