Deserving

"You deserve better than that," they say together. And they seem to mean it, staring intently at me, "You don't deserve anything they put you through." I stutter a bit, trying to come up with a nice way of explaining this that won't lose me my friends, or at least, that won't stop the tangled hug keeping me warm. It's interesting to me that I can pass as a normal, deserving person.

They don't see what I see, what's so glaringly obvious just beneath the skin. I'm a bad person. There, I've said it. Shame on me for nearly thinking differently. Shame on me. I thought maybe today, I was good. I thought singing at the retirement home was good, but I just fooled them too. I got my reminder before I forgot.

My phone lit up. Glancing down and flipping through the unread messages, there's a new text. "Look in a mirror," it advises, "You manipulate and control people for attention," and then goes on to explain that I'm self centered, I've alienated every friend I had, and of course, that they hate me too.

I look up, still smiling, and click the phone off. That's a skill I've mastered. To keep smiling. Even when it hurts enough that you want to fall to your knees and beg them to stop hurting you. Please. But that's a privilege reserved for people who were wronged. Still smiling. That smile bothers me. There's something so wrong about it. There's something so wrong about all of it.

It's not that I don't deserve it. I must, mustn't I? Or maybe I've just gotten used to it.

Patchwork Mind

Brooding, I tangle my fingers in my hair as I stare at the blinking cursor, and fiddle with the latch above my ear. Out of habit, I press the catch, and my head falls open with a pop. I drift over the familiar ridges of my mind, the bits I know so well of myself.

Absentmindedly, I play with the stitches I put in long ago, in a chunky, uneven line. I've gotten used to the thread there, how I fixed myself to be. I prefer it that way.

I pull gently on a loose end, and it gives. Caught by surprise, I keep pulling, letting them all unravel. Pain tears through my head as the last thread pulls out. Horrifyingly, it hasn't healed, just as ugly as I remembered. I grasp at the kinked and crusted thread, hiding it in my hands, and shove it deep into my pocket. Quickly, I latch my head shut again, and try to pretend nothing happened.

Stories

These are their stories. They carry around their quills, still dripping with ink, as they share and write over and over again. Together, their fingertips are ink-stained in the same colors of shared memories.  I wrote stories too, before, stories to share and tell, but they're sealed up in the leather bound books of others, on shelves far away.

The stories of now have been written here, a setting novel to me. I can read them as many times as I want,  rub my fingers on the pages, but the ink has long dried.

Wish Upon a Star

Walking back from the theater, I balance on the curb, teetering gently to either side. The darkness is young, exploring the world with quiet fingers. Dusky charcoal dusts the sky, blending out to the edges of the world.

The slivered moon shyly peeks out from behind the blackened branches of a bare tree. Elsewhere in the sky, there's a single star with the same whispered glow. I grab it quickly, and close my eyes. Wobbling on my toes, I keep walking, one foot in front of the other on the narrow asphalt. I wish on the breath that leaves my mouth in soft wisps of white.

A misstep, and I stumble off. Opening my eyes again, I glance upward at my wishing star, but it's missing. The sky is black now, even the slivered moon has hidden behind the thicker branches.

I can't help thinking I used it up. I walk inside under guilt and an empty sky.

Thanksgiving

I'm happy. It feels amazing to say that.

I'm thankful. For happiness. For my family. For friends who let me drool blood on them and check on me when I'm drugged and silly. For romance. For writing. For you, dear reader. For love. For everything.

Wisdom Teeth

I promised myself I'd blog once more before the surgery.

Honestly, my secret is that I'm not scared of the knife or the needle. I'm unnerved by the recovery, yes, but it seems manageable. My fear is born mainly of the lack of consciousness.

How precious and intricate our thoughts are, perfectly balanced chemicals in perfect ratios to give us all that we think and do. Everything I'm thinking now, everything that lets me write this to you, is so tiny and perfect, a billion tiny reactions in my mind. So what happens when that gets messed with?

I'm scared of turning off those synapses. I'm scared of being completely gone. I'm scared of realizing that turning my mind off means it's utterly off, and there's nothing I'll remember, aside from a gaping black where I should be alive. I'm scared I'll never come back from that gaping oblivion. I'm scared my thoughts won't line up again. On the smallest level, I'm scared I won't be exactly the same person, though realistically knowing every moment we live changes those thoughts and reactions, and we're never perfectly the same person we were moments ago.

Ridiculous, that all sounds ridiculous, and I know I'm wrong, and I'm sure I'll be fine. Fear is a rather irrational creature.

Playing Dress-Up

Some days, I am tempted. Some days, it seems so close.

