Sick

Everything was great. I had the world in the palm of my hand. I was victorious over every battle that came my way. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't. 

It all seemed to happen so quickly. My life changed. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse. I'm not surrounded by the people I expected. 

I got fucked over. Hard. By people I trusted, people I allowed myself to be vulnerable to. People I put my faith in. People I considered my best friends. And it got me right back to rock fucking bottom. 

They left. They saw an out and took it before I could. I know what was holding me back from taking that out - pride, arrogance. And hope. 

I'm prideful. I have a love/hate relationship with that aspect of myself. I don't settle for less than I deserve and that saves me from a lot of heartache. But it bites me in the ass every now and then too. I should have asked for help. I should have swallowed my pride and just reminded myself that although I'm a legal adult, I can't handle everything on my own. 

Arrogance stopped me. That arrogant train of thought of how strong I am, how much I have been able to overcome in the past. Arrogance in saying that this isn't the hardest battle I've had to fight, that I can win with no effort. I seriously miscalculated that one. This battle has been hard and braving it on my own has made it even worse. Arrogance stopped me from fighting with all my might. And if I had, I may not be here. But arrogance stopped me. 

But the fact that I clinged so hard to hope is what kills me. I hoped for the best, I had faith that things would turn out my way. They didn't. 

I had hope that people would change, and other people would stay the same. They didn't. 

I had hope that the people I gave my all to would give me something, anything in return. They didn't. 

I had hope that this would make me stronger. It didn't. 

I had hope that I could conquer this. I couldn't. 

And I am so fucking sick of this shit. I'm sick of sitting here trying to pin-point the exact moment shit hit the fan. It's making my hair fall out, it's making me wake up with scratches on my arms that I don't remember giving myself, it's making me physically ill. And it's not fair. 

But I'm also so fucking sick of feeling sorry for myself. I'm sick of crying in my car and hiding. I'm sick of saving theses emotions for late nights and long drives alone. I'm sick of losing sleep over people that sleep soundly at night, not caring where they've left me. 

So I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going to try my best to just get my fucking shit together. I'm going to do what's good for me and finally be a little selfish. 

But I'm scared. I have a plan. I have a plan that could fail. A plan that could leave me sitting here feeling sorry for myself again a year from now. But I'm going to risk it. 

Call it pride, call it arrogance, call it hope. But that's all I have right now. 

Here

I never pictured myself here. 

I thought this place would be home. Moving in with my two best friends, not giving a damn about anything, living our lives together. I thought this would be the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's not. 

Sasha's pregnant. She's going to move out soon enough. We've lived until his Josie for two fucking months and I haven't seen her at all during that time. 

Jordan, my gay best friend, hasn't been honest with me. He's been skirting around his extra curricular activities like I'm going to judge him for them when he knows damn good and well that I don't judge anyone. 

So here I am again. Here I am with my inferiority complex. Here I am at three am on my fucking birthday wondering where everything went wrong. 

Was it me? Was it this house? Was it just our friendship, doomed from the start?

I don't know. I don't know who or what to blame this on. 

But for once I at least know that it's not me. 

I am so fucking sick of taking the blame for everything. For feeling like shit because other people made me feel like shit. I'm done. I am so done felling inferior. 

I am sick a good fucking friend to all of these people that make it seem so easy to kick me to the curb. So you know what? Fuck them. Fuck them all. 

I will know my worth and I refuse to forget that. And if they can't see it, then I will find people who are a little less blind. 

You're welcome for giving you grade A advice and sticking with you through every crisis. I can't believe it took me so long to see it. It was never me. It was always them. Always. 

So I'm done. I'm not doing this to myself anymore. This is what you call "self respect." 

Goodbye. And good riddance. 

Choices

I can feel myself changing now everyday.  I am not exactly sure who it is I am becoming.

I've been questioning everything lately - the difference between want and need, why the line between love and hate is so fine, how to be who I want to be, if I can live with all the mistakes I've made.

Here is the difference between want and need: I need myself.  These friends that I hold so dear make me feel inferior. And to a certain extent, that's my fault.  They are good people and I'd never want them to change but at the same time, I can't live in their shadows anymore. I need exactly who I am in this moment: the eye of the storm. Everything is crashing down around me and I can feel it collapsing, but I refuse to shatter with it.  I will stand tall and proud despite the chaos I've let into my life because I will be strong again. I may want these people in my life, but I don't need them.  Because I don't need anyone to tell me what I already know: that I am a completely capable force all on my own. I never lost my strength, it just dwindled for a moment.  And I'm back to reclaim it.

Here is the reason why the line between love and hate is fine: they are two of the most passionate emotions you can have towards another person. Loving someone takes as much energy as it takes to hate someone. So I'm going to settle for indifference. I can't live my life loving people who I know don't feel the same way about me.  I've done it too often and it seems as though it gets more and more heartbreaking every time.  I refuse to hate these people, to hold every bad thing they've done in my presence against them purely on principle.  I won't do it.  And I will wish them the best because even if they've done me wrong, I've probably done the same to them.  And at the end of the day, they are still people with feelings and pasts and futures that I hope turn out to be exactly what they want them to. I don't have nearly enough energy right now to love someone or to hate them.  It takes too much heart.

Here's how I'm going to start being who I want to be: going back to school.  I've been blatantly not going to classes for almost a year and half now.  Classes for spring semester start tomorrow and for the first time in years, I'm excited to go back.  I've missed learning and stressing over exams, surprisingly.  I think this will be good for me. I'm going to fill my time up so quickly with two part time jobs and full time classes so I won't even have the time to feel sorry for myself.  I am going to throw myself in to being a good student and a good employee and be content with the knowledge that I don't need people to kiss the ground I walk on as long as I can look myself in the mirror and convince myself that I am worth that level of respect and adoration.

But living with the mistakes I've made? I don't know.  I've made too many at this point to decide if I really can live with them.  Some are small, some are explosive.  But they've all left me sitting here at the cafe on my day off, writing this shitty post to make me feel better about myself.  I can't help but think about how these mistakes, the paths I've chosen to take have made me who I am right now. And that's overwhelming because I am so many things in this moment. I am content and I am sad. I am optimistic and I am realistic. I am strong and I am weak.

Right now I am neither the best version of myself nor the worst.  And I am going to make the conscious decision to be happy about the fact that I've come a long way. I certainly am not where I hoped I'd be at twenty years old, but hey, at least I'm not doing heroin or something.

I am selfish and vain and a little too closed minded. I drink too much and I don't think I was born with a verbal filter. I don't try nearly as much as I think I do and I let other people take the fall for the things that I fucked up.

But I've also given my heart away so many times only to see it be trampled on and depleted.  So right now I'm going to focus on myself. I'm going to try and give up the people who are holding me back from becoming who I want to be and actually take the first steps to becoming that person. I'm going to make hella money between my two jobs, spend more time with my grandparents, move out of my parents' house, and never allow myself any free time to get caught up in my feelings.

Honestly, feeling sorry for myself is not helping anyone.  These pity parties that I love so much are not helping me actually move forward.  And moving forward is exactly what I intend on doing. I am going to fill my life up with so much good, that I won't ever be able to justify sadness again. 

