Brianne Daly

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-11-04T14:42:00

2009-11-04T19:58:12Z

I've been going to work and catching rides to school. I've been sleeping in and spending all my money on drugs and losing sleep. I've been awake for twenty-four hours grinding my teeth, and biting my tongue, and chewing out the inside of my mouth. I saw the sunset, the trees turned into monsters and the grass grew over the street, and I watched cartoons on a turned-off television set, and I saw the sunrise. Halloween night, I was invited to accompany Dustin and his Wayne State friends to Ann Arbor for a wildly-acclaimed party on Elm Street. It's almost every Wednesday night I spend time with the group and I enjoy the majority boy to girl ratio. I took a bus to the Wayne State dormitory where everyone was going from room to room in attempts of putting together a suitable costume. I made myself a pussycat in Dustin's bathroom mirror, Nicholas was Charlie Chaplin, Dustin claimed to be Shaggy without at least a green shirt, Nikki was an Indian, and Kyle bust in the room wearing sunglasses, a beanie, about ten necklaces, and a towel over his shoulders. Unfortunately, that's how he's always dressed, but we said he went as someone from the 60's. Dustin parked his car at U of M and we all went inside the dorms to meet up with the second group of party-goers, Kayla and Mitch as Daphne and Freddy, and about five other drunk girls barely dressed in what were their costumes. We all waited outside Michigan for the campus buses to take us to downtown Ann Arbor. After fifteen minutes, our first potential bus ride stopped for us, but was so full of kids, we'd have to wait for another one. A little frustrated, I sat back down on the bus stop bench alone. The intoxicated girls I didn't know were getting on my nerves fast. Kyle came and sat next to me looking happy as a clam. He showed me a burgundy medicine bottle he was drinking. "This has codeine in it." "What is that?" "It'll fuck you up!" I realize, I get that answer a lot. "Is it good? Is it like alcohol?" "Yeah, do you want some?" I swallowed twice. "Woah, you should definitely be good. You're only supposed to take a teaspoon, but.." He laughed. There was my one big mistake of the night that would inevitably ruin the night. We took our next soonest at a bus ride into town on a vehicle smaller than a school bus that ended carrying about 115 people that night. A student crowd surfed down the center aisle. Kayla passed me her vodka over the bus passengers' heads, feeling nothing from the cough syrup, I was heart-set on joining the intoxicated.

Every house on Elm Street had a line of people to get in. Days before, Dustin told me there were an expected 4,000 people. I'd say this was well over 6,000. The groups diverged, going through houses and looking for drugs or more alcohol or people. I took Nikki's hand who began drunker than I, just thirty minutes before the vodka, jungle juice, and jello shots. And I wanted to go dancing. I was having the time of my life for those short hours and then we were all together again, on our way to a frat house or to get a bite to eat. Somewhere my feet were mindlessly following. And then it came over me and I threw up a decent amount in the grass. Like many a other time I've been drunk and sick, I felt fine enough again after puking. Less than twenty minutes later, we were in a Mexican restaurant I only spent a total of five minutes in, in between running in and outside to puke in the trashcan. Sometimes Kayla went with me, sometimes it was Kyle. Rubbing my back, holding my hair or head or hand. I could barely walk at this point, I had just a faint idea of where I was, Kayla kept handing me a bottle of water. We left the restaurant and I made out Kayla saying we were going back to the dorms. Miles and miles away in our predicament, when my legs stopped working completely and no one could shoulder me anymore and I was face down on the sidewalk in my own spit-up. I heard my name and I felt Kyle's hands on my cheeks, my face hovering over the growing puddle of vomit. But I couldn't my eyes, I was so dizzy and weak, I couldn't hear what all was being said and could just barely respond. I was considered unresponsive and practically passed out. I heard a voice on their phone requesting an ambulance and giving the street name. I managed to instruct whoever could hear me to rid my purse of of my bowl, Link, and a Ziploc bag of Vicodin, DOM (LSD), a syringe, and speed. Just in case I ended up getting searched. I wasn't remotely in my right mind. I had given up on walking and now trying to make it anywhere if I couldn't lie down. I was in and out of consciousness, but I heard the siren and I saw a cop questioning someone, he already had my I.D. when two men lifted me onto a stretcher. In the back of the ambulance the two paramedics asked me questions and the cop asked me questions before writing me an M.I.P. and stepping outside of the ambulance. The doors closed behind him as I continued slipping in and out of any awareness.

The men asked me my name. The date. I felt fingers pressing into my neck and around my wrist. Checking my pulse. "Did you fall?" "No." "Do you know where you are?" "I'm in an ambulance." "How much have you had to drink?" "Not as much as I've had before without getting sick." I was just drunk enough to have no recollection of the codeine in my downfall.

"Where do you live?" I threw up down my shirt. "Why are you whining? Stop whining." "Because I'm scared..I want to lie down! I want my mom.." They took blood from my index finger. "Deep breath.." I could hear we were at the hospital now. I could hear screaming and whimpering as they slid a needle into my left arm. I woke up again when they switched the I.V. of water with something the doctor said would help stop the vomiting, the tape ripped the hair off my arm. The nurse started pulling off my hoody. "First, we need to get this off. You threw up on yourself." More moaning and groaning. "I'm sorry." I was apologizing for vomiting all over myself. I had never seen this nurse tonight. Maybe they sent a different one to me each time I woke up.

"I have to pee." "Okay. Can you walk?" "Yeah." I wheeled my I.V. with me to the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror for a long time. My whiskers were dirt smeared across my cheeks and my mascara circled my eyes and collected in dried streaks down my face. My eyes were still red. I glanced around at the people asleep in their beds right next to mine and drunk kids being questioned and nurses discussing their shifts and I let myself fall back asleep as soon as my head hit the place where a pillow should've been.

"Briana..Is it Brianne?" I opened my eyes and turned over. "Brianne." "Where do you live, Brianne?" "Ferndale." "How'd you get out here?" "Friends." "Do you know how you're getting home?" "I don't know..What time is it?" "Five." She brought me a phone because my cellphone was service-less. I dialed the only number I thought I could. "..Hello?" "Hey." "What's up..?" "I'm in the hospital." "What?!" I thought I heard Alyssa's voice boarder crying.

I turned back on my side and pulled the thin blankets over my head. I heard my nurse trading shifts with a male. "Her ride's going to be about an hour and forty-five minutes." "Okay." "She can wait in the waiting room.." "No, it's okay. I'll let her sleep." Thank God for you. Maybe ten minutes later, I felt him check on me and tuck two or three more blankets over me. I felt my teeth chattering. "She's freezing.." "Hey, Brianne." My eyes focused. "Your ride's here." I saw Mrs. T first. She put her hand over my forehead. "Stupid." I tried to smile. Then Alyssa was at my side. "Hey, how do you feel?" She touched my shoulder. "Tired." No. That's not all. Stupid. Dirty. Pathetic and small and weak. Somehow it was already almost eight. "You almost died." I was probably more conscious than I had wanted to be. "I'm sorry you had to see me like that." "Don't be sorry. I meant to tell you before, but I didn't know how. I couldn't bear to lose you."

Your selfishness. Your no regrets. The friends you couldn't forgive or forget. Each heart that's broke. Each tear that's shed. All the the time that's spent, one drug to the next one. One day to the next one.

I told Alex Castaneda I didn't like giving a drug credit for a feeling, thought, opinion, anything I had on it. That I'd like to believe the emotion was always there, I just didn't realize it until I was on that drug. When was the last time you looked in the mirror? Because you've changed.

I looked at Alyssa through swollen eyes. I did this to myself and I did this to Alyssa. There's nothing any drug can show you that's not already there. Living in your fantasy world alone up in your skull. Where you make-believe beautiful things and forget everything when you come down. And you find yourself alone in a crowd of people you know nothing about and you find yourself without an interest to. And then you miss out.

I've been missing out. There are so many beautiful things I haven't been able to see. There are so many days I won't ever be able to remember. And I almost lost the most important thing in my life. For nothing. Alyssa's always been there, I just didn't realize it while I was busy doing nothing, but ruining things. How could I abandon everything I love in life? Why did I stop drawing? How did I lose what was once so important to me?

I'm just happy to be alive. I had this coming and I'm afraid if it didn't, I don't know how much more I'd lose.

I watched the sunrise to the sunset. The sunset to the sunrise.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-10-12T13:48:00

2009-10-12T18:08:56Z

Nobody ever really knows where I've been when we meet again in months, whole seasons. I couldn't tell you, the places don't have names. Some of them I made up, and there's a few that 'never happened', and there's just a lot I don't remember. But I've seen more old faces in one week than I have in the past year. I wonder where they've been, but I don't ask. They ask me all these questions I don't have an answer to, so I make one up. And even when there is a truth, they don't get it. My recent attitude's, 'you fucked up'. And that's reason enough to throw someone away. Because I was telling someone on the phone, I'm angry because I waited so long to be forgiven by the people I've wronged or the people that felt offended by my decisions, and I kept beating myself up over and over again, and they finally did, or put it in their past at least, and when the relationship didn't come back, I realized I never made the time to forgive myself. And to everyone that has ever wronged me, overlooked, I have never forgiven any a one of them. So the bitter thorns in my side just keep throbbing with every breath I take, until I can't see straight and I'm surrounded with strangers I've made out of people I can't remember ever knowing at all. So I found a place I could go and memorize strangers for as long as it's warm outside, but I carried in my past like a knot around my foot. These friends were more like hangmen I invited in, slipping nooses around my neck, carrying mirrors around their chests. So when I tried to see and speak up, I could only choke and end up joining them. I can't claim to be so hard anymore. Alyssa warned me about the people I let back in my life, they seem to deserve it less and less all the time. But I keep smiling and sneaking around what I'd really love to say sometimes, but probably never will.

Rule Number One: Never raise your voice.

Rule Number Two: Only cry when you have to, completely alone.

Rule Number Three: Never use someones' physical appearance against them, it's ignorant, hypocritical, and pointless.

Rule Number Four: Use only the best of your vocabulary to defend yourself, cursing shows only a lack thereof.

Rule Number Five: Don't ever stop defending yourself.

Rule Number Six: Use only what is relevant in the case.

Rule Number Seven: Fight fire with water.

Rule Number Eight: If you're doing anything worth lying about, you're doing something wrong.

Rule Number Nine: Hurting someone is inevitable, don't ever do it intentionally.

Rule Number Ten: No amount of 'wrongs' will ever make a 'right'.

Living by these, still the better person.

"So when you're sorry, and one day you will be, I'll wish you all the best. I hope that you drop softly and it don't end too badly, and you're raging head can finally rest. And you can be honest and rescue yourself. But I walk my own road, I'll go where you won't go. Don't put me through Hell, because now I see through you. Believe what you need to. Go haunt someone else".

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-09-28T12:44:00

2009-09-28T17:23:40Z

It started with a song I was listening to the late winter of 08'. 'Rainbows in the Dark' Tilly and the Wall, "I was kidnapped real young by the sweet taste of love, built a fondness for things that just weren't good enough. I cradled the crow, always shooed off the dove". And because I had nicknamed my significant other, 'Bird', which brought on further ideas of how all people are like birds in your life, in my opinion. You love so many, unless you cage, you can't keep hold of. One never knows when someone's going to up and leave you. Fly away. Some birds are a symbol of good luck and good tidings. And because my 'Bird' was so good to me and who I believe, to this day, was the best decision I failed to make, he was a 'dove'. The yellow bird you've been waiting for. The 'good' one. So if he was the dove, the reason our relationship fell through, was the crow. My first, the only thing I couldn't bear to let go of. No matter how unjust it was for 'Bird' to lose, and I knew old news wasn't best for me at all, I couldn't stop myself from hurting him. And for what was love to me, I couldn't stop from hurting myself. With the end of that tale, I learned yet another lesson the hard way, but also so much more. It's not about bad or good or evil, or love and hate, as much as it is about what's best for you and what's not. You come to realize it's you, and you're one of two of those birds to somebody else. And you've turned yourself into your dove's crow, and your crow's found a dove of their own. Without one, the other would not exist. There is no perfect thing, no perfect person. Finally, I believe your life is bettered by accepting that fact, and embracing each opposite. Love the bad because you're made to appreciate the good. No, these tattoos aren't for anybody, but myself. Don't be ignorant.

