I used to fall on my knees and get up easily. Using skateboards and helmets to throw myself down, now I look around and notice how many people grew up before me. Just over five foot tall, twenty four looking over the edge of the Baytown bridge and find the world watching waiting for me to be weightless among the breeze. Being gentle means reacting to light things like floating swings or changing leaves and time not agreeing with my plans for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Being gentle means being me before the world affected me. Looking into the eyes of someone I love and finding a child who’s excited for life to always be free. Is death just cheap or am I just skewed from the TCP refinery thing? Spend time chasing happiness when peace is all we need. Feel the full spectrum of emotion, welcome your sadness like a friend you missed seeing around the neighborhood of hurricane leaves. I watched her cut the bruises off fruit that fell from the tree. Snubbed her thumb and sucked the blood dry as if someone taught her young that water turns into wine. Here we go with all our needs. So many things, so many of me. Your body knows how to breath automatically watch them expand fully and release all necessity to control destiny because love or life comes easily when you think beautiful things of simplicity. When the swing set sits empty, my friend cuts the bruises off the peach and looks at me with such empathy, as if there’s a child in me that she’s dying to meet.
-
I only want to leave when I’m comfortable. What does that say about me? I get in my bed and imagine my life better overseas. I leave my peace in a room with two queens thinking that my bed is a better place to sleep.
I found familiarity in a stranger today. I wondered if the area was safe and she interrupted my thought to say that this was her favorite place. They have one back in Austin, but I guess I wanted to see what the difference would be. The difference is a girl who doesn’t know me yet looks like someone I might have seen. I bet she wore ribbons in her hair. I wear them still. Maybe that’s the thing that ties us together.
I met a few more people today. I rode in a car with a stranger and turned out okay. I find that I’ll find my way when I push myself to resolve future problems today. Get that thinking shit out of the way so I can stare blankly and not be filled with constant dismay. I stood outside of a Walgreens and this guy told me he liked my headphones and if I was gay. He didn’t say that exactly, but I knew if I laughed too hard or smiled too big he could either take me or make my day. He skated off, (of course he did) and my ride arrived asking for my name.
He looked back at me. I only know because I was waiting to see if he was looking at me like a feen. Dirty boys are kind of like my nicotine. Dirty like slept in sheets or stomping cigarettes out on the street. Fingerprints left on an almost empty cologne bottle and hugs that feel like a stolen heartbeat. We can share clothes and toothbrushes and stare at the same screen. Feel the same depressions and raise each other up like a late sunrise in the spring. Just a little fling, make myself a bit dirty until I think it’s time I get clean.
What does that say about me?
I like the way clothes feel on me when I’m clean. Swimming in bubbles, my namesake. It’s like no one has seen me naked and my car muffles the sound of my scream. It’s like no one has seen me at my worst and I’m worthy of bigger dreams. I’ll scape my skin dry and slather myself in anti-aging cream.
I want things so opposite of me.
I just hope that we can all get along. I look over my shoulder cause I hear her singing my favorite song. Scream at the same sun asking some god if he has a place for my mom. If god was a girl, she would remind me of where I came from. It’s not like I forget anyway. It follows me like a shadow, because I only notice it when the sun is too bright and I turn around.
Just because I can, I buy a teddy bear and say it’s to socialize my katze. I only know a single Germans phrase, and I repeat it over when I get really tipsy. I’ve only been to Germany once. I never left, and now I only listen to hard techno when I get a little boozy. My mind goes crazy when my body is lazy. Easy rhyme, falls off the tongue reasonably like clothes to a sleazy. I forget that my mind and body are a single entity responding through millions of filled or occupied capacities.
Nothing bad is going to happen to me. It’s all in good time. Something bad is going to happen to me, but it’ll end up fine. One day, I’ll respect my time. I get scared when I realize everything is safe. I’m in a perfectly fine place, most of the time. When I rest my head, I think about how privileged I am to be paranoid about losing my peace when the only thing that leaves me is time and that guy who wanted to look at me twice – one first and last for the last time.
-
Blurry morning sky, and I’ll rub my eyes awake in an hour. Sitting in the shower, feeling dirty and clean. I wish I could ask him to suck the rot right out of my bloodstream. Gentle baby, touch me just to relieve the part of the seams that are too tight and strung. You’re gone, so I press my cheek to the floor. The dirt that pollutes my environment are footsteps walking through the door. How do you tell the girl in the black sheets there will always be a layer of darkness above her? We can watch the same sunset and I’ll still get sad that it has to say goodbye so many times. You have my other hand. Promised me that you would make the time pass easily, indefinitely. I just think anywhere you are is the coolest place in the world, and now I’m homesick.
My sheets were pink before that. Feet on the bunk boards above me and a jumping George on the screen. Double bounce so I can feel high even when you feel like my shadow – in my privileged house with a trampoline and a cat that follows. Held my hand through the crowd when you got too drunk, until we laughed about you getting too drunk and you said you thought I might be too drunk. I thought I thunk myself into a coma, until you woke me up. When I think about it, I feel like throwing up like you made this up. The highlights pulled you out of a funk and I wish you would have just owned it, like this is finally the moment. When you were my other hand, I thought about how you only took care of yourself.
Depollute me. Water me down like rain running from my roof. My window is boarded shut from jumping too many times. Preforming myself into seclusion, and now I’m a magician with a wand and a rabbit. I sit awhile and guess my sicknesses. The shirt I wear that’s not made for me, it’s too big for me, I dried it on accident and now it hugs all of me.
It’s funny that I only feel like myself when I’m not home. Maybe I like being a stranger among aisles. A child looking at normal things in awe. I get along with them all because I grew up with people who say y’all. A sister who answers a second after I call. Would you recognize me in a room full of people and hold my hand again after it all? A hotel room that’s too big for a girl this small. I feel comfortable in public restrooms when I’m the only one in a stall.
Water slaps my window. I think about jumping just to feel the wind, never pain. It would only take a bit of effort to fix this. A bit of money or medications or more isolation. Finding myself in a different place, with a bit of money, medications, and isolation is enough. Music to make the cough go down. For someone so void of emotion, you knew how to make someone cry. That was a while back. I don’t cry anymore, and when I do it’s because I’m thirsty. Staring at the ones left who haven’t left and say “Bailey, I hope you never leave me.” To be fair, I even leave myself sometimes. Not recently though.
