for myself, by myself

i ask what anyone else is thinking about because im tired of my own thoughts.

there is such sadness in the smallest places, such sadness is the biggest spaces.

i feel sadness for young, unsupported mothers,
the idea of elderly people growing lonely.

i feel sadness for every generation who only knows violence. 

i feel sadness for every child who isn't loved in the way they want to be.

i feel sadness for everything that goes to bed empty

i feel sadness for the scared and helpless and hurt

i feel sadness for everyone living paycheck to paycheck

i feel sadness for everyone who feels imprisoned in their own masculine or feminine body 

i feel sadness for every young person who spends thousands of dollars they dont have on an education 

i feel sadness for everyone who has no passion

i feel sadness for everyone who has not known love

i feel so sad for corrupt governments, broken social justice systems, the treatment of animals, the treatment of criminals, the treatment of mentally ill 

i feel sadness for everything dropped down on a train track 

i feel sadness for worms when it rains

i feel sadness for bugs stuck in windowpanes 

i feel sadness for broken homes

i feel sadness for hospital bills

i feel sadness for lost photographs 

i feel sadness for all that is ripped, crumbling, burning, and forgotten.

i have to remind myself that it is not okay to feel the sadness of everyone and everything sad in the world. it is the hardest thing for me to do. 

SORRY, I FELL ASLEEP

loves, lately

winter, a frozen smoothie, nutmeg, a soft sweater,  putting my toes underneath my space heater on high, then a hot shower

to do to feel empty list

have sex with various people, in various places, whilst under the influence of various psychedelics

spend a week watching people at the laundromat.

make out with the girls in your friend group. make out with the boys in your friend group. keep doing that for years. never talk about it, never feel feelings, and never feel full.

feel like you're wearing the wrong things, enjoying the wrong things, and saying the wrong things, and surround yourself with people who make you feel like shit

wonder if the people in love are actually happy

sit alone on a park bench in the middle of the night and watch the crosswalk signs change colors in the silence of no one. 

write poems and recite them for free on the street. 

run until you can't hear straight anymore. 

choose your home based on proximity to the sea. 

PERPETUAL 4AM

during dinner every night, sit in different positions and in different spaces of the floor around the house. keeps mind fresh, things feeling different, and routine feeling far.

crisp apple at the bottom of the staircase with the lights off

black eyed pea soup in the foyer on red ripping carpet

crack a candy cane into a bowl under the dining room table

DISSOLUTION

resonating the past week: if you want me you can have me until the end of time.

it's finals week. it's almost been another year. back to the time of year again where i get panic attacks, feel isolated, lack a schedule and lack purpose--christmas break. i suppose i am one of the few who looks forward to mondays and looks forward to having routine and obligations and reasons to feel okay that day. everything-class, tests, lectures-is a distraction to feel okay. and i understand now how adults work so much; working so much is a better alternative to thinking at all.

i have been thinking about seeing a psychiatrist for awhile now and trying out medication. i think christmas break would be a good time to start medication and see how it affects me (i'll have time to see how it affects me) with limited distractions and more time to think and feel. i guess i should ask my therapist first, but i just sobbed a lot our last session, and before that, i just smiled a lot about leaving for new york. i already booked a flight back to new york in march for spring break. something to look forward to. i'm looking for jobs and housing there as well. another top distraction.

some things making me feel calm and comforted lately: looking for jobs and apartments in other cities, cooking meals with friends, discussing mental health out loud, crowds of people and feeling anonymous, comfortable silences, being in transit (in-between destinations), running.

i finally ordered some books about love addiction (not to be confused with sex addiction) which i heard suggested on mental health podcasts over and over.  i've learned this usually stems from lack of connection with caregivers in early age, i.e. inadequate or inconsistent nurturing, low self-esteem, absence of positive role models for loving relationships. love addicts choose partners who are emotionally unavailable and/or verbally/physically abusive. they choose partners who demand a great deal of attention but who do not meet, or even try to meet, their own emotional or physical needs. they participate in activities that don't interest them or go against personal values in order to please a partner. they give up important interests, beliefs, and friendships to maximize time spent in the relationship.

