Swimming in my pool of blood.

[Here's a couple things I've thought about today. They have a similar theme, so I feel justified posting them together. The first is to a boy I've only said one sentence to in my life, and the second is to a very close friend. Enjoy.]

Critical

I'll sit here in silence, don't be bothered by me. Keep calling that girl a "troll". You're cool-and you know it, so just talk, talk away. Your ego's too big not to show.

Oh yes, she's not perfect, and neither is she, but have you looked in the mirror of late? Your finger keeps pointing, your words, they keep taunting-you're ugly. Stop calling them names.

When one finger points, there are three pointing back; back at you, boy, right there in your face. So make fun of her voice, or that other girl's words. You're just mad you don't have half their grace.

If I could tune out one voice in this loud, loud world, right now I'd have it be yours. I'm much better off missing your negative air and the arrogance with which you choke.




Tearing me down

I've never been one to rudely joke. What I pretend, I become. I've tried not to be rude. Therefore, I don't joke that way; or I don't try to on a regular basis. Habit becomes you, after all.

I suppose I believe everyone else should be this way. I suppose, because what I pretend I become, that everyone else must become rude with their own rude jokes. It's only natural.

What's funny to some inadvertently stabs me. And I can't bring myself to rip the knife out and hand it back as I bleed.

I just let it pierce me.

With each breath it hurts, and I can't stand to focus on the pain because that only makes it worse. I become more agonized if I remember the knife. So I ignore it.

And I bleed.

So thank you, best friend, for stabbing me again. Thank you for your two knifes today. You, like them all, suppose I'm "adult" enough-hard hearted enough-to let the knives glance off. Unfortunately, I'm not as careless as you. I'm not as desensitized.

Thus, I bleed.

And I'd return the knife, but I'm sure you don't need another.


"And it kind of hurts when the kind of words you say kind of turn themselves into blades. Kind and courteous is a life I've heard..."
-Beautiful Mess, Jason Mraz

Never Know

Oh. It's you. I didn't recognize you for a moment. Yeah, I suppose my hair's changed since we last saw each other as well. You look like your ten-year-old self with your hair like that. Maybe even your five-year-old self. I remember you best as a five-year-old.

Don't judge me with this tennis racket in my hand. I've never been a sports person like you. I simply wanted to see if I could still hit a tennis ball the way I could two years ago. So far it's a no. You don't remember I had that phase, do you? I suppose not, it was very short lived. But I see you're still good with the soccer ball. I see you've acted on that God given talent. I see the ball obeys your command like a puppet; I envy you for that. You're really good. It's too bad we can't talk about this.

I've noticed you're wearing a necklace. That's interesting. Just a chain, though, nothing girly; and I must say it adds to your personality. If I knew your personality. I can see now your face has matured. Your baby fat's gone. Mine is too, if you didn't notice. I wonder if you see the five-year-old me standing here, the way I see yours. I wonder if you're putting the pieces of my past looks together with time and trying to make them equal what you see. Like I am you.

I see you're looking at me. I see we keep "missing" eye contact: I look, you've been looking and look away at that moment; and vice-versa. How does your voice sound? I heard you a while back; it had deeped. Is it the same, or has it gone deeper yet? I suppose I could ask, or you could say something to show me, but there are two conversations happening across our paths. Let's not disrupt them by speaking. You can keep wondering about me, and I'll keep wondering about you.

How does it feel, cousin? How does it feel to you to look at me? How does it feel not knowing the hobbies of my life, the name of my best friend, my middle name, or even something as simple as what makes me laugh? How does it feel not knowing what type of humor I have? I don't know more about you than I do your brother. Or your sister. Or your sister. Or your sister. I know your first name, sometimes I even forget your last-is it really the same as my own? I know you play soccer. Apparently you play it well. And for Davis? So you go to Davis High? That's news to me.

Let's be frank, Derrick, if that is how you spell your name. Let's be frank with the fact that I don't know you; you don't know me. I'm seventeen, you're seventeen, and our birthdays are 29 days apart.

We're strangers and we should be best friends.

So why won't either of us say "Hello"?

If We Were a Movie...

If my life was a movie, or a novel, or any form of pre-scripted happening, this is what would have happened:

-I would have gotten into any show at Rodger's I auditioned for (not saying all of them at all, but at least one).

-I would have never had to buy a shirt larger than a medium.

-I wouldn't have been late for school approximately 24 times this term.

-I would have gotten rid of front bangs five years sooner than I actually did.

