Old Scars

I want to stop writing about my past, but what else do I have?

Everyone is gone and I'm still here trying to sort out what happened.
The few people I cling to now are hours and cities and states away.
So I sit in an empty backyard and hold my battered heart in my hands and all I see is my past.
The heartaches.  The traumas.  The people who might have been good for me if I hadn't let them go.
All I see is myself at fifteen taking one wrong step that send me tumbling down a flight of figurative stairs for the next seven years.  Now, the falling has stopped and everyone and everything is gone.  I was left at the bottom, broken, with a head full of stories and words that I use to medicate the pain.
I guess I'm still there, at the bottom of the stairs, but I don't know what the next move is.
Move out? but where would I go?
Fall in love? but with who? who would want all of this?
Be happy? but how? how do I even begin that process?
I don't know.  I don't know the answers to any of it.

Instead, I sit in solitude and pull at old scars and stitches until they bleed out onto the paper and leave me empty again.

Stuck

The sky here isn't a bright enough blue.
The air isn't warm enough to stave off the shivers.
The sea is too far away.
This town is too small, too old.
The roads wrap around me, holding me back.
The memories of these places crash in my head until I can't see anything else.
The faces of these people haunt me in every store, at every light, waking and sleeping.
And I can't escape soon enough.
And I've got no one and no where to run to when I go.

I Imagine

I imagine what might happen if you were the one for me.
I imagine us sitting on the roof, watching the sunset.
I imagine that when I tell you about my fears, they don't scare you away.
I imagine that instead you take my hand and reassure me.
You would listen to my stories, and tell me your own.
We would laugh and things wouldn't feel the way they do right now; all mixed up and wrong.
You would look in my eyes and see the truth and nothing in my past would be too much.
You would find the beauty in these scars that I can't see and the hope that I have buried deep inside.
And on the rooftop in the dying light, we might come alive.
And you might be the one I prayed for.
And I might finally fall asleep happy.

Friends to Live For

There are two types of friends.

There are ones who seem nice for a time, but slowly, make you feel more and more alone when they're around.  You smile more than you speak.  You nod and listen to the stories.  You watch them make plans in front of you that don't include you.  You find yourself thinking about how irrelevant you are, how much more fun they'd have without you.  You think of the age gap between you and question your own maturity.  You realize no one is listening and let your words trail off and slip into a silence that feels like choking.  You feel like you're watching them in a TV show and no matter how loud you try to interject, the sound won't go through.  You force out laughs that feel like knives in your heart and lumps in your throat and when the night is over, you feel so much worse than you did when it began.  And you can, you should, do without them.

But then there are others.

There are ones where you laugh until your face hurts, and the laughs are ugly and genuine and whole.  Your chest aches for air in between the laughs and the stories and the talking because you haven't stopped to breathe.  Your breaths feel like magic filling your lungs.  Your veins are full of sunshine and fire you feel silly and loved and crazy in all the right ways.  The night is dark or the morning is young and even when all the stories have been told and you're worn out from laughter, you sit side by side in a wholesome silence that fills you peace instead of anxiety.  You are lightheaded with the joy of the future with these people, and with the possibility of this moment.  You don't have to say the right things, or do what makes sense because everything is so incredibly messy and beautiful already.  And the world somehow feels both huge and tiny but in a way that brings goosebumps to your skin and a smile to your face for days to come.  And for every one of the these friends, you thank the Lord a dozen times because they make you feel like the world belongs to you and like you have a home here.  And that is beautiful, that is what you live for.

Things I Love

-Sunrise and Sunset
-Long summer days full of saltwater and sand and sunshine drenched in laughter
-Road trips made up of equal parts of music and storytelling and silence
-Getting lost in another world when opening a book
-The way the ocean glitters underneath the sun
-Hot cocoa in spirited mugs
-Quiet fall evenings wrapped in a sweater staring up at the darkening sky
-Goosebumps at the beginning of a song as the notes make their way into your soul
-The way words spill out of broken hearts in the dead of night under cover of darkness
-Secrets and jokes that give way to the instant where friendship is born
-Pictures taped in notebooks promising our past that it won't be forgotten
-Empty paper begging for art and love and pain to be spilled upon it from the tip of a pen
-The lull of road noise when you're all alone in the car making your way toward something new
-The way the things we love come bubbling up out of us and paint our cheeks with red and eyes with light

But more than all of that, I love the way my heart beats of of sync when you look at me as if I am your whole solar system standing here on earth.