i have done all of these things. in every relationship. "my fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy." hoping i can figure some things out.

anyway, i am in no place to be wondering about how a person feels about me or doesn’t feel about me, because i'm not secure about another person’s feelings, i know that i don’t want anything serious at this moment in my life, but something serious is the only thing I can handle emotionally vs being insecure about how another person feels. i feel like relationships right now aren't for the right reasons and that too many people act as an emotional catchall for each other. otherwise it’s not worth it to me, being only partially/sometimes/carelessly invested in each other because it seems like it’s for selfish reasons, like being falsely invested just because i'm lonely and lost.

depression is a blindness and deafness to hope and beauty, but high res and max volume on god damn nothing. if anyone is reading this, don't worry, i'm not suicidal, just deeply sad.

OTHERS, MORE

how could i have expected you to assemble any feeling for me or ever voice any idea of love
when even your orgasm was stifled and numb

"in another universe, you kiss my sunburned shoulders and in another one every gas station is a home and in another one you have your own sun and one of those is a universe where i never speak"

HEAVY/CLOUDED

self-confidence below sea level
i hope all the food i left in your cabinets is moldy

feeling heavy but not knowing where to put all the things making you heavy cause everything’s kinda clouded. i want to feel the weight of you, on top of me, accepting me. just feeling overwhelmingly empty. doing everything but still not feeling enough. just numb. but like numbness that you can feel in a terrible way.

i will be in new york city on friday. i can't stop thinking about paris, sadness, and the horror of inhumane humanity.

I'VE FALLEN SHORT AGAIN

I've been outgrown
hibernate

cloudy bright night 

beauty alone

not painful sad

small feelings abt big things 

we've been outgrown

a tiny spencer statement & vancouver 

PARESIS

1. drinking a bottle of wine before leaving my apartment just to be able to talk (2014)
2.  being social for the first time without needing alcohol to feel comfortable (2015)
3. crying in the middle of the street into the phone to you, and strangers asking me if i was okay when you didn't (2015)
3. eating only a grapefruit for a whole day, two days, and forgetting to eat all together (2011, 2012, 2015)
4. being so afraid to be alone with myself that fucking whoever seems like a better option (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)
5. giving up on family (don't remember when it started and it hasn't ended)
6. loving someone and then learning who they are (2015)
7. not recognizing what i am (don't remember when it started, and it has gotten worse)
8. when, apparently, you remember nothing you did in an entire year (2013)

ALVER ON YOUR BIRTHDAY

The glow of the present

i wish that i could put the taste of morning coffee, some recent blossom of winter, words spoken yesterday, clean cold air, soft in my room, loudness in my car, runner's high, bloom of night stars, the glow of the present
and send to you the small of life so we could share today

I don't know how to speak love when the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste, and the only sexual fantasy I have is busting into the pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowing open the mind of generals


The First Straw
Jeffrey McDaniel

romantic rug burns 

listening to strangers sadnesses hoping to feel less alone. 

human beings are not discrete 

"a view with a grain of sand" wislawa szymborska


we call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand
it does just fine without a name
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

our glance, our touch means nothing to it
it doesn't feel itself seen and touched
and that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its
for it, it is not different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still

the window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn't view itself
it exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.

the lake's floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly
the water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural
they splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small

and all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud
the wind ruffles it, its only reason being that it blows

a second passes
a second second
a third
but they're only seconds for us.

time has passed liek courier with urgent news
but that's just our simile
the character is inverted, his hastes make believe,
his news in human

WORDS FOR EMPTY, WORDS FOR FULL

on feeling invisible

the problem with this is that when you are not acknowledged, when you cannot see yourself mirrored in others, when they do not reflect back to you, like answering your questions or laughing at your jokes or responding to your greetings in an appropriate way, if your sense of self is not immensely secure, you
begin
to
lose
it.

LOVING SOMEONE WHO IS EMPTY

empty people love empty things.

i can't wait until i see your face and my brain thinks that it's looking at a stranger
i can't wait until i see your face and my brain feels nothing
i'll feel nothing.