Feminine Rage

mental health day

i took a mental health day today

it took me 20 minutes to convince myself

but i did it

and i read a book

and colored

and it was so easy

i wish everything could be that easy

but its back to school tomorrow

“We often want it so badly that we ruin it before it begins. Overthinking. Fantasizing. Imagining. Expecting. Worrying. Doubting. Just let it naturally evolve”

— Unknown

the idealized version of my tomorrow self will fix this

unexpected, expected

what happens when you lose a friend?

when he drops you without warning

stops talking to you, but tells everyone else how much he hates you

how annoying you are

and you didn't expect it

but maybe you did

you felt it coming in his exasperation

in the way he stopped texting back

in the way he laughed at everybody's jokes but yours

unexpected, but expected all the same

he did it to others, so why shouldn't it be your turn?

you tell yourself you're better off

and everybody else agrees

but you can't help but be a little sad, still

unexpected

like an anvil dropped onto my head

expected

i felt it in the way he sighed

how to smile

throttle all the sobs

the knots

the not-enoughs

the crumbs, the problems

caught up in the loss

and thoughts which cross along the bottom

rotten crops to harvest noxious garbarge

starving out, atrocity and doubt, unpardoned

tout the heartless harbingers, unfound

a botched rebounding

all the rot and rubble, huddled up around

the floundered flotsam, drowning

struggle-bussing, cuddle-lust resounding

subtle sinking, drowning

down and out, i doubt the

pound-for-pound

surrounded, shouting, drinking in

the blinking end of all i've found

personality

who would i be

if you took me apart

stripped me down to my bones

and then polished them until they gleamed

what would be running through my veins?

a hint of humor, a glimpse of girlhood

who would i be if you took out my brain

who am i if i'm not smart

an overachiever

always looking for some way to get ahead

if you dissected my heart, what would exist there?

am i anything at all?

i used to have a personality

i think

but now i am just a hollow shell of a person

it's what tiredness does to a person

stripped out my essence like the machine in fahrenheit 451 replaced mildred's bloods

see

see how i can't even write without hints of my schooling sneaking in

what have i ever been if not smart

and who will i be

when even that

is taken away

I’ll open a window

to spin a thread

across the sky

to drag myself

across

an ocean of clouds,

to take me to where I belong.

Where the sea meets my toes

and the blue waters edge

is bright as her eyes.

Where we can walk

hand in hand,

as the sun rises over

the perpetual sands,

not another soul in sight,

where we are free.

energy

sometimes i let myself believe i could be an extrovert

i woke up this morning with so many spoons

i replied to texts on time

i replied to texts

instead of just reading or liking or hearting or saying i would get to them later

and then my best friend

(don't get me wrong

i love him

i do)

threw me a surprise party

and when i got home

all i could do was scroll

and now im going to bed

because i have no more energy

introvert, after all

umbrella

my dad pops his trunk

"do you want my umbrella"

it rains the whole day

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me