i don't know why i thought i could help this family.

i'm not anybody worth listening to,
and convincing myself otherwise
has absolutely not been worth it.

fuck it.

i'm lost

i remember when people used to like me,
people used to think i was a nice person.

people used to see me in the street and wave,
used to see me and know that they could say hello.

what happened?

when did i become the kind of person
who can't hold a gaze?

why do my eyes, unbidden,
search for earth when someone smiles?
(when i used to smile back?)

now there are people who don't like me,
and people who believe that i don't like them,
and i pretend i don't care because

i don't know the steps i took to get here,
and i don't know the steps to take
to get back.

memoirs of a shitty person

i love/hate perfect families.

i always try to remind myself that everyone's experience is different,
but i can't help but laugh when someone says their family is encountering a "problem" and it's like, their parents argued one night and their dad slept on the couch for a day or like their siblings are better/worse than them or like whatever i just don't care, it's like -

christmas season rolls around and honestly
the details aren't worth shit, but suffice it to say that holy god damn,
do i get bitter towards families that are closer to whole.

(which is near fucking everyone.)

like just,
fuck you and your "struggles" that amount to a good fucking day on my end.
and i try to remind myself, i try to say, you know:

everyone is different,
a problem is a problem.

but it's fucking hard sometimes.

and the thing is,
i don't want these other families to stop being wholer than mine,
i know i don't.

and this is where it comes back around,
back around to the same place it always ends up in,
which is me hating myself.

because i can't even be happy for other people,
and fuck if that isn't just the shittiest thing.

in the 500s

• you are the kindest of the kindling i have ever lit ablaze
• your light near blinds me; your warmth near burns me, and oh -
  i just wish that it would.
• sparks rising to the sky, and i call: please,
  take me with you. take me with you.
• you will burn yourself to ash trying to warm my heart
• a six-foot-tall bonfire on an empty beach at night:
  and a list of other things i've never had

idk man, been watching that "christmas fireplace" channel or whatever all day while my dad and i cleaned and shit. fires are stuck in my head i guess.

goodnight.

ebb

no matter how gently i press my fingers, matchsticks, into your skin -
the scars, too rough, ignite and i

i watch you burn, near blinded by the light but unable
to look away from another beautiful thing that i have turned to ash.

everything i touch goes up in flames, and you're the worst of it because you,
you come back, burnt and broken, every time, asking me

"again, again, again."

the scars, too rough, ignite and i

i build you into a bonfire over and over
and i feel you burning deep inside my bones.

petty isn't pretty

maybe it's immature of me to be crying in my room and blogging about it, but:

today a friend told me i might be able to come with her and her family on a cruise near my birthday. it's a long story and it's not mine to tell but they ended up with an extra ticket for a family cruise they've had booked for a while now and my friend and i had talked about asking if maybe i could take it (paying for my own flight and whatnot) and then she told me that when she went to bring it up to her parents they actually brought it up before she even could and i just -

i have been so lucky with my friends in that i've not only gained them as important people in my life, but their families too, who seem to find some hidden value in me that i'd forgotten was there.

and it's the strangest mix of gratitude and jealousy when i realize that i feel more love and comfort from the families of others than myown, because i'm not sure when but somewhere along the way i stopped being something good anymore when i'm at "home". and i don't really understand it but it hurts.

i knew coming home for the holidays was going to be bad but then i found my little brother's used syringes in the basement and of course it's right back to playing therapist for my dad and i know i'm supposed to be an adult now but i just wish i wasn't old enough that people expected me to be able to handle this because i don't know how to.

i hate being tied to these people.

and i feel like the real reason i always feel like shit when i come home is because i hate myself for feeling like that but i can't fucking stop. i'm so tired of being associated with my useless fucking drug addict of a brother and my tired, angry father who fucking FAVORS my brother and it's like,

i'm going to university. i pay for all my own clothes, my own food. i have a steady job outside of school.

meanwhile, my brother has held down a job for two months now (the longest streak yet), uses all his money to buy drugs while my dad clothes and feeds him, and has yet to gain a single year's worth of high school credits.

