she appears composed, so she is i suppose.

_remains @ 2013-03-07T22:26:00

2013-03-08T03:26:01Z

Remember this little guy? I named him Digby! I forgot to tell you. He's a year and a half old now. You can see pictures of him here!

I also have a new zine being released on Saturday. You can pre-order it below. :)

I miss and love you guys!
♥ ♥ ♥

_remains @ 2013-02-05T16:37:00

2013-02-05T21:37:43Z

“…and in that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past.”

~ Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

(rough draft, for now)

2012-12-30T17:47:16Z

My body is the fractured remains of a city
defined by urbicide.
Think homicide, think pesticide,
think of the skeletons of homes
destroyed in the massacre of its inhabitants.
Sharp shooters and grenades,
ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Eventually the city sleeps,
my soul evaporates with the smoke.
But my heart,
my heart never stops racing to the
ghosts of shells raining,
infinite screams that know
no hope or help will arrive.
My shredded dress does nothing to conceal
my history, yet I refuse to take it off. Not again.
I've returned to this hellhole but forget the reason why.
Out of habit, I hide my tracks and burn the welcome mat;
this is a home to no one.

Are You My Mother?

2012-12-29T18:00:22Z

(this is a very emotional entry. read it only if you're feeling safe.)

I had this book growing up called Are You My Mother by P.D Eastman. I both loved and hated it. A little baby bird is born without his mother in sight and he wobbles around looking for whomever or whatever could be his mother. His mother was out finding him something to eat but he didn't know that. He had a good mother, but she left him alone, and he almost got killed trying to find his protector.

(Ignore the ridiculous voice reading the book.)

I'm going to be 28 in two weeks, definitely old enough to be a mother myself. My mom had me at 25. Yet I still feel unsafe to date - I always have - due to the abuse that happened to me when my mom was off elsewhere when I was a child. I was abused within an inch of my life and then my mom came home from vacation and life went back to normal. Normal being a mother so dissociated from life that she didn't notice the pain her daughter was in. In fact, whenever her daughter cried she punished her for "feeling sorry for herself" when so many kids have it much worse.

I'm fortunate to have a mother who does love me, she loves me fiercely. We live in the same city. I am fortunate, very very fortunate. Yet if I have a child one day (and I really really hope to), I'm afraid to let my mother hold him or her because she dropped me so much when I was an infant. All the time.

As a kid, I'd read that "Are You My Mother?" book and it gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. And now I am an adult and I go looking from person to person, subconsciously trying to find a new mother. That four-year-old screams in me to have someone save her and I'm the only one who can save her, but I hate her for being so needy. So I walk around like that little bird, every fucking day, trying to find my mother and almost getting myself killed. And no one wants an orphaned four-year-old who has a blind mother.

The end.

p.s. I hate all of livejournal's recent changes. it's making coming back harder. >:| </whining>

_remains @ 2012-12-05T21:39:00

2012-12-06T02:39:57Z

I sought solace in hands but when anyone tries to cup water, carrying their hands to their mouth, water always seeps through fingers. There is never enough to quench. Eventually we stop trying. I am the woman dying of dehydration who lies down in the rain, too exhausted to bring a glass to her lips.

I swallow the word ‘hospital’, it too is too large to chew. You ask lungs or heart, I tell suffocation and shards unmendable. To try to fix me is to be blinded.

Don’t tell me my story is too sad. This I know. My winter is imprinted with fear.

(i can't reply to your comments now, but know that i hold you in my heart.)

_remains @ 2012-12-01T01:18:00

2012-12-01T06:18:09Z

He said to cherish my youth. Blink one day and its gone.

_remains @ 2012-11-04T19:59:00

2012-11-05T00:59:17Z

Find me now. Before someone else does.
~ Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

night vision // lucille clifton

2012-11-03T04:08:03Z

the girl fits her body in

to the space between the bed
and the wall. she is a stalk,
exhausted. she will do some
thing with this. she will
surround these bones with flesh,
she will cultivate night vision.
she will train her tongue
to lie still in her mouth and listen.
the girl slips into sleep.
her dream is red and raging.
she will remember
to build something human with it.

(Originally posted by iatrogenicmyth at night vision // lucille clifton)

_remains @ 2012-10-25T15:41:00

2012-10-25T19:41:21Z

(I have to start expressing myself more and more and more. Otherwise I'm going to go mad, or kill myself on purpose or accidentally. Not being suicidal doesn't mean a damn thing when you're acting out in ways that can get you killed instead.)

When your life is nothing but a quilt of horrors, is there a point in explaining one square? Or a hole in the pattern, the place where the sewing machine quit working when it realized you'd unravel the thread faster than it could keep up. There was a moment when I considered patching it by hand, stitch by shaky stitch, but again I dropped the needle. Gave myself a puncture wound instead.

_remains @ 2012-10-14T14:00:00

2012-10-14T18:00:16Z

Send a distress signal to the universe:
Your reflections are fucking me up.
Sever me from the autumn leaves,
there is no comfort in a warm day,
a walk, the wind.
It's all a giant trip wire,
one trigger will blow this place apart.

consider the fall

2012-10-14T03:34:01Z

If I walk any farther
I'll self-destruct.
This I'm afraid of.
See tonight,
I considered how easy that mouthful
would be, could almost hear the sirens.
Not an action to die
but to prove I'm alive -
look, you haven't lost me yet.
But why conjure so many lies
when I've told them all before,
I don't want to repeat that dance.
I truly need an iron curtain,
not death but a wall to keep me safe.
A locked door, a closed blind,
an excuse to give me some time.
Time to recoil, envelop myself
back into all I've ever known of safety:
my life in my own hands.

