Daddy Issues

She falls into arms that might make her bruise,
who don’t cherish her love and her heart they misuse.

Dad must have run out before she could walk,
Beat mom to a pulp or maybe he
just never showed up.
His actions must have somehow doomed her a “slut”.

You can pick her out by her shirt much too low
You’d be the third guys this week, as far as you know.
You draw a label on her forehead
and try your best to ask her to bed.
She would be so easy to use,
Target: The One With “Daddy Issues. “

You look at me like the way this shirt molds my chest,
and my jeans hold my hips
makes me compatible with the sheets on your bed.
I bat my eyes and listen to your lies
because you’re cute and I’m new to this room.
And for a while I am a prize to be won or a gift to be received.
You drink me in saying something like I’m water that you need.

But let’s stop right there before you’re confused
This sweet naïve nineteen-year-old
Ain’t retaining any “daddy issues”

My dad was strong and he knew how to love
He knew what was important and knew how to have fun.
My dad showed me how a man should treat a woman
Because he knew chumps like you and my faith you could ruin.

I may keep eye contact a moment too long
And sometimes do things that some say to be wrong.
The truth is, I’m smarter than that.
Much smarter than you boy, in fact.

I’ll let you tell me I’m pretty
And the amazing girlfriend you think I would be.
But my dear, I know your intentions
Oh and did I mention…

He taught me to be better,
And the only daddy issue that may be
is that from six feet under,
he can’t keep stupid college boys away from me.

A Sad Short Story

Disclaimer: To give you some background, I wrote this about my friend from high school who threw away everything good she ever had... she let her life simmer down into just a sad short story.

She rolled up a piece of temporary happiness and inhaled smoke from the ember tip. Her eyes eased closed as she coughed and exhaled all her aspirations for life. Flicking the ashes to start the fire that burned her history and calculus books. Warming her hands by the flame her eyes glaze toward the sky, fixating on a flickering star, dreaming of being twenty-one. A rusty, worn lawn chair on her front yard, feet kicked up, she was floating. Another failed bonfire faded into a memory and the rejection from her grounded friends was currently forgotten. Assurance from her temporary acquaintances, that feel like best friends, make her chair become a spaceship, soon soaring among the stars.

The moon loved her and the big dipper sang her to sleep. Orion’s belt held her close and told her she was beautiful. She lost thirty pounds and was the most charming when she danced along the Milky Way. All the asteroids laughed at her jokes and the space listened for hours to her secrets.

The sun came up and her stomach growled. The embers were gone and all smoke exhaled. She woke up to half burned books and misplaced homework. She found the thirty pounds she lost the night before and the added weight of her disapproving friends. All that was left were the people who would share her secrets with the world and the not so funny things that she laughed so hard at last night.

It doesn’t feel right; she would rather dance among the stars, and why not? Her weak heart hides her in the world in which she doesn’t have to pretend to succeed, a world that unquestionably loves her... but a temporary world.

What It Means To Be Missing

It’s not a passing thought or a once a month affair
It’s when you are making dinner or brushing your hair
Or the night you are going to the prom
Or the afternoon while mowing the lawn
It’s the hours spent looking for their face
And realize it’s no longer there
It’s when a casserole can make you cry
And you can’t exactly say why
It’s the looking at pictures and talking to the wind
It’s them never coming back again.
Not when you will see them in a week, maybe a month or two
Not a phone call away or simply finding something else to do
It’s the phone that keeps on ringing and living in the past
It’s no new stories and ones told too fast.

Missing you is not just a phase to go through
It’s living in memories while trying to make some new.

A mind of it's own

A bit of drool escapes my lips, as it only does when I fall asleep in public. I’ve always hated libraries, but in college, it’s “the place to be” during exam week. So I pay the consequences of doing what’s cool, with my head resting on my keyboard…

CAPS LOCK is the drill sergeant, CONSTANTLY YELLING AT THE KEYS TO FIND THEIR PLACE ON THE WORD DOCUMENT. “SADIE NEEDS THIS 8 PAGE PAPER DONE TONIGHT YOU SISSY BOYS!” Then from Q to P and A to L and Z to M, the letters scurry to find their place. Until the bully from the corner, Delete, comes to do away with all their hard work.
From the far corners Esc and Eject are doing their best to run away. The commas, apostrophes, quotations and periods are severely depressed, for the youth has abandoned them and taken the Shifty side. BeC@UsE w3 aLl Kn0w G!rL$ wH0 tYp3 l!k3 Th!s. The mouse swivels on over to my Facebook page, trying to defriend them, but Return is too easy to reaccept their request. The anti-social space bar is pushing away consonants and vowels while the arrow keys assist in bringing them together. The ? and ! are fighting and cussing each other out, trying to finish the %#$@!*& paper before I wake.
The tíldas añd accents are misünderstood while the : and ; are feeling misused. {braces} + [brackets] = are hoping for calculus equations because (parenthesis) hold all the secrets in language. F12 decides to take control, before things get out of hand and the rest of the library notices the life in the keyboard. The volume rises and the master opens her eyes…

Wiping the drool from my keyboard, I pray to research paper fairies that this paper would write itself. If only the keyboard had a mind of it’s own and I could get back to wasting time on Facebook.

