Music That Makes Me Miss

 Music from my younger years spills in and nostalgia takes me over.  The words roll off my tongue dusty but never forgotten.  They pinch my heart the way an old sweater might pinch you in the places where you'd outgrown it.  But they feel so familiar, so warm and bright with memories that I let them slip out anyway.  The notes roll through me and raise goosebumps on my arms as I fall into the haze that only long suppressed feelings can stir up.

And I find myself missing the feelings I had back then.  Feelings that were big and bright and consuming.  I miss the high before the fall; the way I felt so alive.

I miss the way I hoped to much for so many things and my faith in people thrived.  I miss the freedom I had given my heart back then.

I miss the smiles that stretched our faces so wide for so long that the muscles started to ache.  I miss the way my heart felt so full that at times, it felt like it might burst.

I miss so much and I wonder now, if there's some way to get those feelings back.  Some form of healing that comes in more things than old music and aching, bittersweet memory.

I miss so much but I don't know how to get it back.  Feelings just slipping through my fingers, so small and fragmented and intangible that I have to shake them out of my bones the way you shake sand from your shoes.

And the way you go home sun kissed and gritty from the sea shore, I slip out of the music with an ache in my chest and a pinch behind my eyes.  Because even though the feeling fades, for a moment in time the music pulls me through the clouds and then drops me back on the ground and the effects are physical, noticeable, real.

An Island to Many, A Home to None

I know I'm hard to understand.  I know I'm full of contradictions and opposites and riddles.  I know I don't make it easy to get close to me and I know I make it hard to get away.

Stand too close and I craw at my throat.  I push you away.  I suffocate on your consideration and attention.

Stand too far and I choke on the space between us.  I reach with weak hands across the void.  I drown in the loneliness that seeps from my heart.

Am I picky for wanting someone who knows how and when to give me space without the weight of abandonment crushing me beneath it?  For wanting someone who sees through the mask I paint on each day?  For wanting something I'm not so sure exists?

I've lived a life full of loneliness.  People come for a season and only stay for a day.  I've spent a lot of my time wondering who still thinks of me when I still think of everyone.

Am I high maintenance for wanting someone who understands that fear?  For wanting someone who isn't afraid to stay?  For wanting someone who knows that when I push, it's just self preservation not me wanting isolation?

I feel like an island where people stop for a moment of rest before they head home for good.  I feel like the moment of reprieve on a long journey that doesn't quite satiate you because it's not quite home, not yet.  I feel like the space between foreign soil and familiar land, the space where no one waits too long.

Am I wrong for wanting someone to land here and feel like they've finally come home?  For wanting to pull up my roots and land somewhere solid for myself instead of floating in the ocean?

I feel and I feel and I feel and the feelings are like waves, pulling and pushing and rolling over me all out of my control.  Somedays I feel like a rock, solid and firm and standing my ground against them.  Somedays I don't even know how to swim.  I just need someone who can teach me to tread the water and then pull me up into a boat.  I just need a steady hand, a space between me and the water, a moment to breathe. 

The Strangeness of Now

 It's strange to have enough separation between past trauma and the present that I can finally see everything clearly.  I've lived my life pressed up close to the pain, not realizing what I was living in, not knowing how it was changing me even then.  I've lived with toxic acid in my eyes, everything blurred, everything messy, relying on stranger's hands to pull me through.  Trusting what they said and did because they named themselves friends.

Now, I've got clearer eyes, a clearer mind, and a few feet between me and the past.  Now I can see things a little better.  I'm not pressed so close that the truth is distorted, I'm separated a little with a better view.  A bigger view.  A view of how much bigger and brighter the world can be outside of the little muddy patch I'd been trapped in.

It's strange to look back at years of what I thought was my personality, at what I thought life was supposed to be, and realize that who I am is a persona that's been pushed on me.  I'm not better, not yet.  But I'm well enough that I can start shedding the skin they put me in.  The skin that never felt quite like mine but what did I know?  I was living with blank eyes and a head full of lying voices that told me to stay soft and mild and quiet.

