Chocolate Milk and Dragon Breath

My best memories of college so far have been when I’ve acted like a child again.                       

 Going to college is something that everyone associates with adulthood. It’s like some metaphorical gateway to maturity, a place where we’re expected to grow up like suddenly because we moved away from home and took on new freedoms we instantly become the perfect picture of responsibility, but you know what? Fuck that. I am young, but I have been conditioned to feel like eighteen is old age and yet my generation is still so wrapped up in trying to grow up even faster than we already have. Four years is too long to wait for legality so they fake fun through alcohol-induced stupors, drinking to create memories they’ll someday drink to forget.

We haven’t matured in the slightest. Kids still skip classes, trying to find motivation but coming up short time and time again. Students are looking to transfer after month one so they can run away at the first slight sight of a forthcoming problem.

And then there’s me.

I miss drinking chocolate milk through crazy straws and the ease of transforming from five-year-old to ferocious dragon in three seconds flat and the ability to change my mind as much as it suits me. I would take all of that back and trade it for this teen-aged hell in a heartbeat, but that’s not to say I can’t handle the weight of adult responsibilities. That’s not to say I can’t accept that the time will come when maturity is a necessity and not an option. It’s to say that I want to wipe the broken-hearted, strung-out scowls off the faces of my peers like pureed vegetables from the grinning face of a four-toothed toddler and fucking show them what they’re missing. I want to remind them of how happy we were then, because lately that’s all I can think about.

I am clinging desperately to everything I want back from the era of single digits and I am clinging with both five-fingered fists clenched tighter than the stranglehold my lack of inspiration has on me. So I try to surround myself with the joy of sheer, childlike simplicity. I celebrated my eighteenth birthday by jumping in mud puddles and shouting at the moon and letting the rain streak my mascara and knot my hair. I jumped in a huge pile of butter-yellow leaves and walked around with a reminder stuck in my hair for half the day without even realizing and I wouldn’t have given a fuck if I had. I spent a Saturday night watching Winnie the Pooh and I got nightmares from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the first time since I was six and slid down the hill in the courtyard with my friends using jackets as sleds.

Yes, I have felt the burn of cheap whiskey stinging a throat already raw from holding back words I should’ve been said a long time ago and yes, I have modernized my childhood dragon by sucking in smoke and charring my lungs, but my roommate and I jammed on cause Backstreet’s got it and have had it going on for years. Cameron and I reminisced about our favorite childhood television shows and reference Rugrats in regular conversation and Jesse made me laugh until I puked.

These are my best memories, not stumbling through an apartment belonging to someone I’ve never met with fifty of their closest friends, getting so wasted I can’t even remember my last name. These, not letting a junior fuck me but feeling like a grown up for not pushing labels on him because labels are the stuff of high school romances. These. And I have never been more fucking proud of myself.

I refuse to fall victim to this idea that age is a number that can define me. I refuse to believe that this is what life is supposed to be like, because nostalgia has been the only thing keeping me sane in the last few months and I am completely okay with that. And I want you to be okay with that, too; I want to play leapfrog with you and when you trip and skin your knee I’ll help you pick out a Batman band-aid to cover it up with. I want to get lost in the Toys R Us aisles with you while you shop for your next Transformer and later we can play in the sandbox and dig through our teen-aged troubles with miniature shovels and pails and maybe, if you want, we can paint our nails too, and use a different color for every day of the week that we feel alone, just as long as you remember not to forget about me when give in and grow up for good.

Muddled Musings

We haven't had a real conversation in days and you don't seem to mind but it's fucking tearing me apart. You're the only one who knows. You're like cool ice on a fresh burn, the only thing to ease the pain even a little bit. But when the ice melts against the heat of my scalded skin, the pulsing ache still remains and you don't even bother taking the time to listen lately. Too much time has passed since I've been back to my house, even longer since I've been home; so I spend my nights roaming these empty Burlington streets late at night and wandering down the lonely roads inside my brain, a sick parallel. I'm just searching for purpose, some ounce of inspiration in this place that has sucked me dry. I'm only a shell of the person I once was, no motivation and no peace and no smile. I'm looking for comfort in all the wrong places, craving his attention late at night because you're too busy to tell me everything's going to be all right. I've gone against my own word, all the times I said I never would and made myself a liar. I smoked green til I felt golden, my insides warmer than the equator, but it never fucking lasts. It fades much too quickly and suddenly I'm back in the present sitting in this same black hole of a room wallowing and wishing I was anywhere else, my insides rotting away. I thought this would go away when I left. I thought this wouldn't follow me here but it did, it fucking did. The darkness only held off for a day or two before coming back twice as strong and leaping back down my throat, working me like a puppet. It owns me. I don't know how to make this better. I don't know how to fix it or how stop feeling like this and I don't know how to ask for help if I can't even admit that I'm unhappy.

I'm hardly ever alone; so many people surrounding me so much of the time that I can barely breathe in peace yet somehow loneliness is the only emotion I can feel. The rest is just pure emptiness. But I know that home isn't the answer; there's nothing there for me either. I miss everything about that stupid city I swore I'd still hate now, but people there don't care much more than the ghosts around me here do. This intensifying need to pick up and get the fuck out of here is overwhelming. I want to wind up on a mountain ledge somewhere and look over the edge and feel that conflicting and beautiful rush of fear and freedom. Feel that urge to fly again. Feel the wind on my face and the dirt on my bare hands and feet and fit myself into some landscape that doesn't feel as confining as these buildings do. I know this isn't going to just go away and I can't sit back and wait and hope that things will change because even if they do I'm still going to feel this way. Like I'm just wandering aimlessly and feeling unfulfilled in every possible way. Trapped.

You know, phobias are believed to be linked to the cause of death in previous lives. No wonder the fear of being forgotten or ignored keeps me up long hours into the night, keeps my sleep restless, keeps me from trusting him, keeps me clinging to you, and makes me fucking question everything. No wonder the thought of dying alone grips me by the throat and makes me gasp for air like a fish out of water.

i don't want to write about you anymore

i don't want to write about you anymore

i don't want to write about you anymore

I'm growing up

"This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?"

some days

i just like to lose myself in a movie or a really good book so i can forget the complications associated with my life and the fact that i feel more alone than i'm willing to admit even to myself.