Because Here At Uni, Ive Been Static. No One Knows Anything About Me. No One Ever Asked. I Dont Know

because here at uni, i’ve been static. no one knows anything about me. no one ever asked. i don’t know anything about anyone. my friends say i’m an alcoholic in the making. i like to think there is more to me than that. but i probably am. i think i just wanna throw my life away. its so easy.

squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube. punch a transphobe. smoke a cig. drink just to feel. drive somewhere far away. sleep in your car. spend all your savings. and then die. i’d be happy then.

you cross your arms. shut down.

“don’t worry about me, i’ve got a lot on my mind”

i smile as i turn the conversation back around to you. its beautiful, all the words come pouring out of you. you sound like you might cry. there might be something wrong with me, because i want you to cry.

maybe i just want you to be comfortable with yourself around me.

you ground me.

i really do love you.

nonetheless, i listen. as i start to run through my thoughts, try to select an appropriate response, you usually end up speaking again. i hope you don’t mistake my silence for not giving a fuck. if i voiced every thought in my head around you, you’d never be able to get a word in otherwise.

bizarre love triangle, truly.

jealous of a man i never liked as anything more than a casual acquaintance.

but i liked him. his music. shared glances from across the room at a party.

its odd that all my friends are dating each other.

pairing up in some way.

i don’t mind being alone. but that doesn't mean i’m not jealous of others for experiencing that type of intimacy i work so hard to find.

driving an impala was so much cooler in 1958 (but so were lobotomies)

sometimes i have moments where i think no one could be capable of caring for me except you, remember that time you surprised me with london fogs at the park? yeah, no one’s ever thought of me like that before. and i know there are people that care for me but comfort radiates from you, like maybe you’re the only one that really truly cares about me. sorry i got so high the other night i said i was in love with you, which maybe isn’t totally wrong but you knew i was high. you never spoke about it again. but i so desperately want to tell you i deeply appreciate you so much i may love you. but i think that would scare you off. you don’t talk to me so much anymore, you’re so busy doing shit i tell you is stupid.

i want to believe you’re just busy but i wonder if you’re distancing yourself from me. it wouldn’t be the first time.

i miss you. but i’ll give you the distance you didn’t ask for.

i haven’t made any friends. i don’t remember how to and i don’t really care enough. its all fun and games until it's saturday night, i’ve got nothing better to do that to lay in cemeteries and get high until i’m too cold to take it anymore. i love the old gravestones. decomposing bodies are underneath me. i wonder what their lives were like. what they looked like. what they did. who they knew. what they believed. and me? i’m a loser with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. here i lay, pretending there’s another warm body next to me, hands interlaced, speaking to me. but i don’t get that. no, why should i? he keeps asking me if i’m making friends. i don’t remember how to make friends, all i did was get taken in and i lost people as i aged. kept in touch with people who could buy me drugs, kept in touch with those who would remember to invite me out for lunch. but what does it matter? i’ll be out of town soon.

this past weekend i thought about doing it for good this time. the fear right before i do it always sobers me up. i don’t know why suicidal ideation is such a concern with the medical professionals, i’m just a sad confused boy. forty five minutes isn’t enough for you to get to know me.

i hate it when i begin to notice parallels between you and all i want to forget. am i noticing red flags or am i being paranoid? am i asking for too much? are my standards too high? god, what’s normal? you know me better than i do, you spell my name out and all it means to you, to me. you give me words for the facade i’ve subconsciously fabricated. you help me realize i am constantly living in fight or flight mode. i’m so good at this, i don’t even realize i’m putting it up. maybe this is all the therapists want: to be so good at coping no one know it kills you every time you wake up in the morning.

she talked him into leaving me. she’s playing a popularity game, she’s so lost and confused. she does all these things and think’s she’s so good at what she does and believes her words are the only words that matter, boy she won’t survive a minute after graduation. i’m waiting for everyone to realize she’s fucking crazy. it sounds like i’m not the first she’s shunned, i doubt i’ll be the last. what goes so wrong in your childhood that you feel the need to overcompensate like this? i hate the sickly show you put on, you want the whole world to know you’re happy and in love, charming the whole goddamn world, but god, i know you aren’t anything you pretend to be. everything makes me feel so. goddamn. sick.