Alyssa, Mike, and I went to see 'Dear and the Headlights' for Alyssa and I's second time. I thought they did better. 'Run in the Front's' my usual tearjerker, but this time 'Try' did me in with the line(s), "Sick of coming home with the T.V. mumbling. There used to be a time when you spoke to me with words. I'm swearing up and down saying, 'it's a commitment'. And toasting new beginnings saying, 'sorry, I thought it would work'. All my speech is riddled with annulment. I'm sorry, I'm just doing what I think I should. I don't know when I'll talk to you. I guess when both our eyes have finally died. I still want to try". It was just a reminder that the girl standing right next to me's become a stranger. And everyone I've known, I don't know anymore. They played a fifteen-song set that lasted about an hour, according to Alyssa. I think we've been talking more, now I don't feel so guilty when I tell her I've been doing drugs. The other afternoon at Somerset, over a disappointing lunch, she confessed she is scared of where her and Dalton's relationship is going. "Everybody needed something. Kevin needed a lot of attention, Matt was just crazy.." She never finished her sentence, but I could do that myself. It almost becomes self-destructive in a relationship, any kind, when you believe that your counterpart doesn't need you, therefore you have nothing to offer them. The root of all relationship problems, when it comes down to it, is an imbalance. Regardless of how big or how small. And because we're human, there will always be an imbalance.

Haley's back in high school, her last year, on top of two jobs. She's probably better off than I am now, two years ahead of her. After ten months, we finally got part of a day alone together. And it felt good like old times when we were completely comfortable with each other. It's not when someone keeps your secrets, that you know you can trust them, but when they believe you will keep theirs. Then, after longer than I can remember, we laughed together. (With the help of John's Mac).

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-09-22T10:10:00

2009-09-22T14:34:03Z

I have the hardest time trusting people. I stopped letting people in. I have good reasons. I have lacking self-worth. Which looks sad to everyone else who doesn't realize reality can only get worse, if you're comparing it to where you were when you started. I know just how smart and attractive I am based on a majority's opinion. I just don't believe in anyone's obligation to love oneself. If you're doing all you're supposed to do, that's everyone else's job. There's a difference between that and self-respect. Do what you think's best for you if that's what you want. I personally can't fake it. I know right from wrong is just a choice you make to make other people look bad. I live the way I want to live and make me the only person I'm in charge of trying to make happy. If I want, I'll put forth my efforts to focus on somebody else because, 'if you're happy, I'm happy'. The cycle of selfishness never ends, therefore I don't believe anymore self-love is necessary. I get on just fine with what love people are blessing me with. And to be frank, that hasn't done a whole lot of anything for me, I don't need an excess of the shit from myself. For as far as actual self-worth goes, I'd say I mean about as much as everyone else, that's looking at yourself, one of billions of billions of people on the planet Earth. What exactly makes you so special as a unit? Outside of yourself and the minuscule amount of the planet that know you.

Talking to Alexandra Cason brought to my attention another point I'd like to make, when she referred to herself as being a 'slut' as of lately. There has to be a difference between an easy girl and a girl that knows what she's doing. And ask anyone that knows me, I am not easy. The nebulous definition 'slut's' been reduced to has opened up the availability for anyone with a tongue to use it in their offense. Because you've slept with more people than you're comfortable announcing, confessing, admitting. Because you've slept with more people than so-and-so, because they're better than you to somebody? Because you slept with somebody that's slept with somebody else or somebody you might know (somebody that's had sex before). I'm partially-apologetic to inform you, but you probably won't be the last person the person you're sleeping with has sex with. Because you actually enjoy having sex, you may just have a healthy sex life.Or even just because you have had sex. I'm sure these are just a handful of the numerous reasons somebodies going to find legitimate enough to call you a 'slut'. Of course I fully support opinion-based words (insults), but with all that being said, how much worth is really left in the word? None the less, in my opinion, who the fuck's superior enough to judge me and/or my decisions? If you think I'm a slut, then I'm a slut. But I know what I am and what I am not. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your pitiful excuse of the English language will never hurt me. (Or anyone with a spine for that matter).

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-09-11T15:43:00

2009-09-11T20:27:49Z

Another summer has come to it's hesitant or abiding end. I thought I'd make up for my disappeared work with all the warm weather's remnants. Losing the long days, I know, isn't just disheartening for me. So much freedom whether you're still working and going to school or not. Sitting on the bed by the window, I don't care to decorate the room, I won't be here forever. Thinking about days the sun clung to my skin. And if I never had to wear my shoes again. Losing my footing in bathrooms less, as far as means I can't control go.

Megan will have her baby in December. My mom had both her first babies in December. It's a harsh time to leave everything perfect of the womb. I told Megan to watch out for Sagittarius. Can be a little rough around the edges. Knowing winter first, her baby 'Seth', last I heard from her, might just spend his summers trying to crawl back into where he came from.

I can't remember wearing makeup. When my eyes stopped letting me. Or when I needed it. Cutting my hair, as natural as it's been in two and a half years. What can only last so long. My 'kiss list' going from twenty-some to thirty to forty. Remember going steady with just one person and having trouble teaching your lips the rhythm of somebody else? My mouth won't ever remember. The familiarity of a hand to hold yours, somebodies smell only everybody, but they, can smell. You only get a whiff in the oddest corners of the universe, and recognize.

Some of them could dance and pour me drinks, introduced me to puking in front of complete strangers. Breathed vodka into my lungs. They all stayed strangers. Some of them in the month of June wrung my neck, bite down. I wanted to try something new. I've been always bored.

Kit asked me to make love to him. I pulled my shirt over my head and left the room, closed his door, and went downstairs to talk to Daniel. His brother looked just like Conor Oberst and I was so fond of him. I'd go over Kit's house just to get bored with sex and draw for Daniel. He thought he could love me because without my clothes, I was a work of art. And I was so mean. I could only love what Kit sang to me. His 'Bon Iver' vinyl of our 'Skinny love' duet. He gave me 'Neutral Milk Hotel' for all the days that rain, we sang over the CD in his car. I listen to it alone now, sometimes I'm sick of the sound of my own voice. But where did I have room for a two-headed boy?

And then there was Austen Christian Anderson. Born September 9, 1990. Complete Virgo. Never graduated high school. Steals one random DVD from every house party he attends. He lied to me about all of those things and I loved him the most. At least for a little part of July. In his house there was a room with mirrors bigger than the both of us. A bed with white comforters and black trim. A picture of his older sister on the nightstand. He made me undress all by myself, and we made faces at our reflections together. I found a wooden bird with a broken wing one of the places we spent the night, I tied it around his rear view mirror and said, 'it'll bring you luck'. Flightless bird, I'm sure it did. We never made anything beautiful for August.

Most nights my legs were tied up in somebody else, I've lost recollection of. My last letters to Codi and Georgia were only a page long. Maybe that was months ago. When have I told anyone where I've been the past three months? Four or five. Or ten now. There used to be a time I would talk to you with words. How long have you not been able to reach me? Codi stopped writing. I remember the last of what I told her. 'I don't think you put yourself in other peoples' shoes or try to understand their position in a situation, whether you agree with it or not'. Maybe I was right. Codi just turned sixteen this summer. If she's an owl, I'm still a butterfly. Georgia and I have always lived on different pages, so the less I see of her, the more expected our relationship goes. Where she wanted to go, her three months of sun, how would I know?

And Alyssa. The more people asked about her, the less I talked about her, the more it'd sink in, the less of anything we used to have. I stopped talking a long time before I ran out of things to say. After bettering Lice with her loss of Kevin, before just Alyssa fell in love with Dalton. I started jumping at every frequent opportunity to get stoned and sit in front of a movie I can never enjoy sober again. I befriended the bottle and you're my best friend. Beer with the group of boys I think I grew up with. Acquaintances I feel nothing for now. I love Marco, that's true. But anyone I wanted back into my life before, are just strangers in the same bodies. One, I can't even look in the face. So I won't ever alter the last days we lived in the same place I preserved in my memory. I'm always hanging out, but I never spend my time. The ones I most-appreciated aren't around anymore and I appreciate my newer companions or the people that have been in and out. I don't feel close to anything.

The summer stuck to the bottom of my bare feet. Better than the one before, and especially two years ago, but still not so special as before that. I hope the flowers outside your bedroom window keep you company as the Autumn air smothers them to death. I hope your window pane keeps you warm. Before it's cold, I hope you laid on your back in the grass, I hope you saw the stars. And didn't look at them like the lights so far away, their ghosts are still coming back to you. I hope your friend rolled you a joint you smoked on your back that made a movie worth watching, and driving just an arcade video game, and life worth talking about. Think about where all your old friends are right now. Who's posting a blog with a 'sad smiley emoticon', 'Summer's over, I miss you'. Where your siblings are sleeping, who your once lovers are sleeping with. And be happy if you're alone, you won't ruin who you love. Part of my family's where it's 'summer' all-year-round. I'd rather miss it. I'd rather throw up again and be loneliest. The dark circles will appear under my eyes with the lack of sunshine, Vitamin D, and basic human necessities. I'm ready for everything because I don't feel anything. But an obligation-like feeling that I should. Farewell the summer.

Every time you look back at yourself, you feel older.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-08-19T17:29:00

2009-08-19T21:30:43Z

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-08-17T14:42:00

2009-08-17T19:02:31Z

You can't change the past. You can't fix it. But you can change right now and fix the future. It's not always a bad thing. Life is a cycle. After the first time with anything, it just repeats itself until the end. So if you ever miss a feeling you forget you ever had, just know in time it won't seem so bad. I've been spending all of my time forgiving and forgetting. Apologizing and accepting. Catching up and correcting 'he said, she said', 'who liked who' jazz. As if any of it would better our understanding of where we're at.

8/13/09: Happy four years, Alyssa.

I was reading back into what I said I never would, correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, trying my hardest not to rewrite the old story. The way things happened as to what's happening now, I've grown so much. I don't feel like I can say 'grown up'. I've just grown, over older feelings and compassion for some things. Things I feel now and again in nostalgia or just memories. Familiarity. After certain points, that's all you feel. I think I was off on a lot of dates. Anniversaries. My memory's giving up on things I still haven't decided whether I want to give up or not. Come next April, I met Haley three years ago. It feels so much longer, everything always does. Like when you go somewhere new, you forgot where you've been. Or how long you were there. Each piece of your life is just another short story after it's over. Marco said he feels like everyone's on the brink of being 'cool' with everyone else again. I guess I feel it too. "Everyone could be happy." I spend a lot of time with Marco and I am happy. It's not just because we finally did shrooms together, or that we now 'exist on a higher plane together', or the shooting stars I saw and the sunrise he saw, or how he thought for a second my backside was a dolphin. It's just because I talk. He listens, and I don't want him to be unhappy and he's there for me if I ever need it. Like Mike. Like Adam, who's finally back home. My best friends.

I have been so busy with good times, 'like old times', I've been happy. I just haven't felt like laughing lately. Or doing much of anything lately. Maybe it's because I get sicker sometimes, sometimes I feel like life is not so long. Or I just don't have a reason to laugh anyway.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-07-28T23:47:00

2009-07-29T03:49:11Z

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-07-26T16:18:00

2009-07-26T22:15:32Z

Austen introduced me to Carmel. She was playing at 'Aj's' on 9 mile. The three of us all made beautiful music after that. Carmel even asked me to sing with her sometime soon. I don't have the guts for that. Carmel's mom read my palm. She held my hand, 'read my energy', and told me I was perfect. He's not coming back. Someday you will be loved like you've never been loved. You've got so much selfless love in you. You just need to let it come out.

"I need some reason for this rainy day, I think I found it." "Because I can't argue, I'm leaving."

He never ruins anything, I just don't want to ruin myself. I feel like I brought this on myself. I told Marco's younger sister, Celeste, 'I think some relationships only work in the summer, because of all the free time, and can only last till August.' It's not even August yet. I don't know what's changed, to be undone after all. "Don't trust a heart that's so bent, it can't break." And you can't promise someone you'll fall in love with them. Some people aren't so easily lovable. Look for the ones that want someone to love. Don't exhaust yourself on the ones you know you will love. Some people find it unbelievable to be loved in return. I'm one of those people. Mother. Family. Friends. Growing up. You get over it. And if you don't, you will be stuck that way. And I'm not one to throw my insecurities on other people. You have enough of those already, don't you? And maybe I don't ever want to be found out, maybe that's impossible, like Austen said, but you could try some time.

'No marriage starts off with a serious relationship, but you might want to be serious in a relationship if you're ever going to get married.' Dad, giving his opinion on all the relationships he's seen me get myself in. Is it true you can't love anyone without loving yourself? If nobody can love me, I'd still have myself. If that were the case. Or is it a wonder, for someone who doesn't love themselves, all the loose people (not family) in their lives, they don't love themselves. And that's why they love you. Does that make it less? To be loved. How does your love measure up to someone who's in love with themselves? Because I'm grateful to be this person, but I'm not in love with her. And I can't recall one person who was. In love, because I couldn't have returned the gesture. And what is love? To you. That shy best friend that told you, you were her best friend 'too'. That kid you lost your virginity to, too young or too desperate, knowing you'd never get it back. Some people deserve a disclaimer; Hold on to what you value, because you can't just go out and buy a new one. Was it when you were fifteen and someone wanted to hold your hand? And it felt so nice, you swore she had the prettiest eyes. Was it the day your dad took off your training wheels? Your mother made you a cake when you turned thirteen and you felt things were about to change. Is it the first glimpse she's got of you, bloody, but blanketed on her chest. Does anybody remember their first kiss? Because it may just have been before you were able to open your eyes. Georgia figured it our. "At any stage of your life, to love someone and care for someone just as much or more than you do yourself. There is no selfishness in love." Without selfishness there will be no love. If you can't love yourself, you will have the most-selfless love to use as you please. I know soon, you will be leaving your lover.

