florence on repeat

anyone who knows me knows how much i eat. i eat a lot. constantly, haha. but once in awhile i don't eat. sometimes when i need to feel i don't eat. i know it doesn't make sense and I'm not exactly sure why i do it, i can't do it well, i can barely fast a day for religious purposes. but sometimes being hungry helps me feel. maybe it is a kind of fast, a kind of cleanse, i wonder sometimes if that hunger pain helps me think more clearly. it probably doesn't but there is something about the hunger that gives me focus.

i've been in a funk for a week or more. its strange, because i cant decide if its the stress of not knowing what comes next, the complexity of trying to decide where my motivation comes from, or the awareness that i've never really had to deal with my emotions on my own before that is making me so sour. i do not like to be irritable. i become very conscious of being snappy, bitter, and i only act this way towards the people i love most. so its easiest for me to be a loner. just to be alone. so i go off on my own and people don't understand. or more often don't notice. its strange for me. i am so open, so social, so blah blah blah. usually. people see me as people person, i see me a loner. and i process, and think, and cry, and wish so badly that someone I love would happen upon me and see that everything is not quite alright, that i cant eat, cant work out, can't understand if i'm on the right path. it is hard to wonder, hard to decide.

i miss being courageous. it was so much more plausible, or maybe just easier, with a network i trusted, who knew me. im not good at telling, unless you are a stranger, otherwise it must be sucked out of me, pulled out. i want to tell you but i cant. even if you know that i am not perfect, golden, unbreakable, flawless, helplessly optimistic, i cannot tell you these things of my own will. for the past couple weeks i've just wanted to be someone else, someone who has a lot of problems. which is so vague and makes no sense. and i am so blessed. so blessed with people who love me and where i am in life, and i know i am lucky, but i'm tired. tired of always making decisions based on doing the right thing, based on theology, philosophy, maturity, practicality. i want to buy a plane ticket with money i dont have, leave a note behind and eat salt on wind for a month. i want to walk barefoot in mud and get sick from water that isn't clean enough for my soft stomach. i want to walk in rivers and lie on logs, i want to walk in pouring rain and cry until i reach an ocean. i want to dance my heart out with no alcohol involved. its all i want the courage to do.

i'm not sure i ever want to return to the life i have so perfectly crafted. even if it is selfish of me. i know i am very selfish sometimes. and i dont know what my motivations are. if they are really the things that I identify as such. there are parts of myself that i havent seen in a long time. part of that i think is just being on my own. i seem to have lost a carefree confidence tha ti had based on how i defined myself. now that the structure of that definition has melted away into nothing but nostalgia i have trouble knowing who i am. so giving my best self to the world as a goal has become much murkier. i'm not sure what i have to give. what if i lost it. all of the potential that people saw in me might not ever be developed, because im tired, or burnout, or maybe just lazy. imagine that. maybe i am just lazy, and no one wants to tell me but its always been the case. someone should stamp it on me. brand me as lazy. i've branded myself as tired in a way that i cant beat. i cant beat it, no matter how much i sleep or smile or breathe deeply i still cant beat this dreadful tiredness that consumes me.

being stuck is taking its toll. not eating doesn't make me any more mobile but it does allow me to brace imperfection. it allows me to not strive for it, even if i'm the only one who knows im acting out. for all intents and purposes, its almost sad that this is the only small revolution i have to offer to myself. otherwise i am completely entrenched in babylon. crying at any moment when i think i've disappointed someone, and often someone who doesn't even deserve these emotions. i seem to give this layer of high standards to everyone around me and i must live up to it for them, but im not sure they've even earned it. am i a coward. running around like a chicken with its head cut off, like a puppy, trying so hard to please everyone, when i cant. and im not sure why i try so badly because i don't think they even care. if someone kicked me in the side i don't think i would wake up. maybe once in my life i would have, but now it just keeps me spiraling. i see myself kicked in the side and flying across the floor into the wall with my little paws scratching linoleum and whining as a land with a thud against the wall. its a sad sight to see, but maybe i've always been like that and had no idea. perhaps i've never been courageous. and why do i want so badly to be brave? just so these same people can notice, and applaud?

