Sta.sh
- I still remember singing in my room when I was six, and having my mother come down the hall and slam the door so hard that the windows shook.
Her nails hurt when she scraped the tears off my face. "It doesn't matter what you want," she'd always tell me.
Like, when that drunk driver swerved and hit her car – I didn't want her to leave me, and it didn't matter.
- Once on vacation I bought a pair of fuzzy leather heels for two hundred dollars, and when I wore them to dinner, I found out that
- 1. "Suede" is a fancy word for "fuzzy leather."
And 2. Good things don't last: That night my cousin told me that she thought 135 pounds was a little too big for five foot eight. So I tore my tights up to the thigh and threw those new suede heels in the garbage.
It felt good later, to know that they couldn't hate me more than I hate myself.
- My six-word story from ninth grade reads, "If I don't laugh, I'll cry."
When I read that treating people like trash to gets them to need your approval, I finally understood Charlie, so I threw my Psych book at him on my way to math.
All the way to the office I laughed louder than he could scream.
- Two things I'm still wondering:
- when will clear toasters be invented – and, what happens when there aren't enough stars out there for every broken heart?
- I think, the problem is, I tried getting older without growing up.
I picked my eyelashes for wishes but never let them go.
I say too much and think too little.
I have what I don't need and need what I don't have and nobody really says where to start looking.
- If I ever learn how to lucid dream, I won't try to fly or fuck a celebrity – I'll find my elementary-school self and hug her and cry, because I've missed her so goddamn much these days.
- In the middle of the night, it would give me some relief to know that other people will never know what I'm truly feeling.
Now I realize, nobody truly knows.
Now I don't fall back asleep, either.
- And I know, 135 pounds for five foot eight isn't fat at all, but this perfect family, who hides me under big, dark words – and then has me in their Christmas photos like I'm supposed to belong – is not okay. It's just enough.
(I have fucking had enough.)
- My grandmother's last words were, "I'm finally going to see Thomas again," who was my uncle that died in 1987. Her hand was limp in mine, but she didn't pass on until morning.
And it was terrible, that she wasn't afraid. She didn't say, "I don't want to go," like they do in the movies. Because she told me once. She knew.
We're all going.
From my eleventh grade English journal –
Day One: I dog-earred wedding catalogues.
Day Two: I'll never get married.
Day Three: The world smiled back a little.
Day Four: I'm nothing.
Today: I don't know how to end stories.
Tomorrow: Not all stories have to end.
And I know family isn't supposed to make you happy, but I never thought they were actually supposed to make you feel like total hell.
I think you are absolutely full of talent and I know what it's like to be put down by family members, worse if you know they don't mean it that way. I'm but a stranger and I just put up a story about "good advice being useless" on dA, but I really would like to tell you that I think you're talented and that this is absolutely publishing material and that if you are sixteen now, you'll go far into the world with the talent you have.
And I've learned so much about myself just from writing. I'm overjoyed that it shows, too.
I think, the problem is, I tried getting older without growing up.
I picked my eyelashes for wishes but never let them go.
I say too much and think too little.
I have what I don't need and need what I don't have and nobody really says where to start looking.
If I ever learn how to lucid dream, I won't try to fly or fuck a celebrity – I'll find my elementary-school self and hug her and cry, because I've missed her so goddamn much these days.