For the Dreamless Sleeper

Mr Sandman,

I’m tired. Its 3pm and I am tired.

I sit here and remind myself that I am blessed. I have a beautiful if not slightly dysfunctional family, I have friends, I have been educated, I can pay my rent every week and I am healthy. But I am tired.

There are more good days than bad days and I smile more than I used to, but there are days when the world seems to fall down on me. The birds stop singing and the bees seem to have gone some place warmer. But as I think, I start to realize that it’s not the birds or the bees that have gone someplace else, it’s me.

My eyes are open and I can see the sun sifting through the trees, I see flowers bloom and I see rainbows encasing their landscape but the color is gone because my eyes are tired.

I run and I feel the wind brush against my body and when I swim I feel the water passing over every inch of my body. Goose bumps and drops of sweat no longer cover my skin because my body is tired.

Evening dinners surrounded by lights and bustling people are just as beautiful as they had always been. Food is presented and served as if it were a masterpiece to rival the Mona Lisa, but I can’t taste it because my senses are tired.

It’s early in the morning before the sun has risen when his fingertips trace my body. His lips brush against my skin as if they were treasuring each moment like it was the last time we would embrace, but I can’t feel it because I am tired.

But now it’s 3pm and I scroll through text books and readings trying to conjure a sentence that is not only relevant but also comprehensive and nothing reaches the page because my mind is tired.

So I pray. I pray in hope that if God is real, he will hear me. I pray because there is a chance that if someone is out there they will hear me, because even though I am screaming right now nobody seems to hear me. So I reside here silently, hoping and praying that in my silence someone might hear me.

I no longer pray for a savior, I just pray that I might find a place to sleep.

prayerfully,

Sweet Someone.

 

 

For the Silver Siblings

Mum,

I know you expect the world from me but I’m sorry, I only live here. You’ve been giving me the same knee-jerking response since before I could even use my knees “we love you equally, you both have your own strengths and weaknesses!”

Let’s cut the crap.

I’m second best, the silver medalist, the runner up, second fiddle in the orchestra and the more we encourage the illusion that I’m anything more, the more patronized and degraded I feel. This isn’t vindictive or bitter, this is fact.

I went to Nationals, she went to the World Champs. After weeks of study I crawled home with A minuses, she auto-piloted A pluses. People told you that I was handsome, she got the modelling contract. Yes I may be good looking but she is stunning.

She may be a liar but honesty isn’t something you can put on a CV and expect to stand out. Yes I’m reasonably intelligent but she’s a genius.

She was here first, she got to the finish line first, number one has always been her spot. So let number two be mine.

Don’t compare my failed attempts with her successes and most of all please don’t expect greatness. Not all of us can be great otherwise great would just be normal. I’m doing the best I can and I know that she did better, but I am not her. I’m only me.

Getting 85% in an exam is a big deal for me, but you insist on ruining it by telling me what I failed to reach. Your ideals are constantly overshadowing what is, to anyone else, a good job.

You have objectified her to be everything I fall short of being and as my sister, she has never done a thing to me but still, down in the pit of my stomach, I hate her. It’s not her fault though.

There are so many stupid people out there but I wish you would just be proud that I’m not one of them. I am not an Olympian nor am I a child prodigy. Saying I can do better no matter how hard I’ve tried just makes the effort I’ve already put in look worthless. How have we gone so wrong?

I truly do appreciate what encouragement you do give me, but please remember even among giants I am only me. stop expecting more.

always,

Second best.

 

For the Ones Who Are Drowning

My illness,

I’m writing this to you as a friend because after a decade of living with you I guess you could say we are more than acquaintances. At first I wasn’t sure who you were, you were like an imaginary “friend” who was always there; visible to me but to anyone else, you weren’t really there.

You saw my first day of high school and you watched me blush in front of my first crush. You were silent but you were there. It wasn’t until you met my first boyfriend that I heard you speak.
“Why would he stay with you when any of your friends would be so much better for him?” You watched me answer your question when his parents had gone to sleep that night because if I didn’t give him what he wanted, one of the pretty girls at school would, right? But you knew it didn’t really matter, we would never make it.

“You just weren’t good enough for him,” quickly turned into “you’re just not good enough for anyone.”

