Just is.

I'm pathetically predictable
Sickeningly redundant
I fall and get back up
Just to fall all over again

I don't believe I can do better
That I can improve
So I stick with what I know
I can do well

I'll fight with myself
Every time I win
Then I go back
To what it was before

I'm pathetically predictable
Sickeningly redundant
I fall and get back up
Just to fall all over again.

What it is: A Break Up

I just keep driving as memories of you fly through my mind.  The way you smell the way you used to tuck my hair behind my ear.  I love you still though you are gone.  I remember how you used to look me in the eyes but now that had stopped, though I talk to you still, there is no connection, nothing personal.  You said you cared too much and I wasn’t used to being cared about but you did anyways and I got scared.  All of those things I did that seemed to be against you weren’t that but a cry for you to prove what you said.  You said you loved me but you left when I needed you.  I drive over the bridge but stop halfway across.  My hands clasp and I lean my head on the steering wheel hoping that another lost soul doesn’t meet me on this bridge at this hour.  It’s so late, or rather early.  It’s four in the morning and I’ve been up since six the previous morning but I can’t sleep because I’m thinking of you and how things have gone wrong.  You were the first I loved and the first who really cared and I left you abandoned in this world.  I think of the time we spent watching TV while my parents were home and when we couldn’t really do anything else.  I miss your arms around me the most.  The way you would say something and it would immediately make my day better.  Is this what a real break up feels like; is love worth this feeling if it ends?  I think it is because the only thing I regret is ending it.

Who Am I? (August) Chapter 2

August

I had to work the day the moving truck was at his house.  I watched from across the street as they packed the whole life of my closest friend away.  Apparently I wasn’t doing my best work and my supervisor noticed.  I know it wasn’t her job to be my friend; it was her job to motivate me to work my best and most efficient.  I was already down enough when she accused me of trying to get myself fired, that she didn’t know what my problem was but we needed to finish this boat so we could all leave and that if I had a problem then I should just quit.  That’s exactly what I did.  I hopped off the bed I was washing handed her the rag and the Lysol and walked away.  I walked the mile home and I moped as I heard the moving trucks go by I sobbed like no other.  That’s when I gave up.  With Carson gone, I had nothing to hold onto, nothing to keep me going on this path of goodness that I had lived on my whole life. 

The next day I picked up smoking and started lying more than my usual “I’m fine” lie.  My sister didn’t exactly turn me off smoking.  She didn’t encourage it either, but when we went roller blading we smoked together.  I went to the Hang Out on Fridays and smoked with some of my friends.  Soon enough I was smoking more than just socially.  I would sneak my window open and smoke out it by myself just thinking about how badly I was screwing up my life and I didn’t care.  I’d never thought of Carson as the reason until recently.  I was in a bad place and there was only one person I sort of trusted.  Near the end of the summer I started hanging out with Cameron, who had been a friend of my sister’s, he was a good one though.  Cameron worked at the Hang Out.  The Hang Out is a place for teens, like a night club but no alcohol the substitute being energy drinks, pretty much just a dance that happens weekly.  Though there is only dancing when an ambitious person starts it and gets his or her friends to join in.  I went outside every Friday to smoke with my friends that went.  Smoking was my big secret for the longest time.  I didn’t tell any of my school friends, though some of them found out their own ways, life in a small town I suppose.

Life changed so much those months.  I did things that I was so strongly against.  I changed and I was a train on course towards a broken bridge.  I knew this then and I know it now but it was inevitable, just something I had to live out.  This is where the months end and life begins.

Who am I? (July) Chapter 1

July

                I laughed with my friend as we swam at his house.  Carson and I had been friends since he moved near me in first grade; it was the summer before our tenth grade year.  I smiled and laughed genuinely with him but there was sadness there.  Deep beneath where I knew that he would be gone soon after the month was over.  I was spending almost every free hour I had with him.  He was my best and closest friend.  We had other friends sure we had a lot of other friends.  We had built up this huge friend group, we were both very charismatic individuals.  He was sort of a ladies man who didn’t date much and I could get along with pretty much everyone for no reason.  We had lots of friends but we were the two.  We had lockers adjacent to each other, we rode the same bus, participated in the same activities, and we lived near each other on the lake.  We were inseparable and did pretty much everything together.  We climbed up the ladder to get onto his dock and air dried lying on towels.  We called it tanning but neither of us could tan, we just burned.  It was a running joke with us, along with a lot of things.  I was clean then.  I was happy.  I had everything, a job-though I didn’t like it very much-, a best friend, a good family.  It was one of the happiest summers of my life but maybe that was because we both knew he was leaving in August; maybe it was because we were growing closer as friends.  Whatever the reason I look back on July with a smile on my face.  We went bike riding, swimming, to band practice.  We were in the Fourth of July parade together.  We always had so much fun and there was no one who could stop us. 

                Carson had two going away parties, one for friends and on for family, my two friends-Lucy and summer-and I went to both of them.  The friends one was an absolute blast, Carson had invited almost all of our school friends and we all went out on his parent’s pontoon boat.  We jammed out to music and danced until we stopped somewhere to eat.  The food was great and the conversation was better.  We talked about all sorts of things, that we could discuss openly with his dad present-which is pretty much everything-while eating sweet potato fries and jalapeño poppers.  The girls stole the guys shoes so we could go inside-none of us had brought ours- and we looked around and checked out the gift shop and just did random stuff.

                On the way back we stopped in this little bay to swim.  We turned up the music and stripped down to our swimsuits and dove in fearlessly.  We had a dance competition with the other boat in the bay.  I remember it all so fondly. 

                I had a job that summer.  Sometimes I would go to Carson’s house after work just to complain.  My job was closer to his house than to mine so it was easy.  I hated that job, I tolerated it though, and I wasn’t a quitter.  Cleaning wasn’t my forte and I hated doing it like most teenagers.  The only reason I had it was because I felt it was time for me to get one, it was nice having money. 

                There was another party for Carson’s going away, it was mostly for family but a coulple of friends and I went just to show up.  The house was getting empty but there was still enough furniture to seat almost everyone.  Carson was mad that we showed up at first but then he accepted it.  It was fun, we were able to meet a bunch of his cousins from out-of-town.  It was only a couple days before the moving trucks came and on the drive home I cried, silently, because I hadn’t really realized it, but I loved Carson, whether it was more than a friend or not I still loved him will all of my heart and I didn’t want him to leave me, ever, because that was all that ever happened.  I trusted and loved people, then they left.  I don’t know how much he understood of this love I had for him, but it was enough and everyone else knew that his move would affect me the most.

Who am I? (Intro)

What am I doing to myself?  The question rings in my head every day.  Every time I smoke a cigarette and every time I drink or do drugs.  This isn’t what you want.  I know that, but, I don’t know exactly what I want.  It happens more often now than when I first started.  At first, I had a rush from doing things I know I shouldn’t, things that were illegal, now it just seem predictable.  I wake up I smoke a cigarette, I get stressed I smoke a cigarette, I’m about to go to sleep, I smoke a cigarette.  I had sworn to myself years ago that I would never do this, never be like my sister or some of her friends.  Then I started being places where it was avoidable but definitely there.  On Friday night I would be hanging out with friends who were smoking.  I never smoked with them to start and then it seemed like all of the reasons for not smoking were gone, with one person.