Pete Wentz's Livejournal Copycat - Tumblr Posts

future past:

because its everything, no, everything was never the deal. shut the door on terrible times. my shoes are an altar: remembrance: the things i love. can i trust you? would you lie to me? i wish i could disappear into the ground. be wiped from everyone's memory. i was never here, i never existed. maybe i'll wake up. i don't remember my first out of body experience. i don't remember my last. its amazing, the things you miss when you aren't paying. paying attention. i'm not ready for the questions. the stares. the comments. i've faced enough alienation in my life, and i don't need more. i don't enjoy it. but i worship it: alienation. he gave me words, no, he took me by the neck, threw me against a wall, and shoved it down my throat. and i will worship it. do i tell her? should i wait until i'm older? would you lie to me? i run in these circles. its your choice: my diary is an open book and you can decide if you want to know everything about me. its a tv series, you can't miss an episode unless you want to be lost. i'm the only fan of this one, i may be the only one that fully understands my story. my references. i may be the only one to ever read my writing in its entirety. someday i want to help the kids. not because i am good at comforting, but because i can show them there is hope for the future. i want to be what i've never had. growing up is terrifying, and all i see are unhappy adults. not just you, mom. its everyone. everyone's miserable. i can't spend the rest of my life wandering dead mall halls, sunny "self care days" drag on for years, and before you know it, i've wasted my life on never growing up. they tell me to be a kid now. i'm already feeling the stress of someone far older than me. and all i can do about it is lay idle in bed. she says i'm depressed. its not something i'm new to, but its something i'm beginning to fully realize the extent of its ass kicking abilities. showering isn't a chore for everyone. getting out of bed isn't dreadful for everyone. friends aren't terrible. i miss that glorious time when i loved my friends. now it feels like haven't been loved in years: i don't know what it is with you and the joy you suck out of my life all while making me think you're the best thing thats ever happened to me. don't feel sorry for me, i've never been better. i feel exhausted just getting out of bed and crossing my bedroom. i don't know how i'm still functional. i'm barely keeping it together. but maybe someday i'll be something. maybe i'll look back on this and think: realize: i'm delusional. the most beautiful thing ever is how these words withstand the years of seasons changing, wind battering the shit out of me, golden, heat, sub-zero. these are just glimpses of feelings turned thoughts turned words. maybe this is who i really am. thirty years from now i'll be on the same hamster wheel in my head, running in these same circles. peace: is a boat on the atlantic ocean. 50°f. overcast day. me and kafka ride up the shore, canadian water. back home theres vinyls. stonewall. silence. but for now i'm a---

i find its a lot easier to understand my window of tolerance nowadays than i ever have before. i think its funny: i can look back and see when i was thinking rationally rather than when i wasn't. and its all thanks to different circumstances. being overwhelmed isn't an excuse to be an asshole, however, being overwhelmed is an excuse to be an asshole. honestly, i'm transcribing every word in my head as it comes. and you eat this shit right up. god, am i a disillusioned rockstar already? god, i'm so tired. god, are you real? rocks and stars, hell, the rockstars say you aren't. someone outta put a bullet in his head. for now i'm twenty two twenty twenty two twenty twenty two twenty twenty two twenty and its only a matter of time before you're crossing country borders to run from what you're doing. soon everyone will know. you go against all the ethos, pathos, and logos, or maybe just ethics. its. a grey conversation.

“i like you,” revised. again.

“i like you.” i’m convincing myself i do. “i like you. i like you. i like you. can we hold hands? can we cuddle? i’m just joking, haha i’m so funny.” i’m so funny. its clear you see us as nothing more than friends. its clear you see what i doing. we’ve talked about attraction. sexuality. the rest of our lives. i’ve even dropped the big L word, yeah, the big L-O-V-E, i know. a feeling that goes away just as quick as it came on. shit, someday, i’ll probably find myself with a wife and kids, look around, and think, “god, what have i done?” i’ve told the neutral ai robot friend about this. and he remained neutral. i could never do anything about this, but let myself grow up, grow out, grow on.

