On being a not-muse

I wrote this a very long time ago. Today is the day I want to share it.

Date an intelligent boy and you will know that he does not think about you. He is curious and he is fearless and he wants to create the whole world. Date an intelligent boy and you will know that he thinks of many things: lost Mayan ruins, astrophysics, his dog. You will know that he has the eloquence, the articulacy, to think madly dashed, honest sonnets about you, but that he cannot stop at you. You are Bancroft, Nebraska and he hurtling full speed to Antarctica.

Date an boy with depth and you will think of him. You will think of him and think his imaginary thoughts about you. You will look him up like a dictionary during a Scrabble game, you will need him to tell you what you are because you have forgotten—did you ever know?— and he knows the answer. And you will toss and turn and despair, and you will write bad poetry rich with feelings that make you wince and you will wonder why you can’t be so embedded in his head, his blood, his DNA so that he has no choice but to give you just a little bit. 

Date a boy who knows, who has a hunger to know more, and sometimes you will feel terribly alone. Because he will have the entire world around him, a map that overflows the coffee table, and even when he is with you, right next to you, so close you could kiss his eyelids, he’s not really there. 

But one day. One day he will show you something. It will be muddled and it will be inept and it will be human and he will show it to you: only you. And suddenly he will be easy and you will love him. Because he made it easy, because his brain didn’t run to find every secret under every rock, and because… because you just do, you do love him, so hopefully.

I liked you best

I liked you best because I could never predict what you'd say. I've gotten so used to anticipating reactions, knowing what would intrigue someone, knowing what would turn them off. Knowing what joke they'll make before they make it, knowing who would laugh raucously and who would chuckle weakly at it. Knowing the appropriate way to handle bad news, knowing the appropriate way to receive good news, knowing how to mirror a face, a voice, a place, a name; I know who to be to whom. You said people like me; people like themselves. I spit back to them prettily.

I've never quite known who to be to you. I like that. I can read your thoughts and I still couldn't tell you what might make you laugh, what might make you cry. I can recite your punk war stories by heart, but you tell them differently every time. I liked you best because you weren't fucking normal. I liked you best because you didn't try to be; you didn't have the same expectations of how life was supposed to turn out, didn't go into your day taking into account how other people behave. What other people have. What other people desire.

I liked you fucking best. 

It's been so long since I've been here. But maybe I've just been putting off the visit. Here has become somewhere to take comfort, to emit to an open space, taking respite in knowing that while I wouldn't receive a response, everything would be out there, hanging in negative.

I came because I had nowhere else. I don't know what to take comfort in anymore. The end of school doesn't mean anything but uncertainty. Empty, incessant apologies for the same grievances can't hold me over anymore, nor can the idea of pushing things away, of forgetting, moving on. I keep coming up with solutions and quick fixes and distractions but they spin me into a dead stop. That won't make me feel any better, the words clamping down a steel door in my brain.

Lately I've been remembering and calling forth people who don't exist anymore because it's better than being alone, and better than being with the ones who are still around.  At least this way I can sleep next to a memory, next to someone who wants me there instead of all the people who don't, the people who can miraculously bounce my words off their ears and look the other way as the letters fly off jaggedly into the unknown.

It isn't about one person, or one event, or one feeling. It's everything that comes close and retreats at the same time. I can't explain it, can't do anything but send this into cyberspace, close my computer, and try to sleep. So that's what I'll do.