I Love You From the Top of my Heart

And the people bowed and prayed.

And what difference does it make for you and me?

All delighted people, raise your hands.

This song is truly one of my favourite love songs. It is beautiful, long and rambling on, quiet at parts, soft, loud, very dramatic, eerie, happy, silly, nonsensical, tragic, ponderous, all throughout a small 11 minutes and 39 seconds. Gorgeous. And all with the voice of the angel Sufjan; high-pitched and light, floating and cracked, like a fragile glass in a sturdy Roman Catholic church. Oh so beautiful. I love you so much anyway. On your breast I gently lay; your arms surround me in the lake. I am joined with you forever. I want this to be "our" song. Whoever the other part of "our" is. I am writing you letters, love. I am waiting in limbo for you, love. I am trying to be faithful and lovely and myself, a child of our God, a kind and gentle mother, a strong student, a woman filled with purpose and charity. As of late I have been jealous and tired and wandering and confused and someone-who-is-not-me. I have strayed. Or perhaps I was never on the right path. Sera que... I have been on the wrong path, one parallel to yours in a thin wood, a sylvan valley, so close, yet going down a different path. They do not meet. We cannot meet--and I am sure of it--until I join the final path, my love. The people I meet now, today, yesterday, tomorrow: they cannot be you. There is no way, my dear. God has let it be known to me. I have waited so long, but I now know that I have been just procrastinating. Telling the world surrounding me: it is hard to be me. Hard to be nice. Hard to be kind. Easy to be cruel. Easy to be superfluous and flailing like a blind cat in the street. I am slowly piecing through the rubble, and it is hard. So far from comfortable. I feel as though I am blind, deaf, senseless, mute. It is a dark, matted haze through which I sift my daily doings. I am relieved to the fact that I am young, I am 17-years-old, I am not down a path the same as my brother, I am not mentally ill or poor or ruined or orphaned or anything drastic. I am simply a person on this planet who is confused by herself, who feels as if someone else has had a fun time in my body, fun time controlling, and it is time for her to go back. It is my time. And I am joining all my thoughts to you. I'm preparing every part for you. That is beautiful. The focus and the devotion of that concept. That we can spent a whole life, be it 10 or 100 years, joining and preparing for a certain cause, one thing, one beautiful, unblemished entity that promises security and joy. That is the life I do want. That life of purpose, not of quiet desperation. The one that nourishes, not the one that kills slowly at night. The one that is of quiet purpose, quiet faith, quiet devotion. Quiet love. Love truly is quiet, is it not? It is quiet and calm as a still water in the winter. It is not filled with pomp and diamonds. It is patient, as St. Paul says in his Letters to the Corinthians. Patient and kind and does not rejoice in suffering. Anything that does is masked by our little Devil as love. But it is hate and it is harmful.

Oh my Mother, she betrayed us, but our Father loved and bathed us. Nature does love us betrayed to our desires and to the flesh. The ills that flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. When you crochet, I feel mesmorised and proud.

This is a new year. And I promise, I will not destroy myself in my failures. I will try. Just the mere thought of trying frightens me, because I am scared of failing. So, so scared. I have failed so many times. Every year.

I have hope.

60 Pages for You

That's a lot of paper, and I'm sure if it's wasted or put to good use. I'll probably never know.

So there's this fucking horrible thing and it's called hope. We're all born with it. It dies sometime, really. Mine has died. It wasn't a moment; it was gradual, and then sometime last year I guess I woke up and found myself lighter, lighter, floating out of love and into apathy. Not to sound dramatic or anything, you know?

I remember that small moment on the second story of my house. I had kept your little Magic 8 for days. I don't remember why it was at my house. It was sitting in a pile of things I needed to give you. When you came over, I called you up to get your stuff. Before you came upstairs, when I was still alone, I took the 8 Ball and asked it: "Will this year be different?"

I don't believe in magic, I believe in God and the delicacy of his fingers and the omnipotence of his decisions in physics and biology.

"Yes."

I had hope in that moment. It's stupid to base your happiness on a plastic sphere filled with glowing liquid; really, really stupid.

But it was right.

I met new friends. You came back. I leave sometimes. I love sometimes. I laugh sometimes. It's an improvement from everything.

And then that time when I told you, "It's just been a bad 2 and a half years." Happiness felt so far in the past, so far in the future, nowhere in the present.

Why must you chase me and make me believe in you?

I don't wait to believe or sing or wait or hope or love or do anything except go and be quiet with nothing. I don't want to be fragile. I don't want the ups to come, prefiguring the downs.

But it's here.

Just Another

My mother is convinced that if her daughter does not go to homecoming with a boy-date, she is a failure. First, somebody asked me. Then he fell for someone else. Oh, well. I'm used to it. Then, someone else asked me when he really wanted to ask someone else, so I said no. Now she thinks I'm a fucking failure or something for some little blot on my worthless high school history that won't even matter in 2 years.

