Every second of every day since the first time that I came in contact with that electricity that shocked my eyes wide open and my heart skip a beat, I have been counting. I tried to clear my mind and think of other things, productive ones. Sane ones. But still you are like the squeeky floor bords waking me up in my sleep. Squeek squeek squeek.

Those windows on your face are reflecting little rays of sunlight into my eyes. And my whole world is instantly illuminated. And suddenly it's all I can do to keep from crying. Because its you and your sun and your electricity bouncing through my mind. Bobbing and weaving through the negative thoughts a feelings surfacing on the top. Above all else.

But I know that reason says I need to let it go. I need to let you go. But I don't want you to go. "I want you to stay." You want me to stay. But I should've gone. Away, away. But there I laid like a dog in the sunlight pointing my belly at the sky hoping to soak up some of your light. Because even if for a while, even if just for a while, that sunlight reflecting off of me was mine.

And in the way you look I hope you can feel it to. But it took all you could manage to keep from talking about that viscous conscience that's ripping you apart. And even all that you could wasn't good enough. Thoughts and feelings bubbling up, shoving my inadequecies into my face like a pool of blood. Oozing out of my emotional center pooling on the floor at your feet. As I hoped one day you'd soon be using those words about me.

But you wont. Because you've already got a subject to desire. To obesess. And her sunlight is boring through those windows and into your soul, melting into me.

It's not jealousy. Jealousy would require me to want. Its nothing that I want. Its a nothing that I wish I did. And it makes me sad to see someone else getting it, and doing the things that I wish that I could myself do. But I can't, because I'm not made in a way that allows me to do such things. And as such I have no reason to care other than the sake of caring. And I'll tell myself that I don't, because when it comes down to what it is and what it means I don't. But I do care because it's something that I can't acheive. So what is that? Envy? Or is that the same thing as jealousy?
I find my heart wishing I could do something differently or want things differently or try things in a new way, but here I am. Still trying to figure out why I dont feel like I can do anything right. Wondering what I did wrong and why the happiness of someone else for a thing I never wanted in the first place is something that breaks my heart.
Perhaps dishonesty is the root of this confusion. I am being dishonest with myself and everything that goes along with that. There was once a part of me that wanted something different than the something that I have. But that something that I've lost I had reliquenshed when it was gone, and accepted this loss as something that could never be found again.
But still as if it were a lost limb blown off in a war of love, or passion, or indifference, I still feel the phantom flinch. Willing something to move only to find that it no longer exists. A phantom itch for someone thats been severed a time ago. An itch that even if I were able to scratch, wouldn't satisfy the feeling of something being gone. The void of something lost that I didn't know I had to begin with.

Something

Theres a feeling that I get. It's when someone pays attention to me, the look on their face when they're looking at me. It makes me uncomfortable to look back and see all the things that I'm feeling reflected back. At me. But in the form of someone else's expressions. And I feel lost, and warm, and nervous. And my body starts to get sweaty, but not in the normal ways that bodies start to get sweaty. Near my butt, and under my neck. Sweat just pools. Because I'm so nervous about the way they're looking. Because they're looking at me. And I'm standing there trying really hard to look back in some way that could possibly equal the response they're getting in me. But I can't. My mouth doesn't contort the direction I want it to, its maintaining it's natural flatline. Making the time of death of every romantic encounter the instance of first contact. Eye contact. And I can't bear to look up again because I can feel their gaze boring a hole into the side of my face, the back of my thigh, the top of my breast. It burns. It's hollowing me out.
And it's not that I want to make something of this. These glances and hollowing stares. I don't want to take them home and into my bed. I don't want them to know how I smell when I wake up in the morning or know the feelings that live in my head. I don't want them to know me the way I know nobody knows myself.
But I want someone to feel that I'm there. The way I can feel them there. Staring, and hollowing. For one second. Just long enough to be able to say that somebody felt me. Just long enough for someone to know the feeling of me feeling them there.