I cannot wait until these plans become a lifestyle.  I just want happiness to be something that I wake up with, something that comes naturally.  Isn't that what we all want? I am going to choose happiness every day and I refuse to apologize for it.

And if I have a bad day somewhere along the way, I will breathe through it. I will remind myself every day that sometimes all you can do is hang on and hope for the best. Every day is a battle - some days you demolish everything in your path and some days all you can do is breathe. But either way, I'm a fucking warrior. And I don't plan on forgetting that any time soon.

Placeholder

I am inferior. 

I am not a first choice, I am a back up plan. And I am so fucking sick of people acting like they care when they very obviously don't. 

I am shell of who I once was and I can't do this anymore. I'm not funny anymore. I lost my humor, the one thing I had going for me. I may not have been the prettiest or the smartest, but I was always the funny one. And I'm not anymore. 

No one laughs at my jokes or smiles when I'm goofing around. No one genuinely likes the person I am. 

I keep everything at bay and it's still not enough. I'm still not funny and I'm still aggravating and I still don't know who I am. I am trying so hard to go back to the person I was before all this shit. 

Before I had a boyfriend who hit me, before I let the person I loved most get away, before my dad got arrested, before I lost myself. 

I tried so hard to find myself again after Shane. And it took years and effort and energy every fucking day but I finally did it. With a little help from my friends, I finally came to be the best version of myself and I was happy. For once in my life, I was truly content with who I was and where I was going and who I was going to be. 

But I never thought my life would turn out to be this way. I never though lt that I'd be who I am now. I am pushing everyone away and losing myself in the process. Again. 

I can't go through that again. I simply don't have the energy to find myself after all this time. Again. I've been through hell and back. And I've smiled the whole way through, staying optimistic, convincing myself that things would get better and I'd be okay by the end of it. 

But I am far from okay. I am far from who I was, who I was when I was happy. 

And I don't know how to get back to that point. How to smile at the autumn leaves that turn beautiful colors and fall in perfect patches, just waiting to be crunched. I don't know how to laugh at good jokes and smile as if I didn't have a care in the world. I don't know how to be the best version of myself and I'm fucking scared of who I'm becoming. 

I'm becoming more of a robot than I ever was and that's saying a whole fucking lot. 

I will never allow myself to be vulnerable again. I will never be comfortable with who I am because I am not anyone. I am not someone who belongs, someone who matters. 

I am a back up plan. I am placeholder. I am the shell of a girl that used to be everything. And now I am nothing. 

I have nothing left to give, I've already given it all to a person who threw it away in favor of something brighter, something better. Because even my best and my brightest still isn't good enough for the person I walked through hell with. 

I wonder if he realizes that I was there for it. I think he forgets that I've seen his highest highs and his lowest lows and I still think the world of him. 

I wonder if he realizes that no matter how hard I try, I still give him all I have. I give my time, my energy, my money. And what does he do with it? He throws it away. He throws it away because he doesn't want those things from me - he wants it from someone else. 

So I'm done giving. For my own sake, I have to be. I can't give away who I am in return for absolutely nothing. 

And I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to get back to thinking the sun shines out of his ass and I can trust him with anything. Because I can't anymore. I don't trust him. 

He confirmed my worst fears and told me to my face that I wasn't good enough for him. That I have given him all I have to give and yet it still isn't anything. Everything I've done, every part of who I am, it just isn't enough. 

Why? What is so terrible about me that I just can't have anything that I need?

Maybe he isn't what I need. Maybe he's holding me back from finding out exactly what it is that I need. Maybe I need to distance myself from his weight and relearn how to carry my own.

All I know is that I'm not strong anymore. I'm not who I was. And it's killing me. I always held on to my strength. Even if I wasn't funny or pretty or smart, at least I was strong. At least I could carry my own weight and be happy with at least that. And I can't even say that anymore. I don't know I am. I've lost the most integral part of myself. My strength. 

I don't know who I am, but I know that I'm not who I was. 

Expectations

You know when life just didn't go as you had planned it? When all of a sudden it's 3:30 in the morning and you're drunk and wondering why all the things that happened to you happened in the first place?

That's where I'm at now. I'm laying in bed in absolute silence wondering why. 

I'm wondering why I was never enough for the people who were always enough for me. I'm wondering why I can't express my feelings. I'm wondering why it's oh so easy for me to write them here but not say them out loud. I'm wondering why I can put on this facade and pretend like everything's okay one minute and sob the next. I'm wondering why I'm not worth anything. I'm wondering why it seems like so suddenly the things that made me happy four years ago don't make me happy anymore.

I want to be happy again. I can feel it slip through my fingers everyday. I'm almost grasping it, so close to the feelings I want so dearly, only to feel it slip through my fingers as easily as sand. 

It was so easy before. It was so easy to look past my struggles and put on this brave face. I may have known it was always a mask, but I was so comfortable wearing it. 

So what changed? When did I decide it was okay to be vulnerable? 

I'm still stuck with the same type of people. The kind of people that lie to my face and do things they know will hurt me behind my back. The same cowardly people that shy away from confrontation. 

Why do I allow myself to open up to people that have continuously let me down?

Because I have no one else. Because I'm stuck. 

Because if I leave theses people, these people that care about each other more than they'll ever care about me, I'll have no one. I won't have anyone to spend the night with. I won't have anyone to conquer to boredom with and to quiet my demons for me.  

I have run out of strength. I have exhausted all of my resources in this piece of shit town and there is no one left to drown my fears. They are my last option. I have gone through every other one.

I know I could leave them. They have hurt me more than any other person has because for the first time in a long time, I opened up. And they abused that. 

How do I justify that for them? How do I explain that away and make excuses for them for that?

I'm tired of making excuses. I'm tired of pretending like everything is okay because it's not.

I am sad. I am not who I once was and I'm fucking losing it. And they don't care. 

All I've ever done is be there for them and they can't give me the simple respect of being honest with me. 

So why do I stay? Because I have no one left. And if I lose them, there is no one else. And shitty friends are better than no friends at all. 

I'm stuck. I'm sad and I'm stuck. And I fucking hate it. 

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. 

Black

"It's always darkest before the dawn" never really made much sense to me. If everything is awful, how could it be cleared so easily? How many times to you really get a break in life?

I can't think of a single moment in my life when I felt comfortable enough to sit back and think about how good things are. I can't think of a time where everything felt settled. It's always had a way of being swept back and creating another twister. 

Maybe I only say that because everything frightens me. I don't know what's going to happen and that scares the shit out of me. Every fucking thing about my life is up in the air right now and I don't have the patience to wait for it to be settled. And if I'm being honest with myself, which I very rarely am, I don't know if everything ever will be. 

I don't know if this pain in my chest will ever go away when I think about it. I don't know if I'll find the motivation to set myself up for when I'm older. I don't know if I'll ever find anyone that genuinely cares about me. I don't if I'll ever sleep easy at night again. I don't know if I'll ever be content with just myself and not have my self worth tied to someone else. 

I'm constantly worried about someone or something and I can't breathe. I can't sleep. I can't function. I don't know what's happening and I'm scared. I am so scared of everything.