take another drag off this stale cigarette.

if college is about reinventing yourself, then god, i’m unrecognizable from two years ago. i escaped that hell hole, i never thought i’d see light at the end of the tunnel. the first round was just me trying to recover, but i got caught up in lust and depression. second round, i’ve never been better. i’ve never experience pure joy, this is all just an act. keeping up with lies because i cannot handle being caught in an act. i don’t know what next year will bring, if i’m surrounded by a bunch of dirty business majors, am i going to turn into a bootlicker too? will i be able to put up with another two years of alienation? i’ve never wanted to get married or have kids, maybe i don’t need $100k a year, entry level position. i’m going to be so far behind as it is.

i don’t know where you went or where these sentences were leading.

entertaining alternative pasts,

you left me chilled for the two minute drive home from your place. i tried to make a joke about the past but you shut it down, “cars have more uses than just for that, you know.”

i wish i could just talk to you like a big kid.

this fall just reminds me of getting sad and being in love or some bullshit like that. i’ve crossed out names and faces, quotes and stories, lists and reminders. and so i asked you, “are you a top, bottom, or switch?” so i could better replace faces in fantasies that take me nowhere, i fucking hate being medicated. i’m still sad, and i have no distractions.

hey, i started smoking. i guess we’ve both changed. its not enough to form a habit, but something to do with my hands without getting high. if nicotine is a regulated substance, how come caffeine isn’t? that shit gave me the worst migraines when i stopped drinking coffee. so you don’t approve, so what? i wasn’t asking you. just figured i’d let you know what kind of drive we were taking.

so i’m your happy pill, huh? i’ve heard that one before. we are everything we used to be and everything we will ever be. i half wonder if i cut you off now so you have time to heal before you move off to college. there is no good way to get rid of me, i’m a dying star waiting to explode, i’m the glowing canister of cesium-137 laying abandoned for a good reason. you say i’m nothing but nice, god, you’re just as blind as i am.

we’re inches from it. but maybe we’ll just learn to grow out of it.

i’ve been nothing but sad. is it the upcoming death of someone i’ve never known? i drop $10 a year to bring flowers to somewhere no one even remembers. and i pace cemeteries looking for one familiar name. no death has ever made my body go cold like yours did. i still know too much. it knocked everyone off their feet and i couldn’t help but laugh. i can’t help but laugh. i can’t help but laugh. i’ve been in and out of hospital visits for something i can’t bring myself to care about. my brain feels nothing yet my chest hurts and my eyes cry. how does that work? why does my brain cut me off from my own emotions and impulses? or am i just so fucking numb? you know i can’t even feel it when i slash my arms.

i hope i buy sketchy drugs in college and overdose on fentanyl. i’m terrified of death except for when i have control over it.

caretaking and grief (i’m the victim, i’m the saint)

jumpy jittery like i have really bad anxiety, shaking and feeling weak like i have low blood sugar. i’m drinking milk tea, 268 calories. what a specific number. 55g carbs. can’t imagine i have low blood sugar. but maybe its something else, like the first three drags off a cigarette, the first three i’ve had in a few days. i’m not supposed to smoke on these meds, i wonder what high blood pressure feels like. i just wanna go for a walk and feel stupid dizzy, stupid head spins. but i’ve got to go to class. my lips bleed when i speak, they’re so chapped. and my kidneys are in agony, i don’t remember the last time i had more than a sip of water (just to down my pills).

but maybe its something else completely.

i woke up this morning to a winter wonderland snow globe scene outside my window. there’s a tv in front of my bed now. new old clothes in my closet. i will not remember how they got here until a few hours later. and my mother walks in, asks where the usb is. i will not remember why she needs it until a few hours later. she goes into her office, and i turn on this new old tv. i’m still figuring out how to connect my phone, or what i should even watch. but my mother comes back in with tears in her eyes and asks me to test the usb. i will not remember what i am supposed to be testing until few hours later. the snow isn’t letting up so i better get going. roads are slick, car is light, car starts slipping, i slow down. i make it to campus without crashing. i’m frigid on .4 of my walk, i cut through a building, make it to class. i’m so distracted, i barely take notes.