i need space. i need space in this big vastness of space that we're in. the entire universe and i feel like we're too close together. just sitting in this room. its too close. feet aren't enough. i need miles, countries, lightyears. i cant get enough space. space. spay aced. i miss when i felt like there was too much room. that i couldn't get close enough. to anywhere to anyone. and now all i want is space. emptiness. i crave that feeling of simplicity. but im happy where im at. im content. and confused i dont know what i want. i think i know i want to be wanted but dont want to be needed. around. and what if i get what i think i want? im never prepared for that the uncertainty and sinking feeling of terror when i get everything i want. what do i do then, once all my fantasies have been fullfilled? i'll have nothing left. i have nothing left. and everything. its just like a fly to ruin a nice glass of water. when you weren't thirsty anyway.

Im emptying out my head, to try to find that pure emptiness. The purest of happiness and happy words to be said and be heard. I'm trying to get it all out, all the gunk and the junk thats just cluttered inside. Spring cleaning. Me cleaning. For the new season. A new chapter in my life. With healthy thoughts and healthy living. But i know that I can't help it. All things come at a thought, with baggage and dust. And again my things will begin to collect. At the front of my brain pulling me foreward into this new demension of reality. Adulthood. Where I can't see straight, but my thoughts all feel clear. Shiny and new. Glistening. And I can touch them, and feel them. And finally have the time and the energy to find all those words that backed up. Down my throat. Preventing any easy breath. Any any breath. Now they're all pouring out and I'm seeing them now. How I've grown, my undeniable change. But I'm still me. More me than me ever was. And I'm grateful. For this small bit of sanity that I've bit off of reality.

I am DEAD

I hear sirens going off in my head. A lot of deep hitting sirens.
I cant focus, I cant focus.
Im trying so hard to open my eyes PLEASEOPENMYEYES
but i cant
they're to heavy
and it hurts to talk about.
and the words hurt to say.
and no one hears them when they come out the wrong or the right way
and im dead
im dead
inside and out
decaying from the inside rotting on the out.
but im still here for everyone to watch, and gape and and worry about.
is if it helped
NOTHING FUCKING HELPS
QUIT TRYING TO HELP
I DONT EVEN HAVE A SENSE OF MY HEAD ANYMORE
TO WRITE
SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ME
AND NO ONE WILL HELP
im trying to get help
im tried to get help
but no one would help
or could help
or should help
because this can be caught
its a sickness
its a disease
its leaving me broken and distraught
and ridden with lots of unanswered questions.


im thrust into a pit of despair where my body aches to feel the normal feelings of love again. of affection again.

but instead my emptiness surrounds me and devours me
and i dont even know myself enough to drag myself out.

because im not who i thought i was
i was never who i thought i was.

if this keeps going i want to die. i want to die because theres nothing worth living for
and im just taking up space for something else to be alive
to think
to love
to write.

god i cant even write anymore.

[untitled]

I cannot write what my brain doesn't want. I cannot speak words my ears dont care to hear. And its in these moments I find it hard to breathe again. I never know when it's going to hit, or how hard, but it always does. And I feel strangled, and threatened. My words sound weak and wounded, and it's almost as if they've been waring away sitting in my bowls, as the stomach acid rolls and devoirs them whole.
And I feel lost, so so so so lost. I can't find my feet or my toes or my nose or my eyes. Its almost like a part of me went missing, and I don't know where it can be found.
And I keep being told that I'm young.
And I keep being told that I can stay stay alive.
But I don't feel alive. I don't feel like I'm living.
I just feel broken, with my tires sliding against the mud, and my feet slipping out from under me.
And I know that I'm falling, I can feel the wind shoving my hair down my throat. But I'll pass out before I die, never knowing what I missed, or what I wished I'd heard.
Because all those words that were stuck in my bowels, are now splattered on the pavement as a view, and image, for someone to glimpse upon, admire, and discard. Like the lowly serpent I am. Sliding deeper and deeper into this free fall plunge to whatever ends.
But like the sun warms my feet, there you'll go again. The unspecific you. The you you never knew you were, and I've never known. And you'll make my heart burn wild with love. With affection. With guilt. Because I never gave you the means or the words to feel the same burn. And I did it on purpose so I wouldn't have to see, or to learn or to hear that I was what was the worth of fighting this whole time. Of being and existing.
Those words that I kept in my bowels, that I never cared to hear. Broken and dispondent but still ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing in my ears.
They cannot hear, or see, or feel. They just know that you're there, wishing you were here, and keeping you as far away with those pleas of affection as I can muster. Because all those feelings, are lost within me, and to me. Never to be found. Never to be found.

