Imposter Syndrome

"Interesting," He mimics me. "You said it at least a hundred times on Sunday." 

It's been a long time since I've been really excited about someone new. He's still so similar to how he was ten years ago. There's that easygoing, engaging way he moved through the world, the squareness of his hands unlike anything I'd ever seen and the way he smelled- we'd always thought it was cologne but apparently some people just happen to smell magical.

Unexpected beginnings are one of the best parts of life, the honeymoon phase always a nerve-wracking, implausible fantasy. It can be so easy to forget the invisible scar tissue when you feel safe and comfortable in someone else's arms. The only thing that really seems to matters then is the soothing tracing of tender fingers on bare skin.

Then there's the slow, subtle shifting as layers begin to peel themselves back. Histories and old wounds surface in the form of stories or shared secrets. Slowly yet surely learning the edges, the shape of someone else's soul. It's mysterious and exciting and easy.

But then a bad day shows up and all those old, long-healed wounds ache all over again. It's a icy bucket of water, a reality check. Oh, yeah. This is what it feels like. This is who I am. It feels like remembering and in that moment, I am Icarus and my wingtips are alight. 

"But things are so much better now," I tell myself. "I'm different now."

(Isn't it selfish to get better, though? Will things ever really be 'better'? It is fair to submit such a wonderful, innocent person to such a scarred, damaged mess like me?)

One day - one day he'll wake up and something will happen and he'll see it. He'll see the ugly, messy impairments I've tucked away and he'll look at me differently and then everything will change. Suddenly I'm left reflecting on those intimate touches and wondering just how many we have left before the panic attacks start back up again, the bones of things unremembered haunting me even still.

But then there was yesterday.

I'd told him about yelling at my father across the dinner table, about the way he'd go after my little brother and, when he asked for clarification, that was the first time it really felt different. Maybe because it's been years, because there are little cracks and holes in the walls I'd built. But it felt like he was seeing me a little differently. Not as a monster, but a little more like the amalgamation I feel I am. The balancing act, the blindfold, the graveyard, the garden. 

Maybe one day the imposter syndrome will get a little easier.

Maybe it'll be different this time. Hopefully it'll be different.

"You know, some of the reason I'm so anxious is because a part of me is wondering when the happiness will be pulled out from under me." I said softly, looking out past all the trees.

"I thought it was something like that."

garden

 and yet, I am growing my garden.

I had so many beautiful words, once. I knew how to say things. Now I don't know how to say much of anything. 

 a garden is an investment, i tell myself. first the seeds, then the soil.

It's the end of 2023 and I'm sorry for hurting you. I'm not sure I'll ever stop being sorry. It's like that creak in floorboards that you grow accustomed to. Things are just... like this now.Therapy and healing soften it, but it's a feature now. 

the flowers don't come until later.

I've got six plants on my windowsill and a room the right size for just me in a place I told myself I'd never live again. For a long time, there were fireworks when I would do even simple things. But for a while now, the room has been getting colder and I end up sleeping a lot. It takes so much energy to make magic

plants are incredibly resilient things, i remind myself. 

I love that even on the very darkest of nights, you can see shooting stars. For a little while now though, the air pollution has had a particularly powerful impact and there are less and less miracles to be seen in the cold darkness. Sometimes there are particularly long stretches of time where nothing seems to be moving and it feels like somehow I'm simultaneously the last human being on the planet and not human at all at the same time. At times like these, it's important to take one, two, three tiny little breaths, feeling the ground beneath my feet.

they can brave torrential storms and destructive winds and still go on.

I went to the dentist today and had two cavities and a panic attack. My first thought was, "Man, these people are probably thinking that a twenty-five year old should have it more together than this." and my second thought was that it would be so much better if you were here with me. If anyone was there with me, honestly. I wish that, as I sat down in the clerk's seat still reeling from the procedure, I could turn to someone and say, "Holy shit, my dental bill is $307.07 with insurance?!" and have them be so equally aghast that we just laugh about it and maybe I don't cry in my car afterwards. It's the small things I guess.

even when some leaves turn brown and flake off and away, they can still recover.

My ceiling is officially decorated with the glow in the dark stars just for the child in my heart. They cast faint light on the paper butterflies dangling from strings, the plastic vines and the posters, a little napkin astronaut strung up amongst them. He's been there longer than the stars, just waiting for them to arrive. Maybe this is what adulthood is. A sea of loneliness, bills and being beaten down interspersed with moments of trying to create or wait for a little bit of light, even if it's artificial. Ultimately, we all return to stardust anyways.

as long as there is water, they'll find a way.

Little bird, please sing just a little bit louder. It's much too noisy in here. I haven't forgotten you.

one just has to be patient. the flowers don't come until later. the flowers don't come until later.

It's been about a year and a half and god, I miss you. This is an investment, I tell myself. It will get better. This is growth, this is finding myself, this is purposeful, this is adulthood. I have come so far. It will make sense eventually. Just keep going. Just be patient. Listen to your own advice. Be patient. An ever-present mantra. For now though, I'll keep repeating it and look up at those plastic stars and hope for the best. It will get better eventually. It has to, right?

and here i am, growing my garden 

june 15, july 7, september 27, december 19

a steady inhale. i've done all this before.

this is the fourth time.

it's a wasteland here. 

tumbleweeds and dust blowing about, most footprints long wiped away. 

erosion played a role here.

battered makeshift shelters are beaten and near-destroyed

no sign of bullet holes though.

battles long gone, you can still hear the ghosts haunting 

sometimes they're wailing, other times they're laughing

sometimes they're silent.

maybe they have better things to do than linger in places like this.

left with fragments of questions, i can't help but wonder who we were back then.

did i not see the signs clear enough? was it me that changed beyond recognition?

or did you break beyond repair, only a little recognizable underneath your surface.

this is the fourth time and the battlefield is quiet and empty. 

it looks like one side was trying to rebuild once. 

maybe the other side was too. it looks like there were other things at play here.

perhaps one day, we'll find our way back

make this desert look like a garden again

but in the meantime

i need to go plant some things on my own.

