On my recent state of mind

I am a highly objective person. I've always been able to hold the world at arm's length and observe things with reason, and I've always been so proud of that. That isn't to say that emotion doesn't occasionally win over, but the brief periods of my emotions winning are just that--brief moments that pass and are followed by reason and reasoning.

I've always even looked at my emotions objectively, even my sadness. (And here, I refer to sadness, and not depression: I know that depression is a medical condition of the brain, and therefore I will not diagnose myself with depression, the same way I would not diagnose myself with cancer or diabetes or heart disease or genital herpes.)

Whenever things get bad (and recently, that's been more and more), it's almost as though I'm looking at myself from an outside point of view. I can see myself curled up against my wall, staring at nothing, shaking because for nothing can I get warm, and it makes something deep inside me angry with myself. Why can't I get up? There isn't anything wrong--maybe school is stressful, but I'm taking things easy, much easier than anyone I know. I am surrounded (maybe not closely) by friends who genuinely care about me, and I can feel that they love me no matter how far off they are. I have a lot to be thankful for, and yet I can't stop shaking and I can't get up and I can't breathe and I just can't any longer. Not for anything.

Being this highly objective person, I want to step outside myself and give my own shoulders a good shake, my own face a good slap. I want to yell at myself, scream at myself, make myself just fucking get UP already, this does not make sense, you have no reason to be lying there helpless when you have so much work to do and so many projects to start and so many options in front of you. Stop wasting these opportunities that others would kill for. Go make something. Go do something. Just go. Anywhere.

But I can't. I am one person, in one brain, and as much as I would like for logic to win out always, in this one respect, my emotions literally control my every movement. When my brain becomes heavy, so do my limbs, and my torso, and my feet and my hands and my chest, and my ribs ache and my heart won't beat right and my stomach twists and morphs and stops me from eating and all I want to do is sleep but all I see in my sleep are the monsters that haunt me. In the daylight, they are shakes and tremors and an irregular pulse, but at night, they take on a physical form.

And so I continue to lay against my wall. I continue to stare and shake. My brain is heavy, but I cannot sleep; My eyes sting, but I cannot cry.

And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. There is nowhere to go (not that I can move); there is no one to talk to (not that I can speak); there is no more air left to breathe (not that my lungs work anyway).

And so I sit. And I try to let it pass. And I at least take control of my lungs, remind myself to breathe, that as long as I'm breathing I'll make it through, and once I have my breathing I have my heart rate back, and once my heart is beating normally my head loosens up, and once my head loosens up I can move again.

But no matter how much control I have over my breathing, my lungs still barely scrape air. No matter how much I can regulate my existing pulse, my heart still twists and turns and screams against itself. No matter how much lighter my head gets, it still spins. And no matter how much I can move, I still have nowhere to go.

But as long as I have my breathing and my heart and my head and my body back, I can take back reason as well. I can stuff sadness down for a little while longer, and once more hold the world at arm's length.

I know that one day this repression and objection will come back to haunt me, and I will be the worse off for it. And so I'll hope that when that day comes, I've strengthened enough to slay the monsters myself.

Last night

Give me a time, and I'll head out
Away from my house, left left straight right straight left
To red walls and spilled grinds and smeared fudge
But you'll forget, and so we'll head elsewhere
To salt and greasy tiles and smearing cherries
To epilogues and maps and stuffed somethings
To comfy chairs and organic popcorn and fake coffee
And on to stickers and dollar calendars

I would have kissed you in the parking lot, if you had tried

Because I guess I was the last one you had and that was so long ago
And because she's not what quite what you need
And because I don't know we were bored and maybe there's something there

But I hope there isn't, and I'm glad you didn't try
Because I like this thing that we have going on

They say that hands
Are so hard to draw
Because we are so intimately familiar with our own
That any replication will never be
Good enough;

I want your smile to become that for me.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Tunnel vision. I try to look both ways, but I can't see what isn't right in front of me, and even then it's a small window. The walls are closing in, around my eyes, my ears, my lungs. It's like I can't breathe, but if I really couldn't breathe at least I'd have the privilege of no longer being here.

