This is me.
This is some stuff I've written.
I’ve been thinking about virginity
and how much I hate the question, “when did you lose it?” Because my virginity (if I must acknowledge it as existing at all) is not something I left absentmindedly on an old desk to be buried over time under this and that and the other, forgotten. Misplaced. Because the word “lost” seems to imply that this was something I didn’t care enough about to keep track of. It also implies that this is now a part of me that is missing, that I might still be rifling through piles of other neglected items, hoping to come across it again.
You see, if anything I grew out of it, the barrier between me and my partner that prevented me from feeling comfortable enough to introduce another person’s body parts into the equation. I grew curious about this sensation that had until then been alien to me. If I really must talk about virginity as something that exists at all, I’d rather it be seen as a part of myself that I stepped away from and set aside - a bit timid, a bit bold, mostly curious. I tenderly folded it up and walked away when I decided that I wanted to better understand my body and how it works with other bodies, and wanted other people to explore my body too. Nothing was lost. It was knowledge that I gained, not shame. My sense of self worth, my self respect, those things were not sucked into some big black void in my heart where PURITY used to lie.
So when someone asks me when I “lost” it, I will tell them that the first time I had sex, I was so and so years old. But, it wasn’t nearly as transformative as the first time I (perhaps a year or so later) had an orgasm from my partner performing oral sex. Because that’s the thing about virginity. It isn’t the end all be all, a state of being in which on one side a person remains innocent and untouched, while on the other they emerge as a truly sexual being. Sex doesn’t make sense right away, or even after a year, or after many years. Sexuality is personal, and it’s a process. If I am to acknowledge virginity, I will talk about it as I experienced it, as the point in time when I decided I was ready to let other people’s bodies interact with mine in a more intimate way. I will also continue to point out the fact that it’s a harmful idea. I was, after all, sexually active before I “lost” it; this was just moving up another rung on the very long ladder we all have to climb to truly understand our bodies. It was neither a beginning nor an end but rather a very normal summer day in my youth, after which I did not feel like a new person, like I was better or worse than anyone else, like I actually ~got it~ yet. I was however a little bit sore and a little bit intrigued.
Hopefully I’ll be going to bed a little bit sore and a little bit intrigued for many many more nights, for the rest of my life. Because sex to me was never about losing something. It’s about growing. It’s unique to each of us. It doesn’t begin with penetration and always end with gratification (as so many sources in my childhood had led me to believe). And I’m sick of how that ordinary day all those years ago (that ordinary act) is used for others to confirm certain ideas about me. You can keep my virginity! As far as I’m concerned, it was never really there to begin with.
Sunday Apr 4 @ 04:14pmI only fall for the type of people who make my teeth ache.
She’s beautiful in a soft-focus kind of way, the type of face a camera loves whether it’s layered in makeup or bleary from just waking up. Her fingers are long and they can turn a blank page into something miraculous but worrying will forever be her favorite hobby, brows furrowed lips pouted eyes looking out but not seeing what surrounds her. A dream girl, dreamy girl, she contradicts herself constantly by claiming such hollow shoulders could never hold the kind of love we talk about late at night, with words slurring over wine clumsy tongues. She adores but never quite enough, she waits to be adored and it comes at her in waterfalls but it’s never quite enough. One day she’ll fall in love and those fierce brows will unknit a little. She’s uncouth and needy and desperate and kind, but she’s not mine. She wallows in her discontent. Those porcelain lips will part in heated breath for the chance to kiss somebody’s neck, but it won’t be mine.
Sunday Apr 4 @ 10:27pmHeartbreak can fuck you up for a long time and I’m still not sure whether it’s appropriate to apologize or just quietly walk away.
There are two options: you start noticing those minuscule details, like the mostly invisible hairs between his eyebrows or the way his mouth hangs open in his sleep or what he does with his hands when meeting new people - and you start to fall in love with them because they’re his and his alone, or you start to resent them because there’s not enough left in you to love anything at all. And you can try, surely, give it a right good go. But if you only want to kiss his nose after three glasses of wine then it must be admitted that something is still missing.
