gracesmemoir - Tumblr blog

[gracesmemoir]

25 June

im 20 years old and gone are the days where i can count the times i’ve had sex in my head

he always lights a cigarette after sex with the fan on low and the ashtray on his chest, he said it makes him feel like a vietnam soldier.

we watch movies and fuck and watch movies again then fall asleep on repeat. we lay in bed naked and stroke each other. his ears are sensitive.

i’ve learned i like to constantly touch someone, or pet them, as a replacement for words but also as a reminder to them that i’m present, i want to touch you, it’s okay, i like being with you.

my mother says i’m making myself too available. that definitely isn’t the case

summer is watching the house of a woman she met in drug therapy for a couple months. it’s so out of place, the view from the backyard looks like some Mediterranean grotto with overwhelming green and flowers and all white exteriors and stepping stones to the pool. it’s peak colonial revival in windsor farms, on a street with architecture so virginian summer calls it ridiculous but genuine. we went there with ian and river the first time and met a woman my mom went to the gym with. richmond is so disgustingly small. it’s near impossible to find someone with so connotations around them or hasn’t fucked someone you know. we took shrooms both times by the pool but it was mostly just a body high. summer and i talked for a while and the sky was blue and pink. the clouds looked like succulents.

i feel like i’m growing apart from jordan. it’s just hard to talk to him for a lot of reasons. school is a mess right now, i really don’t to stay at home! i think.

this year has been so weird. life is so weird!!

nostalgic for a time that is not yet over

still no person has been able to make me come

[gracesmemoir]

7 June

except for now her smile is just as ingrained in me as it is in him now, i replay her laugh in my mind, her profile, possible expressions, her voice, to make sense of the false person i was left for. to simulate the experience of him being with her, to imagine what i can never observe and what i can never be, i put them under this state of digital surveillance to keep this sick play alive. i contemplate the aspects of her personality that are certainly better than mine: she is probably more straight-forward, more humble, better at eye-contact, pure. she seems so happy and uncomplicated and oddly like his sister. this person i not know but think about all the time and probably has spared 20 minutes thinking about me in her entire life, who is my obsession, my paradigm, who is everything i want to be. i’ve never felt more pathetic in my life but i’m also numb to it in a way, like i’ve already excepted that this is the way things are. the worst part about it all is the anxious nausea in my stomach that comes and goes, like my internal organs know about the happiness they are experiencing but i am not. “i’ve seen you three times since summer” stuck with me so much because it really put my infatuation into perspective, this engrossing, festering crush that i don’t regret but wouldn’t wish on anybody. it hurts so much.

i think the worst part about heartbreak is the hopelessness, like you will never meet someone that checks all those boxes again, that’s that easy to talk to again (started crying for the second time ever here) or has the same balance or cute and nerdy and cool hobbies or the same cute face or or as good of a kisser or cool apartment and backyard or friends and family or general goodness, because he was so good. in general but also to me. he was self-assured and accountable to himself but not in a way that made him cocky, he worked hard and didn’t bullshit things, he gave respect to people and didn’t prioritize his own ego, he was probably more self-aware than i was, he was good at expressing himself without getting nervous. i know its over and i know the best thing for me to do is to give up hope, but maybe 5 or 10 years down the line we could both get a drink at a bar. hope is such a liar. hope is what kept me going all these years, a little over 4 now, but’s its now gonna happen anymore. its never gonna be the same. i wish i was capable of feeling this way about more than one person, i think it would have been worth the pain as long as i knew he wasn’t monopolizing my thoughts anymore. i think about him so much. i see him everywhere.