My hair is flat from laying down on my back. Rolling around the carpet at the hotel next to the laundromat in a city where I might host my final act. Feet in the air like I’m pushing boards. White sheets with a clean smell, unfamiliar and perfect. Peace is a privilege, and I know myself too well. I know you’ll never see this. I’ve mopped my floors and your name is becoming hard for me to spell.
2 responses to “blonde”
-
When I get scared on the plane, I picture my neighbor being you. I prop my shoes on the bag you bought me when I turned twenty two.
The media is fucked up for selling me this idea of being okay before letting someone play with your emotions. I want to boundlessly skip in the field of someone else’s mind, let them push me on the swings for me to fall into and follow through with abnormal motions of attraction. Spreading lies like that across social media and shit as if you’re the Buddha of being the babygirl, when I haven’t found a match, makes me believe that I’m not okay. That the universe rewards false sense self-healing with a … man. I look around the playground and hope that the old boys will stay because if they leave that means the influencer girls consider me to not be okay and do tenfold more healing just to say on another day that I’m in fact not gay. Whose place is it to determine my relationship status based on my psychological status. The fact is you lack the authority to assume my aura’s attractiveness. I believe life is a journey of constant healing from past mistakes and accepting your future as fate and understanding that mistakes aren’t real unless they create pain. The idea that a partner will come when I’m perfectly perfect is imperfect because i wouldn’t want a partner who wanted me at my perfection. I still wake up and add to my to do’s in case the next morning I forget to be the better image of my reflection. If that’s the case, my heart will never be enough and they’re always in advantage to take advantage of my heart. In my divinity, I’ll only know love and until then I’ll be enough for myself to judge.
I think it happens when you are just okay, not the best or worse on a given day but just fine enough to be normal enough to give enough of a chance on destiny’s date. Not with a guy who calls you strong because he values strength and knows your weaknesses better than your deepest passions. I’ve been thinking about strength lately. Let me be weak and have the privilege to find strength in love, as it was meant to be, as if there aren’t multiple forms of love in a relationship. Maybe I love myself too much for a funny man to be confident he can match it. Maybe they get jealous of how i sit on my couch without grace and I tell group stories about how a strong woman acts. They invented the definition of strength, so they know when you’re being it or not. I’m tired of being strong, so I’ll be gentle. At least to myself and others. Emotions have grown capital, the corporations are mining humans for their gold. Let it be your own, and evaluate what things you classify as reward.
I’m just over it is all. It seems like life has become a monopoly and romantic love is an asset reserved for the emotionally wealthy. It’s weird because I don’t necessarily think about a relationship, but I do think about my emotional wealth and how it can be perceived as a threat. Funny thought.
-
I’m sick and I’m crying in my car. I keep looking around to see if people are looking. I cant stop looking.
The nostalgia of an incoming autumn always puts me in some weird headspace. I always get sick. This is my first time being sick alone. It’s incredibly depressing. You make your stupid soup and take your stupid meds and get overcharged at a medical facility and judged for not mastering the art of taking care of yourself. Being sick alone is almost embarrassing, but the act of being sick is almost pleasurable when there is someone who is there to acknowledge your sickness or sulk in it with you. The weather is turning over a new color and there is a filter that makes the world look fulfilled. I envy that.
So, I’m crying in the car again. I realized my birthday is next week, and I have no childlike expectation to experience it in depth. Maybe growing up is finding comfort in simplicity and losing nostalgia in serendipity. Aging past the post-teen boy-feening depressions I had a few years ago, I experience sadness like a clown after people laughed at him. They say southerners can smell the rain before it comes, and they can. I can smell the depression before I start to feel nothing.
My sister would always have swimming parties. She’s born in June. We’re both water signs, so playing mermaids came naturally. We would push each other in and meet each other at the bottom and flap our fins until we believed we were magical actually. Now that I’m older, I don’t believe there is a bottom of the pool. If I jump too deep, there’s no one to help me find my way back.
Competitively, my mortal buoyancy reminds me that I’m at the lowest seat of the plane that’s taking off. The lowest low and highest high. I’m dangling my knees from the highest branch of the steepest tree. I’m constantly flying freely and dodging things in the shape of love or opportunity. I see love as a temporary loss in identity. I got a concussion once and had to wear rose glasses to see. I stopped wearing them because they looked stupid, and I started looking down at independence as something earned and not free.
I don’t think I have ever thought so high of myself. I don’t think I’ve ever considered myself. I’m finally considered, and I’m finally enough. At least to myself. That’s the mid-twenties part about this piece. It’s that crying in the car won’t exactly give you anymore peace. You start to think until you can’t breathe, and you realize your birthday is a funeral and death (when it comes) will be a breeze. I think the universe likes to watch me be, and I often think about the television screen she uses to judge or improve me.
The warm breath of summer starts to thin and so does my anxiety, well to a point. Kisses feel uncomfortable when the Texas sun chooses you to be its target, but autumn tastes of the freshness comparative of snogging someone new. It’s like watching your parents grow old and expecting you to take care of yourself when you’re sick. My mom picks up the chance to take care of me when she sees I’m doing it quite well alone. I wonder if people think of me when they’re alone, or if I’m just the pillar of a balance beam measuring the vibrations between seams of a jagged tapestry. I was sick for a week. No one knew of me for a week. I didn’t exist for a week, and yet they wanted to know if I were free for a drink. I always am. A drink feels like family and adjusting communal moods is like finding an apple close to the deserted tree. Seems fair.
I care so much about the perfume I wear. I hope I can control the sense you make of me, intentionally. I’ve landed at a point where my self-image reflects my ego and touches upon reality. Someone told me I always smell good, so I change what I wear hoping that my aura wears stronger and lasts longer.
I’m sick and no one cares. I sneeze and no one blesses me. How am I supposed to sleep well at night half trusting my divinity? I crave a bit more than self-intimacy but my curiosity for men who lack the ability to understand me emotionally has led me toward clarity. Lately, I cling to my independence like it’s become endangered. Mary loved Jesus before they met by the manger. The burning marsh by the feeder road church reminds me that men and my raised religion taught me anger.