maybe not. maybe im just doing what i love and its hard and so im faltering. but i have a sneaking suspicion that isnt it. i miss the light feeling of being in love. floating through my days with this kind of implausible confidence. for two years ive been on my own, healing, learning, wondering, reflecting. what was i getting, what was i giving, what do i need. i try so badly to get what i need from the people around me. and i think it might be sad. to think that they can give it to me. it reminds me of when i realized everyone cant go with me where im going. but now i scoff at the self righteousness of that idea. where do i think i'm going that is so specific so hard. except i cant scoff because it seems so true even if i dont want it to be. my biggest fear in life might be that i am destined to be alone. not physically alone, in terms of romantically alone. but just alone. in a place where i have to be alone, mentally, spiritually perhaps. i hate having to hold myself up. i hate it. it weighs down on me in a way that allows m to pity myself. wallow privately in my hunger pain.

it is pitiful that this is all i have to say in the face of babylon. i used to think i had so much more to say. so much to fight and i fancied myself able bodied and ready, but now i realize i really am a rabbit hearted girl.

cuffs

I spent the last hour watching two young guys be detained in handcuffs by the cops. I listened to what they were saying, one kid was 17, and only a sophomore in high school. The cop kind of scoffed at him because of this. There ended up being 6 cops, and two kids pressed up against the fence that separates my house from the sidewalk and street in front. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I cried because the older of the two looked too comfortable, he kind of chuckled with the cops, this wasnt his first time in cuffs. When the last car arrived, he recognized one of the cops, he had been in jail for 3 days recently because of a warrant. I don't know the details, but I cried because when the younger one's mother showed up to get him, she didn't. She wasn't surprised. I thought about a life lived watching friends, neighbors, peers being arrested on the street though the bars of your bedroom window. I wondered how many others in my neighborhood were watching from hidden corners. I felt like I was keeping watch, I don't know for what, for proper police procedure. The kids probably did something wrong, something involving stolen bikes maybe, a car? I couldn't figure it out. But it upset me to watch them, an hour later an officer was throwing something on the ground across the street, some kind of bike wrench. The mom had to walk across the street and pick it up off the ground, then take her son to her car as he tried to conspicuously rub his wrists. I saw him rubbing his wrist and tried to find the herschel quote about always being surprised. I'm happy to remind myself that I could never be apathetic, but I don't know what a moment like this means for me, for my future, for where my life is going. I don't want young latino kids comfortable in handcuffs, comfortable as 17 year old sophomores. I was 14 when I was a sophomore.

I can only ball you up inside of me for so long

But every time I smell ginger mint tea you come rushing out of my eyes

Streaming down my cheeks like warm hot rain in summer

The most refreshing type of pain I can’t imagine

I invent you

Age you in my mind

Lying in bed on top the covers, clothed

Face to face,

You are everything I need you to be

We are tired of the rumors

Of the details

Tired of trying to understand

His plan

Is incomprehensible

So I create you

Grown from my seventh grade memories

i cant explain the way my desire to do art eeks out of my body. sometimes im in tears, i dont know what to do, or how to do it, but i have this passion exploding from my pores, and i dont know how to harness it, or how to be productive with it.

sometimes i just want someone to tell me what to do, but then i also get so scared. i have nothing to offer but myself. i have no money, so that means i have no way of funding myself and nothing but blood , sweat, and tears to give, and that i will give, but i dont know how to prove it.

can hard work & determination really pay off in this industry, i believe it does and it will, i just need to find out who will give me a chance to prove myself. or where i can begin to create this space, and then the fear of failure starts to creep in, now more than it ever has before, which is so strange to me, because my confidence has always been my claim to fame, my advantage over others. ive never sat around before and wondered if i was enough, not that i can remember anyway. and now i wonder if i am enough.

how do i market myself? when dont yet have a resume to prove it, and that is what i need to start working on now, and i feel so late in the game.

