love as artifice

here are my conflicting thoughts on love. love is an artifice. it is self-serving. one sees in their partner that which they'd like to see in themselves. if there is a void, one looks for a "counterpart" to fill said void. for example, someone has a low self-esteem, but their partner validates it. they comfort you, make you feel strong, make you feel sure of yourself.
you can be in love with how someone makes you feel, certainly, but i'm wondering if someone can ever truly love another without it being narcissistic.
for example, when you are with your girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, partner, whatever, and you observe them doing something that makes you smile. you know that feeling of watching someone in their element?...it seems there is nothing more beautiful and natural and candid. you watch their beautiful limbs move, admire how their hair shines, smirk at the little nuances, little characteristics that you have claimed as "yours". are you really appreciating and experiencing someone outside yourself making you happy? or is it this unconscious self-contentment, smugness - the recognition that you have the capability to feel this way - that makes us think "this is love".

just like there's something self-congratulatory about being happy for someone (as uncomfortable as it is to admit it). are you truly happy for that person? or are you more pleased with the fact that, yes, you had the capability to be happy for someone outside yourself. "this makes me a good person" - it's a good feeling, no? you took a moment to express a good feeling toward someone else - a compliment, well wishing, happy birthday. are we ever really happy that it's someone's birthday? or are you just happy that you remembered? "yes, i'm organized, i have it all together".

what do you think?

sun it rises

concave, my arms are around my knees and i have this pillow taken from the corner of the couch in your living room that was a mistake. i can't be bothered to perk the corners of my eyes and flood those dry spots with the surrounding, penetrating sun. i'm in the t-shirt i wear every day but it's thinned out from the way i sleep in it every night. my body is thinned out, too, from the way i live in it every day. the sleeves of my shirt are huddled atop my shoulders. i like how i feel so small beneath the reaching cherry blossom trees, dappling gently in the light wind. if any one still inhabited the crook of my neck, they would smell the wind and grapefruit and sugar beet hair creme - the only contribution i'm willing to give to my feminine responsibilities. the air is rarefied but cold enough to make me aware of the gaps between my teeth when i seethe it in. right now i'm empathizing with the spots of shadow on the ground that aren't lit up in small budding patches of blurry light. the elastics in my underwear have nothing to hug and hang a little limp and showy in the cotton. right now i want this privacy this peace forever as i sit so small and the trees they arch and the sun it rises and i observe through my fanned eyelashes.

mutability

"i wish i was like you - easily amused." - kurt cobain
what is it that makes us such inconstant creatures? what makes us happy one day makes us restless the next. we can work for something, put blood sweat tears more blood more tears less sweat into something, and then one day it's not enough. we are like children, greedily casting away toys that our parents have put thought into, paid money for.
and relationships. this one is boring - not holding my attention. time to find some new pussy.
and drugs, booze included - enjoyable and pathetic ways to pass the hours of your life, enhancing or stifling your senses so that you might appreciate what you have around you. "whoa! the floor is like water!" haven't you ever had your washing machine overflow? "dude - look at all the fucking colours" (these exist in the real, tangible world my friend. next time you're not lying face down on the floor, look out the window!)
waking up one day, five years down the road in a fucking haze, realizing that you had meaning, had beauty all around you this whole time.
but it wasn't enough.

please don't misunderstand me - i'm just as bad as the next person. but, you know, it just makes me sad.

i'd punch your fucking head in if i felt confident that i wouldn't want to kiss it all better afterward.

beach baby

when you're out,
tell your lucky one
to know that you'll leave.
don't you lock when you're fleeing
i'd like not to hear keys.

only hold till your coffee warms,
don't hurry or speed.

once a time put a tongue
in your ear on the beach
and you clutch
kicking heels

i really am glad. this will change, inevitably, this feeling of appreciation. i might as well milk it while it lasts, and hope it lingers, gently, somewhere in my subconscious. i feel grateful; free. despite what a mess the last few months of my life have been, i would be foolish to deny how lucky i am. i'm incredibly fortunate to have loved like i have loved. to have made connections with people on such a raw, emotional level. to have felt full; of passion; of contentment; of simple, childish glee; of inhibition.
i have felt loss. loss so absolute that i have been known to clutch my chest, my sides, the contours of my ribs. kneading in the skin, pushing the fragments together again. hollow, resounding loss. i have lost love, friends, my health, my sanity. i have woken, pushing an eye mask past my lids to blurry, afternoon light, unaware of what day it was, how i got there.
i often wonder how i got here.
but i am glad. if these empty days have taught me anything, it is what i'm capable of. i'm still alive, aren't i? i'm young. i have opportunity.
i hope this blog will help me heal. visible, tangible pieces of myself, my thought processes, my passions. a place where i can be honest, stripped of all pretense. confronting elation, pain, struggles, numbness in it's entirety.