Does it bother her that I have high standards?
That maybe I want someone to take me to the dance who actually--WOW--wants to go with me? And just me? Is that too much to ask for a homecoming date that asks you because he actually thinks it would be fun to go with you? Or are my standards just too high? I guess I'm supposed to settle for someone that doesn't really want to take me, but just will because I'm kind-of their friend. That's great. I'd rather spend the night with my best friends than with a boy that doesn't really want to be there with me.

This isn't a pity party; I understand these boys don't exist in my life right now. That's okay. But it doesn't mean I have to be second-best and desperate.

And then she insults my friend, saying she will end up "LONELY" if she keeps insulting our school and our country. WHAT! She doesn't even insult our school or country, she just misses her home country and her old life. She JUST moved here! I'd miss my old life, too, if I moved to a foreign land with different customs. And here's my mom insulting her for not "assimilating" because SHE doesn't want a date to the dance, either. We're going together as girl-friends, is that wrong or less-than-what-you-wanted? I'm sorry I want to hang out with my friends and make them feel welcome and loved at a new school. I'm such an awful person, I guess. Sorry.

She has this pre-conceived notion that I'm anti-social but, really, we're just diagonal opposites. She's a socialite and I'm NOT. That doesn't make me any less of a person. In fact, my personality is not set in stone. Nothing about me is. I am subject to change. So maybe she should wait before criticizing how I'd rather spend Friday nights at home, reading and playing piano, rather than at a stupid football game with people that wrote me off a year ago. It's my life, it's my choice.

I can't wait until I'm alone in this world, without a past. With just a future and a present.

My mother's perfect idea of a life for me seems to be that suburban home with 2.3 kids and a handsome, polite husband who is a lawyer while I am a smart, independent yet motherly engineer who helps save the world by making bridges or computers or something else I could care less about. What if I DON'T want that? I know it's going to be up to me eventually and she can't control that, but it just hurts to feel like a disappointment just because I'm not like everyone else: perfect, pretty, friendly, bubbly, laughy, happy, neat, well-driven, and has everything figured out. THAT IS NOT ME. That will NEVER be me. I will never be you or be like you. I don't fucking like to plan every second of my life on my Blackberry and I DON'T like engineering and I don't want to BE an engineer and I'm not a fucking social butterfly, I just love the best friends I do have and I'm doing my damn best to make them happy and myself worthy of them. I am so blessed and grateful for my life, and God is the one I love. Why can't you be proud of this? Because your idea of Catholicism is just being a good person? I agree that being a Catholic means living it out and treating everyone with respect, but maybe I like going to Mass. Maybe I like reading the Bible and praying and trying to deepen my faith through doctrine. It doesn't make me a fundamentalist or a cult member! I just love my faith and I feel like you don't. It feels like everything, EVERYTHING I do is wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm sorry one of your children is fucked up and a drug addict and homeless; I'm sorry I can't be a perfect daughter to offset your other child. Maybe both of your children will end up "different." I don't love money, I don't love beauty, I don't love status, all I love is this: God, my friends, my dog, music, and my life. I am a simple person and you are not. I am not a realist. I hope I never am. I have dreams and I will have more, I plan to reach those dreams at all costs. I will not be hindered by the world telling me "You're too ____ you can't do this. You'll never do this. You'll never reach your dreams. You are nothing." If the world ever says that, as it says it to everyone, I will ignore it, I will beat it. Does it make you sad that I want a better life, the best life, for myself? That I have a dream?

Well if it does, fuck you and all you say. Because if you can't love me as I am, you're in for a hell of a surprise when, in a year, you WON'T be there to tell me what to do and I can live my life as a I choose. But if you can, show it. Don't insult me.

When You Crochet, I Feel Memorized and Proud

Words are futile devices.

There is a joy in my heart that died two years ago; revived; died one year ago. It is that fragile joy whose neighbor is precaution and wariness. I worry I overstep myself. Because once this joy dies, and it is risen, you will do anything.

Fast in Bed, Not Quite Sleeping

We were in love.

Oh, Sufjan. You make me want to sing out. It is unnatural how happy people I don't know make me, yet those right next to me do not please. I am a mixed-up human being.

To wait for winter's cold and the Christmas, it makes my soul rise up for goodness. I feel that something either very good or very terrible will happen soon. I woke up about a week ago at 4 in the morning, in complete darkness, with this insatiable terror that bore down on my soul like a hatchet. It filled me from every angle, the idea that some faraway future day holds a terrible fate. I don't know; I really worry a lot. I'd worry no matter where I was. Whether it be Runberg or NYC or Chicago or Bejing. I will always be a worrier. But I also think something very good is going to happen this winter. Maybe any life change is good, because we learn? I want to learn (I take it back).

I feel as though this is wrong. So different. I was happy for a night but now things have changed and I can't say that. I just want someone perfect, but I except too much, I know.