I think I knew love before 'best friends', I wasn't fifteen. I never lost my virginity, because technically, I never had it to start. I probably had as many problems in the womb as I do now. My mom made me listen to 'Journey', take that into consideration. Everyone has pretty eyes, my hand's been content with cigarettes for awhile now, and surprisingly fits perfectly into my other one. Quite a few people were born with two. I taught myself to ride my bike to middle school. But I never learned how to lock it up. I prefer walking any day. When I turned nine, my mom and John bought me a lime green 'Gameboy Color' and 'Pokemon: Yellow', and I was happy. I hate cake. I hate most pastry desserts. We went to 'Rain Forest Cafe' instead, for my first time. And Jeff wrote me another birthday card that made me cry. And I remember coming into this place as well as I remember every night I didn't fall asleep sober. Just because she loves you now, doesn't guarantee you'll never be lonely again. But I'd rather be lonely than be with anyone else.

It's been long enough since the last time I spent the actual night, eight hours, over Alyssa's house. I got on her computer to update my Zune, trying to remember music I had been living without, dying to listen to at my own leisure. It would've been a lot easier for her to just download 'The Wall' off a site that's not 'Limewire', but I'm impatient. I got a few songs in. Pink Floyd. And listening, singing along to an album that hasn't made sense since 2007, suddenly gave me the words to explain that summer to someone. I feel so lucky to understand, I am so grateful to my father.

The only thing I left out happening in my summer 07' re-caption, happened sometime in May. May 18, give or take a few days. I was invited to a party. It was a birthday party. And because I 'ran away' with Dominic, my dad made me dye my hair, take out my piercings, and lose a few of the males my seventeen-year-old life revolved around. We'd fight all the time. After Ana left for Mexico, the three of us children became extremely hard to handle and my dad wanted to spend a few days with his parents. I wanted to go to the birthday party. I sat in my bed and I started screaming at the top of my lungs and shaking and crying and there was nothing sane my dad could do. "Don't touch me!" "Why are you shaking? Brianne, stop, you're scaring me." I was scaring myself. Finally I thought he gave up trying to calm me down. "Fine! We're going to Grandma and Grandpa's and I'll drop you off wherever you want to go! You're almost eighteen, I can't make you stay if you're going to leave." I nodded and stared at my feet. I felt bad, but I wasn't going to let him know that. We got in the car. I don't know where my brothers were. I told him, drop me off around 13 and Ryan. At the 11 mile service drive, I knew where he was taking me. "Why are we going to my mom's?!" "..Because I don't know what to do for you and I think you should talk to your mother." I sat in the car, watching my dad talk with his hands and my mom act surprised. I saw John trying to listen-in and that really pissed me off. I wasn't predicting anything, I just opened the door, and took off. My mom screamed, "No! No! Brianne!", over and over. I slowed down in front of the neighbor's house. I knew I could outrun her, but where would I run to? She still grabbed on to me and I started thrashing, screaming, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me! Let go!" "What is it?!" I was terrified. "I'm not letting you go!" "You hurt me! You hurt me!" Over and over in her face. She let her hands up, bewildered. "You hurt me! You hurt me.." I folded my arms around my body. Crying. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry.." Her hands hovered over my shoulders. She wasn't going to touch me again. It's fair to say that I really believe I lost my mind there. One of the only memories I have of my parents together. Sitting right in the bed of my dad's truck, smoking. I sat between them. I don't remember anything they told me, trying to help, but we were still going to Grandma and Grandpa's and I missed Nabil's birthday party.

Gregory and Tim fell asleep early in the backseat. I was still mute. "I used to listen to this album every time I was upset." "What is it?" It was Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'. He popped it in, everything was quiet. "Aw, this is such a cool part!" He'd occasionally say. "Listen to that guitar solo. It sounds so clean." And after every song, he'd explain what Roger Waters wrote them about. And it was all beautiful. I don't think I could've said two honest words to my father before that. He still doesn't realize what a huge influence that album had on me, and still does. The feeling of being so alone, imprisoned in something you built yourself. And sometimes it gets so hard to come out again when you finally want to. The theory on everybodies 'wall' has been picked apart sometime two winters ago. When anything that means well, makes it worse. You cry it out. Like the good you had taken away, nothing stays the same. And your wall's not so big or not so strong or there's a revolving door. You're going to find a lot of doors in your life, Austen said that to me. And don't get used to it being held open for you.

I could talk forever about what Roger Waters wrote, like what I told Georgia. But a lot of it's like 'Purple Rain', you listen to it, understand it, and there's no way to explain it to anyone else. Like just a feeling you get. Nostalgia. Or sad gratitude. When you look at the sky at a certain time of day, the cloud formations, or the sun setting or rising. And you could've sworn it was the same days, months, years ago. But it's just the same sky, with different deja vu. When I see an airplane from so far away, I feel so sad. If I stare I think I'd start crying. But there's no significance I can remember to answer why. I'll figure it out. Some time. It's in human makeup to forget your happiness, love, and pain. However you felt once before. But you remember what you called the feeling, good or bad. I've figured, like childbirth, if we could remember the detail of past feelings, we'd never do it again.

"All alone or in two's, the ones who really love you walk up and down outside the wall. Some hand-in-hand and some gathered together in bands. The bleeding hearts and artists make their stand. And when they've given you their all, some stagger and fall. After all, it's not easy banging your heart against some mad fucker's wall."

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-07-23T20:06:00

2009-07-24T01:44:29Z

I finally got that reading I was promised, it was unexpected and I couldn't think of anything I felt comfortable asking. Mrs. Cox used tarot cards to depict my past, present, and future with three cards for each place in time. The first theme was 'relationships'. My favorite. After I shuffled the deck and cut the cards, she drew three; the earliest stage of past, present, and future. The first card on the left showed a dim-lit cavern with six levitating stones parallel to each other. The bottom two stones in each row were illuminated, but the final stones were dead and black. There was a light at the end of the tunnel and a little, blue butterfly in the corner. "That light represents where you want to be. Everything looked good, in the beginning everything was great, but as you can see", she pointed to the dark stones, "it really wasn't. There was some kind of imbalance in the relationship, whether it be on your side or vice-versa." "The tables did turn." There was a Taurus symbol in the upper corner of the card. The card to the right of my 'early past', was where I'm at this very moment in time. It had the Saggitarian mark in it's corner. There was a crimson butterfly above a sphere split between the sun and moon, at the fork of a gold road leading to a lit up tower at the end of each road. "Right now, your options are good, you're just not making any decisions. There's a beautiful light at the end of each road, but you have to move forward." The card was called 'Resistance'. "You're still holding back. Maybe because of this card before?" The third card of the first set of three was my early potential future if I chose a certain path. It was the 'Magician'. A Buddhist statue in the center of swirling rings of planets and lights and a single, small butterfly. "This means you are the center of your own universe. This card is a 'changer' and it means something needs to change. Only you can change things in your own life, for the better." She touched the butterfly in each depiction. "I'm going to say this represents you." Taurus, Sagittarius, back to Taurus again. The second three cards drawn were placed directly below their counterpart. The second piece to my past; There were two wands in space, crossing each other, their tips on fire. "You know what the term 'star-crossed lovers' means, right? That's what this card is all about. You're still connected to this person, but it's already bad and I'm not going to say it wasn't meant to be, but I don't see anything good to come from it." The second card symbolizing my near tomorrow, was a ghostly girl, like a statuette, sitting on an isolated rock in the middle of the sea. There were three shooting stars and a faint rainbow light across the waves. The rock's reflection made an ominous, evil-looking face. "That's probably him." After I pointed out the face. "Imagine you're this beautiful woman all alone. There is so much good out there, but you're looking backwards." The girl had her head cranked around her shoulder towards the 'wand' card. "This rainbow is faint, but it's what you want, you're just looking in the wrong direction." And the corresponding future card was a goat on a single, distant mountain in the sea. There were huge, wing-shaped clouds around it and a vivid rainbow reflection in the water. "Now see how big the rainbow is ahead of you? If the girl would just turn her head, she could find what she's looking for. Moving ahead would be the best thing for you." Then came the final three cards to conclude each time passage. My 'past relationship' ended with the 'Mourning' card. "This is the second-worst card you can get. It's a 'death' card." There was a large water droplet, maybe a tear, with three swords piercing all the way through it, over cold, still waters in the same cave, no light. "There is no light in this card at all and this relationship obviously ended worse than you wanted or even expected. Because there are three swords, it wasn't only you and him that were hurt in the end of this. There is nothing you want in this left, and going back to it would bring you nothing, but more pain. This is the death of this relationship." The final 'present' card symbolized potentially where I'll be if nothing changes. Six, gold, levitating goblets parallel to each other, filled with water in an abyss of nothing. But the top goblet on the right had fallen from the others and was poured out, upside down. "There is still a substantial imbalance in your life right now and if things continue along the path of dwelling on the past and remaining at a standstill, someone's going to get hurt. It might not be you, and the imbalance may not even be your fault. But there are no completely mutual feelings between you and anyone else." The last card, the far, far future card. The highest love and happiness card anyone could get. Huge rainbows, gold pieces, blue skies, angels, and three gold rings. "The cards never lie. Your rainbow got as big as it can get. I see none of these things in your past relationship. And these rings symbolize marriage. If you let go of the things of the past that ail you, you will be happy and you will know love like you never have before." There was a Gemini sign in the corner. I felt my face slide off my skull with morose nostalgia. "Our butterfly doesn't appear in any of your future cards, so that represents the person you were, and that person is gone." She did a same-based reading on my career time line, equally-accurate results. And when I left her private room, I felt disappointed and strangely angry. Because sometimes you don't want to believe even the things you feel are true. Like you can just fucking change, just like that. She told me I'll always have to work hard for the things I want. I didn't particularly like the sound of that. I asked if she could predict death. "I don't do that. The day we're born is the day we start dying."

"Show me you love me."
My hair was still wet after two showers in a row. All by myself. Not by myself.

I made this decision because I knew it's what I'd want, not because it'd be easy or what's best or what will even end well, apparently becoming clearer everyday. I suppose it's because he's not obsessed with me. He never answers his phone. He never sets a time frame, and if he does, he's always at least two hours late. He answers my questions by changing the subject or asking me trivial ones he really doesn't want an answer to. He says I ask too many questions, I'm demanding, and judgmental. I called him a lying asshole, started crying, and stormed out of his house. He chased me down the block and we continued arguing until his mother caught up with us and told us to come in for tea. I don't drink tea. We glared at each other across the living room. "Austen's like a salad bar. He's different everyday." "That's not an excuse."

That all started when he tried to make his mother spend seventy-one dollars on tickets for him and I to go see Asher Roth. I didn't care to go to the show for thirty-some dollars. Austen kept whining and I called him out on being jobless and spoiled. He stepped outside to 'clear his head'. "I don't understand.. he's nineteen-" "Is that what he told you? Austen's eighteen." And Austen came back inside and I had 'that look' on my face. Which led to an entire night of arguing. I tried to be nice. He said he preferred me to 'keep my mouth shut' if I'm going to 'say things like that'. And it went back and forth for hours, in spurts. He doesn't need me at all. I don't need this at all. We're together, that's what he told me. And I'm happy with that.

"I don't even know what to say. I feel so imperfect. I feel like I will be engulfed into something and isolated. I can just forget how to be alone. How to cope with that. I've been alone for a long enough time. I can handle that and appreciate it. I see me losing that ability. I don't know what I'm getting into. It makes me happy to care about something that's not easy. But I might be unhappier when it ends. Because I can see the ending from here. A part of me says, 'look around for a backup plan or possibly something better', but the honest part of me, my heart says, 'I don't want to. I don't care if I end up worse than when I started'. As long as I try and feel things. And that makes me feel isolated from everyone because he isn't really ready to be there for me. Give one-hundred percent. I understand that, so I want to stay. And for some reason, there's nothing in me strong enough to argue. My better judgment. Knowing when I'll be hurt. Or if I'm hurting right now. I've cried everyday for about a week now. And I can't even give myself a good reason for it or for any of what I'm going to do because of what I'm feeling. And I'm feeling so angry and confused, but I don't even have any solution. Something's telling me, 'your heart will be shattered. And you're going to deal with it'. I don't have a choice. I don't think he'll ever understand where I'm coming from, but is one of the only people with the ability. I don't want to leave him. He told me today, he's going to make me leave him, if anyone's leaving anyone."

