you can still lose even if you really try

Draft last saved on December twenty-fifth, two thousand and twenty-two

"How do you not hate them?" 

The question echoes in my mind as I drive home. It sits in the back corner of my brain for the rest of the month. It pops up unexpectedly the month after that. I'm washing dishes while the voices of Ryder and the Paw Patrol filter into the kitchen from the living room, and suddenly I'm wondering, "How do I not hate them?" It's complicated, this parent-child relationship, and for a while there, I did. Hate them, I mean. But before that, I couldn't imagine a time or situation in which I ever could. And after that, well, I couldn't think of any good it would do to hold onto it. 

We all have those scenes that break our hearts. No matter how many times we see them, how many different contexts we see them in, they push - with unforgiving fingers - at all the parts in us that are bruised and tender. We may not even know what those parts are, but we know that every time we see the child searching the audience for a parent that isn't there, or the pet dying, or the shoes/jacket/picture they were so excited for laying in a puddle torn/broken/ruined, our eyes will burn and we'll find it hard to swallow around the lump in our throats. For me, one of those scenes has always been the moment that a parent goes from hero to disappointment in their child's eyes. That loss of hope and faith crushes me. Every time. And while the bruised parts being pushed may seem like they change as I grow, I think that the fear that's actually doing the bruising stays the same. 

Not all parents do the best they can. Not all parents want to be parents. Some parents refuse to step up to the plate, and that's... well, that's just a difficult truth. A different kind of heartbreak than the one that presses against my ribs when I think of not hating them. Because some parents do try to do the right thing. They try their best, but sometimes the steps forward that took all of their energy still leave them too far behind. Trying doesn't mean you still can't fail. Doing better doesn't always mean doing enough.

Maybe it's the natural progression of things. When you have a parent that tries, they don't always hit their limits right away. You don't know at first how it'll break you when they come up short. And before they have pushed themselves as far as they are able, before your needs move past their capabilities, the very idea of it is incomprehensible to you. It's not a fear that you know to fear. You may as well worry that the sky will turn into pudding. 

I can see, now, the ways in which they tried. I can see the places where they succeeded, the monsters under their beds that they fought and beat so that they wouldn't make their way under ours. I can see the ways that they didn't try hard enough. I can see the places where they came up short. And maybe it takes becoming a parent that tries yourself, maybe it's one of those things where you don't get it until you live it, but I can accept both of those things now. I can hold both the good and the bad and not hate them for either. 

Sometimes a truth will wriggle its way into your mind. It will sit there tapping against every thought you have until you recognize it for what it is. And if you don't recognize it, or if you tell yourself that the tapping is just the drip of the faucet or the sound of legos banging together, it'll find other ways to get to you. After years and years of letting it collect dust on my TBR shelf, I finally read The Glass Castle after a friend suggested it. And that book broke me and put me back together in so many different ways. My childhood could not have been more different than hers, but every single word she wrote spoke to my soul. I needed something light to escape into after it so I picked up a fluffy romance novel and got smacked in the face with similar truths, demanding that I answer the question that was asked of me months ago. 

So how do I not hate them? By recognizing that hate does not help me. By trying to see them without hero worship or victim mentality clouding my vision. By hoping that learning from their mistakes can push me far enough along to get my own kids to where they were hoping to get me. By letting myself be angry and letting myself be heartbroken and letting myself be forgiving and letting myself not forgive. 