_remains @ 2012-10-06T17:39:00

2012-10-06T21:39:37Z

Trying to smash the barrier that keeps you smiling and me frowning,
I'm doing everything right. Reaching out, naming myself the shattered teacup
as you serve biscuits to your friends. I thought if I stepped back through time
maybe someone could fix me like they should have but who will step in twenty-three years later? I thought one of you might detect more than evidence, might sew me back up without a bleeding wound to scream in your face. I fantasize showing up at your doorstep, too traumatized to speak, clearly wandering cold with no jacket or purse. Would you take me in? Would someone take me in? Don't make me resort to my old ways.

Like Ariel I suddenly can stumble out of the shore, naked for all to see. Too busy looking beautiful to speak. Oh wait, that's the poster girl for rape, not I. But still we're all voiceless.

Monumental

2012-10-02T22:06:11Z

"I feel like a bird brought out from its cage to do a trick on stage and I'm flapping around trying to fly away but my wings are clipped. And you're the magician trying to get me to perform but I'm too scared. Feathers flutter in the air all around me."

"I am not the magician," she said. "I am the first person to hear your story, the person to support and encourage you as you find your voice. This is for you. This is for that little girl, no one's spoken up for her before. This is your power and your strength."

♥

me and my therapist. thursday i go to the police to charge my childhood abuser.
prepare for more posts.)

_remains @ 2012-09-11T18:11:00

2012-09-11T22:11:27Z

Throwing myself to the wolves is the only way I know to move forward,
both the smartest and the stupidest
thing I've ever done.

This smashing of reality with a scarred fist,
you cannot hurt me more than this.

I've seen your weapon, this time I raise mine,
twenty three years in the making.

You should be afraid; you taught me to survive.

_remains @ 2012-07-13T22:10:00

2012-07-14T02:10:54Z

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

_remains @ 2012-07-03T23:58:00

2012-07-04T03:58:48Z

Despite the lengths you go to avoid sounding dramatic,
you know that life was supposed to be better than this.
You know it because simply going outside isn't supposed to make you cry.
You think that if only your neighbours could hear your sobbing they'd do something about it.
If life was supposed to be this awful, they'd have taught you self-defense in kindergarten,
in grade one you would have been taught how to breathe with a 2oo-pound-man on your chest.
In grade three you'd learn how to simply stay standing.

_remains @ 2012-05-23T21:16:00

2012-05-24T01:16:11Z

If you can understand this, she was in herself so unhappy that words only melt in such temperatures, but towards other people she was the spirit of invincible mercy and protection. She lived, of course, beyond sorrow and solitude, and, if you follow me, the suffering which had brought her there had left her with a kind of supernatural good manners.

She was a conqueror.

~ T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

_remains @ 2012-04-21T21:35:00

2012-04-22T01:35:09Z

My life goes in circles,
seasons of feeble hopes
snuffed out in rhythm.
Knocking on a door,
throwing pebbles into the pond,
trying to wipe fog from my windows,
I vanish before catching your eye.
Do you see me, this scarred ghost
hungry for more? Or am I just
the wind or a twig
or a trick of the eye,
easily explained away?
I wish my heart were real
to anyone but me.
This flicker,
this anchor to illusion,
this lead in my chest.

_remains @ 2012-04-16T14:38:00

2012-04-16T18:38:52Z

When you're drowning you don't think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I'm drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.
~ John Lennon

Friend's Cut

2012-04-14T13:48:47Z

I'm doing a major friends cut, mainly removing inactive journals. Nothing personal, I just have to update my journal to my current interests and motivations. *EDIT: Since this journal isn't locked you will all still be able to read what I write here. I'm just cutting down on the journals I follow.

In other news, I'm in a major writer's block and am looking for supportive friends to encourage me and keep me accountable to my goals. Let me know if you're interested in this, as well as possibly being AIM buddies to make me stay at my damn computer to write.

_remains @ 2012-02-05T21:52:00

2012-02-06T02:52:40Z

I am an abuse survivor or
an abuse victim,
take your pick.
In the end it doesn’t matter because
every day feeds on the last and
spews out a shadow of my self
who trembles in horror.
She is afraid of everyone;
she knows sometimes kindness hurts the most.
Everyone walks away in the end,
every one.

_remains @ 2012-01-22T21:22:00

2012-01-23T02:22:23Z

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.

~ Frederick Buechner

_remains @ 2012-01-09T11:04:00

2012-01-09T16:04:22Z

I am running out of hope.
Money is elusive, fleeting,
Warmth is costly too.
I cannot resolve
for a better year for I can't
escape this moment.
I fill my timeline with others' words,
the safest way to tell my story.
Do not water this flower,
there is a crack in the pot
and all my leaves are dead.

_remains @ 2011-12-10T21:28:00

2011-12-11T02:28:17Z

The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again.
The truth is you will be.
And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing.
~ Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

_remains @ 2011-12-05T22:47:00

2011-12-06T03:47:16Z

Closeness is like trying to catch a fish. Swimming under water alone it looks so free. When you dive it to greet it you scare the fish off. It doesn't even stay to watch you drown.

Or, should you catch it and bring it to shore, the fish gasps for breath and you watch the life fade from its eyes. You curse your palms for reacting to your hungry heart.

You never meant to be a hook, never chose to be only pain to the world. If you could survive alone you would but you can't. That is your curse.