What They Said: Part I of Voices

"Sit down and give up," they said;

she closed her eyes and listened.

And the dark crept in.

....

"You'll always be broken," they said;

she gave in and let herself sleep.

And the doubt crept in. 

....

"Nobody will protect you," they said;

she froze in helpless terror. 

And the fear crept in. 

....

"You'll never be good enough," they said;

she lost hope she'd ever smile again. 

And the guilt crept in. 

....

"You'll always be alone," they said;

her tears rained like blood. 

And the grief crept in. 

....

"No one could ever love you," they said;

a scream tore itself from her throat. 

And the pain crept in. 

....

....

....

....

"You're not perfect, you're loved," he said;

she hesitantly opened her eyes. 

And the hope crept in. 

....

"Broken can be beautiful," he said;

she started fighting the lies. 

And the peace crept in. 

....

"Don't doubt yourself," he said;

she thought she could smile again. 

And the trust crept in. 

....

"I'm still here for you," he said;

she decided to feel once more. 

And the love crept in. 

....

"I love you," she said;

his smile dried her tears. 

And the faith crept in. 

....

"I love you, too," he said;

she smiled back at him. 

And the light crept in. 

Labyrinth

I've spent my entire life in this labyrinth but I've never gotten lost because it's inside me. Inside my mind. I'm only lost if I want to be and the deeper I go into the maze the more I can hide myself. And I'm the only one who can get in and out. 

At first there's just a long hallway, with doors on either side. These are the shallow things- whether or not my room is clean, which clothes look good together. I probably spend more time here than I should.

When you reach the end of the hallway you'll have two choices. To the right you should see a door with the word 'secrets' scrawled across the top. I'd rather not let you in there right now, so take a left up the staircase to everything that is constantly on my mind. It's a long staircase. At the top is a semicircle of doors. There are five of them that you could explore. The door to the far left is Guilt. The sweatshirt that was never returned, the little white lies I told, all the promises I didn't keep. Behind the next door is Failures. In there are all the shows I was never cast in, all the scholarships I never received, all the goals I never reached. This door is reopened every time I add a new item to the list, which is much too often. 

To the right there are better things. The far right door is Comfort, everything that makes me feel confident about myself, such as friends I've made and compliments I've received. Next to it is Accomplishments: the good grades I've gotten, how my room is always clean, how I manage my time.

The door in the middle is Love. Behind it are two hallways. One slopes upward, the other down. The first one leads to a large room, very simply designed but tastefully decorated. Pictures of my family, immediate and extended, sit on the tables, while those of my friends adorn the walls. This is where I keep a record of every person I've ever loved, however briefly or deeply. Usually it isn't noticed, but there is a small closet to the side of the room. In there are all the living corpses of loved ones that will never stop haunting me. That door is kept under lock and key- opening it releases a flood of emotions I don't want to deal with. In the back of the larger room there is a door that leads to another hall on the right, and a staircase going down right ahead of you.

If you'd gone down the other hall, you'd have entered a huge ballroom that could have and would have been magnificent if not for the damage that has happened. This is my romance. The tapestries have been ripped to ribbon-like shreds and the wallpaper is faded and peeling. The high ceiling is cracked and looks like it will collapse inward at any given moment. And there are the chandeliers. Crystalline glass prisms that have crashed to the dull marble floor and shattered into hundreds of thousands of tiny fragments. Be careful not to cut your feet on the broken glass as you walk to the back of the room into another hallway. Right and up a staircase that leads you to a door ahead or another hallway on the left. No matter whether you take the upward or the downward hall initially, you'll still end up in the same place.

This hall is a long one, with lots of twists and turns and it's always getting longer, because the walls are lined with all my memories. I can see when I said my last goodbye to the family dog when I was five. I can read about how I felt like a princess when I learned to sing 'Silent Night' in German in the third grade. I can look at the outcast I was in fourth grade when we studied the medieval period. I can watch myself cry when I discovered we were moving, and recall all the schools I went to and all the friends I never had in elementary school. I can read what I wrote about the first day of seventh grade and the feeling of finally belonging after 12 years of isolation. I can remember having to leave that behind again to enter high school, and then I found a place here, too. I can watch myself die and be brought back to life better than I was before... I've relived all the sorrow and tears and pain as well as the laughter and joy and love. This hallway is one of my favorites to walk through because I can see in it everything that has created me. This hall is always getting longer as I make new memories, those of school dances and more hours spent at school than at home and becoming friends with my grandparents. 