i walk down three flights of stairs. take a right, out the back door. my legs feel shaky, like i may buckle and fall down, down, down, two blocks until my next building, where i climb up another three flights of stairs. it's bright white in here, probably painted within the past year. the stairwell reeks of fresh paint. at the top of these stairs is a waiting room. no one hardly comes up here.  there’s three massive paned windows, and there’s my beautiful snow globe scene. its the shitty type of scene my grandmother would take a picture of and cherish. i start to grab my phone to send her a picture,

and my body goes cold.

she’s dead, remember?

its only been a few days and i’ve been,,,,, i’ve been gone. i don’t think i’ve had a single thought in my head since wednesday after 10:45am. and i’ve been running nonstop. i listened to you screaming for the last eight hours of your life. and i never got to say goodbye. i don’t think i ever would have. i would always tell you, “i’ll see you when i’m back tomorrow,” but this time there was no tomorrow. you were still breathing fine when i left you. sure it was slow, almost erratic, and in so much pain. i remember the last time i hugged you. you weren’t speaking anymore, but you had enough in you to gently squeeze me when i reached down to hug you. and the last thing you told me was that you loved me, but that was far before you hugged me. i miss you already. today i snapped a picture of that window scene and texted it to you, knowing fully well my mother had your phone. and i started to cry. people saw me, i know they did, but they must understand. everyone’s dealt with death. and if they haven't, they will. my god, i miss you already. god is a little bastard, the universe know exactly what it was doing to spark this chain reaction of events that ended in bittersweet memories of seventeenths and weekend trips to a clinical spare bedroom. its only been four days, is your body even cold yet? i’ve been told you don’t even look like you in the casket. they say you look good but its nothing like you. i want to see you again but i guess all we get is body that once possessed you. i wish this, i wish that.

today i watched them open the casket to reveal your deflated hands, sunken in eyes, skin i could (pull just like clay). gums sewn shut. body drained and pumped with chemicals. your once yellow skin turned “normal,” i don’t want to look, this isn’t you. i don't want your face in my memories to replaced with this lifeless thing in a rented casket. i don’t remember other bodies looking as dead as yours did. but now you’re being incinerated in some oven, mixing ashes with remnants of someone else’s loved ones and past pets. today it maybe started to feel final. it came over me for a second or two, tears started to well up, but the antidepressants kicked in and worked their magic. i don’t feel real, i don’t feel like this is really me. not really you.

i was never going to say goodbye. i expected you to live forever, that was the expectation everyone had in mind. and no one had time to grieve. there’s a difference between watching someone die over the course of six weeks, and watching someone slowly lose themselves over the course of twelve years. three years on hospice. my name is cathy, my name is ann, my name was everyone but who i am. i have four dogs in a world i do not live in. we’re at the park in a bedroom. there’s these really good orange towels in the laundry room. and now her apartment is collecting dust while we wait for the heartlessness of a judge to hear us out. like their first day on earth has never happened, yet they have eight years of law school programmed into their tiny little baby brains. but besides the point, i miss you but i don’t know if this is really happening or not. and it doesn’t hurt until i’m alone, or with people. so it really all hurt but doesn’t hurt. and no one knew what to expect.

today i watched them put your rented casket in a silver hearse. bells ring. it snows. i notice its a cadillac, with a leather exterior. where does one find things like this? and what happens if a hearse crashes into an ambulance? and what if they all die? what’s then? i try not to think of all things that could possibly go wrong, ever. the bells switch from the hourly tune, to background noise to send her off. who thinks of these things, and who controls it? the funeral director smiles and tells us to go inside, enjoy the catered meal my family put together and payed for.

none of this feels right, none of this feels real, but i doubt it ever will, unless i am in the industry of loss.