forty ounces of social skills.

i’m feeling really frustrated artistically this week, really useless and not quite good enough. nothing i shoot says what i want to say, and everything i want to say leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling in my throat, like a pebble lodged there, keeping the words in my brain from coasting out on my tongue, like admitting love and wanting to be loved is weakness. like loneliness and being lost in the city i want to give myself over to completely is not something to scream about. like i’m maudlin and weak and need to just keep my head down, dodge my friends and make it through this month in silent exile.

sometimes i miss drinking more.
sometimes i miss you, and everything, even though we both know we were bad news, coasting from town to town with no set direction and lots of pills.
sometimes i want to look cover my face, punch my soft stomach, rip the skin off my arms and sell everything i own, and most days i want to be braver.
i want to show you.
i want you to see.
i want you to recognize that maybe i’m ok. maybe i’m special too.

open letter.

Freight trains move fast. Like people, and time, and days, and changes. My friend Travis wrote a song… One of the lines is “Days fly by like trees along the rails.” The banjo is picky and mounrful in that song. It picks up and falls back like a heartbeat. Like a train. We love trains, us crazy people. We love travel. We have a love/hate relationship with change. We all think we’re going to stay the same forever, or the same with just subtle differences.
We don’t.
It’s ok.
We just don’t.

These days it is cold, and I wear three sweaters and a thick scarf when I walk from my apartment to work to the bar to my apartment. I kick garbage and leaves out of my way when I am in a bad mood and stomp in puddles when I am in a good one. If I run into someone I know, I get a hug and a high five. My days in and of themselves don’t change much. My life however, is so different, yet not all that surprising. I have a retail job at the mall. I dumpster dive. I champion causes. I sleep outside in the summer because I can. I stay up all night at house shows. I make street art. I want to start skateboarding again because it’s better than biking. It takes me place to place and makes me think of other times when I lived in my parents house and my belly was always full, I never had my own bills and my clothes were newish and cleanish always.

I get hungry sometimes now. Sometimes I’m cold, but I am always happy. It’s weird what we own and learn to own up to. I have a cat who sleeps in my lap every night when I come home and kisses my face when I wake up. I have a string of ex-boyfriends who still talk to me, I have a group just strong enough and just mobile enough that when I leave them, I won’t leave that. That something, that whatever.
I’m restless.
I’m changing. I need to change. I guess it’s just in me, you know? That motion. it sits in my heart, and moves around my chest and pushes and pulls me forward. I’m restless as hell, but I think it’s in the best way possible. Does your new city do that to you? or do you love it there? I hope you love it there for now, but I hope you get restless later. Restlessness is good. It keeps you young and and powerful and just scared enough. Some days are terrifying for me and I sort of love it.

I saw a tall kid the other day, waiting for the bus. There was a shorter girl beside him. He had a skateboard and was making dumb voices at her. She covered her face and laughed. I thought of you and me and being dumb and sixteen. I miss that sometimes.

This all seems very vague in retrospect, so let me just spill my guts.
I am good. I am great. I am hyper and lonely and filled up as hell and waiting for the time to pass. My mother thought I lost my mind for awhile and so did I, but then I realized I am just the happiest I have ever been and half drunk on possibility. She is better with things now. We both are.
We’ve changed.

better get back to juding books by their covers.

these people are guests in my home. if i had taken you to any of their homes, they would have been courteous and respectful to you as a courtesy to me, and because they’re good people and would have wanted both you and i to be comfortable, and all you could do was disrespect them based on their looks and lifestyles. so not only did you embarrass yourself, you embarrassed me and made my home a place my guests felt unwelcome in.

thanks.