in my mind, i meet marcus aurelius. he speaks not a word!

i speak forever. i tell him every shameful detail of my mundane little existence. i exhaust myself with my overall ineptitude and examine his solemn expression. 

he says nothing because there is nothing to be said. there is "in" and there is "out". there are no excuses. 

you can't solve anxiety, but you can learn to let it run its course. 

he looked old and sad.

i remember how vibrant he was when i first met him. he was old then too, but he youthfully carried himself.

his voice used to crackle in the air and his laugh would spring freely.

now, his brown eyes dully, yet desperately, conveyed the melancholy that had sunk through his mind.

i told him i didn't care. i told him to see a therapist. "you hurt me too much," i said, "you can't nuke somebody and expect there to be anything left to care with for at least 50 years."

let people reap what they have sown,

and let those that leave never come home. 

i was 13 years old when i asked mindy, my grumpy summer camp counsellor, why rob, another grumpy camp counsellor, wouldn't hug me. mindy was in her first year of university. she was too skinny, with a perpetually sullen face. her brown hair was framed by choppy bangs that oppressively covered her muddy, blue eyes. rob was a few years older than mindy. he was strange-looking. like mindy, he was too skinny, but he had almost translucent skin and sunken, dark eyes. his hair was buzzed short and his back had a permanent slouch. 

but, i didn't want to hug him because i liked him. i wanted to hug him because he told us all a story about a time when he was depressed and how jesus was there for him the whole time. i was just starting to realize that i was unhappy, with nobody to talk to about it, and i wanted to hug him and ask him if jesus would be there for me too. but when i tried to hug him, he pushed me away with a look of disdain.

so, sitting at the the picnic table outside later in the afternoon, in a nonchalant yet quivering voice, i asked mindy, "why doesn't rob let me hug him?" 

she said, looking uncomfortable, "rob doesn't really like hugs."

i asked again, with a more pronounced quiver, "but why does he always agree to hug jemma?"

jemma was beautiful, far more beautiful than any 13 year old should have been. she had long, shining blond hair and sharp, blue eyes. with those striking features coupled with a body that could have easily passed for 16, it made sense that he would hug her and not me. she was really charming too; she always knew what to say.

me, well, i was just barely starting to come out of my ugly duckling phase, awkward maturity showing on my face and body. my black, curly hair was just starting to grow long enough so that the weight of the hair kept it from being too frizzy, but the humidity that summer pretty much negated that. i had the same big, brown eyes and the same scrunched-nose smile that i do now. but at 13, my body was too skinny in some places and too wobbly in others. i was too honest. sometimes i was funny but mostly my thoughts were not what people wanted to hear. it made sense that rob would hug jemma and not me.

i could tell mindy knew this. she had to know. she looked so uncomfortable.

"i don't know," she said, looking away and pursing her lips as the truth wrinkled her forehead. her thin, stupid eyebrows were being pushed together by her consternation. she knew. 

"but aren't you friends? couldn't you ask him?" i pressed, knowing i should respect social rules and let it go. mindy didn't want to talk about it. mindy didn't care if it hurt my feelings. it wasn't right that it hurt my feelings.

rob wanted to hug jemma and not me because i wasn't special like she was. she had something glowing, fiery, about her that everyone reveled in.

she was a distraction; a fantasy; an escape.

i was a reminder of mediocrity; a fact of life; an underconstruction sign.

mindy pretended not to hear me and looked away suddenly, as though surprised by something. i looked to see what she was looking at and i saw a few boys my age playing soccer. when i turned back, mindy was pretending to be deep in conversation with another counsellor possessing a sneer engraved on her face, daring anyone to cross her.

quietly sighing, drowning in newfound teenage ennui, i turned around again to watch the boys play soccer. some of them had their shirts off. their boyish muscles flexed and shone in the hot sun, but they didn't care about the sun or if i noticed their muscles. jemma was sitting with her legs stretched out on the grass near the boys, with a group of girls caught in her orbit. the boys glanced up at her often and she smiled easily, letting the sun make her hair more blonde and her skin more golden. 

my obsession is now someone else's obsession. someone else is looking up and seeing what i used to see. celestial spikes of light that gave us life. and here i am, trying to stop buying 3ds games that i barely have the time to play. i just bought bravely default on amazon and i worry my parents are going to be suspicious about how i got the money. i've been spending a lot lately. each receipt is a bandage and, instead of peeling them off to inspect the damage, i keep trying to seal the leak.

