Hopeless

It was inevitable; the natural decline of love and warmth in his heart has been apparent since he was young. I noticed his resolve falter and continue to fade when I took him under my wing after his parents’ death. It wasn’t murder or anything, nothing like that. They didn’t have their lives taken away from them. I wish I could say their deaths were due to old age or some lethal disease, no- their deaths weren’t the result natural causes. Imagine you were sitting on the floor in your living room that overlooked the kitchen, playing with your various toys just as you would any other day. But something is different. There’s no music playing over the speakers and there are no delicious smells floating throughout the house, causing your stomach to growl. And when you walk downstairs, your parents are crying and holding hands, which is weird because daddy rarely ever comes out of his office anymore. Watching the only family you know point pistols at each other and end everything would fuck anyone up, not to mention an eight year old kid. I was the one he ran to when he knew of nowhere else to go and now, ten years later, I’m nothing more than an object to him- one that he feels belongs to him, one he has no problem hurting.

            I knew his parents were going to do it, I just didn’t think they would do it in front of their only child. Did they even think about the repercussions? Did it even cross their minds that by committing a double suicide with their eight year old son present, they were planting in his mind the idea that he could end his life just as easily as they ended their own? Far too impressionable for his own good, I knew Dallas was always struggling with his parents’ death. I always had a feeling, ever since the beginning that he would one day do something he couldn’t take back. He was going to do something he regretted. I bet his parents didn’t think that by ending each other, they were also murdering their son. I wasn’t able to properly protect him from all the things I knew were tearing him apart and I was always at war with myself; I never knew whether I should give him space and let him forge his own path or give him some direction, something to believe in. I didn’t know, still don’t, how to give him something to believe in when I have no idea what I have left to believe in myself.

I’ve always known Dallas was different, always had a feeling he was special and in all honesty, he scares the hell out of me. He has these gray-violet eyes that seem to see right through you and you can tell by one glance in his direction that he is constantly thinking; always seeking out what he thinks is missing. I know he has some sort of notebook but he keeps it well hidden, like he keeps most things. It’s as if he believes if he reveals anything about himself he will lose grip on that which holds him together. 

If I could go back in time and right all the wrongs in his life, I would in an instant. I would sacrifice myself in the most literal sense of the word if that meant he would be happy and lead a normal life. I remember so vividly the night I asked him what he thought of himself. I can conjure up the whole conversation in my mind; I can picture his lips move as he told me that he thought, no, he knew he was nothing more than the product of savages who ended each other and left him behind. Such insightful and broken words coming from a ten year old. Too young to have gone through what he went through and too fragile to deal with it properly.

When he was younger, I used to go into his room and find these horrible drawings; on those pages I found guns and puddles of blood and blue, limp bodies laying in those puddles. I never confronted him about it; that’s how it was with us- we never shared anything with one another other than a casual conversation here and there. More than anything I wish I never let the space between us grow so big that it threatened to eat us up.  Sometimes the emptiness in his eyes is too much for me to take.

But tonight, that emptiness threatens to tear him apart. I can see it in the way he walks and in his facial expressions. I can hear it in every breath he takes and I can feel it with every fiber of my being. I know it’s a bad idea to ask him if anything is bothering him, but I’ve never been one to suppress my curiosity. I know he’s done something horrible, irreversible. And all I can do is convince him that everything will be okay. How could I instill such hope but be left with none of my own?

Quotes to Live By

The following quotes are actually lyrics from my favorite artist, City and Colour.
"And finally i'll say it with love, I hope you're at rest in the stars above"

"You need not to find a cure for everything that makes you weak."

Better Late than Never

"Crystal, how long have we been sitting here? I can't feel my face."
I looked down at my watch. We have been sitting here for three hours. Three fucking hours. What the hell is taking Damien so long?
"Just be patient, he'll be here. He wouldn't bail on us last minute," I hoped.
"This wouldn't suck so much if it weren't negative 50 degrees out."
"Oh don't be dramatic, Joey! The worst part is the wind. We shouldn't have to wait much longer."
I was worried. Damien isn't one to be late for things like this. He knows what is at stake and I can't believe he's putting everything in jeopardy. He is risking losing all of the progress we've made. I knew I made a mistake trusting him.
As that thought crossed my mind, I instantly regretted it. He's done more than enough to earn my trust. He saved my life, for Christ's sake. He would be here if he could be, something must have come up. I need to convince myself that something came up and that we wouldn't die here.