so now i have to work harder, write more emails, contact more people, try that much harder, i need to create a space for myself, even if it seems room for one doesnt exist.

today i saw a pale yellow house with a purple door

today i saw a pale yellow house with a purple door

but i felt so much

a tear rolled down my cheek as i wondered

i wondered about that door and what it meant to the person who had painted it

people move in and out

they come and go

time passes

some are welcomed into doors with opened arms

others yelled out of doors

"don't let it hit you on the way out"

i look up at you standing heavy leaden with suitcases in the doorway

looking at me timidly

tentatively

unsure of what my response to you will be

in my mind i meet you in airports

making movie like scenes where people stop and think of how beautiful we are

touched by the contagiousness of our joy

a heeled foot perhaps or a sneaker, pops up in the air

as a bag is dropped down to the ground to relieve a heavy laden hand

my fingers intertwine with empty air

wondering if that is even what i really want

if its what i've ever wanted

if i ever will

your smile in my doorway is what i think i want

but you're a chesire cat

wonderful to be with

but its so dreadful when you are missing

and i wander alone on dark paths

thinking about the joy that they could bring

i walk barefooted, feeling the roots of trees through soft forest mud

i wiggle my toes in warm beach sand

i slide them under your body on the couch

you know my toes get cold

i see your body fading and your smile in the doorway

your chinky eyes fade slowly

and your smile now leers at me

mocking my naivete

i'm on kayak again

ever disappointed at the price of plane tickets

thinking about what it would take for me to get to you

where i would take you

where i might find you

what you look like now

snow whips around outside

i play with opacity in my mind

deciding how much of a wall it creates

how much i can see through

how soundproof it is

how well i can see you approaching through it

trudging through the snow towards me

sitting in a pale yellow house

a purple door painted with love

Molting Grace

The problem with having a split personality is that you know that as soon as everything is going right, something will go wrong.

Split personalities,

trusting in God,

having faith and hope and knowing that by his grace I can do all things,

When things go wrong I get so down inside,

so confused, so unable to cope but only because

I can’t get myself quite where I need to be intellectually.

Why does my own intellect get me down?

Maybe ignorance is bliss,

and I need to stop looking down and around at the people and the situations that make me stop and think.

All I wanna do with my life is make you stop and think,

I think,

that’s what I say,

I do truly aspire to inspire, but I get lost along the way.

Other things pop up, I get stressed, I see bright lights,

I wonder if I should just do what I’m good at to get this bread, and get ahead,

or at least get out,

get out of these school loans and this cage of anxiety that I trap myself into based on the fact that I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

I’m young, they say

the world is yours, they say

you are blessed and talented and beautiful,

and I know I am lucky to have the encouragement,

they say you can be successful.

These are the words that the little kids that I want to inspire need to hear,

the words that never reach their little ears

and so they see themselves as lumps of black coal without personality and value,

til they throw on bright kicks, learn to jerk or drop it low,

they wiggle with it and see that their lumps are in fact flexible,

see they can be a gangster or reinterpret the word ho, but fuck it,

cuz they’re just getting that money.

And I have all the words in the world,

to try to tell them to slow down,

to look inside, to realize the talent that they have,

to be something, something wonderful,

I want them to give their best selves to the world.

And I have all the words,

and yet for me these same words I want to pass to them create a pressure cooker,

and I drown inside them, water boiling up around me,

a bright future shoving its letters into my nostrils and making it hard to breathe.

I am gasping for air in a world that threatens to suffocate me

because of all of its great expectations.

I am the only one that doesn’t see them, or I do,

but now I am a lump of clay terrified of being molded into the wrong image,

being a beautiful statue that represents nothing, but is powerful.

Or being plastacine,

never ever taking a final form,

I’m a chameleon, just adapting to anything but not having anything that speaks of home, that helps me take my final form.

I am molting,

which just means my skin is fucking falling off and my soft wet red bleeding insides are left pulsing,

exposed to the world, to the dirt of it,

the sting of hot air full of other people’s breathe and bacteria,

whipping against the sinewy muscles of my neck, my shoulders, my back, infecting me. And this hazardous situation doesn’t seem to have a way out.

jaded, the healthy alternative?

