Yours Truly

yours truly

dear s,

i find it is so much easier to live when i “separate the art from the artist”. in this case, i imagine your kind loving words have taken the form of some anonymous, generic body, living in some anonymous, generic location, maybe with no face or anything like that. maybe you—

dear s,

don’t mind the blood stained seat, i slit my wrists so much the other night, i wanted to kill myself. i should donate this car to a forensics lab. cause of death: blood loss and chronic numbness. thank god leather is easy to clean. i told him about this. i don’t know why. i was dying to tell someone, like a sick victory. and he proceeded with caution, i could feel his concerned, almost disgusted look on his face, through the text. like maybe he could be angry.

“i’m sorry, i really shouldn’t have done this,”

“i would rather you talk to me and tell me the truth and make things a lil harder for me than for you to not say anything at all and i have no clue how you are”

how could someone genuinely care about me so much? i don’t trust this. feels like a joke, a game, something that will end in fighting and tears because that’s all i know how to do.

and dear s, the other day i cried in my car and i asked you to grab my stuff and bring it to me, and you did. and you stayed with me until you knew i was going to be okay. but i couldn’t stop hyperventilating, shaking, sobbing, it wasn’t a panic attack. i broke down crying in front of these three grown men. i don’t remember what any of them were saying, i don’t remember why everything ended the way it did, i just knew i was upset, and i don’t even remember being upset. but i felt pathetic collecting myself in front of them, so i made myself cry, but soon i couldn’t help it, and that’s maybe when i started panicking. when the shaking wasn’t voluntary, when the erratic breathing wasn’t a joke, something like that.

dear s,

i’ve recently started to realize my childhood wasn’t as golden as i originally thought. i didn’t think anything was wrong until my mother started to profusely apologize for being a terrible parental figure to me, for the awful things she did to me as a kid. and i didn’t get it until i tried to convince her otherwise, until she told me i hide my emotions, until i was on the verge of tears, screaming at her in a parking lot.

“you know the reason i hide my emotions? because when i was a kid, you’d scream at me and hit me if i cried! and you only got worse if i cried harder, and i’d cry harder because you kept hurting me. you know how many migraines i’ve had because you’d hit my head so much? you know half the scars on my arms are because of your own hands? so i cry silently, and i know how to zone out when you scream at me so i don’t cry, but sometimes you think i’m smirking, and you end up hurting me anyways. i walk on eggshells around you because i don’t want to get hurt”

quietly, she tells me, “see, i did mess you up.”

i don’t know what came over me but its all starting to make sense.

she tells me stories of how her father treated her as a kid, somewhat similar to my experiences as a kid. she tells me she was diagnosed with ptsd, but didn’t know why. and it wasn’t until i was in middle school that she started to understand it. by then it was too late to change the damage that was already done.

dear s,

i almost checked myself into a hospital. but what would they do? give me more meds, a slap on the wrist, and send me on my merry way?

“this has nothing to do with you,” you tell me, but i can’t help but feel that this is all my doing.

but hey, maybe we’ve changed so much we wouldn’t recognize each other if we saw each other again. nothing so special about “us”.

yours truly,

леви

predators - poetic explanation of falling in love (with me)

someone’s going to crack and i hope it isn’t me. we’re circling each other through circuits and panes of glass, we’re staring each other down through the rear view mirrors of our cars. its a game of chicken on opposite sides of a two way road. we are these fucked up pen pals. they told me to pick up an out of blue phone call, and i can only imagine you’re the one on the other end. and i may not pick up, i won’t recognize the number. but i might, i’ve spent some time trying to remember all the digits but i always got distracted. sixty two something. a seven, a six, maybe a three.

you know this isn’t your best work. i know exactly which words you added in as an afterthought, things that you insisted fit right there but ideas that could have been left in the shadows. you’re convinced you loved me. you handed over pieces of yourself. i told you from the beginning, this was a terrible idea. purple night under the popcorn ceiling stars, hand in hand eventually became bodies intertwined. you know how to make the chemicals flare up, make us feel like we can stop taking our antidepressants and feel like this could never end. i used to pass by married couple’s dimly illuminated windows at night after dropping you off, and i thought, they aren’t even feeling what i am feeling. i am the only one that has ever experienced love. but they’re just chemicals that flare up when you kiss enough, have enough late nights resting together. i feel a little less special now that we’re broken up. i realize we were just like every other set of lovers. led to the same demise as the rest of them.

someone’s going to crack and it won’t be me. and even if you called, you’d ask me, “what is your problem?” and i might shrug. i guess i’m on a mission to destroy the nothing that’s left. destroy everything beyond repair so we can never repeat this again.

its my turn to be angry.

sure, i’ve moved on but i’m allowed to revisit these feelings for some sick ass journal entry. its healthy to take my anger out on something that cannot be hurt anymore, right? and yeah, i know you read this sometimes. but that’s your problem. you know what you’ll read and what you’ll feel when you open this up. don’t know why i end everything with an explanation, an apology, and i just don’t know how to tidy up the frays on the end of this ribbon.

three of thirty nine and counting - леви 2023

you handed over pieces of yourself. i told you from the beginning, this was a terrible idea. imaginary friend perched on a stool in the kitchen, waiting for me to gather up the courage to choke down my morning pills.

