Christmas Day

Christmas day has come and gone, again. 2018 is on its way. Christmas was not an exceptional one, but I know others who were alone so, I can't complain. I feel as I get older Christmas just becomes a day of longing. I long for my relatives, living or dead, who I cannot see on this day. I long for my childhood and the magic of long days at home and Santa Claus. I also long for the days when I will have a child to create the magic for. I long for the sound of wrapping paper and the smell of bacon grease and eggs. I long for waking up at that hour of the morning when it's so crisp outside and you can see your breath if you're close to the window. I long for the speed at which I would run down the stairs to get to my stocking and presents. I also have so many amazing memories about Christmas.

When you're a child at family parties it feels like at some point you're drowning in the discarded paper from unwrapped gifts. I yearn for the smell of my grandfather's cologne and cigarettes and the scratch of his mustache when he would give me a hug and kiss. I don't think I ever got a single thing from him that I didn't like. I also miss for the years when my brother and sister were younger and so enchanted with their gifts and we had to hype them up a little if they were confused about the use or whatnot. The good old days when you made your parents a homemade ornament and they made you believe it was the most valuable gift they'd ever received. Then, after spending the morning with breakfast and presents you shower and dress and travel to see family, and dissolve into the backseat of the car as you take a much needed nap on the way to Uncle D's house.

It's very difficult growing up and feeling like the clock is only ticking a bit faster each year. I am about to turn 30, and I know I'm not old, but how long am I supposed to wait before fate falls into my lap? I am in a relationship now and wonder if it is the "one." As I do with everything. I wonder if what I have is what is meant for me. How long should I wait to have children? I'd like some sooner than later. Am I in the right place, am I being the right version of me?

 A new year is upon us and I have been thinking about my resolutions. What is best to change or improve this year? My diet/exercise routine? How about my kindness and sincerity? How about my soul... it's been very tired lately. Should I be tougher, or be less hard on myself? Should I stop acting like a child and grow up or continue to hold on to the last remnants of youth I have left in me?

Life is such a confusing journey. You either have to live in the moment of focus on the future, save money or spend it on something that will make you happy, eat your cake or abstain because you should look your best.

I think my goal for this new year should be to worry less. Things, eventually, will happen as they are supposed to and you can't really do much to change them, only to make them more or less enjoyable. I do have so many things to be thankful for. I live in a place only many have dreamed of and have someone who hugs away my nightmares and covers my feet with a blanket when we share the couch. This year will be the year that I find my happiness and my inner peace. I also deserve to breathe in the life around me and not be so busy with my head down that I only catch the rain and miss the sunshine.

Love life. Happy Holidays.

-Hannah

When no one shares your dreams
when no one shares your desires
illusions disappear
you no longer feel the fire
and wishes float away
on the tail of the wind
and everything that you've been swallowing and keeping within
just weighs you down
does it matter anymore?
What is the reason I'm doing this
and who, in the end, am I putting this show on for?

0

Airplanes flicker across my skyline
but it's nightime
so there's no line
and anyway you're not mine.

I'm still working at keeping myself together
but feel weak as a feather
not even a question of feeling good, never
and even with this beautiful weather
the only darkness entering is you.

What did I do a month ago?
Too difficult to say, impossible to know.
I still feel it
some day I won't though
Why do I feel like with you, it wouldn't have been completed

And I wouldn't feel cheated
and misleaded
and conceited
and more vein than what that girl tweeted

I know I'm selfish and I'm unkind
and for as lazy as I am I don't unwind
and a better side of me I wish I could find
and I had it and I killed it.

I have little time left to understand who I am, but I had less to know who you were...
I would've understood no matter what...

Untitled

The leaves are gone, the snow is gone
and god knows how many times we both have been wrong. 
But can two wrongs really write themselves right?

No food no music no train
no money no alcohol no a speck of cocaine
and all my plans were all made in vain
'cause I'll never follow them through
they say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker
well this they couldn't be more true. 