The Truths are that he was my True firsts for everything, First boy to show any kind of interest in what I had to say at 15, first boy to message me like that, and the real first time i had sex. no other time before that was there any sort of romance or caressing or cherishing of each others bodies, certainly no focus on my pleasure, and i feel like her sort of broke me from that hex of being afraid of sex. I didn’t have sex for all of 2019, for such a big portion of my freshman and sophomore year of college! i was scared of the pain of course from that hilarious first time, but also i had no desire or environment to pursue sex. not in that crusty dorm room or at home or on tinder, i think i figured i might as well do it with someone i really liked. Him again. the painful part i keep coming back to is that i wasn’t his first for anything. it was all just me. what shocked me about that night was how happy statements like I want to make you cum or You feel so good made me feel, followed by post-coital remarks like “You got me cheesin’ I haven’t felt this happy in such a long time” and stories about our first kisses while we’re laying in each other’s arms naked. that’s what put the nail in the coffin! but is that what great sex is supposed to feel like? just people connecting physically and emotionally in a way that makes them both glow the day after? even if it was a somewhat-failed attempt and i accidentally blue balled him by making out for too long it was still good ass sex. These memories are bittersweet because I know I am the only one who experienced them who is pouring over them again and again or that they had any sort of major significance to, like a memory with a dead person. where i am the only one left alive keeping this memory in existence, it feels so fragile and so fleeting and so insignificant now, because i know i am the only one who fucking cares anymore. but when i saw that picture of them she posted on her public finsta on his fucking bed, her legs over him, where we had fucked a couple months prior, thats when i just became confused more than anything. how could he move on so quickly? how could he just be okay with erasing me from his life basically forever because she was SO much better? once again i now how pathetic this sounds. ive managed to rationalize my obsessive behavior by it just becoming as normal of a routine as checking my text messages. maybe it’s the quarantine madness. oh, and the timing dear god!!

it’s important to note my awareness around the fact that i idolized him, that i found absolutely everything he said and did as endearing instead of perhaps inconsiderate of me. i cherished every part of his personhood, venerated him and twisted the bad interactions we had into being my fault (which they mostly were). i accepted the careless and lame parts of him easily because i was blinded by love, but of course he could not do the same. because he never loved me, and i loved him for four years. four years placed in such an impressionable and emotional time in my life i can’t tell if they were wasted on him. probably. my lack of romantic history is concerning to me at this point but that’s a story for another time. i think my goal for the end of this year is to fall out of love with him. to move on and to learn how to love other people. i think i’m capable, there’s just this loop my brain is stuck in where i compare him to everything and it seems to be immune to fading to time. probably because i don’t have clarity and at this rate will never get it.

time is another factor that terrifies me. throughout my four years of loving him he has had 3 girlfriends that i know of. i have had none and he is currently to only sort of flame i’ve had in my entire life and that didn’t even last 2 months. i just want to know that there’s someone out there that i could potentially feel this strongly about too. otherwise what’s the point?

[gracesmemoir]

24 July

DECISIONS

It’s next year now. I feel like no one has been there for me for any big decision I’ve made over the past couple years except for my mom by force. I feel like everyone assumes I know what’s best for me and be more passive when I need guidance or am seemingly not doing well. Maybe that’s adulthood, maybe growing older and treading lightly just means you have less reasons to reach out to people and be honest with them. I love honesty. True honest is so rare. Someone telling you what they truly believe without regard to your immediate feelings. Sometimes we don’t deserve to be treated kindly.

There are so many dull and ingenuine responses that my friends, date I say generation, and I have adapted, empty buzzwords that could mean anything in conversation. They have also fundamentally changed how I think I empathize. I could hear a friend talk about an eating disorder or rape or money or boy problems and just say “that’s crazy” or “oof” the entire time. Trauma and words don’t go well together. Alternatively: damn. oh woooow. uh huh. exactly. yeah, i feel that. My brain is just circuited to these generic responses because I’m too overwhelmed to even think of a response that I actually mean. Any way to talk (especially about sensitive stuff) that will make my brain and mouth work at the same speed.

My thoughts have never felt in sync with the rest of my body, surroundings, or life. Not necessarily skewed or inaccurate, just slower. A discordant stream of consciousness that will never say exactly what I mean, when I mean it. I wonder what my life would’ve been like if I was running just as fast as everybody else.

There’s so much going on right now and so much has happened. Too much for me to ever know or remember or properly reflect on. I truly don’t know where I want to be next month, let alone all of next year. How could I ask myself to decide that? How could the world? It’s so cruel. Am I just supposed to be in a state of limbo until the world suddenly forces me to pick my fate at the last minute? I say I do well under pressure, but I just think it’s the only way I know how to operate.

