Every Form of Refuge Has Its Price

Sooooo... three cheers for the overly-optimistic nut. I like to think I'm not too picky, really, I like things to be mostly upfront. I mean a little mystery now and then is lovely, but sweeping things under the rug just isn't my style.

Apparently, it doesn't have to be, because I'm the one getting swept under the rug. Dandy. There are many tiny moments that corroborated my opinions, made me think I had a chance. Like how they played my song, him and his band, when I asked them to. How comforting he always was. How, when we went out on a proper piss-up, then had to take one girl home, which killed the mood a little and made a couple of people call it a night, he stayed out with me because I didn't want my night to be over yet. The things he said to me and the way he properly listened to the things I said. There was something so delightfully genuine and organic about the whole thing. It was lovely. Sometimes it's not hard for me to smile, to be giddily joyful for no apparent reason. I thought I was out of the woods, I thought I was free and clear from when he told me to put down my cup of tea. If it is true, that thing that he couldn't say without sounding like a prick, and I didn't make him say out loud (maybe I should have) then why did he tell me to put that cup of tea down? Something changed. Likely, he sobered up, realized what had happened, and kicked himself for it. It wouldn't be the first time.

But I'm back to being let down. Broken down because I'm not a good idea. I'm not worth my past. Well, at least I'm not beige in this one. Because the stupid things I've done in the past and the hurts I've caused myself and other people have caused me aren't enough in and of themselves, they now get re-validated as the reasons for more hurts. Maybe it's because he's afraid.

I've had a lot of late nights and early mornings this week, which perhaps accounts for my slightly warlike stance by 3 am. I am not one to take things sitting down. And when the person I most want to confront is, for one reason or another, impossible to confront, I tend to go on the warpath against the person or people I find most connected to the problem. Yesterday was unusual because my target, unexpectedly, was myself. There was a little bit of railing against the people in my romantic past, particularly the past year, but for the most part I was my own victim. Sometimes I say the words I'm most afraid someone else will say just to lessen the blow of it if they ever do say them. As though if I've already said it out loud, already acknowledged it, they're just restating things I already know, and it won't hurt as much. I aired a huge number of my insecurities, well, mostly just a couple many many times in the form of jokes at my own expense. Not particularly well-thought out or funny jokes, but jokes nevertheless. I am the girl who, even wearing the shirt I had on last night, can't get a guy to buy her a drink in a bar. I am the girl who is so much more attractive when you're drunk, and who you regret kissing the next morning, if you even remember her face. Perhaps this honorary man business isn't all it's cracked up to be.

As tempted as I was, I didn't do it. I wanted to, fairly desperately, but for some reason last night the toxins just didn't happen. Could have been a lot of reasons. It could have been Bear's presence, it could have been the little white plastic thing. It could have been because hurting myself emotionally is getting to be enough for me, I don't need to fuck with my body too. I'm not sure which reasons in what concentrations are responsible, but I didn't wake up with that familiar stale taste in my mouth, and I'm glad. The war paint is back on with a vengeance though.

Oh what can it mean?
Daydream Believer

Chomp the Spy

I didn't mean to read it, honest. But there they were, the words from the deep dark place, laid out in blue ink on paper. It gave me a good shake, enough to make my lips come loose and confess my fears. Sooner or later the smoke cleared. Cleverer and callous, once everything seemed sorted suddenly it all went sordid didn't you hear?
I would be the worst of liars if I said I wasn't concerned. I am. But for a change I'm not sure why. As usual, I don't know what I want. There's some spite there that I'm not quite sure what I want to do about. It would be nice to get a couple of choice words in, but now that things are heading in a square-one-wardly direction, I'm not sure I mean them anymore. If I ever meant them in the first place. Now that chomp the spy is cleared out, who knows what's next. I can't believe it was a coincidence, the timing was just too clean-cut. But there could be a number of reasons for that. Most of them having to do with power. That moment of what if isn't this interesting testing the water waiting wishing wondering daring challenge me again. Another game. Do I want to play? Are the takes going to be the same as last time? If it's just another instant replay, I'll pass. But if we are a little older and wiser, smarter and tougher, and more mature to boot, this could just be a very pleasant game. There's precedent.
Once burned...
Daydream Believer