Sure

There is such a thing as a sure thing. A thing your head or your heart can feel, and predict, and even guarantee.
Like the promise of hearing a song you've already heard a million times, and you know you'll only live to hear it one million more.
But the thing about a sure things, when another party is involved, with thoughts and feelings and wants, that thing that started out being so sure, suddenly becomes a maybe, perhaps, and ending with an I don't know.
I'd know a sure thing if I had one. Atleast my head knows that, it can tell what and whom I'm capable of having and harming.
But my heart, in an attempt to salvage itself and whatever pitiful peices remain, tells my head that every single one of those sure thoughts that I hold to be true, could not be. Ringing in doubts and questions making something that I was almost positive was true, into something thats only the sad shadow of what the truth could have been.
And I embarass myself, questioning these sure things. Because as soon as I'm no longer sure about the sureidness with which i had had, it seems that everyone can feel it, and breathe off of it. And find a way to independently function off of all the energy of my doubts.
And I'll catch myself in a free-spin fall back to earth, where gravity has surely done its duty to throw me into the grown with serious force.
And I wake up from the force of a sure thing, wondering what part of me I left up in the air and what part I took back with me, and was a sure thing really worth the risk at all?

[untitled]

My eyes are heavy and I can feel them falling. F-f-f-falling.
Closed while they're open. Wide and shut.
I can't see. I am blind.
And I was trying to sleep. I was trying so hard, but then I thought about those things I try to think about less. I let my heart beat in heated guilt while I thought of those things I'd thought I'd left behind. And for an instant, I forgot why.
Then he came flooding in, his light brightening my life.
My skin is not warm, and my cheeks are not hot. My heart is not pounding and my blood has not boiled.
I feel the calm of a storm.
I feel the calm easing the sorrows of my past, and promises of tomorrow.
I don't feel the need to worry.
I don't feel the need to feel.
Because this calm is better than anything I've ever felt.

passive - passive

I don't do too much talking these days. These days, these days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do. - Nico

I'm sick of being so cheesy and hopeless, for I'm not hopeless or cheesy. I like to melt and to collide with other intelligent beings. I'd like to shine and falter in anothers presence and feel nervous when they look my direction. I'd like to feel warm in my heart at the thought of me warming theirs, but I'm always afraid these feelings will fade. And because I'm afraid I'll wander away until I'm trapt in a forest surrounded by thoughts that I don't even recognize as my own, and I'm lost. But there he goes shining at the pit of my heart, leading my feet back to his smile. And I'm not sure if it's forever, and I'm not sure that I'd want it to be, but I know it's for now. And I know that for right now, I want it to be whatever it is. Because when he's shining on me, there's no where else my heart wants to be.

I wish I was a fish.

I wish I was a bigger fish worth catching.
I wish I was a bigger fish to take up more space in the sea.
And I wish I didn't care so much about the kind of fish I was,
because the fish I am I'm destined to be.

Butt...

And if I could swim
I'd swim out to you in the ocean,
Swim out to where you were floating
in the dark.
And if was blessed
I walk on the water you're breathing,
To lend you some air for that heaving
Sunken chest. - Say Anything

Can I just...

He's like the sun on my face, that kisses my skin and turns it brown.
The heat and humidity that turns me to rot and buries me back in the earth again, so that I can grow some kind of life.
The thumpthathadumpthathadump of my heart that reminds me I'm alive.
The red in my cheeks when I'm shy,
The sterness in my voice when I've got something to say and mean it.
The queeziness in my tummy when I know that theres something I've got to do.
The crunch of a fresh baguette.
The ease of a good song,
and the sweetness of every right word.

