I'm gone. For a week, at a cottage, on an island, with my family.
I'm going to drink lots of tea, and write a lot, and do everything with my family.
I probably won't write that much actually; depends, if it turns out how I expect it to or not. I will read a lot though. And tan, and swim, and play scrabble, and pick flowers, and visit the tiny church there, and go on long walks, and try climbing trees, and squish the sand between my toes, and dance alone, and be cozy, and sleep, and wash dishes.
dreamy...cozy and overcast, i want everything in wool. wooden bedposts and brass knockers, the day and night lapse into each other and spin my days into gold...exhale, like you need to.

so it comes down to wanting what you can't have. oh tripping over simple truth...but what's wrong with wanting some things? that's when God appears to be a big meany, holding good things back from me - but that's a lie, from the Father of Lies, trying to discredit God's goodness, His goodness which is evident in His Word, "I will satisfy your heart with the desires of your youth". I just don't understand it all.

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Dear you,

You are un vaniteux. So why do I like you so much? It's not even liking you...I just have an insatiable appetite for you. You're challenging, and while you're as ordinary as all the people I reject, yet the fact that you are happy that way gives you a superiority over your peers; and it's addictive. You're not too far from the rest of them, and I'm dissastisfied with them - but you seem to have a secret, as if this normality of you isn't true, and I am obsessed with finding out if I'm right. Or maybe that's just it - it's all about me; I need to know, I need to be right, I need to win - as always. Perhaps this one singular feature about you that has me mesmerized has one singular purpose - to break my vanity. "I could more easily have forgiven his vanity had he not wounded mine." ugh. It doesn't help that I romanticise it all; and lie about it to myself as well - you're probably not AS vain as I make you out to be, but your continual indifference towards me makes me think you must be the most proud and conceited person alive - which, ironically, would make me the proud and conceited one. And this logic that bounces off of you and back at me makes me dislike you even more. Which only increases my infatuation.
I WISH YOU DIDN'T EXIST
I would sleep better at night.

Sincerely,
Me

Sometimes, when I get tired of crawling on all fours and I feel like the city is gonna swallow me up I come out here, and...I feel like, anything can happen up here. I can, be president, I can lick the stars, suck the moon? Oh man, I'm weird right?...what do you wish?
...I wish, my mother were still alive.
...Oh..I know...
...When I was little, I told my mother I wanted to be a doctor, a veterinarian. She smiled at me, and she said, darling, you're gonna be, the best veterinarian in the world...
You are, I know you are, I feel it.
No, because she's gone now.

Antonio and Nina, Sueno

It's amazing, what pain can do. How it can paralyze us, and lock us up. How we let it do that to us...how we throw away the future because of things that have already happened. How hard it is to move on, to trust again, to love again, to feel again. Fear tells us, don't risk it, you're better off in the dark not knowing what you might lose. But, "it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

There is no such obligation.

- Virginia, The Hours.

but i spend so much time trying to figure out what i should be.

and i want to talk to Mozart and ask him what he thought
when he knew all about love but could love nothing but art.

mm i wrote this a while ago...

there is no "solution". there is only you. the way you are. with no frills or ornamentation.

when i was little i was terrified of swimming.

i fell in a pool once. i was too little to remember it but there were times when i was older that i thought i knew the feeling. water completely alien to my walking feet; the feeling of immediate threat needing some kind of counteraction; the only reaction possible is floundering; and slowly, slowly, losing to the inescapable pull...

now i want to be brave. i get in the pool and i'm completely willing to do what i need to do to stay afloat. and i'm trying everything i know.

but i don't know enough. so i'm flailing, and i know i'm sinking.
and i'm failing it all.

"the only one holding you back is yourself," teacher said to the little dripping girl in the swimsuit.

her eyes stung but it wasn't the chlorine...the little girl thrashed through a salty flood. she never could swim very well...