How did we get here
How am I back in this place

I think I deserve better than this and I don't know why I'm staying and I can see now how warped the idea of love can make a person, how much they might put up with

That scares me.

4.

Only four poems,
maybe two and a half months.
Feels fast, but not wrong.

2016

So much of this year was reeling. So much got lost. So many things hurt. Every year, I say I feel more me than ever, but I trust myself saying it this year because I’ve spent more time alone than I had in a long time. So. 2016.

January: I had held an image (blurry and always changing, but always with the same two faces) of eventuality in my head for nearly three years, and the empty space between my fingers was still fresh and figuratively unfamiliar. And I was not crying in the kitchen anymore. Maybe I realized the space was not new, only newly acute. Maybe I was already angry, I don’t remember. Theory felt not good, but not bad. I had barely taken a breath when high school hit me in the gut; straight girl crush. Straight best friend crush. I felt like the world had lurched under my feet, but I ignored it. 

February: I ignored it because if I didn’t, it would be my disgusting fault. I couldn’t point where the trauma was, I could only panic about it on an increasingly regular basis. I remembered on Valentine’s Day that I love myself and I will love others. I wanted to cry a lot but didn’t. We didn’t talk about it.  I knew I was misplacing my feelings, and I think I knew I was angry. I knew I’d been done wrong in some ways. We didn’t talk about it either. Theory felt not good. 

March: March was a blur. Kathleen told me my empathy looks like reason. I should have known my friend already knew. We talked about living together and it scared me. The opera happened and it was good but it kicked my ass. Theory was Fine except that it wasn’t and it was my fault for being bad at organizing and time management and school, and I half believed that. The anxiety felt like it was on all sides except one. Finals were mostly trash but I trusted Melissa and she trusted me. I visited Chicago and saw and felt different things than I had before. I was around straight girls without acute tension. I was around people I was and am sure love me the way I love them. Scheduling was a small thing, it was Fine, and then scheduling became a big thing, boiling over the course of a few days. I asked for space I didn’t get and then drew a line. I wasn’t sorry. I was angry. I wanted to stop caring about everything I cared about except singing. 

April: New term. Anxiety attack on the first day. Maybe I stopped avoiding the word “unrequited.” The sun was a thing again and so was cuddling. Slow burn, definitions gloriously blurred. A new kind of trust. I called it magic then and I still call it magic. I worked my ass off for an excellent singing recital and gave one. Mr. Post thought it was brilliant. I had my people there and a beautiful dress too. That week, I ignored theory, and coming back was anxiety everywhere. I felt my anxieties blend and confuse one another. Some nights were Bad. 

May: “Oh my god soft girl kisses in the sun wow” are the perfect words. Warmth everywhere all over. I said one too many things about straight girls and realized that I can say trauma when I lost a few days. We were in and out for two weeks, and then everything fell apart. Actually everything, it felt like, because I couldn’t contain it. And after Kathleen had told me I was such a good container. Maybe for other people. I felt angry and alone, and angry because I was alone, and alone because I was angry. I didn’t know where to put it. I tried in theory, I tried to make things work and to help him understand and then to make him understand. It felt bad. Everything felt bad. I felt lost and I missed a lot of meals because I’d be damned if I went to Warch alone, and I couldn’t hold eye contact with a single person. I had to screw up my nerves whenever I left my room because I started walking to the con by myself. 

June: I was sure I would fail theory and I knew that wasn’t right, that the whole situation wasn’t right, but I also knew it was entirely my fault. That I was inherently stupid and therefore worthless. I wanted to leave. Mr. Post died and that rocked our studio to the core. I barely found a place to live. Graduation day straight-up sucked. It just sucked. Pulse happened. I wept in my new kitchen. It rained the morning I flew home. I recognized myself as a Black woman. Money for the new school year looked impossible. Fall term looked like it wanted me dead, re: scheduling, re: skin hunger, re: meeting anyone’s eye. I wasn’t planning on falling off the face of the earth. 

July: A wash of violent anti-Blackness. White silence pressed in on all sides. I looked into grad school. The opera cast list came out and I started running. I got a new tattoo. I stayed in Chicago and my landlord immediately proved to be frustrating. I realized a triathlon could be for me. I balanced working out and body image fairly well after an initial foray into unhealthy territory and considering the running was actually a revenge plan. 

August: My landlord continued to be frustrating. I completed a 5k, and then another, and then another. I realized that fall term actually wanted me dead, but wasn’t too fussed about it because it would be hard and then it would be over, whatever. My body felt strong. I hung out with a girl from town and wanted to feel something. 

