Sitting here somewhere unfamiliar, surrounded by worn in arm chairs and Spanish moss, pretending the chairs are like hugs, pretending the trees are weeping willows, practicing my disappearing act by morphing into the background of a stranger's scenery, how many layers of clothing do I have to bury myself under until I dissolve, can you hear my screaming, did I say that out loud, sorry for stepping on your foot, have you seen that episode of this show, i can't hear you, repeat yourself, what did you say, in a state of constant emergency looking for the panic button and panicking because maybe this is what life looks like, like does it just look like this, how do you hide from the very thing you are, how does your face not constantly hurt, why can't i find my way out, why does my whole body feel like a migraine, is my skin becoming see-through? does everyone thing about death all the time, does anyone wonder what it feels like when someone cuts off body parts, do you know how hard it is to eat, have you ever had trouble swallowing, do you know what it's like to be worried to be alone --- not wanting to be around people but the real fear of what you are capable of when you are left alone? Do you have any idea what i mean? do you think about how uncomfortable it would be to bleed from your pores, do you know the meaning of life, are you afraid of every small thing, have you ever taken lexapro, do you want to know what the stars feel like when you touch them, whens the last time you called your mother, does she know you're lonely, how do you feel today scale of 1-10, did you forget how to count that high, do you think the blonde girl sitting across from me is watching me or does she just happen to know exactly what i look like, why can't i cpitatlie catiske capitalize my words, i can't see the computer anymore, i can't do my job anymore, autocorrect is the only thing keeping me alive, i can't punctuate, it feels like daggers to press shift before pressing other buttons don't make me do it the rose chai i just drank reminded me of a bubble bath but it didn't taste like a bubble bath do you have any idea what that means have you ever been anxious have you ever drowned yourself have you ever wondered if you could become a bug have you ever cried yourself to sleep have you ever believed in god are you afraid of him are you afraid of yourself do you know the muffin man can you handle your mind are you sick are you ready do you know how to get out of here can you reach the orange juice for me do your fingers hurt how do i make it stop

Writing from an empty room, or a room emptying at least, thinking about how the towels are all still so wet, thinking about how it was with you, thinking about you, thinking now about how I still don't think much about you and wondering if that means I am sick or if I was just confused before, wondering now what that says about the way I love, wondering if I even know how to love or if I am just confusing love and romance, not doing any worrying, but knowing there is much to worry about.

This is good. This is something good. The room is full but there is nothing here. I keep telling people that but they don't believe me--- or maybe they do but I don't think they know what I mean. It's all out the door. It's all out the window. It's all buried in Golden Gate Park under the bench where the old lady is sleeping. It's somewhere we have been together. It's something about always being in love with somebody or the missing of somebody or the way it feels to be alone. Addicted but okay, in some ways reminding myself that nobody is as independent as they think, or as selfish as they feel, or whatever or however or whoever. Things just go this way sometimes.

In this empty room, there is a lack of silence. The way air moves, it has that affect on things. It also has that effect on things. It also can create suspect or maybe you don't even remember the way this room looks. It helps me to know how easy forgetting is when you are really good at it.

What Comes is Better Than What Came Before

I'm laying flat on my stomach with my shoulders poking into the back of me- a posture I know will probably kill me when I'm older-- and I'm listening to a Cat Power song I remember hearing for the first time when I saw V for Vendetta in high school. When I love a song, I actively listen to it repeatedly until there's no way for me to keep count. This was one of those songs at another time in my life. But, like I said, now I'm on the floor and it's today and everything is much different now.

It's just Clarissa and me in this living room like it was in the beginning.

The last few years passed in a way I can't explain and it makes me sad now feeling like I can't remember those years. I can barely remember California now-- and I wonder if I'll ever remember anything. I read over myself again and again sorting for any kind of honesty but I think I was just trying to survive. If I remember too hard, I remember everything and feel sadness start to pulse through me. I keep getting older and I can't stop remembering and then forgetting again and remembering and pushing it out of me and hearing her voice tell me I wanted to kill myself when I don't think that's true at all or remembering how I just wanted him to go away or remembering the softer hurt of just being left behind without some kind of explanation. I just want to stop remembering those things. I'm not sad about them anymore, but I can still feel the sadness if I let myself. I think this is probably similar to drug addiction - you just keep seeking the same things. Even when you're healthy, you remember yourself as sick. I think I'm fine. I'm just being dramatic. Moving stirs up feelings and dust.

#

What about something that someone else can actually READ, Kate?

I worry about myself in romantic relationships because my positivity makes it hard for me to distinguish whether or not how I feel is actually real or me being hopeful and looking on the sunny side. I always love these people so hard it kills me -- and then I remember how internally I have been saying all along how I thought he was arrogant or kind of rude or an alcoholic - whatever. But I tell everyone around me how good everything is and then I can't figure out what parts of it are lies. And I think a lot of this is where my Aquarian nature comes into play and I shut down.

Now we arrived together in this moment where we can decide either to jump in together or to keep shuffling around until we're forced together and we are deciding to jump. I keep wondering if it will get dramatic or if it will always be this quiet, wonderful way with you where everything feels okay almost all of the time - and when it's not okay it's only because I'm freaking out that it's overall pretty good and I just panic. I keep wondering how you are growing kinder, getting more handsome, loving me more. I keep wondering why. I keep wondering when we are supposed to get crazy or if we are supposed to do things this way. I can't even process what's going on because it just feels like we're moving in the right direction the right way. Is this okay? Are we okay? Now I'm not asking because I'm trying to go somewhere else - it's more like quiet dancing and we are alone.