I tweeted today: i just wanna chill but i’m not letting myself be chill...i always gotta put myself in high stakes or very stressful situations when i honestly never had the capacity to handle that shit

I know this is just a really stressful night and time and I will be back to my usual jaded, masked, and passively despondent self tomorrow but right now I really wanna feel bad for myself and have someone feel bad for me. Have someone genuinely upset over me other than my mother.

Have started crying several times while writing this.

I’m going to start looking people in the eyes more.

Didn’t even leave the house today.

[gracesmemoir]

29 June

PARKING DECK

Last Saturday morning, during the witching hours, the boy I love was in an accident. He said he thought he was going fly, which is so very much like him. After 2.5 acid tabs and “too many” bong rips he went out to skate with his friends. Not in the right mind. For some enigmatic cognition unknown to him or universe, he jumped off the second story of a parking deck. He broke both of his feet. The scary thing is that I had an creeping fear that something might have happened to him that day. His sister Harper whom I am friends with was supposed to drive me and Pinotti up to DC for a Harry Styles concert, but cancelled literally the morning of. I was kind of pissed off but also worried because the only justification for doing that is something dire. I imagined Harper had family problems, brother problems. I remember thinking for a second sitting out on my porch that if Jack were dead I could never forgive myself for some nonexistent crime. Not messaging him more? Not talking to him? Not being his friend? Not having him love me back? But then I was fine because I knew letting my mind ponder baseless and unavailing stressors was below me. Why do I believe I’m too strong for the concept of worry or insecurity? Perhaps because I think people who openly share their worries and insecurities are distasteful and weak. It’s such a heartless and hypocritical trait of mine. Well, we’re all conditioned akin to sociopaths to some extent. I never went to the concert. I kept laughing at the idea of his body flying through the air, first horizontal and then downward. “The whole situation is morbidly hilarious,” I said. I think he liked that.

HAIR DIARY

A couple of days ago I cut my hair. Chin-length and curly. I don’t remember it being this short ever. For the longest time, probably starting in late middle school, I wanted it to-my-ass long. Five years and all of highschool later I have shed most emotional attachment to my hair through an array of expensive experimentation and appearance-based battle fatigue. This is a sick right of passage for all black girls: whilst coming to terms that we can never accomplish that silky smooth white girl flow, we must a natural way to style our hair that we feel confident in or splurge in alternatives. Both are completely valid options. My first serious hair tryst was an attempt in $300 box braids at the end of my sophomore year. I thought they looked fucking awful and stayed up until 5am to take them out. A white mother and all white friends left me clueless in black hairstyles, but whatever. There are some white girls with curlier hair than mine anyways. I tried senegalese twists a year later and took them out that very night, too. I wanted to be Zoë Kravitz so fucking bad. I quite like my hair now though. It looks like Sofia’s. It’s cute and easy and makes me feel like a toddler.

TALENT IS A LIE

Lily posted on her finsta yesterday: “I want to have a tangible, visible talent. And after 18 years of failing at that goal I’m starting to panic that I’m just generally incompetent and will have to settle for having an unskilled normal job instead of the creative path I want to be on because I will just never be good enough. At anything” This really resonated with me as well as millions of other teenagers who aren’t satisfied with being fucking doctors or government employees or regional managers or lawyers. To me, that is true hell. True soul-killing shit. Creative inertia has settled into every artistic practice or discipline I’d like to think I once entertained. I don’t have the motivation or direction to draw or paint or embroider or collage or research, and it really scares me. Not to shit on myself too much though, I’m pretty cocky in carrying myself. And I think I have a decent amount of talent at nothing in particular. No specialities or passions. I breathe in but hold the air in my lungs until my face turns blue. I hold the silver spoon but still starve. Maybe the $70,000 art school will change this. Maybe not, though.

TODAY

I got up around 9 and set in bed on my computer. I only left bed to go to my mom’s room or get breakfast (granola, almond milk, blueberries). I just watch tv and twitter and shop. These are my days now. I’m going to Fallout with Ezra tonight. Kind of excited. 

“TIME WOUNDS ALL HEALS”