The Risk of Telling You

If I told you the truth. If I told you my past. If I told you what makes me lie awake at night as I struggle to sleep, what makes me bolt so quickly out of my rabbit hole, what makes me believe that sometimes I really am useless.

Would you believe?

And if you believed, would you care?

And if you cared, would you be shocked?

And if you were shocked, would you tell me there's worse out there?

And if you told me there was worse out there, would you still hold me as if this was the worst thing in the world?

And if you held me as if everything I just told you was the worst thing in the world,

Well.

What then?

And what if I told you it all, and you didn't believe, or you didn't care, or if you weren't shocked, or if you didn't tell me there was worse out there, but still held me as if it was the worst in the world (because at the time, it was, to me)...

What then?

What could I do?

Imperfect

I don't always get everything right. I can't always stand up and hold a strong front. Sometimes I trip, sometimes I stumble, sometimes I fall. I don't always do the good thing. Sometimes I know exactly what "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" means.

There are some days I cry into my pillow. There are too many days that I hold my tears back.

The darkness both comforts me, and shows me just how lonely I am.

But I'm me. And I'll keep walking forward, I'll do what I have to do, I won't look back. I'll get where I'm going and I won't give up because of those who say I can't do it.

After all, once I leave here, I won't have any place to go back to. I refuse to fail- I can't afford to.

It's going to be hard, and it's not going to suddenly get easier, but I'll make it.

A Promise to Change

There's just something I want you to promise me. Please?

Please don't believe that you know everything about me. That you know who I am.

If you do... I'll be scared to change. Scared to let you down.

And, could you please promise me this, too? I know, it might be too much to ask you for two promises but...

Could you promise me that if you do believe, somehow, that you know who I am, the kind of person I am, that you won't hate me when I change?

Be careful, though. It's an easier promise to make than to keep.

What It Takes to Be Strong

You build me up. Make me think I'm perfect.

Then you tear me down.

I'm not who you expected me to be. I'm not the girl you see in anime. I'm not the girl who can go through everything with a smile and a laugh.

Some things, they get me down.

But I know what strength is. And it's not always smiling, deluding yourself that everything is okay.

It's knowing that not everything is okay, but you can and will get through it.

And when you just can't believe in that anymore, strength is when you ask for someone to help you out. To remind you that you can do it. To cheer you from the sidelines.

Strength is the ability to be that person on the sidelines for someone else, even if your life is in the gutter, and to be there wholeheartedly. It's not expecting someone to be better than they are- it's knowing that they're trying their best to be them, and helping them stay that way.

I'm not a great person. I'm a good person, and I'm a bad person. When I make or do something for someone else, I take in everything I possibly can and push out something just for them. But if I could, if I had the means, if I could erase all my ideals, I'd tear your wings off for this- for trying to tear off mine.

The Words I Need You To Say

Tell me I can do this.

Tell me I can do anything.

I can ace a thousand essays.

I can do what everyone thinks is impossible.

I can prove them all wrong.

I can surpass everyone else.

I can survive.

I can follow my dreams, and achieve them as well.

And tell me that I will.

Because you're the only one who will volunteer that information.

And I'm not as invincible as I'd like to seem.

I'm the amount of invincible that's unstable and likely to explode.

So please.

Tell me this, because you care, and somewhere in you, as realist and reality-prone as you are, you believe in dreams and dreamers.

You believe in people like me.

Normalcy

The last time my life was normal? I don't know what you mean.

Perhaps last summer, at one of the last sleepovers with the two people I thought of as sisters. Yes. That's before everything changed.

Then it went all tilted and skewed. I was friends with people I... how do I put it? I didn't like, didn't trust, but decided to give them yet another chance.

But they were different than the others, you know? The others, they had actually been my friends, and we had gotten to that point of... I don't know... before it went sour yet again. It was different. I can't explain how, but you'll just have to trust me.

Why trust me?

Cause I know myself. Or at least, I know myself a lot better than I did.