and tonight when i mentioned to my dad that i'd been invited to possibly go on the cruise, he just groaned and started telling me how his credit got all fucked up because he was helping my brother pay off around $15,000 or so in drug debt and how he doesn't know how he'd be able to help me at all and how he doesn't really want me to spend my money on it either because he'd rather i save for school and i get that, i do, but my brother doesn't get prompted to save any of his money because he has no future i guess so fuck it, why not spend it all now, right? meanwhile he still borrows money from my dad like it's nothing and my dad gives it to him, knowing it's going to be for booze or alcohol or fast food when we have plenty of decent food at home and

i don't understand why i'm not allowed to have nice things just because my brother is a piece of shit and i hate that i can even think like this but i wish he was dead. i wish my little brother was dead. i'm so tired. i just want relief. i'm tired of the drain.

i feel so fucking petty and this is why i hate coming home because i hate that i should even be crying over a cruise of all things, like i just feel like such a piece of shit but i just thought that maybe for once i could have something nice and i hate that it took someone else's family thinking of me in order for it to even come close to happening.

i remember when, years ago, my dad talked about how we should all get our passports so that we could go on a family vacation down south sometime.

now he talks about how he's living paycheque to paycheque after court fines and drug payments for my brother and i'm trying so fucking hard to get out of this but sometimes it seems so fucking impossible. how am i ever supposed to get into a situation where i can have money and be comfortable and maybe have extra things, nice things, when i have no money to get me there in the first place?

and i understand that i should be more than willing to put my money towards school but i just want to travel and this cruise is the closest thing i can fucking get to it because i'm trapped in school and i'm trapped with this fucking farce of a family because of school because i need help paying for it and i just want to be done and gone so i can leave because i can't handle it. i can't.

running away makes me seem even smaller but i never learned how to not be a bad person, so.

i just hate that while other people associate "coming home" for the holidays with family and relaxation and i associate it with breakdowns and inadequacy and hating myself.

and i hate that i feel like an entitled little brat when i say that i feel like my brother has wasted MY money because it's my father's money and i know that but god fucking damn it if he had just never been born none of this would have happened and my parents would be living comfortably and my dad wouldn't be talking about how if he's lucky he'll only have $20,000 left on his line of credit when he retires in two years,

and while we're at it why don't we just say that i wish i had never been born either because my parents waited way too late and weren't cut out for it which is why i don't have a mother anymore and why i am playing mother to my brother and why i don't even feel like my father's daughter anymore and why i am so filled with hate and sadness because that's what you get when you combine and angry man and a sad woman and create children.

all of this over a cruise and i have never felt like a bigger piece of shit in my life but i just thought that maybe i could have this one thing. just once. and it's stupid because for all i know things might work out for my friend and her family and they might no longer be able to offer me the ticket - which might solve all the problems because then i'd be back to square one where nice things weren't even on the table for me and so i won't have to hate myself for it.

besides, if my "family" can't be whole, at least someone else's should be.

i just hate everything, most of all myself.

happy holidays.

things i want to eventually make youtube videos about maybe:

• people who treat their pets like people
• linguistic (semantic) evolution
• shit you always fuckin' see at the gym
• skin. oh man skin what even
• why i can't watch typical tv shows
  (why i only watch documentaries and cartoons)
• living with boys all the damn time
• when the fuck do you start feeling grown up
• why farts are the funniest thing ever
• my sense of humor
• body hair/hair in general
• suicide

eh, other shit, i don't fucking know, jesus shit i wish i could sleep

goodnight i guess, fuck it

man what the fuck i'm not even in a shitty mood, just a weird one,
and yet everything i write is the most emo shit i have ever pooped out
and just ugh.

kajhsdfjhgdv

how strange it is, that in my head
are all the things i could have said,
were i not filled with hate and dread
and bitter jaded fire.

how heavy now, the words i chose,
left steeping in a false repose
where every broken body stows
the brittlest desire.

how hardened, 'til a heart can't break?
the burden of a stubborn ache -
i'll swear on it, for honor's sake:
we both know i'm a liar.

helium

i feel like
someone somewhere let out a breath of relief;
the exhalation of their anxieties bleeding into me and i,
i am too full of my own gulps for air, my own
gasps for breath,

the instinctual reprieve.

