Stories and Stars

The most beautiful people are the broken ones.  The ones who have had everything taken away from them.  The ones who are at that edge where there is no reason to lie.  At that edge, all that's left are the stories.  And that's when it all pours out because suddenly, there are no walls, no dams, no barriers.  The truths flow as smoothly as the tears, even if the mouth stumbles over them.

It's a stage where there is no fear.  In a sense, it is rock bottom without actually being rock bottom.  It is quiet and calm alternating with desperation and madness.  It's this beautiful edge that only happens under this precise set of circumstances, no more and no less.  It's just one of those lines, one of those things you have to walk to understand.

I remember walking out of the building and seeing the clouds before I took a picture.  We were fighting.  I insisted on stopping anyway.  It's those little moments of liberation.  I remember watching the sunset that one day.  It was beautiful.  I wanted to cry.  I remember the drizzle that morning and god I wish it never happened.  I want to go back and make it all disappear.  I remember the walk and the traces of blood and I knew but I lied and I remember the way the air smelled.

The coming of spring is hard for me to handle now, because it always smells like that day after the rain.  I don't want to remember it.  It's one of those things that's okay most of the time but hurts so much others.  I remember lying under stars with someone else and saying it out loud for the first time four days later.  And I didn't know what to say to "congratulations" because ever since that kiss, it didn't mean anything.

And even though I'd like it to, it still doesn't.  It haunts me and it tortures me sometimes, even though I'll never admit it out loud.  I'll write about it and sometimes I'll cry about it at night when you can't see me and I'll stare at photos of another person entirely because they make me want to die.  None of the passivity of simply not wanting to be around anymore, but an actual, active desire to make myself cease to exist.

I'm not broken the way I was then.  I was so vulnerable, so cracked, so shattered, and it dripped off me like blood, it was impossible not to notice.  I'm okay now.  I just have my "bad days" if you want to call them that.  They're not days.  They're hours.  Or minutes, more often.  Episodes, perhaps?  It still happens.  It still hurts.  It hurts like hell.  Sometimes I think it might hurt more than it did back then because the wound may have healed but the bullet can't be removed, so it digs deeper and deeper into me.

It's not the same.  It never will be.  I made my mistakes and I can't fix them.  And that's just something I have to live with now.  Nothing I do can change that.  Even if I wish it could.