Yellow and orange on the Bay Ridge line, 
seems the only way to pass the time
underground, undersound
and understanding that I'm losing my mind.

All that I expect of you comes in promise and delay. 
So if I know this why should I feel angry anyway?

Untitled

I kept everything. But, I really mean everything; I still continue to do so. Movie stubs, concert tickets, dried flowers, poems, love notes, every memory i could hold onto.  It was like I already knew he would die or leave -- both leaving me wading in grief. Treading water in horrible grief. Over the first year and a half he had become my everything.  My boxing/ shouting match opponent, my lover, my duet half, my sunshine, personal chef, shoulder to cry on... he was only reliable on that though, being there for me. Nothing more, nothing less. I knew it, his friends knew it, and he knew it.  He was really emotionally there for me-- always around for the laughs and hugs, and so so so many tears. There was a moment, and I don't know when it was, or where it was. A moment when things changed. I never stopped feeling "in love," or felt that he was thinking of leaving me, but I think it was the moment I felt he was right where he should be with me. Like I trusted him again, stopped trying to impress him too much, and started trying to make him happy. Not that I didn't before, but more like we started to become a we, and a family for the first time. And it was our time to feel so exquisitely so.

A little bit of home

Diary Days

Cruel Nighttime

You lure me with a sleepy haze
and soothing air
and heavy eyelids
and just when I want to let them fall
slowly covering my brown eyes
                     -you make me think of him,
Reming me it was his birthday yesterday
and how his skin smelled
and how sleepiness felt next to him
and how it feels without him
                     -you make me think of him.
Please, cruel nighttime,
let me sleep.
Let me lull into dreams of ocean waves and better days.
Cruising, coasting along the clouds,
No.
Sounds of Coltrane
enter my mind
and push the tears foreward.
You were always so cruel.

**For the record, I wrote this a year ago.

“I want to
let her know 
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard 
words
I ever feared to 
say 
can now be 
said:

I love
you.” 
― Charles Bukowski

In light of mothers day

I pull my hair back
no make up
no longer chubby cheeks
no longer have a round face
I've lost the baby fat in my cheeks
but my hair is the same color hers was.
I see her in me so much at this moment.
And reminisce about when I saw this face,
this hair,
and these features,
and not only in the mirror.
It's a proud moment when you see in yourself someone you always wanted to be when you grew up, now that you've grown up.

Silent streets

I walk the silent streets in the morning
my boot heel's clicking on the cobblestone
is the only sound.
The air is still
like the first of January.
Like the party fell asleep only a few hours ago.
Mallorca sleeps in the morning
there is no one around but the workers who get up at dawn are already in the bars for a snack.
The sun is still not up.
Neither am I, but I walk.
I think of how such a loud, boisterous place at night can be so eery and still in the morning.
It smells like wet wood, moisture, and orange blossoms.
Walks alone in the silence, like this one, are so loudly quiet.

Dream last night

I woke up today remembering having had very powerful and intense dreams last night, but I couldn't remember what they were. I let it slip my mind and quickly forgot about it. This happens a lot and it makes me so frustrated. I dream really well, really vividly, and emotionally. I slip back into super distant memories of people and places and am so in the dream that I can taste things sometimes, or wake myself up crying.

I got ready to take a shower and decided to play some music while scrubbing. Some emo-esque song came on and it all came back to me. The dream drifted up to the limits of my memory enough so I could piece it back together. I dreamed I was going through this tiny closet in the wall at my father's (my) house, where I grew up. This closet was always so mysterious to me as a child because it was built at about window sill level, and was very deep and not that high. Good for hanging little tiny cardigans or a child's Easter dress, but not much else. If it didn't always have mildew in it I would have played in it more growing up. Why would someone build a waist high hole in the wall? Anyway in the dream I'm rummaging through it, and it's present day, and I find some kind of container. Like a tupperware box, or a whiskey bottle tube. I open in and inside it are all these precious little things from when I was around 13-15. It was a time capsule. I scattered the contents onto a nearby desk and looked and old mix cds with faded writing of what the songs were, some stupid jewelry, and different other things that I got so excited to see. Remember this song? Remember when you got this keychain, or band tshirt?

