So, I quit Starbucks. I'm sure anyone who read my previous post saw it coming. I made a couple of good friends, put out a bunch of bad and good karma, but I have decided this year is going to be a very different year. One year ago today I was still pregnant, with the abortion pills sitting on my dresser, scared out of my mind. My mom held me through the madness, the pain. I've lost more than I wanted to and never really learned how to let it go the way I should've. I never put a period, I just create distractions. I turn the music up louder, I drown out the noise with sleep, I fish for compliments from nameless strangers. I let people borrow the hollow shell of my body...

"Every day trying to make up for the one before"

I'm going to bravely try to translate this into art.

The ache of 5 years, almost 6 of missing home, missing the person I thought I'd blossom into. Trying to find her again amongst these shattered pieces. Creativity takes bravery. The best authors and artists are ones that just don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks of their work. I'm going to fight to win myself back.

Since being rehired at Starbucks....

1. No one has told me how much I will be getting paid hourly. This is frustrating as hell because not only do I not know but I have asked several times and when I couldn't find a check, my mom gave me her bank acct info so not only do I have no idea what I'm making but I don't even know if I have ever get paid yet. I need to switched it.

2. Even though I'm just a rehire with a huge lack of training, people expect me to be a master of everything.

3. I don't even have a "food handler's card". I had one in Vegas for the longest. 

4. I feel like I'm drowning. 

It isn't the job. It isn't this place.

This story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear,
(This is the calm.)
Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath,
(We are the risen.)
I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea,
(After the storm.)
I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean,
(Rest in the deep.)
I know that this is what you want, a funeral keeps both of us apart.
(Washed up on the beach.)
You know that you are not alone, I need you like water in my lungs.

I wanted this to be real but we're just playing pretend because we need someone to lean on. I'm going to act out my part but disappear towards the ocean. This month is dark and I want to breathe in the salt. I want to sit on a cold beach. I can pretend I'm not an addict, hell this all was just a big joke. A long lie. My head spins with that song from high school (the artist in the ambulance... was that the ONLY Thrice song I ever liked?) I haven't been myself since I was 16. And every year that I get further away from her, I become more bitter. (What do I have to show except the promises I never kept?)

This isn't about Starbucks. This is about being finished with Arizona and wanting to leave it now, leave it alone, start over anywhere but here.

Missing home. Starting to feel the emptiness of this year, memories of decisions made, feelings spent. Settling for the safe. Craving the drugs. Restless and sober. Extremely restless. 

Working as a Starbucks barrista again. Its fun, the people who work at the store I've been refreshing my training with are awesome. They are sarcastic and silly and helped me make it through crappy days.

I miss my father.. I can't believe its been 3 years, 5 years since I lost my grandparents. A year since I chose a different path for my life; I feel like a ghost in my own skin.

How to Destroy Angels, "A Drowning".

I don't know how much longer I can act the part. 

More than 2 weeks away. This is for the better, arguably so, but I am aware.

Happy to be finished with this semester minus a few last details. I graduate in May with honors.

No idea what to do with my degree... don't really know where I want to go from here, but I want out of here as soon as possible. I have felt this kind of restless before. Nothing really solves it except for leaving.

I'm really sorry.

"Everything, everything ends."

I remember when winters felt remotely like winters, and so did autumns. I'm stuck in this place that has turned into my own personal hell; where every person wants to fuck me or fuck me over, where twists are not good parts of a plot line in a novel but another knife turn in my back. Where school work tides me over to the next week.

I wish I could graduate. I wish my lawsuit was over, I wish I could just get past this time in my life.

I go through these cycles I suppose; drug binges, hard work, bad health, amazing academics and achievements that people expect from a Dean's List student. To you it would mean everything, to me it feels meaningless. I read somewhere that someone once told a friend of mine that all anyone wants is, "to love, to be loved and to have a purpose". I want those things more than I ever have in my entire life. As I am coming closer to having to decide what to do next regarding my life, my education, where I am going to live- I am lost. I have no passion for anything any more; when I find something I love I do it to death and then its done. I go back to people who don't deserve me, who put me down and I wonder why. I buy fake hair (god I've spent so much fucking money on extensions in the last few years I could've gotten my own damn car by now) to make myself feel better when I'd probably just feel better if I dropped some damn weight. Or maybe if I stopped wishing so hard to find movie-like love, or maybe if I stopped thinking I'll never ever find it. But here I am, its 5am the morning I have two big exams and I'm not ready.