Out Of Step While They All Get In Line

She's baaaaaaack. Ladies and gentlemen this is how it starts. A little eyeliner, some music from a byegone age, and I'm back in the darkest moments of my life. It's in the past for a reason. It's easier to be angry than hurt. It's easy to scream along with the music and hide behind thick makeup and a baleful stare. I'm going nowhere fast that's what they say. But it's been an awfully long time since someone said that about me. There's a little bit more breadth here now, more than just the thinly veiled pain disguised as anger. I'm so much stronger now than I was. Then, I was exactly as strong as I had to be. Now, the blows are a little heavier now. Pain is fleeting, blows are glancing, when you're dancing through life. I might take that advice, if I could, if I knew how. Hopefully tomorrow's train will stay on the rails, even if I've been a little derailed lately. She knew what you were thinking before you thought it... and that's a good thing? When you do it to me, it leaves me feeling stupid. You leave me feeling stupid a lot. You bastard. It's the wrongs that make the words come to life. It's always cloudy except for when you look into the past. Sometimes even then. Why? Why? Why? According to the rule of three, this is where the resolution happens. Bullshit. Get me out of my mind. Don't let me get me. Come fly with me, let's go real high. Pull me down hard. Don't push me. Don't fuck with me. Drowning's an awful way to go. If it's not worth it, why bother? If it's worth doing, there's some meaning in it. Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, or does it? You say it's wrong but it's right for me. Is it? Am I doing the right thing here? Shouldn't I know? And the reason that she loved him is the reason I loved him too. Put out the fire and don't look past my shoulder. Nothing's as real as our old reckless ways. Was I ever reckless? Did I ever really want to be? Definitely wanted to be. Did it ever happen? The things I thought I'd do. And you know none of them would ever have the strength. Keeping up. Keep on keeping on. If it doesn't hurt it's not worth doing. Admit. Admission. Let someone in. Letting someone in. Find out games you don't wanna play. Just another regret. No regrets. Wasn't that what this was supposed to be about? Who has to know? Those thoughts I can't deny. No more Nile. What a pretty poison, what a lovely lie. Like a hole in the head, I know that I'll soon be better off. Come on, roll me over Romeo. Is this as good as it gets? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Like a needle in a haystack. Listen to your lies. Put on your pretty lies. I feel like a monster. Me myself and I. Let's hash it out. Set her free. A strange duet, your power can go fuck itself. I can handle it. Brave like soldiers. A woman who acts like a man. I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now. Call on me. Stand by me. Twenty fucking five to one, my gambling days are done. Looks like the holy ghost is gone. I'll wait till you fall from grace. It's not like you to say sorry. But then again I don't really know. Are we having fun yet? Fun, that's what this was supposed to be. I dreamed that I knew the secret code. Your face betrays you. That'll be the day that I die. This'll be the day that I die. Drinking whiskey and rye. Back when we mattered. Fueling up on whiskey. I wonder if I'll ever change my ways. Or if I need to. I'm not giving up. I'm not slacking off or backing out or cracking up. Or backing down. I won't back down. This is how I'm supposed to be. Tell me, who should I be? You know you're not the only one. All our lives, we've been waiting. Once a good girl goes bad. Is she ever coming back? She's never coming home. They won't make it home and they really don't care. You better go, you know the fire's out anyway. Another dance another way another chance, another day. I don't know what I've done, or if I like what I've become. I'm my own worst enemy. You can't hurt me, you don't need to. I do it well enough myself. All I know is that I should. So what if it's Californication. I am just as torn inside. It's true, we're all a little insane, but it's so clear now that I'm unchained. I thought by now you'd realize, honey you can't hide your lyin eyes. My morals got me on my knees, I'm begging please. I'm under your spell. Mercy. What'll you do when you get lonely? You been running and hiding much too long. I was only having fun, wasn't hurting anyone. Except myself, but that's nothing new. So you say that only proves that I'm insane. Don't try to save me. Stop me. Keep me here. That's great, it starts with an earthquake. It's my responsibility, you owe nothing to me. You promised me nothing. It was just my imagination running away with me. I took your words and I believed. Out, damn spot. I'm trying to wash it away, but it's all over me in marker. I am so high I can hear heaven, but heaven don't hear me. You could have offered me some dignity. Choose the devil you know or the devil you don't, their horns are the same colour. This truth is stranger than fiction. Don't file me under categories, you're deceived. Genius is in the mistakes. Preaching the gospel according to Johnnie Walker Red. I tell myself I'm gonna be alright, but it's still not clear. What follows. Too young to die and too old to believe in promises. Maybe not too old. Trust me, trust you. How can I trust you, I know you. Now I know what you are. What you do. What you do to me. I know by the look that I see in your eye. Why does this happen to me? Hard to believe that it's not over tonight. Who is the monster and who is the man? I'm open, you're closed. You bleed just to know you're alive. Shouldn't let you conquer me completely. Don't want to forget how it feels without. You can't talk to a man when he don't want to understand. I want to understand and you won't let me. You don't want me, which is more than your right, but couldn't you have figured that out a little earlier? This world if you let it will drive you into the ground. They'll hurt you and desert you, and take your soul if you let them. Break me. Take me over. I'm all shook up. Is it worth the pain with no one to blame. I'm waking up to say I tried instead of waking up to another TV guide. The shit I hear you say just blows my mind. Never seen a sky so blue. Lost like I could not be found. I must be out of my head. I hate everything about you, most of all what you make me feel. Are you aware of what you make me feel? I need to break free from your lies, you're so self-satisfied. If I could make you believe. I'm not kind if you betray me. Gonna be okay. Got to be a joker he just do what he please. We all wanna change the world. I thought I chose the surest road, but that road led me here. You'll never know the way your words have haunted me. I don't fit into this world. I hope that doesn't sound too weird. I try to believe you, but I don't. Tomorrow's a different day. I don't know who you think I am. And for some reason, it matters. We know the game, we played it, and now you want to cry uncle. I'll pay for my sins, the heartache begins. Drinking wine and thinking bliss is on the other side of this. I've felt that fire oh and I've been burned, but I wouldn't trade the pain for what I've learned. Would I? It really makes me wonder if I ever gave a fuck about you. That's a lie. Bloodshot eyes. It felt good to be bad, and was it worth the aftermath? Only time will tell. These changes ain't changing me. This was never the way I planned, not my intention. Dutch courage. Half-finished bottles of inspiration. Curiosity killed the cat. Tell me what I'll never be, make me feel broken. I don't feel like I am strong enough. Are you strong enough? I quit crying long enough. Motivate me, captivate me, I wanna get your face out of my head. Whisper what it is you want. Go on. Go on. Gone going everything gone give a damn. Make up your mind or I will. Walking to the beat of another drummer. Another fucking musician. I'm wishing my life away with these things I'll never say. Now here we are, and I'm suddenly standing at the beginning with you.
I beg to dream and differ.