You followed me when I moved high schools, you even let me make new friends and I started to think maybe we could be happy here. You would appear in the faces of the girls who made nasty comments but more often than not I learned to ignore you. I stopped seeing you so I thought that maybe you had quietly retreated to somewhere better, until one day you rode over me on a wave on grief.

Death stole one of my best friends that year.  The only one that was really there for me was you but I couldn’t push you away because you were the only one who had seen the real me. The only one who could come close to comfort.  That day that death took him away you watched me drown on the lounge floor. I think, even now, part of me is still lying there with you.

I found ways to run away from you and I found ways to hide from you. When I moved to University I thought maybe we were ready to go our different ways and for a while we did. I fell in love and it was like ecstasy; wildly consuming but draining. Without fail you were there to cradle me when I had completely drained myself.

In the pills on the table I saw silence. I didn’t see darkness because that was you and you were already here. I saw sweet nothing, a blissful silence because after sailing in a storm for so long, that was enough to seem like heaven to me.

You disappeared for days and when I woke up I could see  you laying the floor beside my bed. I stopped existing for weeks and lay there with you until I decided it was time to get up. For years you crippled me, you broke me, but most of all, you lied to me. After years of feeling like I wasn’t good enough, like I was crazy, I said no. I wasn’t crazy and I was enough. For me, I was enough and one day I could even be more than enough.

You’re the friend that’s always there, I always feel you and maybe you’ll never really leave. But for now I cherish the days that I don’t see you and maybe next time I do I’ll have a few things to say to you.

So I’ll see you,

Sweet Someone.

 

For Us

My love,

After everything, still, you are one of my best friends. You may not speak of me with the same smile but if we can still understand each others silences then I could not deny that we, have made it.

We don’t talk all the time and when we do sometimes it’s about nothing at all. But among the small talk you will have these moments where it feels like your lights turn on and someone upstairs wakes up. Like you drop the walls you’ve built up and there’s a whole other person in there. This person who isn’t afraid to care and cries when it hurts.

I want you to say hello to this person because this is the man I have spent the best part of the last five years defending, telling people who didn’t believe in you that this man was in there because I had seen him. Of course no one believed me and I looked like I was the crazy one for defending and loving such a brute that had no feeling.

I want you to know that you have the most beautiful lights when you decide to wake up and turn them on.

It makes me so proud to see you doing all these amazing things with your life but it hits a little closer to home when you say “hey, thanks for being there. I know you’re there.” It reminds me that you are the man I knew you could be when everyone else was telling me I was crazy. It lets me know you recognize that I am here, still trying.

So I hope you find someone who turns not only you on but your lights as well. I hope one day I can look at everyone and say “I told you he’d make it.”
But if you feel like you get lost on the way, or if you’re drowning in something a little heavier than usual, I’ll always be here even if it just to sit in your silence and remind you that we are making it.

You’ll get there,
& I’ll be here.
Sweet Someone

For the Ones Who Almost Made It

My darling,

I know.

It wasn’t easy and I put you through a lot. My job, my ex, not being overly fond of your social crowd. I found myself talking a lot about the things you didn’t do more than the things you did do. I wasn’t the usual and I definitely wasn’t what your family had in mind. I wasn’t financially stable and I smoked sometimes. I wasn’t easy and I may not have even been worth it in your eyes.  But you chose to stay.

You didn’t have a job you already had everything. You threw tantrums over things that I thought were otherwise reasonable. You yelled at me and cornered me in the kitchen while you did it. You told another girl you wanted her while I was with you. But I chose to stay.

We chose to stay even though it was hard. You might say it was because we loved each other but maybe we were just stupid.

I ran you into the ground and you broke me so yes, we went our separate ways, and that happens when people grind each other down to nothing. It doesn’t mean it was anybody’s fault, it just happened. I still think of you and everyday. I miss the best friend I had in you because everyday something happens that I want to tell you. But then I remember, we don’t know each other anymore.

When you walked away from our relationship you walked away from me as a person. You then also chose to walk away from the friends we called family. You left us in a way that made us wonder if we were the ones who weren’t good enough.

So I hope you find someone who breaks you and I hope they walk away from you. So maybe you will know what it feels like to not be enough. But more than that, I hope you pick yourself up and learn from it because one day you will make someone the happiest girl in the world. But you need to learn how to love people as they are, not how you think they should be.

With hope,
Sweet Someone.