double mastectomy

i don’t think i’d fight it. what’s the point. why prolong the inevitable?

i don’t think i’d fight it. the worst part is i feel jealousy. how does it feel to have a reason? a chance to feel at home in your dying body? why couldn’t it have been me? i’ve dreamt about this for years and someone who is unwelcoming, undeserving, beats me to it.

and the comedic timing, god, i’m rolling on the floor, hysterically laughing (out of my mind,) it only proves that this is a

Sick Fucking Game

they’re playing on me. couldn’t even make it four months. i’m not sad, i’m upset, i don’t give a shit about her. but there are people this affects. maybe it happened by complete random happenstance, things like this happen everyday. just happened to us again. sometimes i feel completely out of my body. i go to scratch my nose and i can’t feel my hands against my face. the ground under my face. the movements i make are not mine, the words i speak are not mine, my vision sits at the back of my head and i don’t remember anything at all,

do you think she remembers?

all eight minutes and forty one seconds pumped out in waves on a frequency, data transmissions indecipherable to me.

what do you think she’s told her kids? that this means certain death? what happened to aunt jenny is what’s going to happen to me? do you think she’s scared? terrified? what has her life been like? would she fight it?

a double mastectomy,

would she welcome it like i’ve been yearning for years?

she’s dying. and i’m selfish enough to wish it was me, even when i’ve seen arteries beating out of her neck, sickly yellow skin, incoherent strings of words, aging twenty years in a week. and another twenty in the next week. until she’s sixty years old, my final words are “see you tomorrow,” when i should know that tomorrow was never guaranteed.

but i never thought any of this would happen.

and now i’m hysterical(ly laughing) on the floor promising to never fight it.

haven't been writing lately. traded living in my head for living outside this body.

driving an impala was so much cooler in 1958 (but so were lobotomies)

sometimes i have moments where i think no one could be capable of caring for me except you, remember that time you surprised me with london fogs at the park? yeah, no one’s ever thought of me like that before. and i know there are people that care for me but comfort radiates from you, like maybe you’re the only one that really truly cares about me. sorry i got so high the other night i said i was in love with you, which maybe isn’t totally wrong but you knew i was high. you never spoke about it again. but i so desperately want to tell you i deeply appreciate you so much i may love you. but i think that would scare you off. you don’t talk to me so much anymore, you’re so busy doing shit i tell you is stupid.

i want to believe you’re just busy but i wonder if you’re distancing yourself from me. it wouldn’t be the first time.

i miss you. but i’ll give you the distance you didn’t ask for.

i haven’t made any friends. i don’t remember how to and i don’t really care enough. its all fun and games until it's saturday night, i’ve got nothing better to do that to lay in cemeteries and get high until i’m too cold to take it anymore. i love the old gravestones. decomposing bodies are underneath me. i wonder what their lives were like. what they looked like. what they did. who they knew. what they believed. and me? i’m a loser with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. here i lay, pretending there’s another warm body next to me, hands interlaced, speaking to me. but i don’t get that. no, why should i? he keeps asking me if i’m making friends. i don’t remember how to make friends, all i did was get taken in and i lost people as i aged. kept in touch with people who could buy me drugs, kept in touch with those who would remember to invite me out for lunch. but what does it matter? i’ll be out of town soon.

this past weekend i thought about doing it for good this time. the fear right before i do it always sobers me up. i don’t know why suicidal ideation is such a concern with the medical professionals, i’m just a sad confused boy. forty five minutes isn’t enough for you to get to know me.

i hate it when i begin to notice parallels between you and all i want to forget. am i noticing red flags or am i being paranoid? am i asking for too much? are my standards too high? god, what’s normal? you know me better than i do, you spell my name out and all it means to you, to me. you give me words for the facade i’ve subconsciously fabricated. you help me realize i am constantly living in fight or flight mode. i’m so good at this, i don’t even realize i’m putting it up. maybe this is all the therapists want: to be so good at coping no one know it kills you every time you wake up in the morning.

she talked him into leaving me. she’s playing a popularity game, she’s so lost and confused. she does all these things and think’s she’s so good at what she does and believes her words are the only words that matter, boy she won’t survive a minute after graduation. i’m waiting for everyone to realize she’s fucking crazy. it sounds like i’m not the first she’s shunned, i doubt i’ll be the last. what goes so wrong in your childhood that you feel the need to overcompensate like this? i hate the sickly show you put on, you want the whole world to know you’re happy and in love, charming the whole goddamn world, but god, i know you aren’t anything you pretend to be. everything makes me feel so. goddamn. sick.

take another drag off this stale cigarette.

if college is about reinventing yourself, then god, i’m unrecognizable from two years ago. i escaped that hell hole, i never thought i’d see light at the end of the tunnel. the first round was just me trying to recover, but i got caught up in lust and depression. second round, i’ve never been better. i’ve never experience pure joy, this is all just an act. keeping up with lies because i cannot handle being caught in an act. i don’t know what next year will bring, if i’m surrounded by a bunch of dirty business majors, am i going to turn into a bootlicker too? will i be able to put up with another two years of alienation? i’ve never wanted to get married or have kids, maybe i don’t need $100k a year, entry level position. i’m going to be so far behind as it is.

i don’t know where you went or where these sentences were leading.