I love you so much. Even though you 'next' me every time we fight.

The last night Alyssa and I spent 'talking' at Leo's, she wanted to leave Alex, her boyfriend then of three days, and I already knew it was over when she asked me what a 'Cancer's' like. Sensitive. Caring. Defensive. Alex is a Taurus. And Kit's a Pisces. I've met a few and from what I've seen, their personal opinion alone, make them look ignorant and impressionable. I am opinionated, but I know when I'm wrong and some things aren't worth even arguing about. I've been told by my victims (usually boyfriends), 'I help you dig your grave, let you lie down in it, and then bury you'. In an argument, I won't lie, I can be vindictive. The further you push what I perceive as stupidity into it, the sharper and sharper my tongue gets. I can be mean. But beside Kit and I's disagreements on everything that's based on opinion, I couldn't take anything further with that boy. I will never be what I want to be in Kit's eyes, and so I would never be happy. I want to be with someone who's opinion makes me who I want to be. We are forcibly defined by anyone's opinions, so I'd like to be with someone that can see what I see in me, or things I'd like them to see and to understand. I guess that's what it comes down to for me. I told Michael I could never be with someone who hates me so much, but is imprisoned by 'love' (at the time). Because I'd hate myself.

Alyssa fell for Caner at first meeting. I don't know when that was or how that went, but she kisses him like someone before. Donald, Dylan, Damien, Derek, Dave. Dalton. I've only met one other 'Dalton' in my existence, in fourth grade. I was so infatuated with him and I would bully him for Zelda guidance everyday. When I moved to Warren in the fifth grade, Patrick looked just like him for a moment, and he guided me through Zelda as much as I wanted, without any bullying. If it's Dalton, Alyssa, and I, I'm talking to Alyssa and Dalton's listening to me and Alyssa's listening to Dalton and Dalton's not talking. I'm happy she's happy. God only knows, that's all I've prayed for her. And we haven't talked. 'You do you, I'll do me'. And I'm happier than I've been before, because I know I'm appreciating every second I'm spending. Imagine dying, and enjoying every second of it. Where there's only one conclusion and you don't have a choice, so you're not worried or scared of something else. It is what it is. You'll be happier.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-07-20T12:04:00

2009-07-20T16:08:09Z

"I just don't want you to see me as imperfect as I feel."

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-07-06T10:16:00

2009-07-06T15:16:34Z

If you consider anyone whose come into your life and left without your consent, someone that's made a part of you, now vacant. I believe you spend more than the time they were there, trying to fill those holes, without honest intention.

Besides being eternally busy with work, I've been, for thirteen months, busy with nothing. A decent amount of the past week. Weeks. I've forgotten detail I believe I'd want to remember down the line. When I ask myself; how did I get here? Where are my friends? How much have I had to drink? And who is this guy I've got my arms around? Or maybe I ask myself those questions every other day. I just don't remember. But with every drink and every joint and every cigarette I replace with legitimate food, I can still remember you. Better than the back of my hand.

It was Ryan's house Tuesday, somewhere with Alyssa, her guy Alex led us to. Ryan, his girlfriend, Jackie, and their friends, Brandon, James, and Ryan's cousin, Evan. After watching 'Hot Rod', breaking the ice at glacier pace, we went swimming, unprepared. Alyssa in her cami and Ryan's outgrown swim trunks, me, my bra and 'I love summer' underwear. After James thieved Alex's trunks, the remaining four of us still in the pool, ended up naked too. This was before the heavy drinking. Showing up four guys old enough to buy alcohol, around six shots in ten seconds of straight 'Captain's'. Dressed again in Brandon's spare boxers, before almost immediately locating Ryan's bathroom. I spend a lot of time on people's toilets, one body part or another. It was then high-fives and wholewheat bread. Alyssa told me she found James and I slow dancing in the kitchen.

Wednesday night, Lice and I ended up on Woodward, three blocks south of 7 Mile at a 'drum circle' with Alex and his friend, David. Before I even proceeded to get drunk, I kept repeating things like, 'is this real life?' and by the time I was drunk, Austen Anderson showed up. 'You'll see a green and red neon sign in an arch. There's a tree house and fire pits and a bunch of people playing drums and over one-hundred hippies smoking fucking bongs and shit and passing around free wine!' was something like my directions to Austen. The wine was fine, but the Vodka Ryann offered me was top of the line. Austen and I walked, or fell in my case, back to his vehicle to find his and Andy's weed. Andy reminded me of Gerard Way. But Andy had it in the first place, so we just slouched down in the car for a minute. I was tired of tripping over my own feet and I thought I sprained my ankle. "I don't know how much you care about me. Maybe it's more than I care about you, I don't know." My mom always told me, 'being drunk is just an excuse to do the things you want to do, but won't, when you're sober'. I never confess anyone's secrets or any of mine I'd prefer hidden, but I scream out everything that comes to my mind or for whatever reason, try to one-hundred percent convince someone of the only sincere feelings I have in me, only while intoxicated. And with everything that had happened throughout a few weeks, leading up to this point, 'Dead Like Austen' was looking pretty good. "You don't think I care about you? I do care about you." He was using that irresistible stutter, "here, let me show you something." He dug out his wallet and began to flip through pictures and cards. He pulled out one of my senior pictures. "I stole this." I snatched it from him and flipped it over before my brain could even enable me to understand where it came from. It was signed to Alyssa. "What!?" "I didn't read it! I didn't want to intrude..further." I remember over-dramatically hyperventilating. "Are you mad? I knew you might be mad." "You stole..Alyssa's..picture." I managed to gasp out. I was just drunk enough to forget how to handle what I perceive as fucking crazy. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." "Oh my God! How did you even take this!? Where was I?" "I don't know..I just-" "What are you going to steal next? My underwear!?" I got out of the car and hobbled back towards the party. Told Alyssa, who looked worried about my wheezing. If you noticed a photo of me missing from your bulletin board, that would be another result of my recent choice of stand-up guys. I've decided to take this time, as flattery.

Friday night was 'Funk Night', Detroit. DL to the point of an hour-long search party for the party. And when Ryann and I got there, mango Vodka at hand, the management was too legit and getting caught underage and drunk in the 'D' was the last way either of us wanted it to go down. So we detoured back to a mainstream club off 'Bagley' and proceeded to meet mental 'checkpoints' Ryann created on the bottle. Ten minutes into the club and sober enough to be disappointed, Ryann's posse supplied us with infinite pitchers of beer and chugging those are always a lot easier after straight liquor. I couldn't keep either of my eyes open at the same time, let alone walk or dance. I saw a topless girl with black tape X's over her nipples. And one of Ryann's ex's who probably weighed around seventy pounds. I called Alyssa to tell her how much I love her, in which I tend to make a drunk habit of. And Mike B. And Ryann pulled me from the couch to continue dancing and my mouth started watering and I was back in the bathroom. We listened to 'Modest Mouse' on the drive home and we slept in the same bed and when we woke up, we went to breakfast. One (out of two) of Ryann's girlfriends got engaged that last weekend, and the other one was suddenly boring? Ryann's a monogamist, if that's important. A monogamist dates (commits) to more than one person at a time, which is what Michelle at work mistakes me for doing, but monogamy is supposed to be open and there's a whole other word for what I've been known to do, and it's not monogamy. At drum circle, I was also enlightened on Ryann's 'pansexual' sexuality. To be pansexual, is to love anyone regardless of gender. It's different than bisexual, in that you're ignoring sex completely and all the reproductive organs that go with it. Sounds like a fantasy concept. Works for some people. But I find loving anyone a challenge enough. Over a Denny's 'Grand slam' of pancakes, hash browns, eggs, and toast, Ryann decided that monogamy was suddenly no longer in his best interest to be 'realistic'. And he put so much behind that theory originally, I thought.

I met James Cox's mom, and he fried me two eggs, over-easy. And his mom told me I'd hate going into any medical physician or veterinarian work because she's paid to tell people things like that. Plus, she is right. I feel faint at the sight of blood and my mom was always the one with the heart for animals. The name 'James' reminds me too much of recent events, and I call James C. 'Kit' for 'Kitty'. He can be as much of a cat as I can be on a daily basis. When I finally did cut the ties, that soon became suffocating knots, James Harken took it quite well with something a little along the lines of, "Fuck you, you fucking whore. I'm going to make sure your nudes are all over the web and everyone knows you're a whore!" Alrighty then. My sixteen-year-old nudes; old news. I can probably refer you to some classier child pornography sites, but if it's truly that dire for anyone to see me naked, please, let me know. I wouldn't want anyone to die in vain now. This maturely-composed statement coming from someone who once said, "Just because you're on 'Anonib', doesn't mean you aren't classy." Thank you, James Harken, not only for beating the shit out of me and trying to take possessive control of my life, but for the irreplaceable insight. I'm just playing, I think you're a worthless, fat pig, and I hope the next female you decide to choke-up, pulls out a switchblade, slits open your nut sack, and uses the innards of your testicles to strangle you.

It was another Wednesday, another date with Austen. After eating, shopping, smoking, he took me to his mother's. If you knew Austen, you'd appreciate know that he and his mom are just alike. While Austen did ballet and imitated John Mayer in the family room, his mother kept giving me all his older sister's clothes. She seemed shocked to see a girl accompanying Austen, I was surprised when she told me it doesn't happen all the time. "A lot of girls are stupid and shallow. They don't understand Austen. You must be special." His mother took our picture and he put it in a frame, crooked, and gave it to me. "You're like a shining star. I can see you, but I can't have you."

Kit had us all over for dinner last Friday night, the same night Adam came home on leave. Ryan and Jackie, Alex and Alyssa, Kit and me. I'm sure Kit made all the food, seeing as he's going to school to be a chef. A Culinary Arts student. After Ryan and Jackie left, the remaining four of us went upstairs and tested out my unused dice. Plastic pink ones I had to buy when Alyssa took me to 'Cirilla's'. There are sides of Alyssa I am continuously surprised to see. None of it bothered me enough to talk about. I confessed a little to Alex. I trust him. I told Alyssa to 'put that boy on lock-down'. His outstanding downfall in my book; dating Shannon 'Shenanigans'. Kit's mom promised him a 'reading' for me. I'll admit, I was worried to death. Good reason, I know now.

Adam picked me up from Kit's, right after Alyssa and Alex left, sooner after we smoked a bowl. I didn't know if it was the THC's perception, but Adam seemed angrier or just intense. It got better when it slowly sank in that I was really there with him. He'd sporadically kiss my cheek or put me in a headlock. At last we laid down and watched 'Fight Club', I told him I was holding out on it for him. And at four in the morning we finally fell asleep. He woke me up before nine, somehow in his bed. I figured he carried me, and slept on the couch. He dad drug me, Adam, and his brother, Alexander to see the 'Transformers' sequel. I kept falling asleep. It wasn't that good. Adam took me to the mall. He took me grocery shopping. And all his friends showed up for a barbecue. Alex blew off 'bottle rockets' in his hand. Ian, the one that creeps on Alyssa, followed me around and talked about weed. Ben showed up late, we didn't talk. Bryan, I met at an Emmure show with Alex, Ian, Alex, and I drove out to Meijer, and when we came back, everyone was gone. It turned into an 'Adam Richey scavenger hunt' for about two hours, we stopped at Ian's, he has a bong, we stopped at Karleigha's, Adam's ex/good friend, and Adam took me home. He told me to 'hold on' earlier, and he made me hold out my hands. "This is my Marine Corp ring. I want you to hold on to it. Don't lose it." The way the ring felt in my hands, around my finger. I felt he was asking me so much more.

He got out of the truck in front of my house to hug me good-bye again. He felt my chest sigh. "One month, Brianne." I looked up at him, unconvinced. Then we said our 'good-bye's' and I turned away from him once more. "Hey wait!" He grabbed me by the wrist and turned me back around with my blank face. He touched my side. He kissed me. Not like midnight, January first, when the ball dropped and we pecked for good tidings. He kissed me with my eyes closed for seconds time stood still. "One month." I kissed him back. Is this really happening?

"You know you can't give me what I need. And even though you mean so much to me, I can't wait through everything."

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-06-27T21:01:00

2009-06-28T02:02:47Z

The result of disbelief of how much of me you think you know, that I didn't; one of the greatest things I've withheld immediate argument against.

