invisable ink

turn around
walk away, backwards
you'll see my scars
the tatoo's you left me
i can see the trace
of my secrets
on every inch
of your face
even with the smoke
from this burning bridge
in my eyes.
can't you smell it?
the sweat of you and me
melting in this fire
taken away by
selfish you.
a souvinir
because i could never leave a mark
not even a bruise
though god knows i tried
we cant close this book
there isn't an ending
the last sentance's fragment
a burned bridge
(but) a copy on both sides
pick me up on a rainy day
say you'll miss me
and mean it.
because it's more
than being near you.

who's going to drive you home?

"...you say goodbye when underneith's your one belief."

so i was thinking.
about motivation. inspiration.
in class today, i found my self back in the same place i started from.
like always...

understand:

i dance to help me rationalize things.
deal with things.
remember.
forget.
fly.

to rationalize and to deal with is not to let go.
it's to manipulate emotions into a productive catalyst.
it's motivation to move through space.

the problem is...
when one single person is the source of your inspiration,
you recall the face, the emotions - - be they anger, passion, love, restlessness - -
they are readily and easily pulled to the surface.

they are deliberatly acessible
you put them there.

how do you get over something that is such a prevalent part of your every day.
everyday because i have class almost every day and lets just say my surroundings for the past year have been anything but inspiring.

i depend on my love, and frustration, and even hate for him.
not healthy necessarily, i mean a healthy way to deal with these emotions sure,
but not a healthy way to depend on someone.
not a healthy source of continuouse inpiration.

but you know... i have the whole situation, all of my emotions, most everything, figured out.
its rationalized irrationally in my mind, and i know exactly what it was, would have been, could have been, won't be and will be.
it's refreshing in someways to be so aware.

but this awareness leads me to the undeniable fact
i have to say goodbye to him next week.
he'll be states away.

selfishly enough i am afraid i will lack in inspiration.
and even more, i am afraid i will pull at every last heart string so that i can move with a purpose, and in the process hurt myself. (emotionally of course.)
i won't get over it if i have to keep pulling in to the surface.

all of this delays the "healing" process, but no one else inspires me.
it's to late to stop it now.
it's ritual.
i depend on it.

quite the paradox.

i don't know how to say goodbye to him.
i never have.

the only one who knows that side of me,
the only one that never deserved my trust,
but ironicly the only one i have ever trusted.

independant, and reliable due to content, sources shared with me recentlly that they could admit that it was obviously love.
- - mutual love.

for once an admitance that i didn't fabricate the whole thing
because if you knew the people around me that is what you would think.
finally acknowledgement of the fact that i too love and hurt.

there is a strength that both of us draws from the fear, the niave passion, the tension, between us.
what happens when that travels across borders?

this space is needed.
a long time coming.

i just don't know where to go from here.

the only truth that sticks

the people that i thought i knew,
i really thought i trusted...

changed.

i shouldn't say "the people"
it's just one person.

when you look at this person, one of your best friends, and you ask
"who are you?!?!"

what do you do?
where do you go?

people take for granted that you will always be there.
because i am somewhat laid back...
doesn't mean things don't bother me.

did she ever think that maybe i was alittle mad?
alittle mad not even nessicarily that she did it,
mad because she didn't feel guilty,
didnt deem it important enough, relevant enough, to tell me!!?

it's drama,
i hate it.

but there is a point.
another fine line,
the line between above it and numb to it.
gettting walked on, brushed aside, steped over.

there are certin things that deserve a reaction,
that should and will make you angry.

who says you should not necessairly embrace that anger?
it's a human emotion just like anyother
and it is one that should be confronted, not bottled.

i'm great at bottling.
not causing waves.

but you can only turn your back so many times.
things should, will, need to bother you.

and it does. but what can i do?
it doesn't bother her.

i hate this,
tension.
i hate tension, useless, selfish tension.

i want it to matter.
matter to her that i hurt, that this time it was all her fault.

if there is anger and tension.
it should be usefull, productive.
you should both learn something.

right.
it should matter

and it doesn't.
it's funny, how you think you know people.

and more often than not
the people that you
think you really know
are the most complete
strangers.

why?
isn't that backwards?

or is it par for the course?

we're not in Kansas anymore

i hate this place.
it feels so much like home,
and then it holds out on you.

next year.
- - its not even next year anymore
it's two weeks.

its a battle.
battle is overly dramatic
i digress,
a fight.

i'm done blaming people.
i guess thats progress.

but still...

it's the two of us - - like always
"against the world"
our world atleast.
the only world we've known.

funny - - terrifying
how a change,
a big but simple change,
can throw you off.

