I still can’t believe you’re Jon Starnes

So much has been happening I don’t even really know where to start.

Jonathan. So much to say about him.
So, Jon and I have been together for not quite two months. I don’t think I have ever felt so much so fast. It is the easiest relationship I have ever been in. And yeah yeah I know it’s still new, and that people will say it’s too soon to tell. But I feel like we have finally wrapped up the “honeymoon stage.” The newness is wearing off. It’s starting to just feel normal and routine, like my world has always revolved around this amazing man.

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of him when he’s not looking and I just can’t hardly believe he is mine. I have known him now  for 13 long years, and I never thought we’d end up where we’re at. In middle school I used to have the biggest crush on him. We traveled in a lot of the same circles, and I would say we knew each other pretty well, but we were never really close friends. I remember sitting behind him in English class in 9th grade. I’d pull out his pony tail and play with his long golden hair. My mom has called him pony tail Jon for as long as I can remember. But I knew him before his hair was long, so it must have started much later than I remember.

In 5th grade at a class party the teacher, Mrs. Pauttler, let us play whatever music we wanted. I think it was a Valentine’s Day party. Me and my best friend, Liz Mincks, couldn’t get enough of Brittney Spears and Christina Agulaira at the time. At one point in the party, the poppy girly music was replaced by… the worst noise I’d ever heard. I went and asked Mrs. Pauttler what the heck we were listening to. She told me that everyone was taking turns picking the music and it was Jon’s turn for a while. I marched right up to him and demanded to know what atrocious CD he was forcing us all to listen to. I remember him looking at me like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He juat blinked a couple of times and asked “Really? You’ve never hears of Aerosmith?”

In fact, I had not ever heard of Aerosmith, who he still sometimes listens to today. But I never forgot how much I hated them from that moment forward. I don’t think I heard a single Aerosmith song from that party in 5th grade until I started hanging out with Jonathan again a couple of months ago.  I asked if he remembered that class party, and he didn’t but he sure had a good laugh when I told my side of the story.

In September of this year, he and I made plans to go running. But I finally met a man who procrastinates as much as I do, so by the time we both got out to the park we agreed to meet at, it was getting dark, and rain drops were starting to fall from heavy clouds. We tried running through the dirt paths in the woods, but the leaves above us blocked out what little light the moon was trying to lend, and the rocks under our feet were getting slick with the rain. We slowed to a walk, the rain soaking through our clothes. It was cold, but we stayed and we talked for a long time.

After a while we decided to leave. Somehow we ended up sitting on the swings in the rain at our old elementary school. We sat and sipped on vodka and whiskey and talked about the past, trading memories of one another. We laughed about people we both knew, and wondered aloud what happened to whats-her-name and did you hear about so-and-so? We sat and talked for hours, and after the alcohol had taken it’s toll, Jon asked me to dance.

I am not much of a dancer, and I warned him of this, making excuses not to, reminding him there was no music. He took my hand, and pulled me to my feet. He started to sing as I stumbled over his feet, and giggled from embarrassment.My mind was reeling with a mix of emotions and feelings, worry even. It made me nervous to have this boy I’d seen grow into a man with his hand pressed to the small of my back. He was goofy and animated as he sang. He didn’t seem nervous or the least bit shy. He just sang to me and twirled me around on the black top where we had shared so many memories before. In all that time I never thought we’d share a moment quite like this.

Days turned into weeks and soon we were inseparable. We were finding every reason to be together, which is how I ended up meeting his mother for the first time. Even though we’d known each other forever, and my family knew him well, I had never met his. Jon, and his mom, Pam, were moving. I offered to swing by to help them out, and started helping Jonathan pack up his room. You learn a lot about a person when you go through every single thing they own. I learned that Jon is a huge pack rat, much like myself. While going through stacks of old papers we found an old Christmas card I gave him in 2005 and a birthday card from 2006. I was surprised but happy to see he had pieces of us from the past. I don’t even really remember ever giving him cards, but I really liked him back then so I guess it makes sense.

It’s crazy to be with someone I have known for so long, that knows the people I know, that knew me and liked me before I was the person I am  now. It’s like he knows a part of me that most people never will, that every one else missed out on. I have never met anyone that gets me the way this man gets me, or that makes me laugh the way he makes me laugh. He reminds me to be this person I’ve always wanted to be, but some how I always fell short before now. He is the missing piece to my life and myself. He was there all along just waiting to be noticed. And sometimes I stop and look at him, and think to myself “I can’t believe you’re Jon Starnes.”

You Think I’m Not Jealous

You think I’m not jealous but sometimes it just hits me so hard I want to throw up.
Hot tears streak my face.
My breaths come in choked gulps as I try to control myself.
I tell myself to get a grip.
I tell myself to get over it.
But you have your arms around another girl and I just can’t look away.
We all have our pasts.
But I can’t bear to look at yours.
It makes me so jealous.