“i like you,” but it hangs heavy in this god forsaken car. air is dense walls close in my mind goes blank i don’t know how to save this-

“i like you, but,” but? dipshit. “i wouldn’t drive you home if i wasn’t sober.” i really hope its the weed making me feel dumb. i’m sober enough to drive, right?

as he sits in the passenger seat, he almost leans in and i almost put my arms around him, but i follow his eyes to the backseat, he was just grabbing his backpack. i look away as he stands up to get out. he says his goodbyes, starts walking away, but quickly turns and comes back.

“i love you,” he says quickly. “no homo. because it wouldn’t be complete if i didn’t say no homo, right?”

right. cuz we totally needed to clarify that. we’re all just a bunch of mosaics from past lives/friends/lovers. he shuts the door again and walks off for real this time. running up that hill starts playing, and my god, that is just sad. this car knows too much about what my love life has been through. the previous scene feels awfully familiar, the upcoming scene feels awfully similar, but i can change that. i skip the song. if i’m going to drive home at midnight, at least its not something that reminds me of terrible times.

“why do i care?” is the only thing that gets my mind off you when i catch a glimpse of anything that may relate to you at all. i know you’ll never text me but sometimes i hope you do, so i can respond with, “who’s this?” to show you i’m stronger than i was when i was fourteen, but i suppose i’m really not, considering i still write about you. i can turn anything into a conversation about you.

“i don’t feel at all like i thought” i looked again. i told myself i wouldn’t, but i had to unfollow you. i always send myself into a panic attack when i do. shaking, shivering, jaw clenched, disorganized thoughts. we are fucked up pen pals. we always meet at the worst times. we are the perfect ingredients for a beautiful shit storm.

i deleted my three thousand word essay about everything wrong with me, you, and the combination of the two. i am better than that.

writer to writer, poet to poet, i feel like you of all people should understand not everything i write is what it seems.

sorry i didn’t like your friends, i just didn’t like feeling so completely and hopelessly alone in a room full of people. come on up to the third floor of eastman hall. or don’t. i don’t care.

thinking about the dying part of death

someone new. new face. no face. i want to feel at peace. i know better. i know better. can’t think. frantic. switching between. switching. you’re killing me.

i want to be beautiful. i want to be a goldfinch that just slammed into a window, all i wanted was to be warm inside. i want to be the blood spreading over the tracks, all i want is to give agates their red hue, i want to give back to nature. (i want to swallow batteries, down blood thinners and sit in a garage with all the cars running.) disintegrate from the inside out.

there’s a difference between zoning out and derealizing. zoning out so bad you’re floating through life like nothing more than a ghost. can’t even force myself to stay present, to get out of my head. i wasn’t nervous, but i notice as i start to present that i (slip to the back of my mind) and my words became a stream of unrecognizable dialogue. i can’t stay here, can’t stay present, i wonder if my professor knows i’m not here, knows i’m at the back of my head. i’ve been told i’m a shit friend, he said he didn’t stick around because i was nice. don’t know what he saw in m((e if we hated each other) so m)u))ch.

time is of the essence, “well executed,” she tells me. thanks, you didn’t read my suicide note in the background. everyone’s been eyeing it up.

i keep dreaming of dying terrible deaths. homecoming queen dies in a tragic car accident (no details were given.) i watched rollercoasters fly off their tracks and crash into each other mid-air. gunshots go off in a crowd and everyone runs. (i keep all my secrets in parentheses.)

you used to think maybe i was happier if i was having dreams at night. this is all just one long fucked up drawn out entry in (dear s,)

i’ve taken the pills, i’ve parked by the tracks, but i’ve never gone through with it. my therapist knows i have these thoughts but i won’t tell her how i’ll do it. she asks all the wrong questions.

(i jerk the wheel of my car on black ice just to see if i care enough to live.) but who doesn’t? we’re all fucking miserable.