I want everything to be okay but I don't even know what "okay" is. I haven't felt "okay" in far too fucking long and I don't feel like I'll ever be truly happy again. 

I don't know what's missing. I have this vast number of tangible things at my disposal and I don't want any of them. I don't need them. But I don't know what I need. I don't think I'll ever know exactly what I need and I'm losing my fucking mind. 

All I'm saying is that if it really is the darkest before the dawn, it's bound to break soon because I've never been immersed in such an emptying shade of black. 

Knots

I have officially given up. I don't care anymore. Fuck Dustin for not thinking that I'm enough and fuck my best friend in Virginia for leaving and fuck my parents for blaming me for being sad and fuck school for being a constant reminder that the only thing I'm capable of doing well is fucking up. 

I've been doing okay too. I've been marginally happy and optimistic and been doing things that I should be doing. And of course I can't be happy for long. Of course I can't be satisfied with my best adventures. They're never enough for me. Something has to be wrong. It always is. And I'm fucking over it. 

It's like my life is this huge knot and every time I unravel some of it, put it back in pocket, and forget about it, something else gets tangled up. And I can't fucking stand it anymore. I can't stand being second best. I can't stand surrounding myself with the same people who don't really give a shit about me. I can't stand being a disappointment and not having anyone to talk about it with. I can't stand having all of these feelings I have with no idea how to express because I'm so comfortable being a robot. 

I hate being alone. I hate crying in my car in the middle of the day and having strangers look at me like I'm fucked in the head. I hate being with people in supposed to be comfortable with and feeling like I have to sensor myself. I hate not being able to get myself out of my own fucking head. I hate the headache I get after I cry. I hate the weakness I feel while I'm crying. I hate it all. I hate it. 

And I can't do it. It's over, I'm done. I'm done fighting for everyone around me, including myself. I'm done watching myself waste away in front of the world while they turn a distracted eye and pretend not to notice. I'm done building people back up and try to be everything they need when I'm just some background character in their life. I'm done trying to save people. I'm fucking losing it and nobody, including myself, fucking cares. 

It's Isa throwing herself a pity party like she always does. It's Isa getting up in her feelings and refusing to talk about because she never does. It's Isa being moody and taking everything personally. It's all my fucking fault. 

I can't keep taking two steps forward just to be thrown back another fifty. I can't keep up with the revolving door of people in my life. I can't keep pretending that everything rolls off my shoulders. I can't keep acting like nothing keeps me up at night and that I'm not falling apart. 

I write all of this knowing that I will never fucking say anything out loud. I'll never confide this in anyone. I want people to realize but I'm not willing to mention it. And that's fucked up. I'm a waste of a person and it's all so fucking clear. 

I may not be as transparent as I think I am. Maybe my happy act really is fooling everyone and it's not that they don't care it's just that I'm too good at pretending that I don't care. So yeah, fuck everyone but mostly, fuck me for being completely incapable of asking for help. 

I don't need it. I'm strong enough to handle this in my own. And if I'm not, I'm strong enough to get myself out of it, one way or another. 

Forgiveness

There's something completely unreal about the idea of forgiving someone. If they were truly someone who cared about you, why would there be anything to forgive? Why would they ever fuck you over? Why is forgiveness even a thing?

But then I think about all the times I fucked up. All the times I've apologized with my heart in my throat, hoping and praying that they would accept and things wouldn't be torn. 

But those were small things. What about the big ones that take a little more convincing? The ones that can't be fixed with a murmured, "Sorry." The ones where you know you fucked up and it, whatever it is, could be done. 

Why would anyone do that to someone they care about? Is it the heat of the moment or is it something built up from many moments? Which is easier to forgive?

Forgiveness is hard concept for me. But it's also simple as hell. Do I value this person and their place in my life more than I resent them for their betrayal? That's the only question I had to answer for myself. 

Recently, I've been asking myself this about Shane. What he did, the effect it had on my life, I promised myself a long time ago that I would never forgive him for that. And to this day, three years after I've been officially done with him, I haven't. I haven't forgiven him. 

But his weight makes me feel as though I'm going collapse. I think I need to let it go. 

I think I need forgive more than Shane. I need to forgive myself for staying. For being weak. For allowing him to treat me that way. For thinking so lowly of myself. I need to forgive who I was so who I am can be lighter. 

So this is my official record of me forgiving Shane and forgiving me. I forgive Shane for laying his hands on me in anger. I forgive myself for laying there and taking it. I forgive Shane for calling me every name in the book. I forgive myself for believing that his words defined me. I forgive Shane for being who he was. I forgive myself for making excuses for it. Most of all, I forgive Shane for finding a place in my life when I least expected it. And I forgive myself for making it too easy for him to do so. 

Maybe the world I've been carrying on my back will weigh a little less now. Maybe this mountain I've been trying to climb won't feel as high. Maybe my life will be brighter without the shadow Shane cast on it.

But, really, who knows? Maybe this won't change a single thing. 

The September Curse

Every summer for the past four years, I have had a different guy best friend. Every summer ends and with the ending comes September. And that's when they leave. That's when they all just leave. Maybe we grew apart, maybe we had a fight, maybe it was a slow drift, but it always ends. It's the September Curse. 

All of these guys I spend every day with. We don't go more than 24 hours without each other and it's blissful. It's nice to always have someone there. Someone to take away the boredom and the consistency and shake things up a little. I loved them all separately and with all my heart. But this summer, I have never been more satisfied with who I'm spending my time with. 

His name is Dustin and we are inseparable. We can't even run an errand without each other and it's great. We used to be a trio until our other girlfriend moved to Virginia. Now that she's hours away, it's hard to maintain and friendship with her but at the end of the day, she is my absolute best friend and I'd give her the world if I could. And so would Dustin. 

We're here now in Virginia visiting her and we are growing apart. It's so clear how much he loves her and how I'm just someone he uses. I'm someone he kind of loves but it will never stand next to the love he has for her. And I can't change that. 

I can't change the fact that she's better than I am. I can't change the fact that she's beautiful and perfect and outgoing and just lovely. I love her and I'd never want her to change because there isn't a single thing about her that I don't absolutely adore. 

But it fucking blows to live in someone else's shadow. To wither away in the winter while they thrive in the summer. And it's getting to me. It's getting to me because I'm always second rate. I'm always the back up plan. The placeholder. The girl who's used. 

It's no ones fault but my own and I know this. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough for Dustin or my parents or my sister or my best friend. I'm just not enough. I don't know how to be. 

I don't know how to hold on to him. I may just have to let him go. I can already feel him slipping away. It may just be the hardest thing I've ever done, but this battle may be so devastating that there would be no reason to even fight it. He's done. I can see it in his eyes, in the way he sits, in the way he speaks to me. He resents me. 

I don't know how much longer I can stand it. How much longer I'll be able to handle him treating my like dirt on the bottom of his shoe when we're in public and a queen when we're alone. How he acts like I'm some sort of inconvenience instead of a friend. How I don't know how to be myself around him anymore because I'm so caught up in worrying about him hating me more. 