The House That Bulit Me

I have heard this song time and time again. When it first came out I remember really liking it. I hear it on the radio so often now, I don’t even really think about it anymore. I don’t really listen to the words. Even while singing along, I’m just going through the motions. I know the words so well it’s easy to speak them out loud while letting them lose their meaning in my head.

Today this was not the case. I guess I was just in one of those moods. The words spoke to me in a way they haven’t in a long time. I spent a lot of time reflecting on my life and my childhood while listening. I found myself once again relating to the lyrics, and letting them take me back to a time forgotten.

Reflecting on the words, I found many similarities to my own life, even though there isn’t really one house I think of as “the house that built me.” I have many memories in many houses, but all of them at one time or another, were called “home.” I don’t miss them any less because there are many.

My thought process continued to take me through memories, and I found myself thinking about all of the many things that “built me.” People and places, things I did, and things I missed out on. It made me kind of sad to sit and reminisce about the many things of the past I can never have back.

Nothing can replace you, nor can time erase you

I could spend every remaining moment of my life with you.  I could just be with you, and do nothing else, and I wouldn’t miss a thing. Some part of me holds on to a time when that was still a reality. Now it’s not even possible. So much has changed. You have changed.

I remember a simpler time when my future held you, and I didn’t know what else, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I had you. I thought nothing could change that. What changed exactly? Perhaps I will never know. I spent so much time blaming myself for not knowing how to accept the new you. As more time passes, I have begun to wonder if you left out of fear. Did you think I would judge you? Did you think I would love you any less? Did you really think you could do anything to make me turn my back on you? Maybe you just left before any of that could happen. Maybe you had less faith in me than I thought.

I don’t even know you now, but somehow feel a connection I don’t think I will ever lose. I can talk to you without a guard, share myself with you. But you’re not the same person I used to love. I still love you but you don’t care anymore. Your life is somehow fine without me. You don’t feel the emptiness that  I feel knowing I will never call you mine. I piece of me missing, a spot that can never be filled. Nothing can replace you, nor can time erase you. I need you more than ever now. You don’t know, and will never care. You didn’t even want me to take this picture. You were too scared someone might see it. I miss the way it used to be. I miss the us we were meant to become.

Treasure

It seems I am becoming somewhat of an early morning blogger. Waking up painstakingly early to take Kyle to work is never my ideal morning, but lately, for whatever reason, I have stopped going back to bed, and filled that time instead with writing. It seems that the morning is a good time to write. All of my thoughts are fresh and new, and not as jumbled and full as when I fall asleep. Somehow writing in the morning is easy. I don’t feel stuck or clueless. In fact, in just the 3 mile drive home after I drop Kyle off, my morning thoughts start churning, and I usually have a pretty good idea of what to write about before I even get half way. By the time I am rolling up the windows and cutting the engine, I usually feel like I’m going to explode. I am so ready to put my thoughts into words, but I feel like they will slip away if I don’t hurry, like they have so many times before.

Summer is slowly fading into fall. The cooler mornings like this remind me of my first autumn in Kansas City. I hadn’t found a job yet, but something would often propel me to wake up early. There was no rhyme or reason, and anyone who knows me, even in slight, knows I am not a morning person. I easily sleep till noon when left alone. It is totally out of character for me to choose to get up early. But there I was. I would make a cup of hot tea, and curl up with a blanket and a cigarette on my third story balcony, and watch the world wake up around me. Even though I lived in kind of an older, run down area, and my view wasn’t much more than traffic, a gas station, and the tops of the other buildings around me, it was beautiful. I remember that crisp fall morning air, the warm colors of leaves changing. There is nothing like it. As that weather gets closer again I anticipate things like picnics and laying in the grass looking up at the sky. Things that I never really do, but always think about doing in theory.

If life was like a movie, I’d go lay in the grass and watch the sun creep over the neighboring houses on my street. I would sit in the swing in my front yard, and sing at the top of my lungs about love and other wondrous things. In reality it rained last night. The grass is wet and muddy. And the landlord just cut down the branch in the tree with the swing on it. And I am far too shy to sing outside like I do when alone. Few people have probably ever truly heard me sing like I do when it’s just me. Less than a handful. You know who you are.

Lately I have been finding that my mornings are not long enough. I often run out of time to write long before I run out of things to say. Church this morning. In about two hours. I’m trying to decide if I have enough time to curl back under my covers for another hour or so. But I worry that if I do, the world will forget to wake me till noon. The world is tricky like that. I guess I could set an alarm, but who likes to wake up to the screeching sound of that ugly noise? I much prefer the way Kyle wakes me up when it’s time to take him to work, brushing his fingers through my hair and across my skin. Whispers in my ear of morning time, the birds chirping a good morning song out the window. There is no more beautiful way to have yor dreams so abruptly interrupted as this. I treasure these mornings.

