Dustin

What you don't seem to realize is that I am the moon and she is the sun. You may be a star, but there are so many of you. You fill the sky - nothing special in comparison to your neighbor. As singular masses of being, we stand alone. And yet, we compliment each other. You only compliment yourself. 

I hope you wake up one day. I hope you pull your head out of your ass and finally see what is right in front of you. You have two beautiful people who would give up the world for you. And you don't care. 

I couldn't care less if you don't give a shit about yourself. But the fact that you honestly don't give a damn that people give a damn about you blows my fucking mind. 

We fight for you every goddamn day. We try our hardest to love every part of you and every time we think we have you back, you show us just how far you've gotten away from us. And you don't care. 

You don't care that we try. You don't care that we accept every apology you throw at us. You don't care that we let you use us as your floormat to wipe your dirt on. You don't care that we are still here, despite it all. Despite the fact that you make us feel replaceable, like an outdated toy. 

And as I lay here haunted by the thought of not being good enough to make you happy, you still don't care. You are so wrapped up in your own head that it's impossible for you to realize that maybe we have our own thoughts too. We have our own opinions and our own demons and our own battles to fight. And we try our damnedest to be who need us to be. And you still don't fucking care. 

You once told me that you don't see us as real people, instead as extensions of yourself. That is all of your problems in this friendship wrapped in to one set of words. We are people. We have pasts, presents, futures. We have thoughts and feelings that matter just as much as yours. 

Your effect on us is substantial and maybe you don't see that. I know you label yourself as this third wheel, and maybe you are. But we have never treated each other the way that you treat us. You make us feel like loathsome human beings and it takes the two of us to remind each other that we're not. We cling to each other because we have a common enemy - you. 

You set yourself up for this. And I guarantee you there will come a time when we make a mutual decision of the fact that we have had enough. That we have had more than enough. 

And when that time comes, I hope you look yourself in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that it never had anything to do with us. It's all on you. It's never been about how we dealt with you or how we treated you. It's about the fact that you don't care to deal with us and you don't care how you treat us. 

So stop the crocodile tears and the fake apologies and promises you have no intention of keeping because I'm not falling for them anymore. I know who are. I know exactly what you're capable of. I'm not falling down for you. 

Are you worth the heartache? Are you worth everything I feel when I have to coddle you? Are you worth staying up at night for? 

I'm finally pulling my own head out of my ass a realizing that no, you're not. You're not worth the trouble of trying to keep with you. 

Maybe it was never about me not being good enough, but more about you not being enough. 

You're not enough to keep me happy. It's taken me a damn long time to realize it. 

I hope that one day you are enough. I hope one day the sun shines so brightly that it seems like it only made an appearance for you. 

But I'll be damned if I stick around to see it. 

Selfish

I've considered myself a lot of things in the past twenty years - juvenile, insecure, moody, spontaneous, narcissistic. But I don't think I've ever truly considered myself selfish until tonight. 

I'm pretty good at putting the problems of others before my own. I can push past my own problems, take care of them myself, and weigh a little less so I can carry the burden of others. But I realized that the most important person's burden to take awayis my family's. 

I thought that that was what I was doing. I was taking away the burden of the family I made for myself - Peyton and Dustin. I was putting myself in the back burner for them because they needed me. I needed them, too, but not as much. And it was worth it to sacrifice for them. It is so worth it to carry your best friends - your family. 

But I've been letting them help me with bits and pieces too. I've been opening up more, letting myself become vulnerable in a way I have never allowed myself to do in front of anyone else. It makes me uncomfortable, being vulnerable, but I know they don't think differently of me for it. I know that they will always think the sun shines out of my ass. Because they love me. Like a family does. 

But blood is thicker than water. And my mother needs me now more than ever. 

And while I've been putting myself on the back burner for my friends, I realized that I've been putting my mom on the back burner too. I got away. I left that house that was sucking the life out of me two months ago and I moved in with Dustin and I haven't looked back. Not even when my mother called to me, asking me to turn around. I refused to. And that's selfish. 

It's selfish because I took an out she doesn't have. She had one, years ago, when I was young and we still lived up north. And she didn't take it. She didn't take it because she was selfless. She was hopeful, naively so, that things would get better. And they didn't. 

She left that out to fade away behind her because my sister and I were young and impressionable and she didn't want us to face the consequences of her and my father's problems. So she carried her own burden and decided that her own little family, no matter how broken it was, was good enough for her. 

How did she come to that conclusion? How did she look past all the warning signs that told her it wasn't quite the darkest her life would get and continue to guide our family and our lives anyway? How did my mother become so selfless? And more importantly, how did it take me twenty years to figure out just how selfless she is?

She wants me back. She wants me home. That place may not be home to me, it hasn't been for a long time, but I am home to her. And I've been unfair to her. I've been so caught up in my own shit that I haven't had the energy to realize that maybe more people need me than I thought. She need me more than anyone else. 

It's going to exhausting, but it's a battle I have to fight. I have to go back to that house. I have to fight this war with the person who needs me most. Because it never occurred to me until now that my best sidekick is the person going through the exact same thing - my mother. 

I need her as much as she sees me. I need  to be less selfish and give a little back to the woman who gave me everything. I need to stop being so blind to a strong woman's fights and fight them with her. And with enough time, I will. As long as it's not too late. 

Home

Home isn't a house. It's not even a place at all. It's not a place or a person or a sight or a sound. It's not something you can direct yourself to. Home is not something you can pick up and hold. It's a feeling. 

Home is a road trip with a banging soundtrack. Home is walking into a room that feels brighter and warmer than the one you were previously in. Home is a smile that lights up someone else's face after you've told a witty joke. Home is happiness. It's excitement and joy and optimism. 

I don't think I've ever been this homesick. I can't recall ever reaching for those feelings so strongly. I'm grasping at air, stretching my arm far out to only to find that there was nothing there. Because home isn't anything tangible. 

I think I may be searching for the wrong thing. I'm looking for something permanent, something I know I'll never have to live without. But my whole life, I've just been flying by the seat of my own pants. I've taken whatever road I came to and wandered down it, willing to find whatever lays at the end. And there's a certain beauty to that. 

There's a kind of excitement that I find in not knowing what will happen next. It's terrifying, but what's the point in living a life that isn't a little reckless? At least it's not boring. 

This homesickness can't last much longer and I know that. I know that I'll find that feeling in little every day things someday soon. I know that I'll have that joy in my life and I'll love every day for its own reasons. 

I'm optimistic at this moment. I'm hopeful because I've learned that most of the time, things have an amazing way of working themselves out. And if they don't, I'll make my own way through. Nothing has killed me yet. 

Maybe I'm looking for home in all the wrong places. Maybe I need to stop grasping at air and let home come to me. Maybe I need to live more in the moment and let the future come and the past be. Maybe I can hold on to this feeling for a while. 

This new outlook is inspiring. I want to live in this moment and this mindset for the rest of my life. I love it here. This is home. 

I hope this isn't the best home gets for me. I hope everything feels even better tomorrow, or in a week, or in a year. And I have faith that it will. And that's home.