the desert was a constant disappointment, but at least it never deceived me. the desert is now the place i long for, when a year ago, i longed for the rolling hills and craggy mountains of this place where i now live.
i don’t want my old life back, per se. i don’t want to even think about living in that hovel again, where my only comforts were my music, played too loud, and my canine companion, who, i convinced myself, was the only one happy to see that i was still alive at the end of every grueling school day.
i just miss them. all of them. i text them, i skype them, they promise to send me packages for my birthday and we dream of reuniting under the summer sun, but, somehow, that is not enough. i have slipped into old habits again– not the more gruesome ones, not the ones that required me to spill my own blood over the kitchen sink, although the thoughts are tempting. even though i have no physical aches, i take painkillers in efforts to numb me to my emotional pain and kill the thoughts that endlessly race through my head; at least that hasn’t changed, my thoughts are as hectic as ever…
i still wonder how my life would be now, had i chosen to stay in that beautiful desert—i nearly wretch at calling it more than a wasteland, but that wasteland has him, and the rest of our friends, within its sandy, unforgiving grasp. i’ve become soft on it, even nostalgic for it, because of this. my whole world is in that desert, and it is not fair that i live outside of its scope, which used to seem boundless.
i want a lot of things, many of them, i can’t have, none of them material.
i want you, the rest of them, to drive up and hug my sadness away, make me laugh so hard i can’t breathe. but i know that the world doesn’t work like that, and we are just in high school. we cannot drop everything to cross state lines in order to hang out, no matter how dearly i wish we could.
but mostly, i just want things to get better here, so i don’t feel like shit. i have friends—not any worth mentioning, or any that are legendary in any sense of the word—i’m not as much of a loser as i thought i was. i had a few dates, and of course they ended in tragedy. such is life, or, at least, my life.
i long for the sun on my face. the summer calls to me as one lover would to another, desperately, especially when i feel dire and hopeless. i yearn for other places, places not here, not forgettable, beaches and sunshine and the unknown. i ache for the embraces of lovers i’ve not met yet; i need to get the past out of my head, lest i long for that even more, too.
i am not happy here. but i wasn’t happy there, not all the time, anyways.
sometimes i feel like i am getting the hang of living here, that i am back in the swing of things, back in the groove that i had going before my life crumbled right before my eyes back in september. of course, these hopes are dashed almost as soon as they are realized, and i am mercilessly thrown back into the maddening cycle, without a prayer of escaping anytime soon.
one thing is certain; i have never wanted graduation more badly than i do now.