Sometimes this comfort rots. Sometimes this resting mocks me (about the life I want to live).
Oc idea for my wip Dead above.
My name is April and I can be quite the fool.
I stole a bible a few years ago, I browsed the shelfs not looking to steal but to pass the time and then I saw it, black cover and pages edged in gold. I wasn't religious, more agnostic or an atheist that dabbled in Buddhist ideas, I felt the Christian narrative or at least the one I heard about was always about who would pay. How jesus payed for your "sins", and if you didn't believe then you'll pay in the after life, so hold on to guilt and carry your strife , but I also knew that I wanted , needed something. I wasn't looking for misplaced shame only hope and I wanted to have it tangible in my hands.
So with my stomach empty and my shoes hole ridden, I ignored the fashion magazines with diet tips and beauty tricks and filled my emptyness with something close to hope, if only to cope. I grabbed it from the shelf and I left the store. I was too afraid to steal food , I didn't dare even with my hunger, but possibility of having something bigger than life to cling to on cold and lonely nights seemed worth the risk.
During that time I wasn't doing so well, my mother was drinking and taking drugs with her friends god only knows where and the cupboards where completely bare. I would wander around town, I would wait for the days to pass, I would wait for something to meet me in my loneliness. I wanted so desperately for something like god to reveal itself to me, my mother wasn't someone I could lean on and my father wasn't around so I think naturally I wanted something to believe in, to sustain me when food and family couldn't.
Last year my brother and I where almost homeless, we slept on the hard floor in a cold empty room for three years, we spent every day waiting. I would wait for the stores reduced items at the end of the day, wait for the sun to dry my clothes, I would walk for hours round and round, my shoes didn't last long, I tried ducktaping the soles but the pavement wore through that aswell. When I wasn't waiting outside food banks, staring at white walls or writing, I sometimes would visit the church in town. It's a cathedral and I still have no idea what denomination it's under, but I'd walk around and admire the marbal pillers and stain glass windows, I would try to remember how people hundreds near a thousand years ago carved angles into stone and placed their hope in something other than themselfs, that back then a church may have been the only place you could go if you had no where else. I reminded myself of all the people who would have prayed there, that would have stood where I stood and cried, wished and waited as I did. I would light a candle and I would wish for a better tomorrow, I wasn't asking jesus or a god, I was asking the universe, I was asking subconsciously myself to keep going.
What do you think of religion? (Are you religious?)
The night won't last forever. Wait for the sunrise.
the biggest lesson im learning is that nothing is as extreme or as permanent as our emotions convince us they are. nothing is certain and things are always fluctuating and there are always exceptions and there are always mistakes. there is always pain and there is always love. everything is a delicate touch away from changing
I can't think about you for too long, but sometimes you climb out of my Amygdala and I let your face press against my prefronal cortex. Your presence is mostly wrapped in bubbler wrap, hidden in a back room, somewhere near the things I can't talk about and the things I should have. I've quietly closed the door, but it's not locked, I don't think it ever will be, I don't think I want it be. But that room isn't a place I like to visit, it only holds you and the things that shouldn't have happened.
I was seven, but I didn't remember it until I was 13. It was almost a blessing that my mind hid it from me, it would have weighed my small spirit down before it had the chance to bloom. He visited throughout those 6 years and I would laugh at his silly jokes. I thought he was funny. Now not so much, the memory has tainted all the others. It has reset the tone of every interaction. It came back to me in the kitchen, we where both sat at the table and my mother was fiddling with pots and pans by the sink. I don't remember what we where talking about but I do remember the suddenness of remembering being seven with you in my room. I had never tried to picture what people meant when they said your life flashes before your eyes when you're dying. I felt like I was dying, a part me came clawing out of its hiding place and ripped me anew. My life didn't flash before my eyes but you did. One minute you where safe and funny, a blink later you were dangerous and slimy. I wanted you off my skin, but you had been clinging to me for 6 years and I didn't know where to begin. One thing I knew for sure is I had remembered. And you thought I hadn't.
Having a creative hobby or goal honestly keeps the serotonin present. Keeps me mentally present and reaching for tomorrow.
I'm living on the breadline, in fact I'm so far past the breadline its a dot, its a crumb(couldnt help but add a friend's reference). Most days I don't even know how I'm suppose to pay all these bills, because when I do I'm left with minus the amount it cost for even a week of grocerys, and if you've ever done a weekly shop you release that the end total adds up far too quickly and far too high. So you end up living off porridge, beans and what ever hope you still cling to. But sometimes the hope runs out, so I do this, this being tumblr, or I'll picture the little future aspirations actually happening, maybe I'll write that book or buy those paints, maybe I'll do something other than just this stagnant waiting.
It feels like sitting in a waiting room but your number keeps getting pushed further back, like that scene in beatlejuice, so I sit and I wait. But while I do I hum made up songs, I'll doodle on napkins with the last of my ink, I'll ramble poetry and memories on tumblr. I'll try to remember why I wait.
Even though I'm literally falling through the gutters of society I have this one thing that can't be taken away, that remains mine and for now that's enough, if anything it's the end goal. I'll remind myself to live not just survive.
I painted something to accompany what I wrote above Here
Hollow eyes watching the crowd
it's mid day, It's busy
People rush to stores like beds of fish
Fish with magpie eyes looking for shiny things to take back to their home
The figure watching, Is ignored
To look at those hollow eyes would mean to look at their own magpies ones
To confront the misery and their lack of it
So instead they talk louder as they walk past, they drown out a defeated "excuse m–
Or they become silent, their steps quick and their eyes down as they click and swipe
As the figure with hollow eyes watches you pretend to type.