so earlier today, shortly after i wrote the last post, my girlfriend dumped me.

i wish i were a fucking ghost. i wish i didn't really have to exist. i could just sit and watch and no one would notice me unless i wanted them to.

i can't stop thinking about her smile. i know it's cliche, but she had a really pretty smile. her teeth weren't perfectly straight, and they're really cute. and her eyes would crinkle up at the corners.

she had this piercing above her lip, and when she was concentrating, she would with it with her tongue.

i don't really think we were ever in love, not really, but my heart would beat faster whenever she looked at me, and god, we could have been.

it's not so much that we were so good for each other. we were unhealthy. she was high all the time, and i didn't know how to talk to her. it's that we could have been better. there were so many things that we never got to do. that's why i'm crying.

i gained weight again, but i'm not really hungry anymore.

i just want to die.

i wish i were a ghost.

I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams...

My sister came home for the winter holidays yesterday. Actually, screw it. She came for Christmas. It's Christmas. We celebrate Christmas. I'm not sure why, none of us are religious, but we do. I think it's out of habit. My mother's family is Anglican, and my father grew up Episcopal. He used to go to church every Sunday, but he stopped going in his twenties. My mother, who never really believed, fought relentlessly with her parents until they gave up on trying to force her to go. She's the one who really loves Christmas, though. Every year she goes mad over decorating until the house is covered from head to toe in garlands and wreathes and Christmas figurines. And nutcrackers. She's collected them since she was little, and by now she has an impressively extensive collection which she shows off every year with pride. She loves the Nutcracker ballet (she's actually leaving for the pirate themed dance along nutcracker in San Francisco in about half an hour), heck, that's why I'm named Clara.

So, yeah. She loves Christmas. I remember last year when she broke down in the kitchen while we were making date balls and listening to "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" and told me that the previous year, when we were living in the old house, it was around Christmas that she got the letter saying that we were going to lose the house. Of course, she never told anyone until January, she didn't want to ruin the holidays, but she knew that that was going to be our last Christmas at home. She still adores Christmas, though. She loves rituals in general. She loves knowing exactly what is going on. When she is going to the gym, when she has work, when she is volunteering at where, she plans it all out as far in advance as she possibly can. So when the holidays come around, and everything shuts down, she clings to Christmas as a sort of crutch, to distract her and keep her busy.

I love Christmas too, but sometimes I wonder if I love Christmas because I love Christmas, or If I love Christmas because she does.

XOXO
Clara

Some of the strongest memories I have of my childhood are related to food. Grilled cheese and tomato soup, Boston baked beans from my family's special recipe, biscuits and gravy, my dad's chilli, and cornbread drizzled with honey. Blueberry muffins and pineapple upside down cake and toasted pumpkin seeds and gumbo with creole seasoning and homemade caramel that's warm even when it's cold. I remember days in my kitchen with the smell of delicious things in the air and a full oven, sitting barefoot on the counter, drying dishes and laughing while my sister read Jean Kerr aloud and my parents listened and chatted and cooked in sizzling pans on our stove. The kitchen was always so warm, the best room in the house.

I was just thinking about cornbread and honey a few minutes ago, and I started crying. I realized that I'm growing up. I'm not ready to grow up yet. I miss my old home and I miss my grandma and I miss my uncle and I miss believing that everything was gonna be okay, and thinking that bad people were only in fairy tales. I miss having blind faith in my family and I miss being happy. I miss the days when I could come home after a bad day, and my parents would give me hot cocoa and something warm to eat. Like cornbread and honey. Better than any cake, like coming home to a full house and loving somebody. Even more lonely than nobody loving you is having nobody to love.

I miss cornbread and honey. I wanna go home.