-I'd fall "in love" with someone who was actually interested back, instead of someone who was 1) oblivious, 2) a flirtatious player with no heart, 3) just another potential "guy friend".

-I'd have the talent to compose music to go with my lyrics.

-That "D" would have never appeared on 9th grade's report card. Nor the "C" or "C+" from third term...

-My car battery wouldn't have died today.

-I would have never scraped my leg up falling off my scooter.

-I'd probably have a boyfriend by now.

-I wouldn't be utterly disturbed by the simple subject of human anatomy.

-I'd be able to write more than three chapters on any of my various book ideas...

And I think that's why I want to write. Because I can make these things and more happen, or not happen. If I write, I hold the pen, the plot, and the outcome of the story. I can bend everything every which way and make life a thousand times simpler.

I really could.

Though, looking back over my list (which would go on and on and on...) I see that my definition of having a life like a movie is having a life that's perfect. Which, of course, isn't so. Anyone who's seen What's Eating Gilbert Grape or Titanic would know that.

Then again, Titanic is based on a true story. So, in a sense, those lives were in fact a movie...

I guess I'm just expecting the celestial playwrights of my life to look down upon me and say, "Alright, Erica. I think it's about time you get something you've been waiting for. Here. Have a boyfriend."

They can give me something else too, but at present moment I'm leaning toward boyfriend. But, as Liz Phair sang to me today over the fuzzy radio at work:

"Isn't this the best part of waking up-Finding someone else you can't get enough of? Someone who wants to be with you too."
-Why Can't I, Liz Phair

I suppose my celestial playwrights just haven't allowed me to cross paths with that person that "wants to be with [me] too." I've found people I want to be with, but I guess love has to be a mutual agreement.

Let the sun set. And let's start another day alone.

Climb Every Mountain

Flat Mountain Dew tastes like melted Slurpee. If said Slurpee was of the Mountain Dew variety.



I bought a rather large Mountain Dew last Wednesday, hoping it would clear me of my obscene headache prior to my choir concert. I think it worked. Moderately. I only ended up drinking a few sips that day, which, if you know me, is an extremely remarkable feat. I'm known to drinking my complete beverage in one sitting, usually within the time span of one to six minutes.

Let's just say road trips are interesting. If you catch my drift.

Nonetheless, I kept the flat Mountain Dew sitting on the floor of my room, and have proceeded to sip when I feel so inclined. It is doing anything beneficial any longer? The answer is no. But still I drink.

Don't we all tend to do the unnecessary? Don't we all tend to "drink" our "flat Mountain Dews" just because we can? There are plenty of other, more healthy and safe, beverages I could consume, but still I look past my water and on to the Dew. Why?

I think the unneeded tend to be more pleasurable. I often call it "easily distracted". For example, I could be getting ready to hit the hay right about now, and I do love my sleep, but instead I'm blogging; which is in fact a grand past-time, but is it really as necessary right now as sleep would be?

And I answer you no.

I don't reckon I'd have this problem if I quit surrounding myself with flat Mountain Dews that must be swallowed before being tossed out. Maybe if I didn't promise my attention span to other pointless areas, I'd be on task.

And well rested.

All we are, we are.

I sit at the bar in the diner. It's a quiet place off the road to Nowhere; the road is gravel, the signs are hanging by a thread and faded with the past century. The floor is wood, the bar is wood, the wobbly stool I'm perched on is metal. I swing my foot against the wooden bar, facing the faded mirror behind it.

The door peels open with a faint tingling bell. The bell sounds dead and falling.

She takes a seat next to me. Her eyes are brown, her hair is brown, and her jacket is over-sized and navy. She leans her elbows on the bar and stares at the rustic wood. Her sneakers are Converse.

Her sneakers were Converse.

I turn lightly back to my chipped tea cup full of flat water. I stare at it, pensive, like her.

The waitress comes past. She speaks the the brunette, and though I'm eavesdropping I don't catch specifics. I glance back her way once the waitress is gone. I see a light in her somewhere, faintly-faintly-glowing behind her tired eyes and distracted air. She digs in her pocked and pulls out a dented cigarette. I watch her light it, secretly fascinated by the ritual.

She takes a drag then aims the smoke to the mirror across the bar. That faded, extinct mirror.

She takes another drag.

"What are you running from?" I ask her, glancing for a moment to my cup, as if the water within it could make this conversation alright.

She lets out the smoke. I feel the essence of tobacco climb into my mouth and murderously down my throat. I feel my lungs dying as it sticks.