What I'm saying is that I love you. And I will really do my best. And I'm all in.

Been a while, y'all

"What happened, happened once. So now it's best/ in memory--- [...] Love's/ merciless, the way it travels in/ and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove/ we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers/ on the table. And we still had hours." - from "Stolen Moments" by Kim Addonizio

What's the point? Love, merciless, sometimes breaking, sometimes bind-

ing together blind-

ness or nesting itself inside my insecurities--or better yet, can you help me think?

I need words big enough so nobody can actually understand how I feel about anything because life is

inherently

boring. Don't think

that this is going to work out, and I am thinking about being bent over

a balcony

23 stories above with someone I don't know

but maybe we will get married instead of all the other plans I've made. My concern

feels light.

What's happening now?

There's no light here anymore. Nothing anymore, there is is more

than the light just traveling out of me, more than ever

mercilessly I am cutting

you off. I am not explaining myself. 

Time's up. Timing was a word

explaining nothing instead of all the words

I should have given you. We only had

a balcony. And hours.

"You know, I probably did meet somebody like that. I probably wasn't paying attention."

When I met you, I started paying attention. Saying that out loud changed my life, and maybe it has been changing other lives too that aren't just mine, people who are close to me and they are close to other people and you are helping in ways you don't know because you don't know them yet. I wonder about what he said to me, that the next boy would be the one I marry, and now that that boy is you, is that still something he believes and what does it say about me that i want his opinion founded in nothing but a gut feeling to be so true? I remember how you stood and you were like a tree and you were so beautiful in a really masculine way and when you showed me pictures of your cats I couldn't believe how I already knew you were going to be mine, even though for weeks and then maybe even a few months, I convinced both of us that wasn't going to be true. How can we be so different inside ourselves at the same time? How can olivia wilde's bra size be a 32B? How am I living in a world where I can find that out?

Why would we give this away?

And, at the same time, what am I supposed to do to make sure I hold on?

Hard sometimes to be able to understand whether I am sad for the inherit sadness of a sad thing or sad because I have, again, of course, failed. Feeling confused more than ever, feeling like I don't understand why I can't make anyone stay, feeling the most sad because I couldn't make you stay. Or maybe I can. I know it's not over yet, but everything leading up to this feels just as bad as everything else.

I guess I just don't know what else I can do.

Just words

Starting over somewhere

maybe, or repeating patterns,

or worrying about losing my job

or doing things wrong

or how all the people in Dolores Park let their dogs run wild around me like how I am always wondering about how other people are waking up every day and if they are bored like how I am bored

or how about bus roars

and that initial crack of a cigarette.

Beginning the fatigue of a good girl

is smelling that cigarette by a pool

and remembering that boys never

love the exact you-- just portraits and

words and how she doesn't do drugs

but how she doesn't care if you do

and she even likes how you used to do too much coke and spend a lot of money on Ikea furniture. 

She is sleeping through panic attacks,

she is tightening her throat,

she is instrumental in you forgetting

the brunette who hated music,

she is reminding you about leaving,

she is choosing words, and she is

somewhere like salt on your cheek.

I am really glad I did not give up.

I've reached a moment in my life where I just have wanted to be alone--- and I don't mean alone like away from other people.. I have wanted to be alone from my own self. I haven't wanted to write, have consciously resisted it. Truth is, I would love to say I know why but I don't. I have barely cried at all since November. I didn't cry more than for a little while the entire time I was driving across the country with Bryan. When I think about that, I wonder about all of this. I wonder why I don't feel sensitive to anything anymore and I hope that it's just a phase like everything else, I hope there's something left, I hope there are always more tears. I don't want to be sad--- I just want to feel something enough to cry over it.

There was a moment in the airport... My mom was drinking dunkin donuts next to me, we're just sitting waiting for two hours to board our plane, and I think of how alone I felt the second you said bye, and it was like my heart just stopped. I remember looking at my mom with wet eyes and her looking at me and she didn't ask me if I was okay... she knew just to let me be. She knew how I felt, somehow, without me saying anything. I think of this and I think of my mom's big blue eyes and I think of how for the first time she was seeing me in the middle of romance as opposed to in between it or somewhere around it- she saw the separating, the part that I had always just dealt with alone. And it was new for both of us. In a good way. Even in the sadness, there was so much undeniable love.

It's hard for me to say what comes next because I don't know. I just know that this time, like every time, I am all in as much as I know how to be. I am just praying that this lack of tears doesn't mean that I've stopped feeling as much or that I've lost my way. I am hoping I am just stronger in new ways. And that when I do finally face myself, I will feel it all and somehow I will be better because of it. Better than what, I don't know. I am not sure what to do other than just keep trying.

There's no way to know for certain, but I think I am happy.

Somewhere between doubt and magic, I am manic for you; yearning

for something more, he tells me. Stimulating commitments, he tells me. It's you, he tells

everyone. It's not his fault. It's the way things work best. It's best, for me, to keep them

far away--- across oceans, across deserts, anywhere but here. Because here, I am sad

or scared, usually. There is always darkness. Sometimes there is fog. And, of course, 

there is happiness. But the hard part is not the change itself, but the changing, the shift, 

the look on my face as my eyes roll to the back of my head and I am fainting into another

place, a place where it is cloudy and soft, and easy to get lost. So, I do my best to keep

my distance, to keep distance, to keep distant-- just enough to be in love and just enough

to destroy everything I love. This is the way of my world, the way things go here, the way

you and I only needed to meet one time for my entire life to change. This is the way things

go in a perfect world. I am still left crying.