1. Pink, not magenta "bullshit".
2. Mongolian Buffet, your favorite eatery.
3. Adam is the brother you're closest to.
4. You have a problem with the month of May.
5. Everything happens on Wednesday.
6. You hate to admit to crying over anything, it makes you feel weak.
7. Your favorite song is 'The Blower's Daughter'.
8. You want a baby eventually.
9. Pigeon toed; how you walk.
10. You value Alyssa over just about everyone.
11. You write letters to Georgia, and Codi in Illinois.
12. You think I'm kinda gay.
13. You work at Ace.
14. You had a thing for Elysia in more ways than one.
15. You went to art school and dropped out, because college is gay and overpriced.
16. Oh, you can draw.
17. I caught you drool once, maybe you drool a lot?
18. You value honesty and serenity.
19. Promiscuous.
20. Defensive.
21. Chicken?
22. Crab legs; your favorite thing from the Mongol eatery.
23. You smoke Marlboro Menthol's.
24. You used to have your ears gauged.
25. You're supposed to be with a Gemini.
26. You believe in that Horoscope stuff, at least most of it.
27. Besides the Mongol place, you like Leo's and Jimmy John's.
28. Corned beef hash from Leo's, or some french toast.
29. You have a bad thing with rainy days.
30. You keep a Livejournal, as well as a personal one.
31. You bought this pink tiger hoody and the zipper broke.
32. You have a little black phone with a keyboard.
33. You want to visit Codi this summer.
34. You're going to OCC.
35. Large Caramel Frap; Starbucks.
36. You're like a human dictionary.
37. You're ridiculously smart.
38. You have to be vague about almost everything.
39. Your favorite band is 'Coheed and Cambria'.
40. You're a Sagittarius.
41. You smoke pot occasionally.
42. You have a 'high diary'.
43. You wear these brown slippers I tie the laces to.
44. You have a pair of those boots, the rubber ones.
45. You have tattoos on your foot; "Life goes easy on me" and roses.
46. You have the most beautiful eyes, face, nose. Your lips have this curve that's so nice.
47. You have small hands and feet.
48. Your hair grows fast.
49. The nice cashier from 'Pac Sun' fucked you over.
50. You have blue eyes.
51. You looked amazing in that blue dress for Prom, I think I fell in love with you that night.
52. You ordered spaghetti and meatballs when I took you to 'Macaroni Grill'. Oh, and calamari.
53. Your movements are graceful. Your skin does glow in the light, you are beautiful all the time.
54. You once told me that you were in love with me.
55. You told me that movie, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' reminded you of me and you.
56. 'Adventureland' was the first movie I took you to see with me.
57. I think you were wearing a blue shirt that day, I don't know for sure though.
58. We also went to see 'Observe and Report' and 'He's Not That Into You'. You were high, and fell asleep about halfway through 'Observe and Report'. It wasn't that good anyway.
59. Once, you came over and ate dinner with my mom and I. Actually, more than once. We went to 'Bob Evan's' too.
60. You love 'Gushers' fruit snacks.
61. You tend to stop eating. It worries me.
62. You used to have an anime addiction.
63. You make bracelets for everyone. You made me two.
64. I'd like to think I know a lot of your past, at least what's in your Livejournal.
65. You make cute noises.
66. You have nice, soft skin.
67. And lips.
68. You're pretty good at turning me on. I have to find new ways to control myself.
69. You're agnostic.
70. You plan on doing shrooms in the near future.
71. You like to watch 'Sex and the City'.
72. You love popcorn.
73. You said you could see yourself marrying me.
74. You wanted to get 'promise rings'.
75. You have two videos making fun of people from your past, and Alyssa's.
76. Your original Photobucket was deleted by Haley.
77. You made a new one.
78. You have a nice ass.
79. That made you smile at least a little?
80. You always think everyone is your dad when we go somewhere.
81. You have that car in front of your house, but you don't drive it a lot.
82. You find the brothers you live with, a bit annoying.
83. You always look good.
84. One day, you want to 'just get together and do it'. "That day will be so epic".
85. Oh, you're always 'DTF'.
86. You used to live with your mom, but you don't like living with your dad either.
87. Favorite candies are 'Sugar Babies' and 'Mike and Ikes'.
88. I think your bank is 'Charter One'. The green one anyway?
89. You tend to overdraft.
90. You want to beat Haley's shit in.
91. You make lists occasionally, there's one of people you've kissed.
92. Fashion is important to you.
93. You ordered buttered noodles when we went to 'Noodles & Co.'.
94. You want to paint my room.
95. You like it when I kiss your forehead.
96. You're easily-made jealous.
97. You're pretty anal when it comes to grammar. I'm pretty sure you correct me all the time.
98. You always want me to sing to you.
100. You love me.

Yes, I do.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-06-21T15:15:00

2009-06-21T20:32:29Z

"They will detail their pain in some standard refrain that will recite their sadness, like it's some kind of contest. Well, if it is, I think I am winning it, all beaming with confidence as I make my final lap. The gold medal gleams, so hang it around my neck, because I am deserving it; the champion of idiots."

It feels like right before she left, was the most-often I've seen my mom in over a year. Of course, it took them over the original time frame to pack up the moving truck and each time I visited the dying house, there was frenzied panic, my lazy brothers, McKenna screaming, Jack crying, Jeff making fun of Al, Michael, his son, throwing up gang signs and generously sharing his pot, John running errands, drunk neighbors, black neighbors, pregnant neighbors, and Kimberly, mother of mine, downing mixed drinks, sobbing periodically, bitching at everyone, doing her thing. There's nothing I'd like more than to take her to Coney, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, and really talk. Like my dad and I do in the morning sometimes. But I don't think I could have a realistic conversation with my mother. She's not a good listener, nor is she understanding. She asked about my lip in the car, and assumed I had herpes. "No, Mom. It's not a cold sore." And then after a brief, uncomfortable explanation, she went on about 'I'll drag him out of his car and beat the shit out of him! I don't care if he's a minor. Put your hands on my kid, motherfucker!' Like the time Matt snatched the phone away from Alyssa just to threaten he was going to punch me in school the next day, which I one-hundred-percent encouraged, so I could put that asshole away. And my mom started screaming into the phone, "lay a hand on my daughter, I'll drive over there and wipe the street with your ass!" He called me right back to apologize. I was a little disappointed. That's the good thing about Kim, there's not enough reasonable sanity in her department of what's worth physically fighting for, and each time she makes a threat, you know it's not an empty one. I've learned that firsthand. In some ways, we're a lot alike. More than I ever like to admit. I'm selfish, borderline narcissistic according to her, Dad and I disagree. But I'd take a bullet for you. Lay down and die for you. When it comes to us, Brett as the endlessly sad exception, she would kill to keep us alive. That's the funny part about love and compassion. I've disappointed my mom so many times and it's more than normal, just looking at her makes me sick. The funny thing about love, you can curse somebodies existence for breaking your heart. Wish they would suffer, wish they were dead. But when it comes down to it, you can be lonely if they will be happy. And if it's their life or yours, you'd give it up, expecting nothing in return, just because you love them. While I lived with Alyssa, I admitted there were three. Three people I knew without a doubt I wouldn't regrettably die for. And she's still one of two of them. Things change. Personally, I'd rather be selfless than selfish in death. Who do you believe's life is less valuable than yours anyhow?

I came home by curfew to find my dad by himself in the backyard around a fire. "I'm waiting for the fire to die." Whenever we're alone in a mood, talk's worth it. Nathan graduated this year and in August he'll be living in Ann Arbor. "I think in a city like Ann Arbor, you can get into something really good or some really bad things." "I can't picture Nathan getting into anything bad, he's a good kid." Really, my cousin is, great head on his shoulders. "Even if he does, I think he'll be smart about it." "Like what? Smoking pot? Sex?" "I don't know." "I can't picture Nathan having sex." "Me neither." "Then again, I can't picture you having sex." "Well I hope you don't ever try." "Believe me, the image never crosses my mind." "I think sex..is a strange thing." "In what way?" Which lead to an eternity worth of priceless words to take in. I told him, sex is very easy, but for something so easy, it just feels like a lot. 'It complicates things'. "It is. Sex is very important. For two people in love. Or. It just brings two people closer. Very personal. And if it's not, if you just have sex, I think you may lose the ability. Intimacy." Then we talked about love.

"Love is hard. I know you thought you were in love. Maybe you were. I don't know. I don't know how you felt. But I believe true love takes an amount of maturity. And that's with everyone. Not because you're young. Some people still don't have it. For me, you have to enjoy someone's company with anything. And for love to be real, you have to work at it. Don't think you're ever going to change someone."

And we talked about Kate, the one, for my dad. I refer to everyone's once, first, love of their life (you can only hope, so far), as their 'one'. "Do you think about her everyday?" "Yeah." "Do you wish you didn't?" "Sometimes. I think what happened with us was a tragedy. Wrong timing. I do believe we would have been good together." "Do you think she thinks about you everyday?" "Sometimes. But I don't know what she thinks." "Would you still consider yourself in love with her?" "I don't know.." Then he went on to say, "I believe there are people that come into your life you will love and remember for the rest of it." I only ask my dad thousands of questions to answer my own. To know for certain how things might be. How things are for most people. The average lifespan of a human being is seventy-eighty years. A star's is eight-hundred billion, but 'it's still not long enough', he said. "If you enjoy life, there's never enough time." That's nowhere near a long enough time to forget all of what you'd want to.

I cried in my mother's arms before she left. She told me she loved me and I kind of believed that, but it was okay for you to say it this time. "Behave yourself." Goodbye Mom, for one of the last times. It only felt like things should have been different for her and I. "I'm sorry." Dad told me, after Ana forced that I was upset about Mom, out of me. I stopped needing you a few years ago, but what of you did I ever need? I guess a lot, to contribute to the person I am today.

So unhappy or lost or discontent. All my time's been put into petty nonsense to pass my time. It was embarrassing, with Michael and Alyssa. I'm glad they like each other. Me, teeth over my lip, semi-swollen and scabbed, layers of dark under my eyes, sunken-in and glassy. Without saying anything, they'd look me over, start saying something, glance away and glance back. I felt weak, and so I felt deserving. Now, Mike B. wants to beat James' ass, James wants to beat Mike T's ass, Mike T. doesn't beat anyone's ass, James wants to beat Mike B's ass, Alyssa wants to beat James' ass more than she wanted to beat Mike T's ass, James does beat my ass, and sometimes I want to beat my own ass. Where Mike T. was emotional, James is physical. There's not much else to say about it. I told Mike T. to keep the pink locket, remember me. I told James how I felt and he told me to be a 'big girl'. I told Mike B. how constantly sorry I am.

"Because I know you're strong. Underneath that brisk exterior. Brisk, meaning lively, nice, graceful, blissful. I like graceful and blissful."
"Neither of those descriptions fit me."
"Well, that's what I think. When you're not messing around, I think your movements are graceful."
"I don't know. And 'blissful' is nowhere near me."
"And the way your skin glows in the light, and shines through your hair. I think it's blissful."
"I think you're just imagining things."

"And though I know that my actions are impossible to justify, they seem adequate to fill up my time. But if I could talk to myself like I was someone else, well then, maybe I could take your advice. And I wouldn't act like such an asshole all the time."

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-06-11T17:58:00

2009-06-11T23:24:44Z

It started with desiring my necklace back. A pink locket Alyssa had sealed drawings of her ex, Matt, and her and I 'scissoring' in. On Mike Trout's nightstand. After starting with desiring a feel at 'Bayside' from three people behind him, smoking a bowl, dry-humping in his living room. He was the exception to my 'hands-off, I'm high, I just want to listen to music, watch colorful movies, and feed my face' rule. Which in trade, proved Georgia's theory of heightened sensations while stoned, as opposed to sober. I was just bored up to that point. I've heard it before, go into a 'trip' (with any substance) in a positive state of mind, and you'll enjoy yourself. And if you get into something, scared or pissed-off, you'll probably just become more irritable and upset. That's why shrooms are so dangerous in my case, I can picture myself freaking myself out beforehand, causing myself a very dangerous, 'bad' trip. I have better times now.

So, talking to Mike again revolved around retrieving my necklace and a few hours later, turned into threatening harassment. I didn't know if it had ended at that, or if I was ceased to be amazed, yet again. Before the intercepting factor; James Harken. There's a story to James, Mike Smith, Alyssa. Deeper than last summer, and springtime of last year. Where I was just a 'slut' and so-and-so was an 'asshole' and we 'both deserved to die' and 'I'm in love with Amy' and some of that ridiculous drama bullshit neither the slut, nor asshole had time for anyhow. Hell, I might still be a slut, just one you're far more interested in. And I often find myself wondering if he's still an asshole.

First, Jordan picked me up to 'chill' (foreseeing smoking) and James was with him, so we went on a little adventure to a rich neighborhood's park, met a delusional old war veteran, smoked a bowl, hit Meijer, then Leo's. Sitting with 'Hipster Jay' and Mike Smith. James, being freshly 'edge' (again), stayed sober.

