for a few minutes the room is silent and big and empty and i am enveloped in the sweet scent of it. satisfied, my eyes flutter shut, and as i lay i hear the whispering begin.

"are you lonely?"
psspssspsss.
"want to come lay with me?"
"can i?"

i hear covers rustling as she gets off the couch and joins him on the mattress on the floor. i squeeze my eyes shut and plug my ears with my fingers to block out the sounds of movement coming from the ground. suddenly, i'm cold, but i don't want to get my hoodie because i'd have to walk past them.

i calm myself down by thinking about my friends, good things coming up. their noises are no longer audible and i manage to doze off. half an hour? an hour? i don't know, but when i wake up again it's to the sound of heavy breathing and the snap of elastic waistbands. more whispering on her part, and the panting stops. we can go into my sister's room, he mutters, and they both get up, walk out, and shut the door behind them.

i sit up and check the time on my phone. four in the morning. the absolute worst time for me to be experiencing this, as it always leads to self doubt. i grab my hoodie and sit down again. why, after a month of friendship with him, has she managed to do what i never could during that year or so when i was enamored with him? i don't understand why she has no self control. i've lost count, i can't remember all of the names of the boys she's been with this semester. she is beautiful and fun, and acts confident. her stomach is flat. it's four in the morning and i vow to myself never to eat another bite of food for the rest of my life. i am obviously being extremely unreasonable, not thinking clearly, but all of this fills my mind until it's ready to burst like an overfilled balloon.

typing angry letters on my phone screen brings me no comfort, nor does complaining halfassedly to a sleepy newly-eighteen friend. so i hang up and i lay back down and i try not to listen for the rhythmic creaking of the bed in the room next door. the same bed i myself have desecrated in the past.. but not with him.

i don't know where i am going with writing this. there is nowhere to go with it. it's not that i still like him, it's more the basic principle of what happened; why am i always the one lying alone nowadays? what about me turns people away?

last night at the show, i felt like i was entering a past self. i was confident, i grabbed people's hands, i smiled and sang and danced around. two girls who i saw but don't know very well later commented that i was 'pretty' and 'very cool'. was i actually a different person? was there something i did that came off differently to people? at the show, i wore a shirt that was a little formfitting, and maybe it showed my stomach a little bit when i raised my arms into the air, but i didn't care. i still sang just as hard.

i want to be that person all the time.

past future

last five entries:
blisters and bruises - 03.18.08
dorsey - 03.13.07
finding peace - 02.02.07
unintentional clean slate - 09.11.06
natural born cyborg - 06.23.06