Last Kiss

I still remember the look on your face
Lit through the darkness at 1:58
Words that you whispered for just us to know
You told me you loved me, so why did you go?

I do recall now the smell of the rain,
Fresh on the pavement. I ran off the plane
That July 9th, the beat of your heart
The jumps through your shirt
I can still feel your arms

I do remember the swing of your step
The life of the party, you’re showing off again
And I roll my eyes and then you pull me in
I’m not much for dancing, but for you I did
Because I love your handshake meeting my father
I love how you walk with your hands in your pockets
How you kiss me when I was in the middle of saying something
There’s not a day I don’t miss those rude interruptions

But now I’ll go
Sit on the floor wearing your clothes
All that I know is I don’t know
How to be something you miss
Never thought we’d have our last kiss

So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep
And I’ll feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe
And I’ll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are
Hope it’s nice where you are
And I hope the sun shines, and it’s a beautiful day
And something reminds you, you wish you had stayed
You can plan for a change in weather and time
But I never planned on you changing your mind.

Reflections

I took a personality test last night and it really got me thinking, maybe a little bit too much, but that’s kind of what this is about. One of the questions on the test asked if I spend a lot of time reflecting on my emotions. I answered “very accurate” to this question which got me thinking. It is strange how much time I spend just thinking.

I would say that probably 80% of my thoughts are consumed by the past. How I used to feel, how I used to be, who I used to know. I spend so much time thinking about people that are no longer a big part of my life. I am constantly thinking about how things might be different had this one thing or that one thing been different. I find my thoughts wrapped around old relationships, old friendships, old jobs, old houses. It’s not that I’d rather go back. I’m just… reflecting.

I wonder why I am this way. I wonder if I changed my thinking to be more about the future, how quickly I would progress. I wonder how my mind always takes me back to old places, old people, and old times. I don’t ever want to forget. I’m somehow scared to let go. I don’t know how to stop dwelling so much on these things I can’t change, these people I can’t fix.

All of these thoughts make me feel almost sad. Why do I allow myself to sit in sadness in my own head so often? Why is it that I go backward when I let my mind wander? Perhaps I am too scared of the unknown. I’m scared to move forward, but the past is easy. It’s familiar and it feels like home. And everything that’s happened is already past. the hard stuff I’ve already been through. I know I made it out okay then, but who knows what will happen next?

I just kind of realized that I am terrified of the future. I guess I always have been. It is easier and safer to stick with what you know, and who you know, even if it isn’t the best. My personality test said I would rather stay in a mediocre relationship than to be alone. But I think that’s about more than just the fear of loneliness. It is the fear of the unknown. I would rather stay at a blah job or have mild friendships, than to branch out and discover what other possibilities exist for me.

Why am I this way? I’m sure I will now spend countless hours reflecting on these results, analyzing myself. I guess that is what its all about. I’m constantly analyzing myself, the decisions I have made, the people I surround myself with. I am always second guessing myself. I’m terrified of settling for less than I feel I deserve, but I am equally terrified of branching out to find out what opportunities may lie right in front of me. How did I become this person? And will I ever change?

Hard Love

Today is one of those days where I write a sentence and then hit backspace, clearing the page, starting again. I stare at the empty screen, the blinking cursor encouraging me to write something.

I wrote to you today. Everything just came flowing out, as if it has never been held in. It felt natural and normal, but somehow wrong.

Today is a lazy day. It’s nearly noon and I’m still laying in bed on the computer.

I want to erase this all again and start over, but I won”t.

Sitting here thinking about what to write, out of no where this poem popped into my head. I hadn’t read it in years, but can still recite at least half of it. So of course I had to Google it, as all good things can be found in the wondrous land of Google. While Googling it, I found out that it isn’t a poem at all, but actually a song, and it left me wondering how I ever got a hold of the lyrics without realizing they were lyrics. I think I read them in a book year and years ago. And I think the book was called hard love, although what it was about has completely escaped me now. But I digress.

hard love
I remember growing up like it was only yesterday
Mom & Daddy tried their best to guide me on my way
But the hard times & the liquor drove the easy love away
And the only love I knew about was hard love

It was hard love, every hour of the day
When Christmas to my birthday was a million years away
And the fear that came between them drove the tears into my play
There was love in daddy’s house, but it was hard love

And I recall the gentle courtesy you gave me as I tried
To dissemble in politeness all the love I felt inside
And for every song of laughter was another song that cried
This ain’t no easy weekend, this is hard love

It was hard love, every step of the way
Hard to be so close to you, so hard to turn away
And when all the stars and sentimental songs dissolved to day
There was nothing left to sing about but hard love

So I loved you for your courage, and your gentle sense of shame
And I loved you for your laughter and your language and your name
And I knew it was impossible, but I loved you just the same
Though’ the only love I gave to you was hard love

