Letters I’ll Never Send #1

I’m a writer. When I’m feeling something, I write about it. I don’t know how to talk about my feelings, but I can write them down. Sometimes I can make them more poetic than they actually are. Sometimes I just let them spill out of me, chaotic and unencumbered. I’m starting a series called Letters I’ll Never Send. Most of them lean toward the latter option, and most of them are about boys.

Sorry.

Dear most recent heartbreak,

We exchanged pleasantries tonight. We dated for 6 and a half months. It’s been 4 months since we last spoke in person. Three months since we’ve spoken at all. I’m still in love with you. I haven’t let myself think those words in a long time, but I hate lying to anyone, let alone myself. So finally I’m admitting the truth. I’ve moved on. I’m happy. I’ve grown so much… But I’m still in love with you. It’s not an active feeling, but it’s something that lies in the deepest corners of my thoughts. When we were together, I thanked whatever higher power was listening for you every single night. I let my whole heart melt around you, and that’s not the kind of feeling that just goes away. It has stopped nagging me, but it hasn’t disappeared.

But we exchanged pleasantries tonight. It was a fifteen second conversation, and it was plenty polite. I looked at your face and I listened to your voice and I didn’t feel like you were my ex. I didn’t feel like we dated at all. I saw your face and I listened to your voice and I saw the guy who I met my sophomore year of high school, when he was in eighth grade. I saw the guy I finally went to school with my senior year, sang in the same choir with, and couldn’t stand because he was condescending and annoying. I saw your face and I heard your voice and I felt really nervous, but I didn’t feel pain.

It was all so weird, because I’m still in love with you. I know you. It’s been 3 months since we’ve spoken. I’ve changed, you’ve changed. But I know you. I know that you scream-sing when you’re alone in your car. I know that you love tortellini. I know that you put your arm around everyone when you’re sitting down because it’s comfortable for you to sit that way. I know that you hate texting, and that sometimes you just show up at people’s houses unannounced. I know what you look like completely naked. I know that you’ve made me laugh more times than I can count. I know that we’ve been to almost every restaurant in our home town together and that we saw dozens of movies together and that we’ve cuddled under the stars on multiple occasions.

But I looked at your face and I listened to your voice tonight and I didn’t see any of that. We exchanged pleasantries tonight and I didn’t feel any of that. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m writing this letter. I’m confused. I think I’m still in love with you, but maybe I was just in love with an illusion of you. I think I know you, but maybe I only know the parts of you that you let me know. Maybe when I looked at your face and listened to your voice and exchanged pleasantries with you tonight I was interacting with all of you, the parts I never loved or knew. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel like you were the one I’ve been in love with for 8 months.

Tonight I realized I’m still in love with you, but I’m in love with a fictional you, a you that doesn’t really exist. And maybe, just maybe, you dated a part of me that doesn’t really exist. So when we exchanged pleasantries tonight and I felt like we never really dated it because we never really did.

The Reality of Monsters

Welcome to the illustrious Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism. You should feel honored that this blog is gracing your inferior corneas.

Since I am a creative writing major, I am required to take a Poetry Workshop class. Poetry is not my area of expertise, nor do I want it to be. However, I am pretty proud of one of the poems I wrote. It was the very first one we turned in for the class, and it is a syllabic poem, which means every line contains the same number of syllables. It was initially five syllables per line, but I changed it to ten for aesthetic purposes. Formatting this was a bitch and a half so I’m sorry if the format is weird!

I’m usually really reserved about sharing my writing with others because it scares the crap out of me, but y’all don’t know who I am, so it makes it a little less frightening to display the darkest corners of my mind. Let me know what you think (for real, I have to turn in a revised version in less than a month, so if you have any constructive criticism to improve it, feel free to lay it on me)!

The Reality of Monsters

As children, monsters make up our nightmares.
Guttural growls grow louder and louder
as they wriggle out from under our beds.
They stand over us, sneering, baring sharp
incisors and black, soulless eyes. With a
cry, we awaken, and our parents rush
to our sides, ready to assure us that
the space under our beds, in our closets,
behind the curtains, is safe and there are
no monsters scheming to steal us at night.

As we grow older, we become convinced
that monsters are a work of fiction, that
there is no reason to fear ghouls and ghosts.