"I'm not running from anything." She says, her eyes still locked on the mirror, as far away as she was the moment she came in.

"Are you sure?" I ask her, again looking self-consciously to my cup. "You seem like you're... lost."

Her eyes peel from the glass and turn to me. I raise my head to meet them. She's not wearing make-up; she's lovely enough to go without. I envy her for a moment. She takes another drag.

"I stopped for a pit-stop." She explains on the exhale. "Just because I'm here doesn't mean I'm running from something. Maybe I'm running to something. Did you think of that?"

She watches me as I change my focal point to a place beyond her head. "We all come from somewhere. If you left that somewhere and are running for somewhere else, I assume you're running away from that other somewhere."

She just looks at me, absorbing my idiotic statement.

"Plus, you don't look like you're out for a vacation. Or on a trip to visit grandma."

Her eyes faze out again, examining the open space behind mine. She takes a drag and pulls herself back to focus. "Alright. I guess I agree." She pauses and looks at the cigarette. "I had everything figured out. I knew where I was going when, and how I was getting there." She turns back to face the mirror, her eyes glassy again, but this time with light, not the muddled darkness of before. "I had a plan-a road map. I had a map, and I had my bike. And I knew where I was going. But there was a fork in the road. There was a choice I hadn't made before, and I had to make it at that moment; there was no stopping to deliberate, there was no driving back to grade school memories and finding the predetermined answer. It was then and there, and that moment.

"And I took the wrong road. I felt like I'd stabbed in the dark it was so wrong. And it's always so much harder to go back than it is to move forward, so I kept moving forward. I kept..." She glanced at me, then the cigarette in her hand. "I kept running."

I watch her in silence, the ashes on the cigarette falling to the bar top, neither of us taking much note, neither of us pondering if somehow they'd catch the bar on fire. Both of us just watch it, and think.

I remember how I got to the road to Nowhere. I remember my own sense of that sinking feeling of failure, I remember that need to run. I don't tell her that, of course. I felt that perhaps I was here at this bar and that moment for the sole purpose of helping her to find how to crush that butt in the ash tray and turn back home. I felt I was to help her learn that what she was running from was really what she needed.

"How 'bout you?" She asks me. I jerk awake from my ash-filled stupor. "What are you running from?"

I gaze back at the ashes. "I guess I'm running from the past. I guess I'm... I'm sick of who I was back there." I found my fingers in the ashes, drawing my story. "At the time, I thought everything about me was perfect, incredible, flawless. But then I realized it wasn't. I realized I hated myself. And that scared me. I changed the way I did a lot of things. I kept hoping I'd find that place where I was happy in myself, but I never did. My happiest moments where when I wasn't me. When I got to truly become someone else and be them, for however long it may be, was when my heart soared the most. And I hated how all those characters I took seemed to not exist, and all the flawless realities I had as them weren't available when I was my true self.

"So I guess I'm running from myself, really. I guess I'm running from me."

She places the remainder of the cigarette on the plate my tea cup rests on.

"Sounds like you need that." She says, pulling another from her pocket. "I wouldn't start with a new one for my first time anyway." She lights it and smokes it, eyeing me.

I pick up the cigarette.

It's warm. And inviting. I hold it awkwardly in my hand, not knowing what to do with it. I bring it slowly to my lips, I can feel it brush them gently. My heart is pounding. Excited, right? Thrilled, right? Ready? Is that it?

I let out my breath and open my mouth. "And I took the wrong road. I felt like I'd stabbed in the dark it was so wrong. And it's always so much harder to go back than it is to move forward..." Her voice echoes in my head and I pull the cigarette from my lips.

She smiles, but her eyes are still sad and empty behind it. "I thought you wouldn't know me." She says, taking another drag on her cigarette. "I thought my eyes and hair would throw you off."

"More than that is different." I say, setting my cigarette back on the bar. "All of you is like another person."

"Well, that's what I wanted, wasn't it? I wanted to be another person. So I did."

"How long have you been on this road?" I ask her as she pulls a wadded dollar from her jacket.

"Too long." She straightens the bill on the edge of the bar and looks me square in the eye.

"It's about time I left."

I slowly stand from the stool as she places the dollar under my cup. "I miss the days I'd drink this." She says, glancing in. She picks up the discarded butt. "I miss the days I did a lot of those things."

I back slowly toward the door.

"Will I... Will I see you again?"

She turns back to me.