My birthday is just a few days from Halloween. I hated sharing a holiday. I forget that my birthday is coming up, yet I am quick to check if my neighbor started decorating. I’m barefoot on my balcony looking through peoples windows making sure my life appears to be a bit more interesting. The girl across me just got a boyfriend. The couple on the first floor switch holding a cigarette in the morning. The guy adjacent from me has a weed pen, a big dog, and an addiction to p***. I close my window when his opens, and I wonder what they think of me.
A girl with brown eyes and shorter hair – an inch every time I reveal myself to be seen. Everything about her is big. Big denim pants, big t-shirt, and big over the ear headphones with a pace that sometimes includes a hop skip or dance. She keeps holding her cats hand. She smiles with all her teeth. She talks incredibly too loud. She doesn’t cover her mouth when she coughs. She sits in her car and cries when she feels no one is watching her. She closes her curtains too late, hoping someone is watching. What does that say about me? I watched this guy walk in the bush ahead of my car to go pee (lmao). He played it off like I didn’t see. Do people even see me when I don’t ask or prompt them to attend a birthday party to grieve my 23?
I spend most time being hard on myself and soft with others. Sometimes life reminds you to be soft to yourself by being hard to you. I got slapped by whiplash from the flapping wind driving windows down on the freeway. I woke up with a steel boot on my chest after sharing a cigarette (or more). I’m sitting in the car looking to see how fast a puffy face will disappear when the gold sun asks to invade my sunken space. It took my breath away, in a painful kind of way. I got out of the car and let my face dry. I wish I could feel weightless everyday. This week is my birthday, and I wish my birthday hadn’t become just another day.
Everything’s changed, everyone’s changed, I’ve changed and yet I’m the only one who ended up the same. Nothing every seems perfectly settled and I toss around my comforter like it’s a hair out of place on my wedding day. I run my tongue over the chip in my tooth like a dog that’s dying to get loose from the collar ball and chain that’s holding it back from being lost. It’s hard to get out of bed when you actually like your boss. Life is good when you consider time to be of high cost.
As for this next year, I let go of the friends who ran away. I let go of the pain I carry when I know it’ll all just be okay. To the boys I’ve let back in just to watch them rot and crowd my mind with their deliberate decay. The birthday feels like I’m the ring leader for my own circus and I have to beg people to come let me entertain. I got pancakes and chocolate chips to make the morning of – just so I can wake up and know that being alone is okay. I wish for more slow mornings. I let go of quick mornings and mourning younger versions of myself that I hated at the time. I trust the universe to course correct my path when I accept things not for me. I let go of love that’s hard and accept love that finds me. All I want to do in this life is be me because I’m the only one capable of complete understanding of my own being.
I’m cool as shit (that’s okay to say). I write, and I care, and I’m passionate, and I’m wise, and I’m crazy, and I’m loud, and I know myself, and I only have two secrets, and I’m sure of myself, and I love deeply, and I’m expressive in my own right. I hope that my life continues to be this bright, for the light to crash through my window when I’m crying in my car just to ask if I’m alright.
To be real –
Thank you for being my friend over the years. I get fairly emotional thinking about this 23rd. I’ve traveled the most I have ever in my life, and I’ve discovered a passion for the aisle seat. I’ve shed the shyness the world granted me after a rough year with a rough relationship and rough expectations for myself. I live a life that I’m happy with. I forget about concert tickets, I don’t beg for forgiveness, I trust myself and I love being my dad’s princess. I just expect happiness to return after sadness. A funeral is a celebration of life, and I thank the universe for allowing me to explore some more and hopefully forever.
Cheers to those who get devastatingly depressed when their birthday comes and you ask if your friends really care about you and fuck you’re getting older and you just want your mom to call the grocery store for you to see if they can make you your favorite cake. Twenty-four is next door.
Bye bye
-
Some people feel what most people don’t. Some people watch people until they implode. Put me in a movie and everybody will know. I’m a star, the one the people say you are, of the movies we watch that remind us of a future not far. The shooting one that disappears into oblivion for me to chase into eternity without a vision of its journey. The empty minded, and the heavy minded, and the heavy bodied, and the empty bodied – all individual versions of my own humanity screaming at the sky and asking her why people give more credit to the guy. My eyes too wide to become wet again in my own sack of sacred skin. My limbs too foreign to become known again in my own sacred sack of skin. A biological phenomenon participating in spiritual experiment. A psychological phenomenon convincing that I was a misprint.
Around the round world, she chased after her star so far that she found the waking sun instead. Of course, we believe we are worthy of more notoriety for creations apart from our own manifestation of reality. The sun is brighter than me. She’s warmer than me. She’s more than I’ll ever be. She cares for everyone. Becoming unsatisfied in my own fun, coming home to no son, I become lost in finding a direction to run. Too tired to keep running, so I sit where I am and wonder why the sun feels so nice. The grass where I have laid leaves a bed in my shape. When the season changes, again, I will peer back at dead grass and remember to mourn the woman once scorned.
I make it look easy to be squeezed, like a lemon with stolen skin. How are you still hungry for me even when I’m so sour? I’m living in given skin, although it doesn’t feel like my skin, and it takes work for me to feel as it my own again. “This is what I need to remember when I’m depressed” every time I win. To prepare for your children grieving your cat’s death when it’s only the beginning. It sucks to be the trying flower and the shitty gardener when there is nothing you can do without water. With every anticipating moment, there is an assumed recovery for me to prepare for. My therapist never heard the term “anticipatory anxiety,” and since then I’ve been listening to only my own advice. At this point, it’s like I’m paying for a friend and I tell my friends that and they say that it’s the same. I forgot that my therapist is probably selling my data to third party companies to better predict my consumer patterns. I forgot that my therapist is my friend.
Do you realize how human I am? Most men don’t even perceive me to be woman. They look at the girlhood of it all to find a brunette doll at the core of my being with a belly button that giggles when pressed. Everyone looks at me like a mirror, so I’m careful with those who look through me like glass. They’ve seen me shatter like glass. I hold them as if they’ll be my last. How much depth do you see below the pane? Put your face up to it and expect me on the other side of their perspective spinning around a selfish spiral of self-ego and imploding within paranoid suspicion. Talk to me through practiced lines, appropriate and exploitative despite their refine. Genuinely – most of them just hear mumbles that don’t completely register as words, believe some blurred lines of my clear headline, and only focus on the image of me that’s fabricated in their mind. Maybe nothing is interesting, and maybe nothing matters, and maybe that’s the good part of it all.
