Naked Words

We all spend our entire lives looking for something more. We have nothing to start with. Some have families and school but what else? We finally get a job and in our free time we dream of the job we WILL have one day. With that job we finally get a car and then we sit in the front seat scrolling through pictures of our dream car and the one we WANT to have some day. That car gets us places like work, school, and maybe a night out on the weekends. We go to doctor appointments, meetings, and our siblings or families kid’s events. We finally get an apartment or a place to stay and every single day we walk in and start dreaming of owning a house that we WILL have…. before long. We sleep there and we meet people who come in and out of our lives. We start relationships. Then we start to dream of the perfect spouse we WANT to have for the rest of our miserable lives. We get a better job which leads to a better car and a better living arrangement. Then, guess what? We start to dream of the better things we WILL have someday and all of the things we WANT. It starts to get monotonous and predictable. We always want the things we don’t have and we begin to lose any focus on the things sitting in our hands. This is the beginning of being unhappy. Once you start to lose sight of what you do have, you lose it. And once again you restart this cycle of “I want this instead” or “this isn’t good enough”. How long will it take you before you realize that what you have IS enough? That you are lucky to have the things and people you have in your life. You wish to go on exotic trips and see crazy things. But guess what? 60 years from now you will talk about the “good times” and most of those stories will be the silly things your friend did at a gas station or the time you went swimming and got all muddy all of those years ago. Little do you know that those good times are right now. Nobody ever knows it’s the “good times” until it’s too late and they lose it. So do yourself a favor… sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy where you are. Don’t worry about tomorrow or the alarm clock that will be banging at your unconscious door soon. Stay up late, take that other drink, mess up your makeup, ruin those expensive clothes, and do the things that make you happy without letting materialistic things stand in your way. Stop focusing on all of the things that WILL be and what you WANT someday. Think about where you are now and think about what you have. Build from there and  continue to go up. You are going to have fun along the way. I mean after all , these are the good days.

They teach you as a kid that love is about fancy dates and flowers. The Cinderella always gets her prince, the unfortunate love stories always have a happy ending, and love always pushes through. Maybe in some versions of reality that is the case , but not always. Most of the time the Cinderella finds a new prince or vise versa, the unfortunate stay unfortunate, and love seems to fail a lot. I hate how frequently I use the word maybe. It seems so indefinite, and honestly you could say “maybe” at just about anything and there is a slight chance it could happen. There are billions of possibilities. But going along with this cliché that I dislike; maybe love isn’t always what the songs on the radio blare about or the movies make it seem. After a while, and after you’ve been hurt enough times, you begin to get tired of the pain you feel right after you love. Because with love comes loss, with loss brings pain. I guess I always believed I would have that “happy ending” (if those even exist).   I’m joking; I know every ending can’t end tragically. But if you really think about it, all in all,  if you let yourself fully open to someone it gives room for them to hurt you. When I say “fully open” I mean the type of love you can only give one person at a time. The type of love where they know everything about you and they are the ones you will be most vulnerable to. Yes you can love friends and yes you can love family. Along with being able to love them you can also get hurt by them. Because here’s the deal; the closer you get to someone the more likely you are to see all of their little flaws and quirks. Most likely there will come a point when that flaw gets the best of them. Here you are left with a decision: do you wait it out, or do you leave? I wish I had known love was so difficult and this choice is always the hardest because ultimately we all ask ourselves this at some point, “is this what I want”. There will be people who say no to wanting you and many times you do it to other people. We cry, we grieve their absence, we pick ourselves up, and eventually we move on to the next flirt that leads to something bigger. With that being said, in the game of love there are always exceptions. I’m not sure is everyone experiences it at some point, or not. Either way, some people get the very good end and they find their “One” pretty quickly, some go through silly relationships that grow them as people without destroying their want for any other type of love until they find the “One”, and then there is the group who have experience an amazing love so great they were convinced it could never end. At least one of these are bound to happen to everyone whether they see it or not, and sometimes it is more than just one. However, I kind of want to talk about the last group I mentioned. I know it sounds great to have found a love so rare, but it doesn’t always last. Love is so so so complicated and there are millions of things that can go wrong or happen to two people to cause them to fall out of love. Unfortunately, sometimes one fall out and the other falls in. They fall into this sort of bubble where they just don’t feel like they will ever reach their full happiness level. Depressing, right? They try, try, and try to love after that, but never seem to really be able to love someone fully again. Out of all of the three groups I hope whoever reads this fit into the first two. The third group isn’t all bad because the love those people find is a one in a million type of thing. Maybe (here I go with the maybe thing again) they find that love and it last forever. I hope you’re that group too. I’m not quite sure which group I’m in yet. I probably wont know until I’m 80 and looking backwards wishing I could twist the clock back for real. Who really knows? No one. So I guess my advice to you is to be careful where you lay your full heart. Pick the right ones but love every person like they are your fairytale ending, because maybe they are. If they aren’t keep searching. I beg you though, do not lose yourself in the process. Don’t forget that it WILL be okay. Those sad ending I talked about- they happen. And that’s why I aid be careful. However, the chance of you finding true love are very good odds. Be the happiest you can be until someone who really is right for you comes along. In the books and stories they always miraculously fall in love with not troubles. That, I will tell you, is one thing they are definitely wrong about. Love takes sacrifice, it takes loss, and it takes being strong. But love gives. Love gives you courage, strength, passion, the will to do what makes you happy, and mostly it gives you life. So , no, the fairy tales aren’t realty accurate, but if they were we would have a hard time believing in the one thing that keeps many people going. But love can be real, and if you are in that third group- keep going. I’m rooting for you. I’ve been there. It isn’t a fun place to be, but I promise it will eventually fade. You were just too real for them at the time. So enough with comparing your life to the books, the movies, the songs, and the stories. Start writing your own instead. 

