boundless white

I'm lying on the ice rink at my parent's house. It's dark. I'm alone. I was listening to Halloween, Alaska, skating around in the dark, and I laid down on the ice with my arms and legs spread out. As the song I was listening to started to build I just had to sit up. But before I do, I look towards the house and the garage and my car. The boards of the ice rink are high enough that I don't see anything below their edge looking up other than the house, garage and my car. It looks as if on the other side of this ice rink the world just ends.

Like this is all there is. And it's a little scary. To be this isolated.

I know I'm not. I can hear cars driving past me. And of course I know there's a world of things out there, my thoughts are on them; considerably. It's a little more beautiful, but still scary. That the world could end right there on the other side of my car.

As I think these thoughts I'm losing my awareness of the cold. Until I think that, and then I start to feel it. As I sit up I can see now the expanse of snow that is the field that extends behind my parent's house, and it's just so WHITE. So untouched and white. I want to go running - running in the field. Until I lose my breath and just collapse in the snow. It's a boundless, boundless white. I know it wouldn't go forever, but it would go as far as I need it to, and I would just run and run and not think about getting back, and the day to come and tomorrow and next week and next year, anything, I would just be lost in the running. The running through the snow. And maybe I would fall asleep in the snow. I have such a hard time taking naps.

And then I want to be reading a book. I don't care what book. A book I hate. A book that's hard to read through but I'm reading anyway, and I'm not just glancing over the pages and forgetting the story almost as soon as I read it. I'm absorbing it. I'm really absorbing it. And it doesn't matter what it is, just so long as it's becoming part of me. Something I know that I can feel inside of me. And it's not that I don't want it, it's that I don't know how to get it. I don't know how to get more inside of me. I feel overflown with things I don't want. I don't know how to let the right things in. I want love. I want to let love in, and I don't know how. Because every time I try, I try to believe that it's not real. I try to tell myself it's not real. I try to find its flaws and its holes because I want it to be perfect and I know that it's not. And so I think it's not good enough for me. But this field of snow, so white, stretching before me. It's perfect. I just want to fall asleep.

red meat

I've been far removed from my own happiness. Like an ignorant dog so coaxed from its home by the faulty promise of a juicy streak. It was only a mirage - the impression of pleasure in my mind - that I had stumbled upon a solution to my life's great mystery. (Well, I've never liked steaks.) Now I see so plainly how the constant questioning did not truly seek answers as much as it exposed the underlying issue. My happiness belongs to no one. Certainly to no one unwilling to ask my opinion; to share time and space, the fundamentals of a stable relationship. The weight does not come from a touch on the thigh or a planned evening on the horizon. The true foundation is built with calm understanding of thoughts and desires. We are all so generously allowed our own opinions. It is nothing like selfish to be yourself. No peace of mind would ever come from lying to someone, when their interests turn your stomach on end and fill you with an uneasiness akin to shaking your enemy's hand.

That is not to say that no pleasure can be found in a quickening heart and a rush of feeling on the skin. It is a different kind of happiness. I unexpectedly learned how to separate the momentary, the fleeting, from love. Like pieces from different puzzles I then tried to jam them together and pass the resulting hybrid off as pure. It did me so much harm that I am wandering lost in returning it to its rightful place, only after the devoted attachment of the soul. To think I believed any other way would bring me peace of mind. Relief only begins to explain the feeling of being in control of that again! If anything ever came close to regret in my heart, in my past, it would be my own false fidelity.

one and only

We were so happy in this photo when you were talking me up to your friends, like my attachment wasn't so resented, like I was appreciated. Like I was deserved. Maybe in our eyes you can see that we knew we'd be stumbling home and waking up tomorrow when the sun was already setting. The short day was overwhelmed with your apologies to your mother, and I could only listen to one song, which so incredibly reminded me of you. I told you once, and looking at this photo now I don't know if you remember. This is not who I've known since we broke up and I piloted myself into the ground. Every day we seemed to feel like we should spend together was wasted as I believed you might again be the girl in this photo. With a smile I kissed once. Before we fell asleep and woke up further from love.

failure

It was here we sat and talked. Well, you were sitting in this seat, I was on the other side of this corner. All the same, we talked like we've talked before at so many bars. I would've thought, that night, that it was you seeking the countertop and stool setting, but my nerves were being calmed too. I was happy with alcohol in my system, untrusting I am of who it makes me sometimes. And we have had some great memories, at these bars.

I would build a fortress of a relationship with you out of all our empty pint glasses. Our elaborate decoration the clinging of suds on the clear glass, like the thoughts I had that slipped away. The things I had to say but was never given the chance. All of my regrets would be plain to see every time I looked at us. But this monument of leftover good intentions would be impossible to clean. And now what's stopping me from smashing all the false supports keeping us together?

At the very least it's starting over, but it's much more like moving on. You may not deserve my obsessions and niceties, but you do deserve to know an honest man. I don't care about your past enough to not care about your future. But, I don't care enough about your future to not care about my own first. Best intentions are not always enough. Honesty doesn't get you everything you want, only peace of mind. Don't forget that you can make that for yourself, and it would only be your fault to let someone steal it away. The trick is to not stop trying for more.

Even when you fail.

acknowledgement

"Five Little Graves" by The Ivory Coast

is there any way to know that I'm lying,
that my best foot is forward
and that I'm really trying?
must be the face that I make
when I'm straining to keep you
the distance of what I'm really thinking of you

it's the end of the affair
I'm so glad we could come to terms
with the worst part of ourselves
with the worst part of ourselves

is there any way to know that I'm lying
that my best foot is forward
and that I'm really trying?
must be the face that I make
when I'm straining to keep you
the distance of what I'm really thinking of you

I'm so glad we could come to terms
with the worst part of ourselves
outliving the original feeling that
made it all make sense

I'm so glad we could come to terms
with the worst part of ourselves
outliving the original feeling that
made it all make sense
outliving the original feeling that
made it all make sense
outliving the original feeling that
made it all make sense
outliving the original feeling that
made it all make sense
outliving the original feeling that
made it all make sense

the moment you start thinking about her

Because all of the ways you think she could help you are really ways you need to help yourself.

Because the songs she played for you would be great even if she wasn't the one who played them for you, but she did and that's better.

Because she's flawed, and all you can think is that you're flawed too.

Because you have faith in her even when she doesn't have faith in herself.

Because all of the ways you want to help her you can't.

the moment you stop thinking about her

When you realize that her making you a better person was just you making you a better person.

When you realize that her favorite songs were not your favorite songs, but your favorite songs of her's.

When you realize that the reasons why you were meant to be together were not the reasons why you were meant to be together, but reasons that you wanted to be the reasons why you were meant to be together, because you wanted to be together.

When you realize that you want to be together and not because of reasons that you want to be the reasons why you are meant to be together, but because you want to be together.