And I just...
brown like he's shining on me, and rot like he's heating me, and thump like he's my beating heart, and red cause he makes me shy, and want to mean what I say so much I... get queezy, and with every touch and sound and taste, I feel it.

In my skin and my muscles and my blood and my bones.
I feel his warmth seeping into me, and if I get to close I'll melt. So like the earth to the sun I'll admire his warmth far far away from an expanse of millions of miles, where he'll never feel or know that I'm shining back on him.

Big Fish, Little Fish.

We could talk if days weren't so fast - Ben Kweller

Do you think some people were made to take up space? To make everyone else feel less lonely, and maybe these people aren't necessarily meant to do anything but that one thing, prevent everyone else from being lonely. Lets call these people substitute people. The people that fall in love with other people easily, and fall out of it just as easily. Its never anything substantial, the word love itself means next to nothing.

I think I'm one of these people, not specifically in a bad way... I just think maybe that's what I am. I feel like I'm a stepping stone for everyone else's happiness, and you know it sounds like it should be a lonely life but I can't say I mind. Sure I like everyone else want to fall in love, but I've grown so accustomed to the idea that it just might not. I'm completely adjusted to the idea that I might have to daydream about it for the rest of my life, and be content just being a stepping stone. I'm happy that through being with me people can find someone else to make them happier and better suited for them.

But substitute people, my kind of people, we aren't meant to be loved forever. We're meant to be loved for a second. We're meant to be idealized and appreciated for a moment, then tossed back to sea. It's kind of like the little fish that you catch with your hook, but it's too small so you throw it back to sea. Thats what I am.
I'm a little fish.
Some might say I've just got some growing to do, but I disagree. I'm gonna be a little fish forever.
I just wish I was big enough for somebody sometimes, that's all.

The Sleep-Less

I have my moments. I am not always one hundred percent functional. Actually, not even close. I am almost never completely functional or close to completely functional. I'm not even sure how you measure something like that.

Anyway, since it seems I have had this extra time thrusted upon me I might as well do something time consuming and exhausting.
Lets talk.

I need to finish all the work I've been avoiding. It's piling up and deadlines are getting closer and closer and I'm not exactly sure how to deal with it. I know that there are things I should be doing but I can't seem to find the motivation to do them. I'm more concerned with everything else in my life.

I am still hanging on to something I know is lost. And I can't help it. Thats not true, I haven't even tried to help it.

I need change. I need something real in my life. I need less to think about. I wish that it were a week from now, and everything had sorted itself out and there was suddenly less for me to think about and worry about and get excited about. Just life, and the future. Or less of the future and more of the present. The now. And loving every minute of it. I know I'll love every minute of it.

God, can you hear me? It's me Ashley.

And I claim I'm not excited with my life any more
So I blame this town, this job, these friends
The truth is it's myself
And I'm trying to understand myself
and pinpoint where i am
When I finally get it figured out
I've change the whole damn plan
Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that I'll probably regret soon
I've changed my mind so much I cant even trust it
My mind changed me so much I cant even trust myself - Modest Mouse


I'm just another face, just another pretty face. In a crowd of thousands, billions, trillions in the galaxy. Just another ball of energy riding through space in a body thats too small to hold all my worth, so some day I'll just leave. Because my body can't hold all that is kept within me. And maybe it was always meant this way. This body is the chain tying me to this world, and without it I could be so much more then... whatever the fuck.

Can you remember when you became conscious? I can't. When did you become aware, aware, aware? Aware that you're alive, and aware that someday you will die? I'm alive, at least I think I'm alive. And I think I'm aware that I'm alive. And I think someday I'll die. But what if I'm not? And what if I don't?

I can't think like this forever, but I want don't want to stop. I want to be here now, but time time is running out and I feel it. I wish I could go back. I wish it didn't have to be this way. I don't want to live forever, and I certainly don't want to die.

I am afraid of what's to come, because I don't know how it will.

