Exiled against my will, he says

My father drives me insane! After the years and years and years of shit I've had to swim through, I am lucky to be afloat. I did not drown. I am alive and dealing with horrible anxiety almost daily. I could be a heartless bitch and refuse to speak to him. I could "exile" him from my life completely, but do I? No. The past is the past and I just want to move on (even though I understand that we need to confront it and deal with it, I know that's not going to happen), but when he continuously writes these sappy messages to me, searching for sympathy, like he's always done, I want to quote one of my favorite writers, David Sedaris:

"If you're looking for sympathy, it's located between shit and syphillis in the dictionary."

Seriously, he does not deserve any of the kindness my mother, brother, and I still give him. But it's not enough. It's never enough nor has it ever been enough. He wrote me today and said that he was "exiled against his will" from Arkansas. But he doesn't want to talk about it. Of course he doesn't! He doesn't ever want to talk about the past, about the things he's done, about what happened amongst our family. Our family will never be properly healed and that saddens me to no end. We just forgive and forget. But along with our kindness, our forgiveness is never enough. And if I dare say any of this to him, he will just get pissed off at me. I wish he could remember through the Xanax haze he was in how I was the parent, the mediator, the one who kept things, some of the time, from falling completely apart. I still get anxiety when my mom gets mad about something and yells. What about what happened to us, to the family? None of it seems to matter. It's always been about him. ALWAYS. He takes everything for granted.

God, I need some therapy as does my entire freaking family!

Bonnaroo 2009 Lineup Video

Poetry overwhelms me

This is a poem I've been working on for over a year now. Granted it was off and on. I didn't really spend that much time over all on it. I'm still not happy with it. I think my title is cheesy, but it's all I can come up with right now. I have a really hard time with poetry after taking many creative writing classes in college. There's so much you have to think about. It overwhelms me.


Invisible Impressions

I glanced at the blue ink
sinking into the lines
of my fingertips
like shadows on cracks
in metallic concrete.

I stamped my fingerprints
onto white walls
then pressed
middle and index finger
into the puddle
above your shoulder blade--

I left an imprint on your skin.

You grasped for my fingers
like strings, or rather straws,
thirsty for my compassion;
a compassion you knew could be squeezed
from me like water from a cactus.
You were dying for comfort,
and I was weary of the warnings
pricking underneath my skin.

Once again,
you’ve
sucked
me
dry.

So on second thought
I could’ve stamped my fingerprints
onto a white chaise or
perhaps I should’ve pressed
into the hallows
of your face, but
once I saw your tears
mix with the blue ink,
I hesitated; my hands were shaky. Yet
somehow, I was
still
in that moment--
frozen, dehydrated,
gazing at the blueberry splatters.

Eventually,
they faded away
along with your weeping and
I knew you’d soon forget,
my impressions erased
as quickly as magic ink.
The blue now invisible,
and the kindness I’d spared,
untraceable.


The poem is about the many times my kindness has been taken for granted. I put alot into relationships and I am a great friend. I try to leave an impression of my kindness on those I care about, but sometimes these people end up completely forgetting how I had been there for them. Not only am I wanting them to remember my own kindness, I also want them to remember to be kind. Sometimes that too gets lost.