a little bit of this, a little bit of that

36476) No matter how thin you are, you will never be beautiful. Not to you or anyone else. Confidence births beauty and that doesn’t come from destroying yourself. It comes from accepting yourself as you are. No matter how much you grab at excuses to continue this, it’s not going to make your ED a good thing. You deserve better than what you’re doing to yourself. Don’t waste your life wishing for nonexistent perfection. I’ve seen wonderful people destroyed by this. Don’t let yourself slip. Seek help.


I know this. And yet, I slip. Sometimes. 

Today my family and I went to Ft. Rosecrans, the military cemetery in Point Loma where my grandpa is buried. He is cremated and his ashes are stored in a place on a wall like you see in the picture above, where it details his service as Navy Captain in WWII, the Korean and the Vietnam wars, as well as a Methodist flag, his birth and death year, and “Always in our hearts.”

I felt a few waves of sadness as we stood in silence, staring at the engraved marble that represented the father and grandfather we had known. Perhaps due to family dynamics, perhaps due to the fact that I am just now in my early 20’s and approaching true maturity, but I was never particularly close with my grandparents, though we saw them a number of times a year and I loved them very much. They were…guarded, though, so it wasn’t that I had a lack of interest in sustaining a close relationship, moreso that it was difficult to be “close.” Especially as my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and his condition worsened. So I felt sad, but it was maybe not for the memories of the person—though he was certainly an outstanding man—because the fond ones had tapered off at quite a younger age for me—and moreso for what he represented, for the deep sadness in the inevitability of death.

I felt sadness for my dad, and while his relationship with his parents was by no means perfect either, the loss of a parent marks a change in the world in which you know—the person, the people from whom you gleaned life lessons and experience, good or bad, are gone, and you don’t have them to refer to any longer—you are entirely alone in your navigation through the world. And though by this point my father is a fully sustained, middle-aged man, there is still something to be said for having your parents, if not for the need you presently may or may not have, the need you had for them for so many years. The people who created you have gone.

As we walked around the grounds and I saw flowers placed gently below the walls, next to headstones, or notes and cards taped neatly to the marble, I grew sadder and sadder. I saw a card, taped to a marble front that said, “To my mother, from her son” and even another that said “Merry Christmas, Grandpa!” in uneven, childish writing. I began to cry, because even if I didn’t know any of these people, it’s the inevitable feeling of loss that I identify with; that pull, down in your stomach, first steady, and then, at unpredictable moments, when you feel the profundity of death’s permanence. It’s that I will never see my grandparents again, have them to celebrate life’s wins and losses with me, but moreso that someday, I will never seen the rest of my family again. I don’t mean to be morbid, but there’s an ache that comes with that realization, compounded only by the fact that I do not believe in an afterlife; once death has come, that is the end of that person’s time in my life. And though I know life must end, it doesn’t make that realization easier to sit with.

I’ve been having a lot of really weird dreams lately. Some of them are really scary (which isn’t unusual, when I slept semi-normally, I used to have constant nightmares) and some are weird. And a decent proportion of them involve sex of some sort, though that isn’t the main part of the dream. They all seem real enough, though, that throughout the next day, I have to shake the falsified memories off of my reality. Such an odd feeling.

Subconscious, what are you trying to tell me (besides I need to get some? HA.) ?

One of Tom Petty’s 9 US tour dates is in Broomfield!? Oh, don’t mind me, just getting stoked in the corner.

So. Excited. I can’t even. Obtaining tickets is a definite.

‘Cause you’ve got a heart so big it could crush this town.
And I can’t hold out forever,
even walls fall down.