11:11

All I can do is hope that she is thinking of me
If I could blink if I could breathe if I could get my legs to move
Well this could be the day I get this girl to love me - Phantom Planet

I don't feel the need to wish for anything anymore. I see the clock hit 11:11, or an eyelash is picked off my face, and I'm not sure what to wish for. I'm not sure if I even have any wishes left. I look at the world around me and I think, what else could I want? Except for maybe general happiness for those I love, but I've asked that before. Do you think the wish gods ever get tired of hearing it? I wish the ones I loved could be happy wish gods. I wish they could be happy as long as life would allow.

We'll end up where we were.

Everything that keeps me together is falling apart,
I've got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over
My boss just quit the job says he's goin' out to find blind spots and he'll do it
The 3rd Planet is sure that they're being watched by an eye in the sky that can't be stopped - Modest Mouse

I have a hard time understanding people who walk with heavy feet. I know this sounds crazy, let me explain. There's a certain way some people walk, like my mother. They walk with this quick meaningful step, and they slap their feet down. Imagine a quick thud thud thud thud. It breaks my heart a little bit hearing walks like this. It's almost like people with this walk fear that they're going to run out of time before they get where they're going or before they can do what they've got to do. I am not saying that we have an infinite amount of time. If anyone in the universe is aware of the fact that time runs out, and quick, it's me.
But to these quick paced people it's almost like they are going through life trying to live it as fast as they can, because they feel like they'll run out of time. I believe everything happens for a reason, that when we die it's just our time. You cannot try to live your life trying to predict when that time will come, just enjoy every second, minute and hour of this freaking blessing. Because truly, despite the adherent dificulties it is a blessing.
I never want to be able to justify walking through life like that. With a step so fast and heavy you can feel it before you ever hear it.

How I get by

We found a new kinda dance in a magazine
Try it on, it's like nothin' you've ever seen
You sweet talk like a cop, an' you know it
You bought a new bag of pot
So let's make a new start
And that's the way to my heart to
Way to my heart
And that's the way we get by to
Way we get by - Spoon

I think a little piece of me falls in love with every person I meet. Or a piece of me falls for a piece of them. It's rarely that I am ever actually in love, in fact I don't think it has ever happened to my recollection. But I do know that when I think about what love is "supposed" to feel like. That need to do everything within your power to make someone happy, to me that's friendship. I've never known a relationship aside from the rare few that it works out for, my parents being one of them, where you meet one person who fufills just about every need. I think I need to fall in love with everyone a little bit, to find all the different little things I'm missing myself. And that's just how I get by. Because I know that there are certain characteristics I will never be or own or anything like that. So I have to find them in other people who are willing to share those little things with me.

Like faith for instance. I can almost promise that I will never ever be able to just believe in god, or the socially accepted version(s) of him. I don't think I'll ever have the strength to be abstinent from certain things that I know are bad. I don't think that I'll ever have the courage to take risks like just giving all of yourself to someone. Or be selfless enough to have a child of my own.

I don't think I'll ever be any of those things. I know I'm young but, even early on people are able to understand certain things about themselves. So I have to fall in love with everyone a little bit, because if I think too much about all the things I lack, then I've almost got nothing left. I have to be able to pretend that somehow the characteristics everyone I care about own, I in turn own too. It makes me feel more human.. or something.

the Re-Turn(s)

Where have you been my blue eyed son?
Oh Where have you been my darling young one? -Bob Dylan

I have been silently crawling out of my skin. Less silently and more openly. Publicly. Beautifully. Like a piece of art. Or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly and I'm still making all of these pitiful mistakes. Avoidable mistakes. Predictable even. I am predictable. But everyone else can predict it, and me? I'm lost to myself. There's some kind of beauty in that. I'll never get sick of being around me, as long as the me I'm being is still changing and growing. Even if I don't like who that person is one day, I suppose I'll enjoy the journey.

And lately, my chest has felt tight. Like weight was being dropped on it, and my hearts beat seems off. It's out of sink with my head.
And I've been writing, just not in the conventional sense. Still presenting my thoughts to the world but in a louder, less effective, manner.

And Lastly, at least I'm consistent with myself.

Truth: I want to be happy, but honestly that takes work. So much goddamn work. I dunno if I have the energy to work at it anymore.