Why I Must Leave You

Leaving is the better choice.

A plane ride, a car trip
A new adventure

Staying is silence.
Empty places, empty moments
Empty memories

When I go, I'll shed some tears.
I'll miss the adventures,
I'll miss your laugh.
But I'll be gone.

I won't have to see the places
Where we ate together
And talked together
And lived together.

I won't have to remember everyday
What it feels like
With this space filled
By your presence.

Instead,
I will go forward.
To a new place,
Building a new life.

And I will fill the empty
This is why you can't leave me.
This is why I must leave you.

Scared Sixth-Grader

Inside me lives a scared sixth grader.Once upon a time in sixth grade a girl named Sabrina had to leave in the middle of the year. This was not uncommon, in first grade our teacher unexpectedly left in the middle of the year and in every year someone left and someone new came. Our classes were small and I knew Sabrina pretty well; she was amazingly nice and soft spoken and seemed more mature than the rest of us. Even though I knew her, we weren't best friends, and we never saw each other outside of school.
But when she announced she was leaving, I unraveled.
Not just normal tears, but a continual aching sob. It was the middle of a school day and I was back in the bathroom at the end of our class sobbing. I couldn't stop. I couldn't breathe. I was hyperventilating, over heating, having a full meltdown. I was crying so much that my teacher, who was sweet and calm and put up with a lot of crazy things from a bunch of multicultural sixth graders, came back and told me I had to shut up and get it together.

The closest I had come to being that sad was when I left America to go back home to Taiwan after a year of fourth grade in the states. A classmate showed up at my house, once again a girl who was nice, but I wasn't that close with, with a little glass dog to give me as a parting gift. I still have the dog. And we cried on the front lawn while our mothers waited. But even that time, it wasn't that bad, I eventually stopped crying.

In sixth grade I couldn't stop. All the grief of years past, filled with the knowledge that it wasn't going end just overwhelmed me.

I had never cried that hard before, and I never have again, but every time someone leaves that scared sixth grader begins to creep up. When I stand in an airport with all that I own in suitcases, that little girl lurches inside. Because inside is all that grief, all that loss, that I thought was normal, that I thought all people constantly dealt with, piled up inside me. And when the loss of a best friend in third grade fades away, the loss of a best friend in seventh grade happens, and when that begins to fade, the loss of my school, my home, my culture, my security happens. And once again, the grief remains inside of a shaking sixth grader hiding in the bathroom.

"You know it starts here, outside waiting in the cold

Kiss me once in the snow, I swear it never gets old

But I will promise you I can make it warmer next year

You know I came here when I needed your soft voice

I needed to hear something that sounded like an answer

Now I stay here, and everyday I get one

It's nothing I'll forget when the moon gets tired

You are stuck to me everyday

Believe in what I am because it's all I have today

And tomorrow who knows where we'll be

From here I can hardly see a thing 

But I will follow anyone who brings me to you

For now, forever, for on and on and on"

When I was young I had the simple naivety of not knowing that I was a  bad writer. I knew some parts were bad, and that all of it could use improvement. But now I am so very aware. Everything has weight, every word has too much value. And so writing has become a burden, no longer a freedom.

Homesickness

“Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something, I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing.”-Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

As I drove over the mountains I became filled with a deep, overwhelming desire for a place I know does not exist. It hit me so hard that I struggled to breathe and tears began to fill my eyes. I down shifted into third to get enough power to make it up this hideously long hill and I told myself to calm down. Inhale, Exhale, Inhale again. My heart was growing even more heavy, drenched in salt water like a dripping sponge. As I reached the top of the hill the sun broke through the sea of clouds and my heart wrung itself out just enough. The sun burned through my window and began to dry my drowning heart. I was not home. I may never be home. But I had gained the smallest piece of home back again and that was enough. The smallest piece of home is hope, and that's really the only piece I need.

Alone.

I expected it to be different. They tell you not to have expectations, but is that really realistic? Most expectations I didn't even know I had. I guess the biggest thing is that I expected everyone to understand that he and I belong to each other. But they don't.
And I still have to fight. I still have to ask him to fight. And he does not feel my pain, because I do belong to him, and there is no question about that. But he still belongs to other people, which leaves me desperately alone. Alone in a place where I don't know anyone. Alone in a place where I don't fit. Alone in a place where he does not belong to me.

Reincarnation

Why do I cling to things that were never any good? It's like the day after partying effect where everything from the night before, even the bad parts, seems wonderful has invaded my entire life. Nostalgia. I am not sad, I am not lonely, I am not fearing the future, but somehow I long for things of the past. This has always been a problem for me. I want what I used to have, even though I didn't want it when I had it. I want the end of last summer, phone conversations every morning and every night. I want the year before that, sneaking in the night to meet by the lake just for a minute. I want the year before that, pillow forts and dogs. Or the year before that: double dates and a dumb truck, or the one before that: late nights at the stadium, believing in faeries, a group of home. Or maybe the year before that, skipping pep rallies and always being warm. But that is the year that leads me back around to now. Because here I am, with him. Always warm, just slightly on the side of rebellion, hard working, and comfortable. Maybe my whole life I've been trying to get back to a part of home, that I now have found again. We end and then we seem to start again.

Reincarnation of my years, over and over.

Remember

Hold on
My sweet
To the fire

The fire that dances
And flickers
In and out
Of our lives

Keep sight
My dear
Of the stars

The stars that shine
And sparkle
Above and in
Our darkness

Don't forget
My love
The sunlight

The sunlight that burns
And ignites
Deep and through
Our doubts

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

 
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

 
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

 
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

 
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

 
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

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