The reality of monsters is this:
oftentimes, monsters arrive in the form
of everything we ever dreamed of.
The real monsters beam a brilliant grin
and gaze at us with eyes that soften all
the rough edges in our hesitant minds.

The real monsters don’t hide under our beds,
because we welcome them into our beds,
invite them under the sheets, allow them
to slither into the most intimate
and vulnerable bits of our closed lives.

The real monsters don’t hide in our closets.
Our closets become museums full of
skeletons—ugly displays of every
instance of misplaced trust, unrequited
love, and empty words. Our monsters don’t loom
over us, because they stand beside us,
there to comfort us, to convince us that
we’d be happier if we were stolen.

Monsters don’t strike at night when we’re trying
to sleep, because they ensnare us in broad
daylight, when our eyes are wide open, and
they never give us back, not completely.

The reality of monsters is this:
they are everywhere and they are human.

Single And Ready To Stay Single

Welcome to the illustrious Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism. You should feel honored that this blog is gracing your inferior corneas.

Last week, I talked to an old family friend for the first time in years. The beginning of our conversation went as such:

Her: “You’re in college now? Holy crap. Where did the time go? What are you majoring in?”
Me: “English and creative writing.”
Her: “Oh, that’s cool…So, do you have like a steady boyfriend?”
Me: “No.”
Her: “Oh…well…that’s okay!”

That’s okay. That’s okay. THAT’S OKAY. 

I KNOW IT’S OKAY. I didn’t say it wasn’t. Why did she feel the need to console me because I don’t have a boyfriend? I don’t know how it works for guys, considering I’m not one, but it seems like when a girl says she is single, people immediately feel bad for her, like the happiness of a woman is contingent upon a romantic relationship. I’m not trying to turn this into a feminist rant or anything (I don’t identify as a feminist, in case you’re wondering). I just think it’s important for everyone to know–

IT IS OKAY TO BE SINGLE

It does not mean a person is undesirable. It does not mean a person is unhappy. It does not mean a person is lonely. It does not mean anything other than that a person has not found the person they’re going to spend the rest of their life with, if they want to spend the rest of their life with anyone.

I’ve had two serious boyfriends since May 2014. I fell in love with both of them, and I got dumped by both of them. I was single for 3 months in between the two boyfriends, and I’ve been single for 2 months now. When the first guy (let’s call him Tanner) broke up with me, I went to a bad place. I hated being alone, I got drunk fairly often, I smoked pot several times, and I even agreed to sleep with him after he ripped my heart out. I didn’t care about anything. I’m pretty sure I started dating the second guy (we’ll call him Bradley) because I was lonely and missed having a boyfriend. I ended up falling for Bradley much harder than I had fallen for Tanner, so I expected to take it much worse when he broke up with me.

Plot twist: I’m incredibly happy.

Maybe I took the first breakup so hard because Tanner was my first love, or maybe because I was much weaker back then. I was devastated when Bradley broke up with me, and thinking about it still hurts, but I have grown so much in the past 2 months.

While I am still not happy Bradley broke up with me, I’ve realized it’s for the best, and that I’m perfectly fine with taking a step back from the dating scene for a while.

The truth is, I was single throughout all of high school for a reason. I love being single. Not because of the whole “playing the field” thing that usually follows a statement like that, but because I feel like, at this point in my life, I can be my best self when I don’t have a boyfriend.

In the past 2 months, I’ve branched out so much. I’ve made new, fantastically wonderful friends who have already had such a positive impact on my life. I’ve started getting more involved on campus. I’ve joined a sorority! I’ve started doing volunteer work, I’ve started thinking about my future and taking more proactive measures to achieve the future I’ve always dreamed of. I’ve been able to just do my own thing and not worry about how it is going to affect some boy. I’m not scheduling my time around him, waiting anxiously for a text that isn’t going to come. I’m not worried that he doesn’t love me enough or question why he doesn’t want to spend time with me. I’m not trudging through the week, focusing on going home to see him.

I’m not saying I want to stay single forever. I’m not saying that if I developed feelings for a guy tomorrow I wouldn’t date him.

