The gnawing feeling that comes only

When

Plagued

With this

Much weight.

This much weight

The principles of physics don’t apply here.

Tell me, we’re made up mostly of water

A composition of seemingly fluid, peaceful, calm substance

That can turn, when provoked, into a master of transformation

Why is it, why is that when I look at the sea, when I look at a glass of water, when I stare into a broad horizon and over the ocean, why is it that I feel at peace? Why is it when I speak to others about the sea, they see something serene, silence, something calming, yet most of all, beautiful. Boundless beauty. Why is this the first thing, the first thought of water? Cleansing, calm, beautiful, renewing?

When I think, when I think of the composition

When I think of the composites, of every single small undeveloped shot I have of my interiors,

When I think of that of which I am composed of

I cannot see this calm, serene, beauty. I cannot find the calm, I cannot find the beauty, I cannot find the silence.

I CAN NEVER FIND THE SILENCE.

This weight, this water, this turbulent turmoil unfolding inside me is not the calm ocean. It is not the secret spaces of silence and time between waves. It is the crash.

It is all about the crash.

I am composed of 75% crash. That is my water, that is my ocean, that is my makeup.

I CAN NEVER FIND THE SOLACE IN THE SILENCE OF MY SEA.

I find more promise in finding myself in the moment where

I cannot hold on

I cannot keep my composure

I cannot fight this battle against the water

I cannot wage a winning war against that which I am composed of

It flows through me

It breathes and drags pebbles and rocks and scrapes every inch of my bones

Coursing through, igniting, driving

I CANNOT PUT A STOP TO THIS.

So I stop, and I try, and I try, and I try

To hold on while I wait to find an anchor to hold me down

I am no contender for the sea.

And I watch in your eyes, and I see it coursing through you too

And its in your veins, connecting you to every object you touch

Its in the way you feel restless, it drives you, it commands you

Surrender,

I want to tell you to surrender

You should know I feel it to

And sometimes I grab a hold,

but everytime, I lose control.

I cannot fight this battle any more than you can.

This is your composition.

You, as I, are made up of storms, of turmoil

Of the moment of impact,

 The collision

The fast forward,

The inability to ever

Ever

Ever

Slow down

We can never slow down.

We are made up of the moment those waves crash

We are made up of something bigger, something that maybe

 We can never hold in two hands

 We are the weakness that washes up to shore

Yet we are always pulled back.

Sinking in the depths,

We are driven, controlled, by this 75%

We are

The

Loss

Of

Consciousness

Through

The

Need

To

Create.

Sometimes, all we can do is give in to the gnawing feeling, and hope, pray, that we can survive the storm.

The ceiling never fails to astonish me. Some people might think it’s some weird obsessive compulsive habit, but I don’t.

You see, no matter what, each square is always perfectly in line with the one next to it, and that one above it. 

Each line is always perfectly straight. 

Never one too small or too wide.

 Always perfect.

Every night at exactly 1:12 a.m., I look up at the ceiling and find comfort in the way it is organized. So many squares, yet they all fit perfectly within each other. Circles wouldn’t be able to do that. Just squares. Squares have the ability to make the ceiling look perfectly organized without trying too hard. And that’s only the beginning!

I look up, and all i see is white. Everything is washed in white except for the small cracks between each square, which are all perfect, black, even straight lines. Black and white. The perfect composition of colors, lacking the deception and gaudiness of primary colors. So uniform, so calming. Screaming equilibrium. So perfect.

And then sometimes, I try to count every square but I get lost in the way every square is exactly the same size. Not like some abstract art painting, where squares are different sizes and lengths, but like the purest mathematical proportion where every square perfectly aligns with each other. I marvel at this concept. An equation of perfection.

I wonder how many people bypass this kind of perfection, to instead, close their eyes and get lost in the haze of pre-sleep thoughts. The disorganization. The frenzy; the chaos. I wonder about the myriad of people who lose themselves in their imperfect mess of thoughts instead of just glancing up at the perfection above them.  They are truly missing out.

Every night at 1:12 a.m., I look up at the ceiling and find comfort in the way it is organized. So many squares, yet they all fit perfectly within each other. Circles wouldn’t be able to do that. Just squares. Squares have the ability to make the ceiling look perfectly organized without trying too hard. How perfect.

…Right?

I pretend that this is perfect.

I lie to myself every night about this perfection.

I pretend that the cracks between the squares are nothing but cracks.

That the half-square in the corner right above my window is perfectly proportionate to every other square.