He's gone

 He's moving on 

And I'm still here 

With my world crumbling to pieces

reverse, rebirth

i got in a scooter accident yesterday, tumbled face-first into the pavement.

this morning i woke up next to someone that's my... 'something', wrapped in nightmares and bandages. 

nothing makes much sense anymore and i'm just trying to muddle through it, saying yes to things and hoping something beautiful comes out of such a big mess.

when will it be enough? what do i even want anymore?

being apart is painful. being together is painful. all of it feels like being torn apart. 

when we're together, sometimes it feels like you're a ghost that i'm begging to stay. one that doesn't care either way whether i'm in the future or not. 

saying, "i never said i didn't love you." isn't the same as telling me that you love me. for every two steps forward, there's a small step backwards. 

it's almost 1am and i'm thinking about you again. bandaged, bruised, wounds weeping. 

left eye swollen and dark, colored by the accident and the lack of sleep. echoes of waking up screaming in my ears, you holding me tightly but perhaps that's just because you were tired and wanted me to stop.

moving was supposed to signal a new beginning. a new semester, a new future, a new career. adulthood. figuring it all out

but every time i take a step forward, it feels like i'm leaving something else behind. when i push towards him, pieces of myself get lost when he leaves and i'm left wondering. wanting.

wanting to fall in love with myself again. wanting to think of him less.  

wanting to feel loved unconditionally and missed without reason. 

how on earth do you pull yourself back together again after something like this?

how will life regain its color?

who will we be in six months?

will things finally make sense then?

suffering || transfiguration 1

 good morning, good night. i wish i could say they all blur together, but they don't. 

it's always there though. the pain. ebbing and flowing like the tide, it's a constant.

sometimes it's faint and far off and other times, it sweeps me into the crashing waves, drowning. 

drowning.

i thought things would be simpler like this. that there would be some sense of relief.

the moon is high and the waves are louder and i'm still so damn lonely.

it's the love songs that hurt the most. the sudden sensation of hope. 

you asking me what i want and telling me that eventually, it will matter.

what do i want?

what do i want?

you. 

but what does that look like? 

i won't forget when i started crying after i'd stopped clinging to you like a life raft

"i really hope you don't let me go."

i think that's what i want. 

to stop feeling so alone. 

i don't want to be alone anymore.

i want this pain to stop.

i want you. 

please don't let me go. 

wistful, wanting || transfiguration .5

god, i just want you to love me. 

i want late nights and dancing barefoot on the road. drives up the canyon with my feet on the dashboard and lying on my twin mattress underneath that string of cheap lights. i want to romanticize every moment, to wonder what you're thinking. I want to nervously and tenderly reach out and feel the warmth and softness of your hand in mine and the naturalness of the way they fit together. 

i want you to approach me from behind and wrap your arms around me tightly, a buffer against all of your bad dreams. stolen kisses, rich descriptions and shades of exactly how you feel and the sound of handpicked songs playing through headphones as i sit in your lap

i want you to see me, to feel that invisible halo of light and to hear the thunder of my heartbeat, far stronger than ever before and trapped in a body smaller than it's ever been.

darling. my love.

my heart is a peach cut down the center, raw and ripe and oh so soft. 

an open fruit belonging to me but given to you. 

i look at old pictures of us and it's like looking at strangers, like physical pieces of a distant dream. two people i almost recognize, phantoms of a time i can hardly place. 

tonight was the first night in a long time that i opened my computer. that i pulled up the desktop version of spotify. that i've felt the ever-growing absence of your presence and i tiptoed around my aching heart, just trying to keep it pumping still. the world is so vast and large and i'm leaving so much behind and shouldering so much hurt in pursuit of my future. i hope there will be time to rest. i hope that i stop throwing up when i get too sad. 

i keep imagining us on the beach. you're wearing your glasses, no trace of worry on your face and your lips in a very soft, very subtle smile. we're sitting in beach chairs in the sand, just close enough to the water to smell the sea spray but far enough that it won't touch us. you're looking out at the ocean and i'm looking at you. sometimes you're wearing a straw hat, sometimes you're wearing that ring on a necklace of black cord. your clothes change but your face never does. you probably wouldn't wear glasses to the beach what with all the sand but i think about it anyway, lost in a memory that belongs to a future we're not living in yet. 

patience. god keeps whispering gently. love him. be patient with him.

you are doing what's right.

i saw the other pictures, the ones from a couple of weeks ago on that warm evening. dimples enormous on my cheeks, i have a sparkler in hand that shot off stars and felt like magic, a tiny piece of joy in a broad ocean of sorrow. my grandfather told me that he was missing on me that night and something in my heart righted itself. even now i look back and there's something in me that feels found.

will you see it too? will you come home to me, to my open arms?

i would give you all you could ever want for, my darling.

tell me you're afraid. tell me you love me. tell me that's enough.

oh, how i want you to see me.

god, how i want you to love me.