"Anger with all the broken parents, heartache that they too must’ve felt like kids—helpless, unsure how to make the right decisions, terrified of making the wrong ones." ~Beach Read 

*All I Need - Matchbox 20

i love you like the stars above, i'll love you till i die

draft last saved on november tenth, two thousand and fourteen.

i am sitting on the floor of my new, couchless living room, eating sour punch strawberry straws and thinking, as i often do when i consume complete crap, that i probably should have grown out of my fondness for weird, sour, chewy things at some point. most people seem to, at least. it's an important part of growing up that i have missed out on. there is light pouring in from all of the windows that we have yet to curtain, and a miniature human being is twisting around inside of me, and i am suddenly overcome with the greatest feeling of sappiness that i do not think i can contain it.

so prepare yourselves.

i've always been a little kid person. always. invite me anywhere and you'll likely find me hanging out with the under ten group. and toddlers? i think they are my all-time favorite people in the whole world. despite this, the idea of pregnancy has always kind of icked me out. it was creepy and gross and tiring and painful and just something that had to be endured to get to the kids. and by that i meant that it was something for other people to endure. pregnancy was not for me, of that i was certain.

i was soso wrong. i think a big part of it was that i was embarrassingly ignorant about a lot of things. i don't know if i was busy playing hangman in that lesson of bio, if i was just never taught it, or if i just didn't fully appreciate it until now, but guys, pregnancy is fascinating, and miraculous. and i obviously knew all the basics, but the small stuff, like when exactly they develop a four chamber heart and how the spleen makes the red blood cells until the bone marrow takes over and the way that they are their own little person with eye color and everything before they are actually even a person just fills me with this great sense of awe, and it is probably one of the coolest things that i've ever done/learned about. i mean, it is still super creepy to think that there is a whole person-parasite just baking inside of me waiting until it is strong enough to make it in the real world, but it is the most amazing kind of creepy. and yes, pregnancy is still tiring and kind of gross and painful, but it is so much more, too. it doesn't hurt that i was blessed with such an easy pregnancy, of course.

and this person squiggling around inside of me? i am already so much in love with him. every time he kicks or moves i am overwhelmed by this giddy feeling like we are the only two members in a super exclusive club. a really awesome club that no one else can get into. and we kind of feel sorry for you, but we're having too much fun with each other to actually let it get to us. and because i am perpetually a glass-half-empty kind of girl, i'm already lamenting the void that will no doubt consume me when our two-person club expands to include the rest of the world. but for now, it's just me and cricket, and it is wonderful.

everything about it feels very right. i've always been a bit mother hen-ish, and this just feels like everything is falling into place. or something. i know that in a few months i will be sitting on the floor crying because i am so tired and i have no idea what cricket wants, but until then, things are good.

*Romeo and Juliet - The Killers

so i lied

so remember that time in october when i wrote part one of a post and then never actually went on to write part two? yeah, i'm really good with procrastinating. (actually, i have come back to this multiple times since december. it is now may. i just cannot finish or post it for some reason. you guys, i think i may have found some dignity. who would've thought?) just in case you don't feel like clicking the link, part one basically said: i have an issue with attention. when i am put on the spot, suddenly the center of attention, asked something directly, have too many eyes on me or whatever, i panic. like real, hand sweating about to throw up panic. my usual response is to say the first thing to comes to mind that will take the attention off of me the fastest. this first thing usually does not have an immediate effect, and i end up having to answer a few questions. this first thing is usually a lie. well, it used to be. i've gotten a lot better at handling this and while i slip up sometimes, i am more likely to tell the truth these days. (this habit made me into a really good liar, though. a topic i can talk about in another post maybe.) after i say the lie, i'm pretty much trapped because saying just kidding i lied would make me look like an idiot and explaining the panic would just take too long.

and now that you are all caught up, let's go back to high school, shall we? when i was decidedly less successful at this whole not panic-lying thing. *cue memory wavy screen thingie*

it was my senior year. i had recently been turned onto fanfiction full force by a friend who shared a novel-length fic that was so much better than any of pieces i had seen before. it was really good, you guys. i was reading fanfiction regularly and had started writing it a bit, too. in secret, of course. (like, i had a password on the word document just in case. one to open it to read and one to edit it.) the first chapter of my own work was just posted on mugglenet, and i had plans of sharing that with my friends. (maybe not immediately, but definitely before the third chapter was posted. who would see it before then anyway? i had a plan. it involved a lot of stranger-validation and teenage insecurity. i'm not exactly proud of it.) the morning after it was posted, though, before it had more than twenty hits or a single review, i walk into school and my friend asks if i wrote it. (it was actually more of a "i know you wrote it" sort of thing.) the familiar wave of panic crashed into me and i felt a slight breeze as my plan flew out the window and i did what i always did, i lied.

