Constant questions.

Today I thought of something I had long forgotten. The house my mother and I lived in when I was in high school had a huge backyard, so huge it facilitated my mothers longing need and love for a pond, she dug it herself and filled it with Koi, she took such pride in these actions, everything was built with her own hand, even when my step father lived with us, she did it all herself.

Fragments of her have fallen into me. For this I am thankful.

This backyard was so intriguing, I never saw the house before it was bought, when I ran through the halls as we moved in I felt estasctic euphoria, I had never lived in a house so big, and when I opened the back door, my heart soared.

The yard was covered in bamboo, long bright green stalks that swayed in the sunlight. It still astounds me to this day.

A bamboo forrest in the middle of Georgia.

My Dalmatian loved to run through these close knitted stalks, I used to watch with envy as he manipulated his body through it's pressing quarters. I had tried many times, but I was simply too big of an organism to comfortably stroll in the brilliance that was this forrest.

I always wondered who had planted it, and what on earth could've been it's purpose, my mother had tried for many years to control it but it always evaded her and continued to grow in prohibited sections of the garden.

On sunny days, I'd throw on my shorts and run outside fueled by the promise of glaring sunlight, just to stare at the bright green shoots of this foreign plant. So ill-befitting to it's surroundings and yet so perfect for me. I don't know why I think of them now, but the bright green is just so vibrant in my mind. Perhaps I'm simply trying to ground myself, remembering those days where I lived solely in the present, the simplicity of youth, there was no question of what was to happen tomorrow, or the next year, there was no plan, just plain existence. Rice and black pepper, The Sims 2, 8 hour conversations with my long term boyfriend and MTV Jams constantly on rotation.

At times, I wish he had broken my heart. Really and truly broken my heart. It would give me an excuse of some sort to think and behave the way I do to men today, so I wouldn't blame my apathy simply on lessons learned watching others, so it wouldn't reflect so terribly on the romance that no longer exists in my generation. I still have hope you see? That perhaps I'm wrong about the lot of you. I never close my mind to the existence of falsehood on my part.

He did once, he broke up with me on a day I was sick, over blatant jealousy over a boy hardly worth his energy, my verbal infidelity rubbed him the wrong way, and he broke up with me. I cried for hours on the first night, that could've been coupled with the fact that I was sick, but then the next day I was simply angry, the next day brilliant apathetic, and the next day getting dressed for a fuck date with the boy in question.

Years later, thinking back on it, his reasoning for splitting with me was completely founded, I was entertaining another man, no matter how honest I was with him about it, how else would it have been so easy to get into said mans trousers? I was trouble, he knew it, he protected himself.

I understand. And what a blessed feeling that is.

But I did love that boy though, as much as a young girl could at the time. For that time, after he broke up with me, we got back together months later, after I had discovered weave and was nestled in my senior year of high school quite brilliantly. But it wasn't the same, he filled a lonely gap, there was no longevity in that endeavor. Callous of me I know. But have I ever professed to be Mother Teresa?

I remember the first night he called me, we hadn't seen each other for months, I remember the night so clearly. My mother had gone to work. He came to pick me up, I dressed accordingly, pinned a small portion of my hair back and let the rest fall down my back, I prettied my eyes and donned my favorite period piece black velvet jacket. When I opened the door I relished the look of surprise in his eyes, a small victory for wounded pride.

We drove down to a small park near by, kept an acceptable distance as we courted in the playground, I remember the mulch cracking underneath my steps, I remember his rigid composure and my satisfaction at knowing that I caused this change in body language. Somehow I ended up at his house, in his bed, watching Harry Potter, there was still distance between us, but somewhere along the line I decided to close the distance, I wanted to make him squirm, I wanted to own him once more. So I lay my head on his chest and slowly tapped my deft fingers along the expanse of it. Moving my head in such a way to where he could clearly see my lips.

All it took was one kiss to break the dam.

I will never forget that power. It fuels me still today.

But that is life is not? These men fill in the spaces we need them to emotionally, because they have no other plausible role in our modern lives. And this man, this man taught me how to love myself. Worshipped me for a time when I thought I was absolute trash, he helped turn this lump of coal into a brilliant diamond.

And how did I pay him back?

I don't know why I'm so enamored with these memories, actually, no I do, every step has led to today, and I feel as though it should all be recorded, there was just so much I failed to journal, so much I failed to really share. So much I want my children to read, to cry and to laugh with me about in the future. Perhaps in the back pages of my biography there lay lessons to help others who once shared my plight.

The internet affords true honesty as it does complete deception. I chose the first option. The second only brings pain and anguish.

No matter the form.

I promise to remain as truthful as I possibly can be. To show all aspects of my human heart, in hopes to overcome it. In hopes to understand.

In hopes to love.