I've realized that I haven't posted here for quite some time. For months. I can feel the gaps of time widening and widening and I'm starting to recognize that those widening gaps are signs that it's time to move on.

And so what I want this post to be about is how I'm ready to move on.

I'm not sure who all reads this blog, or even if anybody does. I've learned recently that I can't ultimately really know who is all seeing anything. I'm posting on the internet. The internet is vast and incredible and very much an open, free space in which anybody can see anything.

I hope none of what I've said here has cause any harm. And I don't want to end this all in one big apology. I don't want to apologize for what I've said or where I've said it or even how I've said it. But I want to apologize for harm done. I want to apologize for that. It was not my place or my intention to harm anybody in the crafting of these words.

But unfortunately, in this world, simply by our very truthful existence we cause harm. We've all caused harm. But I don't think that diminishes the fact that we should apologize for it. So I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for what these words have done to you, if they've done you harm. If they made you feel helpless to me, or unimportant, or misinformed, or if they've made you feel as though you've failed.

Failure isn't real. Nobody has really failed. You have not failed me. I hope so thoroughly that I have not failed you.

This blog was my first step into writing. It was my first step into the unknown of who I am and who I was and figuring out the materials I am made of. I experienced love and heartbreaks and betrayal and numbness and grief and highs so high that I think I burst out of this very universe and into another one. I have been so happy and so alive. I have been so sad and so dead. High school was a ride. So college will be. Life is so many things that I do not know yet.

Let me tell you that I feel so much love for the person I was in each and every one of these posts. I feel so much love for that lost girl that said the things she said at the times she said them. I'm realizing everyday how important that concept is. Saying the things you say at the times you say them. I still want to be a writer. I don't know if this blog is proof that I already am.

Words have been a saving grace for me. Words have filled me up. Words have spilled over the top of the mug like coffee and burned my thighs. They have burned me and healed me.

I'm very grateful for you having read these words on this blog at the times you did and in the ways that you did. I'm very grateful for your comments and for your love, even if I had no idea you were saying them or feeling it for me. I'm very grateful for all the times and things and ways people experience me even if I have no idea that they are. Thank you for experiencing me. It has made a difference. I believe thoughts and feelings and comments about other people are prayers for them. I pray for all of you through my thoughts and my ideas and my words and my love.

Do you ever just lay in bed, and think about somebody, and consciously put all the love you can muster into your thoughts for them?

I think that is a beautiful prayer.

I don't know if I believe in God but I believe in praying. And I believe in feeling. And I believe in writing. And I believe in all of you.

I really, truly do.

I believe in this blog. I believe in all the ways it has manifested itself and I believe in the time period that it existed in. I won't be deleting anything because I've learned the hazards of deleting and I've learned that even if you delete the physical evidence of something, its actuality in your mind never quite gets deleted along with it.

I think that's a remarkable thing, the way our minds allow for things to live on even if it's only a distortion of the ways things actually were in their physical form. I think our minds are remarkable things.

High school was a time. This blog was a time. But I've realized it's over. This blog is over. High school is over. But words are not over. Words are never over. They just take new spaces. My words are taking new spaces. I'm finding that my words have now taken a public over private form. Maybe that's something that needed to happen and did. Maybe it's something I worked consciously for. I don't know. I just know my words need a new space. They feel so lovely here on this blog. My words feel very comfortable here and maybe I'm trying to fix a good thing but it's the choice I'm making.

I want you all to know love. I hope very greatly that this blog has given you some sort of love, some sort of ache, some sort of piece of my heart.

All of these words on this blog are little pieces of my heart and I hope you've been able to hold them. Lord knows, my heart needs holding. Lord knows all of our hearts need some holding.

I had lots to say. And here is where I said it.