But after that, nothing was normal. Or, should I say, nothing was mine.

Not as in I owned it. Just that, I guess things did come to a certain pattern that could be considered "normal." After a few months, I could expect another sleepover on this weekend, which would most likely be accompanied by loud music or alcohol or both. Or there'd be a party that weekend, where it'd all get a little out of control (compared to other parties) or a lot out of control (compared to "normal").

Is predictability the same thing as normal?

But it got "normal." This was Normal. But I didn't want it. It wasn't the normal I wanted. I threw it all away with a smile on my face.

And then I realized that by throwing it all away, it still didn't make it normal. Make it mine.

Staying, would this new predictability make it my kind of normal?

I guess that's the question, even though I don't want to risk everything of these months to find out.

Three months, and my fall from grace will be complete. They say the firsts hurt the hardest, right?

In three months, there will be no more firsts in relation to that chapter of my life.

Somehow, though, I don't think it will be quite that easy.

The Problem with Comfort

How did we get here?

How did it come to this?

There's certain things I can see in clearly defined steps. From A we did B and went to C and fought over E because of D and ended up here, at F.

Other things... not so much.

Yes. I do believe we're the strongest, and form the strongest of bonds, when life is at it's worst.

So is that what happened?

We got too comfortable in the clouds that we forgot how to fly, and plummeted when a stray wind took that cloud from beneath us?

Now we're here, back at square one, except the staircase to the sky is long gone. Invisible, or maybe not even there, like in the midst of the last crisis, when I had someone else, not you.

There's no neat ABCs that led us here. Only JFVs. The new, messed up alphabet that defines our present, past and future.

The sky was nice, the sun warm, the clouds soft. Now we've got to decide if we've all got what it takes to get back there together and whole, or if we should just lug as many pieces as we can into our own skies, and each leave this part of us on the ground.

What is it?

Catchup

So what's going on?

Decided I'm not being a pastry chef anymore. This is part of the problem right now. No one is too impressed with me. Or at least, no one in my family. Even though I'd be getting a higher education than I'd be getting had I continued.

I'm going to become a museum curator. Which requires a master's degree.

My mom doesn't believe I can do it.

My dad doesn't even act like he cares.

My brother says it sounds boring.

Very supportive family.

Oh well, I'm getting to the point that I honestly don't care. Mind you, I'm not there yet. Just that it's getting there. Sometimes, I can't even make myself care about what my parents say, do, think.

And I have my first personal counselor therapy appointment on the 4th.

My ex-best-friend's birthday. But that's okay.

No, really, it is.

Okay, ask me on the 4th. I might have a clearer answer.

But I am excited.

Parents don't know. That will be a... well, let's just be truthful here, shall we? It's going to be a huge explosion of crap when it hits the fan. So I'm waiting on revealing that tidbit till I have all the means I need to get away from my house for a week or so.

Yep. That's a snapshot of my life right now.

Tell me something I don't know.

I hate dream killers.

I attempt to kill my own dreams enough. Luckily, they don't stay dead.

So I have a very short temper for those who don't believe, in themselves or in me.

If you've got something against my dreams, go to hell.

If you've got something against your own dreams, shut yourself up and be brave enough to make them come true. Prove yourself wrong.

Everything worth anything is going to be a fight. I don't need you telling me how impossible or difficult it will be, I already know. And you don't need yourself saying the same thing, cause you already know.

I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairy tale

Dead end after dead end. Horrible experiences all along the way.

I bury my head in my hands time after time and wish life was simpler, better, easier. And each time, I tell myself that life is this way for a reason. I just wish it wasn't, you know?

I wonder if all this crap happening to me while I'm young means life will be smooth sailing in a few years.

Doubtful, but there's where my hope goes.

Drag your feet out the door

I've decided I don't like the Real World.

Give me back my childhood.

I swear it was stolen from me.

I curse all those people who lied and said this would be fun.

Replay. Replay. Replay.