September: Kathleen did not dip, but it felt like she dipped, because it felt like everyone had dipped. I could barely sit through the first church service of the year, I had so much pent up anger toward white people. I had confusing feelings about a man. I put up a good show in theory for maybe two weeks before it was bad. And I’d thought spring was bad, but somehow, my anxiety about actually everything had grown tenfold. Or maybe it was that way in spring and I mistakenly attributed that to the newness of the hurt I felt. Or maybe the hurt just continued, maybe I never really got up off the ground and I could just pretend better in the summer. (Maybe grief takes more than six vacation weeks to experience?) 

October: I was talking to another girl from town, and maybe would have felt things if it hadn’t been school. I started calling theory a little ‘t’ trigger. This was corroborated for me by someone who knows what she’s talking about. I remember being literally trapped in the theory classroom listening to the Beethoven and feeling physical fear. Anxiety, which was maybe visiting five nights a week, moved in. Bad nights abound. I don’t remember much about midterms, only that I actually cried myself to sleep, the most awful shaking crying I’ve ever experienced, and I had an anxiety attack so bad and long I took myself to walk in hours that Monday. Staging scenes was bad, but some people came out of the woodwork who saw this department for what it is. My new therapist was magic. It would be dramatic to say she saw me at my most lost and saved me, but it would be accurate also. I met with music students of color and felt real. I talked to my director about speaking up and speaking out and felt real. I crushed on a boy. I solidified a new friendship. I kept the fuck up in history. Percy found me! 

November: I started recording lectures because I was so in and out with anxiety. I was still working out, amazingly, and then I wasn’t. NATS happened and Percy’s owner found me. I met with my theory professor and he made me feel like a crazy person, like I was literally out of my mind. Wednesday November 9 was the quietest I have ever seen campus. I still had steam for a few days and then it hit me hard. I could feel tired and angry and sad and nothing else. My therapist called it Fatigue. I couldn’t finish theory. I couldn’t do it, even though I told everyone I could. I was too relieved to feel shame for very long. My director showed up for me and I believed him truly this time. A toxic person walked out of my life. I looked for a casual hook-up and ran into something, someone, joyously different. I drank a lot and slept a lot and kissed a lot and blurred out the anxiety, and then I flew home, where I needed to be. I didn’t know how to tell people my graduation date moved, but no one found a problem with it. I felt closer to my cousin than I had in years. I thought I was going to dip out of whatever smiling kissing thing had started and I didn’t. 

December: I turned 23. Facetime?? Smiling and slow reaching back out. Taking stock of the damage, but not rushing about it. My body image surprised me in its fluctuation. My mental health is probably very bad, but I don’t have to go back to the situation I left, and I’m not alone. I’m sometimes angry about theory, which is good. This is something I have never done, walked away with the express intention of healing and trying again.  

Resolutions for 2017:

Cook more

Read more

Swim more

Sing better

Tell people I love them

Show people I love them

My last year of undergrad starts tomorrow. I want another week of summer, just to breathe it all in and let it all go. I've been doing this for my entire life.

I feel anxious about small things, and I feel strange about big things. Not bad, just strange. I don't know what will happen.

Four/Five

This school year kicked my ass. I feel like I had to pick myself up off the ground every week. And I did, and I passed my classes(!), and I learned things, and I loved in new ways, and I grew but god I am so tired.
Summer is the time and space I need to heal from these last ten months, without scrutiny or glamour or deadlines. I just need to sit with myself and let go of the pain I'm holding on to.

Orlando is more than I have room to hold inside, which is maybe why I keep crying. 

I am choosing the women in my life. I am choosing myself and the goddess and the wonderful, awe-inspiring women in my life.
I need to put my feet in the ground and heal. I need to learn to trust myself.

2015

January - Things did change, as I expected they would. I started working out. I learned about kissing in a real way (it felt like a birthday, or a familiar place) Some little injured piece of me kept showing up in German. I dropped Stats because I was afraid of it. My old tired laptop finally pooped out. A possible future seemed to unfold at my feet and it was exciting. I got really serious about singing. There was nothing I would have called "settling".

February - I started consciously setting aside thoughts and emotions in order to get school done. Women and Friendship was important and a lot. Someone asked about the ring on my finger. My room ("the room") was too small for all of us. I felt afraid but full of love.

March - I was ready for my audition/jury weeks out. I passed easily and got day drunk with Rachel afterward. I started saying I felt grumpy when my emotions were acting up. (I didn't recognize that correlation yet, I just knew I was grumpy.) I did, though, become aware of my insecurity about feminine presentation. I cried after Scandal one night. I was super excited about Sexualities. I was relieved to not be seeing anyone on campus. Someone hurt me very deeply.

