It's a winding road, when you're in the lost and found. You're a lover, I'm a runner and we go 'round and 'round.

The feeling of relief after a good cry is comparable to few things in life. As I type I just think one thing, however sinful it is, goddamn it. Hello to all readers, if you're just tuning in, be aware that I am not a people pleaser, but I tell it like it is.

My breath is sharp and punctuated by my shivering, audible even above the music flowing from my earphones and into my ears. Sometimes I just wonder, are there people in similar situations to mine that, like me, don't share it with many or even any. I wonder, do the people I encounter daily know what is happening in my life, or are they maybe even too consumed with struggles in their own, greater than mine? 

I am long since discovering that my mother and I will never cease to fight. But, on Friday, as I drove five hours with her to visit my dying grandfather, I had a fleeting idea that maybe that didn't have to be the case. Once more, I realize how far off that thought was. One more fight, one less day. The thought keeps scrolling through my brain, continuously, just as Krispy Kreme doughnuts do in the factory behind the seemingly quaint dining area. I've realized the worst type of fights are the ones which are inclusive of words beyond the personal sphere, which are shameful, seizing words, that just leave you breathless.

As I sat eating my 3 Minute Brownie, back against my cheetah print pillow that I can't remember life without, I heard my mom's footsteps advancing up the stairs and knew they were directed towards me. She brought in her cell phone, the back held together by a piece of duct tape, an abhorrent yet sufficing solution to her. My father was on the other end, and we spoke for a while, about my mom's and my argument, about my grandfather, about trivial topics. Only a few of the hundreds of words he spoke really registered with me, depositing an unpleasant sting on my argument with my mom. "I don't have any more money and she is having to use her savings to shop for you." Suddenly I knew why she had been so taken aback as I complained about the lack of apple sauce and cheez-its. 

I wish I could draw a cliche picture for you, how I sat with my head in my hands and was so torn up, how I cried, how I sat in dismay at my own ignorance. But, instead, I just used the back of my spoon to smush the rest of my brownie, and strained to hold back tears, to let myself be weak, one thing my grandfather wasn't. I remained immobile, and sucked in my own breath hard, pulling my hair back to keep from falling in my face. I just rested, without movement, my head placed on the edge of the desk behind me. Looking up at my fan, I just wept. I wouldn't look down and allow even more tears escape from my eyes, as I saw that my grandfather is just one more thing neither my dad nor I have anymore of. And I refused to look down, because I am too aware that the bottom is lurking right beneath me, that my white flag stands taller than I do, and that there is no where left for me to run.  .

Money makes for a great slave but a horrible master

Ah, it feels good to be back. I had been meaning to post for such a long time, but I've had a shortage of time. The days feel so long in the passing but all at once, they're gone.

Inside me, emotions are so abundantly flowing, making every move of mine feel stifled. So many feelings that I am unsure of what to make of them. It's like a fork in the river, with more than two ways to go. These next few months of my life fit that last sentence perfectly. Oh, how things can change. But, maybe in these next few months there will be a glorious beginning. Which is where I should probably start.

I have been blessed with two parents who love me dearly and are wonderful. But, as the economy crashed, my parents' jobs were both taken. And while this has been an adjustment, I'm afraid the adjustment of adjustments is ahead of me. Needless to divulge all the details, my parents' funds run out right after Christmas. What is there to say? Fear is for cowards, though sometimes the cowards are the wiser ones.

So much of what I know as true, so much of my lifestyle, has been altered already and may be once more. As I glance around my room from behind my laptop, I picture all of my belongings in boxes, them being the only part of me that will be ready to leave this house. And while I can picture this room stark white, back to the way it was the first time I saw it, none of my possessions will remain. I'll be all I have left, with one exception. Jesus remains. Sometimes I had to admit this truth, but He's the only thing I've learned I can hold on to. As things, places and people have been stripped from my life, as I've had to adjust to living on less, Jesus never once even shifted.

"Things can only go up from here," a friend told me the day I found out my dad had lost his job. Boy, were they wrong. I am desperately afraid, I won't lie. But if things go down from here, I know one thing. My desire is to be at the bottom, sitting on Jesus' lap, his arms cradling my trembling body.

As I type this post, I am moving my back up against my futon, looking quite peculiar, I'm sure. I have been eaten by bugs, not nearly as bad as I have been before, but as bad as you can be in a mile walk at 10pm.

The problem with telling people how you feel is, unlike the school counselor who always provides insightful perspective and never becomes short-tempered, they have a choice of how to respond. Even if you are sobbing, and your heart is broken, these people have a choice to be insensitive.

