breathe. (dear you, pt. 15)

the toughest part about breathing,

i think,

is thinking about breathing.

once your conscious mind starts thinking about breathing,

you’re stuck thinking about it.

no turning back.

and so what was once such a natural function to you

is no longer effortless.

at least, temporarily.

give it a few minutes, and the thought usually wears off.

it’s transferred back to your subconscious and you can just let your body and brain and heart and lungs do their thing.

you see,

that’s how things are divided.

conscious and subconscious.

automatic and manual.

routine and ritual.

it’s important to distinguish between the two.

it’s important to discern what goes on which side.

it’s also very easy to lose track.

because breathing is a given.

but i think i lump too much into the subconscious,

and so i miss things that matter

because i’m so focused on the things that i’ve already inaccurately placed in my list of things that go on the conscious side.

and again we’re back to the noise.

it’s why i haven’t been listening to you.

(either/any of you for that matter - because there’s a lot of people i haven’t been listening to.)

i think i fear you telling me what is out of place,

because chaos quickly becomes comfortable to me.

isolation is easy when life feels like a hurricane,

because we tell ourselves that it’ll be safer for everyone else to just wait on the harbor so that we can keep them out of the storm.

but maybe the shore is there for a reason,

and the storm isn’t following us. we just keep chasing it instead of getting out of the water and onto the safety of dry land.

dear you,

i get it.

just give me some time.

let me come to the shore,

because it looks good and i miss standing in security.

and please,

throw some ropes out here,

because while you’ve been on the shore for quite some time,

long enough for it to become subconscious for you,

i’m still thinking about each breath.

lost in translation. (dear you, pt. 14)

they say silence speaks loudest;

i wouldn’t know -

i haven’t heard silence in who knows how long.

beautiful, peaceful, deafening silence -

i hardly remember it.

all i can comprehend is the pulling of voices.

voices pulling each way.

good voices.

average voices.

manipulative voices.

my own good, average, and manipulative voice.

i wonder when you last heard your own voice?

because, you see,

i’ve heard mine a lot lately.

i’m recognizing the patterns.

trying to make sense of them.

trying to ignore it when i’m supposed to,

and trying to tune in closer with a voice more divine than my own can ever be.

i wonder when you last heard your own voice?

because, you see,

i used to think that i could translate your words.

i thought that i could comprehend the thought processes that compose the symphony of your soul.

but it’s a foreign language now.

words and worlds that i can’t inhabit;

thoughts and dreams that don’t have a space for me.

i wonder when you last heard your own voice?

because, you see,

i think that there are only two possibilities at this point.

either you changed your mind,

your tune,

your language,

your conviction,

or,

or,

or,

you already had your mind made up,

and you tuned me into another frequency,

all the better to deceive me,

to set me on a different course,

and to send me on my way.

dear you,

everything ends someday,

and so i have to ask myself,

i wonder when you last heard your own voice?

because yours is unrecognizable,

and i want to hear it again. 

spinning. (everything ends someday, pt. 6)

how do you stop, 

when you think you’ve gone too far?

when nothing appears to be right anymore,

but you’re not sure how much of that is your fault.  

fault.  

its easy to assign fault, 

but so hard to see the fault line beneath your own surface,

nagging at you, 

tearing away the pieces of you that you thought were whole.  

all of a sudden, 

this amazing foundation that you thought you built

disappears as the ground shifts and behind to swallow you whole.  

i never mean to let people down;

it’s just a byproduct of my own condition.

it’s the mark i continue to miss.  

i wish i had the chance to make sense of this, 

but you’ve shown me what i need to know - 

you’ve shown me that my best isn’t really good enough, 

and now i think the worst is starting to show itself again, 

because none of this feels okay at all.  

everything ends someday,

but for now my head is spinning, 

and i feel like i’ve lost it.  

did i lose you? 

i don’t know what is missing from me -

what makes me the afterthought in your life - 

but i can’t keep spinning like this. 

did i lose you? 

dissonance.chaos.gasoline. (dear you, pt. 13)

dissonance.

the most beautiful sound, i think.

there’s an odd balance between beauty and madness.

as if there’s a way for the chaos to make sense,

only so long as you don’t fly too far off the reservation.

i haven’t been sleeping again. i’ve spent way too much time thinking of you,

but not really thinking of you.

i’ve mostly been thinking about the concept of you.

because as i’ve stood here for the last year, slowly gluing myself back together,

i’ve often thought about chaos.

i thought i thrived in it.

it turns out, i made it work when i had to,

but i wouldn’t call that an existence.

i’m over being reactionary.

and yet,

here i am.

currently it’s 12:30.

last night it was 4:30.

the night before, it was 3:30.

and i’ve been thinking about chaos again,

and about dissonance.

i’m trying to wear a new frame,

because the chaos didn’t work for me.

as it turns out,

it’s harder to isolate the madness and drive it away than it is to ignore it.

but i can’t ignore it.

i love the dissonance,

but i loathe chaos now.

dissonance has a tendency to at least acknowledge the rules. chaos carries no regard.

dissonance allows you to burn the house to the ground and start over,

but chaos is covering yourself in gasoline beforehand.

and your disregard for my vulnerability has covered me in gasoline.

dear you,

everything ends someday,

and now,

it’s really late,

and i need to wash the gasoline off of this shirt,

so i can burn the house down without burning myself anymore.

everything ends someday, pt. 5

everything ends someday,

and a little over a year later,

new things are finally beginning.

it’s a strange feeling,

because it’s just under two years later,

and so much feels similar.

new, but old.

a fresh perspective on an old pattern.

yet the old patterns never really disappear.

we just try to anticipate them and meet them head on.

we come ready to fight.

but we forget sometimes that fighting is tiring.

fighting takes strength.

fighting takes practice.

and sometimes,

it feels as if the fight is going to lead us back to the beginning again,

making us wonder if the fight is worth it.

and so when the moment arrives,

and we find ourselves asking those same questions again -

those same awful, false, dead-end questions again -

the search for answers feels like a fight that we don’t have time to battle again.

but what if,

we weren’t meant to fight?

what if what we’ve been trying to learn all along was not supposed to be the answer?

what if we were supposed to STOP asking the question?

maybe the questions are unanswered because we were never meant to ask them,

because the line of reasoning that got us here was so flawed,

so misguided,

and so evil,

that to answer it would only be an illusion.

we’re trying to solve a puzzle,

but the pieces are literally numbered.

—

dear you,

everything ends someday.

stop solving puzzles that aren’t there to begin with,

and maybe,

just maybe,

you can live with the promise that the numbers don’t lie.