The Lilypad

La Grenouillere

I stand there I admire the beauty of this scene

What else am I supposed to do? I can't tear my eyes away
from the ripples in the pond and the intricate designs carved into the wood of the boats
I could go for a swim and have a laugh with my neighbors
I would much rather gaze from afar
The sun is shining bright and beating down on my exposed skin
Its days like these that make me miss how it used to be
When I didn't have to stand here alone because I had you by my side
But this will go on
Time won't cease just because you're gone

By the Seashore

How it got to be this late I have no clue

Somehow my drawing turned into a sketch of Poseidon

Perhaps I was daydreaming of the underworld, the forgotten city of Atlantis

All I envision as his trident stares me in the face are mermaids and seaweed

All I see are tedious lines connected by the promise of a whole outcome

If I were a fish I would never fear those who could end me at any moment

Why live in fear when I can breathe underwater?

Its easier for me to pretend that there is more to this world than us

than to act like what we see and know and hear is all there is

What about what we feel and hope?

 

The Meeting Spot

We had plans to meet here. We made it a tradition within the first few weeks we knew each other, when we were still learning all there was to know about another person. I wish we could go back to those weeks, those days where I started noticing how his laugh had turned into mine and how I had adopted all his little phrases and manuerisms. This type of thing is bound to happen when you spend every minute possible with another human being over a long period of time. I also started noticing how different we were from one another. Whereas I was too shy to tell the waiter when my order was wrong, he was the first one to let you know you’d made a mistake. I loved him for it but I also despised his bravery. I didn’t think it was fair that he had all this courage and I paled in comparison- a timid, insignificant half of our whole. I decided I was done waiting. Its been an hour, I thought to myself. He isn’t coming. As I walked home, my pace much slower than normal in hopes of running into him, I couldn’t help but dwell on why I even expected him to be there in the first place. The last time we talked wasn’t exactly what you would call a pleasant conversation. I kept telling myself to let it go all the way up until my doorstep, where I found flower petals leading to a note on my welcome mat.

Future

-I think it was really cool to learn that the art institutes hold career fairs where students can showcase their work while attending the art institutes and some of them even get job offers on the spot. It was also interesting how when you figure out your major, using graphic design as an example, your gen eds all revolve around your area of study.

 

-I would like to know how a lot of the software works.

 

-10 years from now, I hope to be traveling. Although I know that probably won’t happen, so I’ve been considering getting into social work.

 

Pillow Talk

 Sleeping never came easily for Jeremy. He knew that in order to work up to his full potential, he had to be well rested but that didn't make him like it any more. Jeremy always talked about how much of a waste sleeping is- he believed that humans would be much more productive if they didn’t spend half of their lives sleeping. “Imagine how much we could all get done in that amount of time!” he would always say. And I think that’s why he was always up so late- one of the reasons at least. His mind was always running. The first time I went into his room, the first thing I noticed was the ungodly amount of notebooks he had on his desk and floor. I asked him when he had time to write so much. “While most of you are sleeping, I’m concocting plans and ideas for the future. Not only mine, but yours as well, Lydia. If I could fall asleep easily, trust me I would.” The last thing I noticed when I left his room that day was how his pillow lay there, rumpled and bunched up, and obviously used very often.

Side Roads and Hoodie Weather

“There’s a car coming! Get out of the road, girls.” Reluctantly, Taylor and I made our way to the side of the road. As soon as no cars were in sight, we were back to skipping in the middle of the street, kicking up leaves and laughing hysterically over things only our 7 year old minds could find intriguing. It was Friday, which meant walking to the ice cream parlor with Papa. Our grandpa never missed walking us up to get an ice cream cone on his days off and he always got off work early on Fridays. Sometimes I miss when things were like this- before everyone moved away, drifted apart. Before everything changed for the worse. Those brisk, autumn days where kicking up leaves and going for walks with my family would never again be mine. I guess it’s inevitable, the automatic evolution of people and things and ideas and the unavoidable affect our influences have on our ways of thinking.