sure surfaces

i think i have an inability to see my own defense mechanism as an excuse for behavior in others ..

example, how do you tell someone you like someone else better but initiate conversations more? something that was grating on my last nerve but i realized i do the same thing ..  everyone wants to be wanted no matter how much they don't want that other person .. and even if you don't want that other person right now if you keep them interested, even in the slightest, then if whatever you have moved on to pursue doesn't work out you have guaranteed yourself a back up plan.

i've done it more times than settles well with me but i resent being the one put on layaway. mostly because normally i don't play this game .. if i see this happening i cut ties, i don't bite .. but now i'm biting and i haven't the slightest idea why.

a lie .. i do know .. because there are inherent similarities in personality and defense mechanisms between all of the people that can tear me apart and i walked myself up to another one of these people and placed myself squarely in the palm of his hand -

because the devil i knew, even with a different face, the devil i knew was safer than saying no to what i knew i didn't want in someone else.

(is the underlying thought here that it is easier to hurt myself with something i do want than to hurt someone else who wants me that i don't want?) yes.  

violent delights/ends

nights, so easily mangled
stolen spans
without obligation

loosely based on
red wine, excuses to rummage
in the kitchen to pursue
what i should have known was time-limited

hands leaving breadcrumbs
blue-green

postcards from

(the shower, the headboard)

an admission
dropped
(like jeans, coats hours before)
on 5am tile -

'i started to like more' -
(..i know)
a door closed

is to the continuation of patterns
as saying too late is to being enough.

as much a prison

behind velvet ropes 

adorned with expectations

poised to disappoint

acrophobic in

a museum littered with 

fractured pedestals 

happy too

i see myself projecting my jealousy of one relationship onto the one i have become entangled in.

do i continually pursue superficial relationships so that i have something to project my disappointments onto?  because it doesn't take much time or effort to find a relationship that is devoid of emotion .. so do i fill these interactions with what i am lacking or do i simply develop emotions after the fact because physical intimacy cannot exist without some sort of chemistry?

or is that im unfazed by the polygamy of the relationships if i am unaware of it but as soon as i see otherwise my ego is bruised? maybe my jealousy is still projected in the right direction and what i am otherwise feeling is my consistent insecurity that "i am not enough." because if you're not enough for the guys you don't have feelings for you how can you be enough for the ones that you do?

if you're not enough for the people you don't have feelings for you how can you be enough for the ones that you do?

 

silence: outstretched for you

hardening; molding here on this limb
beauty in the temptation of 
aborting myself from this
love for your strength. 
denial rooted in our changelessness, 
growing (c)old, battered 
unable to fall, prevented, 
a death grip on this arm -
yours, familiar, in this (dis)integration 


(of us). 
   

the richest things

i am clearly not as good with words as you are, and um, i know that things between us have been a little complicated and that there have probably been some mixed signals, mostly from me with regards to the time we spend together . . what im saying is that i think maybe the best things, the richest things, aren't supposed to come easily, and that sometimes the moments that make the most sense happen when everything else doesn't .. and well, i think you deserve more than popcorn tonight.

- Psych

your mistake

: you 

    not here. 

    not this niche to rot

    deteriorating in the crevasses between you (and) 

another testing, a crack even

every interaction we experience is tainted by out expectations. .

wants

needs

we're selfish, and we want things for ourselves that other people have. when we both want the same things we become friends, when we want the same things from each other we fall in love/lust/ (or hate)

but what if continued but unacknowledged expectations color an entire relationship? suddenly respective expectations/desires become misaligned. and if you, like me, are unable for whatever reason to vocalize these wants/expectations etc. then you find yourself severely disappointed.

* * *

i build walls with people, if i feel insecure about the future of a relationship (or an interaction to cite my own overly clinical term) i put another (or multiple other) person between those feelings. . use them to numb myself to the disappointment, make myself seem desirable even though my wants are misaligned with those i use.

yep use, i use people to avoid developing legitimate feelings for someone who may not like me back. and i do this because i have never learned to confront anyone about anything .. (a trait im sure comes from years of suppressive environments and assumptive authoritative figures)

.. how did i become a person that is scared to pursue what she wants? (prior entries will reveal i know exactly how .. but my real question is how do i get over it? )

and the music

conscious

of shaded eyes

watching movement, a blurry smudge, (is it beautiful?), on inside windows

perpetuating what is glanced at

incidental confrontation

pay attention!

fingers, legs- furious and insecure

intention-less in their concord

(just happening, like things should)

overlooked,

for fear that paying attention

is more ...

the nature of artifacts

falling.

not off,

things falling on.

skin on skin,

intentional and

unacknowledged,

dropped,

buried.

changeless in this manner,

subsiding

under piles of;

us

denying the alternative.

a drawing you give your mother

i hate that im not a confrontational person. i am taking steps to like myself, which is a long time coming, and maybe the more i like myself the more confrontational i'll be willing to become.

