Little Things That Make Me Happy

Apparently, happiness looks a lot like being understood.

I know it’s cliche. You don’t have to tell me.

There are many people I think relate to me, but I don’t find myself relating to many people. I don’t think people understand me, my experiences or what happens in between humility and confidence.

But I have lived stupidly and in emotionally volatile waves. The world beat me up pretty bad. It’s not easy to notice. Not unless you get close to me. Which rarely happens. But my hair is pretty and I can smile real big, so it’s like a magic trick.

I find myself relating more to things, fictional characters or weather more than human beings. I feel rejected by people. Ostracized or judged.

When it rains, it feels like there’s finally something there letting me know it sees me. Like it’s mirroring exactly how I feel in all its intensity. It can be gentle. Or heavy. Sometimes it can be dangerous. But it always comes and goes. It may fall from the sky, but to me, it just sounds like the world finally coming undone. Finally letting itself feel something after being beaten down by humans—littering, killing and destroying the planet. Like someone holding it in all day at work, just to finally crumble on their bathroom floor. I know what it’s like to white-knuckle the day to protect people’s sanity. So you put on a magic show. And the crowd goes wild.

Rain makes me feel understood. I can hold five hundred nightmares in my body until they come pouring out of me on a random Tuesday afternoon. I keep the flood on my bathroom floor so I don’t rain on the world, though. I’m not God. Although sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if I drowned the world in it.

Instead it shows up in my writing. Or how I love. And sometimes, on those very rare occasions, it shows up and destroys everything around it—including myself.

And I am seen.

Deep Car Talks

I’m afraid of being seen by you. I know what comes with that. It’s easier to wear a shadow, or pretend to be perfect and proper and bubbly so no one feels uncomfortable. And I do that a lot, you know? If people saw the emotions I’m capable of, I think it would make them claw at their throats for air and push me down to stay afloat.

Nothing feels small to me. Nothing feels like a minor experience.

Everything is a threat.

Everything is all-consuming.

Or maybe it’s just love.

And I avoid people and experiences because I know how desperately I want someone to touch my roots. That I’m willing to go far enough to get your dirt under my nails and call it gardening. I’m afraid of how deeply my hands will go. And I risk getting stuck there.

Or spend years trying to pull myself out.

Without hands, what will I do?

Scream.

But when I have that one moment. The moment when I feel like I’ve met someone that sees and doesn’t run, what else is there to do but bleed in the comfort of a laid-back seat with the music on low. Maybe it’s something a little sad or a bit dark. All the same, just something else that mirrors me.

Intimacy terrifies me. I can really come to life in a crowd, you know. I can really shine. Tell the funniest jokes, make a fool out of myself just a little bit—as long as I can get a laugh out of someone, who cares? But something happens to me when you get too close. I crawl back inside of myself. That little safe space that’s only for me. The place I used to go when the music was too loud and the adults were acting funny. A place I can go where I cover my eyes and they can’t see me if I can’t see them.

Until I meet someone that gently brings my hands back down to my lap and tells me all the bad things they’ve done. They show me their shadows and we shake hands and they sit behind us in the backseat. And the music is low and they smile when I tell them my biggest fear is sharks.

And if I’m lucky, maybe the rain makes an appearance on the windshield.

A Song That Kills Me

I’m not usually into the happy songs. Not because I want to be Wednesday Addams or anything. But I want to be taken over by someone else’s sadness. Let me hear the sickness you’ve spent years trying to cure. I love that someone else’s pain can be the remedy for mine. The ugliest thing done to you can become the prettiest thing you make. You can build a thousand castles from the ash and I think you deserve to be crowned for it.

^{Even if no one understands.}

I know what it’s like to dislodge the knife from your heart and carve a masterpiece of your own making. Even if only one person understands, isn’t that enough to know you can be understood? And God, do I understand. More than I’d like to.

To be slaughtered by someone else’s pain and resurrected by the killer is but a voluntary death. And that’s something to live for.

Writing a Pretty One-liner

I’m not always on. I have my nights when everything feels numb. When I can’t feel, I can’t write. If I write from my brain, it loses its flesh and feels like bone and reads like computer. If I can’t write from my heart, I don’t want to fucking write. It doesn’t read the same. It feels like I wrote it with lidocaine.

But there are other nights…

Maybe someone hurt my feelings. Maybe someone I loved left me. Or maybe I let my mind wander into places the body has long since left, revisiting the graveyard of almosts. And I’ll write something that looks like it belongs on a fucking tombstone. Here are a few of my favorites:

”We were cut from the same night sky, hiding stars behind our backs, blaming each other for the darkness.”

“You have to be a little fucking crazy to fight fire with gasoline.”

“But I’ve loved too many Gods. And I’ve loved too many Yous. Turns out, I’ve loved nothing at all.”

“Fill a church with guns and you’ll still find your place is on your knees.”

“There are three options when standing in front of something so surreal; fight, freeze or fuck.”

They’re not perfect. They’re fucking mine.

They’re Violetta’s.

Being Understood

It circles back—wanting to understand. Wanting to be understood, yet not wanting to be close enough to be seen.

I do find people misinterpret things, misunderstand what I say. Sometimes on purpose. They contort my meaning into something I don’t recognize. I do believe some people make it their life’s mission to misunderstand you. And because of that I find myself speaking to walls and being shut out by even more of them at every turn. So I sit. I sit and I wait.

For them?

For him?

For you?

I don’t know.

I’ve stopped introducing myself. I’ve stopped approaching people. Love scares me because it has too many faces and I don’t know which one to believe. All I can trust are my feelings, but those have led me into graves I barely clawed my way out of. You see more when you’re closer to death. There is no greater light than the one that pulls you under and forces you to see things others have had the fortune of never living.

Between all the walls and faces, you hope you finally see one you can trust. And you think you do, but they turn into walls too.

I crave someone to touch me so badly it tears into the pit of my stomach. It’s hard to focus on loving someone when your mind is built to detect the impending doom. So my silence becomes a weapon I turn on myself.

But I sit in the car with the seat laid back.

Playing songs that will kill me.

Writing my pretty one-liners,

waiting for the rain.

And I will talk here. And maybe you’ll turn into a wall someday too.

But thanks for your time, you know?

xxx