The nice bits dropped out of me so long ago. I hurt everyone I touch.
Tuesday Mar 3 @ 07:59pmI used to think the devil lived inside my shadow but now I know that I’m my own worst nightmare.
It started when I was very little, maybe seven or eight years old. Triggered by the news, of all things, a story that happened to be playing on the television as I walked past the living room, detailing some “unidentified illness” that had struck down a couple of local citizens. My parents didn’t realize I was standing there, peering around the corner with eyes as big as saucers, little heart learning for the first time how to pound in horror at the unknown. That the night terrors which for years would wake me mid-scream, shaking so hard that the rattle of my baby bones could surely be heard for miles, was the product of some random and inconsequential news story.
“Whats wrong?” they’d ask, eyes drooping with exhaustion as they held my vibrating hands. “What are you so afraid of?”
I could only ever respond with a slew of I-Don’t-Know’s and Please-Don’t-Go’s as they sat uncomplaining till I fell back into fitful sleep.
A two minute blurb on the tv changed me entirely. Before, I was fearless. An invincible child (as all children lucky enough to grow up innocent believe themselves to be) and no tree was too high to climb, no stream too dirty to drink from, the ground and the sky and my little growing body all existing in blissful unison. Safe.
Until the darkness rolled in like glass shattered over my happy head and where once I’d perceived not a hair’s worth of danger, suddenly there glowed death in every nook and cranny of my world. I retreated into myself, I laughed less and talked less and would be sent into a shaking fit of terror just at the sight of a dark speck in my oatmeal. An eight year old’s primary characteristic should never be paranoia, and yet - at night the fear made me physically sick, my stomach pushing out whatever illness bearing particles I might have unknowingly consumed that day. The fear was an illness I could trust, because at least it was mine, under my control, vomit induced by ideas instead of a virus.
In a lot of ways I died that year. Looking back, it’s a distinct point at which the color of my childhood fades. Senses became duller, my only clear memories those of unadulterated terror at nothing and everything at once. There was no logic behind it. My immediate family, myself included, never suffered from any serious physical illness. I scraped my knees and chipped a few teeth, but there wasn’t even a broken bone to shock my system. Just a two minute news story and my imagination to turn me into a shell of a child. And because I lived so entirely in my own head, no one ever knew. My parents saw some if it, of course, but had they perceived how deeply and completely paranoia controlled my life I’d have been in a psychiatrist’s office faster than you can say “mental illness.” It was a problem deeper than they alone could fix, and thus deep enough that they barely caught a flicker of it.
So it goes, I guess.
Yet despite my ever jack-rabbiting heart (which still beats half the time like the grim reaper himself is breathing down my neck, even when I’m calm) I grew up relatively healthy and relatively strong and I taught myself with no small amount of trepidation that I’d continue to survive without constantly and meticulously washing my hands.
This is a story I’ve never told.
Partially because how can one truly explain living every minute for almost a decade in unadulterated terror, carefully hidden because I could not discern its source? And partially because fear had become so much a part of me that I was unable to recognize it for what it was - an uncommon and unwelcome guest.
So then why, now, after all these years, is it something I can finally talk about? Maybe because I’ve learned to use public restrooms without feeling the need to cover every inch of the stall in toilet paper or because I’m completely okay now with eating finger food despite dirt under my nails. Because water marks on people’s glassware no longer make me balk and if someone coughs near me I no longer have to physically restrain my terror. And they’re little things, I know, but I’m proud all the same.
It’s more than that though. Maybe I’m finally talking because I realize that I grew up feeling so fucking fragile - for no realistic reason - and it pisses me off. I prematurely threw away the gift of a carefree childhood because fear was so much easier to give in to. Because of course I was fragile, we’re all fragile! But the possibility of the unknown shouldn’t keep us from life the way it did to me. For ages I suffocated myself under the weight of a million what-ifs. Even now, after digging myself out of so much of it, each unexplained twinge or pain or wave of nausea sends me into a fit of silent, internalized hysteria. Underneath the composed exterior lies the terrified little girl sitting up at 2am screaming SAVE ME SAVE ME SAVE ME!
