what could i be without you

it’s not where i didn’t go, it’s where i could have gone, but mostly, here i am

when it’s all said and done, when the sun scratches its way into the room between dusty blinds and your t-shirt and mine and your body and mine and it wakes me, i’ve been awake all night. and a mirrored closet and a bad chandelier, and a reach for water results in an empty bottle or a reach for my phone becomes a reach for your shoulder. when i wake, though i’ve been awake, i think i’ve been awake, i watch my own chest rise and fall and think how poetic it should be but it’s just my bones and lungs. how expansive i can be, how large, how i take up space, how my doubled vision makes this worse and how wrong that feels. so i reach again and find cigarettes, and decide to pollute our polluted space with smoke. so the first noise you hear as you wake is the round click and turn of your lighter with my thumb, the pucker of my lips on your cigarette, and my inhale and exhale of your tobacco. and this wakes you, but it’s more than my noise it’s my presence. there’s a buzz because someone left the stereo on and it was probably me and it’s your stereo. so i couldn’t tell you what woke you but certainly it was me. but you turn, and you mumble and you sleep. your sleep, your words. so i am successful in not keeping you, from yourself. i’ve tried so hard to wake you many times before, in the slightest smallest move. in the shift of my legs under sheets. in the moving of your arms from around my waist. i have woken you so many times and yet you are, asleep. i can’t find what can keep you awake, it must be more than me. i’ve been so busy taking you in. i’ve absorbed so much of you there’s not much of me left to remember. you don’t notice because there wasn’t much to begin with. so how can i keep you awake. when you call, and the words move from your lips to mine and your eyes stay cloudy and your touch stays strong, i stay strong. and when you decide, i decide. and when you sleep, i sleep, but i’ve been awake all night, and where have you been.

and when it is all said and done, when the nights end and the date turns, and you turn away from me; i’d like to tell you to absorb me and keep me and hang on to me and please, please stay awake - but there’s so much of me you won’t remember, there was nothing to begin with, so how could i make you stay?

for the first time it has become inherently obvious that i am ‘wrong’
people, being my peers, and their peers, are insistent on letting me know constantly how wrong i am. wrong because they believe that i am seeking and searching in order to please, others than myself. but how can they know? it’s become so obvious that no one seems to agree with my personal motivations. the things that get me out of bed in the morning are beyond what i talk to my peers about. that’s why they are my peers and nothing else. 
maybe i am wrong, but who’s to say?
it’s beginning to get at me, to pick away at me, to make me question exactly what it is that i am doing - but that’s it - i am doing. i am out and up and alive, and though i may find comfort between my sheets alone and i may not attend each party or gathering, even though i find solitude to be an experience and i find education to be the highest moral belief … i am not you… 
i feel my support system is wavering and this is a danger they would not understand.
they is such an awful word.
especially when you know who they are.

even if i am wrong, to you i may be, to me, i am perfect.

there are moments

in me

that sit between each ligament

each creak of my knees

each stretch in my thigh

which need reassurance

which need remembrance

in order not to die

there are moments

in me

that sit between my ribs

in the small spaces filled with anatomy

that need no comfort

that need no reminder

just the will to survive

what could i be without you

it’s not where i didn’t go, it’s where i could have gone, but mostly, here i am

when it’s all said and done, when the sun scratches its way into the room between dusty blinds and your t-shirt and mine and your body and mine and it wakes me, i’ve been awake all night. and a mirrored closet and a bad chandelier, and a reach for water results in an empty bottle or a reach for my phone becomes a reach for your shoulder. when i wake, though i’ve been awake, i think i’ve been awake, i watch my own chest rise and fall and think how poetic it should be but it’s just my bones and lungs. how expansive i can be, how large, how i take up space, how my doubled vision makes this worse and how wrong that feels. so i reach again and find cigarettes, and decide to pollute our polluted space with smoke. so the first noise you hear as you wake is the round click and turn of your lighter with my thumb, the pucker of my lips on your cigarette, and my inhale and exhale of your tobacco. and this wakes you, but it’s more than my noise it’s my presence. there’s a buzz because someone left the stereo on and it was probably me and it’s your stereo. so i couldn’t tell you what woke you but certainly it was me. but you turn, and you mumble and you sleep. your sleep, your words. so i am successful in not keeping you, from yourself. i’ve tried so hard to wake you many times before, in slightest smallest move. in the shift of my legs under sheets. in the moving of your arms from around my waist. i have woken you so many times and yet you are, asleep. i can’t find what can keep you awake, it must be more than me. i’ve been so busy taking you in. i’ve absorbed so much of you there’s not much of me left to remember. you don’t notice because there wasn’t much to begin with. so how can i keep you awake. when you call, and the words move from your lips to mine and your eyes stay cloudy and your touch stays strong, i stay strong. and when you decide, i decide. and when you sleep, i sleep, but i’ve been awake all night, and where have you been.

and when it is all said and done, when the nights end and the date turns, and you turn away from me; i’d like to tell you to absorb me and keep me and hang on to me and please, please stay awake - but there’s so much of me you won’t remember, there was nothing to begin with, so how could i make you stay?

takesamuscle:

We speak only when he is drunk and I cannot sleep. Four times he tells me he loves me, none which he can remember, none of which I ask him to repeat. At four in the morning, I lie wide awake in his arms, my palm on the rising and falling of his chest; he drifts in and out of sleep and in between…

(via takesamuscle-deactivated2018012)

what can you learn from sleeping alone for 3 months?

it doesn’t get better.

it may, in fact, get softer. more manageable and less noticeable, but in no means does it get better.

haven’t been here in forever. need to rant, 
it’s like i can’t make up my mind on who i am. i thought i knew. i feel like i have this direction, this passion, this need to acquire and build. but something is missing and i know what that is, but it’s all something i can’t have. so now where am i? somewhere i’d rather not be. and i know i have the ability to break out, to get out, but that would require more sacrifice than i’m willing to admit.
i am stuck, i suppose.
perhaps it’s not as bad as i feel, but i feel bad. and that’s the thing. i’m feeling things and i haven’t felt things in years and i, honestly, don’t know what to do with it. 
what the fuck do you do with feelings? wallow? spite? discern? i’m disconnecting cause i can’t manage them and now what… i’m back to where i started. 
i’m back to wanting to be numb because frankly, it’s the easy way out.
and what other way can i go?
the hard way? what the fuck is that? confrontation, rehabilitation, i’ve been there, i’ve done it, and led me right back here. where i stand.

so now what? 

dudefromthe206:

no birthday booty for me :(

amen