It's like waking up early Sunday morning to catch the sunrise, only to find out the sun is gone, gone, never coming back. He ran away with the moon, the dish and the spoon, and by now they're probably miles down the Milky Way, beyond even a speck of dust. But you can't blame them for leaving us, can you, because there comes a time when you just can't take care of everyone anymore--you've gotta take care of yourself.

At least, that was my reasoning, and we see how far that got me. 'I've gotta take care of myself, because you won't and neither will anyone else.' But we all know that's bullshit. I'm not taking care of myself. I can't make myself do anything. But I can't acknowledge that it's my fault, really, because some days it's just so hard to even think about getting out of bed, about letting my feet hit the floor, about seeing people, communicating, smiling, walking, moving, breathing, it's just too much. Once feet meet floor it's all over, it all becomes real. I can't hide in plain sight.

I just keep looking both ways, left-right-left again, but I can't see anything coming until it hits me. I can't feel the vibrations of the world under me, warning me to watch out. Protecting me, even though its sun left. So noble. But I've become so disconnected that I can't read the signals of my mother Earth anymore, can't hear her telling me to watch out, you didn't look hard enough, come on, sweetheart, pull yourself together before you get yourself killed. Lord knows I can't lose another one.

Disconnected. Disjoint, excommunicated, exiled, self-imposed. Maybe someone wants me around, but I sure don't. And even if they say it--even when they say it--I won't believe it. I've already convinced myself otherwise. I've walked that path, I've been there, I had my chance and I destroyed it, and now I'm left to clean up on my own, as it should be.

I don't know what I'm saying anymore. I don't know why you read all of this. I'm not okay, and I haven't been okay, and I don't know when I'll be okay again. Just don't worry about me. I've made too many promises I have to keep, so I'll be here for quite a while longer. I'll try not to burden you while I'm here.

Two-cup Sundays.

The best kinds of days are two-cup Sundays
Waking up at a leisurely 10:00 am to a hot black cup in a penguin mug
And spending the rest of the morning lazing down the highway
Corn rushing by on either side, dry from the drought
Soybeans blurred into one goldenrod block of earth
Feeling content in a journey, home on the other side
Where I'll stay up until 1:00, maybe 2:00
Pretending to study, but really just thinking
Brain stimulated by peppermint steam from a new mug, this one striped
Sitting back, bathed in warmth, letting the afternoon stay free
Knowing what's left to do can be done another time.

The best kinds of days are two-cup Sundays
When the warmth of the first cools, the second replenishes
Until morning comes, ready for cup number three.

Faces: Redux.

I made some changes to this piece to fit the prompt for an English assignment. There are things I like about the new one, but I think overall I prefer the original. Feel free to let me know what you think.


Sometimes, when the mirror peers back at me from far away, I see hollowness. I focus on the shadows under my cheekbones, the purple bags under my eyes, the cuts and scrapes and bruises across my cheeks and forehead. I see my scars. I wince at a pale reflection and eyes too wide for a small visage. I strike myself as a lost child.

But sometimes, when I get closer, I perceive things better. I recognize the familiar freckles dotting my nose, the even tone across my cheeks, the black flecks in my eyes that give them the appearance of depth. I notice thick black lashes that don’t need mascara. I see the red flush of blood protecting my face from the chill air. I straighten at the sight of a teenage girl, a member of a pack, just like any other.

Sometimes, I wonder how many faces I have. I wonder which face is my real face, or if they’re both mirages. I wonder which face my best friend sees, and which face the cashier at the grocery store sees, and I wonder if they’re the same. I wonder if the snickering I hear is about me, if the gazes weighing heavily from behind are malevolent or benign, or even just a figment of my imagination, echoes of fear resounding in my mind. I wonder if the days I deem myself acceptable are the days that the world finds me acceptable as well, or if we all have opposing opinions on what I should look like.

Sometimes, I wonder if my face even matters—if what I see and what everyone else sees makes a difference. I wonder if people appraise me at face value, or if they wonder what thoughts lay beneath my skull. I wonder if I appear twelve, like they tease me that I do, or if I give the impression that I’m twenty, like they assume I am before they see my face.