it's not the same.
and i've spent the last year looking for the simple mined cosistancy that has escaped me.
or that never really exsisted.
but nonetheless there was something tangable.

ritual. consistancy.


it is/was ritual.
it was dependable.
it was a different kind of love, sure
it was a home. a family. but love all the same.

a place of passions and tensions
thats real
that ties people together

so where'd the passion go?
where are the strings?

thats the thing,
there are no more strings
nothing to tie me there anymore

but it was something, no, the only thing i depended on.
and it was ripped away.

i guess it's unhealthy to depend soley on one thing
but i thought since it was a place
it was different.
supise. i was wrong.


i was unaware that places and situations could break your heart.
i thought i was a human quality.

no.
it's not.

i've spent the last year trying to rebuild,
but i don't have the power or the pieces.

so i just deal with it.
thats life. you deal with things. you know this.

doesnt mean i have to like it.
we've been through this.

i know.
but it still sucks.

here we go. one more year.

offstage lines

i never used to be able to bury my emotions.
- - i used to be crystal clear - -
now i know how to hide them.

turn them off.

and that scares me.
that scares me because that means i am like him,
in more ways than i ever wanted to be.




is being safe worth all of this?
no, it's not.

burried mirrors

i feel like the way people precieve me is completly inacturate.
lindsay was right when she said that "most people just don't understand" me.

i guess i never realized it before.

i think i would like myself alot better if i were not bogged down by precocieved notions.
it's like living inside the lines that the people around you have colored in.
and they all precieve you differently.
the way they want to precieve you.

everyone likes to think they know you.
and everyone likes to think they chose the right colors to fill you in with.

it's like a portrait.
a self portrait will turn out much different
than a portrait painted by a stranger
wich is different than a portrait painted by a friend.

life is made up of painting different portraits
assigning people different colors.

someone told me that they precieved me a "extermely bubbly and exsesivly happy"
i was appauled and amused.
bubbly would be a perfect antonym in my mind.

this person has known me 4+ years and has me all wrong.
makes you wonder how well you know the people around you.
how well you judge people.

someone else described my exact personality to me.
the exact way i thought of myself.
he had only known me 3 weeks.

it's strange
certin people only see a certin side of you.
people will, to a degree, see what they want to see.
make you who they want you to be - - think you should be - - in their own minds.

you may not even know the you they see.
and that may explain the awful adivce they volunteer.
or the critisim they voice.
they will give you every tool to make you who they want you to be.
they want you to live up to their first impression, their ideal impression.

it's almost selfish.
to try to mold a person into your personal perception.
but everyone does it,
it's subcosious.

its natural to want the people around you
to agree with your beliefs.
to see the way you see.

i just can't help but wonder why it is impossible to see - - precieve - - with an objective eye.

i know every experiance we have
every person we meet
changes the way we see and precieve things
- - like changing the perscription on your glasses.
with the risk of throwing a tacky metaphore out here,
it's like chaning the perscription on you life.

but how can we grow without losing that objectivity?
children see through objective eyes,
where do those eyes go?

is it in conjuction with the loss of inocence, niavity?
or is it that the world, that man kind, and culture jade us?

and how do you stop it?

i think it would be refreshing to see with clear eyes.
to really see from outside of myself.

i know it's cliche.
but it is fascinating, don't you agree?

pointless flares

i feel like people just drive me backwards.
back there.

i put, for the first time in a l o n g time, effort into getting over it. around it. through it.
i wanted to be.i really really did.

you know why?
because i met someone who inspired me to be strong, who made me like who i was, and who was generally interested in me and my well being.
that was new to me. both of us needing eachother and equal amount - - that was new. that was nice- -

where'd it go?

wish i knew.
i understand that you need space to cool off
i get that. i do.
over a week with no word after a summer full of once, sometimes twice, daily phonecalls or shared space.

thats not fair. and i dont care if thats selfish. it's true.
people never realize, when they need someone, how much the other person needs them too.
you don't need the fact that the other person needs you. no, people - - like me - - don't thrive on being needed.
i thrive on the wanting to need another person. wanting to hear, see, converse with another human being.
i wanted so much what i had finally found.

now he's droped off the face of the planet...

exactly.
for once i was starting feel again.
really wanting to feel again.
[ i think he was too, but won't admit it ]
he realized the routine we had fallen into was inspiring mutal feelings.
and of course we cant have that.
atleast that's what it seems like.
thats how i precieve it because thats what has happened before.

it's the goddamn baggage. the ghosts. the past.

so where do you go when you take that free fall from almost trusting a feeling again to crashing back down to where you were. - numb. [numb but safe.]

you go back to the only place where you have ever felt anything "real"
or atleast real to you.
part of you hates that you are there.
hates that you want it again.
part of you just wants to stop the numbness.
bury yourself in familiar, allbeit painful, "love."

all of a sudden you find yourself wanting everything you've been stealing away from for the past year.

you came out. you tried. and it's starting to hurt.
better run back to where its "safe"

- - a safe that is anything but - -

i just want to stop running.
i'm tired.

