"you can't stay a saint that long in the city."

i left home and it was hard, even though home wasn't where i belonged and i was surrounded by people that hurt and places that hurt (memories at every corner) and here i am, in a room with floor to ceiling windows opened to a busy windy city, even at 434am, in a deathly quiet apartment with three strangers. i don't feel safe or welcome; not really. when i try to talk to them, to connect, a wall comes up in my mind/head/heart/throat and i mumble and stammer and laugh nervously and inappropriately and sometimes they just sit and look at me and i feel like they're staring at a not particularly gorgeous exhibit at the zoo. i am sure i will always feel somewhat displaced in certain situations; the exquisite joy/pain of solitude seems to be written on my bones, i feel it so deeply. i will never fit in, probably, and that's mostly my fault. i'm okay with it, i think. i just worry that my other roommates/people i associate with are uncomfortable because of my presence.
i walked around the city with the other half of my heart today and people were stopping us here and there; telling me my hair was beautiful and that they liked my tattoo. it happened some more that night, in between this genuine(ly appreciated) compliments, i felt people staring. staring like they did back home, miles and miles north and much less diverse. i feel their eyes and see their expressions and it's the most uncomfortable sort of feeling -- i know i'm strange looking, i know i'm ugly, i know my hair is blue and metal shines in my face and my skin is marked permanently by ink and my arms are scarred and i have absolutely no fashion sense and a double chin and a large stomach and thick legs and blemished arms and i know, i know, i know all of these things, please don't stare at me like that. disgust, wonder. please, i'm begging you. the only people who have ever gazed at me in admiration are boys in my bed, and i suppose that's expected of them, right? and it was never real, not really, they just wanted my hands to cover their bodies and my mouth to do the same. i have not taken any medicine in almost four months and when i'm not fully focused my mind wondersandwondersandbleeds into itself and i think that maybe something's finally totally broken up there; i realize i don't care.
i feel both very okay and very much not okay simultaneously and at different times in the day. i am okay and i am not okay.
["do you want to go with me?"
"go where?"
silence
"yeah, yeah i do."]
from where i sit and where i sleep i can hear the train rumblerustle by, all through the night, and when i hear it go by and realize i am in my city and i am where i always wanted to be, it maybe doesn't all seem so bad. i hear the train and i realize that love exists, love and loss and pain and touches and kisses and the moon and the stars and everything in between, i hear the train and the train represents every little thing i stayed alive for all this time. i hear the train and i think that maybe it might be okay, someday, somewhere, whether i am dead or alive or here or there or alone or wrapped in your arms, i think that someday it might be okay when i hear that train.

but then the train passes, you know, and there is only silence again.