Sometimes, I think that all of my faces are truly just one, and that it’s not my face being altered, but my mind.

Hands.

Long, wiry bones meet tiny, stubby ones
One shaking in anticipation, one not noticing
One covered in oil, grease, and dirt
And the other never separated from its pen.

Shy and nervous and oblivious and indifferent
A year of sitting back and waiting for the right time
Remaining distant, scared of contact
Of screwing it up before it begins.

Palms meet, fingers entwine
Thumbs wrestle in nervous excitement
The sweat of the nerves goes unnoticed
In the sweetness of the touch.

The shakes eventually dissipate
The nerves focus attention on new things
Distance is never significant
And if it was, Time took care of the rest.

Time grew, attitudes evolved
Proximity became a right, not a gift
Possession sought value over intimacy
And shakes began once more.

What once brought warmth becomes unwelcome
The comforting becomes invasive
The once oblivious stands startled and guarded
While the once nervous becomes far too confident.

A line is drawn, and distance is brought back
Fingers disentangle, palms separate
The piano hands go back to playing mechanic
And the writer returns to her pen.

C'est l'automne maintenant.

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

When I woke up this morning, the sky still reflected the grey of last night's storm, and I put the chill wind I felt down to the rain as well. I spent nearly six hours in a run-down IUPUI School of Nursing classroom lit by fluorescent lights, with windows of sunlight behind me that I never saw.

And when I stepped outside, already high from the liberation of knowing one more step to college was completed, I was blinded for a moment by actual sunlight. Not the filtered crap that comes through the  meurtrières that pass as windows in my school or the horrible yellow rays that reflect off the buses around my high school parking lot, but real sunlight. I'd forgotten the impact real sunlight has on the colors of the world. This strange, in-between season has brought the rain the summer lacked, and the weeks of storms have returned the green to the world. The trees looked as if they were stretching, waking up not from the death of winter but instead of summer, their green returning for a few weeks before the world turned to fire again. The grass was freshly wet, the soil beneath especially brown; even the buildings were more vibrant. Suddenly, the stop lights and road signs that had been the only source of color for the summer seemed dull and fake.

The air was still crisp--I don't believe it ever passed 68 degrees today--and I realized that it wasn't the storm making the world cool and beautiful. It was impending autumn. It may only be the beginning of September, but I can already sense October.

I can smell the bonfires, feel the warmth of the heat on my face and the chill of the night air on my neck. I can taste dried maize and pumpkin seeds; I hear the laughter of my friends as we wander through parks, trying to accurately capture the beauty of the world around us and just falling short. I can see the beauty of nature, the way the seasons really affect the world.

I can feel the impending nervousness of college, the rush and struggle to get our final test scores and fill out the right applications and appear the best we possibly can in order to avoid life-long student debt. I can feel the pull of youth, the beginnings of our last-ditch efforts to go outside and explore this world while we're eighteen, to take spontaneous roadtrips to however far away one tank of gas is, the haunting realization that this is our last chance to really screw up and not have it count.

C'est l'automne maintenant. And for once, l'automne may be winning my affections over le printemps.

Goals.

I'm going to start posting here more often. Longer things, probably, so not like every day, but just when I have something to say.

I'm going to catch up on my line-a-day journal.

I'm going to finish my quote Bible.

I'm going to finish the story I haven't named yet, but that might be tackled in November, because I'm bad at new ideas.

Yep. That's all I've got for now.

The empty set is a subset of all other sets.

This is one of those situations in which I've stared at the screen for a long time trying to figure out a way to put my day into words, but I can't seem to find the right ones.

In summary:

• Objective achieved.
• I'm sorry, but I just don't understand.
• I cannot wait to meet you.
• Fuck set theory.

Sometimes, when I cross my legs
And let myself fall backwards,
I imagine that I can feel your weight
Fall on top of mine.