Now, I can see the road ahead of me.  Not far, but enough that I'm curious about what might come next.  I'm curious enough to want to walk a few week.  Healthy enough to make it a little farther away.  I have a chance to make a new life, make a new self, make a new world.  I have the chance to change, to grow, to heal.  A chance to make my way into that bigger, brighter world beyond the mud patch.

It's strange to understand so much of my own mind.  To have so many thoughts going around all the time.  To constantly pull at the treads in my insecurities and unravel them until I find the source.  I'm a trail of threads, knotted up and tangled and hard to follow.  But I'm learning to be patient with myself, learning to follow one thread and pull and let go until I get to the root.  Until I get to the heart of the problems that sprouted from seeds planted in my heart.

Now I can see the weeds and I can see the flowers.  I can see where the good begins.  I can see the route to make my way out of the tall grass.  It's just a matter of time, a matter of having the strength, a matter of having the stamina.  It's a matter of fighting not only the ghosts of my past, but the doubts in myself.

It's strange to have a moment of clarity after so long, a moment where I can definitively tell that my next move will be the change in the tide.  Now I just have to make it.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#4)

A letter to the three of you, three friends, three tragedies, three strangers.

It's been a long time since I've seen any of you.  One of you still embraces me as a friend.  One of you might stroll past me like a stranger.  One of you still stands against me as an enemy.  That's okay.  It's okay.  We were all so young when we met; so insecure and unsure and scared.  We were all trying to find our places in a messy, difficult world.

I don't want to place blame.  I'm just trying to come to terms with what we went through when we were friends.  I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that the cracks in my heart didn't begin at fifteen when I met a senior boy who stole my heart.  They began a little earlier.  With us.  With you.

I didn't really notice when you used me as a tool to find yourselves.  I didn't realize you were all using me against each other.  I didn't realize I was being treated like a prize and not a person. That pattern in my life started with you: with boys who didn't know how to be honest, who only knew how to play games because our lives seemed so much like a chess match at the time.  Always trying to be one step ahead.  Trying to win.  Trying to prove ourselves.

I realize now, that I was collateral damage in the chaos of your self-discovery.  I was a side-effect of you becoming who you are.  And while I am glad you've all found your places in the world, I wonder if you ever considered what would happen to me?  After you postured with me at your side, after you proved yourself, after you found yourself; what happened to me?

You taught me so early that I was someone to consider but never commit to.  I was the almost, but never enough.  I was the girl you might use to make someone jealous, but not the one to make you happy.  I was the ego boost and never the endgame.  I am truly happy you all found yourselves because I know it was a struggle.  I watched you fight tooth and nail for who you are.  I watched you triumph and thrive.  And I wonder now, how do I find me?  After so many years being treated like a place holder how do I find my place in the world, the way all of you did?

You all found yourselves, but somewhere in the shuffle I got left behind.  I heard each of you saying "maybe" and "only if" and "not now" and I sat politely with my hands in my lap, waiting for someone to tell me when it was my turn to be found, when it was my turn to become myself.  But no one ever came.  

I genuinely don't mean to sound accusatory or malicious.  I just never saw what was happening before.  I didn't realize that while you each told me I was beautiful and funny and impossible not to love, none of you were actually loving me.  I wonder, in all the time you spent playing each other, and finding yourselves, did you realize I was losing me?  Did you see the parts of me that broke away every time you showed me off like a stack of poker chips?  

We were so young.  So confused.  So scared and selfish.  We all just wanted to find ourselves.  

I think eventually you all found yourselves by borrowing pieces of me until there was nothing left for me to hold onto.  I'm sorry I didn't stop you.  I'm sorry I didn't know.  I'm sorry we grew up fighting and hurting each other.  I'm sorry I let you think that you can break people just to find yourself.  I would've stopped it all, stopped our pain if I had only known back then.

-M