The following night I made plans to 'sleep' over Lice's. We caught up with James and Mike Smith in Leo's. Mike, I met back in the summer with Shelby, I'm sure. James had been texting me, flirting, then laid eyes on Alyssa, and the texts turned into 'she is so cute'. Alyssa asked me something about James and I before crossing Main Street. All implications of something 'going on' or somebody 'crushing' or 'when you say 'hit it and quit it' with Mike T., that doesn't mean hit it again and get emotionally attached'. 'Hit it and quit it' and 'hook it up' are my two favorite ways to say whether it be serious or not, something's going down. I assumed Alyssa figured as much, talking about James Harken, Mike Smith, Hipster Jay (Jason), Nick, three out of four of those Middle Eastern dudes we saw at the 'Cafe'. It works kind of like a game, whoever you call 'dibs' on. I've surpassed counting on one hand. You'd be surprised on how long Alyssa's list is too. The rules are all that's confidential.

Regardless, the four of us spent the entire night and early dawn together. Hitting just about every 24-hour restaurant for coffee, Meijer, and 'Trowbridge' (because Mike suggested something 'scary'). I don't know which was scarier; the dark, ancient suicide spot for young adolescents, or James Harken and Alyssa holding hands.

Within the days passing, tension grew between me and the two of them and everything anyone said seemed to reach a whole new class of 'shady'. 'If James Harken ends up being the downfall of Brianne and Alyssa's friendship, life has truly, entirely become the biggest joke'. Period. But Alyssa had the Sagittarius Mike to continue chasing after, to no prevail, as I initially suggested, knowing Sagittarius. It's a wonder how Alyssa and I manage, seeing that in everything I've ever read, Taurus and Sagittarius have no hope whatsoever.

By now, anyone with common sense could have guessed James' story involves more of me now, but that's not of interest to enlighten anyone about right now. I was made to believe James had sent Mike T. a threatening message before I could even tell him what was said between us. It turns out that message: 'Delete Brianne from your phone and never talk to her again or I'll put your face through the street? Curb? Cement? Sidewalk? Gutter? Something painful-sounding.' Was never sent.
"I've got your back."
"Then what do I get?"
"Anything you want. My heart?"
"What do you want?"
"You, to be mine someday. And to be utterly committed to me, to be completely honest. Not now, later."
Everyone wants something. I can't fairly offer.

And just a few days later, Lice and I were conducting one of our infamous 'bulletin conversations'. Once 'bulletin battles' in 06/07'. And when we were done, Mike T. posted two bulletins, as did I, two more.
Mike T: Subject: Finally
Body: I am going to bed. I hate you.

Me: Subject: Lol
Body: Get pissed.

Mike T: Subject: Failed to mention
Body: I miss you.

Me: Subject: Okay
Body: I don't really know if those bulletins are about me.

So he texted me. Note the fact, by this point, I was blown out of my mind and in no possible state to even try and be coy. And I think I had lost it for the first time with him.
"You seriously think those bulletins were about you?"
"Just the first one."
"They are a pair. And no, they aren't about you. I find it funny how you still think and talk about me though, and leave me 'truthbox' comments when it's obvious it's you."
"What 'truthbox' comments? Haha."
"Where it's Prince lyrics and it says 'I seriously think you're crazy'."
"'I seriously think you're crazy'? What Prince lyrics are those? Haha."
"'Little Red Corvette'."
"There are no lyrics in 'Little Red Corvette' that say anyone's 'seriously crazy'? But there are, 'you must be a limousine'. And what's your point anyhow?"
"I didn't know you were that immature to post Myspace bulletins about me. No one talks about me being crazy, and within the past hour, you've posted about 8 bulletins talking crap about me. I just didn't know you were that immature."
"Oh, I'm pretty immature. Rude. Ridiculous. Obnoxious. The list goes on and on. But you know what? That's okay. Because I'm not a piece of shit."
"Oh, so now I'm a piece of shit too?"
"Ha, funny the things you learn. Like, I didn't know you were such a crazy creep-ass, until I actually developed some kind of human feelings for you. Too? No, you're just a piece of shit on top of many other things. All you do is try and get with girls and treat your friends like shit and think your shit don't fucking stink. Well, news flash, it does. You're probably a lot lower than everyone you think you're better than."
"Oh really? So I'm a crazy creep-ass piece of shit? Just checking."
"And the worst thing is this sympathy bullshit. 'Oh, you're always doubting me. Oh, you're going to hurt me. Girls always leave me'. Whine. Whine. Whine. I'm tired of getting the guilt-trip. So I'm just straight-up telling you what my friends and your old friends have been telling me for weeks."
"Well, thanks for your honesty. Sad thing, you never really got to know me and I never really got to know you. And for the 'treating my friends poorly', I really don't know what you're talking about. But I'm glad I found out how you truly feel now. One thing though, you're listening to other people instead of actually getting to know me. But maybe I'll see you around sometime and I'll give you your necklace back. It was around my mirror in my car because that second bulletin was about you. But you've obviously told me how you truly feel now, so bye."
"You're lying."
"I'm really not, but you told me how you truly felt, it's fine. If you're at the 'Set you Goals' show coming up, I can give you it back then, or actually mail it this time. But you really told me what was up, so like I said, I'm glad I really know how you feel now."
"Wow. Then why, Mike, do you never fucking tell me shit?"
"Brianne, I wasn't trying to get sympathy for the 'I think you're going to hurt me' because I honestly thought you would. And I really have been busy with school lately. I only have three weeks of class, I just took midterms, I've been swamped. Plus, you always just talked shit about me so I didn't see the point in saying anything. You said I was crazy, plus all those bulletins. On top of it all, I haven't even tried to sleep with anyone. No one could do the things you did. But I really do have to sleep. Test tomorrow. So I guess I'll see you around."
"Mike, that's not fair. I feel like you hate me now."
"I don't hate you, you spoke your mind. I'm really let down, but nothing I can do."
"But I feel a lot of other things too. You let me down first."
"I was scared. And your other feelings obviously aren't the real thing. You speak your mind when you're mad."
"Scared of what? No. I say my true feelings when I love or care about someone. Not mad."
"You hurting me, that's what I was scared of. Well, you don't seem to love me, you seem to hate me from what you said. A lot."
"How the fuck could I hate you, Mike?"
"You said some really hurtful things, Brianne."
"I was scared of rejection. I didn't want you to think I was dumb and then hurt me. You hurt me all the time and rejected me."
"I never tried to hurt you or anything. And I never rejected you. I can't set aside my education, that's why I'm so busy. I didn't think you cared. You'd randomly post bulletins talking shit."
"And you're still making me feel bad. I shouldn't feel bad. You really hurt me."
"I don't want you to feel bad, you didn't do anything except speak your mind."
"Don't say that, Mike. I want you to stay. Why can't you just like me for me and why can't you just make me happy and stay?"
"Brianne, there's nothing wrong with you at all. I do like you. I just never have time to see anyone. You wouldn't want to see me anyway. You think I'm a lowlife piece of shit."
"I want to see you."
"I need to sleep, Brianne. I'll text you in the morning. I promise."

"Morning."
"I know you probably don't want to see me again, but I'm sorry I called you a 'creep-ass piece of shit'. I don't agree with that."
"It's not I don't want to see you again, because I do. Like I said, I'm just a little down."
"I think the world of you. I was just really frustrated and upset. Don't be sad, things will get better."
"I'm hoping so."

What? No. What? The fuck. Just happened? I called Alyssa, crying because I was laughing so hysterically. My THC-infected mind wouldn't allow me to really process if all was as fucking crazy as I was thinking it was. "You didn't do anything wrong. He's just good at manipulating people. I think it'd be best if you just stopped talking to him." "But I don't want to."
What? What are you saying, Brianne? And I felt bad. Then I felt like I was the crazy one. You are so clever. I give you that wholeheartedly. You are such a piece of work. I'm speechless. Somehow, the whole thing's been turned around again. And I feel like I should be apologizing for being a crazy bitch. What. The fuck. And I really don't know what's going on. But that was all the weed I had on me and Rachel's leaving again for Tennessee tonight.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-06-04T19:00:00

2009-06-04T23:27:20Z

"Please take care of yourself, Shark."
An appropriate nickname for big, scary, dangerous, eight and a half-inch dick. Perhaps.
"Huh?"
"Take care of yourself. Try to stay out of trouble, but not too much. Stay as safe as healthy. Be sensible enough to move forward. And stay charming."
"I don't know what to say."
"It's okay, you don't have to say anything."
Because I don't want you to. I walked over eggshells to hear what'd come out of your mouth. Everything I didn't want to hear. I felt this was most-appropriate. What's fun without a little trouble? But what's worth this much? Safety can be imprisoning, but security's a satisfying feeling. Don't think unless you have to. And never get caught-up in the scabbing past. Acknowledge your scars. And your personality has much to be desired, but don't change who you are. And like everyone else, good or poor, I wish you'd take care of yourself.

Then I left him, the first chance I got. Where it felt right. Anything without closure leaves an unsure, empty place I'd inevitably fail at filling. You're probably not as bad as I made you out to be, but I was wrong. Two hours later.

"What?"
"You posted a bulletin about being horny, so I said it was only because I posted one about my dick."
"What? I've been sick with a fever. I'm always horny."
"Are you saying because I'm busy, you haven't been fucked properly?"
"..Well, who'd you think I'd be fucking?"
"I don't know. I assumed you got back with Mike."
"Nope."
"You want me to fuck you again?"
"..Are you playing games with me?"
"No, I want to seriously know how bad you want my cock."
"You know I liked you, Mike?"
"All of a sudden you got really attached? Always wanting to see me or be with me."
"Not really that much. I've learned to cope with space. I've got my needs too."
"I know that, but sex is all you need from me, I feel like."
"Not at all. But I feel like that's all you'd give me."
"Sex is good, but it's not the way to my heart."
"And what is?"

I don't think that's something you could give me. Then he left me, again. The first chance he gets, every time. No two-hour-sex is worth weighing against questionably sane-reasoning. There's a time and place for mind-blowing sex and there's a time and place for use-of-mind conversation. I don't believe I've got a time or desire for either with you, Mr. T.

Countless mistake number: ongoing; Allowing my selfish wants overlook, then surpass, the possessive, psychotic disrespect of my best friend. Alyssa's always looking out for me.
"What are your intentions with Brianne?"
"Brianne knows how she feels and so do I, so that's none of your business."
"Brianne values my opinion."
"Your opinion doesn't matter. Brianne and I want to be together, so that's obviously good enough."
"It's obviously not when you treat her bad and act like a douche."
In a nutshell.

That was a lovely mess no one should have had to cleanup. A position I shouldn't have put myself in to begin with, to clean up the insecurities I let you shit all over me. Because at one point, before Codi stood up, I refused to take anyone's shit. Because I was already so full of shit. And I hurt the one I love. And I hurt the one I'm in love with. But I didn't think I'd actually do it.

And if you still say yes, then I say yes.
If you say no, then no it is.

Now the question Alyssa posed remains;
"..Are you going to see him?"

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-05-28T12:36:00

2009-05-28T17:47:31Z

Keeping myself busy has proved better than keeping alone and sulking. I'm not particularly fond of the month of May, and the sooner it's over, I'm sure, the better. Maybe it's just me, but making any consistent decision has been fairly inconsistent. And I think I'd like to make something clear in my world as of now, but this whole month's been nothing, but reminiscing and resentment and exploration. I wrote Georgia to describe current events as 'me, wanting to try new things', not wanting to be tied down or commit to anything. Because it's not fair for anyone involved and because I always do what I want. "I hate feeling tied down." I mentioned to Hanan on a slow day at Ace. "How would you know? Have you tried it?" I let that sink in for a good, long time. You're 'supposed' to do whatever makes you happy, because in the end I think that's all that matters, but I don't believe I've ever been 'happy' a day in my life. I'm not depressed, it's just that happiness seems like a long-term state of being. I told my dad about the condition Mom's leaving their house in when they kick them out. "Really, it's kind of sad. Your mother's going to be miserable for the rest of her life." "I know, but I feel like I might too. Even if I had everything I wanted." "It's not about having everything you want. You have to be happy with what you have too." "I can't make myself happy. It's not that easy." "Yeah, I wouldn't know. Maybe I was just born this way." I got real quiet and sad for a minute. Think about being sad about something, like breaking up, or losing a family member, or missing out on a movie or concert you had your heart set on for months. Then think about feeling that way your entire life. Like you're always missing out on something, even when you don't know what. I rarely stop smiling. I'm usually happy-go-lucky, cheery, and positive about most anything. But when it comes to where I want to be, I can't imagine anything worth it. So I live day by day, don't ask me where I see myself in a year, in a month, tomorrow? I don't have an expectation for it, just apathy.