You know what? I need my everyday, stupid, societal, shallow thoughts and actions and ideas and steps. I need the fucking treadmill. I need somebody to tell me how to define my worth. That's right, I need big corporations and government and a society filled with overwhelming prejudice to define my worth. I need somebody else to tell me what to do. Because I can't keep sitting here making up my own life. I cannot just fall through life and see what happens. I will die if I do. And maybe that undermines everything that makes me wild and free and full. Maybe that defies all that is myself. Maybe that makes me seem shallow and stupid. Maybe that will ruin all my work as a writer. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But I need for somebody to tell me that if I don't make peace with "God" that I'm going to hell. I need somebody to tell me that being anything more than "skinny" is not okay. I need somebody to tell me that saving for retirement and then spending it all on a nice condo in Florida is a good idea. I need somebody to tell me that sex is nasty and wrong. I need somebody to tell me that getting a good job that pays well counts as a fulfilling and meaningful thing to call my life's work. I need somebody to tell me that if I don't get married and settle down and have children that I am not doing it right.

All those things are comforting. And guess what all you ball-busters of life? I need comfort. I need the approval of the shit heads around me. I need the approval of my parents and my teachers and my friends and my strangers and my neighbors and my sibling and my cousins and my co-workers and my grandparents and my enemies and my aunts and my soul mates and my acquaintances and my uncles and my priests and my church-friends and my classmates and my gods. I need somebody, just kidding everybody, to put their checkmark of "cool in my book" next to my name. I need that. I find comfort in being liked as much as possible. I find comfort in following along with the crowd and being just like everybody else. I find comfort in having people have only good things to say about me.

I am the most approval-seeking being on this planet. At least, I think. And nobody  wants to admit to being that person. Nobody is ever supposed to admit that all they fucking want at the end of the day is for people to fucking like them, fucking approve of their fucking existence. But guess what everybody? I do. I want approval. And it's about time we all just fucking own up to it. It's about time we start admitting that we care what other people think about us. We fucking care.

I need the shallow end of the pool. I need to be able to wade where my feet can touch the bottom. Because treading water in the deep end is tiring me out. In fact, it is killing me. You can survive in the shallow end, your legs might get a little tired from standing or your bum a little sore from sitting but you can make it out alive. But man, in the deep end? That's another story. You got about 20 minutes before you get to the point where you just can't do it anymore. Your head starts bobbing underneath the surface and your limbs are exhausted and all you want- the only fucking thing you want- is to fall. To drown. To stop having to try to get to air. All you want to do is fucking let. it. all. go. The deep end brings you to the point where you have no choice but to die, or get yourself as quickly as you can back to the place where your feet can touch the cold, slimy, fungus-iced tile of the shallow end.

You know, I'm a little angry at myself. Because this blog used to be my private space. A space where I went when I needed to say what I needed to say- without anybody in my real life reading it. When I wanted to talk about the things that were literally gutting me. But then I made the mistake of sharing it. I shared my private space. I shared my private longings and hopes and fears and desperate moments and highs and lows. I shared it. I put this link on twitter, and facebook, and my tumblr and I hate myself for it. I am really, really, really not sure where the appeal to do that came from. Maybe because I wanted to share. Maybe because I wanted somebody to know. But I'm starting to believe that there isn't as much glamour in openness as some may believe.

In fact, I think there is very little glamour in sharing anything. Because once you share- it's out there, it's now taken as fact. I can't take anything back. And what I liked about this space for myself is that I could take my words back. But when somebody you know sees your words, they take it as fact because they then assume that everything you say you mean. But the thing is, I don't believe that everything we think we mean- so how in any way could everything I say be what I mean?

I need a space to be in conflict with myself. I need a space where I can say one thing, and then say another thing. Because the truth of this all is, is that I'm growing up. I'm 18 years old and I'm not quite sure about anything. I'm not quite sure about a lot. And the point of being not quite sure is contradicting yourself every once in awhile. Or more than every once in awhile. Maybe all the awhile. Maybe all you do is contradict yourself. Maybe that's the point of not being sure- you see both sides and you still can't choose.