I got many teeth removwd yesterday and the doctor gave me a coctail of medecines that is making me kind of woozy and i'm not quite sure how to deal with who i am right now. i know i'm bad at everything i do and they keep on telling me over and over again. i don't like this. i don'tlikemyself right now and i'm sorry if i di something wrong. i don't know what i did but i'm sorry, please talk to me i'm sorry . plese forgive me i dont know what i did im sorry shira.

yesterday i started to feel like crap about my body again.

yay.

logically, i know that there is nothing spectacularly terrible about the way i look. a little sickly, maybe, kinda short, some acne, but nothing too bad. i know that i'm not fat. i just. sometimes i feel so goddam worthless. i feel big and clumsy and ugly and i know that everybody feels that way at one point or another in their life and i know that i don't need to lose weight, but i feel like i should.

last summer, i stopped eating for a bit. i would go for as long as i could stand without food, and when i had to eat, i obsessed over calories. i would exercise until my inhaler wore off and i got an asthma attack, and i still wouldn't eat. i stopped dong that a few months back, and in hindsight, i'm glad i got out before i got in too deep, but sometimes i still feel like maybe i should start again. i don't want to, but they keep cheering me on.

they're not bad, per say, but if i have a negative thought, they latch onto it and start shooting it back at me 24/7.
fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat a mantra that they pound into my head until i can't think anything else.

i have friends that would yell at me if i tried to tell them this. they would say that i'm an idiot and that i'm not fucking fat so i should stop fucking saying it, and i know that i shouldn't feel bad about the way i look, but that's not gonna stop me. i don't try to be insecure, i just fucking am.

what a talent, huh?

You know what? I'm pissed and I'm scared and I'm worried and I feel like throwing up and I am fucking angry. And I'm tired of pretending that I'm not. I hate that I put on this facade of happiness and energy and excitement and I hate how whenever I try to make a place where I can stop putting on that mask, I just end up doing it there. It's just so easy to lie. Things like sadness and anger and hate and depression are hard and complicated, and pretending to be happy is simple, because nobody ever says "you are smiling and talking and you look like you are enjoying life, what's up with that?" If you look like you might be the slightest bit under the weather, you get a barrage of questions and people telling you that they care, that you would be missed, that try to convince you to be happy and are then angry when you can't manage to do that. So you pretend to be happy, and it's tiring, but you're always tired anyway and people leave you alone. Lying is simple and easy and I do it to you and I do it to my friends and I do it to my teachers and I do it to my therapist and I do it to my parents and I do it to strangers who ask me about my day. But right now, my mother is drunk and has been having crying fits every day for the past week and she scares me and my father is ridiculing everything I do that he doesn't like in the hopes that I will feel bad enough about myself that I won't do it anymore and I am angry and I am going to say it:

I DON'T LIKE LIFE.

And don't you dare try to comfort me. And I have thought a thousand times about killing myself and yes, I know I would be missed and I know that I am loved, but I wish I wasn't so that wouldn't be hanging over my head every single time I look at a knife or a gun or a bottle of pills or when the thought even crosses my mind because I have a Reason to Live.

And I fucking hate it.

If I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight, will you pardon me and tiptoe through the tulips with meeeeeeeee

So I've decided to write a blog post like other blogs. That means no creepy writing about hallucinating or night or weird poetry. Wait. Oh shit. I write emo poems, don't I? Fuck. I never thought I would be that person. Fuck.

Oh well.

Anyway, the creepy psychopathic brain children, as I like to call them, are pretty calm tonight. Z is pouting because I won't play with him. Marcus is singing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" (he does a mighty fine Tiny Tim impression). I'm not sure where Seven is. She's been kind of quiet all day.

I wanted to talk about a recent development in my life: I've started playing roller derby. And I feel so much better about myself. It's a lot of fun, and never something I thought I would enjoy, but I really do. I love roller skating, and bashing the shit out of other chicks is fantastic for relieving stress. The workout it gives me is doing amazing things to my body, and, possibly the strangest development, I know people now. I have people who don't care that sometimes I stare at things for a bit too long or have really messy habits or get distracted by butterflies, they just care that I'm me. They took the time to learn who I am, and they haven't backed away very slowly, so as not to upset me.

That's usually a good sign.

xoxo
Clara