what is it that you’re looking for here in this wasteland?
when i was younger i found the boys who would grow up to be men like you and i would sink my fingers into their hearts, not caring about the jagged glass that was cutting me the whole. way. down. i found them and i tried so very hard to twist them into mine, i tried to be everything. once, i succeeded.
no one wants to hear those stories.
how many times i’ve been looked at and all they can say is, “i don’t know how you did that”. and the answer is, universally, neither do i.
it’s not an honor to better someone else when you do it at the cost of everything that lives inside you. just once could one of you stop with the pleading and the imploring and the thanks for a moment, long enough, to notice that i do not exist to make. you. better. i am not a goddamn vessel for your worry fear anger anxiety and how, how did you see through to my own emptiness when i dress up every day in this facade of “don’t fuck with me”. mostly though, i don’t want your accolades. they remind me of what i’ve lost.
eventually, even the masochistic among us tire of vampirism, and what appeared to be bonding and love is revealed for what it is. eventually, you leave, and over time it all feels like it happened in a different life. i’ve had four lives now.
the past three are echoes. they’ve been reverberating a little stronger lately, and perhaps it’s a sign of growth that i know their sound families and i can feel their pull but say, “ah. there you are. i think maybe not, this time”. and i will keep walking, and they will get fainter. and fainter.
I see some people and Love seems to flock to them, they never seem to be lonely or sad and I wonder what that secret to this magic is. I know all too well what you are talking about and can only say, that you will know it soon enough. As I grow older I have learned to not let myself fall into that trap of compromising myself to make another happy. Sure, there will always be compromises, and you will always have to work to be happy and to keep your partner happy, but someday–and maybe you already are at that someday, I can’t say–you will have something that doesn’t hurt to make these choices. It’s out there.
so much of this hits me where it hurts. the self-awareness here is astounding. there’s something to be said for knowing the dark parts of you, being intimately acquainted with your failings, with your past selves, with the murky reasons for the things you do that make absolutely no sense to anyone BUT you.
Reading this reminds me of standing on a corner when I was 17, wearing a leather jacket with a torn lining, freezing. It reminds me of knowing exactly who I am and not caring if anyone else does. It’s beautiful.
The first time I read this, the first line stayed with me, and it has run in my head over the past week. Especially the image of the wasteland. When I lived in the southwest I was always fifteen minutes away from nowhere and it suited who I was at that time of my life.
As for the echoes: I love that you are learning to master them. It’s all the harder when they’re made up of jagged glass times, and this is how I know that you can do pretty much anything.