she didn't give up that easily and would casually slip leading questions into group conversations. i remember her asking about a title of a movie and i said it was wicker park and she thought that was solid evidence that the fic writer was me because it was listed as a favorite movie in the author profile and who even knew that movie existed. i argued that the reason i knew it was because i had just watched it on a friday night friend get together thing a few friends and i used to have. which was true. but that was also why it was listed as my favorite movie. because it was in my head. (every time i see/hear anything about the movie - even now - i suddenly feel ashamed and sometimes it takes me a minute to remember why.)

anyway, i continued writing my fanfiction and posting it to mugglenet and making friends with amazing fellow fanfiction writers (one of whom i actually just had a brief catch-up session with online the other day, after eight years of radio silence. it was cool.) and improving my writing and lying about it, because i was too far in to stop. it was pretty awesome because i had some loyal readers and i got a bunch of reviews and some friends and i used to email each other whenever a new chapter was posted on one of our stories because we didn't want to miss anything. it kinda sucked too, though, because although there were great people online, i sometimes wanted to talk to my real life friends about it, and i couldn't. i couldn't even mention the name of the story just in case it blew up in my face. shortly after that, my friend and i started working on a story of our own which i have mentioned on this blog a few times. i wrote both. my online life was so far removed from my real life that they never even bled into each other. i don't think anyone ever conclusively found out that it was me, but really, they could have known the whole time.

and then graduation happened and i got busy and abandoned my story. (not the one i was working on with my friend. that one got finished.) i sometimes feel guilty about it and think that maybe i should go back and write an ending for it. any ending. but i'm not the same person i was at eighteen and i don't really want to corrupt it. besides, i only have vague memories of what was happening in the story. i haven't read it since the first semester of undergrad and am not sure that i want to. anyway, this is my compromise. i may not ever finish my story, but i will acknowledge it as mine. it is no longer a bastard, and that's about the best that i can do for it.

(also, yes, i do realize that i was - and probably still am - quite pathetic.)

*Here's to the Night - Eve 6

i had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor

i have been feeling not the best lately. hence the break from blogging. (although there are some hastily jotted down thoughts in drafts, like "why are audiobooks so freaking expensive?" and something about books to movie adaptations this year. it's a good year for those, if you like that sort of thing. also, a rant about the phrase "the only thing to fear is fear itself" which you can now read in all its unedited glory:

you know what i never understood? the phrase "the only thing to fear is fear itself." and how that supposedly makes you some super awesome above everyone else human being. but... and maybe i'm understanding this wrong, but wouldn't that really just make you really, really weak? like, if you are afraid of being afraid then doesn't that make you afraid of everything? "people are afraid of spiders. hmm i wonder if i'm afraid of spiders. ahhh me being afraid. i must never see a spider because then i may be afraid of it." and like, you are only brave when you do things in the face of your fears. if you are not afraid of dragons then petting one does not make you brave, it makes you a good pet owner. if you are afraid of fear, how are you even supposed to overcome that? do you get scared? because doesn't that defeat your whole endeavor?)

and the fact that this post has taken me literally over half an hour to write so far (and the majority of it was copy-pasted from a draft) makes me want to take an even longer break.