This evening, as my mom picked me up from the library and we began to make conversation on the ride home, my sister came up as a topic. If you happen to know anything about me, or have read earlier posts, you'll know that my relationship with my sister, second only to my relationship with my mom, is the most broken relationship I've ever seen. It pains me so deeply, and never ceases to, no matter the circumstance. As the conversation took a turn and became a little more deeper, this once more arose... my problem with me sister, or, rather, her problem with me. I shared with my mother what I hoped she would have known in my fifteen years of life. My sister's emotionally murderous remarks, threats, words and more importantly, actions. When we finally stopped at Harris Teeter, where my mom was stopping to pick up some groceries, she exited the car without slightest sign of hearing a word. She rounded the small SUV and opened one of the back doors and lifted her purse over her shoulder. "Are you mad at me?" The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"I don't know. I'm just tired of hearing the same old thing, over and over again. I'm so tired of it." At this moment, I should have just slid out of my seat and walked home. Instead, I sat and waited, in the heat of a car without open windows or AC, a car as still and immovable, as determined as my mother's mind. She returned and began to spit out words quickly, asking questions, but not really asking, instead just wanting to put me in my place, put me back in the playpen, back where the only sounds I could make were safe, positive ones  "ma", "pa", "gah." She asked what my plan was and I said, wearily, I was done trying. This was quickly rebuked and she proclaimed to me how that relationship affects everyone. My last rational words were that she should take it up with my sister then. More retorts, more painted-white wooden stakes were driven into the ground, a picket fence that didn't mean a happy, American family at all, but instead a divided one. I had too much self-respect to listen to that, or maybe was too weak to hear the consequences of my own actions and said "You have NO compassion. Stop the car. I'm getting out. I don't ever want to talk to you."

I fled the car and walked onto the sidewalk, where my mother's car followed. I made a sharp turn and crossed the road, which she couldn't emulate. The little gold car drove past the intersection and stopped, her lights signalling traffic to go around. As I continued to walk straight, approaching my mother in her car, I heard her yell for me to get back in the car. I just repeated what I had said before, I don't want to talk to you. And off went the car, but mostly my mother, quickly and without hesitation, with ease and even seeming eager to do so.

One thing I was distinctly aware of was how many times I had done that exact same thing before: been left, emotionally, on the curb of a road, to walk home. In all of about the eight times I've just had to leave, out of sheer hurt and inability to exist under the same roof with those people and remain civil, not once have I been sought out. This was an acute awareness, that just seemed to be sharpened as I turned a corner and saw the back door of my house, shut, appearing to be a different world. The door is made of wood but felt like a thick, steel lock. The criss-crossing of the window panes of the upper half of the door screamed indifference, the wooden grain the same direction it had always been, no evidence of a missing daughter.

I came into my house, though it felt like a stranger's, like that of the people I petsit for, maybe even more unfamiliar. I heard the voices of my parents in the other room, and I knew they'd heard the door, though neither of us said a word to the other. Running upstairs and settling into the groove of the futon I'm still on now, someone texted me and asked if I'd done anything this summer. I knew my normal response: camp, the keys, and backpacking and whitewater canoeing trip (in chronological order). But instead, I altered it: camp and a backpacking and whitewater canoeing trip, what about you? I slid in a pair of earbuds after I sent the text, and turned my music up loud enough to not be able to hear my ceiling fan.

Bit by bit, even an unnoticeable amount, I built my window panes, the beginning of my door. It'll be wooden alright, but feel like thick steel. My door will be just a door to most of those, but to my family, the ones who fabricated wall after wall to keep me out, it'll be impassable. It'll look like aged wood, painted white with a friendly brass doorknob. But that doorknob, with its four-inch diameter, will be all it takes to keep us apart. It was all it took to take us back to the silence, the cold-shoulder; back to the start.

And Why Do We Like to Hurt So Much? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKy2a2LVIWE

Sometimes being at war doesn't make you a warrior. It makes you a coward, a big, fat coward. You shoot at the enemy because you feel inadequate.

In the background, a series of doors smacking their frame feel almost rhythmic, musical. Blood rushes to my head as I hear yells, my heart thumping with such fervent emotion. I feel scared to touch these keys, scared to make even a peep in the storms of war beyond my door. I'll spare you the gruesome details, the words and the numerous, mindless remarks such as "I don't want any part of you. I don't want you near me." But, as I sit here in shock, I need to become real with myself. I knew, all day, this would happen. Since the first minute my mom stepped over the threshold, with a solemn look in her eyes, a cold war began, its silence killing all the inhabitants of this house, slowly and invisibly, like carbon monoxide.

