Mirages of Matchstick Men (and you).

Sublime Oh Nine.

Made it through, didn't I?

It's not so cut and dry as beginnings and endings in some respects. And I don't know what I want to say right now, but I know I want to say something. So writing, sitting here on bones and in skin that isn't as uncomfortable to be inside as it was at this time last year, feels more right than I know or have any words to type. I need to say something honest, start this year with honesty. Be a real, apologetically honest human being.

hon·est (ŏn'ĭst)
adj.

1. Marked by or displaying integrity; upright.

2. Not deceptive or fraudulent; genuine.

3. Equitable; fair.

4. 1. Characterized by truth; not false.

   2. Sincere; frank.

   3. Of good repute; respectable.

   4. Without affectation; plain.

5. 1. Of good repute; respectable.

   2. Without affectation; plain.

6. Virtuous; chaste.

All of them. And find out what I've actually been hiding from all these years, and if it's really as scary as I've made it out to be in my head.

It's hard to trust, but it gets easier the more you do it.

And splitting yourself into a million selves? Easy. The only part of it that's a little tricky is maintaining them. But finding yourself, being one single self? Harder than it looks.

But it gets easier the more you do it.

Happy New Year!

As promised.

I wrote nothing to actually write here today (and for that I do of course apologize), but being the woman of my word that I am, here's one from the archives that was published earlier this month. Enjoy, darlings.

Make Out

phones with broken buttons

call back with broken words

typo send backs

on his back in my bed

for four days on end our heads

are not quite right but nothing ever

is when you're in the thick of it, wanting to live inside of a perfect

silver book of things that cannot be named until

you've at once known them, felt them and lost them

if only for a moment

in time.

Old habits die hard.

As you may have noted from the above picture, I am indeed completely obsessive compulsive about my notebooks all being the same shape, size and weight. I'm a creature of habit, I like this specific brand, it's pretty self-explanatory, etc. etc.

Anyways. Of all of the notebooks I've had this year - the blues, the whites and the browns - it's the current blood-red leather bound one as seen above has taken the longest to fill up. I'm unsure as to whether or not it's coincidental or subconsciously acted out (I'm beginning to suspect the latter), but regardless it's true that each book has brought with it a different set of problems, vices and insecurities (the worst of which, in my opinion, are probably contained within this one).

In May and June of this year writing has been less of a priority and yet likely more of a necessity than it has been at any other point in 2009, but something about doing it has just felt too taxing for me to work through and confront. Instead, as has been my pattern with everything from my mental health to my credit card balance, I've chosen to stick my head in the sand like a goddamn idiot of an ostrich and pretend as though nothing is wrong. Nothing. At. All. In this case such metaphorical head-sticking involves not writing all that often. Obviously. Pathetic, I know.

But to bring things back to my initial point: I'm a creature of habit and am addicted to being a person with 'follow-through', and it is for this exact reason that I can't just let the stupid thing go unfinished and move on to the next one, which I have predetermined will be full of nothing but happy summer fun and romance and sunshine and kittens and good outfits and all of that nice, positive, wonderful shit.

So...yeah. As much as I don't want to finish this one (and I reallyreallyreally don't), I have to thanks to this sick instinct in me to be honourable and give it a fair chance.

Whatever. I'm so looking forward to hitting that last page. Even if it does take me another 869490570 days to get there.

Hurricane Heart Attack.

I don't know where it was.

I thought I would die
(but always feel that way on rollercoasters.)

I'm going to go
down
with you.
Sitting down.

Ooh la la,
annhilation.

The more
I leave,
the less
I lose.

I'm always losing to win.

Aren't you so pleased with yourself, being out every night
with drugs and chalked love on the sidewalks outside
rejecting cabs that pass by?

Do you want to play dress up and mess up my room?
Do you want to lie down but put a line down instead?
Do you want clear skin and clean hair, not an ounce of waste anywhere?
Do you want tiny reminders to remember you were there?
Red and orange paints,
sleep all days,
dead phone calls,
new-old sweaters
fur hats and panic attacks?

What do you want?

All I can give you is
all the same words
on all the same days
stranger than the ones that came before them
and likely no stranger than the ones that await.

It's just, like...well, y'know...

I find myself wondering if everything is horribly, awfully wrong or wonderfully, magically right in my life right now.

Better off as the fool than the owner of that kind of heart.

I may have been the kind of girl who wore her heart on her sleeve at some point in my life, but I can say with a good deal of certainty that I haven't been that type for quite some time. Somewhere along the line playing my cards close to my chest seemed like the logical thing to do, and it's since become dangerously easy to simply never show my cards to anyone at all.

I'm not saying that my guardedness is wise or clever or particularly well thought-out, but everything and everyone is based on such fucking externality anyways that really, what difference does it make? So long as my thighs don't touch and my roots have been touched up and my heavily braceleted wrists are thinner than the girls' sitting next to me, it doesn't. So long as I go out often enough (but not too much) and drink this and know the bar staff there and that club owner here and am always welcome in the booth, it doesn't. So long as there's a vague sense of knowing that I'm smarter than all of this, more than all of this and not trapped by all of this, it doesn't.

Or does it?

The fortress of anonymity that I've built and fiercely protect around Nightgowns & Cigarettes can be somewhat problematic for me; just because they don't know me doesn't stop me from wanting them to at times...but, mind you, not enough for me to confess to anything.

So what will it take for me to stop being so horribly scared? The mention in a recent issue of Eye Weekly certainly didn't do it. As we sat there on our stolen couch, the newspaper print of the thin pages staining our fingers as they flipped through, taking note of the photos of our friends and columns about the bars that we get free drinks in, surveying the events that we'll accept and decline the inevitable invites to and it was there, caught in my throat right there with the smoke, and for a brief, fleeting moment I wanted them to know. "You see the word Lush there, in bold on the fifth page's Letters section? Yeah, well, that's me."

It would have been so easy, and it wouldn't, couldn't come out. It absolutely couldn't come out. For them to see it and know, to attach the faces and names to every post would be the death of all of the honesty I have in me and reserve for here. It's why I carry my notebook with me everywhere I go and hide it if I'm sleeping, showering or if my purse is too small to fit it in. It's why I lock all of my old, finished notebooks in a desk to which only I have the key.

Not to be too morbid on a Friday afternoon or anything, but here it goes: I often wonder what'll happen to them if I die unexpectedly.

...yeah, too morbid. But one more reason to stay alive long enough to see my eventual death coming I guess.