So terribly tired

I'm so tired.  So terribly tired!  I try to dedicate myself to my work - and I've been doing quite well considering how out of the habit I got during that year "off" when I could stop whenever I wanted for a refreshing fairy tale - but it's draining me of energy.

I'm thankful for the work, it distracts me from the heartbreak, and I thank heaven you can block people from your facebook feed, and curse facebook for making me see my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend's facebook posts about him when she and I have never met and are not facebook friends or have even commented on or liked any of the same posts.

Most of my department seems to be paired off already, so I must dree my weird alone.  Maybe I'll find a math major with a penchant for history.  Or not.

I ache all over, probably from sleeping on a foam mattress topper.  I can't wait to be able to afford a bed.  A real bed!  It'll be such luxury I might even feel rested some mornings after I get it.  Even billionaires can't buy feeling rested and healthy after a good night's sleep, no matter what silken glories they may sleep in.

Nervous Nellie

I submitted my novel to an agent last night...so incredibly nervous!  On the one hand, this is the very first person I've submitted this novel to, so I shouldn't expect them to take it - it usually takes dozens of tries at the very least...on the other hand, this is the woman who took on The Lightning Thief, and she's actively looking for similar authors...so it'd be foolish to not hope, right?

I don't know, but at least I've taken this step.  They say on the website that if you haven't heard from them in 6 weeks your novel isn't right for them, but I'm not sure I want to wait six weeks to submit to someone else, now that I've gotten the ball rolling...but maybe it's only fair to give them six weeks? 

This business stuff is so confusing...

"Once Upon a Moonlight"

I spent the morning swimming for exercise and enjoying the bright Florida sunlight.  I'm totally exhausted from my thesis, mentally and physically (insomnia is a bitch).  I wrote this poem the other night when I couldn't sleep, and share it here now.

Once upon a moonlight
of pale and starry trees
where frogs sang a saintly chorus
and owls floated on the breeze.
I stood upon the darkness
and reached into the clouds,
and as I humbly stood there
I finally screamed aloud.
For a single second,
the silence did abound.
And then the nightly chorus
did begin another round.
For my unbeoming screaming,
though from a spring deep and true,
had no place in the nighttime,
with its round of old and new.
The moon he hung so round and big,
staring at each starry leaf and twig,
indulgently smiled at my distress
as I pulled my hair and tore my dress,
reminding me of what he's seen -
from shell-swept Gallipolli to a new-crowned Queen,
and that my misfortunes are but a blot
on a small and insignificant plot.
A thousandth of an anthill, in
the fire of a thousand suns.
I must not be so foolish
as to feel I'm one of the few
to suffer the fire and agony
branded across my face, and heart too.
That I must produce a smiling visage,
if I wish to find any relief.
In celebrating the joys of others,
I may find some surcease
from the bitterest sort of hatefulness -
the agony of self-defeat.

Maybe I'm a different breed

Too hot; too cold, too weak, too strong, too much, never enough.

Who am I?  What have I become?

Breaking News: my band-aids never stick because I spend too much time washing myself clean.

If only one could wash away the guilt and the shame, the pain and the same, same, same over again.

It makes sense at the right time of the morning.

Put aside the logic for a moment - at what point does "I want" become "I need so desperately that missing this in my life could kill me"?

running in the night

Ha! I believed I had a chance! 

I'm in hell.


Hell.


Hell.


Hell.


Hell.


Burn me alive and end it all.

the new glory

For months now I have suffered under gall and harness, and developed wounds I thought I couldn't bear. 

Today...today has been tough, but good.  I think I'm starting to heal.  I think I have a chance.  A real, tangible chance.

here's to the night

Those glimmering nights, as translucent and effervescent as champagne bubbles; where laughter was free and salvation assured. 

I am beautiful now but I enjoyed my beauty then, the golden glamour and the dark-lined lashes giving me the confidence to flutter and smile as I wound my lover around my little finger, secure in the knowledge that he liked it there.

Does she love you the way that I did? 

Windows down in the car, the warm summer night whistling through...the glow of the cigarettes and the burble of the water bottles...it was never enough, but it was never lacking either. 

Slamming doors were a happy sound then - they signaled arrivals and new opportunities, new kisses, new music. 

The flash and sparkle was not confined to crystal...they sparked among us, our conversation, our laughter, our glances were enough.

I'm tired of asking...never tired of remembering...until I wake up in the enveloping darkness, shaken from those glorious dreams of what truly happened...I wake with a sense of having been falling, and clutch at the sheets and gasp to find I'm lying still, that I'm alone, and no one is holding my hand.

I turn over and feel my heart burn within my chest, and I remind myself that the pain means that I'm still alive - like frostbite, where there is pain, there is hope.

I close my eyes but the visions come back; that is no longer my life - just something I used to know.