my dog is leaning forward watching me eat dinner. his big brown eyes are pleading with me and his little snout is smelling the air hungrily. he's a cute, little, chubby thing. now that the weather has slightly improved i'm trying to take him for longer walks. and we walk, with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling out happily as he pants and takes in the fresh, cold air of early spring. in the present, he got bored of watching me eat and left to go see if anyone else in the house was eating anything.

i spend a lot of time thinking about my dog and the stars.

i want him to think i'm beautiful and significant

because, though i've been clearing my mind and feeling happy, the words from the past boomerang endlessly though my mind, piercing my neurons again and again until the neurotransmitters fizzle and burn out and i wince and my brain smokes and my heart slowly melts through my back through the floor through the earth

through the goddamn universe itself until it's gone, gone from what i can fathom, gone from my conception of existence, gone until it doesn't hurt anymore

but i pull myself away from those depressing dreams. i'm smiling because i'm happy even though it hurts because i try to find joy in the small things. like nails that glisten like rubies even though i kind of suck at putting on nail polish

i examine my almost-flat tummy and i think, well, at least i'm close and i figure, gee, if they airbrushed me i'd have a taut stomach too. i did about 17 sit ups and then started reading book covers in the closet, remembering the places they'd taken me but then

i come back to this moment and i think

it'd be pretty nice if he thought i was beautiful and significant, but if he didn't, well, that'd be okay too but not as okay. the truth ain't always eloquent. 

social interaction is all about acting how you feel like acting. i mean, truly feel. it's about listening to what people say and genuinely responding to it. i guess people who are anxious in social situations don't trust how they feel because it led them astray in the past. but that's also what social interaction is about. saying something stupid, feeling bad about it for a little while, and then moving on from it. i guess, if you get hung up on the feeling bad about it part, you end up nervous and you act against how you genuinely feel like acting. so, don't feel too bad, kid.

the truth is that i showed ya my soul and ya didn't want it

so i make a mockery of myself, let myself slip a little more each day.  i resist hard work, i resist effort. i enjoy inertia. 

mostly i try not to think about the things that drive me insane, with little success. i have so much work to do and i've barely done any of it. i wish i could find something joyful, something that motivated me to get out of bed and look myself in the eyes. the words, the pictures, the sounds, the touches, the tastes, the smells... well, they don't do it for me. 

while i write, i think of all the mean things people could say to me about what i write. the harsh thoughts bite at my nerves and i can't smack them away. i think i'm going to keep a written journal again. i've had so many fragments of them over the years, but i think it'll be nice for me to have something that will keep track of the empty days. maybe it'll make them a little less empty by having somewhere sane to talk to myself to.

still all choked up, not even close to all grown up

it continues on in my head. i cover my ears and bury my face in my knees. i just need to wait for it to pass. the feelings burst up and submerge me, long enough that i worry if they'll consume me

but i always come up with my lungs burning, smoke coming out of my nostrils, and red eyes drooped low

some days it's just about coming up for air.

i've been playing fire emblem on my 3ds and the characters in the game are telling me to go to bed. i bought the 3ds in october because i wanted to play the new pokemon and it's a pretty nifty machine. i just like it because i love nintendo games. i receive a great sense of validation from these relatively easy games.

some days i want more friends and some days i never want to leave my house so people won't think things about me. i suppose i need to stop trying to turn sand to gold and let the useless grains fall thru my fingers. alright, well, goodbye

i used to push my lips against your cheekbone and a little smile would creep across your mouth and the sun would shine through the window and i'd smell your cologne in my hair as i walked from your car to my house and i'd want to walk right back

sometimes you'd catch my eyes unexpectedly and my body would be flooded with an electrical surge and i'd be speechless

maybe that's why you don't love me anymore. i thought you were more than a human being when that's all you wanted to be

we're never going to talk to each other again

i don't want to think about your brown eyes making me melt into the earth

so i won't

just stay away ok?

as we lay in bed, a foot apart from each other, i would hear his molars scraping against each other. sometimes, i would gently touch his cheek and he'd wake up a little

and, in a soft, sweet voice, i'd whisper, "baby, you're grinding your teeth" and he'd grunt and turn over to face away from me.

and i'd lay there quietly in the dark, listening to him breathing and grinding his teeth and i'd wonder what it would be like to be the kind of couple that lay with our bodies intertwined and stayed up at night talking about sweet things.

but it wasn't meant to be i guess. he keeps tweeting about wanting to be friends after the fact and i just sit here crying, coming down from the molly, wishing he still loved me and wanted to do mundane things with me like deposit cheques at the bank or smoke joints between my classes.