I imagine the creak of my bed
As you kneel below my feet,
The caress of your hands as they move
To my knees, up my thighs,
Over my hips, up my sides
With the rest of your body following,
Covering me up like a living blanket.
I imagine your hands coming to a stop
Above my shoulders, the way you might
Position yourself so as not to smother me completely,
But then again, maybe you'd fall on top of me
And smile as I try to push you away,
Only to pull you back. I imagine
Your face moving above mine to kiss my forehead,
And moving back down to rest in the curve of my neck
As your arms circle around my shoulders
And you pull me up in a hug.
I imagine that we'd lay like that for a minute, and then
As I'm losing my breath, you'd roll over and pull me with you
So that I could curl into your side
And we could rest together.

I wish I could hold your weight above me.
I loathe not my own physical weakness,
But the space that stands between us--
I'd hold you up forever if you'd come a little closer.

It stormed yesterday.

So I wrote a shitty poem about it.


First storm in months to break the drought
Months of nothing, until suddenly
Two days and two nights of nonstop water from the sky

It's like the clouds were playing a trick on us, but now
They cannot hold their laughter in any longer

A solid inch of standing water--hell, it might even be two--
Offers to carry me across the parking lot
But the molecules cannot hold me up
And so I fall under the brim

My little black ballet flats soak completely through
And it occurs to me that maybe I should take into account
The weather whilst deciding what to wear
But I guess it's too late for today

Cold feet, cold toes, cold seeps through all of me
Until I'm shivering all day, and my feet aren't dry until lunch

Call me a devil for praying for the rain to stop
It's just that I don't have any socks

Faces.

Sometimes, when I see my reflection from far away, I see hollowness. I see shadows under my cheekbones, purple bags under my eyes, cuts and scrapes and bruises across my cheeks and forehead. I see my scars. I see a pale reflection and eyes too big for a small visage. I strike myself as a lost child.

But sometimes, when I get closer, I see things better. I see the freckles dotting my nose, an even tone across my cheeks, the black flecks in my eyes that give them the appearance of depth. I see thick black lashes that don't need mascara. I see the hairs between my eyebrows that I never get around to plucking. I see a teenage girl staring back at me.

Sometimes, I wonder how many faces I have. I wonder which face I'm seeing is my real face, or if they're both mirages. I wonder what face my best friend sees, and what face the cashier at the grocery store sees, and I wonder if they're the same. I wonder if the days I find myself good are the days that the rest of the world sees me as good as well, or if we've all got different opinions on what I should look like.

Sometimes, I wonder if my face matters. If what I see and what everyone else sees makes a difference. I wonder if people take me at face value (pun intended), or if they wonder what thoughts lie beneath my skull. I wonder if I look twelve, like they tease me that I do, or if I look eighteen, like people think when they talk to me without seeing a face.

Sometimes, I think that both of my faces are really the same face, and that it's not my face that's changed, but my mind.

Fail-ure.

Oh yeah, remember that time when I actually used this?

So I gave up on the poetry challenge. Partly because I can't finish anything, but mostly because the rest of the prompts left me feeling uninspired.

I've been writing more though, so that's good. I think I'll still use this to put stuff I've written that I don't want to put on Tumblr because of people following me. So that's a thing. Whoop.

Best wishes!

My English teacher would be disappointed.

Today's poetry challenge thing is to write a cinquain on a topic of my choice. I had to look up a conquain, because I couldn't remember if that meant five lines or five stanzas. Oops.

I don't care about your pretty apologies
Or how well you can wind words to your bidding.
It remains that the words you've used before--
The ones that drove me to the brink of extinction--
Overrule whatever you could possibly have to say now.

This has been another installment of Miranda being an angsty teenager.

Slaying demons.

So I'm not being a slacker and quitting the poetry challenge, I'm just not doing today's because I don't like it and I don't feel inspired by it and I think it's wrong to write poetry about something that doesn't truly inspire you. But there's something I wanted to talk about instead. My whole life, I've fought with a horde of monsters and demons that take over my brain and try to make things bad and make me do bad things, and for most of my life, I've let them win. (That's why I chose the screen name I use on most of the internet, by the way. It's my reminder to fight.) For the past several years, I've hated myself for this. I've felt like I have to fight, but I've never felt I had something worth fighting for, so I've never fought. For a while, the demons went away, like they do sometimes, and like always, they're coming back now. But recently, I've found reasons to fight--I've found things worth living for. For a while, I was truly happy, in a way that made my chest hurt--in a good way. So now I've got a fighting tactic that I'm going to try, and so far it's working: Every time the demons make an appearance in my day, I think of all the things I have to live for. And so here is a list I'm going to share with you of some of the things that have made me happy.

