What Would Cummings Do?

The sun is going down on the streets of Green Bay, and I'm sipping on cinnamon-infused coffee. Savoring spices seems wrong when I have had so little hope in the past weeks. I reach for my poetry books and come up with an ee cummings collection.
If cummings were here, what would he do? Would he let the sun fall without dancing in it's delightful warmth, sucking the last few ounces of indian summer for its light? The leaves on the tree directly facing my window have all fallen. They are now dead and brown on the grass and in the street, crunching along the cement. Would cummings think this a positive or negative attribution of their life? When the leaves die, do we die as well? Would he assume his own death in the changing of the seasons? I don't know. But I wish I could ask him.
Cummings has forever been my touch stone. When I hear his words echo through my empty apartment, I am comforted and soothed. A man I once thought I loved called me his ee cummings' girl, but even with the deadliest pain scarring my heart from our ending, I still feel that I am the world's ee cummings' girl, hidden skillfully behind coffee and cigarettes.
I love the words I cannot comprehend. I do not need to understand words to know that I love them. So why on earth did I feel like I needed to understand matters of my heart to love myself? Would cummings have regretted his life if words did not exist in it? I know I would.
Another man I thought I cared for deeply once made me feel like writing was not important. He wouldn't read my writing, he pointed his angry fingers at my poetry when things were crumbling between us, and for that I will never forgive him. I may forgive many things and continue to move on, but that one moment changed how I felt about him forever. Would cummings have ever pined for someone who made his writing seem insignificant? I seriously, seriously doubt it, and neither will I.
I've been failed by many people, felt loss and pain from many people, but my words have never abandoned me, and for that I will not die with the leaves. I will patiently wait for spring, knowing that beneath all death is some new birth awaiting our gleeful eyes.
“--fear buries a tomorrow under woe / and up comes yesterday most green and young”

No one knows my pain... like Curt Kobain

So another note to that person who shall remain nameless....

I saw you on Friday for the first time since we last spoke. I know you saw me. I know it hurt you. It had to. How could it not? It was killing me, walking around talking to people like you weren't there, pretending I wasn't upset by your being there. What a joke. I hated it. I hated that I couldn't just walk up to you and give you a friendly hug or tell you the things that have been going on in my world. It felt wrong. I miss my friend.

I know what you said too. What you said about me and feeling bad about me. I don't know what it means, I don't know if I want to know what it means, but there it is now. You should feel bad because if I am feeling this horrible day in and day out, then it's only fair that you are as well.

You didn't have to run away, then or Friday. I talked to your friend at bar close, and he was so nice to me that I thought my heart would break. I didn't deserve that. But then again, I don't know what I deserve anymore...

It's been a while...

I know this is a stretch, but I feel like I must use this as a medium to talk to a certain someone who once told me he read my blog all the time (even though I never post on it). I doubt this person still reads it, however, I have things to get off my mind and instead of holding them inside I can release them into the universe... here it goes.

It's been over a month since we've spoken, and it all still feels so fresh. I feel like day-to-day I'm slowly getting over the whole thing, but then again some days are harder than others. Then I think to myself, why are you and the thoughts of you bothering me so much? We barely were a thing when it all ended so abruptly. The more I think about it, the more I'm reminded that it wasn't just you - it was the idea of you.

I had been eager for this to happen for a very long time. I remember wanting it a year ago and thinking it'd never happen. We were always in different places at different times, but I knew I would always have you as a friend come the school semester. You were a touching stone, a rock I could lean on, someone I could talk to about things and confide in. You got me in ways that other men didn't seem to. The poetry, the glances, the small flickers in mood, you saw them in me - acknowledged my me-ness and accepted it as who I am. I don't think a lot of people can say that about anyone they know - friends or otherwise.

So there are these times when I can distract myself long enough to almost forget that for a moment I had finally gotten what had taken more than a year to blossom. I work, and shop, and hang out with friends, and watch endless DVDs... some moments I don't even remember that you are out there. But more often then not, you are there. In the moments following those moments, with some memory popping out and catching me off guard. The smallest things can set me off sometimes, when my mind is left to wander and I have nothing or no one around to keep it moving. I've re-played those last conversations in my head over and over again, searching for some moment of recognition that you knew it was going to hurt as much as it has. That you were going to hate this too. That you were losing a good friend as well...

The harder I try not to think about these things, the harder the You in my mind digs his heels in. Those times in the 4e office, wandering campus halls together, stealing smokes between classes, planning routes around MAC hall so that I could have a shot at seeing you during the day. You plagued my thoughts constantly and yet I was continuously trying to push you to the back of my mind, only to have you agree that it was a mutual feeling until recently.

