There isn’t much that makes me cringe like personal affairs being publicised on facebook. Thankfully, I have pretty smart friends and don’t have to endure too much of this, but I’ve occasionally watched an acquaintance have a very public breakup, and it’s icky.

You know, both parties change their status to ‘single’, then one of them updates with a sad face, then the messages of cheer up and i’m here for you start pouring in, and then the other person posts some “cryptic” fuck you status… it’s all just weird and narcissistic and grosses me out.

I watched one of these public outpourings of emotion happen today, and it made me feel immediately uncomfortable. If you know me, you know I have absolutely no problem with emotion, being myself on the Kristen Bell side of the emotional scale, but when it seems broadcast for the sake of being seen, that’s when I get squirmy.

I’m not shy or weird about people knowing what I’m feeling, but in some ways I am quite private. You might have noticed that if you’ve been following my blog for some time. I’m going to take a rare moment now to divulge (forgive me):
Over the last few months, I have been recovering from the break up of my five year relationship with a person I lived with, travelled with, adopted a cat with, experienced cancer with, and mostly believed I would marry and have children with. That came crashing down when he told me he was going to New York to be with somebody else.
It has in many ways been the lowest time of my life. I moved in with my parents. I had to remove many of our mutual friends from my online life so as to not accidentally see or hear things I didn’t want to know, which has not only changed my social life but also hasn’t really worked. I still found out that he has given our cat to somebody else. I still heard about the farewell party in his honour. I lost and had to mourn my best friend, and confront the possibility he wasn’t who I thought he was. I lost the friendship of my dear friend Tim - my sister’s ex of 8 years who is now dating my ex’s cousin. I had to confront my own inadequacies and self esteem issues as well as my ongoing duel with depression, all while trying to keep myself together enough to run a business.

In any case, I’ll get to the point: while I’m having a bit of an online boohoo about it now, and I occasionally posted some tidbits on tumblr, I never once made reference to any of this on facebook - the place where all the people I know in real life hang out. That’s because I don’t know if I could bring myself to be that public about my own drama on such a non-intimate forum. I’m too disgustingly, infuriatingly self-aware for that. But today as I watched that public facebook breakup go down, I wondered if it would be better if I had just posted some annoying, emotional shit while I was at my worst.
Because all that was being left on this post were comments of encouragement and positivity, and while I don’t know how sincere they were, it would have been nice at the time when I was buried in my blankets hyperventilating and unable to eat for weeks to know that somewhere in the sphere of my life, someone knew what I was going through. And cared.

edit: I posted this less than five minutes ago and I already feel violated and exposed and weird

things i miss at 1:40am

adam d mills
red walls and the first time we shared a bed
the way you fit around me
melissa dilber
my ipod + headphones
snow
sitting in your van talking about anything
peace
sleep
being able to listen to the weeknd without feeling sad
my lunchbox

the boogs. always the boogs. 

It is this, and only ever this, that inspires my best writing.
I am unwittingly churning out a book.
Perhaps it will be a masterpiece and make me a billion dollars.
I will call it ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Heartbreaking Heartbreak’.

And still I miss you. Here on a bus far from everything and everyone I know, remembering every day how we really have nobody, you still feel like home and I want nothing more than for you to be next to me giving me meaning.

The sky is getting darker and the sun paints it with colours. I move across the country on highway listening to Hood and think: there is a space between me and you.

- 18/10/2011

‘she writes like i used to’, i think in the shower
my swollen belly hiding me from my feet
turning the cold down in increments
trying to feel something under
water that’s never quite 
hot enough. 

(Source: captaintalia)

I have too much of most things, and not enough of everything else.

(Source: captaintalia)

I realised recently that I give more weight to the negative things I hear/think about myself than the positive. A wise old man I know (ha) reminded me that this is no useful, pleasant, necessary or accurate way to live.

So, in the spirit of bucking against that terrible habit, I might record some of the lovely things I am told. This one was just sent to me in a private facebook message (I think it means more when it’s not on the “wall”).

“Talia, I am very glad that there are people as rad as you hanging about in my sphere of influence.” - CBA.

(Source: captaintalia)

I must say, I am tired of encountering bullshit. I am so bored of disappointing people.
Don’t be fake with me: I see through your shit.
Don’t lie to me: I don’t have time for dishonesty.
Don’t betray me, don’t doubt my motives, don’t judge what you don’t know.
I don’t have room in my life for poison, or for people who don’t see me for what I am.

It’s a fine line between stars and black holes.

Maybe I have high expectations, but I don’t think being decent and of substance is so much to ask for. I notice more and more the spiderwebs and the unsaid - and it’s always the things that aren’t said that get me - in every area of my life, with everybody.
I can’t help but think: what else aren’t you mentioning?

It’s terrible to be such a crusader for truth in a world so full of deception. I am unflinchingly loyal, I believe wholeheartedly in honesty (this is perhaps why I am a compulsive discusser and often too forward: I need to get it all OUT), and I am so fucking good at seeing inner beauty on the outside.
These are (debatably) my positive qualities.
They make it a continual disappointment to be surrounded by people who see beauty in surface level shit, and a continual exercise in having my trust trampled on.
I’m done.

I spend ten minutes listening to a group of boys (they are not men), drooling over the most boring, vacuous girl in the room.
You hate her face and tell me I’m special.
I spend twenty years being friends with people who will turn around and talk shit on me or cross boundaries they shouldn’t.
You learn from mistakes and put me first because you know what it means to me.
I hear one boy tell the other boy he should ‘make a move’, before going on to spend the next half hour doing so himself.
You think she’s a kid. You would not do this to your friends.
I give and give and give, and am emotionally battered at their hands for my efforts. 
You see the selfishness. 
These are some of the reasons why it’s hard not to love you, and difficult to understand why we don’t lay our heads down together when night falls. 

Don’t get me wrong: this is not a self pity post. This is a marker in time, and a necessary reminder. While I may have lost hope in most things, I still believe in the good of the elusive 1%.
There is still a tiny pinprick of light, somewhere. I have to keep walking towards it.

There are but a few rules for friendship, or for just being a good human.

More people should learn them.

When you opened your mouth to tell me you were leaving
I thought:

Let’s sit here in silence until it gets dark
As the corners of your mind
And my heart.

- June, 2011.

(Source: captaintalia)

and i looked up at the sky
the rain fell like toothpicks on my face.
and the buildings stood, still, waiting in line next to me.
i have buried too many friends and not enough memories,
carried too many pens and not enough enemies,
but i listened to the paint peeling on the wet street
and it told me
blood is heavy and falls faster than water.
i lowered my head and leant on his shoulder and knew that
someone was right when they said
that the hands of the rain grow ever smaller as they seep into our skin.

- Friday, July 21, 2006

(Source: captaintalia)