love

Explain

I stripped down for the shower, quickly peeling off my clothes and leaving them on the floor. Turning towards the mirror, I inspected my body. Sloped shoulders leading to collarbone, high breasts and a flat midsection that fell into a curve further down. I tucked my chin to my chest and looked down.

How could such an innocuous body part cause so much trouble? It was certainly nothing to look at, fleshy folds and bits of stray hair. If anything, it looked like a rather disgruntled mustachioed rodent. Hardly anything to get your panties in a knot.

I swiveled my rear and placed my hands over my hips, hoping to get an angle that would make me understand the desire. But I just kept feeling as if someone had informed me that Helen of Troy actually looked like a surprised muskrat.

Dear John

They say your skin renews itself every thirty five days. My skin has been replaced thirteen times since you bruised it. My nails have grown and been cut off, my hair bleached, dyed and trimmed. Old scars have faded, others have appeared in different places.

I remember, sitting, counting the marks you doled out, recording their placement and shape as if I was writing a report. Unable to make sense of the previous night, I wrote down everything I could remember, then let my memory fade with the bruises. The swelling went down, I was able to walk without a limp again. But still, something inside of me hurt.

Sometimes it was a throbbing ache, sometimes a burning all over, like I had been neatly peeled. The pain was constantly in the back of my head, never lessening. And deep within the pain was the old me, that young girl screaming  no stop it you're hurting me please don't touch me don't don't why won't anyone help me stop please, forever repeating those five minutes. A phantom limb with a tightly clenched fist, impossible to relax and uncramp because it doesn't exist.

Perhaps a better or stronger person could have ignored the hurt, not picked the scab and let it heal with time. But I do not know how to do that. I do not know how to reconcile myself to a body that you covered in invisible scars.

I wonder if you would recognize me. I wonder what your life is like, who is in it. After you beat and humiliated me, did you go home and kiss your children and make love to your wife?

I thought your presence would fade from my life as soon as I got away, washed your smell off of me, healed my body and threw out the clothes you touched. Yet not a day goes by without me thinking of you.

Sometimes I wish I could hunt you down, make you feel as scared and violated and helpless as you made me feel. Other times I wish it had never happened. Mostly, though, I wish that I was the first and last person you ever did that to. It is easier to bear pain when it may have saved someone else from a similar trial.

I want to hate and cry and despise and scream and pity and throw things at you.

But I find that all I can feel for you is nothing.

Balloons

Once upon a time, I was in love. The boy was perfect- tall, intelligent, gentlemanly. The kind of man romance novels are made of. We spent Canada Day weekend together. When we went swimming, we spent hours telling each other things- favourite songs, favourite foods, what we’d like to do with our lives... Man oh man, did I have it bad for that boy. When he professed hatred for my sworn enemy, I thought I’d swoon right there.

As soon as I arrived back at home, I searched my house high and low for his favourite song- 99 Red Balloons. The closest I could find was my mom’s old cassette tape of 99 Luft Balloons. I stole away to my room and played it over and over again on my old silver ghettoblaster. 

We were going to get married to that song. For every child we would have, we’d celebrate by letting one-- heck, a whole bunch of red balloons into the air. Every anniversary of our life would be marked by red balloons drifting into the setting sun.

Unfortunately, like most romances between 10 year olds, our love was not to be. We drifted apart in junior high school, and I never fulfilled my balloon-studded dreams. 

Fast forward 10 years, and for my ‘unbirthday’ my lovely friends secretly filled my room with red balloons while I obliviously sang loudly and off key to Third Eye Blind in the basement. After much screeching and jumping up and down, I was left with the problem of what to do with a room full of balloons. While a lovely gesture, it is uniquely terrifying to wake up in the middle of the night smelling latex and seeing a shapeless mass floating above your head.

So I consulted Nena. Which really wasn’t much help. I do not live in a war zone, nor am I politically active (beyond telling the PC party that my Dad is dead whenever they phone for donations). So I meditated on balloons. What do they do best? (Besides pop suddenly and make you scream.)

Well, float. 

So maybe Nena was on the right track, for the chorus at least. With this in mind, tonight I went out to my backyard and let the balloons float away into the sunset.

It was beautiful.  

As they floated off, I thought about my hopes and dreams. Simple ones, like health and laughter, then more complicated ones like love and contentment. Then I thought about how damned cliché it was for me to be wishing on escapee balloons drifting into the sunset. I ought to be thinking about the birds I am potentially killing by feeding them lovely, tasty flat bits of rubber.

However, an hour later, a little voice inside me is giving me a green light to be a sentimental dumbass where red balloons are concerned. Perhaps it’s a little nostalgia for the balloon-full life I never had with that boy. Even more so, I suspect its for how well balloons and dreams go together. They need weight to stay on the ground, but they were never meant to be on the ground. They’re meant to be high above our heads. And yeah, sometimes they’ll hit power lines, or the pressure will be too much and they’ll pop. They might go places you never imagined. Occasionally, something will try to swallow them and end up choking.