I lie to Uber drivers when they give me a reason to. I tell stories to Uber drivers when they don’t. Stare at me with your wrinkled eyes through the mirror and tell me how basic I am to be writing on a blog about basic shit. I can’t tell if your spit qualifies as drool. You’re not reading this, but I want to let you know that I went to the grocery store yesterday and stared too long at a stranger. If you took anything from this conversation, let it be that you’re dying and so am I. If I die alone, is that all I’ll be remembered by? I cry without blinking, I drive without breathing, I grind my jaw while sleeping. Nothing is new, everything is new, and I forget that you too are human.
You know, you should really schedule your un/predictable emotional recessions. There are ways to hack it now. Just focus on your wellbeing and dance in the sun or some shit. Read something thick and fulfilling that you forget to think about how thin you are becoming. Drink water when you can’t find your appetite. Focus on your breath when your heartbeat is bouncing. Take a relaxing bath and see how long you can hold your breath underwater. Light a candle, try holding the match and see if you feel your finger get hotter. When it burns, let it remind you of your mortality. Go get a band-aid, slap it on, call it a day how about we? We can reschedule depression. Let’s ask depression what time works best? Hey, Depression – what time works best? Anytime. Any day. Sometimes all the time. Always some time.
A past time. My parents would describe me to have been a quiet kid. I’m sure most people would’ve pictured me as a happy kid, and I think I am a happy kid. I was very observant and smirking in my shy nature, pretty smart, pretty for a girl and smart for a girl. I got so excited to meet the tooth fairy that I pulled a few more out to save her the trip. I got so excited to meet my sister that I would sleep by her crib. I got so excited to slip into my dreams only to wake up still feeling asleep. I feel so much more awake now in memories, and I wonder if I’m living too much in the past in order to make the present time fast. I don’t mean to speed things up, but I’m on the run.
You said I was mellow. Maybe I’m just exhausted. I like listening to sad music. I like listening to music so loud I can’t think. I’m begging people to hear the music I have in my head, constantly organizing a lousy hum drum of quite pessimistic voices while masking optimism. It’s like “hey, I forgot who I am and I hate the casualty of a repetitive day-day, but you’re fine so you just represent the community of being fine and satisfied while I try to open my window today.” I’m not doing much except practicing a genuine smile in the mirror, do my friends use me and I’m oblivious to it, hugging a dirty blanket while experimenting with metronome breathing, do I find passion in anything other than my thoughts, staring through my ceiling with a steady ice cube melting on my forehead, taking care of myself to a maladaptive obsessive compulsive point, do you ever think about purpose. That’s the thing: if nothing matters, why are you worried?
Positive Nihilism. The once neon starkness of emotional stunting now faded and dusty in the childhood attic I visit when it’s a holiday or whenever there is a happy yet sulky occasion. Wait, why am I talking to you again? Yeah, you seem like you have it figured out? Studying psychology with a focus on cognition while being active in therapy was just me playing the part of Pavlov’s dog. Salivating every time I pulled out a treat and rang the bell with my own paw. I’m rewarding myself for solving a problem I created. At one point you become comfortable knowing that someone is sleeping in the same position directly above and below you, in a different dimension or in a separate unit.
You paint yourself white and fill up with noise, like a reflection of a nuclear bomb and you’re the last one remaining. You paint yourself white, acting like you are empty when really you are every color. The emptiness inside of you to be felt as full, too full, almost never full, a sip remaining of the spilled milk you cry over. Exchanging energy with yourself and becoming higher with every thought. People keep asking you why you are blue, red, green. Let them perceive, finally.
-
go outside feel your shoulders burn and freckles form to look in the mirror at a blushing face realizing the sun kissed you too much because you are loved deeply by whatever made the reflection that stares back i like to think they want you to find love outside of empty conversations and instead with the moon and the stars that pair the opposing yet agreeing texas sun one day you’ll find love in more than just yourself like the way you’re 23 but still braid your hair to show off how much you love the girl who grew up too early and make grocery lists with pink pens to feel how much sun loves you again in the parking lot of the grocery store and how much you hate the rain and driving home and overcompensating how much you can carry into to a lonely apartment in stormy weather and how the rain makes you feel like you have to cry when you don’t have a reason to so you convince yourself of a reason and crawl back into the bed that you never made because you knew you would return to it later but then you wake up to the sun peeking through a sliver of a curtain and see the freckles on your shoulder and the scratch from your cat so you start the machinery of the day and the rurring of your coffee and the ice falling in the fridge and remember the mortality of your existence glaring at your cat’s reminder of playfulness in the form of a scar and open the window to send good morning to the sun because your aunt told you that your freckles were kisses from heaven and you wanted love so badly that you would spend your hours in her backyard in your school clothes looking up and thinking about whose looking down except now you’re older and imagine you as your aunt watching the younger you from behind a window
Once that’s over it’s be there in five I’m sorry I’m late be right back don’t worry about me I’m doing just fine how are you I’m okay and okay is okay because my body is a vessel for my soul to remain stable and okay is better than imbalance we are fine and the stars have aligned and my dreams could be mine all if i really work for it or if i really manifest it by writing down my assumed obsessions three times in a row or pray hard enough to someone or something I’m still debating the name to or ask around to have others guess at my fate for the sake of not knowing or you should just collect crystals and write their meaning attempt to use them to find your meaning over again and write it down loose papers half read books notes don’t forget write down and notes on the app using wordpress to buy the rights to your own words that sit in a tear stained journal with flowers on it because it symbolizes that you’re always growing or maybe even in the italian leather journal you spent extra coin on because on special occasions you need to separate your current reality from the future curiosities using words that your hand gets tired of repeating things like “would your higher self approve of this” “would your younger self dream of this” “would you be here writing still if it worked out (the way you saw and not the way the universe planned or the way your parents wanted them to or how that boy you’ll never see again imagines it to?)”