It was hard love, it was hard on you, I know
When the only love I gave to you was love I couldn’t show
You forgave the heart that loved you as your lover turned to go
Leaving nothing but the memory of hard love

So I’m standing in this phone booth with a dollar and a dime
Wondering what to say to you to ease your troubled mind
For    the Lord’s cross might redeem us, but our own just wastes our time
And to tell the two apart is always hard, love

So I’ll tell you that I love you even though I’m far away
And I’ll tell you how you change me as I live from day to day
How you help me to accept myself and I won’t forget to say
Love is never wasted, even when it’s hard love

Yes, it’s hard love, but it’s love all the same
Not the stuff of fantasy, but more than just a game
And the only kind of miracle that’s worthy of the name
For the love that heals our lives is mostly hard love

Your Brother

I look for pieces of you in him. It hurts but I can’t stop myself. He looks so much like you now. Just 19 years old. The way his car smells of oil and grease reminds me of driving around with you. I try to like the smell but I never really did. I watch him work on my breaks, sweat pouring down his face under the summer sun. My mind takes me back to your garage, and the hours spent there. I found it so boring then. It’s still boring now, but I treasure it somehow.

I say something and for the first time I hear him laugh. It chokes me up a bit but I push it down. He reminds me so much of you. The goofy way the sound of his laughter is more air than anything else. I don’t know if I could explain it to anyone who never knew you. He’s quiet like you were in the beginning. I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t know me, or if he simply is that way. I cling to every word he says, this boy I barely know. The way he talks, the sound of his voice, everything takes me back to you.

Some part of me never wants to leave. I can just keep pretending you’re not gone. Sitting in his car in the dark in silence, a tear runs down my face in the back seat. I tell him he looks like you, but he says nothing. I wonder if he sees it. I wonder if it kills him the way it’s killing me. I wonder how he’s hurting. I wonder how I would would hurt to lose a sister. I think of your mother and how she must feel. I feel guilty for hurting like I do when there are so many others more entitled to the pain.

I long to be close to him like I was once so close to you, but it doesn’t make sense. We are practically strangers, him and I. I can barely make conversation with him. I just don’t know what to say. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about you, but that’s all I can think of looking at him. It’s impossible to explain these feelings. It hurts, but I’m so scared to let go of it. I can’t stop staring at him. There is so much of you in his eyes.

It’s getting late, and it’s time for him to go. He thanks me for dinner. So polite. I want to hug him, but I don’t know how to take a step closer and put my arms around this person that isn’t you. So I tell him I’ll see him tomorrow, and I hear the front door shut at the bottom of the stairs. My boyfriend says he really likes him. He says he thinks he might have liked you if he’d known you better. He says he doesn’t see much of you in his personality, that you look alike but you seem like such different people.

I feel crazy. Am I making it all up? Am I looking for you where you will never exist? It would be so much easier if you were here. I wish none of this had ever happened. It doesn’t make sense and it’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to miss you like I do. It’s not fair for me to hurt this way. It’s not fair the way your memory haunts me every day. You were always the one I came to when I was feeling the way I do now. Where do I go now that you’re gone? What do I do without you?

A photo of you

I have always loved pictures and everything about them. I love capturing the beauty of a moment, forever frozen in time. I love looking at pictures, seeing them, feeling the emotion attached to the memory from the photographer’s perspective, learning about a subject by studying their face, their body language.

It is sometimes hard to see photos of you. It reminds me of how close we once were. It is strange to look at a new photo of you, old friend. It is strange to realize how time changes everything. It feels wrong to have to study you, to re-learn you, a person I once knew better than myself. Those pictures bring all kinds of memories and emotions flooding over me. The pictures bring me back to a time when I knew you. I’m remembering you the way only I can remember you, the way I will forever have you memorized in my mind.

I remember when you were mine. I used to study you. I used to draw you. I used to watch you sleep, studying your peaceful face, praying I would never forget that moment. After all this time, I never have. I think back to those times, those years we spent together. It makes me need to write.

It is strange to write about you now. it feels forbidden and mischievous. It feels wrong to remember and to pretend life was good then. But everything happens for a reason right? We are both where we are meant to be. We were never made for one another. Perhaps we just faked it so long we convinced ourselves.

I don’t miss you, but I miss the simplicity of that time. I miss drawing you, and studying you face while you dream. I miss knowing you the way no one else did. And I wonder how you are. But I dare not ask. I can’t take that step backward, can’t open that door for you again. And I don’t ever want to. But sometimes I look at your pictures, and feelings stir inside me that I can’t quite explain or understand. I hurt. I miss you but I don’t miss you. I don’t miss being yours, but I miss the person you are. I miss the me I was when I was with you. So I sit and look at you now, and remember you then.

You used to make me this happy.