"Only if you make the mistake of finding me. I'll be here, at this bar, with this cigarette. And I don't plan on ever having to share."

I nod, understanding. I open the door, with a weak tingling of bells, and head out to the gravel road. I don't look back.

The road to Nowhere is merely a road from somewhere. I stopped there once on a road to somewhere else. But I made the wrong choice there, a stab in the dark, and I ran from that somewhere to somewhere else, but it only ever was the same place.

I've learned that if you take the road to Nowhere, and you stop at the diner just off it, chances are you'll stumble upon the you that's been there before, the you that made the wrong choice before. And that experienced you will offer you the same wrong choice they accepted.

Will you say no to yourself?

I get on my bike and turn it toward the street, hoping to never see myself like that again.

Falling Apart

I don't know what I want to say. I knew I blew it. I knew it wasn't happening. People can say all they want through common courtesy that they thought I did well; we all know I didn't.

For once I'd like to be able to show that I have the talent I apparently have. People tell me I can act, people tell me I'm great. Then why doesn't my resume say so? Why don't I have a list of leads that say without speaking that I have skill?

I know I'm not a singer, and I wouldn't mind so much if all the world around me, all the people I interact with, weren't either. I don't want to "face the music", I want to forget this ever happened. I don't want to live all of next year thinking, "Maybe if I'd just practiced a little more. Maybe if I hadn't wasted my life. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe."

If only, if only, the woodpecker cried...

Hand me the box of tissues, and pass me the water and Advil, because this headache and this heartache aren't going away too soon.

"Every so often we long to steal/ to the land of what might have been.
But that doesn't soften the ache we feel/ when reality sets back in...
Don't wish./ Don't start./ Wishing only wounds the heart."
-I'm Not That Girl, Wicked

It's like my grandmother once said, "If only desire was enough." If only talent had nothing to do with it. Then you could have it; then you'd be alright.

I'll be okay, eventually. I feel my heart stitching itself back together already. But you can't bleed for less than a day and expose your wound to salt and expect it not to sting. Sadly, tomorrow I'll be surrounded by salt; there's nothing I can do about it.

But I'll do what I always do and break down inside. You won't see it, you won't know, but that salt is stinging and it's stinging hard. And come tomorrow night as I lay staring at the ceiling, that salt will visit me again as water pools down my cheek.

I can accept it and agree, here on my own, but with the eyes of my peers I'm certain I'll feel moronic.

Perhaps I'll invest in a Dunce hat.

But we can cross out "Dunce" and write "Failure."

St. Patrick's Day Slums

I have that feeling again. But frankly, I'm not surprised. I've felt it coming on for some time now, but I pushed it aside. What kept me going? Hope?

The inklings of foreshadowing tapped me on a regular basis, but Hope just took my hand and lead me away with a smile. "It'll be alright." Hope said. "Just wait. It'll be alright. Trust me."

Well I watched today. I stood there and watched. One, two, three. Four. With each hug; it didn't hurt, on the contrary, I felt utterly fine. His arms were the broom, and each time they enveloped her, the dirt of my emotions was swept out the door of my heart. Silently. Painlessly. Hope glanced at me with mild concern.

I looked slowly down. "That's okay." I sighed, releasing the last from my system. "I can see it now. I'd always assumed..." I shrugged, melancholy. Hope and I turned, that feeling filling me again, that feeling of getting over. That feeling of moving on. But it wasn't as consuming and painful as the first time. It was more of a peace: a peace that I was wrong once again, and that my efforts had been fruitless, in vain, all for naught, and any other classic phrase of the type.

It's time to quit thinking. It's time to quit wishing. It's time to start living, start being, and start letting Fate hold my hand and lead me away, not Hope. Though Hope, Hope is a grand companion, but both Hope and I are blind, and we focus too much on the fuzzy. We take note too much on the absent. We live too much for the dead.


"Goodbye my almost lover./ Goodbye my hopeless dream.
I'm trying not to think about you;/ can't you just let me be?
So long my luckless moment,/ my back is turned on you.
Should have known you'd bring me heartache.
Almost lovers always do."
-Almost Lover, A Fine Frenzy


And I'm not bitter, I'm utterly content, as odd as it seems. I should have known; correction, I did know, all along. But sometimes it's much, much nicer to smile and pretend that I don't see. It's much, much nicer to be the ingenue for once. Once.

Today was not my time. And I pray I can prove Murphy's Law right.

I pray the time I don't think I've found the one, I find the one.

We'll see. Fate and I will see.