The Dream

I dreamed that you had ceased to love me—
not that you had come from other beds
back to mine, or gone from mine to others,
just that something in your heart had stopped.

I willed myself awake to find you still
beside me. It was just a dream, I thought,
yet when I turned to kiss you, in your eyes
I saw that you had ceased to love me.

I willed myself awake a second time
to find myself alone, as I have been
these many months, but did not know if it
was terror or relief I felt, and whether

dreams unfold the past or make the future
plain. I dreamed that you had ceased to love me,
and know when I see nothing in your eyes
I can't dream myself awake a third time.

-David Solway

Mi Familia

Most days I wake up and miss my family, but today it was different. A deep, dark ache in my heart. A feeling that no one knows quite how I feel except them, and they are so very far away. I think about how my back aches and my eyes are tired, how I'm trying too hard to look cute in my own way, how those three finals are piling up on me and I have to well: too big of dreams not to do well. I think about how my couch back home is the perfect length and comfort and how the couch here is half size to fit in my half sized apartment. How if I was home I could fall asleep on the couch and wake up to music playing on the stereo, the smell of my mother's wonderful cooking, and the darkened Taiwan sky. If I was home we would eat and talk and play a game or watch a show all together. I would come into their room while they were reading before bed and lay down and talk until they kicked me out so they could sleep.

But I am not home, I am not with my family, I am here, alone. 

I don't do well being alone, I'm bad at it. It doesn't suit my nature. Yet here I am, doing what I need to do, being alone. Looking at the heeled boots I bought online with fur around the top. Me, in fur, trying to be something I could be, but right now, I don't want to be.

I don't want to be responsible, I don't want to be sophisticated, I don't want to be trying so hard; I want to be home and young and loved and surrounded by warmth.

Mi corazón pertenece a mi familia

If - Rudyard Kipling

"If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

I love the way your hair parts straight down the middle, and how when you lost those thirty pounds you wore your old clothes and looked like a shrunken doll. I love the way you trip over your own feet, and pick apart your food before you eat it. I love how you talk passionately about things most people don't care about. I love the way you light up when you see people you love.
But I hate that you will never know this.
I hate that I will never get to love how much you love me.

Why are you panicking? I can feel it. The tension and confusion rumbling through your ever spinning mind. Where did it come from? So sudden and seeping. Overpowering slowly, the intensity making everything worse. Knowing that it won't get better yet. When did this begin? How much longer do you have to go?
Sometimes are you so afraid?

I am. I don't even know why most of the time. It arrives and the world has become too big. And I, I have become far too small. The light is garish and the walls are cold. I am no longer a tree, I am a weed, about to be pulled. I am no longer a sunflower, I am a violet. Tiny, about to be stepped on. Washed out purple instead of ginormous brilliant yellow. Where am I? Where have I gone?

Maybe I'll sleep now, and maybe tomorrow you'll be back, and I'll be back. We'll be back. "It will be okay, everything will be okay." I don't know who I'm trying to reassure anymore. Maybe both of us and maybe neither. I am saying nothing. I am disappearing. Someone see me! Someone really, truly see me!

Tonight I pray that this panic subsides and once again, we are found.

The Beginning of the End

"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."
-Peter Pan

The question

I need to know if anyone else feels it too. Like What Sarah Said mixed with Damien Rice and a few heartfelt screams. I need to know  because it seems like all the loving faces are smiling smiles of honest emptiness. Am I the only one? Do you feel it too? Has anyone really found it or are we all just tired of hurting and getting hurt. Do we finally say enough is enough, I've been doing this too long, time to give up. Have you found what I'm looking for? And will I ever find it? This deep solid confusion and loneliness is growing. I need to know. Who has my answer?

The question was who would I be for a day, I'd be anyone truly loved and contently happy. That's what I who I wish to be.