Portland

The night is dark.

The glittering pavement is wet –blue, red, and yellow from the streetlights reflections. Many of us are out tonight.

My friend Louise walks beside me and Gayle is in front. We don’t quite know where we’re going anymore, just lost and tanked somewhere deep inside this city. A friend of a friend lives here and we are crashing on his couch. I woke up with Gayle’s foot in my face. My jeans shorts were unbuttoned and around my knees. I remember stumbling in and sleeping on top of her after fooling around with some stranger.

I don’t understand what is happening anymore, I just follow and follow and smoke and smoke and lose myself into this abyss that seems to get deeper by the second.

Now that I’m away, I realize just how fucked up I am. The books I read teach me about the truth of the world. Money is your god. Money will eat you alive. We tear down trees and drive animals to extinction for a dollar; hurt the people who can’t defend themselves.

The wind is cold and I wrap my raincoat around myself. I’m tired and I want to go to sleep, but I can’t tell the others that because I want to prove that I am just as capable as them. Gayle and Louise see my tired face. “You tired, baby?”

“No. I’m fine,” I whisper.

We walk into the seedy apartment. There are people everywhere. I see a shrine to Art Garfunkel in the corner. A gold frame with his picture in it and a garland of plastic roses around it.

“What am I doing here?” I think.

And so I sit down on the bed and look up at everyone and wonder how I got here, and why I am still sticking around. And how and if I want to get myself out.

I am young. I should be doing this. But I can’t shake the feeling that I am alone here.

When you’re a girl, you think things will work themselves out. I will go to school,
get some friends,
learn about the world,
meet the guy of my dreams
…But this isn’t reality.

You get heartbroken and trampled over and used and the world breaks for a while. You realize that this silver platter of happiness is the phoniest contraption that girls get their hands on.

I’m sorry.

Nothing comes easy. Nothing is 100% fun all of the time. Sometimes there are days when you won’t want to get out of bed. Some of you will cry and some of you will scream. But I promise you that you’ll be okay. You were built for this. You weren’t meant to be some perfect story. The guy of your dreams won’t complete you and the weight you lose won’t make you happy. At the end of the day the person you go to sleep with is you and the person you wake up with is you.

You will be happy and you will be okay. I’m not there yet and I don’t know when I will be.

I know I still have tons of shit to get through,
there are tears to be shed and curse words to be spluttered
and boys to bat my eyelashes at.

It will be okay.
You will be okay.
I will be okay.