No Picture So Pretty

Sometimes I can hear her through the walls,
she cries on her pillow until she falls asleep
And in her dreams I hear her screams as she falls
for a boy who naps on the branches of birch trees

She hangs a painted picture underneath the leaves,
but he will not turn his head to see what she has drawn
And all-the-while the river bellow whispers and weaves
the secrets of a young boy's heart, empty and withdrawn

I go into to sleep tonight with someone next to me,
trying to settle in comfort over a pillow that is dry
And I make a wish as I close my eyes, to dream,
to dream of falling for the boy in the birch tree

I'll paint a picture and hang it underneath the leaves,
hoping and praying that he will turn his head to see
But he will remain on his branch, as still as he can be,
and then I'll know that his heart never belonged to me

I wake up each morning with all my love returned,
He is so loving, so silly, so honest and concerned

Yet my songs all sound off key,
new things fail to impress me,
I've lost my sense to cry,
my passion has all run dry,
flames are losing their flicker,
moments pass by quicker and quicker,
the sugar tastes bitter,

... and my poor heart is losing her glitter.

"The best fuel for a writer's heart is sorrow."

Can't Slow Down (I'm in love with Brett Dennen)

I'm fallin' for a man who has never seen my face --
I just can't seem to slow down.
His words are like a sweetened wine shakin' me, all twisted up,
into another drunken clown.

I am a lover, and I am a dreamer
I've been that down, and I've loved, and I've lost


There's just something to the sound of this voice,
the way he seems so cool...
Something about his royal reign and noble rule --
it's weavin' me a fool.


I've been a poor man, I've been a rich man
I've made a fortune and I've paid the cost


Yet something in my pitted heart tells me that he'll never know
my shape, my name, the twists of my frame, or the sound of my "Hello."


And I've been cheated, I've been defeated
I've played the game and I've been double crossed


I hear him sing,
"Follow your heart and you won't get lost."

Moving Backwards, In the Flesh

"When look for faults, use a mirror... not a telescope."

As unfortunate as it seems for me to admit to the entire inter web that I cry myself to sleep as often as possible, it is also just as imperative that I humiliate myself for your further education. I will be turning the foolhardy age of 19 in exactly one month and eighteen days. And still I can admit to never having been sexually active or involved in any major drug usage -- aside from the few experimental puffs from a nicotine smoke in the past.

I'm not bragging. I'm complaining.

I suffer from a severe insecurity problem. I have been suffering from this problem since the very day I slipped out from my mother's womb. Scratch that -- maybe even from the day I was conceived. Shocking, very shocking. I know. To think: all of this time I have been working my way towards being diagnosed with an incurable disorder. Incurable, why? Because the feds, the governement, the Alien Conformant Unit, whoever, whatever, doesn't believe that it's important enough to study any further.

So for the remaining time I spend on this planet, I am expected to look in the mirror and feel as though the flesh I was blessed with isn't really mine. I will live my whole life seeing myself in photographs and not believing that I'm really me. I will live nearly one century long with the feeling that I am stuck inside some sort of alien body with no way to escape.

They call this "Body Dysmorphic Disorder." And the only known cure prescribed for it is "to not think about it." I could laugh at that for the rest of my life, being constantly reminded that this disorder is just another subsection of OCD. How can I not think about an obsession? I put on as much makeup as I can, in different experimental ways, only to feel the same. I have panic attacks (in inconvenient public places) that give me a painful sensation like that of tetanus running throughout my jaw, chest, and fingertips. I don't go out for weeks in fear that someone might look at me.

It is psychological: something that I understand completely. But it is also emotional, physical, and so very real. Who knows when it started? But honestly, who cares? It is there to haunt me every day. It has hindered me from being the colloquial teenager. It has stolen from me every important relationship I have ever been in. And it will keep me from having a stable career and out of the hopes of ever being in a stable marriage, if in any marriage at all.

I can look forward to the possibilities of becoming addicted to plastic surgery, sucked dry of a social life, and turned into a totally home bound freak of urban biology. I can go through life believing that every "I love you" was underlined with some sort of second motive. I could go on forever knowing that every mirrored reflection is both my best friend and worst enemy - One for telling me the truth, and the other for being so cruelly disgusting.

---

I am watching all of my friends move forward, toward college, careers, and families. All the while I am moving backwards, in the flesh. I have been so pathetically depressed for such a long time that I've had myself subconsciously convinced that my life would somehow finally be over after high school.

It is not over.

And I am spending every day trying to inch myself toward the idea that I might actually have to continue living. I might actually have to pick a college and find a job. I might actually have to choose who I want to be for the next sixty or so years.

I might actually have to face the mirror.