It's going to be so fucking hard to let him leave. But it would be even harder to ask him to stay when I know that all he really wants is out. So I'm going to have to give it to him. I'm going to have to give him an out. And it's going to kill me. 

Maybe he'll live a better life without me holding him back. Without me there to act like I own him. Like he's my property. Without me to bring him down and never lift him back up. I can see him slouch under my weight and I know that I have to relieve him of my pressure. 

It's the September Curse back again to haunt to me. It's mid August and I know that it's coming. A month from now he'll be someone I'll see on the street and avoid eye contact with. He's someone that I'll catch up with awkwardly in a couple years after we're both older and time has healed some of our wounds. 

I'm losing him all at once. And it's killing me. 

End

Have you ever thought about how easy it would be to kill yourself? A jerk in a car, the wrong mixture of alcohol and medication, a strong slice with a knife. There's so many ways to end it all. 

When you think about it, death must be peaceful. To live in an endless sleep must be a dream. There's got to be something to look forward to in death - everyone does it. Everyone fucking dies. 

Does the length of your life really matter, then? Does it matter if you live to be twenty or fifty or a hundred? Eventually, everyone that knew you will die. And everyone that knew them will die. And so it continues until the chaos eventually consumes us all and all humans perish. 

So does it matter? Does it really matter if I don't live to see 21? Will they be upset if I didn't? 

Sure, I might get a few instagram shout outs and my Facebook wall will turn into some sort of online memorial, but will anyone stay up at night and think about me? Or will they rest easy knowing that there's one less malicious son of a bitch wandering around? Probably the latter. 

They'll move on. It may take a couple days or months, but eventually my memory will fade and I'll be the subject of a therapy session and little else. Maybe I'll be thrown into a small anecdote at a business party ten years down the road, followed by a soft smile and then forgotten just as easily. 

So does it matter? Put in to perspective, I am one person in a world of billions. There must be people out there just like me who aren't happy with the lives they lead and wonder how they could live in eternal happiness. And then they realize that the only way to be truly happy is to not exist. That's the only solution. I could live an eternal death and be happy as a clam. 

There's a few things I think I'd want people to know. I would want the people who are surprised by my departure to know that everyone wears a mask. No one is as content as they may seem. I'd want them to know that everyone you meet is still a human and leads a life you know nothing about. 

I'd want people who were saddened by my death to know that I am happy. Nothing here makes me happy like the idea of death. And that's fucked up and I'm sorry but we're probably all better off for it. 

I'd want people who are angry at my death to know you are totally justified in feeling that way. It's a selfish thing to do. To leave you all here wondering why I'd ever take such drastic measures. And I want you to be mad at me. I want you to feel hurt by my actions and blame me for them. After all, there is no one else to blame. Take a shit on my grave as the ultimate sign of anger and I will welcome it with a smile from under your feet. 

But most of all, I'd want the people who are closest to me to know that I love them dearly, and with all my heart. Every single one of you was always good enough for me. But I wasn't good enough for myself. You were the reason I made it this far and I'm sorry I couldn't push myself further. I couldn't ask for more wonderful people in my life and I honestly didn't deserve any of you. 

I love you all. And here I am writing this knowing that I'm a peice of shit for it. So I'll ask again: does it matter?

Light and Dark

I found these old photos of Lucas and I. 

We're not together in the photos but they were taken on the same day because my sister had a photography project. I keep the pictures in the very bottom of my sock drawer. Out of sight, out of mind. 

But lately, I've been thinking about all the things I've lost. My schooling, my shot at a relationship, my respect for myself. And I lost Lucas. 

Every now and then, I go back to the days I was pining after him. They were simultaneously the best and worst days of my life. It felt good to fight for something. To want something so badly that I knew deep down in my heart that I would do anything to get it. But it also sucks that one person could bring me down to that level. That I would throw away everything about myself to please one person. And I knew deep down in my heart that I wouldn't look back. I would throw it all away and not give a damn. I would do it for him. 

But he wouldn't do it for me. 

I was never that person for him. I was never going to be the girl he thought about day and night. The girl he would send an early morning text to. The girl who's house he would drop by to with my favorite flowers just to see my face light up. 

And these pictures remind me of why it wouldn't have worked out anyway. In my picture, my face is lined with heavy shadows. I'm expressionless, looking straight in to the camera. There's a look of angst in my hooded eyes that makes it seem like I've been carrying a weight on my shoulders for far too long. 

In his picture, his face is alive. He's grinning so wide that the sun glistens on his teeth. He's looking away from the camera with squinted eyes from a heavy smile and a bright sun. He's radiant. Vibrant. Present. 

He looks like a living, breathing, laughing person and I look like a shell of a girl. 

That's how it's always been. He knows who he is and what he's smiling about and why the sun shines every morning. But I don't know anything. I've been waiting to see a light, so have something with substance fill me up inside so I can shine the way he does on the outside. 

The sun that shines so brightly on his face dims on mine. The smile that stretches across his face is lost on my mouth. The squint of his eyes make mine look haunted in comparison. 

I've been waiting for the expression to flit over my face easily. To squint at the sun and grin without a care. I've been waiting for the sun to come and dry up all this rain, but I'm caught out in the storm. 

Lucas

I first fell in love when I was fourteen. His name was Lucas and we live in the same neighborhood.

We became friends when I was about thirteen.  My best friend at the time was a very pretty girl. And eventually, she and Lucas started dating. At this point, I had a huge crush on one of the other neighborhood boys, Alex. Me, my best friend at the time, Lucas, Alex, and another one of the boys from the neighborhood were five friends that couldn't be stopped. We did everything together because we all lived in the same neighborhood and at the time, we were too young to drive. 

While us girls were going into our freshman year of high school, the boys were going into their sophomore year. We discovered everything together - alcohol, weed, cigarettes, sexcapades. We shared them all. While Lucas and my friend were dating, everything was fine.

Then, one day, my friend just kind of lost interest in him. We stole some liquor from her parents' cabinet, got drunk at about one in the morning, and walked to Alex's house to hang out with everyone. I let Alex in on the low down - she was going to break up with Lucas. So Alex and I went outside to let them have some alone time.

So she broke it off with him.  It had only been a couple months. We both thought it would be no big thing - they were really young and going to different schools and all that jazz. As far as my friend was concerned, she was just along for the ride and this was her stop.

But, for God knows what reason, Lucas took it hard.  He started tearing up by the time me and Alex got back in the house and Lucas went back home a few minutes later. We barely saw him for the rest of the summer.

By the time school came back around, my friend ended up moving and living in a different school district. Alex went to public school, our other guy friend went to the charter school in our town, and the only two people that ended up at the same school were Lucas and I. We both ended up at the prep school a few towns north.

Lucas and I didn't really end up talking very often in school. However, he did come over to my house about once a week after school and we'd hang out. For some reason, though, he didn't like to talk to me in school. 

It took me a damn long time to finally figure out that the reason Lucas didn't talk to me in school was because he thought he was better than me. He went there the year before and I was brand new and he didn't want to be known as the only friend of the new girl. Which just kind of fucking blows, you know? Like, I wasn't terribly ugly or bitchy or unpopular. By the end of the first week, I found my group of friends, got the hang of the uniform, and built myself a decent reputation. So I didn't really get it.