And that the slight peeling is meant to be there.

I ignore the fact that some lines are too wide, creating a gap, or too small, melding some squares together.

I pretend that each square is perfectly in line with the one next to it, 

and that one above it.

that each line is perfectly straight.

Never one too small, or one too wide.

Night after night, I pretend that this perfection, this reality, is truly captivating.

And to be honest, I only pretend that the ceiling never fails to astonish me, because it is the only thing to distract me from the fact that it’s been almost one month since I’ve woken up without you next to me.

Je porte le poids du monde sur mes épaules.
I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders
and hope not to crumble.

I’ve witnessed buildings, peel slowly;
I’ve seen them lose their hope, little by little;
I’ve seen the hope extinguished
from the veins that pulse
inside the most inanimate of objects; 
I have seen the life
in something that is said
to be void of life.
 
If they could only find your life,
I know they would see that you carry the weight,
tu portes le poids du monde
sur tes epaules aussi,
et qui peut te regarder?
Qui peut t’entendre?
Who will ever hear you?

Find your voice.
I plea for you to please find your voice. 
I hear your whisper, 
your calls in the wind,
your echoes
and your achings 
and your pleas for someone
to hear you.   

I know how you feel.
I know how it feels
to be run by the constant beating,
the constant wearing down.

They say a fire can kill you;
if you are inside a burning building,
the possibility of being reduced
to a virtual mess of nothingness
is high.
You can extinguish a fire,
yet a fire can extinguish you.
A fire can kill you.

But you, you live with that fire.
You live with the constant,
incessant,
peeling away of your veins by heat;
the constant stripping
of your internal wires
by holding something
that nobody
should hold inside of them.
I know.
But do they know?

Do they know how it feels
to live with a fire?
Has anyone ever coexisted with a fire?  

You carry the weight,
and you live with that fire. 

All the troubles in the world
live inside of you. 
The pain of hurting too much
because you’ve given too much
to someone who could never
love you back.
The struggle of not doing
what you’re supposed to
and going against what you are told.
The evils that could never be named.

You give them a name,
you cultivate them,
you let them eat you alive
and burn inside of you,
and then you give them reign to roam free.
You free them, just as they free you.

You carry the fire 
that could keep anyone in chains, 
yet you let it set you free.

You can sing about these things
that mean nothing to you.
You can write about every beautiful thing
that this world has to offer.
You can hope that this beauty
will set you free.
You can hope,
but they don’t mean anything.
Sometimes the most beautiful of things
cannot give rise to anything real.
Sometimes, you cannot feel alive
if you do not hold the fire inside of you,
let it slide up, curl up
and burn around your esophagus
and sliver by sliver,
cut away at any safety
that beauty provided you with. 

They say a fire can kill you,
but do they know what it’s like
to live with a fire inside of you? 

I do, and I know you do too.

Je porte le poids du monde sur mes épaules. 
I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders
and hope not to crumble.  

When I was younger,

I hid behind angsty music.

Sometimes it just felt better

to blend in.

I figured that

when I got older,

I’d figure everything out.

Now,

I’m hiding my angst

In order to be

the me I think I should be.

We should grow calmer in age;

I don’t know if I am.

A fire is raging inside of me.

It’s hard to be who you really are

When you’re scared by expectations

of who you think you should be.

I know less than I knew back then,

and I still haven’t figured anything out.

“This is all I know.” Scrawled on a weathered and torn slice of a 9 ¾” blue lined composition page, these words echoed the only solid truth I thought I would ever encounter in my life. See, truths are something rarely ever encountered. Human nature only fools us into thinking we have found the truth, when in reality, it is merely an illusion of where we are with our lives and what we think we need…

At one time, I believed the only boy I would ever love was the one who I had known since I was eleven. The boy who I had my first “real” talk with in the basement of his house. Real, as in something beyond the basic middle school gossip talks usually entailed. I thought he was the only boy who would ever see things my way; the only boy who would ever truly listen to me. At one time, I spent a summer daydreaming about him day in and day out. I found myself waking up just to watch the sunrise with dreamy eyes. I found myself wondering when the day would come that he would realize what I had realized. I found myself believing that I had found love. I found myself believing that this was the only truth in my life. Beyond everything, this was something real. 

I spent years, watching you live your life, and live your life without me. I found myself grasping for you, as you wanted nothing more to do with me. I found myself wondering about you and what could have been, even when a new boy was in the picture. Slowly I began questioning what I thought I had. It took me years, but finally, this truth no longer became a truth. What I thought was true love, was merely an illusion.

