August 3- random feelings

I was soooo set on hating EOP. I came in expecting nothing more than to just get through the 4 week program. In and out. But now it’s the last day and I realize how sad I am to leave. Coming to UB was very scary for me. I realize now that growing up in Lacaster cut me off from the rest of the world. We hide behind nice houses with col de sacs and name-brand clothes that make us feel like we’re higher up than everyone else. We are a majority- white high school. I have never known anything more than this. So when I came into this program and I was a minority for the first time in my life, I was terrified. 

Quickly, though, these people changed my life. I met a girl who told me that when she was fifteen she was paying her family’s phone and electricity bills herself without even a thank you from her mother. When I asked one boy about the buildings in NYC, he told me that they don’t look as beautiful when you’re standing on top of one contemplating if you should jump. Another boy told me stories about how the older kids used to pay him a few dollars a day if he won in fights with other boys. 

When these people told me about the lives they lived everyday, I couldn’t speak after. How could I possibly tell them that the hardest thing I’ve gone through was kids being mean to me in middle school? When they asked me how I got around the town, how could I look them in the eye and reply, “with the car my parents bought for me when I turned 16.” 

July 30- random venting

Someone once told me that death is so selfish. Because when someone dies, we don’t hurt for that person, we hurt for ourselves because they’re no longer a part of our lives.They can longer give us what they once gave us.

I keep trying to think of things to write to make this better. But for some reason I can’t. I feel selfish for trying use your death as an excuse to write something beautiful. Selfish for being here when you could’ve needed someone, and selfish for sitting here at 1 AM wanting all these answers when I know there’s a huge change I might never get them. And I think about all the things I might not ever get a chance to do now. Hear your voice again. Hold your hands that I always made fun of for being so little. Laugh at the same time as you. Roll over in the morning and see your face next to mine.

People say the way someone says goodbye says everything about them. 

What if I don’t get the chance? 

What if I didn’t know that you were even going to leave? 

What does that say about me? 

December 2

when you loved me, 

you often asked me the same questions

over and over. 

on friday nights,

why don’t you go out? 

are you afraid to get high? 

“you’re too boring for me.”

i thought if i became what you wanted,

you would love me again

4 shots and a blunt later, 

you had the nerve to tell me 

that i had changed

and you didn’t want to be with a girl

who only cared about going out. 

When I asked you why we would never work out, you would tell me, “We’re too different of people.” (I’ve been thinking about it a lot.)

Lately I’ve been finding little pieces of you in everyone I meet and everywhere I go (1. I know I don’t ever even cross your mind)

Like when I’m alone in my car and mind is flickering through all the times you were in the passenger seat. When that one song came on the radio and I went to change it, telling you how much I hated it, you replied with how much you love it (2. I never turn it off now).

Or when I think about how you’re the only person I ever let smoke in my car (3. I never liked the smell of cigarettes until they reminded me of you) 

But I know if you read that line you’d roll your eyes and be offended that I said cigarettes remind me of you (4. even though I thought it sounded poetic)

I think about the times I said I wanted to taste you (5. so I would kiss your lips)

but when you said you wanted to taste me you would unzip my pants. (6.)

I wonder if you think of me when you look at the flower I left in your car (7. even though you called it a weed)

or if you threw it away when it died long ago (8. clearly I’m not good at letting things go after they’re over with). 

I used to wonder if you smiled at the same pages I did when you read my favorite book (9. And then you told me you never even finished it)

I know that in the end you’ll just tell yourself that you did nothing wrong- because after all, you did tell me from the beginning, we were just friends (10. but I still thought we were more all along)

Random venting-March 20

I think we are all afraid. And so we dance around the subject of commitment by using terms like “just talking” or “no strings attached” then wonder if when we leave, they’re texting someone else. 

Prompt: write, without stopping or backspacing, stop thinking about what other people would think and just write. 

For me you opened my mind but I think to you it was just opening my legs. When I said I wanted to taste you I would kiss your lips, but when you said it you unzipped my pants. You say you didn’t want just sex but when I asked what we were you danced around the question. You would say that we aren’t serious but when we’re around my friends and family they all say there’s no way a guy can look at you like that and feel nothing. I wonder if I cross your mind, because you’re on mine all the time. The smallest things remind me of you. You’ve got my head spinning all day long and every time my phone goes off I hope that it’s you, but it’s never you, and I wonder if playing hard to get is what I have to do but then I also wonder if that’s even worth it. I’m stuck between pretending I don’t want you to maybe get you to want me, but also saying fuck that, it’s not worth it, I need to be blatantly honest and fight for what I want. Yet again I am reminded that this isn’t a fucking fairy tale- you’re just the boy I met at work and life isn’t really guaranteed a happy ending. If I chase you I might push you in the other direction. I think of all the boys that chase me and I find irony in the situation, that you push me away because you don’t want to settle down and I push other people away because I want to settle with you. And there’s all these things I want to say to you. But I’ll keep my mouth shut, because that’s what’s best for me right now, and for us, if there ever will be an us. 

I feel like I’m constantly reminded of you. I hope you think of me when you’re driving in your car and see the dandelion I left in your upholder, and I hope when you see my favorite book laying on your bedroom floor you wonder about me. I hate that you were so different. You say we’re just friends but I’ve never had a friend care about me like this. And the worst part of this all is that I can’t even be mad at you, because you are honest and kind and just a genuinely good person- which is why I fell for you to begin with. It would be so much easier if you could just tell me to fuck off and leave you alone so I could have something to be angry about, but you are just so nice- and I’m laughing at myself as I write this because the only word I can even think to describe you is “nice”, when I could look through the dictionary all day and relate every single good adjective to your name. 

 I never liked the taste of cigarettes until they reminded me of you. 

August

when i was sixteen i met a boy i thought i could love. he took me to a park at 1 AM to sit on the swings and told me that when his mother was diagnosed with epilepsy and couldn't drive, his father went back to school to become a truck driver so he could take her with him everyday. months and months later, he graduated from school and she decided she didn’t want to do it anymore, and that was it. i felt my heart in my throat. you can do everything for someone and they could just change their mind and that terrifies me beyond belief.

2 weeks later he changed his mind about me. 

january 3- something i found in my drafts

when it is quiet and dark and there is nothing to break the stillness because our breathing is synchronized, right now when the silence is peace and bliss, right now when i lay with my head on your chest and all i can think about is how i ever wondered how i would ever fit anywhere else so perfectly, when my fingernails trace patterns and stories of forever into the small of your back, and your hands study my body as if it is your goal to remember every single curve i have. all i can think about is how i’m trying to take in every part of this moment, but i’m stuck because like everything else in this world, this will end. 

tomorrow morning we will wake up in your cold bedroom and you will remember the million reasons why we would never work out together and you’ll regret letting me leave those marks on your collarbones. 

during times like these, 

when you want to tell me that you love me, 

don’t. 

because i know how easy it is to mean it right now. 

you might love these moments and the way that i make you feel and the feeling of closeness when you’re with me,

but you do not love me.

december 25- unfinished rant

it is christmas day and a thousand things are going through my head but the most mind-blowing thing is that it is my last christmas at home with normality. next year, i will come home from whatever college i decide and try to feel at home again in a room that will probably feel too big for me even though i’ve slept in in for 17 years. i try not to think about it but it terrifies me that this is going to happen so soon. i’m not ready to move out and be on my own, especially around the holidays. it scares me to think how different things could be next year. that the people i have in my life this year might not be here next year, or even tomorrow. it’s so scary to think how fast life can take things away from us with no warning or reason.