I cannot choose. I am a chronic non-decision maker. And now I can't decide if I'm gay. Like it's something I think I'm supposed to decide. All I know at this point is this: I want to kiss girls. I want to eat girls out. I want to be eaten out by girls. I want to touch boobs. I want to lay in bed with a girl and have an extremely intimate conversation about life with her. And I want to touch her while we do this. I want to touch girls. I want to put my arms around them. I want to feel them with me. I want to come home to a girl every night and walk up behind her as she makes dinner and kiss her. I want to have awful screaming terrible fights with a girl. I want to be on the edge of destruction with a girl and back off from the cliff just in time all in the name of love. I want to do this all with a girl. Or girls. I want to read the newspaper with a girl. I want to make coffee for a girl.

Does this make me gay? What if I said I still think that some of that still sounds good with a man? What if I said I didn't mind/actually enjoyed making out+ with men? Does this then make me not gay? Does this then make me bi? And what if I have had experiences with men, but have never once had an experience with a girl? Does that make all of this not even credible? But what if society is so fucked that I actually am sort of forced to come out as lesbian, just so I can have an experience with a girl? Since I have no lesbian friends/acquaintances/people that I know?

Do you see this crazy list of questions? Do you see how it's all just one big cycle of not knowing? Do you see how I can never fully feel that I am GAY or STRAIGHT or BI because it really just comes down to the feelings in the moment?

And then it's like- what about the other stuff? The stuff that I've done, or said, that are "clues" about my sexuality?

Like the one time in the car with my mom when I was really little when I asked if girls were allowed to get married. The thought had actually just popped into my mind, as a young little child, having no sort of exposure to gay people in my life. I literally thought of this all on my own. And to make matters even worse, after my mom's whole explanation about how it's only in some states and Canada or something, I said, with all the dignity of (literally) a four year old child:

"I think I want to marry a girl. They're just nicer."

Oh, the terror. But really guys-tell me, is that conversation supposed to actually add to the ever evolving case that I might be gay? What about the fact that when I watch porn/masturbate it's only to girl on girl stuff. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE ANOTHER POINT OF EVIDENCE THAT MELISSA BOUGIE IS CLASS A GAY?????

What about the fact that I don't wear makeup/ don't paint my nails? IS THIS SUPPOSED TO INDICATE MY GAYNESS?

What about the other fact that I have had REALLY VERY A LOT MUCH intense and involved friendships with females? Is that even an indicator?

Really the point of all of this is to say this: I don't know. I don't know. Because I have never once touched a girl in any sort of romantic fashion. But I would like to. Is that enough?

And what happens if I totally fuck a girl and it sucks? Do I just say "Hey, hahaha jokes on all of you- not gay!" Is that what I'm supposed to do?

And now, after all of this, can we now just point out the fact that these questions have been present and pressing and considered and discharged and re-evaluated and edited and examined and all this again and again for going on six years now? SIX YEARS OF DEBATING MY GAYNESS PROBABLY MEANS I'M GAY RIGHT?

And the verdict still stands: I just don't know. But I think, at least for now, I'm gay.

At this point, I'm not really sure how I am going to make myself happy. I'm not really sure where I'm going to get the guts to get my life together. And truthfully, I'm not really sure my life is ever going to have been gotten together. I will always be in conflict. With myself, with the world, with the way things are and the changes that come. I will always fight. I will fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. I am absolutely relentless and I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to stop fighting. I don't know when or how to just let another person win. Let another thought win. Let everything win, and then go. I don't know how to just let it all go. I don't know how not to hate.

I don't know how to look at somebody I absolutely, positively despise in every sense of the matter, and not just get so fucking pissed off that they exist. I don't know how to just say to myself, "They are here. They are a certain way. That's the facts of it. No amount of dirty looks and rude comments is going to change that. So forgive them. Forgive them for being who they are. Forgive them for pissing you off. Forgive them for being disgusting and rude, for hurting people you love, for being annoying. Forgive them. Because they can't help it just as much as you can't help hating them for all of the above."

The way to combat hate is not with love. It is not with acceptance of hate. It is with forgiveness. It is with each and every person that exists on this much-to-tiny, annoying-to-be-alive-on planet trying their god damn hardest to forgive. This is how we stop racism, and poverty, and sexism, and homophobia, and every type of general everyday hatred that seeps out of us so freely and without control.

