I take a long time to heal from things and I should know that and embrace it. I have been trying to change things, because I've been told I make things too hard for myself. In the last 6 months my self-importance has been shattered. It is humbling, which was shocking because I assumed I was already too humble to begin with. I am not.

Everyone wants to hear they are the exception. It was a blow to my self-worth to realize, for at least this once, I was the rule. That it doesn't matter how much heart you have, it may not always be enough. I would hope my reaction to this would be to continue to try to make everyone as important as I can. I don't want anyone in my life to ever feel as though they are just one of many. Logically, my reaction is that. I write everyone letters. I tell them my secrets. Emotionally, I feel closed off. I've lost my desire to hold on to things, because people are always telling you to let go let go let go and I did, but it's not my way. I hold on to things, even if it kills me. But I miss wanting to stuff everyone in my pockets. I miss my desperation, as sickening as everyone else found it. I did the things everyone always tells me I should, the things they think will make me better, stronger, happier. I just feel emptier. I'm letting the sadness back in, so I can let the happiness back in too.

embrace your condition and never feel as though you ought to feel differently than you do.

Summer, I try try to love you, but I am thrilled to watch the snow fall and pile up from my bedroom windows.

Time keeps feeling suspended. I forget I ever went to Kenya and yet I think I miss it always anyways. When does the loving things so much your nerves feel like they are on fire come back? And sure, it was a little awful, the longing, the desperation, but if I have to be desperate in order to have all my emotions back, I won't say know.

I want to be in love. I want my heart to come back from wherever it's run off to.

every fucking summer.

summer of love 2011, wisconsin love affair, all summer long. strictly wisco.

Today I talked about Kenya with someone whom I don't know so well, and who maybe does not know me so well. It was the best Kenya conversation I had so far. It felt good to talk about it. I hope this keeps happening.

CHIN UP HEART UP BABY GIRL

Grandma recites me poetry
that's ancient but erotic
then mumbles after me
"to fall in love's psychotic"


just needed to jot this down.

ex-essential crisis

it's just one of those days where the weather coordinates with your hangover and then you sort of feel the world closing in on you. i didn't have these days in kenya, and I recall missing them, but now i'm not so sure.

Under dream song #1 I wrote "betrayal sans malicious intention", which somehow feels significant, though i'm not sure how.

I spent Kenya being honest in letters, but now I'm home and I don't remember how to be honest in person. I don't even think I know what honesty is. I feel strangely terrified of falling apart, but also fairly certain I won't. Fairly certain I don't have a reason to. Trying to teach myself that affairs of the heart can not be my main drive, my main problem, my main concern. And knowing this has nothing to do with anyone but myself, which is sort of scary. Which is completely scary. Quit trying to dissect your sadness, just take it for what it is, let it go, trust people until you can't anymore, then don't trust them. But none of that in between, where you want to trust them, but tiptoe around them because you aren't quite sure you do. Trust yourself to be good enough. Not just trust this, but know this. I have this unfair need to know what I am to people, to know where I fit in, instantly. But mostly people don't know where they are going or how they are getting there or where they fit in and definitely don't know where you fit in. I need to be more like them and less like me, sometimes I think. In Kenya, I didn't have to think about these things.

I have so many things to work on. Days like these tear me down. I need to stop letting myself have days like these. But the idleness of time scares me, terrifies me, and sometimes it feels like simply by letting time pass the way it sometimes does is losing. I feel like things are being lost, like I should be rushing to save them for myself. But sometimes dear, you just have to let things happen the way they will happen and be patient and not anxious and love the things for the way they are, not the way they might be. People too. The terror of summer is creeping up on me, I have never known what to do with my free time. Or known what to do, but now how to enjoy it, knowing I could be doing so many other things.

I just want to be full of love, and not have this coordinate with being full of sadness, and I don't know why sometimes this is hard and sometimes this is easy, but am convinced that it is all up to me, and that I will learn happiness a new way this summer, and learn how to love myself, and learn how to keep myself together.