...just send me a sign. a flare. a smoke signal. something?
please.

can't say it better

" Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect to someday suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equiped with a sturdy hand rail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us that tempts us. It is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

- - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundra

call me when you get this

i remember why i don't get my hopes up.
because it hurts like hell when you start to lose it
- -lose hope i mean - -

you start out numb and looking for sustinance

you find something that breaks the hard exterior...strikes a match in you again.

you start to hope. you start to feel.

you hang on to this hope so hard your nuckles turn white.

maybe it's a strangle hold on hope. maybe the situation becomes complicated. maybe you have to have faith in someone again. it tests your boundries, your readiness to move forward.

your waiting for him to want to move forward as well.
hell - - you're just waiting for him to call.

you become numb to waiting.

so are you really any farther ahead of where you started?

i'm so restless - fighting with myself not to give up.
not to see with the same jade eyes i always hide behind.

i don't want to give up faith in this but i need alittle help.
i need a smoke signal. a flare. something.

because really...
when you become numb to hope what else is there?
exactly.

why does this have to be so hard?
maybe it's hard because its worth it.
or maybe that's just what you want to think.

one private room

how is it that we compartmentalize:
love from lust?
idealism from rational thought?
spontineity from subconsious planning?
ritual from love?

you know a person incredibly well.
- - have known for 4 1/2 years.
and they have known you for equally as long
your there for eachother through the toughest parts of growing up

[ a factor that some psychologists say is the very thing that makes first love so hard to walk away from ]

but he is not your first love
not any "love" as far as your concerned.

however, when every time you see him, you share intimit moments
- -and they undoubtbly have a driving/passionate force behind them - -
is it lust?
no

its searching. its an atempt to renue your faith in the beliefe that you can trust someone again,
that somewhere out there there is someone you will feel comfortable with, who will know you so well that these things are natural.

we are catalysits to eachother.
we renue faith the we all to often lose in other people.
we help eachother realize what we want.what we've lost. what we still need to find.

to know that you can be that close to someone emotionaly and physically and not get hurt because you both need eachother, because its been happening for almost two years, and you know it's something dependable and won't end until you are both ready for it to.

- - its a skeleton of love i guess.
yes, thats what it is...its a prayer that we can find something to fulfill us.
and all the feeling is there...but there is a key missing. the key that gets you to "love."
you remind eachother what you deserve. what you are looking for.
catalists.

that is one emotional compartment.
its seperate from everything because there is nothing else in your life like it.

so how can this first person co-exsist with one that you know you are "in love" with?
you never said the one you were in love with was any of the things you wanted.
love is a feeling you can't shake, not even if it goes against every priniciple you've harbored your whole exsistance.
doesn't mean its a healthy, or rational.
but part of you wants it more than anything. the other part is disgusted by your weakness toward this other person.

its another compartment: "i love him but he wont change and i need more than he is brave enough to give me"
its not even falling out of love - - though for a long time i tried to believe it was - - its just a fact. love is something you have to accept before you can fit it into your life, your way of thinking.
just because you "love" does not mean you have to throw yourself into one person, no matter how degrading, because you are "following your heart."
love - - i have found - - does not have to shackel you to a person.
you have to know yourself.

you have to realize that when you compartmentalize like this...walls will go up to form these metephorical compartments
- -love is love. its there, you want it, its ripped away from you and evntually you accept it.

just because you accept it does not mean it goes away.
- - it took me a long time to grasp that too.

love is an ideal thought, to protect ourselves we have to seperate it from rational thinking. if you try to rationalize these things it will rip you apart... give you a headache.

its walls. its compartments. its seperations.

the one i still struggle with is seperating ritual from forming love.
i've said this before and i'll state it again because i still can't quite wrap my mind around it:

if love is, at its core, the longing for routine, for ritual,
(for your heart to be lulled into a save haven of unbroken patterns)
then why is not ritual a longing for love?

its a fine line. ritual lulls you into false security.
perfect example?
contact with another human being every day for an extended period of time, say since the day you met, you learn to depend on that phone call (or visit), you learn the anticipate it. soon it helps you through the day. eventually you want it. then you need it. then you realize -- maybe i love it? or better yet want to love it?

you open up. you trust. you laugh. you share. you become close. its a natural progression.
and maybe its just that people don't realize how dangerous ritual is.

i don't know how to seperate those yet, ritual from love. maybe it comes with time.
...but should it?

should things have to be seperated in order to keep yourself safe?

i don't think so. i don't want to think so.


