March 2nd, 2018
The rain falls but my tired ears only focus on the static coming from my computer as my music freezes and shifts from the broken disk drive. No body uses CDs anymore, they are basically obsolete.
My winter starts to mix into the new spring but feels sort of rushed, like someone forgot to tell the sun to set and it just stayed where it wanted. If only our planet stayed put in one place, maybe we could stay in the perpetual rainfall.
I’ve been writing songs without the music, some people would just call that poetry. I can’t play any one instrument well enough to accompany myself, but that doesn’t stop me from forcing a simple chord progression at my words, making the same song over and over again. It reminds me of when people listen to pop punk and say it all sounds the same. Maybe this is why.
“You look just like I said you would.”
All of the hobbies I used to have die while I age. It feels normal but maybe it is situational, maybe it is avoidable. I hope, in a sense, that I can one day regain all the strength I have lost in the past two years, but it’s looking pretty bleak and desolate. I open my mouth only to throw out words I forgot to think about before they form on my tongue, spewing into the air like a swarm of bees buzzing towards the bear knocking on their hive. No one can go back to fix it, so we are forced forward and onward to at the very least get ourselves away from the chaos we just created. Humans are complex for many reasons, but one that really strikes me as important is a simple one. We, unlike many other living things, can communicate our feelings in so many different ways and have some other human understand it, whether it is talking, crying, dancing, running, or even lifting an eyebrow. There are endless ways of expression, the most confusing and elusive being silence.
I can sit here and write to no one but only do it for myself. To feel connected to someone that I used to be or see in the mirror. Starting out to write down some funny situations and stories about my life but shifting to this place to unravel and relax, letting whatever I bottled inside free in the open ocean I created by accident.
When you smell something familiar and it takes you back to the elementary school lunch line. I barely remember what lunch was like that early in my schooling, but I can sure as hell recall what it smelt like, felt like. Running our tiny fingers over the painted handprints of our peers, only to be torn to the ground and built over again for a new generation of children who do not get the pleasure of marking their own school with their very own scraped up hands. Growing up is going back to the town you grew up and not recognizing it, driving past your childhood home only to see others living in the room you painted all by yourself. Someone probably already painted over it to welcome a new baby into the house or to make a child feel more comfortable in their new dwelling. They will build forts under the same door frames and in the same hallways. It can now be sentimental for someone else and lose everything it used to be for you. But that is okay, it has to be.
June 9th, 2018
This is my new way of thinking, my new diary filled with obscure things from the past two years. I wish I could go back and type more and scroll less, but alas. This is our world now.
As the middle of summer creeps on by, I feel very stuck in place. But soon there will be new horizons to look at and a familiar mountain range to take in again. As I stand on the top of my West Seattle apartment building, I stare out toward the Sound. It is too cold to swim in, so I fight the urge to dip a toe, figuratively, and I am flooded with feelings. Feelings that strayed away from me and come back with brutal force. To the people I have met in these short two years: Thank you for taking me in from the rain and drying me off, feeding me macaroni and cheese and rice. I expected it to be a terrible combination, but it just fit. Thank you for seeing me for what I am and what I am not. It has eventually opened my closed eyes to what life will one day be and I will take it with and continue to grow.
I have always found life interesting. People click on and off day by day, leaving and returning to the same places connecting with the same people as if they are the only ones on the planet. Then one day they stop returning and move on, toward other places and people. They try their best to stay in touch and sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they don’t and that is life, messy and unpredictable. Their circles expand, intertwining with previous shapes to make your very own abstract painting. People come and go and if you’re lucky they come back and stay the same. If you are anything but, they will leave the same way the arrived and it will hurt for a bit but eventually dull with time and nurturing. Your very own buds will start to bloom and you won’t even remember what it was like to freeze with the cold. You just have to wait for spring.
Anyway, these are my last months in Seattle for a while, and to whoever is reading, I want you to know that I needed you. Everyone on this planet needs their people, man. It is what makes it worth it. Try to remember that.
Stay Radical, Take Care Of Yourself,
Paige Alys
middlealys 