I felt it when

Lorde said I’ve never felt more alone, it feels so scary getting old.

Keane said I’m getting old, I need someone to rely on.

Pixies said your head will collapse if there's nothing in it and you'll ask yourself, where is my mind?

Both my dogs are now dead. I miss them so much.

I miss my best friend who is no longer my best friend. 

i think a lot about how i didn't have a voice 

and i think a lot about how instead of shattering my silence

you grew around it, so seamlessly

i was wilting and you didn't care

what are we?

two friendly strangers living next to each other?

two heartbeats connected by nothing but the fact that we are both here. right now. we exist together. but so separately 

in a house that sometimes feels more like a dumping ground for all the things we've mindlessly collected over the past 5 years. 

the skeleton of a home 

i'm so fucking angry at you

i hate that i can't voice it and i hate how much i've cried over this and i hate that i still have so much love for you and i hate that i allow people to mistreat me and all i know to do is to offer my dilapidated heart and say please let me keep loving you anyways i really fucking hate it

i hate that you stayed friends with my rapist

I spend my 25th birthday with canceled plans. Window shades down. Hungover. Crying in my room. 

I try my best to contain what feels like a thunderstorm. In between sleep and wake, I utter a prayer to the universe. 

could you please, god, please be gentle with me. i know the world is breaking. i know people have and will face far more than i ever can fathom. i ask you, with so much privilege, to please be gentle with me anyways. 

I spent the earlier part of 2022 in Malaysia. In the Penang heat, I watched ice cream melt into the pavement. There was something hypnotic about the dissolve. How seamlessly it softened into the ground. How safe it must feel, to relax into something so harmoniously. I was jealous.

I wake to the beating sound of my heart. My chest hurts. 

Grief is hard to go through alone. It's tainted my life in a way that I experience the present like a memory. An echo of reality. I feel like I'm constantly reaching out for something I can't quite name, but I'll know it when I feel it. 

Despite it all, though, I know I can manage. 

A reminder to self:

Perish the pain. Stare into the light for as long as you can manage. Stare into long, long nights. Take in the last breath of May. Elastic. Temperamental. Fleeting, like everything else in life. Howling and still. 

Then dust off your smile. 

At the end of the day, the heart is a muscle. Pain means you're using it. 

You're alive.

 

X, 

alysha. now 25. always still learning.