i'm sitting against a tree in our campus courtyard with a laptop, trying to seem as though i'm a part of the typical college scenery. in reality, my fingers are covered in stale resin as i try to clean out my pipe to take a stealth toke. finally satisfied with the suction, i bend down behind my backpack to light the bowl. i breathe in as the weed soars through me. i appreciate the sleepy golden sun and the fall chill even more than before. 

it's a typical college drug addiction but i'm happy for the most part. i have a lot of friends i haven't seen much of lately, but i'll be seeing them this weekend and maybe that'll jumpstart our connections. but who knows, maybe i'm destined to be lonely even when i'm not alone.

i watched meet the robinsons on netflix and it inspired me to let go of the past and keep moving forward. i guess you can laugh at me for being so influenced by cartoons, but it might mean that i'm still emotionally a child. i'm cursed with the brutal honesty and the equivalent lack of emotional skin. but i'm an adult now and i can say i'm okay with the way my life turned out. it wasn't what i expected, but days like today are enough for me. 

"what are you saying without words?" he breathed as our faces were inches apart

"what do you think i'm saying without saying?" i smiled coyly, tightly pushing down the cork in my heart

"that you're not taking this seriously, at least not like i am - but it's okay, well, i don't mind," he smiled back, but his anxiety leaked out in his eyes despite his best efforts

"you are mistaken," i said with the phlegm in my throat cutting my credibility

"oh am i?" he asked rhetorically with that stupid, little, lopsided smirk reappearing on his (though i hate to admit it) handsome face

"yes," i said primly as i left the room to segway into another conversation topic as this one was getting too close to the truth

i never told him what i was really saying without saying but i'll tell you:
i am manic and you are everything, your eyes smile body soul make my heart burst open like a cheap bottle of so-called champagne and i would do anything for you to feel the same way but i know that you could never even come close and i'm tired of playing it cool but i can't because thems the breaks when you want to date someone who cares so much about what other people think and the way that things are supposedly meant to be carried out in today's convoluted dating structure so i'll play along for a while longer while i hope that you're the bluebird i've been waiting for

i'm glad i never told him because he turned out to be a waste of time. he thought he could lead me on and that i wouldn't leave because i was too attached. he was mistaken (he usually was). he might have burned me, but i hope you didn't forget that my name is ash. and now he's all salty because i don't want to be his friend, but like j. cole said,

"i had you 
but you can't have me 
i never stay"

today was a good day 
green grass tickling my back and
bright tulips blooming a few feet away

i shift restly
between the damp cool shade
and the shining hot sun

elizabeth didn't get on the plane today
and it was sad
but not how it was supposed to be sad

let the black teeth of doubt and regret chew thru my core
than hold my breath
for a dove that turned out to be
papier-maché waved around on a stick

so let the wind sing thru the gaps in the windows of my car
as his residual silhouette traces a heart in the spring fog
i will dream of my best friends on beaches afar
as i savour the city smog

i asked him to take me gently
instead he took me lightly

you felt the flutter and 
i felt the seismic spark.

i asked if you wanted to build a sailboat with me, 
but you said the weather wasn't good enough, 
the materials were expensive, 
and it would be a lot of work. 

it was a yes or no question. 
you didn't say yes, 
so you meant no.

i said your one-month free trial was over. 
you said you hate that i'm so straightforward. 

i lied when i said you split me in two. 
sorry for the shit talk, baby, i'm blue. 

---
epilogue

on that last day i said your eyes looked like galaxies

and you said that was the gayest shit you ever heard

skipped my own pity party
to take a selfie with his dick

i've been thinking a lot more than i've been writing and that's good. i used to connect with people on this website a lot more when it was just us, a bunch of teenagers writing about our problems. now there are a lot of people here that think these journals need to be the pinnacle of writing and everyone's got a lotta shit to say. i mostly think people should mind their business but i'm the one putting my business up on a public forum so i guess that's on me. but then i decided that i've been on this website for over 8 years so i'm not going to change and i'm actually pretty happy about that.

i've been thinking in a healthy way, practicing CBT on myself when my thoughts try to lead me to the grave. i felt like writing today even though i didn't have a lot to say. writing in this text box has been a great comfort to me over the years and this website isn't perfect but it's always felt pretty cozy. 