Words are flying through my head, like Color Guard flags do as girls in shiny uniforms thrust them into the air and in circles. I'm not sure how to sort them, to group them, just like football players on a field, colorful blurs in constant motion that proceed after the Marching Band and Color Guard at high school games. Violent debacles make my head ache, even if I weren't involved. But, somehow, I was. My parents, the people by which nearly all my physical attributes are derived from, and more specifically my mother, hurling words at my dad that can't be erased, words that slice and chop, words that puncture and scar, words that even Mederma can't fade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ige8G7qpEF8

     Shaking in my closet, I try to type and balance the laptop on my knee. It's been a while, and I apologize, because it feels unjust that I can just ditch as I please. That seems though to be my main desire these days. After a violent battle with my parents, physically, emotionally and verbally, no thought is more pertinent in my mind than this: I need to get out. However you interpret it, an exit is all I long for.

    After a call to someone, I realized how numb everyone is to my unsettledness, but I know writing always extends a hand in my time of destitution. So here goes: Today I woke up, my consciousness focused on a strange dream in which my sister was giving birth to a Muslim and would have to give it up because she wasn't 21... a little nonsensical but bear with me. I gathered myself and stumbled down the stairs, exhaustion present in my step. I spoke to my mom, explaining my dream to her with brevity. She sighed and voiced her displease as I mentioned the fact that the baby was Muslim. I stood up for the imaginary baby, a more figurative stand for Muslims everywhere, that just because they come from a culture with terrorists means little. Are all Americans overweight and stupid? No. She used her shield of religion, "I just want everyone to know Jesus!" Because, similarly, all American babies are born Christian, right? I was set with unease realizing her prejudice, her obvious and ignorant racism. I let it be, finished my breakfast then went to the house possessed by the dog I'm petsitting and returned home after running into some friends on the walk back. From the first step on my lawn to this exact moment, the unease has succeeded in occupying my whole body. Long story short, the tussle abridged to just a exchange of mean words, I am an ungrateful brat (repeat mentally about 5 octaves higher and that's more like it). Basically, I am a worthless child that is undeserving of anything but being pushed, shoved and/or hit. And for the past 41 minutes, I've sulked in this truth. I've been told by who I thought was my 2AM that they're just tired of hearing it. And, to be frank, I feel as if I am fighting for my life. This anger, this brokenness harbored behind my door is cancer, eating the good cells and converting them into   malevolent ones. And the outside of me, slightly battered, is not a valid reflection of the inside, torn and in tatters. As my parents yelled over my weak and poorly broad-casted defense, all I remember thinking was this: "For it is impossible to be feared and loved." My fear was suffocating, bursting into small droplets and falling from the corners of my eyes. It was exploding into red roses under my skin, doing an excellent job of turning my face nearly maroon. The fear was feasting on the traces of love I knew to have for these people who I shared the most genetic similarity with in this world. This fear was opening a chasm of which hurt would overflow. And fissures continue to appear, all over my body, a weak representation of the internal bruising. Because every inch of me is bruised.

-

I conceive the idea that honesty is understanding the meaning of a word. The word never has one definition, instead varying from person to person. And while truth is definite and solid, it is relative. It is relative to the person who speaks it. I feel that the world would be so horrid, so torn if only truth was broadcasted. But I have this perception that we would all be better, we would all be brokenly whole in some twisted way. We would cease to see these hues of gray that were materialized by the liars. We would see it, this life, as a shattering, paining beauty. We would be one hue of black, because we couldn't all be friends, and hold hands on the playground, but we'd know where we stood, and we'd occupy our square of territory. But all at once, we'd be a crisp white, dashing out of where we were stationed because we would conceal nothing. Life would be an hour of recess on the playground and everywhere you stopped and stood you'd leave as soon as you came. We'd push through the lines drawn with chalk and we'd smear them. We'd be so sure of ourselves we'd become lost. We'd be fearlessly exhausted. We'd run then freeze, like greenlight-redlight. And before we knew it, the whistle would blow and we'd end in a totally new formation than we'd began in, a shuffled deck of cards, anticipating being dealt again.

-

Dressed in white,
I'm letting you win this fight.
Zero - one,
record the score, you won.
Now you have it all,
everything but me,
my hands may be calloused but they're empty.
But I'm better without it all,
with nothing left,
there's no way to fall.

A cut beneath the skin,
we walk around pretending we're not stretched thin.
Lay your weapon down,
it isn't a race of who can fire sooner,
who can make the first sound.

I see it when you look at me,
like an actor's cue,
it's my time to leave.
As I go,
the strings within me pulled tightly so,
I feel a pang,
a broken love for someone I'm afraid I don't know.

I bReAkdowN.

Clap my heels,
I have an ache to return home,
but I don't know how home feels.
The sky closes,
the amethyst clouds burst.
That bright sun be cursed,
because this rainbow isn't worth a cent,
because of all those words, not one was meant.

Put your eyes on me,
are bruises and wounds all you see?
There is pain beneath the surface.
Mind you, I come at a cost, though I'm no purchase.
Release me, I'm no slave,
I am not of your service.
Watch me limp,
oh, watch me stagger.
Just know that what I was, what I am,
deserved more than these punctures,
the conversation of my heart and your dagger.