But you have to let them fly that high, because that is where they belong. There’s nothing sadder than a little balloon hidden indoors, slowly losing air, day by day, until it becomes a wrinkled mass that falls to the floor. There’s nothing worse than a dream that has been shoved into a recess of your head, dying a little every day you keep it off your mind.  

It’s hard to remember that when you're busy living life, making ends meet, when taking the easy way out often feels like the only way out. But for tonight, anyways, I’m going to keep looking at the sky and remembering that the only way to keep my dreams is to let them drift up to the sky where they belong.

Is it the same for them?

It is human nature, I know, to wonder if there is someone who feels the same as us. Am I normal? Do others experience the world in the same way I do? And we run around, proud to be independent and free, but there is still, that little voice inside, calling out for someone like them.

Is that where the concept of soul mates comes from? Someone whose little voice goes “yeah! Me too!! I like gouda cheese too! I think Austin Powers is hilarious too! I really want to learn photography too!”

Honestly, I don’t even believe in soul mates. It’s a nice thought and not much more.

But things that I can’t help but wonder:

Do other girls think about sex this much? Does it drive their mind as much of the day as it does mine? Do other guys think about sex this much?

How long does it take to stop thinking about someone? Is it the same for everyone? Do they think about me?

How do other people fall asleep? Are they like me, they can only fall asleep if they imagine being in someone’s arms or have exhausted themselves with math and incessant projects or are drunk?

Is that fairytale really as fulfilling as everyone thinks it is?

After depression starts fading, does it ever really go away? Or does it keep cycling?

Am I really as self assured as I think I am? Or has that cover been on so long I cannot even tell what is real anymore?

Do other people have difficulty expressing emotion without being drunk? Do other people view strong emotions as a weakness like I do?

We’re all out there with these little questioning voices in our heads,

DYING to know the answers

DYING to hear a reply

DYING to know if there is a friend or lover or stranger who feels the same way as us

and we’re all too fucking afraid to ask the questions

cause what if there isn’t?

If you can back it up with graphs, its gotta be true

I came up with this chart after a rather realistic dream where two of my very charming friends never existed. That is to say, I dreamed that they had never been part of my life. And let me tell you, it was fucking glorious.

Now, don’t get me wrong- I love my friends, they’re beautiful and loyal and tons and tons of fun. But sometimes I get a little jealous. Cause everyone falls in love with them. Because they’re charming motherfuckers.

You see, I suck at picking up social cues. I swear like a trucker, and my version of flirting is pushing my man of choice against the nearest wall and having my way with him. I am not at all charismatic, people generally don’t want to be my friend. I was always one of the last people to be picked for group projects, unless one of my friends with actual social skills was in the class. (I mean come ON, what tactful person writes a fucking blog post discussing what a cocky motherfucker they are?? Me. I do.)

So, since i have the charisma of a potato, my ability to be an attractive person is pretty much dependant on my ability to wear makeup and stay skinny.

 You see, with optimal amounts of weight loss and makeup, i can actually pass as a decent looking human being (especially while in bars with dim lighting). However, too much or too little of either of those factors results in me looking like a)skeletor, b) a guido, c) a clown or d) some sort of overgrown gremlin. However, with charm, people have the ability to raise their attractiveness exponentially:

 

As you can see, a charming person who is fat and without makeup can actually be more attractive than the socially retarded, by shifting the relationship upwards. When you are a charismatic person, people don’t care that you have a face like a fucking horse.

And that is what I blame my inability to attract people on. Well, that or my weird hobby of making graphs out of social phenomena that I made up.

self loathing? yup.

Know what pisses me off about bloggers? They are so damn whiny. And self-involved. All ‘blegh why doesn’t he love me’ and ‘I’m depressed, VALIDATE MY FEELINGS!!!!!’ and ‘ baby monkey riding backwards on a pig’... (okay the last one is just plain awesome. There is NOTHING wrong with baby monkeys on pigs. Especially when a techno song is involved.) AND I DO THE SAME GOD DAMNED THING.

See, I’m a huge advocate for the “man the fuck up” method of dealing with emotions. Which I’ve noticed doesn’t work all that well. But still, get the fuck over it people, stop whining about your fucking problems and go DO SOMETHING about them. Or blog about bacon! Cause really, who doesn’t love bacon? Even vegetarians have the no-judgement-bacon-rule (or at least the awesome ones do).

So why am I not blogging about bacon? I’ve written essays on my love of pizza subs before, MY BLOG COULD BE AWESOME. But instead, I just continue to piss myself off. I just want to stop blogging cause I’m being so fucking annoying. BUT... I want to improve my writing... and I tend to find other things to do instead of writing in a journal. So, do I continue to blog or just close this shit up? Or start a whole new blog about the magic that is toast?

Fuck it. I’m going to get a glass of orange juice.