I used to think my first break-up was the greatest thing to test my strength. Being strong for myself and holding myself together was the most important thing in my life. The pain of break-ups, as well, became a truth for me.

This truth was rejected as I sat, listening to my closest friend tell me she was battling an eating disorder over our weekly coffee date. When once being strong for me was enough, being strong for my friend became my new priority. When I once thought heartbreak was the hardest thing I would have to deal, I now knew as an illusion as well.

At one time, I thought I had figured out what I wanted to do with my life. The freedom and comfort of food became my calling. I had enrolled in an out-of-state culinary institute, and was ready to leave at the end of the summer. I finally discovered what I was good at. At one time, I thought being a chef was what I wanted.

However, that soon came to a close, as, leaving the school tour, I realized this did not fit in anywhere in my life. My career in the culinary field, was as well, an illusion.

This is all I know. Scrawled on a weathered and torn slice of a 9 ¾” blue lined composition page, these few words echoed the only solid truth I thought I would ever encounter in my life. 11 journals filled to the brim, shouting at me to look at the truth. 

Because everyone else was saying they found true love, I wanted love too, and I fooled myself into believing I had found it for years. I made truth for myself out of something that was in no way true. I fooled myself into thinking heartbreak was the hardest thing I would face because I knew, by nature, heartbreak is supposed to be difficult. I fooled myself into thinking the culinary field was where I was supposed to go because I was searching for something to do with my future. Not because I was truly passionate about it, but because I needed a path to take. With graduation quickly approaching, I needed a plan for the future, and took the first thing that came my way.

Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we found the truth. Maybe it’s because we want to have what everyone else has. Maybe it’s because we want some certainty in our ever-changing lives. Maybe it’s a product of our environment and circumstances. Or maybe, it’s because we’re human.

What I’ve learned is that when we accept false truths, we deny ourselves of the real truth when it comes about. And when we walk away from the real truth, we give way not only to losing potential happiness, but to losing ourselves in illusion.

No, I am not going to be a master chef. I am not in love with my long-time best friend and high school sweetheart, and I do not know what true love is. I don’t always know how to be strong for myself, or for the most important people in my life. I don’t always know how to separate truth from fiction.

But what I do know, beyond all the small changes, missteps, and false pretenses in my life, is that I have eleven journals, screaming out to me. Screaming out to me that while I don’t have true love, true strength, or, well, the chance at becoming a chef, I have these words. I have the certainty that my words give me, the love these words emit, the strength these words possess, the passion these words express. And I know, this is enough for me. And I know, this is what I love. And I know, beyond everything, this is all I know. 

I found myself stitched
on the inside of winter’s bone,
an inscription carefully woven
into a worn childhood sweater.

The stained earth read
like letters from two long, lost, lovers;
Weathered, hardly legible, torn at the edges
Disintegrating into the dirt
with the imprint of unheard whispers and an old life

I used to know where our footprints stopped,
but the river is constantly weeping.

Etch your story into the dirt and watch the river fade it away.

The river will meet the dirt,
and the dirt will meet the river again
But that’s the problem with that small border
where dirt meets river.
There was never a clear distinction between what is,
and what isn’t.

We will never be able to compete with Mother Nature.

The bruised land will always be land
The gritty cracked dirt will always be dirt.
We were, and we are not.
These things weren’t meant to last.
Every pin bunching up the seams
of each infinite night sky
sears into me.
I am forever charred by your burning eyes.

I found my love stitched
in the arctic winds that seep deep into my bones;
in this loss of sleep I find
that I cannot fix this fracture.

I found myself stitched
on the inside of winter’s bone,
like an inscription carefully woven into a worn childhood sweater. 

The dirt on the ground
read like letters from two, long, lost, lovers;
weathered, hardly legible,
a memory of hidden secrets 
and an old life.
Etch your story into the dirt,
and watch the river fade it away. 

I used to know where our footsteps stopped,
but the river constantly wept.

That’s the problem

with that small border 
Where dirt meets river.

There was never a clear distinction between
what is, and what isn’t. 

The land will always be land
The small lines, footprints, gritty dirt

will always be dirt.

We will never be able to compete
with Mother Nature.

These things weren’t meant to last.

I found my love stitched
in the arctic winds
that seep deep into my bones;
in the loss of sleep i find
that I cannot fix this fracture.

Belief in the breeze,

The smoky morning haze.

The sun on her face,

and the touch of lovers’ hands.