It's incredible how time flies... and at the speed of light. I was 14 15 years ago. I don't feel much different most days, my hair still doesn't cooperate, I still have more or less the same build with a little extra in some places, and I still listen to a lot of the same music, which helps maintain the facade that I'm not growing up. I now teach Spanish youngsters in a high school and watch as they deal with the same things I dealt with at their age. Popularity or lack there of, isolation, family problems, feeling like every moment is the most important moment that will ever happen to you. I see a lot of hurt feelings, and outcasts- as I felt when I was younger. I see kids trying so hard to be different and still following the crowd and others that would give anything to fit in. I guess high school is the same in any language and culture. It seems like those days of having nothing to lose are so far away, and although I really felt miserable for a lot of that time, I'd go back in a second. I'd relive every awkward moment. It's really magical to reminisce sometimes...

Just me. No more, no less.

Under my skin, 

there is just me within. 

My faults and my successes ,

my achievements and my messes,

and each of these wonders

makes me wonderful.

Smell of Adolescense

I have distinct memories, as a child, of the smells of Spring, and Sqummer creeping its way in on the back of the wind. Car rides in my family were always too long and very uncomfortable. There were four of us kids, and never enough room or air to go around. We could never agree on any radio or music, and had to use our walkmen-- discmen later on-- and then you have the problems of running out of batteries, and trying to trade tapes or cds; this was a challenge depending on who you were fighting with that week. You could get something cool like Alanis Morisette to listen to, or maybe you got passed the Alice Cooper. The window seats were always the best because not only did you get a source of fresh air, but also a source of cool air since we never had working air conditioning in any of the used cars we had growing up. You also got a great view of something to look at out the window, and the buttons, switches, and sometimes ash trays to fiddle with on the road. Like a game boy for us back seat citizens. I always remember these trips in the car with specific smells, depending on where the destination was.

If we were to go to the beach, either to visit our cousins, or friends of my parents, you could always smell the salt in the air once you got closer to the Jersey Shore, usually on the Atlantic City expressway. There is a certain moment when the sensation of heat and the smell of salt waft together into a sauna like sensation and enter into your nose and mouth and excite you with the notion of jumping waves and sand castles, and riding bikes and eating ice cream from the ice cream man when he drove by. This also always evoked the smell of sunscreen and hot tar, the kind you can't walk on because you'll burn your feet. If we were taking a trip to our lake house, the most magical place of my childhood, that smelled like a house that was boarded up all winter that opened its windows and doors just for my arrival. It smelled like earth, fishing, and lilly pads, with a mix of moth balls and laundry detergent. It smelled like skinned knees and bikes races and catching frogs. It smelled like catching fireflies. It smelled like sweet adolescence.

My childhood had so many smells. I was walking the other day and got a breeze of wild flowers that stopped me in my tracks and reminded me of home. When the last crispness of Spring would vanish and the mornings waiting for the school bus at the end of the driveway were no longer miserable. There are other smells that will always remind me of my youth. Baby vomit is one of the many. That smell of curdled milk that you can never wash out of bibs and blankets but is such a sweet, tender smell that reminds you of something, someone, that was once so small. I also remember my mother's Jergens hand cream. That lotion had a smell that was a signature smell that they continue using to this day, and it's always a nice throwback.

I think that smells go with certain seasons, obviously, but I also long to replicate them again now, as an adult, when those seasons arrive. It is Spring in Spain and I wish I could smell the wet dog running through my dad's house, or the newborn kittens we had every year in our basement from feral farm cats.