• Two of my favorite novels are being made into movies.
• Both of those novels are novels I've WANTED to see as movies (one was a movie, but I've been itching for a more modern version).
• So far, neither of these movies seem to suck.
• I have a group of friends that love me as much as I love them, for the first time.
• Matt has forgiven me completely and totally.
• It's like I'm falling in love for the first time all over again, except this time I'm less scared.
• I still have my books. No matter what, my fictional worlds are still there.
• I've finally found the place where I belong.

Playing catch-up?

So, I got a few days behind on the poetry challenge thing, and essentially it all comes down to excitement about The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Great Gatsby, and yeah, let's be honest, laziness. But no matter! I don't give up. So I'm still doing this. And so you get this post full of three whole poems! Lucky you!

***

Day four: Write a haiku about anything.

Listen to your words,
Like the wind across the sea-
Whispering softly.

***

Day five: Write a three line poem about lemons without using the following words: lemon, yellow, round, fruit, citrus, tart, juicy, peel, and sour.

A wedge in my water

That adds that little kick necessary

To be flavored, but not quite lemonade.

***

Day six: Write a poem of any length incorporating every word from your latest Facebook status.

I've never been a fan of the movies

Rarely have I lined up at midnight

To see the latest films on the big screen

But this is the year of my favorite stories coming to life

Already I've seen two trailers

Beautiful sets, brilliant castings

Two novels, both life-changing,

Are being made real

So far, they've made great impressions

Have kept the spirit and themes alive

Twice this year I'll be heading into a theater at midnight

And I absolutely cannot wait.

***

I apologize that these were exceptionally bad, but brilliant author and my spirit animal Maureen Johnson once said that writers have to allow themselves to suck before they become good, so hopefully this means I'm on the road to becoming good.

When things don't come out the way they sound in your head.

Day three of this poetry challenge thing calls for a poem using the first ten words on page eight of the book nearest to me, used any way anywhere in the poem.
The book nearest me: City of Lost Souls, by Cassandra Clare.
My words: "storm was in full bloom rain streaking the windows like"

Late winter storm
Spattering rain down on the world
Birds hop through puddles
Raindrops streaking down the windows
Falling, quickly reforming together
Racing like cars to finish last

The best view is mine
From the back porch
Wishing the lightening would strike me dead
My family calls me in
Saying I'll catch a cold
But that isn't what worries me

Remember that storms bring seasons
That after this, spring will come in full bloom
Better even than it was last year
April showers bring May flowers-
The worst of this world creates the best.

I'm so sorry you read that.

Jour deux.

Poetry challenge thing day two: Who was the last person you texted? Write a five line poem to that person.

I didn't want this to be about you,
But I guess there isn't anything I can do.
Thank you so much for the person you are,
And for never wandering away too far,
And no matter what happens, I'll always love you.

I hate rhyme yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Poetry challenge thing.

So I found this 30 day poetry challenge day, and with the start of a new writing channel I'm sharing with six friends, I thought it might be appropriate to give it a try this month.

Day 1: Write a poem where each line starts with a letter from your first name (an acrostic). It can be about anything, but it should not be about you or your name.

Maybe we were wrong, but then again
It's impossible to judge just yet. Our
Reckless tendencies led us to never once
Ask, is this okay? Will this work?
No, we learned, at least not now, and yet I'll be
Damned if I haven't fallen so low as to write bad poetry,
And yet I find it impossible to care.

So this is a thing.

This is like the fourth blog I've made on here. I'm bad at blogging, but I'm going to try to use this as a place to keep things I write and stuff, since my laptop exploded and I have none of those files anymore. Super happy about that.

Anyway, my name is Miranda, I'm 17, I like to do stuff that interests me (context is everything). I'm a Nerdfighter and FIRST-er and avid fangirl and that's pretty much it.

Okay. This has been awkward.