One Day it is All Going to End

Fifty-three miles into Tennessee, the drone of the car engine is beginning to lull him to sleep. Mountains line the horizon, and he hasn't crested the biggest of them yet. He's passed the billboards announcing his arrival into hick country—buy ammo here; Jesus is LORD—but he doesn't know where he is yet. He's halfway between nowhere and somewhere else, approaching exit 74, looking out for the bridge lined with lamp-posts, and the Sonic, and the Walgreens. 

He will unfold from the driver's seat to stretch and gaze at the north Tennessee sky, because he didn’t crash his car into the embankment outside his neighborhood when he was seventeen. Maybe it’s a miracle he didn’t. He wrote lines that year, about how only God can decide it’s our time to die, when he knew himself to be the only being who could make it stop. Every day, numb hands on the steering wheel, he chose asphalt over oblivion. 

Two-hundred and thirty-six miles south of Portland, Tennessee, he could climb that embankment and lay down a bouquet of tall grass for the teenager whose dream was never realized. He could leave a memorial to the desire that ended as silently as it lived, without anyone taking notice of its disappearance.

One day it is all going to end. It will end quietly, marked by signs without substance. An inflatable rubber duck tethered at the side of the highway. Drive-through fries in the passenger seat. A left turn onto TN 109 north.

I am free of it

The best way to burn a photo is to start from the center. 

When lit from the edge, the flame burns itself out before it reaches her face, her eyes that shimmer at me on the other side of the camera. It cuts parts away but stops short of catharsis. I muster the courage to dip her back into the candle flame. The paper crumbles from my hand into tentative ash. 

I burn the next one from the center. It pops and distorts, beyond salvage long before it crumbles to ash. I light the rest off of that photo, one on top of the other like a palm-sized bonfire, my only source of light and heat. 

I get to the birthday card she drew for me, and then I say I can't do it. Surely, I have to keep this, surely, but the writing on the back makes my organs contort as much as the thought of burning it. I hold its edge up to the candle, memorizing her words as the fire consumes. It hurts. The flames reach my fingers before I let go. 

I cannot have this back. I will never get this back. Even if, somewhere, some impression of it remains, the thing that mattered is gone. 

Tentatively, I admit: I am free of it. 

New Year, I remain.

11/14/2024. 

If you kill yourself,

your cat will miss you.

And even if no one comes to your funeral,

She will wander the hall, 

Reaching under the bathroom door,

Crying 

Where are you?

I love you.

Come back to bed. 

 --

commentary on this one is that my journal fell open to this page while I was looking for my goals from 1/1/2025. I'm still recovering from the events that made me write this, but on the brighter side I still have a cat who loves me more than anything.  

It's hard to be open about struggling and having struggled. If I expose my weak spots, I fear people will come for them. 

In 2026 I'm going to write more. And get a glasses prescription that isn't five years old. And become something built from joy instead of living in the negative space of things I am not. And I want to find friends again. 

New year, and the central pieces of me remain.  

Love you,

Laine. 

Hello Again

Good evening reader (friend, stranger, etc). 

Hello again. 

I'm the same person who's always written this blog in the sense that my genealogy and my google account haven't changed. I'm not the same because it's been three years since I've looked at the blank Blogger editor and written. I am the same because lives can become cyclical, and because it's almost winter again, and I never know what to do with myself in the cold. 

My name is Laine. That's L-a-i-n-e like the French word for wool. My pronouns are they/them or he/him. 

 I don't know if anyone is still here. For a long while, I wasn't. We'll see how long I stay. 

 - Laine

Actually, I think the restless energy is trying to escape something else

Written 9/24/21

I'm here in a city now, in my little bedroom with my laptop, wearing my partner's hoodie, and the city didn't fix me. The music didn't fix me, what almost freed me held my lungs too tight and now I am coughing, dizzy-head-spinning and realizing that's the only thing I have left to escape.

i don't know how I got here 

i don't know how to get back

I speak evenly, I turn my head when I cry, the red on my cheeks is
just the acne medication but inside

I am shaking and my hands are shaking and
my eyes unfocus and why can I see my glasses I
usually don't see my glasses but my brain is seeing and
my skin is feeling and there are things
touching me and I want them
gone I want them to stop and I
shut my eyes and cover my ears and I
breathe and I cry and maybe 

it passes
I open my teary eyes
The sandcastle of my body is crumbling but
The sand is still there
I have some water and patch it back together

You're invited

You're invited to a hibernation party! 

December 1st, 2020 at my place. Everyone is invited. No RSVP necessary. Wear pajamas.

It's dark out. I'm wearing a sweater and jeans and listening to music that I stopped paying attention to a few ad breaks ago. I put my hands under my shirt and press my fingers against my bare stomach to warm them.

I look at my reflection in the darkened window. My idle thoughts ask why I'm here. 

I don't get a break from the worry, or the dread, or the fear of the days to come. I hold my breath for a second; my reflection blurs as I stare at it. 

My hands are cold. 

I take a breath.

That's what it was like: weeks of holding my breath until I remembered that I still needed oxygen, and staring while the world around me blurred, and trying not to feel the numbness spreading inward from my cold fingertips. 

My thoughts ask again: What are you doing here? 

I have an answer that I can't put into words. I pretend I don't hear when they tell me it isn't good enough. I am here whether they like it or not, whether I like it or not, because I don't know where I stop and they begin. Can I draw a line? 

Bring a snack if you can, nonperishable. We'll want them when we wake up. 

When? 

When I have feeling back in my hands again.

Nothing is real, but I think it's a Sunday

Written 10/9/20

It rained today. 

The world gets quieter and emptier when it rains. I drove myself to class in silence this morning. I thought about the rain instead of listening to music. Everything feels shifted, and I blame that on the fact that I'm the only person as far as I can see. I feel a little bit transparent. 

I step out onto the wet pavement and see no one on the sidewalks. The calendar says I'm supposed to be here, but my head is telling me I'm wrong. It's too empty here.

Isn't it Sunday? Isn't it the weekend? 

I had classes yesterday. It can't be. 

I am at the right school. I parked in the same place I always do. There's no other building I could be walking to. I feel lost.

I ask myself if I'm forgetting something. I'm not.

I lock my car anyway, swing my backpack onto my shoulders. I cut through the grass instead of taking the sidewalk and feel the wet grass soak into my shoes. While I'm walking, I have to check the date again, just to make sure that I'm not in the wrong place.

I sit through my class. We finish the movie we've been watching, and my professor lets us out fifteen minutes early. The world is just as empty as I walk back through the drizzle.

Isn't it Sunday?

I check my phone. It isn't Sunday. That changes exactly nothing.