I also will never cease to associate the smell of fresh cut grass with my house growing up. The 20 acre farm. That grass that my father constantly had to mow and constantly annoyed the shit out of him. I was grateful for the constant mowing because it meant this smell was all the more common, especially during summer. I feel like summer is nothing but a mix of that salty air if you go on vacation, fresh cut grass, catching fireflies and barbecue. The juicy, drippy, sweet, smoky smell of chicken on the grill. Nothing comprares. Not even close. No matter where I am in the world, fresh cut grass will always bring me home. But hey, I'd settle for any of the aforementioned odors. They all bring me back to something, somewhere, and someone from a different time I'd give anything to relive again.

New Day

Some times the things that frighten you the most are the ones that open doors to new worlds you would have never discovered had you not walked through the frightening dark to get to them. I am on day two of what has been a very long process of trying to be a new me, a refresher. I swore at New Years I would be better. I solemnly swore at Lent that I would improve. I have made it a constant focus of mine to try to push out the best version of me without sacrificing happiness to do it. Needless to say it is a day to day, constant mission. I started taking antidepressants two days ago. I got the prescription a week ago and it took me that long to build up the courage to start. You get prescribed something that in writing says you can't hack it, in my eyes at least, and it freaks me out. I am not capable of fixing myself and have to rely on medication? Well fuck it, Ive been self-medicating since I was 15, why stop now, just because I didn't prescribe it to myself? So far I am still adapting, but today, this morning, was a little clearer than it had been in a while. I woke up without the screaming anxiety yelling in my ear about all I have to accomplish before 8am. No nagging about going to work out because you haven't in so long, no whining about how much work you have to do, my brain left me alone today, for the few hours I have been awake.

I moved away from New York City on September 26th, 2015. I will never forget how painfully difficult that was, but also how liberating. I left behind many things that I still miss, but there are days when the clouds part, and I can smell the spring on the horizon, and I remember why I did it all, and why I left it all behind. I live in a place most people would kill to live in. The economy isn't great but nature and landscape make up for what it lacks in stable work hours. Who wants to work anyway? I also found out many things about myself when I moved here. I learned it's okay to feel like shit after a break up. Allow yourself to be swallowed up by that grief because afterwards everything will be ten times brighter. I learned you can fall in love with strangers who seem like the total opposite of what you'd been looking for.  I learned that you may think a person or city makes you feel a sinking hole of depression, and that it is, in fact, something clinical that will follow you wherever you go-- if ignored.

I am still learning but my eyes are open. I am awake and I am here and it is now. I will appreciate what I have and maybe even go out and take a walk and smell some of the million flowers growing around on my island. My personal playground. I may or may not get the work done but at least I will be conscious of it today, even if it is going to be procrastinated like all other things I am assigned in life. I'd rather go outside and play today.

float away

The stars used to give me so much hope.

Now they just seem like distant wishes that won't come true...

no sleep

Your pillow has no depression in it
because you don't sleep in this bed
and all the plans and situations I had dreamed up swelter around in my head.


I don't know why I bother
to pull up the sheets
and fold them over
on my side
to match yours
where the sheets stay up
and the pillow fluffed
and just sleeping was enough
when you used to sleep here
if now you don't sleep here.





Shoulders,
         and skin,
                and all that's within
long for you.

Saturdaze

“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” 

- Jazz, TM

I can still see all the things I memorized
about your body
when I was with you.
And sometimes
I close my eyes
and still see your clavicle
still see your birth marks
still know your hands
I know your winding roads and curves and on ramps and exits
I know your faults and defects
and imperfections.
And I
still smell your chest
your disfigured bony chest.
And then I remember everything else.

Longitude Latitude

It doesn't matter where you are
what continent you're on
who you are with
what you are drinking
what music you are listening to
how much you "like" your situation
how good the food is
how beautiful the spring is
and the summer when everything is in full
when the sadness comes the sadness overtakes it all.

I die to be able to wake up every day thankful and resilient
Instead I wake up
in or out
of the arms of someone
with or without
my family by my side
in or out of financial troubles
encased in my own body consuming bruise
that is
.depression.

Food does not fill
a a will that won't will
a song that's been killed
constant emotions being drilled
escape with a pill
a little wine spill
eyes close
and in that moment
time froze
tranquil.