you get a job that wants you to travel which means you can sit in the airport at four am and stare at strangers and imagine their morning or their life or your lives together and smile in silence and prioritize the aisle seat because you need an escape plan from everyone to even your own mind sometimes to dissociate when scheduled peer over a strangers shoulder and watch the space grow between you and the ground feel the idea of feeling grounded become harder you can’t focus when someone else is in control until you accept that not everyone is egocentric in their protection like you have been lately even the pilots kids tell their friends that their daddy spends his days in the air and his wife sleeps alone with a glowing phone text me when you land I’m glad you made it I’m glad to let others drive for me when it’s convenient just tell me what to think but not too much because I’ll still recover my own conclusion and since we don’t own the right to the route can I at least find the control of the wheel do I just need to hand my fear to pilot who splits clouds and looks down at the ground to imagine his life perfect as is?
all of a sudden I’m fine being the wife with the glowing phone with the guy who flys planes or saves lives or plays in a band and makes shit money it doesn’t matter because his lips show his gums when he smiles and i get lost in his eyes trying to find out his fate and if I’m in it his jeans are ripped it was an accident skating surfing skiing driving with white knuckles because he gets nervous around me how much is the weighted blanket of his heartbeat that covers me in childish warmth I’d spend forever melting in the couch just to have him steal my breath for a second longer he takes a shower and already smells expensive like commitment and yet still cheap like a puberty crush it’ll put you back in the middle school hallways when you rediscover that feeling of finding a boy attractive again about ten years later at 23 basketball baseball football i hate sports but i could play with him forever with those ripped baggy jeans and the thin t-shirt from an era i didn’t know him from i want to rub my face on it exactly how my cat does to me in the morning when he misses me even though i was there the whole time was he there for me the whole time will he be there for me when he’s not even mine i think he was always in the back of my mind because his tattoos are etched into my memory as if they are the folds in my brain and i like to imagine our hearts beating to the same melody like a song my recycled soul used to sing when she first fell in love that now she sings in the car alone thinking about what love is going to be like now that she’s capable of accepting it
I’m not a wife yet I can’t honestly imagine what that would look like because at heart I’m the girl with red lipstick high heeled boots being shy on purpose old fashioned with cherry juice lots of it and hope that it tastes tarte so you’ll slip into a hazy sleep and have lazy sunday with a sore throat from a selfish cigarette that you stepped on after finishing with your friends with sticky shoes from gross clubs and a guy you knew for five years (5 hours) till he smiles for too long and you wonder if you made the mistake of getting ready for him I hate that feeling that devoting my femininity to men by taking extra estrogen to make sure their mistakes are forgiven by science and not religion it’s like a reward to earn your womanhood back once he drains you of your gentleness because when it is over you care again about proving him wrong and having nice bras and doing face masks whitening teeth lash serums jergens self-tanner using fresh towels with a clean robe after scraping your skin clean with razors and brushes I value my effort more when I’m alone instead of with a man who expects more of me anyway because he grew up with a mommy with red nails and a daddy who flew planes so I’ll walk around in high heeled boots and a push-up bra with my hair bouncing toes painted eyelashes touching my eyebrows and smiling big because he said he loves the color red and that it reminds him of his mom like why are you looking at my lips and thinking of your mother and why am i looking at him thinking about rest of my life battling eternity with a stranger just for an hour of an unheard conversation and silly time-limited attachment
I’ll get my nails done with Alexa and ask her if red is a good color and we’ll consider the way planes hold all this weight but are skinny enough to split the sun so selfishly and how much better we feel when summer comes around because we can spend more time in her backyard drinking red wine and talking about our pets as if they’ve spoken english to us and I’ll daze off into psychological oblivion thinking about how my favorite thing is this world is to be a girl and be girls with other girls simultaneously and be girls with boys who recognize my femininity and don’t want to take it from me by handing me their clothes like a coupon for 40% decreased effort the next time you see them or buying me drinks as an exchange for a great (literally cant hear you) conversation next to an ear-splitting set by a sixth street DJ about tech sales and how his dad flies planes and it fucked him up by not seeing him as often so he love his mom and women-alike out of pity and “so do you want to take this somewhere else?” “if you tell me what my name is I’ll consider it” hop in the uber and go to the place that smells like you and wake up to the peeking sun and the cat whose scratching you to see if you’re still alive because they love you.
I was listening to “Pretty Boy” by the Neighborhood and he talks about Devon so gently that it made me think about all the love I’m a witness to, the love I can’t wait to experience, the love I discount or take advantage of on a daily basis, and the love that I once thought was love but am now smart enough to know that’s a misrepresentation of words (like … toxicity or projection). Everyone my age is so worried about maintaining love, finding love, keeping love even when it hurts… I guess this is an American thing, to believe we have to work and earn things. We live in a scarcity mindset, when life has proven to us so many times that we are capable of almost anything – so why do we feel like we aren’t capable of something so genetically-disposed like love? If you’re imaginative – you’ll find love somewhere in between some drunk guys slurred words or on sunny days or when your cat blinks at you slow or in an airport for a quick second in a guy you fantasize about living with (because why not).
-
I clean my mirrors down to a clear image, being sure to treat it carefully because it shows a reflection of me. At my most desperate times, I would get up from my sunken warmth to look into that mirror and see a deserted mind. I would walk back and forth in the mirror in some socially relevant outfit to make sure the heels could last through the night. I hate being perceived, but I need you to perceive me in order to understand that it’s okay to be a million different things at once. I carry my cat to the mirror and see if he knows what a reflection is. As of recent, I tend to stare at the mirror just to disappear within myself. Kind of like how you stare at someone you think you might love. Hmmm. I look back at the reflection just now recognizing it’s alive, again, just older now and considering that I’ll devote my life looking after the younger versions of her. It’s so funny too, because I feel like the younger versions of myself had only worried about the older versions: writing down a list of hobbies in case I forgot to have free time. With all this worry, I’m worried that no one is worried about the one who is presently doing the worrying. Should I tap on the glass and remind her?
Anyways, hello. I haven’t talked to you in a while. Life is a lot. Everybody needs you, then nobody needs you. Wake up the sun is going down. Stand up, you did too much, just sit down. Only open your mouth until you know what’s coming out of it. Want to see Nirvana but I don’t want to die yet. Want to hear God but she won’t speak to me yet. Want to be me but I can’t figure her out yet. Still. Ugh. I’m too extreme – wanting to know what scratches the deep parts of people’s brain and asking why they won’t tell me more about myself. We’ve only been dating (never been on a date) for two days, can you tell me what you see? It’s okay, I look at myself and reduce it to what I pay to keep it alive sometimes. A single bed and single bath. In the middle of a place I didn’t grow up but made home and consider running away from again. A concrete block built in 2017 to shove someone into for the corporate earning, for that person to work for the corporate earning, and live life completely yearning for more growth.