April - My new German course was real and I was behind, which together with my new hurt facilitated a month-long shamed spiral. I got quiet I think. I just did my work. In hindsight, more things were strained by that than I realized until now. Poetry was good. I thought it ridiculous to miss class to see a girl, and my therapist told me it was the single best reason, and I agreed with him. Then he said he was leaving. I heard about Delta. I missed Sam a lot. Sexualities had yet to impress any of us.

May - Grey's Anatomy scared me in a way I didn't know how to be scared before. I pulled my shit together a little. Poetry was really important. Sexualities didn't get better. I felt accomplished for finally being a Busy Lawrentian. I told myself often that I felt grumpy because I hadn't eaten lunch, or I hadn't slept well, or I hadn't gotten off in a few days instead of acknowledging that some basic needs weren't getting met. In my head, it wasn't fair to have them at all. I didn't quite understand why I felt more tired than I expected on a regular basis. No one else was finished falling apart. Karen told me I was Most Improved and it felt really good. Sexualitites was the worst. I didn't know how to feel about therapy (generally not good, is what it was).

June - I was finished with living with other people. There was a studio party at some point and I made choices without taking time to understand why. Campus was beautiful. It felt like mine for the first time. School ended and I didn't feel anxious about it. I was excited to stay. Nervous excited, for research living alone and for other, more selfish reasons. I took steps to communicate with people I love even though I was afraid. I decided a strict summer reading schedule was a good idea. Melissa told me to write the trashy love poems. I read The Ethical Slut and made myself breakfast every day. I got serious about my hair.

July - I started buying real groceries. July 4 was something I hadn't anticipated and it didn't scare me. I cried for reasons I thought and still think are weak. Maybe I had an inkling. I fell off the wagon. I hung out with Max a lot and decided to care for myself. I got back on the wagon. I would not have used the word "settling" then, still.

August - The first night of Mile of Music was tipsy and impulsive and smiling, and the next night was a lot of tears. After such a long day, I was too tired to shut in the imbalance between emotional needs and what I was getting. I cried at Inside Out and I cried at other things too. I moved into Draheim. I went to a wedding. some stark contrast between the late night rough and the soft wee hours convinced me things would be different. I let anxiety get the best of me and picked Chicago over Milwaukee. My gut said to be nervous and when I didn't listen, it said to take a lot of showers and grab Pride and Prejudice from the library.

September - Anxiety sat in my stomach like bile. I spent a lot of time talking myself through simple tasks and a lot of time still not getting through them. I spent a lot of time feeling shame and guilt. I experimented with a boy-type human. I decided school was more important and I was really excited for term to start. I rallied for a short wait. I got my nipple pierced! French made me a little nervous at first, but it quickly proved wonderful. My new therapist was different from my old one.

October - The freshmen liked me. I felt like a real person in a real production. It wasn't cold yet. I was aware that I was wishing, as opposed to wanting. (The difference there is in realistic possibility.) We got serious about Delta. I knew everything would be fine. I was glad not to have to accommodate my own weaknesses. I really considered a bus ticket and then thought better of it. Halloween passed and I did not actually cry that day.

November - The Don Giovanni talk happened and I felt acutely alone for a little while. I talked to a teacher for a long time about race. I finally got impatient. I realized I was okay being friends again with a girl I used to date. Tenth week proceeded just like every other week because I had my jury at the end of it and then finals. I simply did not have the time. I reread for several days before saying anything to anyone. I passed my jury and all my exams very well and finished the term strong. I had two Thanksgiving dinners! D-term was on my nerves before it even started.

December - D-term stayed on my nerves. I was beyond exhausted. I cried a lot and stayed up too late a lot and it was exhaustion and nothing else. I turned 22 and made room for my anger. I saw Anna! I finally, finally flew home. I listened to Hamilton and wept. I got sick and lost my voice for a few days. I talked to my family. I smiled a lot and felt exasperated a lot. I never really unpacked. I slept on the couch some nights. We made a cake and it fell apart. I don't know if I'm ready to leave. I don't know what I feel.

Resolutions
- Eat breakfast every day
- Grow longer, healthier hair
- Have a good recital
- Keep doing good school work
- Call Avery and Lucas more
- Keep asking for help
- Work on the skin thing
- Make some good money this summer
- Finish some poems
- Breathe deeply as often as possible
- Work out more consistently