At the end of this hallway is where I keep the essence of me. It's a library that started out small at first but has grown as I have become more and more human. There are shelves and shelves of books that hold my identity. Some of these books I've never even opened, unwilling to find out more about myself than I want to know. But there are others I read constantly. They tell me about who I am on a deeper level than most people will ever know. They tell me what helps me discover myself. They tell me where I turn when I need to escape. They tell me what heals me. This library is my sanctuary. Sometimes I let someone borrow a book or two or three, but I've never let anyone in before. I keep the library in the best condition I can. If my library is in order I can handle anything. Sometimes I lose it and my library faces the consequences, but I always set it to rights again, and then I cherish it even more than before. When I feel lost in life, I go to my library and then I don't feel so lost.

My mind is sort of like a labyrinth, but I'd guess it's a lot like yours. I've almost gotten lost inside my own mind, though, and it's time to leave. Time to retrace my steps back through the memories and love and stress to where I began. Thanks for coming with me.

A Love Letter

To no one in particular, 


Love isn't supposed to hurt like this, but I can't stop crying. I think about it daily and every time it just hurts worse. I thought heartbreak was just a figure of speech until I felt the pain in my chest, right under my rib cage on the left side. For some reason the pain won't go away.

Love is the reason I'm awake past midnight writing this. I can't find a word that really describes the feeling, but sometimes words just get in the way anyway.

Tell me, is there someone out there who will love me no matter what? Because that's all I want right now. Someone to always love me. Even when my hair isn't done and and my eyes are red from crying. Even when I'm wearing pajamas and no makeup. Even when I eat big firsts and bigger seconds and still go back for thirds. Even when I make mistakes. So tell me.

Tell me what to do when my heart is breaking but he isn't there because he's desperately in love with someone else and I think I saw them holding hands today. Yesterday. Whatever. Tell me what to do when the tears keep falling without my permission. But most of all just tell me that he's out there somewhere and he's right for me and I'm right for him. Because all I find myself doing right now is crying and waiting. And it gets harder and more painful to keep waiting.

Maybe it is meant to hurt this much.


-From no one in particular

Dreaming

The sky is getting darker but the streetlights and headlights and houselights are getting in the way so I can't see the stars anymore. I wish they would turn off the lights, because the stars can't shine without darkness, and when I finally get away from all the lights, the stars shine brighter and then I think of you.

You always liked looking at the stars. I remember the night that all you wanted to do was look at them. You just wanted to look at the stars. And so did I. So I put my head on your shoulder and we watched them until we fell asleep.

It's so dark out but I can still see the clouds, like a mermaid's long, pale fingers stretching out into a deep blue-black sea, searching for the small white diamonds called stars. Dreaming of touching them. I want to touch them.

But every time the mermaid gets close enough to touch, the stars somehow just slip through her fingers. It's all right, though, because it's the dreaming that matters, even though it sometimes hurts.

And I'm going to keep dreaming. 

The Girl Inside Me

There's a girl I know who spends most of her time hiding. I catch a glimpse of her occasionally in the quiet moments, in the silence of midnight or the still of early morning.

Her eyes are constantly lifted to a ceiling of cloudy blue sky. Their depths are mirrored in hers. They are windows to her soul, and in them I sometimes catch sight of forever. 

A gentle breeze blows her hair behind her and brings her home, and the smells of rain and wind and sunlight keep her from falling. Beauty and life sustain her soul and appear in her smile. Thoughts of flying fill her dreams.

And her arms are outstretched to embrace it all, while musings of love and forever dance in her head. 

She especially likes rain. During the day she goes out and stands in it and lets it roll down her face and arms and into her hair. At night she pulls up the blinds, opens the window and watches the raindrops hit the pavement. Usually she prays for a thunderstorm. It's been 561 days since she dragged herself out of bed at 5:30 in the morning to watch real lightning flash. She finds the sound of thunder both comforting and terrifying. 

I think this girl is beautiful. I used to see her more but she keeps leaving and it's getting harder and harder to find her. 

I wish she would come back. 

Dear You,

I am inexplicably fixated by you. I am morbidly fascinated with you. I am gruesomely tempted by you. As expected, I'm also furious with you. Thinking about you makes me angry and afraid but also fills me with a sense of closure. 