I'm already listening to Christmas music!! This year, I'm going all out. The true meaning of Christmas AND Advent. Perhaps I may fast over Advent, and pray of course. I want to buy everyone or make them a gift. I love cheer. Then maybe a party!! (I Sound So Unlike Myself In Real Life). Yes, I'll throw a blow-out party! Blow-out typically means 5 people for me. Eff my small life. But yes, and we'll actually DECORATE this year! The whole house! I must get read now!! I know it's only September. I am not unaware. O come, o come Emmanuel.

We Were in Love

"The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is out to Get Us!" by Sufjan Stevens.

Love so asexual. So borderless, like a world that fits on a map and a continent, without oceans.

Love so simple, the love of a 6-year-old boy and his friend. There is no locker room, there is no football field, and where there is, they are sheltered by youth. Youth itself is a tired fence and comes down with age. Some grow up and keep their intact; my grandma, who has seen poverty and lawlessness and abuse and violence and seen her own country crumble beneath her into the war-torn terror zones that it is now: she is still so innocent. I cannot say the same of myself. I cannot say the same.

I miss that love. Now it is this: it is to please a boy, to make him want you with the push-up bra and the high heel and the makeup that washes off with every night, knowing that it has done you no good that day. The love that is that of a man, to think he loves a woman but just sees the grey eyes and not the sadness in them, the organic curves of the hips but no bruises at all. He hears a laugh, but not the pity.

To be a woman is a horrible thing. I have read Something Wicked This Way Comes, how women are bound to the earth and carry a legacy and men do not. But it is a horrible thing; man can be free. He can be without a shirt and it is completely acceptable. He can run and sweat and work and change and move and drift and never be tied down to anything. He is a free entity. The woman will always have something to hold her back. Always. She will always be waiting in a quiet corner; for a pregnancy test, for a phone call, with hope, for someone she loves. For women, platonic love is so natural. Too natural. But we are all stringed to something or someone from the time we are born to the time we are put into a grave. We can never be free; I want to be free. All I've ever wanted was to be free; truly free.

Freedom comes from God, I am finding out everyday.

Finding God is so simple in a quiet room, as is everything.

But when there are those people; that make you feel as if you must be a certain way; act a certain way to make an impression. Then I lose you, God. You are lost somewhere in between dreams and myself. There are two sides I have found: I can be liked or I can be loved.

Being liked involves nothing.

Being loved involves everything. Every ounce of focus and willpower and want and choice that you have; if you want love, the true love, you need to give everything. Surrender to something, and it will love you. Like a dead, beaten dog at the bloody doorstep of a warm home in winter. The dog that is well fed, that has a collar and a clean coat; he will never find a home because he will soon be found by something that will not see him. But the other dog, the defeated and alone, he will be pitiable and be fed by a hand that knows him. He will be bathed by arms that hold his neck at night, that gather his belly in its fullness and scoop him from underneath, to bring him to a warm pillow in the dead of night; to sit and sleep until dawn. I will never be loved because I am afraid.

I was once in what I thought was love. But instead it was a love that should have stayed a friendship; it was unclean and it was wrong, but it was so beautiful because it came from an abyss I do not know. It did not announce itself, as love never does. But I was and I am so, so young: too young to believe in anything substantial, or so I am told. So I am rebuked.

I know how to "do" love over again if I am given the chance, and I know how to get there.

I know all the steps.

I know it all.

It is the worst thing to have all this knowledge and absolutely no courage to execute it.

Let's Get Fucked Up and Die

If memory serves, I'm addicted to words and they're useless.

There are some incorruptible thoughts I have. They are those thoughts that to say them aloud would taint them. They're like apples, and once you bite them, they oxidize into something unsightly. Something somebody would have once wanted, but no longer cares for. I have made the mistake of saying some of these thoughts out loud, and now they lay stained with rain and wind at the dreamspace of my mind, begging at a gate, to come back in. But they are no longer virgin.

Air does something to thoughts; so do vocal cords and bumbling efforts to make sense in a world where making sense is absolutely necessary where love is not involved.

--

Did you dream of a better life for yourself, love? When you were a child, and time did not exist, and you did not know that you existed yet or that the future was a true thing... Did you? Did you see yourself as a giant, towering as teenagers do, with a mop of hair and smooth shoulders and broad teeth? With fingers and hands that fixed, healed, helped, anything but hurt... Did you see a woman with red lips and blue eyes? Or with bronze skin and a warmth of perpetual summer? Did you see 3 piece suits, shiny objects, leaves in the fall?

I saw these, too.

But I wonder what happens to dreams. Because now, 12 years later, I am 17 and I have seen dirty and seen lies and seen inexplicable hate and turning away for no reason. I've frozen people out; I've lied to my parents; I've made myself a dirty wretch; I've disappointed nearly everyone I love; I've laid my hands on a dying animal; I've ruined. I've ruined people and myself. I've ruined parts of you; parts I do not know and never did and now; never will. I've drunk wine alone; I hold everything like a cigarette.

I did not see this 12 years ago, but this takes up more of my life than those far-away dreams do.

Why are we born innocent? It is wrong.