Clock Tower

It’s crazy how I can drive down the same roads
Walk the same paths to some certain destination
See the same sights and entirely miss others

I’ve lived in the same place for 2 years now
Heard the same trains
The same trucks
Even see some of the same faces in these
Same places

Yet this is a new bench I am sitting on
Staring at this clock tower on the courthouse
I hear it ding every hour of every day
And I have just now noticed how
The octagonal bricks are a light gray and blue
Alternating every 3-4 lines in the structure

It’s very possible this structure will be here
Long after I am gone and I could have gone
My whole life with not even seeing the details
Of this building that was most likely here
Before I was even an idea in creation

It makes me realize how caught up in the big of this life I get and how I miss the facial expressions of the people in the cars that pass by on the road in front of the clock tower that has octagonal bricks alternating from light gray to light blue every 3-4 lines in the structure that has been here long before I was even an idea.

Moments

We are made up of moments
Ones where we look up to the stars
And down at our feet
In the backseat of cars holding hands
And alone in dim lit parking lots
Long nights out at bars
And long nights in alone
–trying to ignore the buildup of silence

Ones where we come home
And ones where we leave home
–to never look back
Ones where we run away
And ones where we stay to fight back

All of these choices and the people around them
Make up everything I am on this day
The smile I see when I wake up every morning
The way I spend my time
–the contentedness of not having to find a way to run away
Everything I have and what I am
Derived itself out of snowy nights in parking lots
Arguments in the dark
Watching sunrises after never falling asleep
Too many “social” drinks in the city
And weekend vacations to the country
Just trying to escape all of the moments I created the week before

Moments of sand falling through fingertips on vacation
Or a snowy Saturday morning where I have no plans
Life is much more than what it presents itself as
And these moments we create
–the magic of Christmas long since forgotten
Was forged and created
And the longer I spend learning that my soul
Is not something long since forgotten or broken
The more I understand I can make the magic
I can bring these moments, shape them, create them
For everyone else who needs them
As much as I have needed them before.

Blank(et)

The blank page stares back at me
Until I force myself to write letters
To make words
To fill up space
To feel less empty
To find feeling
To break emotion
To wrap this moment around me
Like a blanket
Freshly dried
On a cold winter day
To fill up space
To feel loved
To feel whole
To fill the void
But also to create it.

Pretend Like Everything is Okay

I would work 1,000 twelve hour days
if it meant you would be safe
as the world is crashing around us
i find myself not lost in traffic
driving through downtown cleveland
in rush hour
and if the world was ending today
i would still be forced to go to work
sit at my desk and pretend
like the world wasn’t burning down
around me and this time thankfully
it’s not all in my head
but i guess im used to this
and im not entirely sure
how everyone can just pretend
everything is okay
like they hit some sort of adulthood
i haven’t yet
and everyone walks down the same hallways
go to the same printers
say hello to every passerby
like there’s nothing going on
outside of the four walls
like people aren’t dying
like i have a choice to stay home
and disasters really do bring out the
best and worst of people
when they have to choose between death
and a paycheck
but i guess it’s always been that way
i just thought i wouldn’t have to be
reminded of it so soon
after getting off the streets.

What am I?

What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I?

Minutes

I watch the minutes count down
I become the seconds falling away
As my world becomes some fucked up Dali painting
and everything starts to slip through my fingers
And I struggle to push it back into
my heart —
my brain —
I press and press and it all just slips through
over and over and over again
and I just can’t keep my shit together
to hold anything in place
and the seconds
seconds —
seconds —
pass
pass
pass
away —
And there’s nothing I can do to hold them there
Sometimes we don’t get second chances
Sometimes life is just too thick to breathe
Some days you just hope for air
Or to burst into flames
and the seconds
seconds —
seconds —
pass
pass
pass
away —
As I break away
And all I want to do is
Figure this all out
So I can carry the weight
Or just ride out
All the decisions I’ve made along the way
To not see myself as the enemy
and the seconds
seconds —
seconds —
pass
pass
pass
away —
I cut my fingers on the pieces
I’ve found from the mirror
I tried to build
So I can finally see
The way I want to see myself
And I am hoping I can still
outrun myself
before the seconds
seconds —
seconds —
pass
pass
pass
away —

With me.

Changes

I’ve made an overall decision this year that I was going to continue on my whole “self love” journey that started in October of 2018 and has now grown to being over a year and going into 2020. It’s been rocky where I can go a few months of really focusing on betterment but then fall off, get depressed, do something stupid and then continue on that path for a few months. Which I guess what life kind of is in general. You continue on and just try to get back on the path you have decided to make for yourself. I mean, it really is hard to do things that are good for yourself. Not only for people who don’t really like themselves but also for people that do. Because starting new habits are hard. Keeping them is hard. Challenging yourself to a new anything is hard that’s why it’s a challenge. Which makes my challenge difficult but there’s more to my journey than just challenges.

It’s also a lot about healing. And healing is one of those go up 2 spaces, back one, go up 2 more spaces, go back 5, go up 7, but go back 3, kind of things and you just kind of keep trying until you get one step ahead. And then another and then another. And eventually you just kind of get in a good spot and make a lot of progress. It’s up and down but you know, it’s worth it, for the most part.

I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Not untypical for the normal millennial who’s parents had them when they were 16 years old. My parents had no idea how to even be people yet, let alone parents. I don’t blame them for any of that. My parents grew up with virtually nothing and survived by creating numerous defense mechanisms that they thought were healthy and then passed on numerous ones to me. Until one day I asked myself why in the world I was doing some of those things I was doing. Then eventually through good friendships, mindfulness, therapy, long nights, drugs and no drugs, sleeping and no sleeping, I traversed through a few and made better habits. Thankfully making it through the worst of it all alive.