Fuel

I have been avoiding publishing certain works of mine, because I have matured past the stage of writing about puppies and rainbows. Nervous because most of the people reading are my family, and I am still probably frozen in their mind to the 8 year old with braces. But recently I have gotten into watching Slam poetry online, basically obsessed, and I realize that if I don't share what I write, than I am hiding a piece of me. Honestly, that isn't fair to you or to me. So now, uncensored, I will post what I write, because it is what I feel and experience. I'm going to be brave and vulnerable. After all, this is my blog, I am nineteen and experiencing college, life is more than puppies and rainbows now. Not that it's all, or even mostly, bad... but it gives you fuel.

I lay there with your arms around my body

Breathing in the memory that I’m prepared to store

For the nights ahead that I already know you won’t call.

Telling myself, “Hey, It’s okay, At least you didn’t go all the way.”

I shave off and dissect the previous encounter in my mind.

Keeping the part where you told me I was beautiful.

Keeping the part where you looked me straight in my eyes,

Where you told me about your family

Where you made me feel special,

Where you called me baby.

Gathering those pieces in the space next to me,

so there is something to weigh down by bed;

Something to warm my covers,

something to hold me close,

something to back up all my lonely teenage clichés.

But the rest of my night is lying next to me too,

Weighing down the mattress with temptation,

Regrets,

Broken ideals,

With disrespect,

Hickies

And lips to be sealed

Secrets to be kept

And expectations to fulfill.

At dawn I'll shuffle around to find my bra and self-respect.

I’ll stuff the good memories in last night’s jeans pocket

And the bad ones will stick to the bottom of my shoe.

Follow me back to my own single mattress

And witness the lies I’ll tell my friends

And the lies I’ll tell myself.

Pretending that next time I won’t settle for temporary.

Next time I’ll stay true to the vows I have professed.

Maybe that next time there won’t even be a next time.

But I know in the fumbled excuses and make up covered tears, pain will echo in my voice no matter the tune I sing.

Tonight I’ll go to bed, with the story I have created. The arms of false hope will rock me to sleep and night by night it will let me become a little more jaded.

Because breaking your own heart is safer than letting a stranger

and I am an expert

at avoiding danger.

Dear Sadie,

Thursday, September 17, 2009

It has been said that to know where you are going in life, you have to know where you have been. I know where you have been and you know where you are going.

You used to listen to Ani Difranco on a daily basis and tried to earn money every chance you got. You indulged yourself in ice cream too frequent, snuggled with your mommy and loved your daddy more than air. You drove too fast, texted too often and were quick to forget. You stood strong in what you believed, even when you weren’t quite sure what it was. And at the end of the year, you ran with your diploma.

You have loved the world until it wore you out, trusted the ground after you tripped and forgave the sky whenever it rained. Your heart was never on your sleeve, more like tucked under your socks in the security of your shoe. You have stepped lightly as you walked daily through your past. The present was like movie, you had no control over the monster that would jump out from behind the door. This girl at seventeen, hopefully you still remember, too often left the house without her shoes on.

Now you are older and wiser, as long as you haven’t forgotten. The older you get, the more you realized how you need the people you knew when you were young. I hope you have fallen in love, by choice, not by gravity. Every step you took was precisely planned out, but when you had no place to walk, you jumped. You listen to Ani Difranco on a daily basis and eat organic produce only. You are shaped by the life you had once but no longer carry around your mold.

You don’t give up on your dreams, even when you can’t fall asleep. You call your mother just to let her know your flavor of ice cream and blow kisses to your daddy. Your best friends have become your foundation and courage and your sister has become your best friend. You questions the stars and sunsets make you cry.  Life hasn’t held you back or moved on without you, you are holding tightly to the reigns. You are a woman who is conquering the world, but rarely go outside with your shoes on.

Love, Sadie

Sequence, studying & Self-reliance

I kept waiting for the inspirational moment in which I would have a great realization about college life and my newfound independence. At that opportune moment, I would whip out my Macbook and blog about it while sounding educated and well-rounded as I sip coffee in a hip cafe. I’m almost a month in and I have had many small realizations, most of which are not blog worthy. But for $339/credit hour this is what I have come to realize:

People think you are much cooler than you are when you have a guitar in your room.

Roommates will steal your food. The next morning, you will steal their headphones.

You don’t have to wear sequence and leggings. Most nights, youprobably shouldn’t.

On Friday mornings you have to yell louder than the alarm to make sure she gets up for her 8 o’clock test.

It’s never “nothing” when she stays the night in his dorm five out of seven days of the week.

We have half the same genetic makeup as a banana.

Being a football player is not a personality trait.

Suddenly, you are remorseful of the years your sister spent telling you to keep your things on your side of the room. Karma is a bitch.

Studying is essential. Making sure you study the correct chapter is even more important.

Boys know how to make you feel special to them. The trick is remembering that you are too special for them.

Staying up until two and waking a few hours later is suddenly acceptable.

Smoke breaks are a good time for socializing… and telling your roommate that your dad died from cancer.

Eye contact makes you new friends; so does remembering their name.

Your mother’s voice makes everything ok.