Then one day, around the time we all got rowdy, ready for Christmas break, he was sitting out in the hall eating lunch when I walked up the stairs and saw him. He stuck his foot out and tripped me.  I didn't fall on my face or anything, I just kind of stumbled. At first, I was humiliated. But when I turned around to glare at him, I saw he was grinning. He stood up, and tickle-attacked me. I started cracking up and ran down the hallway. He immediately started chasing after me. We were both laughing unabashed as if we didn't have a care in the world. 

But then we made the mistake of running past Mr. Brown's room. Mr. Brown was the Chemistry teacher. An awesome guy who teaches better than anyone I've ever been taught by. However, he was also a no-nonsense kind of guy.

"Hey, hey, hey!" he yelled. We stopped in our tracks and snapped our heads down in shame.

Mr. Brown told us to come in to his classroom and sit at tables by ourselves in opposite sides of the room for the rest of our lunch period in silence. We made faces at each other from across the room when he wasn't looking. After what seemed like hours, the lunch bell finally rang. Lucas shot up like his ass was on fire and speed-walked out the door.

As I was packing up my bag, Mr. Brown asked me, "That your boyfriend?"

I stuttered for a second because, for some reason, I was just really not expecting that.

"Just a friend," I replied eventually.

"Do you want him to be your boyfriend?" Mr. Brown asked with that knowing smirk that middle aged men get when talking to naive teenagers.

I was as blase as I possibly could have been when I said, "Nah, he's not my type." My cheeks were flaming red by the time I finally walked out of the Chemistry lab. I wasn't fooling anyone - Mr. Brown knew I was head over heels for this guy. And he was right.

I stayed up day and night thinking about this guy, wondering if he was thinking about me. I constantly daydreamed about what we would do together if he possibly liked me as much as I liked him. But I knew in my heart of hearts that he didn't. He didn't stay up at night wondering what I did that night - if I stayed in or went out with friends. He didn't fall asleep thinking about how happy he could make me.

But I was so infatuated with him. Everything he did was just another reason for me to like him more. I was naive, I was fourteen, and I was in love. 

The school year ended and summer greeted us with open arms. And suddenly, Lucas was back in my life again. A few days before my fifteenth birthday, we ended up making out thanks to a game of truth or dare. 

And after that, I was seeing a hell of a lot more of Lucas. He was over almost every other day. One day in July, we started playing poker. We turned it in to a little bit more than a game of cards though.

Somehow, we decide that when Lucas won a hand, I would feel up on him. And when I won a hand, he would feel up on me. I looked forward to those games every time I heard my doorbell ring and saw him standing on the porch. This continued on and on and on until the Christmas of my sophomore year.

In the time that we were fooling around, my feelings soared for him. He was all I ever thought about. As far as I was concerned, he was perfection. Everything I had ever wanted and everything I ever would want.

When Christmas came around, I didn't see him for a while. I thought it was just because of the holidays so I didn't pay much mind, although I did miss him. But by mid-way through January, I still hadn't seen him. 

He ended up showing his face a few weeks into the new year, but I didn't see him nearly as much. Now, instead of staying up thinking about all the romantic things he would get for me, I stayed up thinking about what had changed. Was it me? Did I do something wrong?  Was it my fault? Did not even like me as a friend anymore?

I was confused and heartbroken. By March, we hadn't fooled around since Christmas and I had only seen him four or five times. Then, halfway through March, my best friend Justin threw his sixteenth birthday party.  Surprisingly, Lucas was there. I didn't expect to see him.  Usually he wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with guys that were younger than him.

I was nervous. I wasn't exactly sure how to approach him. And, at this time, I was dating Shane. I had been dating Shane while this whole Lucas thing was happening. But I didn't know what I wanted. Shane was easy. Shane liked me. And I liked Shane. But I had history with Lucas. And I wanted to see where it would go. I should have stayed loyal to Shane. And I know that now. But I got this rush with Lucas, like he was where I wanted to be. Like he was home. And the Shane thing wasn't serious - not serious enough to tell anyone about, anyway.

So I walked up to Lucas and put my hand on his back and smiled at him. He smiled back. Just as I was about to open my mouth and say something, he walked away. As if the smile was enough for him. We had acknowledged each other's presence and he didn't need anything else. 

I was sad. More than sad, I was mad. I was angry that this guy I used to sabotage my relationship with Shane could drop me so easily. I wasn't anything to him. Just some girl he fooled around with a few times months ago. 

For the rest of the night, I let that anger fuel my fire. I danced the night away with my friends, hung out by the pool, and laughed louder than I usually would. I tried my best not to look at Lucas during the whole party. I wanted him to believe that I was as unaffected by him as he was by me. 

I let myself glance over at him a couple hours later and he was dancing with a girl I played soccer with in the varsity team at our school. She was in my grade - a year younger than Lucas. And she was pretty. 

And it's funny because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Lucas had a "type." Soccer girl and I both had a lot in common, starting with the fact that we obviously both played soccer. But beyond that, we were both tall, a little big-boned, and had long brown hair with a bleached streak in the underside of our hair in the exact same spot. I mean, it was weird. That's not a coincidence.

Lucas started dating soccer girl by the end of spring. That was fine. I just threw myself into my relationship with Shane and I told myself that I wouldn't look back. But I did.

I still do, every now and then.

It's hard because we live in the same neighborhood. Although he left my school to go to some private school in the city after my freshman year, I still had to pass his house everyday to get to my house. He lives on the first street in my neighborhood and I live on the last street. There is literally no way for me to get to my house without passing his.

And every time I pass his house and his car isn't there, I have to wonder where he is. Who he's with. What he's doing. All these scenarios pass through my mind and it fucking blows that the days of me pulling up to my house and seeing his bike in my front yard are over. In the blink of an eye, we weren't even so much as friends anymore.

It's been almost five years, and every now and then, I still think of my first lost love. For a long time, I thought about Lucas constantly. I hoped and prayed that I'd pull up to my house in my rusty old Jeep and see his little coupe pulled up outside. But that rarely happened. He officially had bigger and better things to do. I was pushed aside to live a better life.


But now? Now I'm nineteen. I'm no longer the naive girl I was five years ago. We haven't had a real conversation since and I've barely seen him. When we do run into each other, it's awkward and strained, even now.

And that's okay. Because five years ago, he dropped me for a better life. And three years ago, I dropped his memory and the hope that he'd return to my life so I could focus on what I had. I was happy without his weight.

What cracks me up now, though, is that he's a total deadbeat. This sounds so wrong and terrible, but it's almost like I beat him in the long run.

Five years ago, I was pining after him. But five years from now, I will be a pharmacist. Ten years from now, I will be living the American Dream with a beautiful family in a blue house with a white picket fence.

And he won't have moved an inch.  He'll still be stuck in a dead end job trying to figure out who he is and what he wants to do.

He may have left me in the dust all that time ago, but I fucking won. And better than that, he lost.

Anonymity

I left school. Everyone is pissed at me for doing so. My parents, my sister, my grandparents, I can even see the glimmer of disappointment in my friends' eyes although I know they're happy to have me back.

