I suppose I didn’t think much about moving to the east 

I just wanted somewhere to go

I think when you’re this age, you’re just looking for somewhere to go

Found somewhere, 

somewhere

Drove and drove

thousands of miles

didn’t think much about leaving home until the mountains swallowed me up 

with every blue green tree

and thick rock, knowing

swallowed me up so good

i found a new home

Watching caddyshack with the lights out

never really got to tell you how much you were like my dad.

not that like, you could ever heeeeeear(here), not with both your eyes. 

whatever, whatever. it’d be cooler if we could have stayed madder at one another for longer. 

you’re in the middle right now, it’s a strange thing to watch. better than average is hardly anything at all. he got me on his first time, one two threeeeeee

my father cried at my graduation today, so that’s one last thing to say. 

i told you my project ended in maybe, maybe

and i said it really should have been you, you.

no, no

tao lin’s sloppy seconds/i guess my heart wasn’t as brave

to break over something like making it big out in LA

My life has been filled with almosts. 

I was almost there. I was in the car. I got a phone call. Had to go home. 

That car was busted with a brick of heroin.

I was hanging out with kids that were starting to smoke crack. 

Rich, white, suburban kids. 

Starting their lives with crack. 

And I was almost there. 

Except.

My youngest brother asked me to stop going out for a week or two. 

Because he was scared. Because he just wanted to watch some movies. 

And when those kids were busted for smoking that crack one day after school

I was not there. I was not theerreee. 

I am a lucky one. The Gods must be watching over me. 

I remember the stars we put around the corners of the room, I remember the freckles on his skin looking like small, orange mulberries. We left the post cards of half planned road trips and the swedish shop all those summers ago. Strange to think we had dreams so big and we so easily let them slip away. That was a hot day. Really, it was probably the heat of the day. 

To the summer, to the manatee springs. To the mountains where we’ll live, I said I loved you enough to give the city up

we’ll see, we’ll see

First thought was that they were strange birds (beginning, near the end of my last dream). 

Small blue flowers, someone made a crown I found and wore. I wondered if they could see and if that was hard.

we’ll see, we’ll see

I wonder if B has skin like mulberries and stars in the summer.

we’ll see, we’ll see. 

I didn’t care, I don’t care, I spend so much time caring, really not a lot at all. 

Cut all my old t-shirts into slutty tank-tops, sure did cut all those silly band shirts into sewing cloths. 

Listening to piano music, found something new to look at in the news. 

Feel badly about missing, not missing, thinking, looking, talking, well, well, well. 

Telling B almost everything about everything now. I never realized how much I liked being listened to. 

All of a sudden I want to smell his sweaters, live forever, climb the tallest laddeeeeeer

well, well, well…..

You have created the most beautiful show on television. Never have I felt so understood or so apart of something as I do when I watch your show. You have captured exactly what it’s like to, not only be a girl, but a person. The dialogue, the situations—perfection. Girls is saving my life and making me smile one episode at a time. I’m so happy that someone just a few years older than me is writing such universal truths and that those truths are being heard. Love you, Lena Dunham. You’re the best. 

Because I said so. 

Because the last lines of Ulysses brought me to tears, neither happy nor sad. 

Because Ben gets me even though I would have thought he’d be the last person in the world to do so. 

Because I’m almost done with school. 

Because I started eating right. 

Because I want to live forever.

Because the things that used to keep me up at night don’t cause nightmares anymore. 

Because I found Ben. 

Because life is good. 

Because for the first time in my life I wake up filled with happiness and the first words out of my mouth are love.

I spent my entire summer searching through Walgreens in bad Chicago neighborhoods trying to find my favorite kind of shitty face mask and then found it my first five minutes back in Wisconsin. 

I woke up panting from a dream that ended with Ben being sucked down a sink drain in the apartment of a friend of mine from Wicker Park. I pulled him out sopping wet and cried on the wood floors until the chill from the open window made me wake up. 

“Ben.”

“What?” he mumbled, digging his chin into the top of my head. “What’d you dream about?”

“I dreamed that you were almost sucked down a sink. And my writing professor was dancing with a blunt. And we lived in a white summer house with a bunch of girls from class that don’t like me much and I dreamt that they all went shopping together and didn’t invite me, so you took me instead.”