I keep imagining your embrace. I think of going into your arms with my eyes closed and never opening them again. You are light and warmth and untroubled peace.

But I've seen what happens when people touch you. Or you touch them. I'm furious at you for touching the people I love and taking them away from me. Sometimes I'm ready to touch you and follow them. But usually not.

I know that eventually I'll have to touch you, and if you get impatient or think I'm taking too long, you'll just touch me and it will all be over. You'll touch me and I'll lose myself to you forever. I don't know when it will happen, only that it will. Until then, it doesn't make much sense to be afraid of you.

But I am anyway.

Love,

Midnight

Unexplained Fears

I looked out over the valley and caught sight of 

something I might call forever

and in the dark I saw the streetlights and houselights 

and the headlights on an endless string of distant highway,

waiting to be severed.

I didn't want you to see them,

but they were there in my eyes,

all my hidden tears

as inside I cried for how much I have missed 

because of all my hidden fears

that have held me back for all these years.

It still echoes in my head, that simple prayer

that caught me in in its glare

and forced me to care

because I can't get this feeling out of my heart

and I don't really want to.

I want it to stay there with me and you

Until the string of lights is broken

and forever can be spoken

Until my hidden tears have dried

and my lying fears subside

And I name this feeling and learn to cope

But I'm pretty sure I'm feeling. hope.

Spent so long believing I never could heal,

spent filling the cracks in my soul with steel,

fighting back doubts, unsure what was real,

I thought I had lost what it takes to feel.

I didn't mean to write this much to you

but we know where we stand

so I'll tell you the truth-

Because of you I counted to ten

and all of a sudden I trusted again.

You came and offered me reprieve,

you came and somehow made me believe.

I think you might be good for me,

and I think you've finally set me free.

I'm trying to say that you pulled me ashore-

and that because of you, I'm not afraid anymore.

Time Passes

Seconds

                      Minutes

                                   Hours

                                       DAYS

                                    Weeks

                                             Months

                                                                                 Y  e  a  r  s

It's been a lifetime since I entered the world as an outcast. Since I retreated into myself and my books and immersed myself in learning, and somewhere deep inside me I resigned myself to the very real possibility that I will forever be in this painful isolation. So long since I became me in a way that I never want to be me again. Since I started looking for the meaning of being alive, not just living.

Time passed.

It's been years since I was forced to pick up everything and move to another state. I always knew we wouldn't be there for very long and that just made me more and more... lonely. Haunted by the memory  of my once-friends saying they would write me every day. I never received a single letter.

Time passed. 

It's been months since I walked into the dim, white hospital room and said goodbye for the very last time. It was the last day of December and it was freezing outside, but it wasn't as cold as my heart was. Not even near that cold.

Time passed. 

It's been weeks since he put his arms around me and held my hand and held me close and my heart beat in my chest. For a moment I let myself hope, but then I had to remind myself that he was only putting on a show.

Time passes. 

It's been days since I laid on the grass and lifted my face to heaven and poured my heart out into the stream and felt loved and understood by the people who mean the most to me.

Time passes. 

It's been hours since I heard her crying and didn't know what to do, and I decided not to care about class so I could talk to her and feel like we were friends again.

Time passes. 

It's been minutes since I thought I might have been falling out of love.

Time passes. 

It's been seconds since---

But time still passes.

Broken Walls

There are walls around my heart, made

from years of pain and isolation. I wish

you were using a hammer to break the-

m down because then at least I'd know

I should resist. But instead you are slo-

wly taking the walls apart, brick by bri-

ck, and I'm so very helpless to stop you. 

I'm trying to put up the walls again, but
the bricks are crumbling beneath my fi-
ngers and I have nothing to fill in the cr-
acks with. I've spent so long building al-
l these walls that I forgot they were the-
re and now for the life of me I just can't 
remember the way I built them before.


You knock me down and pick me back up
 again but I forgive you every time beca-
use you have no idea what you're doing. 
Through the cracks in the walls, my heart 
is pulling me to you, but my head is screa-
ming that I should run and and hide myse
lf behind that wall again, however weak.

I'm at war with myself and I don't know 
what to do, so I'll just sit here on the co-
ld grass and feel the equally cold bricks 
against my back while I eat leftover cho-
colate and stop my heart from becoming
as cold as the dilapidated, broken bricks. 

"Take all that you have,
And turn it into something
You would miss if
Somebody threw that brick,
Shattered all your plans."
          -Brand New