I've felt so out-of-place, I had to do something. Anything. And I started with Michael Billings. Who I have still been seeing. Who I still inevitably dragged around after me. "You know I care about you and have feelings for you, right, Mike?" "Yeah, it's just me. I constantly have to be reassured." "But I don't want to be with you. And that's not you, it's me. No, it's not 'somebody else'. I just don't want to hurt you or lie to you." Sometimes lying can go without saying. I'd feel like I'm leading him on. I'd feel like I'm going to hurt you further? And I feel like a cliche hypocritical piece of shit, but that's nothing unusual. "Well, I'd still rather stay and risk it." "Risk what?" "Being hurt." "For what? How can I hurt you any further? I just told you I don't want to be with you." "Waiting for you to change your mind." "Well, there's something else I think I want to tell you. About Mike T. I thought you wanted to know." And without going into excruciating detail of the affairs of Mike T. and I, telling him the things I have done still fell short of making him do what I think anyone should do in his position. Something I have never been good at doing. Just walking away for what's best for you. "I'm always here if you need me, Brianne." You're letting a good one go. With feelings included, you are a hypocrite. An emotional masochist. And I bet on regretting this. I plan on missing you. One can only hope to lose, then try and take it back. How else would you ever appreciate anything? The 'good times' are only so good in the past-tense. I can only hope to feel incomplete, and pretend I know what's best for me. Pretend I only feel like something's missing because I know what it feels like to be complete. I love to lose. You only want what you can't have, so rid yourself of everything you've got. "It's only once you've lost everything, that you are free to do anything." I love you because you love me. Selfish, ugly, sweet or mean. And because you love me, I can't stick around for you.

With the full story, Codi gave me a well-deserved scolding, I deprived Alyssa the privilege of in the first place.
"5/20/09
I think that you are throwing your life away, in all honesty. I think that you are wasting your time and doing nothing good for yourself. I decided not to worry about you anymore. I'm sorry. It will come back as soon as I feel like you need someone to worry about you. But the way I see it, I don't think you care either way, so I think I'm going to concern myself with someone who needs someone to to be concerned about them. I think that if you know what is best for you, you will try harder to put your life in the right direction. I feel as if I take life a whole lot more seriously than you do. And I am looking for my place. And you are looking for fun. To figure out what I want to do with my life and be happy in between. I feel as if you don't do any of that. That you think about love, lust, fun, and getting back at people for things, even if it's in your head. The Mike that you were dating seemed to have a good head on his shoulders and even though that was very opposite of you, I think that he was good influence on you. It's not a bad thing to know where you will be. Honestly, it's a wonderful thing. Stability is bliss. I am disappointed that you picked the new Mike and that he is as much of a scumbag as he is, without using an ounce of your heart. I find it very degrading and I lost respect for you because of it. I do not understand most girls because of the actions they take, just like the actions you took. Being with someone very good for them and still being unhappy. Being bored with someone who treats you well. Are women looking for the unsteadiness of everything? Do you want to fight? It makes you feel good to fight for something. It does for everything. It feels especially good for someone to fight for you, back. But that all comes in time."

I've heard a lot of good things. I hear a lot of harsh things with no heart. Sometimes I hear things that change my entire outlook on something. Codi's my best friend, and she's saying this, because she loves me. Not like when your parents tell you that after everything they tell you to do. I don't think I've ever felt better about feeling like the lowest scum of the Earth. Everybody needs somebody to worry about them. Especially when you don't give a shit about yourself. Lack any self-respect. When given two choices, always makes the wrong one. It still feels ironic, but I've heard it all before. Different people. Different times. Different situations. But it all boils down to my self-realization:

I blame the rain for bad days. I blame CCS for my lack of inspiration and the downfall of nineteen years of art. I blame my mother for every insecurity that holds me back from being a 'normal' human being. I blame my past for why I'm fucking up my future. I choose not to care about the things that would really matter to me, and I choose to ignore my heart, I claim I can't hear it anymore. All I do is sit around and feel sorry for myself because I don't know where I want to be or what's best for me or why I'm never happy or why I can't make myself happy. And I blame everyone for not being able to help me and I push everyone away, just to make myself more unhappy. I try and make sure I let everyone know what's best for them, but do nothing to better myself. There's no one left to blame because it's entirely my own fault for being selfish and lazy and pathetic and probably the biggest hypocrite of everyone. And I gave up everything for nothing. To finally find, I am the only reason that I am unhappy.

"I'm not real anymore. I'm like a story passed down by kids at campfire parties. No getting out of bed today, I'll just lay here, uninspired, feeling bad that I threw you away. And I'm a shadow that whispers stupid songs about his heart. Well, I'm sorry for letting you down. I'm sorry for everything about me that hurts you. I think about what you said on the phone, If I die alone, it's my own fault. I'm sorry, I give myself a hand."

Now I don't know about you, but I think it's time to get my shit together. I can't feel bad about this forever.

"5/20/09
When a caterpillar sees a butterfly, does it know?"

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-05-24T12:54:00

2009-05-24T16:55:09Z

Do you still forget the breeze?

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-05-15T13:35:00

2009-05-15T18:27:04Z

A week before Prom, Alyssa cut Mike and I's weekend short, and dragged me to a 'New Found Glory/Bayside/Set Your Goals/Fireworks' show. It could've been a lot better, but it could have been a lot worse. Even I ended up enjoying myself. A good crowd promotes a good show. And that's the night I met Mike Trout. (Or 'Douchefish' if you're talking to Alyssa). He walked up to Alyssa to say 'hi', before he wiped his sweat on her face. Alyssa says, 'he used to be Kevin's friend.' They used to tag along with him on some wild drives out to random destinations to meet Myspace girls. His shirt was covered in blood and sweat and Alyssa knew what I was thinking. "You know what, he got a big straight-edge tattoo on his chest, and one day he just broke edge and smoked weed." Well, that straight-edge tattoo's actually on the back of his calf, where a 'Set Your Goals' tattoo covers his chest, I found out for myself later. There are eight tattoos in total. And I couldn't even imagine there ever being a 'straight-edge' soul in that body. Because I know what it does, and there's nothing very 'edge' about it. And maybe I was in all the wrong places, searching for a soul. There'd be a lot of things I'd find out for myself, and Alyssa should have broke my arm. Because I would rather have that broken arm, than have my wounded everything else.

And that's just around the time, after Prom, I broke up with Michael. I can't say 'left', because that's hardly an outcome with me. And my reasons weren't what you'd presume to be the obvious at this point, but it still took me long enough to come up with words for how I feel, set aside the vague bullshit I usually try and feed people. The truth is, he's a great guy. And I can rarely say that much about any species of male.

"I would do anything for you, Brianne. And I wish you could see what I see in you, because I was so happy when we were together. I don't really know what else to say. I would do anything right now for you to change your mind, but I don't think that will happen."

I do believe every word of it. If I asked for the moon, I'm sure you'd spend all of your growing up, training to be the astronaut that will walk on the moon, and then buy the moon in my name, if that's what I wanted. But it's never that simple. Someone's more-likely to bring me the moon, than anyone's succeeding in winning with me. I don't know what most girls want in a boyfriend, but I can't imagine myself being with him long-term. Because you bend over backwards for me, and I break my own back. I'm not bored, you're not boring. But I can picture you in a year. Two years. And I am spontaneous and ridiculous and I might be anywhere in the world in two years. But I don't think of it, without Michael. The truth is, I adore the kid. And with whatever decisions I make, however unstable or non-concrete, I don't want to be without. Without you around, to be near, to talk to and laugh with, and to spend hours at a time with, I feel like something's missing. Oh, I know I'm selfish. Probably turned as selfish as they come, but I've tried to be fair. "With the truth, if you want to leave, leave. And if you want to stay, stay." So I'm not dragging anyone along without the entirety of their knowledge. "I'd rather stay." And in any case, I'd rather be brought the sun.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-05-12T14:23:00

2009-05-12T18:55:49Z

The house is finally foreclosed on. They had a good, long run. But with over six years of debt and ruined credit, there was no hope in my mom's will to keep it. 'We found a place down in Florida. You know I've always wanted to live there. It's affordable and John will get this job and.. We have until June tenth.' Adam'd never leave, therefore neither would Brett. They'll move in with Jeff. It's her, John, Jack, and McKenna. And me.

This is the closest to 'home' I can say I've ever felt. Everything I've known is in this state. It's all I know. Things I've built and things I've killed. Entire worlds outside of this one, within irreplaceable relationships. All of my past and what I'd assume would be much of my future. All I can love and the things I never want to see again. It's a love/hate relationship. And I've learned to believe, when the bad outweighs the good, it's time to leave. I told her I wanted to. Leave it all behind at last. That's what I was convinced I wanted. I never wanted to feel that way again. Here, my heart's been in the saddest shape I predict it'll ever be. She's convinced I'll be coming with her. She's yet to find out, I've changed my mind.

"5/3/09
Although Mom's convinced I'm going with her, I've decided today, I won't. Not only because things could go bad, but because I have to go my own way. Although this state's old to me; I know all these roads and cities and this town. I've built a lot here. And a lot has 'died'. It's a love/hate relationship with this place, but moving away to Florida just seems like running away right now."

When Patrick left, I didn't assume I'd ever see him again. It had been since July anyway. And then in the winter, he packed up and moved to Chicago, left his parents a note. I'm sure they blame themselves, and maybe they had a lot to do with it, but I know Patrick had to go his own way and he was done with this state. I took it personally, he didn't even give me a 'good-bye'. Maybe I didn't deserve one after July, after what John Riggs had told me about the parties and the drinking. He thought I was trying to make him feel guilty. So I left him alone. Until just over a month ago, when I heard from Alyssa who heard from Stephanie who heard from Carl who heard from Joe Blow down the block, who saw the movies and spread them around like T.B. And they bled all over his name. And I erratically texted hi, which turned into him calling me, and finally, we talked. And on the fourth, just like July, he came back.

We sat in Leo's for hours, talking about everything from Chicago to my 'cougar ways' to 'Zelda'. Our continuous favorite. He told me not to laugh when he explained his potential-future Zelda-themed tattoo, and I liked it so much, I think I've made up my mind on the tattoo I'm getting myself, when he comes home again. "If we had a third person, we could get the 'Triforce'." I've (temporarily) made up my mind on 'Tael', on the back of my neck, partially behind my left ear. Tael is a purple/magenta faerie in 'Majora's Mask' for the Nintendo 64. He's the Skull Kid's (the main villain) companion, against his will. While 'Tatl', Tael's older sister, accompanies 'Link'. Other than representing a huge part of the best times of my past, I choose Tael above the other faeries, because he's the kid brother. A big part of the tattoo would be for Adam.

'In seventh grade you dated Ashley Fairman, and I felt like you were dumping me.' 'Yeah, I remember you storming up to my locker, screaming, 'How could you do this to me?!' And then you closed my locker on me.' Laughing, laughing, laughing. 'Remember Allen Cook had a crush on you and you had us fight at recess, you said you were the prize.' 'And I remember you were just chillin' in the grass and I beat him up!' More laughing. Some things never change. Meet me in the field behind the playground. Meet me in the graveyard. Meet me at the show. I could have kept him forever, but time together now's precious. It's the little things like that, that make my life worth living.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-05-11T12:14:00

2009-05-11T16:48:11Z

"What are you going to do with your boyfriend when we move to Florida?"

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-05-06T21:13:00

2009-05-07T02:03:08Z

Adam Richey came back for ten days, early April. He graduated from boot camp, 'basic training'. We went to Leo's. He looked bigger, stronger. He seemed changed. And all I wanted to do was walk with his hand in mine, or hold onto him. He told us, Alyssa and I, and Houston, about the Marine electrician school he was going to. How he'd be back in 50-60 days, then come home. For good. Until he's deployed. Six or seven months in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or wherever they need him. It was torture. And I wished he had never come back at all. Ten days? Fifty days? Six or seven months? I felt desperate to find a way to hold onto him forever. In just those ten days. Because when he comes home, I'll always know he'll be taken away again. And this time, there's a chance he won't come back at all. We didn't take any pictures. I felt selfish for writing him about any relationship ordeals I was currently in. Maybe we'd be lovers if I hadn't told him, he was my best friend. My brother told me his name was in the 'Warren Weekly'. "He graduated from something I guess.." And I'm so proud of you, Adam. My words can't show you though. There are no words. I love you, Adam Daniel Richey. And when you come home, we'll nap together again and I'll get drunk and knock out some 'Rockband' jams with you on backup vocals, and smoke a bowl with your younger brother. And Alyssa and Ben will be awkward and we'll laugh at them in the next room. And we'll get those tattoos and drive down to the beach and all will be well. And you won't be deployed. And we won't be separated again.

Alyssa finally turned nineteen on 4/20. While she was gambling in Canada, I was getting high with Rachel. I don't remember when she came back from Tennessee. 'Doesn't love Dan anymore.' I didn't care. I didn't miss her. Or resent her for coming back, making work a little harder again. I tend to burn my thumbs using her 'scorpion' bowl. I tend to end up in a ton of stupid situations on her account. I tend to end up in enough stupid situations on my own account, as it is.