Forgiveness. We stop all the hatred with forgiveness.

I forgive you for living in my home. I forgive you for looking like a midget/beast. I forgive you for being so immature my internal organs begin to bleed every time you're around. I forgive you for eating all the good food that minimally exists in my house. I forgive you for causing fights in my family. I forgive you for trashing our house. I forgive you for costing my parents money. I forgive you for being the catalyst of my hate. I forgive you for bringing out the worst parts of me. I forgive you for never talking. I forgive you for causing trouble. I forgive you for being naïve.

There is nothing I do not forgive you for.

You are free from me and my hatred, free from my dirty looks and my eye rolls, free from the never ending critical comments. You are absolutely free.

And now, so am I.

I can never quite trust myself. I can never trust that the decisions I make are the right ones. And the thing is, I make each decision so cautiously, so aware, so researched, yet it comes down to my speculative emotions, time and time again. And so I can’t trust myself. I can’t trust that my gut isn’t lying. I guess I’m just not sure if what I’m feeling is my own real-life gut, screaming as my brain tries to decipher it, or some made-up gut that exists only in the flashing neurons of my imagination. I still am not sure which is which. Which is my brain, my stream of never ending thoughts that together have made up an entire other world separate from reality, or my pure reality itself, outside of flashing neurons? It seems as though I’ve created two separate worlds I must choose between- the world of who I am, and the world of who I want to be. And I’m not really sure which world I should be catering to- the ever reaching dream of who I want to be, or the everyday existence and factual reality of who I am. And really, I believe that that is one of the most pressing questions of societal existence: Do we strive to be something better, although it may stray from “who we are”? Or do we becoming fully “who we are” and accept our faults and weaknesses and discomforts thus failing to strive for something better, because it might really just be more fantasy than reality?

And the thing is, I feel that even in how I worded those two questions, the answer has been made painstakingly clear. But the other thing is, I don’t always agree with that position. I don’t always agree with myself. I’m flakey, I move back and forth between opinions and ideals and hopes. I move around and through and jump over various hoops of burning fire. One day I’m this, the next I’m that. And so where do I fit? How do I make these grotesque decisions- like where to go to college, or exactly how I want to define my own sexuality, when every day I hold a different ideal for my life? And perhaps that is where the problem lies, as I expect to mesh myself into an ideal of life- a series of events and circumstances, instead of allowing a series of events and circumstances to mesh into myself. I expect for myself to enter a world that I have predetermined, instead of predetermining myself, and allowing a world to form around me.

These are the questions I grapple with. The questions that sting me in the dark hours of the night, while my parents sit out in the mosquito infested backyard with vaguely familiar strangers who grapple privately their own unique and equally valid questions less than ten feet from where we rest our heads and conceive our children.

 

I haven't felt like this in over a year. I've felt many things within that year, but not this. Not this numbness, this complete misunderstanding I hold with myself. I've gotten very good at lying. I've gotten very good at putting on a face that even I can't notice I'm wearing. I have gotten so very good at forgetting myself.

But then, all of a sudden, those masks come off. The walls I had so sturdily built can no longer keep myself out. I creep into my façade. My struggles, like a tidal wave, flood the city I had built. The city of everyday. The city of routine, the city of happy. The fucking city of happy that stands at the border of myself, just like the fake city of North Korea stands at the border of South- a shining face of the world it pretends to be.

That's me. I'm a North Korea in a world of South Koreas. Everyday I trick myself into believing I'm this power. I'm this mecca of okayness. Of prosperity. But I'm not. My people are starving. My people are falling around me. And the rest of the world is against me. And I have neither the resources nor the strength nor the intelligence to stop them from ironing me flat. Some days I know I am a writer. Some days I know that the fucking city is fake. And I realize that only my writing can expose it. Only what I write down in letters that have printed themselves on a page can expose the fakeness of the city, the fakeness of that which I built to show.