I’m just saying that it’s perfectly awesome being single, and I am fully aware of this. I don’t need anybody to tell me, with pity jumping off their tongue, that it’s okay that I’m single.

I don’t think I have anything else to say to you people at the moment. Stay tuned for more Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism.

Atheism In Your Face

Welcome to the illustrious Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism. You should feel honored that this blog is gracing your inferior corneas.

My school has a meal trade system in which students can get non-caf, delicious food for a meal swipe rather than paying for it. One may do this anywhere from 10 am to midnight, excluding the hour from 12 pm to 1 pm. Whaaale, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I get out of class for lunch at 11:50.

Why am I sharing this information?

Today, I was hastily making my way to the student union after class so that I could get a personal pan pizza for lunch. It was 11:58, and I had my focus locked on the entrance. I picked up my pace, refusing to miss the deadline because it was a Monday and pizza actually sounds heavenly no matter which day it is. As I moved close and closer to my destination, I noticed an older man standing outside the doors, and I noticed that he held a stack of pocket-sized books in his hand–The New Testament.

We have an open campus, so this kind of thing happens quite often. Usually, I will offer a smile and just accept the Bible and it stays in my backpack all semester. However, today, I had my mind on melted cheese and tomato sauce. So, the man extended a tiny Bible to me as I passed and, without looking at him or smiling, I continued walking.

I got my pizza with about seven seconds to spare, and as I was opening my mouth to take my first delicious bite, a pang of guilt hit me. I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t take a Bible, but I felt bad for blowing the guy off. This got me thinking about things I think other people should consider as well.

Don’t get me wrong–I love kindness. I believe in being kind to everyone (though I am certainly not always successful, obviously), so I know I should have been a bit more polite to the man. However, I’m going to propose a question to y’all.

What if he had been an atheist handing out pamphlets on the reasons he doesn’t believe in God. I guarantee you a large chunk of the people who passed by would react very negatively. A lot of people would probably get offended (even if there was nothing actually saying anything bad about God), maybe even say hurtful things to the man. And why? If a person simply disagrees with your beliefs but does not actually bad-mouth it, why would you get offended? I’m agnostic, and I don’t get offended when someone promotes Christianity (or any other religion). One may argue that handing out pamphlets about atheism is trying to “force” that religion on a person, but why is handing out a Bible any different? Sometimes I feel like even mentioning atheism or agnosticism offends people, and that is absolutely absurd to me.

I have so so so many opinions on this matter, and I have no idea how to put them all in words. I really just want people to think about this. I respect any religion, and I know not every atheist or agnostic person is the same as I am, but sometimes people get offended too easily. Simple as that. And honestly, when someone acts offended and disrespected just because I do not believe the same thing as they do, it makes me feel like shit.

Please understand, I’m not trying to call anyone a hypocrite, but I feel like oftentimes people just don’t think about what it’s like to be on the other side. They only focus on themselves and then they victimize themselves when they are unknowingly doing the same thing to someone else.

I don’t think I have anything else to say to you people at the moment. Stay tuned for more Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism.

Who dafuq are you?

Welcome to the illustrious Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism. You should feel honored that this blog is gracing your inferior corneas.

This is actually just an obligatory introduction post because I feel awkward starting out with something personal or offensive or a combination of the two.

So, here are a few things you should know about CC&C:

• Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism is an anonymous blog. Please don’t confuse my work with the drivel that is Gossip Girl. I promise my blog will be much deeper and significantly more clever. I chose to go anonymous so that I have the freedom to express my thoughts/opinions in any manner I deem necessary. I don’t want to worry about offending my best friend’s grandmother or something because I am a hoodlum using the fuck word and disagreeing with her religious views.
• Consider that your warning. I will curse. I will not shy away from controversial topics and unpopular opinions. However, I always, always, always try to respect others. I am not trying to insult or bash other people.
• I am going to post things pertaining to my life/interests. This is honestly a cavernous range of subjects. I’ll talk about college life, books and music, clothes, rants, etc. There is something here for everyone.
• I love discussions. Please feel free to comment on anything I post, even if your opinion is vastly different than mine. All I ask is you keep it respectful.

I don’t think I have anything else to say to you people at the moment. Stay tuned for more Cats, Coffee, and Cynicism.