the law of bad things

I hate that good things are so foreign to me it sends my system into shock. Crushing, crushing. Can't breathe. Dangerous scenarios feel natural, feel expected, feel like where I'm supposed to be. This whole year, nothing bad has happened to me, and I feel like I'm running from the law. The Law of Bad Things. Fugitive of horrors, hidden away for now -- but it's only a matter of time.

disquiet

On the cusp of great things, and my first flawed instinct is to throw myself backward, toward known miseries, rather than risk flinging myself forward, into I-know-not-what.

fml

The problem with feeling indifferent about "God" is that I have no one to rail at when I'm upset.

something that's like you

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

better run, better run

reckless

Did I ever tell you how, a couple of months ago, I realized that I'd never broken a single bone in my body? Not only that, but did I tell you how shockingly ANGRY that realization made me feel? (Furious! Livid! Absolutely seething!) Not because I had any desire to actually break my bones, but because I was missing out on the kind of life experiences that cause broken bones -- and I was missing out on them for all the wrong reasons.

It made me want to jump from a high place, crash my bike, try skiing for the first time. It made me want to drive to Mexico in a borrowed car without any money. Go to a party with a hundred people I don't know. Drink too much, dance on tabletops. Get my lip pierced on a dare. It made me want to do things I've never done before.

It made me want to be reckless.


My current mantra, via weheartit.com

because

I've been really stressed out lately because everyone is having babies except for me and because I finally got a new job which is amazing but also scary and because [the boy] is being noncommittal and it's driving me insane and because I don't have enough people to talk to about things and because I miss my friends so much and because I keep realizing all over again how much I hate my parents and what they did and how much it effected me and because there is so much revelation going on up in here it's making me dizzy... and because I know I'm the one who has to pick my own self up and make what I can out of this hard, hard life, every day, until it's done.

at sixes and sevens

I'm so out of sorts this week I hardly know how to begin to describe it.

many words, no courage

via weheartit.com

brash & brazen

Sometimes I just want to walk in there and kiss him, right in front of everybody. No nervous small talk, no half-promises, no guessing games. Just to see what it would be like; a hello and a goodbye at the same time.

Sometimes I wish I didn't worry so much about what happens afterward. After the bold gesture; after the dramatic moment.

It holds me back from trying so very many exciting things.

self-consolation

Someday, every piece of clothing I own will be chic, and then it won't matter what I put on, I will always look like I have it together.

(I just went to the video store in yoga pants and a cami. All I can say is that I was really, really tired... And maybe I've been living in NorCal for too long. Nobody else thought it was weird, but I sure did.)

a center tightly wound

They always called it "poise" but
if they'd asked, I'd have told them:

No.

Paralysis.
Inability to move.

---

Even now, I do not make
unnecessary movements. After
a run I push my muscles
to stretch as best they can but
though I am
leaner day by day it is often all I can do to

brush the very
tips
of my
toes, always
just out of reach, because
I am so inflexible,
unbending, rigid inside
and out. Every day

I operate from
a center so tightly wound I
do not know
what
might
happen
if it were to loosen
and so I do not

yield. For if this
twisted
mass of knot on
knot on
knot were ever picked free, what then

would be left to fill
out this treacherous
skin that is
the shape of
who I am?