in a futile attempt to assert the significance of our existence to the universe, we became a species of excess and waste. burn bright, burn fast. so in another two eons, some other planet across the void can be stunned by the beauty of our extinction.

dated 25.5.17

late at night
when my long forgotten memories
come out to haunt me
and the nostalgia drowns me
in my past
i think of you
and all the things we used to do

i used to tell myself
that the way we needed each other
wasn’t love
it was two lonely people
doing all they could
to keep ourselves alive
in our harsh world

but when i see your face
there’s a feeling in my chest
that i can’t deny
and maybe we were in love
it was just broken and painful
because that’s all we knew

dated 7.1.16

we never really get over things
we just distance ourselves from the feelings
but we can’t escape the feelings attached to memories
and so every time we share a moment
i’ll have some associated memory from
that summer we spend in love
or the winter we kept each other warm

dated 2.2.17 12.00a

you’ll spend your 20s
finding people who will love you
for the rest of your life
not just in love
but those who’ll love
from the deepest parts of their soul
and will support you
with every fibre of their being
as we try to get better
and become grown versions of ourselves.
people who will see you at your highs and your lows
never wavering in their belief in you,
loving you unconditionally
as we try to fix the things
they broke in us.

i wake and look for you in my bed
but these days, you don’t live here anymore
just fragmented memories in my head

i look for you throughout my day
to tell you all the little things,
and the dumb things,
because as much as you disagree,
you’re my best friend

i say goodnight when i climb into bed
but these days, my voice doesn’t reach you
just the ghost of you living in my head

the only place i don’t look for you
is in my dreams. for a few hours,
i can forget and pretend
you are still here with me

flood my brain
with serotonin
& norepinephrine
silence the unforgiving lonelines,
the ever constant identity crisis.

turn off brain
and let bake
for at least 2 hours
so i can see what life is like
outside the confines of my mind

reboot in safe mode
and start again
because who would i be
if i wasn’t bpd me

i’m sorry that i ghosted you.

i know now it was wrong
the way i disappeared.
not like i faked my death,
to give you closure.
not like i never existed,
and erased myself from your memories.
but like i didn’t care enough
to say goodbye.
i tried to write a few times,
once i regretted what i’d done
but you changed your number,
and moved on.
i always asked our friends about you
to see how you were getting on,
but i never had the courage,
to ask for your number again

i haven’t kept up with this like i had originally planned. the last time i checked in was at year 5. for wood, i didn’t have any big revelations, and was just drifting along trying my best to survive.

but surviving isn’t the same as living. eventually the people around you notice and they either challenge you to grow or leave you behind.

i have no idea what i would have written for 6 (candy), 7 (wool), or 8 (pottery). even now, i’m not entirely sure where this will go. when i think of willow, i think of the tree from disney’s pocahontas, grandmother willow, or harry potter’s whomping willow. problematic, i know, but i don’t know that i’ve seen many willow trees in real life to use as a point of reference. so my idea of a willow tree is this massive tree that can bend and absorb the things that are thrown at it without breaking.

things are different from year 5, i’m no longer just surviving, i do believe that i am growing. it’s slow growth, probably stunted by my own unconscious telling me that this is what i deserve, and that this was never the plan. but growth is still growth, i have to try and remember not to be too hard on myself. i was never really one for planning in the first place, other than my 7 year deal that i made with myself, but that expired without my life collapsing like i thought it would. you see, the plan after valley was to give it 7 years. if things weren’t better by then, i could say that i gave it a fair shot, and wouldn’t hold it against myself for giving up. year 7, i surpassed the age that my father was when i was born. that turned out to be a surprising trigger that sent me into a weird identity spiral, but i came out mostly unscathed.

i don’t know where this growth will lead, and most days i still feel like i don’t have an overall existential purpose, but at least i’m not stagnant. and i have some goals, at least for the short term.

i guess it’s cheesy, to say “i bend, but i won’t break” because i know that i have broken before, but i have also grown since then. like trees growing around things or scars forming on skin, i keep a memory of what happened, but it doesn’t keep me from living.