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.

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.

entertaining alternative pasts,

you left me chilled for the two minute drive home from your place. i tried to make a joke about the past but you shut it down, “cars have more uses than just for that, you know.”

i wish i could just talk to you like a big kid.

this fall just reminds me of getting sad and being in love or some bullshit like that. i’ve crossed out names and faces, quotes and stories, lists and reminders. and so i asked you, “are you a top, bottom, or switch?” so i could better replace faces in fantasies that take me nowhere, i fucking hate being medicated. i’m still sad, and i have no distractions.

hey, i started smoking. i guess we’ve both changed. its not enough to form a habit, but something to do with my hands without getting high. if nicotine is a regulated substance, how come caffeine isn’t? that shit gave me the worst migraines when i stopped drinking coffee. so you don’t approve, so what? i wasn’t asking you. just figured i’d let you know what kind of drive we were taking.

so i’m your happy pill, huh? i’ve heard that one before. we are everything we used to be and everything we will ever be. i half wonder if i cut you off now so you have time to heal before you move off to college. there is no good way to get rid of me, i’m a dying star waiting to explode, i’m the glowing canister of cesium-137 laying abandoned for a good reason. you say i’m nothing but nice, god, you’re just as blind as i am.

we’re inches from it. but maybe we’ll just learn to grow out of it.

i’ve been nothing but sad. is it the upcoming death of someone i’ve never known? i drop $10 a year to bring flowers to somewhere no one even remembers. and i pace cemeteries looking for one familiar name. no death has ever made my body go cold like yours did. i still know too much. it knocked everyone off their feet and i couldn’t help but laugh. i can’t help but laugh. i can’t help but laugh. i’ve been in and out of hospital visits for something i can’t bring myself to care about. my brain feels nothing yet my chest hurts and my eyes cry. how does that work? why does my brain cut me off from my own emotions and impulses? or am i just so fucking numb? you know i can’t even feel it when i slash my arms.

i hope i buy sketchy drugs in college and overdose on fentanyl. i’m terrified of death except for when i have control over it.

i read the first five pages of the surrender theory and thought i was god

the timeline of this all is fucking pathetic. i’m sitting, chilled, at white table, white walls, white computer, white clouds, massive windows coated in dead bugs and old spider webs. there was a man sitting in front of me but he left twenty minutes ago. there was a woman with a kind voice teaching english to a group of,,, i don’t know. i couldn’t see but i could hear them. i have my headphones on, have mentioned that i’m cold yet? a year ago today i bought flowers, and then maybe i thought to text you. two years ago today, i let the day slip past me with no physical way of remembering what happened three years ago today, crash, bang, smoke. and i couldn’t help but laugh. twenty four hours ago today, she got discharged from the hospital. its crazy seeing someone so healthy, someone you thought would live forever,,,,, she struggled to get out of her bed, she needed help using the bathroom. she’s high on the same painkillers her mother was addicted to. great, if she makes it out of this alive, she’ll have dementia when she’s ninety. god, why must there be so much death in one life? god, i’m looking for answers and i’m finding them all in the things you told me were blasphemous. i won’t defend you any longer, you’re lucky i’m still keeping up looks. a year ago a week from now, i think i texted you. i don’t know, it was something dumb like that. you blew off a halloween party to clean my room. not sure why you felt the need to help me out. i wasn’t so depressed then, i was far worse when i was begging the universe to keep us together. but its exhausting begging you to be good to me, its exhausting waiting for you to come around. i spend all my time in the past, i can see all the symptoms of convincing ourselves it was worth it, i can see it in you still, now. i won’t let a round three happen, but i keep having dreams about you. but i have no way of reaching out, i deleted everything that has to do with you. and i will keep it that way. its all up to fate to get us together again, but i will have moved on to greater things. did you know your left headlight is out? its not, but i liked the way it sounded. “i love you,” written on the back window, i know it wasn’t meant for me but it feels like its taunting me. like i said, the timeline of all this is fucking pathetic. i like to think i’ve gotten over dear s, but this really is all the same thing.

