oh it is a moment to cry

at one point a man that i loved fiercely accused me of abandoning him. today i received an email that proved to me that i did the right thing. he was a beautiful bird that i tried to keep in a cage. i didn't do it on purpose, i still don't know how i did it. i think i just paid too much attention to him. he started gnawing off his own leg as they say, and i saw it and knew i had to throw him out. i had tried to open the cage, but he never flew out, which i took to mean that he didn't want to go. but he needed to go. so i threw him out.

and now he has nice new feathers. he is happy. just like i always wanted.

and all i can do is come here to my secret place to cry and put these stupid words down. who knows why i want to share them. maybe i need to throw them out too. i need them to be gone from me. it is hard to believe that the happiness of someone i have loved so deeply can make me this sad. or maybe it is because i know that i wanted so much for him to find this happiness sooner, so we could get on with being so mad for each other.

alas. we don't get to pick these things do we? we can only see them, or sense them and wait. like when you plant bulbs in october. you know they're there, and you're pretty sure that they will bloom, but you just have to wait. and sometimes they don't, not because they hate you, but because sometimes that is just what they do, they don't-bloom.

where do words go when no one knows they're there?

it's hard to get words out these days. i have filled whole journals with romantic rubbish and never minded before. but now it feels like every word has to be worthy of print, every song ready to record. god there are thousands of pages of garbage for every one word worthy of repeat in the world. why can't i let myself remember that?

so this is my place. this is my secret place to cry. to be romantic, or rubbish. to pose the questions i cannot bear to ask of any person. what's compelled me to this place was a sleepless night and a day paralyzed by the fear of not being good enough for the world. not skinny enough. not smart enough, prepared enough, happy enough. it took me until 6pm to shower. and then i dressed and got right back onto my bed. sitting here with my computer. but i have all 80's all the time turned on. so that is helping me want to be alive.

the truth for me right now is that the world feels like more than i can carry. there is too much to feel, too much to fix, too much wrong. and so many people to love. i am flooded with the desire to love, and it literally is washing me into nothing. like on the beach when you write a word in the wet sand and watch the waves slowly wash over it - it becomes harder and harder to see and then it disappears.

i like that analogy because i like the ocean. i mean i really like the ocean. it is bigger than me. it has no name, no face. it neither loves nor hates me. it doesn't wash me away because it has some agenda. it is just doing as it does. like that tiger that escaped from the san francisco zoo. it was just being a tiger when it killed that boy. that's what tigers do.

i can't be perfect. okay? i can't live up to even my own expectations of who i ought to be. but today perfection is not what i'm asking. today all i'm asking is to be able to leave the house before it is midnight again. i keep trying at that. and i keep failing. ending up back here on the bed. on the computer. my eyes stinging. hiding here. hiding here where i am distracted from the fact that there is a world.