anyway, the point of this post is to have a post. and also to record for the future that i was alive. that my parents were in CT with my grandma for a while, and that now they're back. that they took a break from CT to spend ten days here with my grandma before going back up. that they brought back boxes of family history that i've been going through, looking at old pictures and marriage certificates and diplomas and phone messages and notes on napkins and craving the stories that go along with them. that's the problem with being a voracious reader who blurs the line between books and reality just a bit too often. you start to need the stories. all of them. i want to be the omniscient narrator that sees everything, from every time, and knows what everyone is thinking, always. i  see a picture of friends on a beach with "junior prom picnic" scribbled on the back and i want to read an entire book about it. i want to know what they were talking about, who took the picture, what day of the week it was. i want to know what they ate, who went to the prom with whom, and what the decorations were like. i want to watch a movie of their lives. i want the stories.

i'm one of those people that could look at old pictures for days without getting bored and listen to my grandmother tell stories for years without getting sick of them, so i'm kind of in my element right now.

if nostalgia was a drug, i'd probably overdose on it.

and really, though, why are audiobooks so expensive? (please don't comment with something about how the voice actors need to be paid now too instead of just the writers and publishers and whoever else which obviously means the price needs to be jacked up because i know that.)

*Photograph - Nickelback 

in fact it's phony as hell

i think that a lot of the rules of good writing apply to good living too. you should live your life the way you write. or maybe it's that you should write the way you live your life. actually, whichever one you're doing right, do the other one that way too.

the number one rule of writing is to "show not tell," and i think that applies to the way you act as well. we all hate it (and if you don't then you should) when an author writes a character and tells us, "by the way, this character is really smart. really. trust me on this. like one time, he got straight a's in all of his classes and didn't even have to work for them. he's just really that smart." and then the character doesn't actually do anything to show us that he's smart. ever. but the author continually tells us that he is. if you wrote a character that acted smart, then we are smart enough to know that he is smart without you telling us. (too many smarts in that sentence. ugh.) if you feel that you need to tell us so often then you are going down one of two paths that are equally wrong. path one: you could think that the reader is not smart enough to make his or her own deduction on the smartness of the character based on what he does alone. or two: you are writing this character poorly and failing to show us that he is smart, so you need to let us know he is in whatever other way you can. both of these are paths that you should probably get off of. right now. forget about the map just turn to the side and walk. you'll eventually find yourself somewhere better. 

along the same lines, if you have to continually tell people something about yourself like, "i'm a nice guy," then you are doing something wrong. you are either belittling the other person's intelligence by refusing to believe that they are perceptive enough to pick up on the fact that you are a nice guy and/or unwilling to believe that they have the mental faculties required for them to make the decision on whether or not you are a nice guy (and by make the decision i obviously mean make the decision that you wanted them to make). (in plain english: you think they're too stupid to see how nice you are.) or you are doing something at the moment (or in a very long string of moments more likely) that make you seem like you are not a nice guy and so you feel the need to constantly remind people that you are, in fact, a nice guy and they shouldn't forget that fact just because you are currently acting like an asshole. in both cases, you are telling not showing. and in both cases i am inclined to think that you are not a very nice guy. you are probably coming off as either arrogant, proud, creepy, pedantic, or hypocritical and none of those are good things. 

so, in life as well as in writing, show. don't tell.

*Back 2 Good - Matchbox 20

there's a moment in time, and it's stuck in my mind, way back when we were just kids.

draft last saved: june third, two thousand and thirteen, eight:nineteen a.m.

i stared at the picture of the man, trying to find the face of the little boy that i used to know inside of him, trying to look at it objectively. i supposed people might find him handsome. people might look at his muscled arms and squared jaw and say that he was just the right amount of conventional hot. his hair was long now and the goatee that sat on his chin was new, and i supposed they gave him just enough distance from conventional to be exciting. to be adventurous. to be someone you could fall in love with. but me? i could only see the anger in his jaw, the perverted leer in his eyes. i tried to remind myself that they weren't his, at least i hoped they weren't. i hoped he hadn't inherited the meanness with the bone structure. i hoped he hadn't adopted the manners with the looks.

i looked at the man and tried to find the little boy i used to know inside of him. the boy that would hide with me in the closet under the stairs, holding our breaths so his father, thundering through the house, wouldn't find us. his father, that would beat the little boy. his father, that would send the little boy out of the room and do things to me that left me with a fear and shattered trust that i still had not gotten over.

i looked at the man and tried to find the little boy but saw only his father instead.

i closed my eyes and turned away.

