Weather for Headphones

I took some time off from school because of my skin, and now I am back. It’s a strange feeling.

I can’t really compare it to anything except when I spent a week in Charter Ridge for suicidal thoughts. Most of the kids there were only around for a week or two weeks, and then they left. But in those few days, we became close. There were tears and rivalries. We gossiped about the girls in the other block. I was teased and I had people stand up for me. There was a student there, a young man who understood me and helped me as much as he could. I wouldn’t have survived without him.

And then I left. It was like walking into a new school, or seeing a new country where the people spoke a different language. Even though it was only a few days, I was someone different. I didn’t want to be with the people I was with before. I knew that I deserved something more.

It has only been two days, and this week has been impossibly hard. So many people love me and like me and want me to succeed and do well. There is this immense pressure on me. I am really, truly terrified of letting everyone down. I have had thoughts this week that I shouldn’t have, and it’s because I feel both alone and like there is too much love.

I have come to realize that love is more than just being. Love only works if it has mutual support and criticism. Sometimes, loving someone can hurt more than it helps, because that love puts expectations on the person. Maybe it is just that I need less love…or more love from myself.

I feel like I am someone different. I am not my nickname anymore. I’m not someone who puts up with B.S. and flawed thinking. As I get older, my standards for myself and for other people continue to climb. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I know that it means my life will eventually be a lot happier and satisfying.

It is hard to explain myself. I’ve never liked talking about myself or what I think and feel, but it seems like it might be the only thing that can keep me going. So I am going to keep going. I know that this feeling will pass eventually, and things will work out. I just need to cry and fall apart and put myself back together.

my sheets will never be silent
whispers trailed between your fingers

i’ve always wanted to kiss people
through windows my astral heart

every birthday i ask for cookies
the cakes are made en masse

i used to draw mountains
but people make better horizons

if you build a sea of night
if you hide beneath the stars
someone will find you

Last night, I was anxious about returning to school. I am living off campus, and my room felt empty. I wrote two poems- one is about loneliness, and the other is about hope.

sometimes i taste the stale marrow of isolation
a creak in the night is enemy or empty

and it’s impossible to silence the noise in your head
the tin-tin pitch black space which craves distance

some person some day may read my words with their eyes
the ones that never penetrate walls, though seeing everything

we wish for open air and box our hearts instead
a car door slams, lights flicker, with the air we think we breathe

if this is the beginning then the end will be between

Sometimes I feel old. I don’t think that it’s all bad. My toes creak and my body shivers in the cold. I have trouble getting out of bed because I’m afraid of how I could get hurt. Life has made me hope too many times, and I each time i got burned. But I’ve gotten good at it.

I get better at hoping every day, like the way the next term paper is better than the last. Like the way I love you more and more every day, in little different but noticeable ways.

I fall down the cliff, and I climb my way up. I scrape my skin and my heart. Sometimes I cry a little. Maybe I cry a lot. But every time, I get better. And everytime, as I’m scaling that face, with bare hand and thin jeans, I look out at the sea. I see things that weren’t there before…and I let go of them.

I’m beginning to suspect that hope is what life should, what my life should be about. Everytime I think I can’t make it, everytime I think about taking another bottle of pills, I realize that I don’t want to go. Even when things seem pointless, hopeless, and gone- I can’t.

I’m beginning to think that hope is a part of me. I don’t understand where it comes from. I’ve had nights when I scratched myself bloody, nights when I awoke in a bed of my own skin…but I keep going.

Sometimes hope pokes fun at me. I want to cry and mope and blame God. And then hope comes from out of nowhere- from inside me. I’m so set on crying, on feeling bad for myself, that I say in my head, “No! You can’t hope. No! What? Oh. Darn it.” Hope makes me realize that feeling sorry for yourself is an excuse. It’s an excuse to do nothing. So I keep climbing.

Sometimes I feel young. I eat junk food. I dream about being an astronaut slash president slash pulitzer writer slash rockstar slash nomad slash moviestar. I watch bad tv. I’m still afraid of the dark.

Have you ever cried so much that everything seemed funny? Or you had your wet eyes closed for so long that, when you opened them, the world was bright and new? That’s your body telling you to hope. Because nothing lasts forever, good or bad- but especially the bad. There’s a saying- if you don’t like the weather in Kentucky, wait a minute. If you don’t like the weather in your heart, close your eyes. Just for a moment.

Hope is something that lives in our blood. A heart doesn’t know the day it dies. It could fail any moment. Lightning could strike you. There could be a plague. But it keeps pumping, day in and day out, no matter what happens. It hopes for the next day, the next hour, the next second to stay alive. It hopes, even when you aren’t.

As long as you’re alive, you have hope.

at night the birds escape
their homes nestled in the crook
of my ear and my eye, pecking holes
i want to kiss them, make friends
but they scream when hands wander
near the place where i burned myself
with so many forgotten fingertips
the fallen pieces start to ache
these rough surfaces wear smooth

one day i’ll stop the sharpening
but a bird that leaves will always return