-˜-to defuse any indiscrepancy you think i may have made- - what with going on about ritual just now and in the begining describing a pattern that is everything but love...it may apear that i contradict myself.
i think that the begining situation is an evolution of closeness. its a subconious hope and yearning that grabs ahold of two people. the thing is it's not a ritual because it is never planned. sure it happens most everytime but that is not the intent. there are long talks and tears and screaming and then comforting. its not planned because, due to proximity and time, it does not happen alot but when it does it stands out in ones mind.

does that makes sense?
its not expected. not depended on. so it's not necessarily a ritual.
if it were to become expected and looked forward to and depended on - - then it would be a routine. a ritual. a pattern.

its all fine lines and walls.
it comes back to crossing lines and breaking down walls.


how cliche.

beauty in the breakdown

the past "molds" you.
- - molds as in shaping. as in a compsotion of materials to produce a solid and distinguishable product.

but what if to "mold" could also mean the deterioration, or natural decomposition of a material.
as if it were rotting a person from the inside out.

pesamistic i realize.
but depending on the host is it not possible that the past could be parasitic instead of nourishing?

its the deviding line between those who learn from their past and at some point retain memories, sepia toned, and stained with laughter and meaning,
and the people who live with ghosts, who spend their lives running...from themselves.

people, myself included -- i'm not denying it -- run from something, in this case the past to prove my point, because they know it will or has hurt them. one is compelled to run because they feel empty inside, because they are looking for spiritual sustinance, something to make them feel again, its a desire to stop the numbness.

so, we're running to feel. we are running from an internal hollowness.
maybe the key is that the hollowness really is internal. no amount of running will make it go away because as we run we just carry the hollowness with us.

the past, in our minds wether valid or no, is the cause of this hollowness. the past has not molded us. it has rotted us!

we end up running from no one but ourselves.
no one else has the answers you want. no one can make the nubness go away until you stop running.

- - and the quickes way to end the race against your past?
except it. learn from it. grow from it.

let it shape you not rot inside of you.

i think its that the past should be a catalyst to the person you are becoming -- who you want to be--not something that holds you back..chains you down.

i might be crazy but that makes alot of sense to me right now.

demolished--
a word that encompassed both destruction
and the sweetness of the crumble.

when the stars turn blue

i understand his need to fall off the face of the planet
for alittle while

but i didn't think it would be this hard
--for me.

i miss him in those gaps between phonecalls
because this is the first time there have been gaps.

it's almost like dr.jelk and mr.hyde
only the demons are figurative -- cognitive.

i guess part of me is really worried about him.
and part of me wants to know this side of him,
the person that comes out and takes him of the face of the planet.
(and away from me)

...does that make me selfish?

a portable prison

there are so many demons each of us has to fight.
it's impossible to know the thoughts, parasitic, that prety on any one mind.

its internal fires that are lit and exstinguished by the past. by change. by any amount of feelings.
the same sparks that make a person who they are at their core
are the same sparks that can destroy a person.
turn them inside out.



but you can see them -- from the outside -- you can see..hear..someone struggling.
why cant you help them?
--"save" them.

i always thought i could just read people well.
relate to them.
was just a generally compassionate person.
figured all this would(will) make me a great psychologist/advice columnist
and as true as that may be

turns out...

i have a saving complex.
who am i kidding? i knew that.
always have, actually.

i have an uncanny way of finding the people who need to be saved from themselves.
and i want so much to help. i want so much to give them faith in something again
to prove that not everyone will give up on them.
is that so bad?

a lesson i've learned:
you can't save someone who doesn't want to be
saved.

but i still try.
but.but.but.
there is always something more.

i want to save him from himself.
--just like before--
i don't think he wants to be saved...
no
...maybe he doesn't know he needs to be saved.

it's visiable, to me.
he will tear himself apart.

another thought:

funny, how you learn so much about yourself through other people.
i was so busy concetrating on anything but me that look:
i've learned so much about how i deal with demons, and ghosts, how the past has made me grow and jaded me, molded me, changed me.
direct conversations, where the person actually cares about what you say, scare me.
scared -- past tense -- it's better.
thanks to him.
and i hope that i am teaching him things.
you always hope you are giving something to the people around you.
something they will remember, maybe even thank you for....but thats not why you do it.
it's human nature, it's my nature.

i just want to bring him back to the world of the living.
make what ever he is fighting, what ever is haunting him, dissapear.

this comes as no suprise to you does it?
no.