If I grow: is my reward a house, a backyard of sand, and a dog your cat hates who can run in said backyard? Do I also get a boy who I fear I love too much? I found it easy to lose the love I had for myself by finding it in other people, at least the version of them that lives in my head. Oh to have your feet warm and to feel your head rise with the silent breaths of that boy you agreed you loved the same as yourself. Kids (maybe) who have your eyes and similar insecurities. The rushed plea to heal those insecurities before they discover them within themselves too. Rocking chairs and road trips where you look at the clock enough to obsess over the memory of you sitting on your couch in your first apartment alone, wondering if it became true.
Hi. I haven’t met you yet, but I think about you all the time. I bet you have the same emotional dispositions, yet have become perfectly satisfied. You have my wrinkled eyes and insecurities that you are secure about. Nirvana is a state of being. God created the idea of being. How is it being, being you all the time? A silly thing about the universe is that it gives us the opportunity to imagine that scenario (manifest), live the scenario (look you made it), and take advantage of the scenario (what’s next). We spent most of our time imagine ourselves in different scenarios when really all you we doing is guessing ignorant bliss. You must learn how to keep walking with uncertainty; to avoid spoiling the universe’s gift by trying to guess the next one.
Sometimes it’s exhausting for me to do the work to feel like myself again you know. I do something “so bailey,” and I contemplate for a few days why the action is so reflective of me. “Bailey is the type of girl to call boys beautiful or pretty.” Everyone won’t stop talking about doing the work and the amount of water you need and the early bird that needs to get the worm too. All you do is experience and heal and experience and experience because you healed once and that one mental breakdown you always mention when you’re drunk has become your shortcut to an easier life… however, you will still wake up with a hangover and think “I thought I worked on that already.” lmaooooo
I’ve accepted that I will never stop healing. It’s because I will always want to keep experiencing.
Do I have to keep treating my inner child and future self differently when they all look like the same reflection? Even if we don’t see them happy, we have this infinite imagination to picture them being that way. The body keeps score, but the mind always wants more. You’re existing between a perfect plateau of experience, so specific in showing microscopic milliseconds worth of highs and lows and leaps and bounds in growth. And why do we grow? The universe is expansion, you are the universe. Keep growing through the minutes. Stop growing up too fast. Is it too late or did we take a different route? I hate this road, and this car keeps getting older, and the billboard in the rearview said “nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”
The universe sends us exactly what we are ready for at the exact time we need it in our lives. I truly believe that, it’s like the only thing I devote myself too – like a thesis for life. I wouldn’t be 23 if I didn’t mention that it also sends us exactly who we need, and it takes them away. It sends us exactly who we need when we didn’t know they were coming back too – which makes you question if it’s up to you to heal or if the universe will force you to do it anyway. Ignorance is bliss, to live is to find bliss, so why do we try to find so many meanings to something so intricately simple? Being is easy, living is harder. In the most wabi-sabi way, I’m trying make peace with the emptiness at the core of human life by overfilling it with so much happiness.
To live with the universe is a treasure, genuinely. Maybe I’m just a #lovergirl to get emotional about how lucky are we to learn each other, and love each other, and kiss each other, and feel each other, and see a glimmer of humanity in each other. To connect with the universe through other people and find that same humanity in yourself. To look into the same souls you forgot to remember again, until you do remember them again, and realize you will never forget them. God I miss you already, always. To people who I’ve seen experience all emotions, to people I hold hands with, to people who let me the opportunity to count their pores, to people who I’ve listened to sigh, to the greens and blues of the world living in black and white.
Put both of your hands out and grab the hand of your youth and the hand of the oldest you. How critical it is to balance yourself within the present and not have them drag you back and forth. I look in the mirror about a month later (now) and feel complete knowing that I’m a balance of so much unknown and too much known. Being the same girl I’ve carried through life, I guess with some over-saturated soul that will last me past this lifetime. Time is limited and yet endless, take it in by second and heal everlong.
I wrote this because I was cleaning my mirror. Do you ever just sit and stare at yourself, not because you’re doing your makeup, but you can’t believe you’re alive? You like wait … it’s not just me, it’s the universe (at least, just 5’4” of the universe). Adding to what I said in the last blog: although there are so many versions of yourself you have yet to meet, try not to forget about the one living now.
-
My name’s Bailey Champagne. I’m 23 years old, and I work for a living at a job. I have a bedtime of 11pm on a good day, 2am on a really good day. I have a cat who is now one- I think that makes 15 in cat years. I live in Austin, I used to see myself here forever, I’m not sure about that anymore or about anything- other than the next day maybe. Being alone in your college apartment is comforting. Being alone in your apartment that you pay for is necessary, complete with a personal rebrand and a cat that cries for its dinner. I have a sister, who knows Bailey best other than my parents. I’m the oldest child of two, the standard for which my sister separates herself from maturely. You can hear my dad in my humor, I have to thank him for that. You can hear my mom in my advice, I have her to thank for that. You can hear Billy when Bailey fails, and I loathe her for that.
Billy was born from drunken slurs of men trying to say my name but never held intention to understand my words clearly. She was, is, relevant to an inner child but more reliant on self-destruction for social acceptance. She spoke through bat shit eyelashes, whatever she could mutter replicating the same speech of those who named her. She was quite skilled at sneaking drinks from willing pocketbooks and witty personas. She was a liability for the guilty behaviors Bailey wouldn’t claim as her own. The chaotic fun girl who squeezes her body through crowds just to find a table to stand on. To lock her knees and scream “accept my crazy, but in a chaotic fun girl way”. The crowd would stretch my arms so far that upon rebound I was a wrinkly fetus of who I saw reflected in mirrors.