But it finally got to the point where I was so unhappy there that I started feeling a way that I think everyone feels at one point in their life. I started feeling like maybe this was it. This was the best it was going to get. The marriage I had made with my life that constituted the point "for better or for worse" had given up on the better part and was only able to give me the worst. 

Every other thought that ran through my mind was pessimistic and depressing. I didn't know what to do. It got to the point where dragging myself to work was bad enough but class, too? It was impossible. 

I felt helpless and discouraged. Like there's was nothing I could do to take myself off the path I was leading myself down and I was doomed to fail. Not just fail my classes but fail my family, my expectations, my life. I felt like I was doomed to fail myself. Like I would never amount to anything because I just wasn't worth it. I wasn't worth the trouble or the money or the saving. I wasn't worth it. 

So I made the decision and I left college. For the most part, I enjoyed my time there. I liked classes. I like the people I met. I liked my job. What I didn't like was feeling anonymous. 

Which is kind of ironic because I'm writing this anonymous blog for strangers who will never know that I am the author. My high school teacher or one of my coworkers or the guy working on the line in Chipotle or the girl that sat next to me in Calculus could be reading this and have no idea that it's me. That is anonymity. 

But what I hated about going to a state school as big as mine was the feeling I got walking around by myself, unable to connect with the people around me. The only thing that tied us together was the school we all attended but they all found something else to click with. Maybe it was a class they were both struggling in or the same complaints about a dining hall or how excited they were for the game that weekend.

And I couldn't tell you why, but it's so hard for me to bullshit my way through those conversations. It doesn't make sense to me. That I can't sit down with a stranger and discuss simple things. Not like I can discuss important things either. 

It's moments like this when I actually realize how terribly low I think of myself. I don't think anything of myself. But at the same time, I think so highly of myself. I'm a walking contradiction. It's like I'm the dirt on the bottom of your shoe but I'm also the best shit in town. I'm funny as fuck but I'm also as boring as watching paint dry. I'm nice to your face but I'm a bitch behind your back. I'm a good person that does bad things. At least, that's what I'm trying to tell myself.

If I was honest with myself, which I very rarely am, I would look myself in the mirror and list out all the horrible things I could say about my character. It would be an extremely long conversation and not one thing I would say to myself would be a lie.

I'm trying to change this things about my character that I find fault in without fully admitting to myself that it's a fault. Maybe that's not the way to go. Maybe I should sit down one day and just say to myself, "Isa, get your shit together and stop being such a cunt all the time."

But I think that would just make things worse. But then again, how the fuck would I know, right? I've never tried it. Maybe it will be relaxing, therapeutic, even. But I'm scared. I'm scared that I'll just be my own worst critic and hate myself even more.

Now, I'm trying to think of the positives. The things that are making me happy right here in this moment. Because I have so much to be happy about.

I'm sitting in my Justin's room with my two best friend while we're all just noodling around on our laptops, only stopping to do something funny or exclaim a witty comment. I'm home from school and although there's a new weight of guilt on my shoulders, the weight that remained from wasting my parents' money on an expensive education that I wasn't taking advantage of.

We spend all of our time together and I couldn't be happier with the company I'm keeping. Here, I don't feel anonymous. I feel like I'm thriving. Like I can do anything so long as I keep up with the pretenses and let these two people who mean the world to me honestly believe that I am worthy of their friendship.

Am I worthy of their friendship? I'm not quite sure. But I'm trying to be.

Safe Haven

I need a safe haven. Somewhere I can stop thinking about work and school and all the drama and everything I dislike about my life right now.

Some people use drugs. Some people have a friend they can count on. Some people just take a fucking nap. But I can't do that shit anymore. Drugs aren't really my thing. My friends are slowly growing more and more distant. Fuck a best friend. I don't even know what that is anymore.

There's always something to worry about. Like how I'm most definitely going to fail Organic Chemistry. Or how I may just be fired from my job because I'm going to slap my freak of a manager one of these days. Or how I lost my best friend because all she's concerned about anymore is her boyfriend.

Let me tell you a little something about my "best friend." We have one of those really unhealthy relationships where I don't think either of us can really stand each other for very long but no matter how annoyed we get with each other, we're still going to be close. Which is okay, I guess.

But it's like I'm so annoyed that I don't spend a lot of time with her anymore but then when we finally do get to see each other, I just want to find any excuse to get the fuck out of there. And I don't really get it. I mean, I want to say that I could never even entertain the thought of breathing a bad word about her, but boy, can I. She's conceited and superficial and she thinks her shit don't stink.

It's exhausting having to inflate her ego all the time.

I love her, I always will. She's a loyal friend and you can't really ask for much more. But, God forbid, she's ever wrong. God forbid someone calls her out on something. God forbid some guy doesn't leave her his number on a tip slip. God forbid one person decides not to worship the ground she walks on.

Remember when I lost my virginity? When I said that I went through with it because I felt like that girl from the beach and David both liked me more than they liked my friend and my ego was so fragile that the feeling of being liked made me ready to hop on whatever chance I got?

It's the same feeling I got when I found out that my current crush doesn't like her at all.  And neither do his roommates.

My "best friend's" name is Melissa. She's a petite 5'2" with blonde hair, blue eyes, a big ass, big tits, and a flat stomach.  Boom - every guy's fantasy come to life.

One day, my crush, Dylan, invited me over so I could buy some weed from him. Usually, he just lets me in, I get the weed, give him the money, chat with his roommates for five minutes, and then I leave. But this time, Melissa came with me. And this time, he invited us in to smoke with them. Correlation? Beats me. You take a guess.

So we get in to Dylan's apartment and sit on his couches. His best friend, Tyler was sitting on the long couch when Melissa and I first walked in. I'm good friends with Tyler.  We get along easy because we're both easy to get along with. Also, we share a mutual love of the same two things - beer and football.  Their roommate, Sam, was also there sitting on the recliner.

I sit on the smaller couch and Dylan plops down beside me. Melissa takes a seat on the couch next to Tyler. Sam and Tyler are talking across the room to each other while Dylan and I have our heads bowed towards each other, conversing quietly.

The only one not really talking is Melissa. And another thing about Melissa is that she loves attention. And I mean, if she's not the center of it, she's uncomfortable. She likes to pride herself on being "one of the guys" and down to earth, but she doesn't see herself clearly because she is neither of those things.

I don't like to kid myself - I can be "one of the guys" and I can down to earth if the settings are right. If we're sitting around watching football, I'll be the loudest one there screaming at the TV. If you ask me how I'm going to decorate my apartment, I'll shrug and pick up some unmatched but clean furniture from a thrift store. I don't give a shit about those things.

But Melissa isn't like that. She flits around pretending that she likes football but I can see how disinterested she is by the end of the first quarter. She's a penny pincher so she'll give you slyly condescending comments whenever you splurge on that really cute shirt from that expensive boutique in the mall that you really can't afford. She always has to be the best, the brightest, and the greatest. And it kills me.

So apparently, what was killing her was that we were smoking out of a bong. Melissa only likes bowls. Me? As long as it has weed in it, pass it to me.

