"i am who i choose to be"

sometimes i think about things that i'm not supposed to. like a dream in the night reminds me that something was here and now it's not. someone was here, and now that someone is somewhere that i don't know nor have the right to know. and it's scary. because the someone somewhere is still reminding me that i want them here, but i can't have them here. i'm not supposed to even think of them anymore but the more i try, the fall gets harder every time. i can't be apathetic. i can't not feel the way that my heart is screaming. it's impossible. it's part of me and undeniably true. i'm not sure where emotions are supposed to draw a line when you're only seventeen. i have a life to live. i don't think i'm supposed to be this restrained by something that feels like love but can't be, because love is perfect and undying and unfailing and constant and true and this doesn't feel like any of those things.

the tooth is gone and the more i try to pretend everything is perfect, my tongue keeps creeping back to that familiar place, where there's now a gaping hole that makes me feel incomplete and a little bit ugly.

i was driving, and my head hurts and all the lights are blinding as the cars pass on the highway and i want to scream at them to stop making it hurt so much. and i think about what i miss and the song that describes my feelings so perfectly, and i think about that song and dissect every lyric and know that it's exactly how i feel. and then, interrupting those thoughts, that very song is selected by random of 300 on my ipod and begins to play and is suffocating in my little car. the song that says "i miss everything about you..." and i park and lean my head back and close my eyes and i can't cry. but i sing the song that says i miss everything about you, even after everything we've been through. i sing and then i go inside and order chinese take-out and take it home to eat while i watch closer, and i lay in bed that night and know that nothing has changed, and i'm afraid that it never will.