We talked and talked for hours

about the places that we’ve been

And the places you’d wish to be

We went through our favorites

Our secrets and our hates

But before we ran out of topics

You asked me

About what exactly was my “thing”

I said I was a writer

then across your sweet look I saw something scheming in your glance

you had wished to live forever

and now i was your chance

you clawed your way inside me

shot jet black ink in through my veins

made sure i would write of you

until i drove myself insane

you longed to be the hero

like in the books you used to read

remembered as the kind of the man

that everbody needs

it was to late when you noticed

the one mistake that you had made

that a warrior might fight with arrows

but the pen’s a writers blade

and you cant just tear my world up

and then expect a loving rhyme

you used your words as sharpened weapons

and now i will use mine

i trapped you in ink handcuffs

locked behind my written bars

and now you’ll finally live forever

as the monster that you are.

Do you ever have that moment ? That moment when in just one tiny instant you miss somewhere , some one , something. And that tiny instant triggers a reaction of memories leading to thoughts about the simplest touch, the simplest smell, the simplest look, and even the tiniest memory of the feeling. The way your feet felt heavy against the floor. The look of the person’s eyes. Whether they sparkle or fade. The way a person’s voice crackles when the talk or the smoothness of their sentences. The way your breath quickened or slowed. The smell of fresh trees and spring in your nostrils. Maybe it’s the smell of cinnamon and the fall of leaves that triggers you. But either way you remember. It’s like every single day you’ve spent after that day you spent a day not remembering that single memory but in this second, this time just right now, you just want to go back. You can remember every detail of every moment. The way your eyes begun to sting and your throat went dry as you screaming to bring them back to life. The feeling of the day when you saw someone who looked like that person. Saw a ray of sunlight shining through the trees in a park that reminded you of the time you were driving down an old dirt rode and there were patches of sunlight all over. But now , when you drive the only spot of sunlight you seem to notice is the one against the leather of the seat next to you but it’s not the sunlight you notice , it’s the fact that it’s empty. Maybe it’s the feeling of an empty bed. Because you know that in the perfect life they’d be beside you. The smell of the restaurant where you used to laugh and talk at can send you into a spiral of memories. It’s crazy , isn’t it? How vivid your memories of certain times can be and how dearly you can miss them.

I loved the way he touched me.

What more can I say?

His hands were made from the things we all have trouble believing in,

I’ve written plenty of poems about how you can’t make homes out of humans. It’s true. You begin to find yourself wrapped in their warmth and you never get tired of the safety net around you. You build a foundation and all of a sudden there are walls, but they are inside and not out. But see this gives them the power to know you. The power to know every single thing about you. The way you smile differently in different situations, the way you eat breakfast, the way you shower, the way your muscles move, the involuntary movements your face makes. This give them to power to choose not to love those things. You tell yourself it’s okay. Because it is. They don’t have to love the home you’ve built of them. Maybe it’s because you’ve never really had a “home” so you actively search for something to catch you after a long day, that one thing that always sticks. You fall in love with the way their face looks when they sleep and everything is quiet. You fall in love with the way their chest rises and falls. You fall in love with their laugh. You fall in love with every little detail you never would have thought twice about and you start to think that this is the home that you will grow old in. It’s crazy how fast it can all happen , but it does. Unfortunately, you can’t make homes out of humans. I’ve told myself this over and over again. Because at some point they won’t want you there. After so many times of telling people: its “okay” and that their “happiness” is what matters. I start to think something is wrong with me. Maybe I’m not very good at building houses. Maybe I need to build my walls back up before I try being on the inside of anyone else’s. I’m just not sure I want to let anyone in. Maybe I won’t . It doesn’t matte how hard I try to stay I just can’t. So I quit. I no longer want you inside of my walls. I don’t want you to see the beautiful windows and fall in love with the view. I don’t want the creaks it makes at night to scare you at first but then become a comfort. I don’t want you to know anymore. So…. You can go home now.

 

 

 

Sometimes you are someone’s favorite sweater. They wear you all the time. They wear you around the house, out to dinner, to the movies, or even while they sleep. They wear you in front of their friends, and their families, and in front of strangers, because you are their favorite sweater and they want everyone to know. As it happens, whether on purpose or accident, one day they hang you in the back of their closet. Before long, other sweaters are placed before you, and you watch them as they come and go, wondering if you’ll ever be worn again. soon you become not as accessible. The other sweaters are easily seen, touched, and worn. you suddenly become far away. Far away means they forget the color in your eyes, they way you smell, and your voice I the morning. So you hang, collecting dust and watching other sweaters keep the body you love warm. Maybe one day you’ll be pulled from the closet, and they’ll remember how they never felt as warm from all the other sweaters as they did with you. They’ll remember how you promised not to scratch their skin or be stained with lies, and you kept those promises. But as it happens, maybe you were meant to just be a sweater, and you were only ever meant to be worn until they no longer needed you.