the poet has a one sided conversation with their journal:

shit luck, i can’t align this to the left.

shall i fall into old traditions?

bottling and obsessing, bottling and obsessing.

he knows. he’d have to be fucking helen

keller to not know. but sometimes he’s

so oblivious. so maybe he doesn’t know.

he says things, like,

“i’m going to pretend i didn’t hear that”

so he knows. he knows.

he knows the way i look at him sometimes.

the things i say sometimes.

i love looking at him.

thanks for noticing it before i did.

you gave me words for something

i never needed to know.

god, maybe i should end it.

but maybe its not so wise.

thanks for telling me i’m good at writing.

even when i know you’re lying through your teeth.

are you okay? are you okay? are you sure? look at me. are you okay? hey, only me. its only me. thanks for noticing something in the way i kissed you, something i didn’t even notice until you gave me words for the pain in my chest, the,,,, for now i’m stuck, chilled, second floor of this god forsaken library. isn’t heat supposed to rise? i want you to read this, i want you to love me like i’m convinced i love you, i want you to see me the way i see you. its so much easier to love yourself when you know you’re capable of being loved.

so much of the “love” word. you know what you’re capable of.

we’re so close to it, yet you keep letting me drag you closer to it. i’m letting you read my annotated copy of the perks of being a wallflower. if that isn’t a giant “i’m madly in love with you” then i don’t know what is.

i don’t even know who s is. is it you? is it me? someone else completely? i don’t know who i am (addressing anymore). i don’t know where you went or where these sentences were leading, i just love to hear the sound of my keyboard clicking.

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

how could i forget? you play sick games on me in my sleep every night. my body goes through the motions of being terrified (i wake up to scratches all over me, and the inside of my mouth chewed to shreds). my mind is blank, no matter what fucked up things you do to me in my sleep.

i half wonder if this is the end. i'm doing better now. i don't want to say goodbye, but i don't know when i'll see you again. i wonder if you feel used. i sure do.

lost cause

i mean it when i say i truly am a dead end. i don’t deserve the money and energy and relationships i destroy trying to get better. i’m doing everything i can. i do the talk therapy, i take my meds and supplements, i eat the right food, talk to my friends, go for walks, sit in front of sun lamps and tell myself i’m a good person yet i’m still fucking sad. my therapist says that really all i can do is find the right meds. vincent says my therapist is shit. he doesn’t get it. there’s nothing i need to talk through, i’ve written my way out of all my problems except this.

at some point, you’ve got to swallow your pills and accept that this is as good as its ever going to get.

but i can’t help but whine, “it’s not fair!” that everyone else can talk their way out of things and i’m left stuttering and desperate sputtering out sophisticated words in a pathetic attempt to get my point across.

but i can’t help but wonder if killing myself isn’t a bad option. i mean seriously, what else is there left for me? what’s the point of this shit if i’m just going to be a shaky grey line, a greasy 6B pencil held at a 170° angle, down a newsprint pad held in your non dominant hand, shaking because you haven’t eaten in a day or so and its starting to show.

and sometimes i wonder if tonight is the night. but it never is. but sometimes i wonder if i’ll man up enough to do it.

untitled no. 17

i just want to scream. i don’t have words. trying to figure out songwriting when i no longer write like i used to.

“chronic: can last for years or be lifelong.”

little snippets from middle school and lives that no longer exist, at least the way they used to.

picked up a guitar again, started carrying stickers and a white lighter with me wherever i go.

i am growing into a sad child.

its a shitty collage of words, it forms a picture but it’s not a pretty one.

and yet i can’t put my finger on what makes me sad and empty, which is perhaps what sets me apart from people who are just sad.

thirty feet below me are theatre kids projecting their shitty transatlantic accents out to an old theatre with nasty orange seats. i can't understand what they're saying but the audience laughs occasionally. something interferes with my headset and buzzes data indecipherable to me.

i’m laying, staring up past the black light into the ropes of our single purchase system, contemplating the consequences of climbing a little higher and falling a little farther.

it follows me everywhere.

or maybe i drag it with me without even realizing it. like we’re chained up, unsure, terrified, unwilling to know what life is like without it.