i hate to use the old cliches but,
they are cliches for a reason, and i am

drowning, and i am

ready to sink.

i am buoyed against my will
by breaths that were supposed to be comforting,
that were supposed to feel okay.

i am fit to bursting,
my skin stretched like a sad party decoration left for a week
in the room of a child who doesn't want to forget
the birthday where she finally
got a cake and i -

i don't understand this shape that i have taken.

i am so blown out of proportion.

tealight

the scent of a freshly burnt-out candle,
the scent of going,

of going,

of gone.

flux

we live in the cages we build ourselves.

our whole lives through we strive for
goals set by other people whose names
we do not know.

and if you are lucky then you want it
and if you are unlucky then you pretend to
because luck has nothing to do
with "securing your future."

i am working, barely,
for a piece of paper that tells me
that i am good enough in the eyes of others
to deserve more things i do not want.

i don't understand the definition of desirable.

there are three types of people in the world:
people who know that they are sad,
people who do not know,
and a third type i've
yet to meet.

(but who i hope exists.)

our whole lives through we strive for
relationships whose value is unknown or unnoticed,
because connections are key.

we treat it like a web upon which we weave our own designs,
but our construction relies too heavily on the material weight.

our bars are built in the sadness we choose for ourselves,
our lock and key fabricated from the arbitrary rules we choose to believe in,
despite the inherent longing for beliefs we have schooled ourselves away from
because simplicity lacks strength.

our prisons may be intricate,
but they are prisons nonetheless.

sdfghjkjhgfx

everybody grows up broken, battered and bruised;
if not outright abused, then cut, cross and confused -
all reaching for ideals that don't fit with the model,
and learning early on: the cure comes in a bottle,

and my problem was not knowing what the problem was -
courting chaos 'cause that's what a lack of chemicals does.
took me ages to accept that this was not my fault;
the many stages through which i guess i'm now an adult -

not that i know any more, not that i feel any less -
not that i'm angrier or even more happy at best.
but i've got a prescription, which makes it not an addiction, right?
yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night.

take me off the pills - take me off the 8-a-day, straight-away,
chase-with-water, like-you-oughtta-act and i am not okay.
i don't know how to speak without spite, feel like i might
hurt somebody, man, why didn't god make me right?

and i ain't religious, 'cause i always grew up being told
that what you do when you're young is what you are when you're old.
well, i've attempted suicide twice, so that's nice -
guess what i'm gonna get is not dead yet.

what the fuck is the matter with me, why can't i see straight,
why can't i just be someone not filled with hate -
too late to rock myself to sleep and try again tomorrow;
got to borrow some seratonin to help ward off the sorrow.

 jhfghdsgh will continue later or not idgaf

lack

it's hard to talk about;
all the time i've gone without,
claiming i don't need to be another bomb to walk around -
trying to diffuse the tension,
always confused,
not to mention
how the fear of being seen as something weaker-than was stronger than
my own defence and
i don't need attention, 'kay -
get another soul for intervention, 'kay -
'cause i won't be a piece in your possession play,
that's yesterday,
i'm up and gone and walked away -
don't know how to say
it still hurts.

i'm here to listen,
to put in my lines at intermission,
to read back the feedback required in my position.
it's an easier concept
to be on-script,
to sit back, smile, and steer clear of that guilt trip
of not giving a fuck.
i learned the hard way not to -
and now i'm so fucked that i can't when i ought to
sought you out to figure out what this was all about
and caught you, red fuckin' handed,
i can't stand it:
that you can't even handle what your choices got you -
two scared fuckin' kids who grew up and forgot you.
never quite enough though, i do confess,
but i've said enough here, so i digress.

if i could,
i'd tell you how i don't sleep nights,
and my trust is tied tight so i just pick fights,
and pop five pills a day,
'cause i don't work right -
never know what to say
because i speak out of spite,
and i hate not caring, but i don't know how -
HEY MA, i wanna scream, IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW -
you might love me less if you could -
'cause ain't that the problem, huh - from the 'burbs to the hood,
"mommy didn't love me the way she should,"
i'd rather not whine, 'cause that don't look good,
"i'll be fine," i say instead,
and i walk.