Daydream Believer

Poison

Destructive behaviour is a funny thing. Funny peculiar, usually, although I have been laughing an awful lot lately. A means to an end. I wonder where the end will be. I know what will likely happen if I continue. I've seen the pictures. It isn't that I like it, it isn't that I need it. But oddly, it makes it all feel better. The willing intake of so many toxins, it makes me feel better, strangely. Like bringing the turmoil from the inside into something concrete, something of which I am the commander. Something that's between me and that little burning tube. Someone made the hypothesis that in order to do this kind of thing, one must hate oneself. I freely admit that I hate myself from time to time, but it is not at those times that I crave the toxins, not usually. Something to focus on, something to bring myself out of myself, something to make the rest of the world real again. Art on the edge, going not quite to the point where you lose control, but close.

And it makes it easier. Easier to forget. I already have that foul taste in my mouth, it lets me ignore it. Easier to act, not to think, not to wonder, not to compare. Easier to keep the secret. I once felt relief, a strange, twisted kind of relief that all I needed to trigger a sensory memory of that strangely comforting time was to smoke a couple of cigarettes and drink a case of cheap beer. It was that easy, and the taste in my mouth when I woke up the next morning was exactly the same. And here I am drawing parallels with that time again. Much as I say it's the same, it isn't. Fundamentally, it has this major, gigantic difference which I can only see being totally honest with myself. I won't call this a game, even if there is some play involved. I toy with the idea of opening up, of telling tales. If I did, the inherent betrayals aside, would it change the act, force me to change the qualities or quantities of it in the telling, in the reactions? Adjust the past in my memory based on the reactions of someone who wasn't there? Colour the experience with the eyes of the present? Force me to qualify and quantify my own reactions? I don't know. You have to be honest about what you want, and I don't know why that has always been so hard for me. But now I am honest about what I want. Both in the short term and the long term. At least to myself. At least as far as I can figure out what I want. That's all I can ask of myself.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried. I'm reasonably sure it's not a motorcycle accident, since it's supposed to be packed up for the winter by now, but I'm still a bit sketched out. It's unusual for it to be like this. Some people, you don't worry if they don't pick up the phone, some people, you do. With him, I do. I'm worried, I'm afraid. Not just about now. About later. About whens and wheres and what ifs. I'm pretty good at being realistic, but what happens when the thing you've tried to be most practical about becomes the thing which not only can, but must, defy rationality, the thing that makes everything else take a back seat, the thing everyone's looking for whether they think they are or not. The thing I thought I couldn't have, and so petulantly declared I didn't want. Maybe I still can't have it. That would be poetic, wouldn't it?

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Dirty Little Secret

I got home just a few moments ago. Just after half past two in the morning, totally sober. I'm on a little hiatus for the moment, hoping that my favourite form of toxin will regain its power.

So it wasn't the quiet, relaxed, even intimate evening in I had been planning on. It was probably just as well. That's the great thing about shows on DVD, you can watch them another time. Haven't picked up my fiver yet, and though it's gone to double or nothing now, I'm not sure it's a fair contest anymore. Is it bad if I kind of want to lose this bet?