I don’t think people pay attention to me enough to see me squeeze my body through the crowd, feeling so uncomfortable between the sweat of slurring men and vulnerable girls. I struggle more to find an expensive car with unknown driver, even though I wanted to leave early anyway. I fob myself through the gate and finally feel my chest lower once I slip into the silent depression of an unmade bed. I get up, I’ll lay around, and I’ll get up, and lay back down. This season of singleness, there’s no place like watching my life pass through the comfort of a broken-in room. The silent and sobering Bailey wakes up from her nightly death to find Billy’s fandom fatal ego reborn. Window to the phone. I’ll wake up and make plans, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re scared that you might be depressed.
Bailey is at a point of realization of identity, again, always now a days. I guess that’s a thing that happens at 23, when you work from home and feeling like you’ve been at home since the pandemic began when you were 20. I felt so young when I behaved 23, now I’ve grown into a tall child with mild anxiety and wild performance syndrome. The perfect balance of my light femininity and love of the deep dark stuff, all wrapped up in an oxymoron of a smart human.
To think of it, I’ve always been into the deep dark stuff. Let’s just say that’s the scorpio in me. The guilt behind asking for advice, the halt of emotions after the action is over, the rush of contemplating an explanation for said action and professing opinions like you’re running for office (or from yourself). Campaign for Champagne just like I posted around for fifth grade politics. It’s a rush to scratch the deepest part of your wounds and realize you have the same evolutionary evidence as someone else, mentally that is. I like to think that Billy is part of that dark stuff, but as much as I can convince myself- I cant accept the fact how shallow she is. She pretends to drown herself in order for someone to realize she wants help compared to Bailey, who fights daily to float above it all. In fact, I’m so used to holding my nose and stretching my socially wrinkled arms to reach the edge of the pool. Being at a party and feeling like an open wound, all the people ask if I’m going to put a bandaid on it. Bailey would nod, Billy would scream.
I guess “Billy” (which if you haven’t caught on, is a big metaphor for my party persona) is the offspring of the child who never asked for attention but received it anyway, but who instead demands attention as if it’s an earned prize. In some way, like all fun friends, Billy was a liability. In another way, she’s greatest pool float I could find when Bailey was holding her nose and trying to stay afloat like a wrinkled fetus. It was an identity that felt needed to remain active in order to feed Bailey’s damaged identity from seeking other approval, outside of herself, because Bailey is always (say it with me) going to find it on her own anyway. She’s a sort of dissociation that allows me to show others I’m worthy of performative socialization, temporary flirtations, or validating secretive motivations. Break her down a bit more and you’ll find Bailey asking you to lay by her.
Billy is sure an alter ego – who mirrors my insecurity of feeling like social praise is a reward, mostly in confronting events. The outspoken Bailey, the chaotic Bailey, the good at fun Bailey all wrapped up in some entanglement I created to eliminate the processing of minute responsibility. When you suffer from seasonal depression, or you process events the way a rollercoaster rolls, you kind of form these imaginary motivations to avoid the seatbelt from releasing at the top of the hill (healing is a life long ride, buckle up). I understand that I never felt accepted enough socially to stand on this table in my given name and lock my knees to say “accept my crazy, but in an empathetic and innocent way”.
And this is all to say that, Billy and Bailey are much the same – she is me and my honest imagination after all. To dismiss Billy is to assume she isn’t of my own creation, an act to deny myself of further acceptance for the parts of me I may feel uncomfortable or too comfortable with about. She is the crutch to an injury I may have inflicted: the smiling angel face to a gut punch of demonized anxiety. The cheerleader, the performer, the mirrorball and all. Let me admit we have a duty to ourselves to embrace our singular selfs, the duality of ourselves, the multiple parts of ourselves that make us ourself.
I hope if you struggle with identity, you find some relativity in this. I found myself blaming Billy for things Bailey did, in a bad way. I found myself laughing at things Billy said when it came out of Bailey’s mouth, in a good way. This is a long way to say at the end of the day, I am okay. If you suffer from seasonal depression, avoidance of said emptiness until it overwhelms you, I found that the part I once understood as distraction was actually my greatest therapy. That’s through savoring my connections, a worn discrepancy between what I thought Billy favored but truly a deep necessity for Bailey to have to feel supported, loved, human, grounded. The window will be there to watch when you come home and the phone will be there when you wake up to set up tomorrows plans. Just give yourself grace, there are so many parts of yourself you haven’t met yet.
Seriously though I am very happy.
-
Going to Germany. Well, as I’m writing this I’m on the way there. Everyone was excited to hear I’m going, and they tried to pass some of their emotions through the phone via change of tone, but I couldn’t become excited. Why the fuck am I not excited? I’m very fortunate that I’m wanted, needed, enough to have to make the day trip to visit.
I’m shaking at the airport from anxiety. I’m not very well traveled, it’s a new thing in my life. It was once a thing that was pinpointed as my downfall, almost shoved in my face, being a homebody by default development. For a while, I would wake up to the start of a movie I’ve seen before though all days come to a perfect conclusion- one that you know how it ends and how it begins again. How lovely it is to be rained upon by sweet nothing, that a predictable day is the pit of your depression. To be missed (by my cat mainly) with intention of goodness and not for salacious reasons because we’ve all moved on (i’m a free agent, let’s do it). To be shaking in an airport not because you’re scared of airplane food but because I’m terrified of where my mind going to go for 10 hours. You won’t believe the amount of times I researched quotes about “jumping over the boundary of fear” and “all great things are the on the other side of being uncomfortable.” Mumbling to myself cliché words in an airport reminding myself to stay grounded while being one of the highest in the air.
On a normal day, I can’t help but to distract myself with tik toks to shorten my span for a minute. I look away from conversations that last longer than thirty minutes. Oh to be stuck in a drunken hometown bar living scenarios I’ve played in my head twice over for more than a few hours. I get off the plane that lasted a bit longer than ten hours just to see that no one has sent me a tik tok (pitiful), started a conversation (awh), or drunkenly typed out something they regret the next day (i wish).
I tell my friends that I really don’t mind being alone, yet I yearn for them today to assure me that I’m not. I’m fine with being alone, for a while it was my preference, the time before that I couldn’t think about my next breath before that someone reminded me. Sometimes I replicate that idea of someone, being the sad girl who just dreamt of being the girl I am now, just as an excuse for poor present behavior. Maybe I relive my healed trauma for the sake of experiencing emotion that takes me out of my healed, dissonant contentment.