(i make it so obvious for anyone with any clue about me. i wonder what you think about it.)

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.

“i love her,”

you do? those are words you threw out like candy at a parade until one day i noticed you stopped saying it back when i said it. did you know i had to force myself to say it? because i didn’t believe it, but it was easier to say it than to deal with the consequences of silence after you—

sometimes i find myself getting wound up about all that happened but i have to remember to take a step back. nothing about you has changed, she’s getting the same treatment as me. (it was shit,) and part of me wants to cover her ears and eyes but i don’t know what good that would do when the chemicals are already doing it. but maybe an absence of it would force her to stop and think. but even then it would take months for it to clear out, so there’s nothing i can do because i can guarantee you, nothing will get through to her.

i’d like to be there to pick up the broken pieces. i can’t put them back together, but i can let her know it was okay, it was an ugly vase anyway. the sentimental value will eventually fade away and you won’t even remember anymore. we’re too young, do you understand what you’re doing to her? this is manipulation, this is being taken advantage of, but you don’t even realize it.

be pissed at me all you want, but all around this is pathetic. what brings you here? the same reason as me?

you’re a secret my peers don’t even know about. i mean sure, “i write on the side,” “i’m really more of a poet than an artist,” and all that jazz, but they don’t know shit about this. i like anonymity. nameless title cards. clipped out faces, blurred hands, and trailing frames. unfinished indesign files laying around my hard drive. the art of dragging things out for as long and as long and as long as i possibly can. i can break my work up into shows. but poetry doesn’t work like visual art galleries unless i give it visuals. and i try, all i’ve got are half finished sketchbook pages and notes crawling with ballpoint pen ink. and this isn’t even poetry, god, its just writing.

i think i’ve found my passion or some shit, less terrified for the future but still willing to let someone discover my cold body hanging by a rope. i’d be perfectly happy being an artist for the rest of my life but god, i don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable parts of life. i want words to flow from me not like they are, i want beauty dripping from my fingertips and i want people to like it. i want a fucking pat on the back. i want a hug. i want to be comforted, to be loved, which leads me back to why i do all this shit anyway. but it sounds pathetic,

Artist’s Statement:

I create art as a means to express my longing for emotional intimacy and desire to feel cared for. In “Seventeen” I depict my journey getting over a breakup that happened forever ago but please keep reading, there’s so much more you just don’t understand, i can give you receipts, quotes, i want you to feel what i feel, i want you to know that i— but i— i hope that you’re—

so i don’t know where these sentences were going or what the point is. the only reason i didn’t kill myself was because i wanted to graduate on time. well shit, i’ve got six weeks before i can officially fuck my entire life up. but i’m happy, right? i take long drives because the sunshine leaves a gentle smile on my face, not because i’m desperately searching for a distraction or a reason to keep going.

i don’t think i’ll ever find another person like you. i hate to quote that song that’s like “you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” cuz fuck, that’s exactly what i’m trying to say. kicking, fighting, biting with the brick wall with absolutely clue i’m even here. well, it does, its fucking ignorant as shit. but that brick wall “loved” me, right? it “loved” me. it made me feel “loved” or whatever chemicals come with that. and that’s what i want again. he’ll take you in and make you think you can stop taking your antidepressants and then he’ll absolutely fuck your life over. and he just. gets away with it. and it comes out in all the worst ways possible. can you tell i’m resentful? its because i love dragging things out but i try to blame it on a desire to be an artist. some shit i’m not even good at.

this was supposed to end forever ago. but you don’t even remember. was there a point? was there a reason? no. you wanted to be beautiful and this is what you got.