Ben sighed and pulled my deep into his chest. He is the largest guy I’ve ever dated and though it gets cramped every night in my tiny bed, it’s the safest and warmest I’ve ever felt. 

“I’m sorry. You’re safe now.”

“What are the chances of you dying?” I asked, twisting through his arms so that my chin sat on the edge of his rib. 

“100%.” 

“I meant, what’s the percentage of you dying like, before you’re supposed to?”

Ben thought for awhile and gave me some statistics and his analysis of such, but he ended with a promise to look that up later and tell me the rest. 

We kiss and kiss until my breath starts to feel bad and I pull back. 

“Not now.”

Ben grabbed onto my leg and moaned. 

“No!”

“Please, Lisa? I love you.”

I must have laughed a bunch and kissed him on the nose, surely, but he continued with his not-so-subtleties until I whipped around laughing to tell him I was too tired. 

“I took you shopping!” he shouted. “In your dream, I took you shopping!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but that wasn’t real.”

“It was real to you.”

I paused.

“Yeah it was…”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and thought how nice it was to wake up every morning. He kissed me and then pulled my face away for a moment. 

“I did always want to date a girl with green eyes.”

I can see for miles, miles, miles. 

April twenty-sixth. 

Never finding time to write, even with sufficient amounts of coffee. Called my mother to tell her Ben was the One. She made a big ol’ deal about us being allowed to sleep in the same room from now on. Was really excited about Harvard and McGill. She said we were good partners and I told Ben about that part and he said he already knew that. 

Went to a reading today, but couldn’t sit through the whole thing. It should be easier now that I’m prettier, but I still feel the same. Went home and thought about deleting more emails. I had never realized there were so many until I wanted them all gone. 

I feel bad, I feel bad. I should have stayed at the reading. That always seems to be my last line. I should have stayed, I should have stayed. 

I’ve never felt like this before and I wish I could write about it as much as I live it everyday with my heart. 

The internet went out at my school last night, so Ben and I watched Saved! in my bed instead of doing our work. After it was over, Ben crawled onto the floor to cool off. I felt the dampness of the sheets where he had been laying. 

“Why didn’t you just ask to open the window?” I giggled, tracing my fingers over the sweat. He shrugged on the floor. 

“It was nicer holding you.”

My ambien kicked in and I began to tell him my ideas for my next art projects, what I had talked about with my mother on the phone, everything I had learned from Ulysses. He listened as sweetly and as quietly as he always does and when I was done he reached up from the floor and took my hand. 

“Lisa, I just wanted you to know that if we ever had a daughter…and if you died… I would take her shopping and buy her a prom dress and take her to get her hair done and let her be girly and silly because I know that’s what you’d want.”

I can’t explain it dearest tumblr, just tell it in the clearest way I can. Oh tumblr, with all the quiet people who read this blog, all the people who I feel like know me, but I will never get to know…

I don’t feel lost anymore. All I feel is the most incredible, thick excitement. Like, I’ve been asleep, or hesitant, or nervous for years

and now I don’t. Not even a little. 

He told me last night that for months all he could think about was holding my hand. 

“I’d be walking you to class and you’d be talking and laughing, but all I could think about was how badly I wanted to hold your hand.”

He sipped his beer quietly on the loud party porch we sat at the edge of. Someone walks by and says hello to him in a language I can’t understand. 

“And I couldn’t… and it was so heart breaking. Just knowing you were so close, getting so close to you, but not being able to do this one intimate thing.”

He looked off. I rested my head on my palm and wondered how someone like him could ever think so sweetly about someone like me. 

“For so long all I had was just looking at your hands.”

He turned to look at me and smiled. 

“I should hold your hand more,” he said, taking mine in his. He looked down at our fingers intertwined and smiled so big, his eyes began to sparkle. “I love holding your hand. This is my favorite thing.”

oh god, my toes went numb and i called bens name and he came in and started speaking doctor to me and my eyelids started crumbling off my face and i just kept yellinh

“Oh, dear! you better catch those! they can’t buy you new ones, not with all the stores!”

and then my teeth started shattering and chattering and get all over tattered and he picked me up and held me in his arms with his finger in my mouth so i could have something real to chew, never was good with glass teeth. 

and he held me there in my space jam underwear and whispered nice things about places ive never been until i stopped crying and my feet stopped trying to get off the ground and until i didn’t have anymore hate in my heart, until i could let the bad things go go go

everyday. at 12:00.