Mike and I were aimlessly driving a night, weeks ago. "Take me to your middle school." We were stationed in it's parking lot, listening to 'Modest Mouse', ended up in the backseat. Lying together and then typical teenager backseat behavior (no sex). Suddenly, there was a bright, white light through the window and we were wide-eyed, "Shit. Oh shit." "Fuck." Get your pants on. Please get your pants up. I told you not to wear a belt. I gave that up in tenth grade. The cop tapped on the glass. "Come on.." God dammit. I physically persuaded Micheal out before me, a clear shot of his ass in front of me. Cop number one stood there and asked us completely irrelevant questions, while cop number two stalked Mike's mom's car with a flashlight. Cop number one mainly focused his attention on Mike, looking scared as shit, the occasional glance over at me, leaning against the car, arms folded, looking pissed. "How old are you?" "Seventeen." "How old are you?" "Nineteen.." I can picture it now; 'Ms. Daly, you have been convicted of three cases of statutory rape, and now child molestation. You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can, and will, be used against you in the court of law.' Oh, you have no idea, Mr. Officer. After standing by 'our' car for maybe ten minutes, with a flashlight still scoping it out. Check the exhaust pipe, please, maybe you'll find some exotic drugs we're smuggling in from Mexico. After officer one 'checked' our IDs in his car, "Find a better place. You're nineteen, get a hotel." Then we thanked them and got in our car, they continued smirking and got in theirs. Shit, can't a nigga get a nut around here? A 'better place'? A 'hotel'? Bitch, the world is my hotel! "I am so sorry.." Mike kept saying. "It's not your fault." Sorry about your 'blue balls'.

I called my brother that night, before my phone died. Maybe just to check in on him. I don't remember what we talked about, but I'm sure I can assume it had something to do with Shannon. My brother and I have tongues sharp as knives. In truth, it's old news I don't want to get into. I believe, she left him because 'people change', she's 'not in love with him (anymore?)'. That's not my business, though I stand by my opinion, but my brother's well-being, I make my business. Throwing up, getting drunk, in that order. I told him, 'I know it hurts, to have your heart broken, but now it's the time to get smarter and stronger. Don't be weak.' I've tried empathy, it's what I know for Adam, because I can't muster sympathy. Love happens, and then life happens. And there's no guarantee either will end on a positive note.

"4/26/09
My mom and I had a long talk on the way home, and I think she really likes the idea of you, around me. 'Of all the millions of people you could've met in this area, you met her, and she seems like she wants to push you to be better'.

5/1/09
I had another dream about you in second hour today. The only part I can remember was your gorgeous face in the sunlight, smiling at me in Royal Oak. I never have dreams that I can recall, besides something of a nightmare.

I miss your beautiful face, your eyes, your nose, your lips. I look for your scent in my hoodies, but hardly ever find it. I think about you a lot."

It was my 'dream' prom, because it was the prom I never got to have. I wanted to involve Alyssa, at least to 'help me out'. Take pictures, dress-shop, even discuss it with me. But it turned into a touchy subject. Alyssa didn't get a prom. She just barely let me try on my dress for her. It's frustrating how often we haven't been on the same page lately. Things you now can't say, to your best friend. If I can't talk about it with you, I don't talk about it at all.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-04-29T21:20:00

2009-04-30T01:47:45Z

Adrianne and I went to Leo's on meeting and because I had been texting Mike for weeks, I told him, 'If you'd like to, meet us there.' He beat us there, maybe we were luckless on finding a place to park right away. I recognized him, and leaned over his shoulder, "Are you looking for someone?"

Adrianne and him sat side by side after I dragged them to the smoker's section and neither of them ordered food. Or at least not as much as I did. As usual. In truth, at first glance, there was nothing about Mike that caught my interest. I was still trying to dissappear; drugs and soulless sex and more drugs. But then I noticed your jawbone, squared-off chin and perfect symmetry. And your brown eyes, they're almond. And your mouth and your teeth when you're laughing.

Then I could've just crawled across the table and told you all of these things, or, act like a normal human being, refraining from any hormone-induced animalistic tendencies.

04/07/09 And now the birds can swim, the fish can fly.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-04-25T21:34:00

2009-04-26T02:13:20Z

I stayed over my mom's that night, and with the predetermined plans of going to the drive-in movies, I decided I'd walk down the street to Al's house, and engage in conversation with his son, Michael Musztuk. His dad bitched and moaned about me being over, distracting Michael, and nonchalantly asking for a favor. To get me through the night. Over three hours in a cramped car. He still handed over the bag.

Michael and I stood around in my garage, smoking a joint I'm positive he rolled too fat. Mom was in and out, opossum-searching or something, weed is not her drug-of-choice. But apparently, Mike had something else on hold for her. I heard them talking, hush hush, about Michael getting something extra from his friend, Jacob. I was high, not deaf.

"Don't say anything, but Michael's getting me a little bit of coc from his friend, Jacob." "What?" "Hey, it's free." "But isn't that dangerous? Isn't it very addictive?" "After all these years, it's not going to do anything." "I wouldn't trust anything from that boy, he's trailer trash. Anything could be in that coc." "That's why you taste it." "You taste it? What..?" She laughed and turned her head behind her left shoulder. "Do you know who I am?"

She convinced me. If anyone knows what they're doing, it's my mom. She was a cocaine addict for two years, before I was born. And one morning she looked in the mirror, didn't like what she saw, and she quit. And things really can be that easy. If you don't like something, change it. And do what you want. Always do what you want.

"Mom?" I hesitated with my words. "Could I try it? If there's enough for more than a line." "Coc? Oh, way more. Yeah, but not tonight. That shit'll keep you awake all night. You're already coming home around 1:30." "Okay."

And that's just the kind of person I am. I know I'll regret not trying something new, especially if the opportunity's handed to me. There's a fine line between recklessness and stupidity. And I'd rather give myself a fifty percent chance of regretting what I have done, than undoubtedly regretting what I have not.

Last week, my mother 'never wanted to see me again'. This week, we're meeting the family I never knew I had. Next week, we're snorting cocaine together. That's the way things just unfold. Of course, I came home from the drive-in around 1:30 AM, still stoned and pissed about 'Observe and Report', and heard nothing more about white powder and my mother. And she's not worried about missing out on cocaine this time around, so I'm left all up to chance. While others are experimenting with hallucinogens and pill-popping, we'll be living in high-finance. 'Getting high' everyday turns into smoking pot everyday. And it's routine and there's really no point as far as I'm concerned. Man up, get a real addiction.

These entries have unfortunately taken long enough already to get down on paper, and a lot is always happening, but for a good portion of it, I was stoned and somewhere else. It sounds sad to say, more so a year ago, but there was a snap-decision one month and after I've been there before, ending up in the sky, crawling back out of the sea, I decided to step outside of fickle feelings and anything repetitive, old, masochistic. I made new friends and I had good times. Always good times. The good times are killing me. "I have a lot of good times, but I never have fun." Raad told me one day during work. The day Raad and I figured everything out. The future's not looking bright.

If you live like me, you'll find yourself stoned on somebodies couch, watching a familiar T.V. show from your past. Or with your middle school/ninth grade best friend, Megan, in Highland, in her boyfriend's trailer, sipping watermelon liquor through a straw, spinning in circles. Before, her teeth are perfect, after her braces would cut my lips, when we used to kiss. Before we get drunk and kiss. But now she kisses Tony and his best friend piece of shit trailer trash tried to fuck me, and I pass out on the couch, while his 40-some-year-old 'father figure' gropes my ass. And then I'm in the bathroom, puking the prettiest pink shade of vomit my insides had ever been privileged enough to expel. Tears soaking their toilet seat, crying over my mommy.

Megan's car's always breaking down, before her and Tony crashed it. Her new car's windows don't work. We go to Coney for breakfast and I'm staring at Meg's slit-up arms. And I told her, "Try writing it down. If you're frustrated or upset. If it pains you. Don't carve it into your skin. Embedding a bad experience into your body only preserves it in your memory. And every time you look at it, every time someone asks about it, it'll hurt you. So, you're only torturing yourself." Don't go making my mistakes.

cash_butterflyy @ 2009-04-19T20:25:00

2009-04-20T01:10:05Z

It all started on a Sunday.

Thirty minutes before 5 O' clock closing hour, the right place, the right time. "Do you have an 'Ace Rewards card'?" Similar to a 'CVS card'. Gives you points with every purchase. You get coupons in the mail. "You can look it up by my last name." He said. "Langston." Guy Langston. "Do you have any kids?" "Yes." Never mind. You could have been Michael, but 'Langston' is a popular last name. "Oh my God." What? "Michael is my brother." Michael Langston. Shelley Langston. Suchanek. Kimberly Suchanek. Kimberly Ann Langston. Mom's dad.

Oh my God. And he turned me. "You have Michael's nose". I was smiling, but my eyes were watering. "And how is Michael?" "Oh..he passed away a few years ago." Shit. "Oh." My voice was quivering. I had only met him once in my life, when I was born. My mother's father, that didn't want a daughter. Grandma Shelley's husband whom she loved to no end. The only man she'd ever love. Who left. And she blamed Kim for everything. If you were never born, the love of my life would have never left. Poor Mom. Shit. When was the last time you heard from your father? When I was born.

Smiling and fighting raining. Sobbing in my Great Uncle's arms. He gave me his number on the back of his receipt. "Call and come over and we'll talk, okay?" I felt myself nodding. Shit. Shit shit shit. What do you want me to do? God. Call her right on up? Tell her, 'Hey, your father's dead and I still hate you, by the way.' This is not fair. Are you trying to throw me some kind of sign? Well, God, this is some bullshit!

My mom called me because I had been texting Adam, cluing him in. She asked for the story beforehand, and then what she really wanted to know. For nineteen years. Where is my father? I choked up and started to apologize before I could even tell her. Your father's dead, he passed away a few years ago. "Oh my God..what?" "I'm sorry, Mom." I gave her Uncle Guy's number. Adam said she sat in the kitchen and grieved all night.

Micheal died from cirrhosis of the liver. He wasn't a drinker. His mother, Great Grandma Terry, had a picture of him on her mantle, three weeks before he died. "We asked him, do you want us to go find Kimmy? He said 'no'. I suppose he didn't want you to see him like that." That's not fair. When Mom's parents divorced, they took Kimmy to court. Custody, visitation rights. "And how often would you prefer to see your daughter, Mr. Langston?" "Once a month is good." My mom was crushed, and that's all I'd really known of my grandfather.

In my earliest memory, I was very small, and Adam was a baby. My mom was married to his dad, Jeff, and they were holding each other at the bow of a cruise ship. Somewhere tropical. The sun was set, sherbet shades of pink that went beautifully with my button-up covered in pink, parading elephants. And I knew we were heading home, I still know the feeling. My mom's earliest memory was waking up to the sound of her parents screaming at each other from opposite sides of their kitchen. Shelley was cheating on him. He had found her with another man. Heartbroken, he left her. "He talked about killing himself, years after the fact." The only woman he loved. The only one he'd ever love. Who left. And she never told little Kimmy, 'it wasn't your fault'.

She took me, Adam, Brett, Jack, and McKenna to Great Grandma Terry's just a couple of weeks ago. We'd never met as far as I can remember, and neither could she. I have a 24-year-old cousin, Cory, he lives in Royal Oak, he's a chef down there. Uncle Guy remarried, Donna, and she has long, beautiful hair. I told her about American Apparel. And Adam talked about his girlfriend. And Brett played on his cell phone. And Jack and McKenna bounced off the walls. While Grandma Terry chain-smoked. "Smoking will kill you." I joked. "You know, I'm going to die anyway, and if it makes me happy, that's how I want to die." "Damn straight!" Then my mom and I pulled out our packs and we all smoked like chimneys. And what Terry said will probably be embedded in my mind for a very long time.

On the car ride back to her house, and to drop her good-for-nothing husband off at his minimal wage job, with her five kids, Mom went through an envelope her grandmother had given her. Things of Micheal's. Photos, and their was a trading card, after he was a boxer, when he was a race car driver, with his stats. I saw my mom's face go red, her lips sucked in. She passed the card down from Adam, to me. 'Marital Status: None. Family: Daughter, Granddaughter.' I felt my teeth bite into my bottom lip, and looked back up to the front of the van. Mom's soaked, blue eyes, that weren't passed down to me, we're on mine. "He acknowledged me.." She trailed off, and turned away. I felt the weight of her world on my shoulders. When my dad disappeared for months at a time, trying to 'find himself', and I'd run around our house crying, 'Daddy doesn't love me! Where is my dad? Why hasn't he come home? Why did he leave me, Mom?" And she said, "Beanie, it's not your fault." Kimmy, it's not your fault. And that is all how I was brought into the world.