So every time it came to Melissa's turn to take a bong hit, she'd wave it off. And then the guys, being the gentleman they are, would ask her why she wasn't smoking. She told them that she only likes bowls and then whipped hers out asking them to pack it. So they did.

And then she started complaining that she wasn't high. I took three bongs rips and I was done. I was stoned out of my mind.

We stopped smoking for a while and we just listened to music and bummed around, talking. And when I say talking, I mean that I was talking to Dylan while Sam and Tyler talked to each other.

Melissa, once again, was uncomfortable because no one in that room was paying any mind to her. So when Sam asked me what I wanted to listen to, she jumped in before I could say anything.

"Well, I love Eminem. Could you play him?" she asked.  Sam gave me a look before slowly turning his head to Melissa.

"Sure," he said slowly. "Which song?"

"Well, my favorite is Lose Yourself. I can rap every word to that song," she professed like not every single one of us in that room could do the same thing.  We were all nineteen or twenty. That song came out when we were like eleven or twelve - the time when you ditch your parent's music and start listening to the "cool" shit on the radio.

And, usually, I'm not one to diss someone's music taste because it's not like mine is all that spectacular. It's actually one of my biggest pet peeves. I don't think you can judge someone solely on the music they listen to. But with Melissa, it just gets on my nerve. Like I shit you not, I told her once that one of my favorite lyrics ever were from a song called Clairvoyant by The Story So Far that goes, "This is your life, there's no way to run from it - the doubt in your brain or the pain in your stomach. I only have but one complaint at the moment - don't paint me black when I used to be golden." And she honestly says, "Yeah, I don't know how some musicians come up with that stuff. Like Taylor Swift. When she said, 'It's a love story, baby, just say "yes."' Like, how do you write something so relatable?"  Like, bitch, seriously? What the fuck. That's judgement material.

Anyway, Sam plays Lose Yourself. And she proceeds to rap every word like she's the shit while me, Tyler, Sam, and Dylan give each other looks when she's not looking. It was actually kind of hilarious.

After that, he plays another song by Eminem without really saying anything. While the opening music starts, Melissa says, "Oh, my God, this sounds like that one song by Eminem. Have you ever heard Mockingbird?"

Sam gives her a "no shit" look before saying, "Yeah, this is it."

It was all I could do not to laugh. She starts tumbling along the lyrics of Mockingbird, trying to save face which was just more funny.

After Mockingbird, Sam was understandably bored with the direction his music had been driven and started playing the kind of stuff that he had been playing before. So we all just went back to talking.

And then Melissa had no attention so she asked everyone if they had tattoos. Dylan, Tyler, and Sam all said no. And then there was an awkward silence where I think she expected them to reciprocate asking if she had any tattoos, which they obviously had no intention of doing. So she took it upon herself to say, "Well, I have one."

And then Tyler said a dismissive, "Cool," which also made me want to laugh but I held it together somehow.

Sam, however, took pity on the poor girl and asked, "What is it?"

Back in February, Melissa and I got the same tattoo. It's a small word in script with a bird flying off the end. So white girl. I'm not exactly proud of that tattoo, but hey, it's alright. The only difference is that Melissa got hers on her bikini line and I got mine under my left breast.

Given the opportunity she was seeking, Melissa said, "Here, I'll show you." She then proceeded to stand up off the couch and pull down the side of her jeans just enough to see the top of her "v" and her tattoo. Which, I mean, was kind of slutty. She has had a boyfriend for about six months at thing point. Don't go flashing your cooter to random guys you've only met once.

Anyway, they all saw it and said some variation of "That's cool."

Then Dylan said, "Hey, Isa has the same tattoo!" I'd shown him mine a few weeks back when we were hanging out on a smoke break.

Melissa did a dismissive wave and let the "Yeah..." that came out of her mouth just kind of trail off.

Then Tyler turned to me and asked me all sorts of questions about my tattoo: did it hurt? Was it expensive? Where did I get it? Every time I answered one of his questions, Melissa would give her variation of the answer to that same question. And every time she started talking, Tyler and I shared a look.

And I know that this story makes me sound like a terrible friend, but I just can't take her shit anymore. It's so nice to have someone who was born on this high horse be taken down a peg. And a few weeks later, although I didn't know this at the time, we wouldn't even be friends anymore. So what's the point in faking it?

Eventually, Melissa and I left Dylan's. She went back to her apartment and I went back to my dorm.

The next weekend, I was at work with Dylan when he invited me to come over on Sunday to watch football and kick back a few beers. We talked about it for a few minutes and hammered out some details. Finally, as the conversation was ending, he says, "Isa, can you just promise me one thing?"

I scrunched my eyebrows and gave him a confused look because I had no idea where he was going with that. Nevertheless, I said, "Sure."

He looked almost apologetic when he said, "Please just... don't bring Melissa."

But there was no need to look apologetic because my cheeks hurt from grinning so much when I said, "Promise."

Shane

Sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I like to make fantasy lives in my head.

I think we all kind of do that. You know, when you’re trying to fall asleep and you can’t so you start to think about what life would be like if things were better. And, usually, they all have a similar quality - whether it’s always starring the same person or in the same place or there’s always something different about you in that fantasy.




When I have these fantasies, I'm usually with the same person - my ex-boyfriend Shane.

I met Shane when I was volunteering as a candy striper at the hospital in the city my freshman year of high school. We met the summer afterwards. He was cool and older and hauntingly mysterious. Everything a freshly fifteen girl wants in a guy.

The two of us both got lucky with the worst section of the hospital you could volunteer at - the trauma ward. There were people that fell off ladders, people recovering from heart attacks, and even one chick that I think was having a nervous breakdown. They kept her in a bed with a net around it.

Anyway. Shane and I would go around the trauma ward, door to door, getting patients their drinks, restocking glove boxes and just having conversations with them.

One day, when we were stuck in the stock room refilling ice buckets, we started talking. And I have never clicked with someone so well. Never had such an easy conversation. Never talked to anyone who just got me right off the bat.

A few weeks later, he asked me out on a date. So, I said okay. You see, Shane lived on King Street in the city which is huge because that means he's packing some dough. Or at least, his family is. So a pretty, mysterious boy with money? I was fifteen and officially a sucker.

We dated all summer and I never told anyone about him. Not my family, not my friends, not even the stranger on the side of the road. There was something about him that I couldn't shake. Something that I didn't want to share. He was mine and mine alone and having something that was wholly mine was exhilarating.

A few months went by and I was in heaven. He was mine, I was his, and we were happy. There was something about being with him that made me feel dangerous and unpredictable. It was a great feeling.

But, as it tends to happen, something went wrong about six months after we met. A week before Christmas, we got into our first fight.

We were sitting on the couch at his aunt's house and watching a movie, which we tended to do a lot, when he asked, "So what does your family do for the holidays?"

"Well, on Christmas Eve, we all hitch on up to grandparents' house on the lake and open up presents at night and drink eggnog. It's probably my favorite night of the year," I told him.

"Was there an invitation in there?"