And the thing about North Korea is, I think they built that city for themselves as much as they did South Korea. I think they had to prove to themselves that there was a city that could fit in with what they sought to match. That they could build something that would make the rest of the world think they were just fine. And they were fucked up enough to think that that would work. And I'm fucked up enough to think that building a fake fucking city of everyday life to show the rest of the world I'm just as goddamn normal as the rest of you would work.

I sill feel that I'm not a good writer. Because I'm not. My words are sweaty on the page. They feel sweaty in my head. They drip with the exertion it took to form them. They don't feel clean- they don't feel like they were taking a jog through the park- an easy and effortless jog. They feel like a 300 pound man walking 10 feet from his bedroom to his bathroom to take a piss, red and out of breath.

My words feel out of breath. They feel bad. They feel laughable.
My words feel laughable.

My First Title Ever: Life doesn't drown, it saves.

Even the Worst People have
likes, dislikes,
Gods they answer to.
They’ve gotten their heart broken.
They’ve been in tears on the floor,
felt trapped in their bodies,
kissed the wrong person.
They’ve felt bad.

And the very Best People-
they’ve ostracized a person they used to hold
Close.
They’ve cut somebody off in traffic.
They’ve broken up with somebody who was still
Very Much
in love with them.
Maybe they even did it on Valentine’s Day.
They’ve stopped praying.
Good People, Bad People, Worst People, Best People,
People, People, People.
We are all People.
People who fail and succeed and hurt and heal.
And sometimes all this in one day.

And sometimes people choose to defend the wrong side and sometimes people stop loving when somebody else just started and sometimes people fail their classes.
Sometimes people don’t wear very put together outfits and sometimes people judge us before they know us and sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes people spit on us and tell us we aren’t deserving of rights and sometimes people stand up and scream about things they know nothing about.
 Sometimes people stop caring when they should continue, even if just for one more day.
 Sometimes people kill themselves and blame it on society.
 Sometimes people forget about God and sometimes people remember her all too well.
 Sometimes people step on other people to get to the top and sometimes somebody really needs to start stepping on some toes to get what they deserve.
Sometimes people think too much about what other people think and forget to live.
Sometimes people forget they are here and pretend they are somewhere else.
Sometimes people put on faces that don’t reflect their feelings and sometimes people wear their feelings on their face.
Sometimes people have bad hair or bad names or bad nails or bad breath.
Sometimes people wear too much of the wrong perfume and sometimes people don’t remember to wear deodorant.
And sometimes people do both- at the same time.
Sometimes people have sex and sometimes people make love.
Sometimes people want God to exist and sometimes people want God to stop showing up. Sometimes people wish they were something else and sometimes people feel fortunate to be who they are. Sometimes people remember the best parts and forget the worst and sometimes it’s the other way around.
Sometimes people clean their houses explicitly even when nobody is coming over and sometimes people show up at the worst times and you haven’t had time to clean the house.
 Sometimes people make friends and sometimes people sit alone.
Sometimes people can’t make it to the party and sometimes people’s lives are so full of nothing that they always do.
Sometimes people stop talking to each other and sometimes they start.
Sometimes people move and sometimes people stay. Sometimes people don’t stop to think about how their actions will affect somebody else until it’s too late.
Sometimes people celebrate Christmas and sometimes they celebrate Hanukah and again, sometimes it’s both.
Sometimes people grow up in New York City and sometimes people grow up in Kentucky. Sometimes people eat healthy and sometimes they eat like shit.
Sometimes people ridicule everyone except themselves and sometimes people will only look at themselves in the mirror and fail to realize that everybody makes mistakes.
Sometimes people learn their lessons late and sometimes people learn their lessons early and sometimes people don’t learn their lessons at all.
Or sometimes people simply fail to acknowledge that everything, really, in the end is just another lesson that they had to learn at some point- and that life will go on, and get better, and change form, and right wrongs, and breed love, and give people hope. Life will go on and it will give us all a reason to hold on- to continue to hope.
Life doesn't drown it saves.