College Heartbreak

I wish my mother was wrong when she said you never forget your first college love

Honestly I didn’t think I’d have to forget you

After your leaving, you disapeared from every record

Yet what else would I expect – you never wanted to leave a trail anywhere but my neck when you still loved me

People ask me if you survived past that year and I am as clueless as they – the only difference is our bodies were intertwined enough that fingerprints lingered months after drifting away

I don’t use those sheets anymore, I’m afraid they’ll still smell like you

Which would be the only thing you left me other than memories played on repeat trying to figure out how I could have made you stay

I told myself it was just bad timing

But I kept running over that day like a child running their tongue  over the spot a tooth once was

How I could tell by your distance

And the pain in your sea green eyes you were trying so hard to hide from me

You hesitated as if for a moment you were thinking about keeping our love in a locket around your neck

Now hidden in a drawer somewhere collecting dust

I have no idea if you exist on this earth anymore other than in memories

And sometimes that’s worse than mourning someone in the ground

Mental Illness vs. Education

My high school was a cheesy 80s movie

My friends and I smoked cigarettes under the bleachers and in the dugout

Once even in a girls bathroom, nearly setting the school on fire

Three of us broke a window, forcing the school to bolt them shut the next year

I spent half of my high school career in detention, making it a miracle when I didn’t get any my senior year

Many of my high school teachers saw through it all and knew I actually had a brain smart enough to get into college

Many panic attacks in bathrooms, hospital visits, days spent in the guidance office, therapy sessions, psychiatrist appointments, and hallucinations in hallways later, I got to a university I never thought I had the chance of going to

College enjoys trying to break me down

The counseling center cannot take people like myself

Those who require “extended care” are referred to a center a town and a bus ride away, a place I cannot squeeze into my ever busy schedule

Friends have needed police aid to not end it due to inadequate care here for people like us

Getting out of bed is one thing but falling into the pit of despair is another

I cannot count how many times I thought of leaving this world since arrival, having to pull myself out of the darkness enough to know my problems will not be solved by ceasing to exist

I have not seen the world yet, no matter how many lovers leaving make me think that I have

No combination of booze and drugs can fix you but damn does it feel so when you are laying on your floor out of your mind

I thought it would all go away but some days it feels worse than years spent being a fly on the wall

I am lucky enough to still be in the world I built myself

Assault

Most assaults are done by someone you are acquainted with

The first was my then boyfriend’s best friend

He kept touching my ass while I kept asking to stop

He was holding my best friend’s hand

I kept asking him to stop, just like everyone else

My hand collided with his face hard enough to make him cry

He was holding my best friend’s hand

 

The second time I was drunk off blue vodka

It was one of my best college friends and it was nearly 3am

I trusted him enough

He walked me home which he has done dozens of times in the early hours so I wouldn’t be afraid of being violated by someone else

He kissed my cheek twice and forced me to kiss his

I had to push him out of my dorm mere seconds before I could have been splayed out

That was the closest to a murder scene I have ever been

There is a grime on my skin from his hands nearly wandering where they shouldn’t have

It’s been 4 days and I feel like my throat is closing in

I trusted him enough

Clung

After you jump into a pond with your clothes on, they stick to you for hours until they’re a little less than damp but less than dry

You won’t know what’s still pond water and sweat if it’s midsummer

His smile still hides in the corner of bittersweet memories

Each flinch you saw the disappointment in the memories still tethered to my bones but had fled my memories to the darkest corner of my brain

Disappointment in the people and how the pain still clung to me

He watched sunrises with me soundly sleeping in his arms

Moments of beauty and serenity like that surfaced with the tears when we both knew our journey together was coming to a close and all he had to say was those five words to let me go – I don’t love you anymore

Mornings waking up to rain lazily dripping off the roof as I lazily kissed your shoulder still remind me there can be good in a life tinged with bad

He may have forgotten about the ways my eyes lit up when I talked passionate

But our fingerprints still dot each other’s skin for another 6 years until they fully fade away with our bodies forgetting young love like that

 

via Daily Prompt: Cling

Wrong Light

Whenever I write about you I talk about cracking

I forgot mentioning the way you morphed time like marmalade’s slow, letting us take each other in

There was a gallery displayed on your skin with every freckle, stray hair, scar that my fingers were hungry for

Your eyes held galaxies I could explore forever

Each time I paint you into words I forgot you were the home I thought my love could live in forever and how could I lose something like that

When you left I evaporated from the pools my tears melted me into

Nights when you were still here, you sleeping in my twin bed tangled limbs and all

Sleepily kissing your shoulder, you pulling me closer as your teddy bear

Awoken by thunder one night, your warmth as you still slept, the only thing I thought was how I was looking right at the rest of my life, dreaming, holding me tight

After your leaving I couldn’t even eat without remembering each conversation shared over a meal

To this day I don’t know why you left

Maybe you were afraid it was too perfect to be real

Every time your lips curved into a smile I thought I was watching the rest of our lives together play out

Each bout of laughter the house, the children, the adventures

Now each moment it fades a little farther as we forget the way we felt the calm storm of love

Left with the few moments our stories wound together as one

“Self Obsessed” – My A**

I am so sick of seeing major magazines and blogs publishing articles about how millennials are lazy and self obsessed, titling us the “selfie generation”. The authors are preaching as if they’re perfect in every single way possible. Older adults act as if we sit at home all the time doing nothing of importance to them, like we spend all summer sitting in front of a computer or tablet screen on social networking sites. In reality, that is the opposite of what happens. For example, I volunteered from the time I was 13 until I was 16 and got my first paying job at my state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. I may be an anomaly, but I am still an example. I am in my second year of working at the same minimum wage job, and I see many more peers working at the same employer for their last two years of high school and in many cases through college.

Also if you want to pull the “graduation rates are lower and less kids are going to college than when I was your age” card, here are some statistics on that. According to multiple sources, 81% of high school students in the class of 2012 graduated, which is an all time high. About 66.2% of 2012 graduates would go to attend college the fall after graduation, with a higher percentage of females attending. Keep in mind this is happening while the cost of college has risen 400% from 1982 to 2007.
According to Bloomberg, tuition and fees have increased 1,120% since records began in 1978. With this, kids in my generation won’t be paying off our loans until we’re 35. When the authors of these articles were in college, they could easily work their way through college, but since inflation of college prices has skyrocketed there isn’t a chance in hell for us. Until people take the blame for their mistakes, my generation will have the burden of past generations’ mistakes on our shoulders. And everyone is wondering why we aren’t having kids when a kid can cost as much as a house that we will never be able to afford. But I guess that’s a problem for another day.