When you’re sad for a long time it becomes a bit of a habit
Like an after-school snack or regular exercise… or… or…
Puking after every meal
Habit, see?
How can you ever be anything but sad?
It’s just the way things are
“But what do you have to be sad about? You’re so pretty.
I tell ya,
If there was a Queen of making something out of nothing…
Wait!
Pick another dress.
That one makes your arms look fat.”
Habits have a funny way of making you forget that there was a “before” the habit or that there could ever be an “after”
Did I say habit? I think I’m looking for another word
I can’t find it……………………
Let me see if you can guess it!
Let me describe the feeling:
Was there ever a time that your body felt like it belonged to you?
Because it sure as hell doesn’t now
Will you always make a habit of keeping your breasts and thighs hidden beneath fabric
because a fight or flight response is triggered each time a man’s eyes linger on you for too long?
What you should make a habit of is pretending nothing happened
“Men don’t like damaged goods”
Do you even remember what it’s like to not feel like the biggest fucking train wreck?
And not the cool, ‘can’t take your eyes off’ kind
No, just a clunky, empty freighter that no one even realized derailed
One that sits somewhere
Pathetic
Collecting rust
Do you ever just feel like a clumsy pair of legs and a useless pair of lipsticked lips and a stupid set of dead, doe eyes that do and see
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing but a dark room with an evil face in the corner
“You’re 20, why do you sleep with a night-light?”
Because it’s red eyes glow if it gets too dark!!
You’re just legs and lips and eyes and a pair of dainty, deaf ears that hear nothing but whispers from the creature who wants to eat your heart in the middle of the night
“Take it. It’s defective, anyway.”
A fraud
All the world’s disappoints wrapped into a tight little body with a rat’s nest of hair that other Girls whisper behind your back about
They say they would kill for that hair
“Do it. Kill for it!” you command them with your mind
But the weak little things are all talk
Not like your creature…
Habits: And you wonder
If there’s any other way to spend your days than screaming on the shower floor, reminding yourself for the thousandth time that you are everything that’s ugly in the world
But the creature in the corner thinks you wonder silly things
It reminds you to keep the curtains closed
Crawl back to your bed
But don’t go to sleep, either
Your demons need insomnia’s company…
It’s funny
In a way
Because you want it to stop
But this consuming darkness has been there for as long as you can remember
So why would it abandon you now?
Are you quite certain you even want it to?
Wasn’t it you who told it one night in September
That it’s the only thing that has never left you?
“Happy is a choice you make every day”
But what they don’t know is that you’ve only seen night for the last 5 years
And it’s dark and haunted and perhaps the worst part of all
Is that you aren’t even afraid of it
But then
Somewhere
In the vast, hopeless, unending, devil’s hour
There lives a ‘maybe’
That whispers softly every so often
Until it convinces you it’s time to leave the room you’ve sat in,
Day after day,
Carefully painting the walls with the perfect shade of sadness
But first the ‘maybe’ sings you to sleep
With a lullaby full of promises
And you don’t wake up for days and days
And your roommate’s friends begin to ask if there’s something wrong with you
“She’s just like that” with a hearty eye roll
And you hear the mutters in your sleep
But no matter!
Because you’re transforming
Like your big, down blanket is the cocoon
And when you wake up your room is bright
And the lint that floats in the sunrays are actually tiny fairies doing an intricate dance
And you begin talking to them
And your friends tell you you’re talking to fast
Slow down
But your hands are shaking because you OD’ed on magic
Has the world always been this beautiful?
And a nice boy tells you that he’s enchanted by the way
A smile spreads across your lips when you notice the perfect way the light is hitting the Oak tree over there
“It’s like you know something the rest of us don’t”
And you do! Because you dwell in a dimension that is stitched together with ecstasy
With a lollipop in your cheek you blow bubbles into the wind
Hasn’t it always been this way?
Evil creature, who?
There’s fucking STARDUST running through your veins
Life is good
And you still don’t sleep
But the fairies keep you company
And you handwrite beautiful stories on unlined paper into the early morning
And strangers are so grateful because you’re the goddamn most positive person they know…
But your friends are just a little more cautious
Because even if you can’t see it right now
What with all that fairy dust in your eyes
The only difference between the evil creature and your beloved fairies
Is a strong hit of mania
And the comedown is
just
around
the
corner