I need a break. I need some rest. But I have to take care of my mother, I have to finish my senior year, I have to have to have to have to. There's always something I should be doing. It makes me hate my life. I don't really appreciate anything any more. 

Sometimes I throw on the show Intervention and think: these people have NO IDEA how lucky they are that they have family that loves them so much and a tv show to pay for rehab and the ability of others to function without them. 

I think I realized the reason I keep stalling on grad school is that I don't really have it in me to do this any more. I need help.

I hold my own head underwater and wonder why its hard to breathe.

when the morning came I rose
staring at your long outline
tracing lines across the lettering
contemplating my own crime
as I stared at your soft skin
letters spelling out your name
and as you moved in the sunlight
I knew I'd never be the same
as you carried me, so heavy
from the weight of our desires
we never reached the shore line
we just started our own fires
burning with out cause
with out a reason
or a rhyme
you held my heart inside your palm
and never lost the time

after a lustful, unhealthy encounter with Luke, he took me out to lunch for a serious conversation. Though I lost my feelings for him long ago, though I can see the narcissistic egotistical asshole he is, the fact that he's already been on a couple of dates made me feel like a fish being gutted. He's not sure that we'd ever fix "us"; neither was I, but because I can't have that, its what I t.

what did I do? I met a random guy off of craigslist who didn't want anything but to hang out with me. He took me over to his brother's house and then to his and I snorted more coke than I've ever done in my entire life after four years of not touching the stuff, all for free. The guy was sweet and a gentleman and all I had to do was be there and enjoy myself. Today I'm paying for it with my entire body feeling like death. I can't tell if its simply the physical ramifications of last night or the mixture of that with severe emotional pain. 

so fuck you, and your untouchable face and fuck you for existing in the first place.

but when we get tangled together and the only thing I can see is you, it doesn't seem like the world exists either. We instantly have this magnetism that draws us fiercely to each other if we get too close. 

I'm just gonna get my feet wet until I drown.

I almost feel like forcing myself to stay up, forcing myself out of my bed to create something beautiful-- or tragic.

I'm queen of my own compost heap but I'm getting used to the smell.

I'm in an Ani mood and want to force myself to get up and paint something, but I'm fighting my body. Fighting my hurting insides. Fighting myself, same as always.

you know there's no escape and no excuse.

and the history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us... the bible didn't mention us, not even once.

In the purest corners of my heart I'm still just 18 years old, sitting on the edge of a tiny man-made pond, listening to this song and I can smell the grass, I can hear the birds splashing quietly in the shallow waters. I can see the road that curves around to Lazy River drive. I can see the two story house, the only two story house I've ever lived in. I can see you delicately laid out on my bed, skin so pale the blue veins pumping life through you were easy to see. 

you are were my sweetest downfall. I loved you first.

In that room we both were a little bit more innocent than we wanted to admit. I can remember your lips on my skin, the smell of your clothes, the way I used to dream of our own house one day. What I never knew was it was in that room that we began to build our own house of cards... and one by one age would blow a gusty wind of painful truths to knock it down. 

Now even though I try several times a year, I have to push to even hear your voice for a second on the phone. Sometimes I do try my best and push, push with everything I have left even though it isn't much, and those 31 seconds become an eternity of "how did we get here?" 

I miss the quiet places inside of myself that you replaced with loud noise all those years ago.

this will be my last confession; I love you never felt like any blessing- whispering like it's a secret only to condem the one who hears it with a heavy heart.

Split me in two; like an old piece of wood I feel splintered and this humidity is making my pain swell just to spill over my edges. I've been trying to run until my legs feel like battery acid, trying to burn you out of my memory. I sink further into myself, my guilt, my anger. I pull you closer just to taste the blood in my mouth [who is the betrayer? who's the killer in the crowd? The one who creeps in corridors and doesn't make a sound... my love has concrete feet, my love's an iron ball] 

The sky has been grey for days and I just need to find some time alone inside myself. I can't find peace, only sharper shards of this broken mirror to drag across my porcelain skin again. It doesn't feel like enough, it doesn't feel like I can breathe, but I'll make that call, I'll take that drive, I'll let your hands search my body for the missing pieces that we both can't find.

I can bend my will but I have no will to bend; I just wish I could break.