December 30 2017

december 30 2017

Yesterday was a good day. I was really happy. and my heart was fuller than it’s been in half a year.

But last night it was kind of breaking because I know that I won’t be that happy for a while.

and I’m dreading tomorrow

life away

Life changes. Mostly in small amounts that you never really notice. Sometimes bigger things, but things that don’t affect your life personally. Mostly it just seems too far away to matter. Like hearing about an earthquake halfway around the world. Yeah, it’s sad, but you’ll forget about it eventually. You’re allowed to do that. It didn’t happen to you.

And then life changes in a big way. a really big way.

This isn’t the way it works. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.

It seems distant until it happens to you. Then it’s up close and personal.

And you don’t understand why everyone else treats it as a distant problem.

This is huge. Why don’t you care?

The world spins at 1,040 miles per hour but nobody feels a thing.

Distant news.

broken zipper

At first, it was just a vacation. I still had the old house, I just ate dinner at a different table. I slept in a different bed, but my old room was still there. I still had that connection. That promise to return. That reason to go back.

It was sold. Now someone I don’t know lives in my house. My room.

But still, there was the car. My mom’s gargantuan silver Toyota. The one we’d had since I was in elementary school. The only car that didn’t make me totally motion sick. I held onto that for a while.

It was totaled. They let me keep the mangled license plate. It was lost among the boxes.

And it keeps going like that. I comfort myself with a different item from my life,    from when I was actively living my life, each one more insignificant than the last, until something happens to take it away from me.

like the backpack from my old school its zipper broke and it’s close to unusable but i’m stubborn i guess or the binder i bought just because it was the same brand as the one i used a few years ago it ripped in half so i tape it back together every time the tape wears off

⚘⚘ SEND THIS TO TEN BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE AMAZING. SPREAD THE LOVE. ( ﾉ ꒪▿꒪)ﾉ*

THANK YOU ELEA!! I think you’re pretty amazing too 💗💗

office angels

“Nine Unheard Messages…”

“Hey, it’s me. I jus-“

“Message Skipped.”

“Hi. Did you get my last mes-“

“Message Skipped.”

“Hello? Are you doi-“

“Message Skipped.”

“Hey! Answer m-“

“All Existing Messages Deleted.”

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound reverberates inside my skull like pounding fists.

shut up. Shut Up. SHUT UP.

Wait. Wait. Oh.

The fists are real. They’re real this time.

I drag my feet to the door and look through the aperture. Just in case. Just in case.

And the knocking stops.

It’s her. It’s her.

Maybe if I just ignore her. Pretend that I’m not home.

“Peter, I can hear you. Just let me in.”

Mad.

We’re in the living room. She’s suddenly uncomfortable. I know why but I wish I didn’t.

“You know that Ed Sheeran song about angels dying because it’s too cold?”

She nods.

“Well I always thought that was strange because when I picture an angel it’s all white and bright and pretty. And that’s the color of snow. I always thought of angels as cold creatures, so the thought of one freezing to death never made sense to me.”

She brings her eyes up to mine.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“People think differently. It’s not all the same. We’re not all the same.”

The Refuge

The only house perched on the only gravel road that split  my uncle’s property, [REDACTED]

“The Refuge” for short.

Our mail appeared in the only mailbox by The Gate, in front of the army of invading bamboo, next to the rotting tree stump, still taller than me, and annually engulfed in wisteria.

Whenever my cousin’s college friends overtook The Dock for the girls to tan and the boys to cannonball into The Lake, my dog whined restlessly at the door until they finally left. The Mound was the farthest area from our house in the Refuge, all the way down the only gravel road, down the steep speed-bumped hill that stopped my bike in its tracks until I was brave enough to ride up.

The Mound wasn’t anything but an enormous pile of dirt my siblings and I would venture to once in a bored blue moon. We carved shelves in its side for our favorite trinkets from nature and challenged each other to clamber to the top, which was covered in unforgiving brambles and thickets.

By now, our trinkets have long since been buried by a bulldozer.