LOVE STORY.

she wanted to write a love story.

you know, the kind where two people fell in love. that story about those two people who didn’t even know each other, but met when the best friend made her go meet her new boyfriend and then handsome best-friend-of-the-boyfriend just happened to look her way.

the one where he thought she was all that an a bag of potato chips in that tight, flattering dress she just so happened to be wearing and she thought he was just-another-man. possibly like the one she had recently broken up with – who knows?

fast-forward a couple hundred pages and you’d have yourself a perfect little wedding. one with white satin bows that adorned tall oak doors leading the way to a fat little priest and a nervous, handsome groom. where the bride looked ‘way too good to be marrying that man – honestly, him for a son-in-law?’ according to her father but everyone knew that later he would be spotted dashing quick tears away as his daughter said ‘i do.’

and, of course, in the end they’d have beautiful children; a daughter with ringlet curls who ran up and wrapped her arms around her daddy’s leg, squealing as her brother, only one year her elder, chased her with a granddaddy-long-leg-spider.

she wanted to write a love story, perhaps to contrast her own life.

not that she’d never fallen in love, of course, just that…

no.

she wouldn’t think about that, not now. thoughts such as those were reserved for one in the morning when she was lying on her lumpy mattress in the dingy apartment with six locks on the door but a window in the bedroom that allowed her to stare at the moon and the stars as long as the neon sign on the side of the building next to her had the remnants of a smashed liquor bottle keeping it from shining.

she traced the edge of her martini with her little finger as she glanced at the clock on the faded yellow walls. they didn’t card her here; she’s known the bartender and the fact that he had a wife got her alcohol even though she was wretchedly underage.

it was eleven.

she really ought to get to her place before the place got too wild. she certainly wasn’t in the mood to deal with sleazy drunks and their pissed girlfriends tonight.

no, she wanted to write a love story, perhaps her own. either way, there was not room for drunkards or two-cent whores or that man with the handle-bar mustache in her love story nor in any story she planned on writing or reading anytime in the future.

she sighed a devastated sigh – partly because she was devastated and partly because she was sick of dealing with her devastated self – and stood up, leaving her drink sweating on the table.

straightening the black-leather skirt that barely covered her ass and pulling at the shirt that revealed just a little too much of her midriff, she slapped a few ones on the table before tapping out of the bar in heels (and with the accompanying wolf whistles) that she had finally gotten used to.

the sticky night hit her full-force as she stepped outside making her wish that the few days of New York summer would just disappear already. the walk to her flat wasn’t a long one, though the lurking strangers in the night shadows made it seem so. she was almost accustomed to them by now, but something about the way they looked at her made her think, crazily, that they could see through her; that they could hear her story as if she was screaming it from the top of the wrecked building she slept in every night.

she slept there, but it wasn’t home. there was only one place that was home and she could never go there again. like a cliché, she’d left for New York and didn’t look back. she didn’t want to think about what she’d see if she did.

finally reaching the building, she climbed to the very top floor and walked down the long hall to the smallest apartment available. she unlocked all six locks, kicked the door twice, and then punched it open. after securing the place in the same way, she threw her small purse on coffee table before walking down the three step hallway and into the bedroom.

looking out the window as she unstrapped her shoes with ease, she saw that the annoying neon pink sign was blinking on and off again tonight. barefoot, she walked over and pulled the ragged old quilt she used for blinds down; she didn’t want to look at the stars tonight anyway.

she peeled off her outfit as she made her way to the closet-sized bathroom and, while the water warmed for her shower, looked at herself in the mirror.

she took a washcloth, dipped it in rubbing alcohol, and ran it over her stomach, her left thigh, and her breasts. the cover-up came off easily.

scars.

she traced them with her finger; up her thigh and to her hip. from her navel to her chest. like a spider web, like a secret, they covered her.

she pushed her long, brunette, ragged curls out of her face and stepped into shower letting the lukewarm water run over her.

she wanted to write a love story, perhaps one to mask the one she’d lost.

laying in bed in a t-shirt three sizes too big for her (it still smelled like him, she was sure of it), she allowed the thoughts, you know, those thoughts, to consume her.

‘come on, baby, we’ll be fine.’ he slurred as he brought her into his arms and held her tight. he leaned in and kissed her.

she smiled up at him – graduation had come so fast. someone yelled from behind them, the bonfire still going strong even if they were all too drunk to know a log from their leg by now.

‘are you sure you’re okay?’ she grinned stupidly at him.

‘more than,’ he kissed her forehead and slung and arm around her as he led her to his truck. something told her not to get in, to stop him. to walk the mile down the back road and to her house, but she was eighteen, this was her graduation night, she trusted him with all her heart, and together, she swore they were invincible.

the truck was silent, save the scratchy radio that blared country music. she was tired. ‘i can’t believe it’s over,” she whispered.

‘me neither, baby,’ he replied, looking from the road to her face. ‘you know that i –’

she’d screamed then.

it was a horse – or so she thought. he swerved; he swerved even though his ’89 truck could have handled the collision with a simple barnyard animal.

it couldn’t, however, handle one with the big oak she’d first kissed him under.

head on. so much glass. so much blood. his. hers. together.

‘love,’ he’d said.

she wanted to write a love story, one that didn’t end like hers; one that ended like the ones she had written not six months ago for her english class.

one that didn’t end in New York, in a dingy apartment, with clothes that exposed more of her than she’d admit; she wanted to write a love story that ended like he’d promised it would – back in the small town she’d grown up in, in a small house with a wrap around porch and children that ran around kissing boys down the street under the big oak tree.

she wanted to write a love story.

[1.31.10/2.1.10]

PITCHERS.

INFLUENCE.

i wish i could say that i was creative. that i had innovative ideas or groundbreaking thoughts. but i don't. i feed off of other people's ideas and thoughts and end up with something of my own that resembles a bunch of other people's ideas complied into one thing that some people look at and go 'wow, that's different.'

but it's not, really. it's not different, or new, or creative. it's just a mixture. a compilation of what other people have thought of and done tossed into the same brain (maybe with a few new ideas, too, sure) and then spit back out. but it's not like anything else so it gets christened interesting. new. creative. even thought it's not.

and i feel bad. because i can look back at anything i have produced and see the influences that go into it. that this idea was so-and-so's with so-and-so's twist to it. it's not mine, it's borrowed. it's someone else's idea put with something else so that it resembles something new.

but then, i realize, that it's who i am.

i'm not 'original.' i'm not a unique person, not really. i'm a unique person in that no one else has been influenced by the people that i have been. no one else has lived like me and thus taken things from the people i steal from. no one knows that my style of writing comes from about three different people, more, actually, if you can realize that it's "me" talking and my personality is stolen from many. i feel like i am a collage of the people that float in and out of my life. that some of these people become too much of an influence on me so it's hard for me to separate me from them. and i don't think that thats a good thing.

i don't like that i'm made up of different people because if that's true i don't know who i am. if i'll change when i'm around a new set of people. i want to be strong in who i am but i don't know who that is. how many people that is.

so i'm not creative. i'm not new or innovative or anything of the sort. i'm resourceful. and maybe that will come in handy one day.

SNOWDAY.

it snowed today; not much, but enough for the roads to be dangerous so school was cancelled. i took my present out in the snow - valentine's day 2009, alice the bear. the innocence of her and the snow made me smile.