One major coping technique of both of my parents was the consumption of food. My father binged on anything he could get his hands on and my mother controlled her eating by either not doing it or going on crazy unhealthy diets and doing it all the wrong way. From the time I was 12 to 18 I was forced on these crazy diets as well. Full organic, fully vegan, just vegetarian, all meat, no meat, no fish, only fish, just carbs, no carbs… all to appease my mothers intense and debilitating eating disorders. All gym, all the time, to binging 4 pizzas on a weekend she was too hungover to do anything else except sleep. My mother would wake up at 3am, leave for the gym, come home at 4:30am do a P90x hour long workout, leave for work, work, and then go to the gym for 2 hours after. During all this time my mother would not eat. And by the time she got home, she would make me some sort of kale veggie salad with no dressing and go to bed. She would do this for a month or so and then completely burnout. She would then every day for a week eat at Fiesta pizza while forcing me to eat all the vegan food we had in the house so it “didn’t go bad because she spent so much money on it and I can’t let it go to waste.” She would then down 2 bottles of wine a night and completely submerge into every trashy romantic movie on Hallmark you could find and then puke up everything she ate every night. This created a very unhealthy outlook on how to be healthy. Because by the next month we were not only vegan but “this time” we were only allowed to eat alfalfa sprouted bread and lettuce with tiny black bugs all over it. I have an intense amount of unresolved issues with the gym and my relationship with food is not the best. I find that I can still go days without eating just because I forget to. Or that I can eat entirely way too much food all because I am feeling a certain way. I have an intense disgust with the gym and most physical activity done at home that has anything to do with some sweaty person yelling at me that “I can do it” and “Only 5 more reps!” makes me nauseous upon hearing it.

My main point of this post is because I am going to try and go vegan for awhile to help in my journey of becoming more mindful of not only what I am putting into my body but how it is getting there and who/what I am impacting on the way to my body. This creates an entire existence of awareness that I have never felt the need to have but feel the need to have now. See, when I started this journey it was honestly just about getting over a woman that broke my heart but it has turned into so much more. It has become about finding peace. I have learned you don’t search for it, but I am still trying to find it through various ways of living. I am not sure I am doing anything right but I wanted to try something that left minimal impact on the Earth itself and all the beings on it. If I want to lessen my suffering and I feel valued enough to do that, then why would I not also want to do things that lessen the suffering of others? I know going vegan doesn’t help all the animals but it helps my soul to not participate in any of the suffering. My soul feels heavy and I am hoping with the more natural things I put into my body the more I feel connected to the Earth and all things in it. I also want to try and develop normal thoughts about being vegan than just constant trauma and disgust left about it by my mother.

As always, I will update about my journey and we will see what happens. Maybe it helps me exponentially or maybe it will blow up in my face, but what I do know is that I wont know until I try.

Thank you for reading.

Transmasculine

My identity has been erased
By women who identity as genderqueer
Because their boyfriend’s broke up with them
Or they feel more comfortable in jeans.
They destroy my self confidence as
They explain how they are gay too
And ask me to talk more about how life is
As a lesbian with my girlfriend
As if it were that easy to erase who I am
Like I could just stop hating everything I am
And be a lesbian instead
How everyone is so accepting of who I am
I’ve become invisible living behind
Girls who think they are men because they wear suits
And men who think it’s manly to punch people
In the face
And I am stuck somewhere underneath the dirt
Invisible like a flower growing
And as I grow I will only be valued once I bloom
So I guess until then
I will have no identity
And I’ll be no one
Because those who are louder are always heard
And those that just want to be accepted for all they are
Might just not be needy enough to be seen
To be heard.

December 31st, 2019

I started 2019 lonelier than I had ever been up to that point in my life. The struggle to understand why I was so angry at the world and what I had become became the only thing I cared about. I spent most of my 2019 sober. I wanted to know that I could do it. Live my life without other substances to get through my problems. Because my problem was me. And I was blaming anything and anyone for all that I was going through. I did a lot of things on my list from the year before. I wrote almost everyday. I got published. I saved over $5,000. And this year I am working on $10,000. I took classes to get closer to my degree. I got a promotion. I now make more money than I ever thought I would in my entire life. I started volunteering. I started to learn how to say “no” to people who took advantage of my generosity. I made new friends. I lost some of those friends. I played music out at open mics. I started testosterone. I came out to more people. I made art. My art was shown all over Cleveland. I went out and took pictures. My art was in the newspaper. I learned how to love again. I learned how to do things even though they are scary. I grew. A lot. I worked. A lot. I met a person that makes me feel like I can be something. Like I already am something. Like I was never nothing and all I had to do was just start doing. When this decade started I was 18 years old. I was lost and in love. I was broken. And everyone I surrounded myself with was broken too. And miserable. I’d love to reflect more but there’s a beautiful woman sitting next to me as I write this and she has been teaching me to live in the moment. And I have been loving every minute of these lessons.

I will not be doing anything much more different this year or this decade but I do know that I wont quit trying. And even when the days are rough and I feel raw and broken, I know I have it in me to continue on. And that’s what 2019 taught me. That I am worth the fight.

Sunshine Pills

Sunshine in a black pill
My friend tells me he’s been prescribed
“sunshine”
And I’m not surprised
Realism turns to
pessimism turns to
“black hole”
In the middle of his soul
6 months of knowing him
And all I really know
Is everything in his life is pulled into
2 categories:
Things that make him angry
and
Things he really really hates
But it’s not unusual in Ohio to be
Prescribed “the D”
Because everyone here
Hates pretty much everything and everyone
Including the sun when it’s out and when it’s not
We get easily bored