It's all about the little moments. Most of the time, I just want to go back to those moments of excitement and intrigue, and in the pursuit of them, I find more moments, until I wind up sitting confused and alone trying to rationalize actions, both my own and those of others. This is the problem with not knowing anyone very well.

If it wasn't crazy, I'd be bored. I prefer the craziness, as much as I might bitch and complain. I think I have a balance for a moment or two.

And I'm only 16000 words away from December.

Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer

Grow Your Own Dope- Plant a Man!

Funny that I never really believed him until now. You're beautiful. It's just one of those things guys say to girls whose beds they're trying to get into. Now that he isn't anymore, or maybe he is, who could say, I do. I believe it because I've seen it with my own two eyes. I didn't believe her when she said it either, just something friends say to other friends to make them smile. I never thought about how every time I'd ever said it, it had been absolutely true. That's only just occured to me now. Regardless, it's not something you can believe through proof you can see, you just have to feel it, and right now, I do. "I hope he tells you you're beautiful, babe, because you never seem to believe it when I do." Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but the mind of the beheld. Thank you.

The makeup and jewelry are more like a shield than an adornment today. The shield I keep telling myself I don't need. It's really a confidence thing. A friend once put it very simply for me, "Eyeliner equals confidence." I can't be afraid anymore. I've been seeing a lot of the clear light of morning lately, from both sides. I think maybe that's when I do my best thinking. I wonder if I'll still think getting up before seven was a good idea at midnight.

Oh, I managed to cross one off the list.

Forewarned is forearmed. I'm definitely armed. Hopefully I won't need to be. I seek no enemies. Occasionally they fall into my lap. Hopefully I'll run into the good one today, and this will be a moot point. Or it'll be worse. I'll let you know how it shakes out.

Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer

Lucid

In order to grasp true lucidity, one must rely on their own perceptions, unfettered by the constraints of common thought. It is only once we go a little bit mad that we experience the clarity of sanity.

Maybe we all sound as crazy to him as he sounds to us.

One of the most beautiful, confident, self-assured women I have ever met felt threatened by my presence (read: hopeless girlish crush on her boyfriend) when I felt myself to be a socially and physically awkward 15 year old. Maybe there's something to this. I'm not sure whether her perception or mine was closer to the truth. Either I came off a lot better than I felt, or she was a lot less confident on the inside than on that cucumber-cool exterior.

Oh promised land, what a wicked ground.
Build a dream, watch it all come down.

People squirm when I smile at them on the bus. At first I was doing it to be friendly, now, I'll admit, I'm kinda doing it to see them squirm. And to see if I can find someone who doesn't.

Oh god, he looks exactly the same. He still won't talk to me, but now I can't hope to walk past him without knowing he's there. Hell in a handbasket.

If you want games, I'll play. Games are fun, but don't do me any favours. I don't want your pity.

Bloody hell if you'd just eat a few more vegetables! I know that it's more complicated than that, but part of me just wants my good old friend back. I want to be the more damaged one again, but it's only partially so you won't have to be. How silly a hat do I have to wear before you'll notice me again?

But the half-finished bottles of inspiration lie like ghosts in my room.

I don't know how it's so easy for them. These things don't come easily to me.

Today's what, the 14th? I miscounted, it's coming up on nine weeks now. Hell.

Hyenas laugh when they're agitated.

Maybe a little rampage is what I need...

Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody,
I got some money 'cause I just got paid.
How I wish I had someone to talk to, I'm in an awful way.

Why do I already know everything I read in Cosmo this month? Well, except for that trick with the... never mind. But how come I'm so much more sure of what I already know because now I've read it in Cosmo?

Poor brokenhearted baby. I'm having a hard time mustering sympathy and stifling I-told-you-so's. I'm lonely too, I've been lonely longer, and you weren't going to do a damn thing about it, so why should I?

Good night and good luck.
Don't worry, you can have mine. I'm sure not using it.
Daydream Believer

Ramen

I once fancied myself a rebel. Then I decided that I really didn't have the drive to defy convention, and at that point I found that that was exactly how I defied convention, and continue to. I don't align, or identify. I tried, goodness knows. But nothing quite fit. I tried to be unusual as a woman in a male-dominated field, athletics or science, but realized that I can't stand math and would take writing over running any day of the week. I change too much, too frequently to qualify or quantify myself as any certain type. Indeed one of the things that I felt set me apart from many is something that's about to change. I suppose I could look at it as gaining a skill. A dubious one, I'll admit, but this doesn't have to be any more character-altering than learning how to fire a gun was. I know how to fire a gun, but I'm not about to go on a shooting spree. It's not about who I am, it's about what I can do. Power and ability. I liked the ride, time to try it without training wheels. I'll probably fall, but I'll probably get up and do it again.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

The Game

I could. I can. I will.