***

this was supposed to be part of something longer that i never got around to. it could also use some editing. but oh well.

*Kristy, Are You Doing Okay - The Offspring

i'm not sad anymore

draft last saved: august eighth, two thousand and twelve, eleven:twenty-four am.


i wander around blank pages and the nothingness presses down on me until my knees are buckling and my back is breaking and my shouts for help are being shoved down to my toes. i'm overwhelmed by the possibilities that are hiding just out of reach. i know they're here somewhere, but i also know that they are no longer for me to see. i can no longer make something out of nothing, i cannot take the page and make it sing. my words have run dry and my creativity slipped away under the cover of night.

maybe it's an excess of fear or a deficiency in sadness. it could be the pressures of expectation or the weightlessness of content that has me floating above the meanings and filling my hands with vapor instead of substance. all i know is that i had something once, and now i don't.

you're waiting for me to regale you with epic battles and tear stained images, but i have no more stories. i have no more words. i have no more need to pour my mind onto paper and share it with the world. i also have no more tears, and no more nights trying to outrun the monsters in my head.

and if this is the price that i must pay for that, so be it.

*My Last Semester - The Wonder Years

you can't always get what you want

draft last saved: august eighth, two thousand and twelve, twelve:twenty-one pm.


i want to write about the fact that the world is my oyster: that it is cramped, gritty, slimy, and taking way too long to grow a pearl.

i want to write about dead people who aren't here to tell you to live your life better, because they are far more concerned about the way their family has completely moved on without them.

i want to write about grey skies and sucking poetry out of my bone marrow and a boy who saw too little.

i want to write about a black hole named anna and the ticking of the second hand.

but i've always been told that we don't always get what we want, so instead i'll write about nothing.

*You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones

i went down, down, down and the flames went higher

draft last saved: august eighth, two thousand and twelve, twelve:thirty-four pm.

let me burn
let my skin bubble
and my blood boil
let me melt in the heat of the fire

anything but this reflection,
this waiting,
this constant wondering when and how and where

let me skip the judgement
let me pass the scales and instead
be thrown onto the coals
red hot and scorching
let the reek of burning flesh invade my senses
let me not be purified by time but
let my sins be burned from my body
by unforgiving flames

let my apologies be ripped from my soul
and shouted to the heavens
let them not be well-phrased and rehearsed

let me burn, burn, burn,
because purgatory is a fate far worse than hell

(inspired by the author's comments on this poem.)

*Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash

wish you were here with me, wish i was there with you

draft last saved: august fourteenth, two thousand and twelve, eleven:fifty-five am.

i wish you were still around. actually, no, i wish that i wished you were still around. i wish i didn't hate you so much and that the thought of seeing you didn't make me want to jump off the balcony. i wish i wasn't so melodramatic.

it's just that i'm empty now, and i think that you could be my ink. i have no more words, but you always seemed to be spitting them out like they were filling up your closet and you really needed room for your shoes. i could take some off your hands. i have no emotions, but i remember you crying and laughing and shouting three times a day. maybe you could share some with me. it's okay if you only want to give me the bad. they were always my favorite anyway.

because i'm no longer an empty canvas, but i never quite made it to masterpiece. i am covered in scribbles and strike outs and there is no place for me to add anything that has any chance of being seen, of being distinguished from the mess of mistakes i've tried to hide. but i think the brightness of your red would be pretty against my dull grey. i think people would stop to read if it stood out like that. i think i might still have a chance if you were still around.

i wish you weren't the kind of person that's so much better when they're far away.

*30 Minute Boyfriend - Julian Casablancas