i'm content

even when i'm not

and that's all i've ever wanted

the snow is beautiful, magnified by the bright winter sun. i crouch down and start packing together white crystals with my bare hands, letting the cold sting. i pack it together until i can start rolling it up the snow-covered hill. i push and push and push and devote my entire attention to this sparkling, increasingly heavy creation. i reach the top of the hill with a gleaming white boulder just up to my hips. i shock my lungs with a sharp gasp of freezing wind as the sun slowly disappears behind thick, grey clouds. i nudge my efforts down the hill as they consume ravenously, growing wildly, rolling wildly. the snow is dirty here from the displaced parking lot slush and it coats and merges with my work. 

i'm six and i can't open the mini carton of chocolate milk they gave me to go with the unsalted popcorn. it's movie night at the shitty public school in the low-income neighbourhood we lived in when we first immigrated to canada. i struggle for a little longer until a kind-eyed chaperone takes the carton from me, turns it around, and opens the spout from the correct side. i think the movie was tarzan but i remember more about the milk carton than i do about the film. most of my childhood was pretty sad and lonely but i really liked that memory of someone picking up my problem, turning it around, and fixing it for me.

sometimes i think i'm permanenty damaged because of all the excess cortisol that i've experienced over the years. i think i'm to blame because i don't relate well to people - i don't like myself, so how can i even begin to like anyone else? most of my relationships were based on my idealized perception of people rather than reality. i don't think i can call myself lonely if there's nobody i long to talk to. i'm writing here because i like to and i feel like it's a way for me to communicate with people without actually having to give a shit about anything they say. no, i completely understand that i'm kind of a selfish, ego-centric person but, after pretending to be a nice person all day, it's nice to take off the mask and be real. 

mostly i crave non-existence because i feel like a malfunctioning product waiting to be replaced. i don't care about religion. in fact, i feel offended when people to tell me to trust in god. when you look at it from my nihilistic perspective, you might be able to understand that the idea of believing in some omnipotent deity "that knows best" is insulting.

i've always had trouble bowing to authority and i have even more trouble praying to some imaginary thing that supposedly made up a bunch of rules for me to follow (mostly concerned with what i do with my vagina) because otherwise i'll go to hell where i'll suffer for all of eternity. it's actually hilarious when you think about it. it's like a group of toddlers got together and decided to write a rule book, "follow these rules and you'll get to go to the bestest place forever, but if you don't you go the worstest place ever!" what a joke. i went to a catholic school and i'm friends with some religious people so, of course, i'm perfectly accepting of their beliefs and i would never tell them that i secretly think they're really stupid. 

at least i know who to call if i ever feel like recruiting for a pyramid scheme.

I’m trying to figure out my internal causal forces, but lately they seem to be smoky, correlational tangles. It’s a mist of existential ennui that I bury by trying to solidify the bonds with the people I care about. I don't often act as the enlightened individual I aspire to be. I have lofty goals that I don't understand and the questions I have are unsatisfyingly addressed.

Are emotions our guiding force? Our soul seems to be defined by our dreams, feelings, and desires. But can our emotions exist without the stimuli that bring them about? It’s difficult to imagine the emergence of emotions in a vacuum. Some people believe that the soul (consciousness; the mind; the psyche) transcends the body.

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."



I disagree, because I don't see how the soul can exist without the body nor can I envision the reverse. We have a body, but we also have a soul. Through the body, our interaction with the material world feeds our nonmaterial connection to the soul that manipulates that body. When the body dies, the soul starves and soon follows suit. It is apparent that the body is a physical manifestation of the soul and the soul is a metaphysical expression of the body. Their interaction is fundamentally connected and they are fatally dependent upon one another.

“The whole is greater than sum of its parts.”

The dual participation of the mind and the soul creates the phenomenon of existence. The senses would have nothing to read without the body’s connection to the material world and there would be no understanding without the senses to connect the body to the immaterial world. When both worlds are firmly attached, the result is being: holistic order between the physical and metaphysical.

You are not a soul. You are not a body. You have both.

Existence is greater than the sum of the soul and the body.

all i want to do is lay in bed and kiss you
two mouths one breath

but i wake up like a single bracket an incomplete parenthesis
so i keep talking making conversation ignoring the fact
that i'm ready to follow my own advice

or try to
i'm never going to kiss you again

or try not to
because it's hard not to
when i think about the lovely creases at the corners of your mouth

when you smile
and our teeth click together

but it's morse code
for good bye
and i close the empty space

with a long sigh
for the longest goodbye