When he asked me this, my heart stopped for a minute. I wasn't really sure how to reply because it sounds super bitchy to be like, "Well, considering they have no idea of your existence in my life, no, not really." And he didn't say it to push me, it was obvious in the way he said it with that easy smile of his.

I let him down as easy as I could have in the second I had to think of which way to tackle that question. I told him that I hadn't told my parents that I was seeing someone yet. He was my first boyfriend and I wasn't sure if I was ready for them to meet him.

At this point, I had nothing to worry about with Shane. He was a gentleman whose father was a doctor and was on the fast track to medical school, for God's sake. He was a total catch, any parents would be proud. But I wasn't ready to stop being selfish with him yet.

And after I said that, I got something I wasn't prepared for. Shane got angry. I've seen Shane ticked off - when he left his phone at home or when his aunt told him to empty the dishwasher before he left. But I had never seen him truly angry before the moment he decided that I didn't want my parents to meet him because I was ashamed of him. Which wasn't the case at all.

Before I knew it, he was screaming at me. And that scared me and made me go into the defensive, so I was screaming back. And then I said the wrong thing.

"I was never ashamed of you, Shane, but now you're really going to give a reason to!"

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, his hand was around my bicep and he threw me to the ground. My back hit the coffee table and then I just kind of starfish-ed next to it.

I expected him to automatically realize what he did and apologize for it. But that didn't happen. Instead, he stood over me, straddling me with the hardest look I've ever seen in anyone's eyes and said, "You don't want me to give you a fucking reason to, Isa. Trust me."

I was scared. And I was heartbroken. I was so thrilled to be in this relationship with someone who I honestly cared about and all of a sudden, it was gone. He wasn't the person I thought he was.

And then, all of a sudden, he was again.

After he stared at me with those hard eyes for a few seconds, I let a single tear slip out. As soon as it started falling from my eye, his eyes flickered to it and his face lost all the hardness.

He stopped straddling me and knelt down by my side just apologizing over and over again, trying to help me up. I automatically sat up and scooted away from him, telling him that I was more than capable of getting up by myself.

I got up on my own, brushed myself off and said, "What the fuck, Shane?"

All he said was, "I'm so sorry," with remorse in his eyes and voice.

But I wasn't fucking having it. I was hurt. I was confused. But, above all, I was fucking pissed. I was livid. How dare he? Who did he think he was? I actually liked this guy and he just threw me against the table because I made a comment? Are you fucking kidding me?

"You're fucking right you're sorry!" I exclaimed with spite turning my tongue black.

"Don't cuss at me, Isa. Don't do that," he said sharply. His anger was back. And mine was replaced with fear.

"Okay," I said softly.

We didn't talk much after that. We sat down on the couch again and watched the movie. But for the next hour while we were both definitely not paying any attention at all to whatever fucking movie was playing, I winced every time I saw Shane so much as a take a deep breath. 

As soon as the credits started to roll, I asked Shane to drive me home. Which he did in silence.

And this is the kicker - this is why I've made myself change so much over the past few years. I was weak. I was so fucking weak for this boy that I thought I might have fallen in love with. I had crumbled in to a shell of myself in just a few short hours. I went from an equal partner in a happy relationship to the submissive partner in an abusive one.

I thought that the next time I saw him, things would go back to normal. I was hopeful for it. I thought this was just a one-time things brought on by his own insecurities.

And that is why when I stepped out of the car, I pathetically asked Shane if I would still see him that following weekend after Christmas.

I thought I saw a smile flirting at his lips when he replied with a simple, "Yeah."

Ghosts

There’s so little that I really know. I don’t know who I am anymore. I feel like the ghost of a total stranger. There are things I want to ask, things I want to share, things I want to know are true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But I think I’m finally starting to understand that maybe I’m not supposed to ask, share, or know those things yet. Maybe I am the ghost of a stranger - the person I used to be. Who I was and who I am are such opposite people that when I look back on everything that has happened in the past two years, my head starts to spin. And I start to imagine what might have happened to me if I hadn’t changed. Maybe I’d be happier. Maybe I’d be more stable. Maybe I’d have more friends. Maybe I’d be more confident. Maybe I’d make better decisions. I don’t know.

But I think that’s one of life’s greatest moments. When you realize that every small decision you make is a big decision. The decision to stop being friends with someone. Or which college you’ll go to. Or if you’ll go home for that one weekend. Or if you’ll work at this place or that. We all make decisions like that. And those decisions plant the path ahead.

I can’t see very far down the path that I’m walking, but I can see the twists and the turns. And although I’m terrified that one twist may land me back to the start or that one turn may be too sharp, I’m also ecstatic that I have a path in the first place.

And I just hope my life turns out to be one hell of an adventure.

Teenage Girl Drama

Y'all. I am so in love. I’m in love with someone I know deep in my heart will never love me back. I may be “better” than him in some of the ways that matter - I’m more responsible, smarter, hard-working. But he is fucking gorgeous. And, yeah, we’re friends. But how long is that going to last? Until school lets out? Until one of us gets a significant other? Until one of us finally admits that we like each other?

And that’s the thing - I know that he likes me. At least a little bit. At least I know he’s not totally repulsed by me.

See, the thing that blows is that the first guy that liked me slipped through my fingers. Another liked me but he had a girlfriend. Another one liked me but I couldn’t bring myself to care for him the same way. The last liked me and I just kept being a bitch to him until he got over it and decided that I wasn’t worth the trouble.

And all that I dealt with when I had to. Yeah, the first took a little more time. But I got over when the time came for me to take my head out of the sand and face facts - I missed my window of opportunity.

But this guy. This fucking guy. I like him so much, he’s all I think about. He is who I want to spend my day with. He’s the guy I want to watch football with and show him my paintings and my writing and cook for. He makes me want to do the things I enjoy because a part of me just knows he’d enjoy them too.

But I’m a fucking coward. And I know that. I know that I’ll never have the courage to just invite him over for a blunt or ask him to see a movie with me. I’m a coward.

With the right hair and make-up, I’m okay. A solid six, at least. But I do this all the time and I know we’re all guilty of it: when we see couples out in public, we automatically judge them for the way we look together.

And when I tall, big girl like me walks in with a 6’3” man that looks like God took his time on him, people are going to wonder how a girl like me snagged a man like him.

And that’s the thing. I don’t want to snag him. I’m sick of snagging guys. I want a guy to snag me. I want a man to wake up to my face every morning and think, “Man, I’m lucky I found her.” I don’t want them to roll over thinking, “Eh, she’ll do.”

I don't want a relationship that I have to settle for. And I don't want a huge Nicholas Sparks romance either simply because I don't think that it's plausible.

But what I do think is plausible is finding a guy that likes me for me and I'll like him for him. People find a person they fit with all the time. I can't remember the last time I got butterflies with a guy. The last time the sight of that one person sent my heart into overdrive. The last time I stayed up all night thinking about that one guy, hoping he's thinking of me too.

But this one, this one I could imagine the whole nine with. The whole meeting the parents, cooking him dinner, American dream kind of love. And I want it so badly.

But there's a part of me that just knows it will never happen. And that's okay - that's fine. I just have to convince myself that I'm worth that kind of love before I get into the business of trying to convince anyone else.