From what?
From dying before I’ve had a chance to live. And that’s the biggest joke of all. I felt a need to leave my name carved however faintly in the infinite history of humanity. Even at eight years old, I was terrified of being forgotten.
So I travel ferociously, eating through cities like a ten dollar all-you-can-eat buffet, trying out every taste and smell and texture, every landscape. Constantly looking for a way to leave myself behind and wearing myself out in the process. Throttling my own fear without remorse, sometimes letting it get the best of me. There are days I can’t get out of bed. There are other days when nothing can stop me.
But for the first time in over a decade, this hated companion, the black hole that sucked up so much of myself so easily, is finally something I can see. I can stare it back in the face and while occasionally I blink first, more and more often I’ve been winning. There’s nothing to fear but fear itself, right?
It’s an acquired taste but I’ve learned to start swallowing my terror. And I guess that’s progress.
Monday Mar 3 @ 05:30pmOn being an American abroad -
In our discussion of the modern American novel, American identity, and the fascination with a post-apocalyptic world, my professor asked me an interesting question. Have you, since coming to the UK, experienced much (if any) anti-American sentiment? He posed this question after explaining how, during the Bush administration, the university had to avoid advertising American studies courses or putting up US flags for fear they would be burned. I stuttered a little bit, trying to think of any incidents in which someone responded to me negatively. What I ended up saying was that it’s a hard question to answer really, because in a lot of ways I’m actually quite anti-American. Keep in mind, this is during a discussion in which the hypocrisy of our nation, as well as the horror of our current political culture (interestingly, all of the UK students seemed pretty damn up to date on American politics and the stances of the Republican candidates, and shared that sense of horror regarding the lunacy of it all) so I was feeling a little less than proud of where I had come from. Actually, I felt pretty sick. I’m more aware here of how my country is perceived from the outside, how other nations are skeptical of our politics and policies, how it can be easy to view the US as a big and often unfair bully. I’m also aware of other’s perceptions of the American dream. How it is still alive in some ways, floating through the subconscious of our fellow societies; how it has lost, in many cases, its shiny tint in lieu of a more clouded and worrisome image.
Here’s the thing though - while I could go on for ages about the atrocities of America’s past and present and my embarrassment at being part of such a backwards nation, being away from home has instilled in me, for the first time, a sense of my unquestionable American-ness. Having never lived anywhere but the US for more than about a month, and even then having been surrounded by other US citizens, I’d never quite realized how much a product of my environment I am. Where I grew up, the language I speak, social interactions, personal ideals, the food I’ve come to view as common or “normal,” even the shape and texture of the terrain that surrounded me throughout my life feel entirely, unequivocally, irreversibly American. I couldn’t shake those things out of me if I wanted to, and consequently I can’t shake this newfound (though ever present) sense of identity. In a way there is a sort of pride there, buried under the guilt and the anger and the sadness that’s come from watching the US interact with the rest of the world throughout history, but a pride nonetheless. For the first time in my life, I’m not claiming to be Polish and Russian and British but rather to be from Baltimore. Natty Boh, Ravens, Domino Sugar, blue crabs. The swingset in my backyard. Hampden at christmastime. Working at a store that only exists on the east and west coasts. I come from somewhere, I have a home after all. It’s a feeling that’s alien to me, the girl who couldn’t stay in the country for more than six months at a time, the girl who never truly identified as American despite her citizenship because she had only seen so little of the rest of the world.
I am, in fact, an American through and through, and it’s a new idea to struggle with. Having been in such a different environment, even just for five weeks, it’s clear that where I come from is stamped all over me. I could get used to living as part of a different culture, sure, but the society I come from will always be a part of me. It shaped me. And so yes, while in many ways I am anti-American and I do reject and abhor so much of what happens within the nation, I am also now coming to terms with the fact that it is my nation. It’s an idea that doesn’t sit easily with me, that in many ways I still want to reject. But it’s interesting too, that half a world away I’ve recognized “home” in the place where I grew up, I’ve recognized my environment as a part of myself, and I understand finally the pride that comes from belonging somewhere, even if it’s a somewhere you can’t always be proud of.