I think I'm starting to understand what it is like to be in Los Angeles, and now I am more conscious of the things that I was afraid of in the first place. I was afraid to come to LA because I thought people would be superficial and fake, and arriving here, I've been very pleased to find a community of old friends, and meet some wonderful new friends who have helped me reaffirm my faith in humanity, artists, and people who just have a certain understanding about the ways of the world, systems, human behavior and relationships with people.

However I've also begun to understand how being here could make me jaded, and the strangest thing about it, is that I'm not sure if it is unhealthy or a "necessary" reality check. The ting that has made me realize it most is my relationships with people, and the hardest part about this past week is that I feel like all I hear is a big I told you so from my ex echoing in my head, and the thing is that he never even meant it like that.

I am used to living in a reality which I am beginning to realize, though I've neared this realization before and pushed it off as pessimism, that my reality, my rules, my way of viewing the world around me, and perhaps most importantly my expectations of people and what relationships mean and work, isn't the norm. My ex hurt me bad once, he said something to the effect of, "You need to stop thinking that everyone you are invested in is as invested in you, because they aren't." And that hurt. That hurt because I've tried so hard to find a community despite the fact that I've never lived anywhere for more than four years and have trouble being truly vulnerable with people because I don't necessarily see them as permanent. I value my relationships with people, but I've more recently in the past few years been realizing what it means to not only invest in people you see on the daily, but make real efforts to reconnect with others, stay present even when not physically present. And it isn't easy, and I can't say I'm good at it.

But being out here is different. The kind or behavior that I grew up considering to be respectful, intuitive, second-nature, all of these things that I took for granted, rules like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" are not necessarily rule for everyone. Or perhaps that isn't even it entirely, because its a combination of being willing and able to be available to people, to have an "its just nice to be nice" outlook on life, but then it also has to do with being able to recognize what people want and need.

At times it might be just recognizing if someone is lonely, if someone is bad at asking for help but needs it, if someone is just having a tough time and might need a hug...because I do very truly believe in the power of human touch.

It's strange because just last week I had a conversation with a wonderful friend of mine who was saying that there was something very wonderful in the way that I am not jaded. But this week I wonder if its just something that should be chalked up to naivete. I don't know if my naivete is something I want to hold on to or not. I want to hold on to it, I want to be someone who gives you the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. But I'm realizing that this is often a lifestyle that leads to hurt, pain, disappointment, complications, or just straight up awkwardness and miscommunication.

I don't want to be jaded, I kind of want to be naive, if being naive is just being equated with being nice, and happy, and carefree and optimistic, and trying to do the right thing. I have always thought a lot of this outlook on life comes from my faith in God, my confidence, because I do not feel alone, because I have a relationship with God that makes me just want to do the right thing, help people when I can, try to make people smile. But now thinking about it, I see the turn the other cheek thing more clearly, and the fact that the answer to how many times to turn the other cheek is seventy times seven means a lot of pain. So does being Christian in that way, among a community of people in the world who do not believe the same way or react the same way mean a lot of constant pain. I would say yes, but then if I go back to Eckhardt Tolle I see that the pain comes mainly from the disappointment, from the realization that things are not reciprocal, that everyone doesn't see the world the same way you do. And if that is the case than the key is just to be nice, do things for other, try to meet others where they are, always go out on a limb for people, always try to come through in the clutch, try to be the reliable one, the ride or die chick, and not expect anything in return. And that, that is a hard road to walk. And one that, unless you are extremely involved in a Christian Community (which I don't necessarily know if I want to be, because for some reason I always feel like I'm not doing enough, don't care enough, perhaps am not naive enough, because I don't want to give everything that I feel like these communities are constantly asking of me) where you are not seemingly the only one attempting to walk that path, is a hard and lonely road.

So right now its almost as if I am considering becoming jaded, considering putting on a tough shell, just to not be constantly upset or feel so easily hurt by things that probably shouldn't hurt me.