Is there something to be hungry for when your plate is already full? Am i so starving to the point that I’m just used to this empty stomach feeling? Staring into an abyss of algorithms, staring through the person explaining to me how they operate, them staring at me and seeing the girl I still don’t quite understand yet. What do you think of her? Is she worthy of a swipe, a quick smile across the bar, a friendly hug paired with a “How is your mom doing?”, a glimpse of her getting into the car with someone else, an explanation of how you can’t seem to pay attention to her more than you can a football game or the girl pouring your next at that hometown bar?
I’m still on this flight, thinking about how I’m hungry for something but I can’t understand to admit who… I meant what. One thing about me is that I’m too creative. Before you spend your time giving a response, which could be my reward, I’ve already pictured the conversation we will have the next ten hours. How is it so far? Jet lag is a bitch, but damn you’re just as exhausting. Why aren’t you hungry? Have I fed you enough? What if I put it in a 60 second loop enough to make it last for the rest of our years together? Keep scrolling for content. I’ll be sure to provide it.
I’ve been watching Friends on the dash of stranger adjacent of me. I cant hear the sound, but I’m picturing what their mind is reacting to in real time. I know people are doing the same to me. I bet they’re guessing my age shorter than a few years, picturing me waiting to text some guy that I made it safe, that I’ve traveled enough to know the exact plane model and meal they’ll serve me. I’ll choose a movie that they’ll expect me to watch, some American feminist she is watching Little Women and not crying at the part where she denies Timothee Chalamet but wipes tears when the main character runs away from it all. We’re much more alike than I want to be.
I had multiple thoughts on this trip of running away and becoming an anomaly, my true yet completely false essence. I walked around the town at night and said thank you in different languages to see their reaction; do they know I’m the foreign one? I’ve imagined myself being a pinpoint on the globe and having my friends scroll to Europe to find me independent of their time. I’ve prepared my responses for them in advance when they ask how it was.
Before this trip, I only asked what I could give, when really all I need was to be fed myself. Were you starving? I actually just ate. I opened my arms and received as much (metaphorical/actual) food as I could. The waiter put his hand on my back and we walked through the cobblestone and he asked if I ate well. I was so full that night. I looked around the city with this man’s hand on my back, and I realized that I actually was always full. I am SO full that I poureth my cup until it drips over onto the counter to the floor and got my feet wet. My feet are wet, your socks are wet, and here I WAS asking YOU if you would like more water. Asking people to participate in my communal drowning for the sake of not feeling alone in my quarter-life crisis. Here, I became satisfied.
In fact, I assume that position so much of others that it’s way easier to talk about the struggles of my generation than to have a ten-minute elevator pitch of who I am and what I do over dinner with whomever I’m trying to impress. Just get to the good stuff before my stomach starts growling. I guess that’s the point of being in a foreign country. You don’t really have time to cater to others, and you really are stripped to your basic needs until your feet are dry and you can walk around confidently knowing you are the inside the mind of the outsider (over thinker, under appreciated, equally oblivious).
I’m coming to terms with the fact that allowing people and experiences and culture to share their portions with me is why my plate is full. Or at least, that’s why I want it to be full. Not full of empty thoughts of who I will be in a year, what her occupation will be, how will she make it through the day without becoming the person whose kids ask her when dinner is ready.
I’m on the returning flight looking straight forward at my own dash. I look through the movies and imagine what it would be like to be in my own bed, in my own apartment, in my own shared city of people who moved to get away from everyone who’s plates were empty. No one knew I was on this flight, I didn’t want people to ask me questions just yet. I wanted to enjoy the simplicity of having a perfect cup full of fulfillment and a plate complete with white sausage and Moroccan waiters who get paid a living wage and Prosecco at hotel bars with people who address you as “Ms. Champagne.” I really loved the persona I built over this trip, until I realized I was the one who created it. I’m the one with a cleaner closet, the one with the personality to want conversation with people she doesn’t know, and to embrace the mystery she finds in herself. That’s so cheesy.
When I would walk away from a counter, I know I was being noticed for my accent. I liked being noticed in a foreign country, at least the positive side of it like getting discounts at places or giving tips to waiters like they don’t expect. I think of if I reminded them of someone, or if they imagined my life being completely different than what it is in reality. When my flight back was, if I even had a ticket, or if there was a guy waiting to text me when I land, or if I was the American type of feminist that agrees with the politics of her state.
As soon as the plan wheels touched gravel, that LONG flight, my cup shakes a bit and my food falls over. It’s empty, and all of a sudden I’m filled with the urge to experience it all over again. Instead of asking others to make me full again, I have wait to get back on the aisle seat and see what will fill it. Go somewhere else other than my grudge of a room that I imagine my self melting away in. Talking with strangers and buying their art from the side of the road and asking them what their mom made them when they were little and touching ancient architecture and realizing WE ARE ALL THE SAME AND THERE ARE MORE OF US OUT THERE!
In simple, just for the sake of giving an unscripted response, it was amazing. It was exactly what I needed. To be alone, without knowledge or understanding of culture, to be a fly on the wall and have so many people guessing where I bring my buzz to. To be the center of attention in my mind to the point that I distort my perception of other peoples perceptions of me. People watching to a psychological, slightly mentally ill (the fun kind), extent.
If I got anything out of this trip, it was the allowance of ignorance and being blissful to things I don’t quite understand, even my own emotional depth. Realizing that I love being a fly on the wall so much that also I’m worried no one will notice me. Allowing myself to indulge and become full of other people instead of being so full of myself and my quest to solve life all the time. Finding out that it gets dark early over there, the food is better, and that you much prefer the 4-hour dinners with sparkling water and wine from next door rather than the boring drive through with five dollar boxes. There were lots of things I took from this trip. I indulged in it all.
This may explain why I’ve been absent for a while. I’m actually happy, maybe a little too inspired, waiting for another adventure that’s in the form of a person place or thing. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to go overseas, to have a job that allows me to work with people and know people who live a life different than me, and to have the urge walk alone in a different country and become a little more satisfied not following a path popularly traveled to find my own sense of individuality.
I mean come on, Germany was amazing. I was in a huge life rut before then, dedicating time to wrong individuals out of boredom and being revived by beer and roasted pumpkin.
The Champagne Soapbox 
Leave a comment