I’m still trying to learn how to reconcile the hatred and the love for the place where I was born, and it’s a new experience entirely. The world is still a really big place, and I’m only just starting to understand who I am amongst it all.
Tuesday Feb 2 @ 10:25amWe talked about Los Angeles as Sodom and Gomorrah, we talked about how everything burns as I spilled coffee all over my pants and cursed a little too loudly and sat shaking from the inside out, stomach heaving and boiling as my legs jiggled wildly just to keep me from jumping out of my chair. I said too much about disenfranchised youth because I just can’t help it, because everything I read makes me sick and sad and I have to get my opinions out before someone else talks over me, even though we’re all trying to say the same damn things anyway. I keep staring at myself in the mirror and the person I see is not who I picture in my head. I’m sick of my skin, back to hating everything but the nose because for some reason it’s the only part of my body that ever made sense to me. I keep repeating in my head, “stick to your guns girl” because a month ago I was so sure of myself and now I can’t even get dressed in the morning. It’s a symptom of change I guess. Everything burns. I’m burping up smoke and caffeine, I’m drugged and lost and dreary and I stayed out too late last night to dance alone on broken glass, new friends coming and going with arms waving freely but nobody ever meeting anyone’s eyes. Coffee talk. I look down at my hands and they’re so familiar I want to cry. I keep thinking about that one time I was so high that the memory of California made me throw up, because deserts and highways just have that effect on me. Nothing is familiar. I miss myself.
Tuesday Feb 2 @ 09:21amas we stood in the kitchen sipping english breakfast tea in a vain attempt to sober up, she asked if we could listen to This American Life in bed while we fell asleep and my heart nearly stopped from being so in love. when I woke up this morning the view through the window was bleak. we sat and watched snowflakes flurry over the roofs of houses. my throat hurt something awful, from yelling in loud bars I told her, but the walk home and the slippery cobblestones and the fog ‘round my head confirmed this was more than a hangover. sick but not sad. she always makes me eat breakfast before I leave, sitting cross legged on the kitchen counter because the house doesn’t have a table. anyway. I slid my way home and got lost in the city streets, and through the snow I saw people so infrequently that I sometimes got the feeling that the world had stopped, everyone frozen inside of their houses, hands poised in place, eternally pouring milk into tea or patting a faithful dog. snowflakes wetly dribbled down, blowing back and forth before finally finding the ground in all their cold confusion. down the hill, through one park then another, and just as I reached the gate with a sign reading ‘Prifysgol’ a bell tolled once. the city moaned and breathed with me. you forget about time here, the tick tocking of twenty four hour days, because with each step you can feel the centuries in your knees. maybe it’s just the sickness talking. maybe it’s just the gray clouds and my fuzzy head. but I’ve never felt so small or alone or vast or awed as I do in this place. trapped in its timelessness, stumbling forward through history. these tiny perfect moments frozen too like snapshots lovingly placed into my own personal record book. this morning she smiled and I took a photograph of our view from the bed. for safekeeping, I told her. so we never forget.
Saturday Feb 2 @ 01:59pmMy hands get stuck tracing the outline of your jaw, over and over and over and over again till it’s recorded in the spaces of my fingerprints, till I can remember better than my eyes would let me. I note the shape of your lips (as if they were mine), as if I ever had a chance at keeping them. I can’t stand it I can’t stand you but please, please, I need your breath against my cheek tonight.