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.

its not all about you, now, is it?

“i am almost completely soulless,”

i need to throw away everything in my room, throw away all my plants, throw away all my clothes, all my art,

“i am incapable of being human,”

i’m not thinking straight and i don’t remember how to calm down because everything i’m doing isn’t helping. i’ll try a different song, hell, an audiobook, deep breaths, god, i hate the feeling of coming down,

“i am incapable of being inhuman,”

why do i do this to myself again? its not unlike you to shit talk me backstage, and i’m sorry no one told you, (i thought someone would,) and its not unlike you to think everything is about you,

“i am living uncontrollably,”

(i watch your hair fall all over your face and i’ll look away and i’ll swear to never think about you like that again) and you’ll think that secret’s about you but its fucking not. i don’t think about you as much as you think i do.

(i’m lying to you and i’m lying to me,)

you, of all people, should understand, right? you should see through this, but you fucking don't.

disintegration of platonic love

for now, the day i’ve feared the most is here. i’ve tried not to think about how college is the end of high school friendships, how the moment i realized i could love again it’s about to disintegrate, how i cried on the phone with you six hours away, how nothing ever lasts. i’m not homesick, i am home.

i miss you.

the face and the body doesn’t count, i want the thoughts in your head and the feelings you experience and the shit you say to be closer to me. i want you in my passenger seat again.

i worry about him. i wish i didn't but i care too much. and i didn't know someone could care back.

and i should know better.

maybe he was right, love is the worst but its worth it for the good things it brings you.

because here at uni, i’ve been static. no one knows anything about me. no one ever asked. i don’t know anything about anyone. my friends say i’m an alcoholic in the making. i like to think there is more to me than that. but i probably am. i think i just wanna throw my life away. its so easy.

squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube. punch a transphobe. smoke a cig. drink just to feel. drive somewhere far away. sleep in your car. spend all your savings. and then die. i’d be happy then.

you cross your arms. shut down.

“don’t worry about me, i’ve got a lot on my mind”

i smile as i turn the conversation back around to you. its beautiful, all the words come pouring out of you. you sound like you might cry. there might be something wrong with me, because i want you to cry.

maybe i just want you to be comfortable with yourself around me.

you ground me.

i really do love you.

nonetheless, i listen. as i start to run through my thoughts, try to select an appropriate response, you usually end up speaking again. i hope you don’t mistake my silence for not giving a fuck. if i voiced every thought in my head around you, you’d never be able to get a word in otherwise.

rush week

she’s really drunk. she loves her boyfriend, and wishes she was a man.

she’s adamant. she wishes she was a man. she used to wear a binder everyday, but then she met her boyfriend.

and her boyfriend wouldn’t love her if she was anything but who she’s pretending to be.

“i wish i was a man,”

“you know, i used to have these thoughts a lot before i realized i was trans.”

i’m stone cold sober.

“i’ve been ignoring it for years, wait do you want a white claw?”

i walked into this party with a shaking body, but i put on a happy face and talk to my friends. but they know its an act.

i chug my drink. i want to be drunk.

“are you alright?”

a lot of people have asked me this lately. i used to be good at hiding it. there must be something in the way i carry myself, or the lack of light in my eyes when i smile.

“yeah, just really fucking depressed. i don’t want to be here but i know i should go through the motions.”

i feel fine, but my body won’t keep up. i’m getting migraines a few days every week. i stopped getting my period. sometimes all the lymph nodes in my body swell up. sometimes i get so dizzy i can’t walk straight. (i started writing again)

i don’t have the energy anymore to keep up with a room full of laughing friends. my body language falters, the smile in my eyes is gone, my apparent apathy // disenchantment comes through.

but whatever.

“you’re so cool. you shouldn’t be sad, you have so much swagger.”

she’s medicated and four beers in.

i should join a frat. not sure i could do another cult though. i gotta stop going all in on an institution.

i don’t know how to end this. just kept getting worse. i wanna sleep.