I have tortured myself for weeks now trying to figure out how I changed, how you changed, and why I was suddenly not worth the effort. It has driven me to tears, to starvation, anguish, and to miss days at work. I can't even write the way I want to. Everything comes out in jumbled words and painfully overemotional sentence fragments. I feel helpless and bitter. You were supposed to be my guide post. I didn't want a savior or a knight, I just wanted a partner. That was too much for you to handle - I was too much for you to handle... and I will continue to wonder why that is, possibly for years to come because I had held you on a pedestal for so long.

I'm sure I'll do this again some day, but for now - that's enough, boo (don't call me boo.)

Paddy's Day

It's hard to believe that two years ago I was in Ireland on this date. I was sitting on the couch at the 717, sick to my stomach with a horrible bladder infection, watching some bad television with the lads and watching them drink the nastiness wine known to mankind, Noblemen. It was also an experience I'll never forget. The feel of the sunshine outside, the smell of the apartment, the comfort of the lads as I laid feeling ill on the couch... Some experiences stay with you forever, and Ireland will always be that for me. It was something I did for me, which I don't think happens enough in my life. I'm usually running here or there for this person or that person and trying so hard to please the world. When will I stop and just focus on myself for a while?

I feel I am getting a bit better at it. I can recognize the warning signs of forgetting who I am... That has to count for something, right? We work and work at being a certain person and being seen a certain way, but never stop to take notice of who we actually are or what we stand for until its too late. I don't want to forget there are things I aim to be for my own self-worth: open-minded, intelligent, gentle, sweet, funny, self-sufficient.... It's the self-sufficent that I think I struggle with the most. But how uncommon is that really? As humans we try to find that one person to "complete" us, but I feel like that's a bunch of crap. Whey can't we complete ourselves and find someone who compliments the greatness that is us?

So all in all I guess I do have a New Year's Resolution: Find who I am and be great at being me.

The goal.

I didn't set any weird New Year's Resoluations - not that I ever do - however, I made one solid goal for myself for 2011. I want to write every single day. Not just on the blog, including the blog, which I have woefully fallen out of love with, but also in a notebook, on my laptop, on my desktop, on pieces of scrap paper, anywhere and whenever. Wish me luck...

Beware the Sent Box

I learned a very valuable lesson tonight: my email's sent box is an unexpected minefield of broken hearts and unanswered prayers. Without thinking, I wandered into the sent box of my personal mail and found a couple hundred emails I had completely forgotten I'd once written. Some more difficult to read over than others. Let's just say, I'm recovering from the ache in my chest as we speak.

As prepared as we can be for life's unexpected heart breaks, there are no preparations. Things come at you and you're not able to stop them. I feel as though this is a lesson I am continually learning over and over. After each let down or painful experience, I expect to pop out on the other side a completely different person; a girl who understands the world better than before, who can handle whatever life has to throw next. In reality, that feeling only lasts until the next gut-wrenching newsbreak hits and I'm back to square 1, wondering where all my "lessons learned" and wise knowledge-based-on-experience went.

Maybe the better option should be to just forgive and forget, if only I could get to that point. Is there a way to forgive and forget things that change your life's path in almost every way? People come in and out of our lives all the time. My dear friend, Nicole and I had a conversation about this very topic last night. We decided we are entirely changed girls from the ones we were 3 years ago. With that being said, we could not decide if that was a good or bad thing. Why are we so afraid of change? Most of the emails I discovered were ones going to people who used to be huge parts of my life. Sadly, all of those people are no longer speaking to me for various reasons, be it break up, break down, or change. There's that word again - change...

Realizations Unwanted

Has anyone ever told you something about your past that you yourself had no idea happened? They open this Pandora's box and suddenly the flood gates of your mind are rushing with thoughts, worries, panics, and worst of all, regret. You tell yourself its all going to go away. It happened a long time ago and there's no reason to be upset, but that doesn't plug the flood. In fact, the thoughts are coming more quickly now, rapidly ripping all rational argument from your mind. Could this one thing entirely change your existence? Does it change your experiences? Tear back the flesh of old wounds? Maybe. Maybe it doesn't though. Maybe it just stews in your mind reminding you of why these things have been set aside for so long; why you've been meticulously building a wall to hold in these particular floods for 3 years of your life. You've pushed, pulled, beaten yourself into a bloody mess of your former self many times over only to lay the discarded hatred and misunderstanding in front of a rushing onslaught of fear and denial. If you don't acknowledge it, it's not real right? Right...