Sunday Jan 1 @ 12:04amNew Years Eve was always so anticlimactic anyway;
two thousand and eleven is only a number that makes sense because we make it make sense. Years months weeks three hundred and sixty-five calendar days, twenty four hours, who’s counting? This morning the sun rose and peeked through the open blinds of the window next to my bed, old bed, okay kind of new, new room, bedroom number eight or nine. But the point is the sun rose just the same even though my view was different, and tomorrow it will rise just the same too. I could make a new years resolution, but my new years aren’t measured by dates. Every broken bone or time I cry or change my style. When I learned to drink coffee, when I learned to use a lighter. When I decided to leave the country for a while. Every new bedroom. Maybe tonight is an excuse to get drunk and kiss someone, but I think there are reasons to do that every night if you want to. Tonight I won’t lie and say that I’m celebrating some new beginning. Every week I shed a layer of myself and leave it hanging on a tree or street corner or on the edge of a rumpled bed. I’m not going to eat better or drink less or go to the gym more just because the calendar says it’s going to be two thousand and twelve. I’ll measure my own years by the places I lay my tired young body down. By the people I fall in and out of love with. Soon it’ll be on to bedroom nine or ten, but. Who’s really counting? We grow up staggering, the years can’t count time better than our bruises do.
Saturday Dec 12 @ 10:54amIt hit me while I was sitting in the library reading Gregory Corso’s poetry out loud and contemplating marriage - that what I really wanted was to stand up, walk away, and come home to someone I could touch. A body in my body on my body, I mean get naked and get close because we realize that it’s hard being a person sometimes. I want to unload my heavy head and enjoy the camaraderie of the young and terrified, confused and fucked up, the people my parents warned me about becoming. There is something so necessary about hiding under sheets and getting eyelashes tangled with someone else’s just because we can. Not for the sake of love or passion or even orgasms, just a closeness that keeps me warmer than whiskey and feeling nowhere near as alone. I will crawl all over you, I will eat you alive, I don’t need anything as much as I need skin on my shivering skin and that’s a fact.
Monday Dec 12 @ 11:56pmThe only real goals I have for my future are to get (something anything) published (anywhere), get drunk in as many countries as possible, and be a nude art model.
Wednesday Dec 12 @ 03:41pmYou called about a shooting star and I realized it’s been about a month since I last heard your voice, almost a year since you came over with a blanket and some sandwiches and those easy happy kisses. I realized how lucky I was then, how glad I am to have you in my life. We maybe don’t need wishes on stars when we have friends who’ve saved our souls more than a few times.
Sunday Dec 12 @ 01:06amAnonymous asked: how do you deal with heartbreak?
My heart has only really been broken once. I cried, and my knees stopped working, and my body hurt. I spent a lot of time sobbing, hating myself, hating the person who had hurt me, missing him, wishing I was dead, and watching Buffy. I wrote a lot of awful, awful, aaawful poetry. I screamed. I made stupid crafts with friends. I threw up, I slept all day. Everyone does this differently. It’s the part where every inch of you hurts enough that you can’t do anything but feel it.
Eventually something changed. I decided I wouldn’t let him win and I went out of my way to pretend I was happy. There are more pictures of me laughing from that summer than I think have ever been taken of me. And most of the time it wasn’t real, but my momma always said, fake it till you make it. Eventually my chest hurt a little less in the mornings. I found other things to look forward to. I traveled, I kissed people I didn’t know. I think the important thing to remember is when you hurt that bad, it won’t just leave you. Hold onto it, let it sit with you - grow around it. Maybe you’ll never feel the same… I sure don’t. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing though. It took time and tears and support from friends I hadn’t realized could love me so much. Time, most of all.
Everything takes so much damn time.
Monday Nov 11 @ 11:44pmthe nighttime is our secret, as if when the sun goes down we’re able to slip off unnoticed into each other’s lives. hiding together. shaking caffeine hands keep us up, heartbeats jumping this and that way, nobody has to know what happens between these 3am sheets. days will roll into each other, nights we’ll roll into each other, and when the sun peeks through my open curtains we’ll roll apart again.
Monday Nov 11 @ 11:23pmSorting through stuff from my old bedroom in my parent’s house, found some journals -
“I’m 14 years old, and I’ll live for at least a thousand more.”
oh, kid.
Saturday Nov 11 @ 11:37am