I daydream in cloudy fantasies of romance. Saturday night. Maybe I'll straighten my hair. I smile to myself, listening to what everyone would say. How pretty. I have earrings that look real enough, at first glance anyway.
I take note of what others wear. Remember those shoes, you can get shoes like that, I tell myself. I dress, mentally searching for clothing I've bought and never worn, the uncomfortably tight skinny jeans in the bottom left drawer, with the Forever21 hand-me-down top at the back of the closet, a mix of popular style and magazines, until I'm convinced I could pass for someone else, everybody else. I pull out clothing from all nooks into the center of my bedroom, where I hold it out as though adorning an unseen mannequin.
I picture myself in my fantasy. I fit in perfectly. People will come to talk to me and find I'm perfectly interesting as well, and ask me about music or sports. How much we have in common. Rehearsing these conversations in my mind, I'm tempted now to fill my itunes from the 21st century and learn how sports are played.

Alas, how startling reality returns. I reprimand myself silently. With a sigh, I pull the frizz back from my shiny, pockmarked face, and lose whatever figure I had in a torn, discolored sweatshirt. I force myself as though this is my punishment.

Happiness

Here's something new, still staying away from the angsty whining.


I feel full of music, or happiness, or something. I can't hold it all in my heart. There's little cracks, stretched seams, where the feeling is leaking out. It drips out of my heart, down into my arms, and I fling them out, letting the excess fling off my fingertips into the world. It's fun, I suppose. I dance with it, I sing with it, I drive other people crazy. I keep it full of music and colors and people, it flows fast, insatiably greedy though bottomless to share.

I suppose I'm terrified of it.

Later, I turn on Edith Piaf. La Vie en Rose. I sit with my chin at the windowsill and mouth words I don't understand. The glowing remnants of the sunset are somewhat promising, and the whole world seems exciting.

Hamburger Dress

Let's interrupt my normal whiny rambling for something completely different.

I knit a dress that looks like a hamburger! And I love my blog and my readers, so I give you pictures, you're welcome.

Anyway, this is it all spread out, before I sewed it up the back. It's cool, right? Lettuce and cheese and meat and all, and the tomatoes cool too.

This is it finished. I'm really proud. Leave comments!









Lots of love,
         Reagan

Faulty Teenage Logic

He was always attracted to her, but it never bothered me. He dumped me with the promise that we'd be together again. I guess he never really meant it, or maybe he forgot he ever said it, because he forgot about me rather quickly. It wasn't until a few months later I realized we'd never get back together. At the same time, I realized he was flirting with my best friend.

I wasn't so much hurt by the fact that she was my friend as I was by the realization that he was over me. I was foolish, romantic, and he was my first kiss. I never understood the unwritten "bros before hoes" and "chicks before dicks" rules, but I used them anyway. He and I were over, but I wasn't over that. I guess I was so desperate to stop him from being with anyone else, that I played the only card I had, the only expected reaction. So I told her she couldn't be with him.
"Why?" she asked.
"He's my ex."
"So?"
"Well, you're my friend."
"So? We really like each other, and we make each other happy."
"That's not how it works," I snarled. I was stubborn. I was so set in the idea that she was breaking the rules, that she was terrible, that she was breaking girl code and ruining our friendship, that she was the only thing standing between me and him, so I decided nobody could be happy.

I lashed out at both of them, how selfish she was, how scheming he was. I hurt. I forced her to promise me she'd forget about him. Then, pitying myself, I stopped talking to them both. But I was haunted by what she said. "We make each other happy." And how fleeting is happiness? How hard is it to find someone you could talk to? If he couldn't talk to me anymore, maybe he could talk to her. At the very least, maybe they were just happy together. Resigned, I called him.
"Listen, "I sighed, "I've thought a lot about it, and if you want to date her, you can."
"She didn't tell you? We've been dating for a week, I asked her out last monday."
"And she said yes?"
"Well, yeah."
I hung up.

I called her later, but I didn't have the heart to be angry.
"Are you ok?"
"I'm fine," I said. I wasn't.
"Are you ok with it?"
"Yeah." Not a bit.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."
"Don't worry about it."

I felt betrayed and helpless. But it wasn't really ever in my control to begin with, it was always their choice. Falling asleep that night, I genuinely wished that they'd be happy together. A week later, she called me. They'd gone to the mall, and evidently, it hadn't gone well.
"I don't get it," she cried, "We just didn't click."
I sighed, and pulled back my hair with one hand, then let it fall absentmindedly around my face. For the next hour, I consoled her over our now shared ex. The phone beeped angrily with a call on hold.
He called me after she did, looking for the same comfort, and I gave it.

I'm not anything more than her now. Just an ex. Just a friend. We'd both been kissed. Written songs about. I wasn't anything special to him anymore. But I don't really regret it. A chance to be happy, even in high school, even for two weeks, is still a chance to be happy. I'm not defending or advocating anything, but if I played it over again, the only thing I'd change would be to wish them well sooner.