oh this meant to be a two-sentence post and golly miss molly how it poured on out

i am meant to be at a family reunion today. instead i am hermiting and rereading old journals from high school and disparaging at how far i have not come in nine years and how tempered now are my ambitions, and i am watching the cats sleep peacefully coiled in my comforter and i am throwing up. 

of late i have been skittery and grim and your comments i keep in my inbox and reread ad nauseum in the hopes that this time i will be able to take them in, that they will mean something at last. because you have beautiful things to say but my barriers have been far too reinforced and with you nicking away at the outside and me inside trying to stop the continued construction maybe we can save me from my own self-sabotage. i have fifteen thousand things to say to you all but how can i say what i mean to say to you when i cannot even say it to myself? 

conundrums and empty heart, dizzy head and fragile mind. i am meant to be at the Lake just now, all smiles to the cousins and quick answers as to What I'm Doing These Days and What I Plan to Do Ultimately and being a safety net for my mother of course, for my father too, not to mention my aunt and my cousin, i'm meant to hold it all together for them all and i'm meant to lie in the sun and eat and swim and my bones are not meant to jut out nor my scars to be seen (or exist at all) and i am meant to be a shining token of their success, legacy, poster child, what have you. 

i will not be that, no, i am no doll and i am not sorry. and i will stay here in california and smoke and throw up and cover my scars thank you because my dogs love me no matter what, really, no matter what i am or profess to be or how many times i fail or succeed. they will be there with their slobbery smiles and snuffly kisses. and you will be here with your words of support that i am afraid of because no one anywhere any time has ever supported me so much and it terrifies me because i cannot possibly be worth that, no, no way. the universe is ever expanding and still i take up too much space in it.