I find it easiest to be what people expect me to be, and even easier to be what people want. fulfilling others expectations should never be as easy as it is for me; I slide through relationships without ever truly revealing my wants or needs; and people are too selfish to even know the difference.

i find myself wanting to be genuine with the people who expect nothing else from me but who i am. which is a ludicrously profound statement, but as a feeling it is refreshing. so what if the people who make me feel like this are new to me (and younger)? it doesn't even matter that they don't realize they have allowed me a freedom from expectation.

in my mind i romanticize this idea, make their lack of expectations something to be coveted. and maybe it is? we are cultivating something innocent; something confounded from a mutual respect, commonality, and in the process honesty? .. see there i go romanticizing. im sure this comes from everyone else pointing out what is in front of my face. . but is it? or am i finding such innocence so refreshing that i am enticed by it?

it is much easier to pursue someone when you know what they want and you know how to give it to them. It is something else to go through this process like a normal person. . something i suppose i never did, or developed a stigma against because of the delusions conjured by my mother and her unreasonable expectations about my personal life.

and what if that is happening again? it is a real possibility that it is (happening again).. and that other people reinforce her philosophy because i am subconsciously projecting it onto my attitude about the whole situation.

and here we have it ladies and gentlemen the inherent explanation for my inability to confront anyone about anything.

make me stay

“You know how when we were kids there were all those cool prizes at the bottom of cereal boxes? Ok . . well there are two kinds of kids, there’s the kid who flipped the box over and opened it from the bottom and grabbed the prize right away and then there was the kid who waited patiently and ate bowl after bowl of cereal until the prize just tumbled out on its own - there’s also a third kid named Mikey who would eat anything, including the prize, hes not really important right now - I didn’t wait, I didn’t wait for my decoder ring or my frankenberry action figure when I was a kid so what am I waiting for now? All I know is that I don’t want to miss out on the prize ..”

-psych

weightless place

self -

undefined by extraneous choices;

made by an impulse

to be loved,

no matter how conditionally.

No matter

how incongruous what loves me is

to what i love, think i love,

.. think needs me to love.

self

- bled complacently

after all this

(by what is opposed to loving me back).

loving like this

the way i see it .. no, the way i have been conditioned to see it by my own experience .. is that there are two ways to start a relationship and two ways to end them.

there are those who get too close, platonically, and the relationship has no other way than to gain depth besides physically (and the emotional avenues the physicality opens up). people always think this evolution is ideal .. ideal until these things develop long distance, with another person involved, or after you find out your not attracted to each other .. insert awkward ending here. things fade, you stop talking (accept for the occasional what if), and your done and regretting never knowing/or knowing too much.

what if this new depth is inhibited by another person? what if you are ready to take that step and are unable to, you lose your chance you can't go back and silence creeps in to fill the space of the lost moment. then it's gone .. love, or the potential for it, has expired. it doesn't come back.

the other type of people are those who automatically present themselves with the potential for attraction, you move too quick, you play too many games, they are intimidated, you are distracted, things happen once, maybe for a few weeks and then they dissipate because .. well because why?

because people are afraid they won't fit into your life? because they have a girlfriend? because they can't take responsibility for their emotions? because why?

and maybe love is like this too .. unanswered questions, missed chances, singular encounters .. maybe anticipation is all love feeds on. . and when that anticipation reaches its climax we are disappointed by its actualization.

maybe the only way to seal love is by the ritualization of this anticipation? and is the only way to ritualize both these types of "love" by running to and from the same familiar stranger?

it cant be ..

like this also

there are some people that make you want to stay, and others, invariably, that make you want to leave.

staying because there is potential for friendship, something untapped that would benefit everyone. but staying because it's easy and this is a redeeming quality of a place that otherwise smothers is not .. beneficial.

stifled by not

defining your absence

ironically, many of the people that make you want to leave are the ones you can never fully detach yourself from. But is leaving bc there is potential in multiple places .. where happiness is a possibility and comfort/simplicity is a guarantee ..is not detaching yourself from a claustrophobic obligation simply rerouting it to another catalyst?

really what i am saying is that unless you go somewhere for yourself, and only yourself, you will eventually, inevitably become unhappy. (clearly.)

is the only way to find self-happiness to abandon people you love? and in this abandonment do we find that love is worth it only if you have come back to it more happy, un-stifled, than when you left it?

walking away from people because the happiness they provide is perishable is love also.

love is preserving the perishable so that the finite qualities of people cement themselves in us.

do we free ourselves by preserving the finite from a distance?

and is this love also?

love is like this

i'm sorry no one told you

- i didn't tell you

or that you knew that no one told you

but you knew what wasn't being told anyway

i'm sorry you had to know before i had known you knew

that life is volcanic; catastrophic in its potential to disappoint

no one is sorry that i'm disappointed

-constantly

no one knows that i know they are disappointing me

bc they think they are better .. no one knows i know,

we know,

that they are liars

they lie, bc we know that life is

volcanic

bc we want but cant have

things not be the same

i'm sorry things can't not be the same

or i wish i was

catastrophic in a sense

because lacking sameness

makes dissimilarity disappointing

-like everything else

like life

when you're lied to

in a way that averts the truth without speaking

i'm sorry i'm not sorry about your sameness

sameness, when it is a rooted, like a dying tree to the ground

self made, like a tomb

i'm sorry no one told you

-i didn't tell you

i will not be a part of your infuriating sameness

i will be volcanic and catastrophic on my own.

the middle torn out

until recently i had no idea, but i am seeing that grief is at times stagnant, and always fragile; selfish in its fragility almost, like a little kid clinging to the leg of a parent (a memory) for fear that when it is no longer tangible it is gone .. indefinitely.

and then there is the silence. its not silence though, it is an absence of sounds, daily sounds, those of living (existing) that become deafening in their enormity. like a vacuum, amplifying the singular sounds of existence so that their echo is a constant reminder of this absence.

i try to take up space, absorb the echo so it is not quite so suffocating - does this last forever? in varying degrees?

can a heart break forever? a painful disintegration that you cope with but never resolve?

ive never understood loss before now ..

and i don't know if we're not better off not knowing.

someone else's forward motion

"intentions appear to be the most fragile things in the world."

- Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician.

Daniel.wallace