I Love You But All You Know How To Do Is Hurt MeI Can Only Love You From AfarFrom The Safety Of My Bed

I love you but all you know how to do is hurt me I can only love you from afar From the safety of my bed I can look at your picture Without you tangled up in my life I can love you With the peace of your absence I can love you I can feel your warmth when you are gone When you’re next to me all I feel are burns. When I am safe from you I can love you When you can’t spew your acid at me I can feel your soft edges And I can love you When I can’t feel you When I can’t know you When I can’t hear you When I can’t see you When you’re far enough away to wonder if you’re still real When I’m far enough out of reach that not even your thoughts can touch me When I can’t be your prey in any way When you can’t touch me I can love you

I want the dad back who picked me up from the school talent show and took me straight to Big Bear, pampering me with coloring books and hot baths.

Making me feel special inside, like I was in a different, more magical, sparkly world. Like everything was fun and tasted differently, because I was with him, and we were in the snow, in a little cabin.

Even just in his car on the way there I was the most special girl alive, the luckiest girl alive. He loved me. He liked me.

Enough to scoop me up and take me straight to fun.

Now my dad is dead, he’s full of gray, he’s never the same. He’s bitter where he used to be sweet. There’s dead ends where there used to be endless paths, escapades.

I don’t know if it’s my fault or his makeup. If it can’t be changed or if it’s because I changed, because I sullied it by growing up.

Where did I go wrong? Where did he start to change? When did he leave me, and become who he is now?

A cruel stranger, one who changes like the wind, one who I could never trust.

What if I just accepted the sadness & found beauty here? Beauty is much easier to find around me than happiness. Finding beauty in the mundane, the normalities in this young war, this invisible battlefield is my shelter. I clutch my raft of soft grass & pillowy clouds & piercing trees as I’m carried through the choppy waters of constant embarrassment & the jostling fear that something is wrong with me. My drapey soft florals hold me and my silver bands keep me straight and hard.  I like to imagine that everyone is hiding under the beauty too.  Glitter sparkles, you just need your eyes to see it. You don’t have to be happy.

I’m always chasing chasing chasing the next thing Another friendship I thought would last swept right out from under my feet How can you fix what you don’t know is broken? Wish they could just be honest Wish I could just be honest without you leaving me too Maybe if I’m skinnier you’ll like me better And I can point my little nose in the air when you come crawling back with I’m sorry But maybe that’ll just be another something I chase That when I reach I realize I’ve never even changed Another thing that proves to add no color Another thing I thought would be the answer but there’s just no cure Jesus says he is the way the truth and the life I’ve only felt him once and when I did it was true But where did he go and what can I do When I’m with her and when I’m with you then I can taste the end Like I’ve made it But the other 99% I’m chasing and they’re chasing me too And neither of us can make it Neither of us can make it

I don’t understand why people are so mean and I don’t know how to survive in this world Trying to get my head screwed on straight it can all be fine when I’m laughing in the car with you The music so loud, drive so fast you can’t hear your thoughts But then I crash and I’m tired and I lay in bed for days I need to rest I tell myself But rest is just a break from life They say I need to live, I need to be alive But I'm tired