Saeve's Journals

Butterflies

I'm in love with a man, yet he doesn't know.
I'm in love with a man, yet afraid to show
how he brightens my day, how he lights up my night,
how I can't seem to breathe when he's out of sight,
how his voice sends shivers right down my spine,
how my heart starts to melt when his eyes find mine,
how my tummy goes wild, butterflies inside,
when he's standing, unknowing, right by my side,
I'm in love with a man, yet afraid to show,
I'm in love with a man, but he doesn't know.

Tired

I am tired of talking. Your words wash over me like waves over a beach, and all they leave behind is the debris of a thousand useless arguments. We used to call comfortable silences our own, but they, too, have long gone. Now the air between us feels static, filled with everything we have said and everything we have not said. I look at you when I think you don’t notice, but the person I see is a stranger to me these days. The language we used to speak has become separate, like the people of Babylon, who through divine intervention were made to speak different tongues and thus lost their ability to communicate. Only there’s no divine intervention here. This is all our own doing, and neither one seems to know how to undo it. I wish I could turn back the time and do things differently. But that’s a futile thought, as time cannot be turned back, and I do not know where I would have to start, I do not know when we started talking with words like knives, to hurt each other. Maybe it was a gradual thing, a slow thing, the hurtfulness seeping into our conversations bit by bit, until they had erased every kind word and we suddenly were left wondering when we started cutting each other up this bad. So I am tired of talking, because all we do is hurt each other. And I am tired of our silences, because they, too, hurt.

to all those suffering of chronic headaches and migraines ;o)

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,

I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety.

W.S. Gilbert, beginning of the Lord Chancellor's Song in Iolanthe

Alone

Demons haunt me wherever I go, and I have forgotten or repressed whether they are yours or mine. Maybe they are ours, only you have chosen to ignore them, and so they come after me only.

I am yearning for sanctuary, yearning for someone new to take me into his arms and tell me that everything will be alright. But as these things go, that someone is unlikely to show up as long as I let those very demons from which I want him to shield me take over my soul.

So here I am, alone. And this is where I will have to fight, alone. I do not know whether I have the strength to succeed, but the thought of sanctuary in his as yet unknown arms gives me confidence and hope enough to risk the fight, alone. To be able to be together again, with someone new.

To Brian Hugh Warner

Through my eyes

I find myself as yesterday - as any day,

nothing special to be seen.

Through your eyes

I find myself beautiful and new.

So just for today

I'm switching

right to brown-green,

and left to white-blue.

Jim Beam

I am sitting in a darkened room. It is past noon, but the blinds are drawn to keep out the midday sun and its light. The room smells of stale cigarette smoke, faintly of dust, and heavily of sadness. The first two have to do with the room not having felt an airing or seen a cleaning in a while. The latter has to do with my father, who is sitting across from me on the couch. Even though it is comparatively early in the day yet, his eyes are already getting glassy. Partly, this can be attributed to the Jim Beam sitting on the coffee table in front of him, and partly it has to do with the deep sadness which has made its permanent home in the crevasses around his eyes. These used to be laughter lines, but these days they function mostly as aqueducts: they carry only water.

On the wall behind me there hangs a picture, a watercolor drawing of a waterfall. My father has painted this in one of his many therapy sessions. The waterfall represents his tears, he tells me, coming from a well of sadness within him which will never run dry. Apparently, my mother has created this well, and has taken away the sunshine and the laughter from his life. At least this is the way he sees it, most days. The golden rays of the sun have been replaced with the fickle golden warmth of the Jim Beam, as the laughter has been replaced with the waterfall of tears.

At twelve years of age, I am a poor substitute for my mother to him, as well as a constant painful reminder of the way his life used to be before she left him, taking me and my brother with her. He does not tell me this in so many words, because in his own strange fashion he loves me, and is happy to have me with him, even if that happiness is tinged with the pain of remembering. But I can feel it in his unspoken words, can feel it in the heavy, palpable air surrounding us, pressing down and in on me. The pain in his eyes is like a flashlight, and every time he looks up from the poker game we are running on the coffee table, this flashlight of pain lights on my face and lights up my insides. It is not a good light, this. Not like the sunshine. This one is a light leaping out of darkness, like a beacon guiding sailors and lost souls to a safe harbor, a safe home. But it is warped, twisted, as there is no harbor inside himself anymore, no safety, no home.

He is looking to me to make things right. To take that beam of light from him and plant it in my own eyes, turning it around and un-warp it, untwist it. To guide him to safety, to home. And I want to, I really do. But I do not know how to go about it, so I fumble awkwardly through the days, I make half-hearted jokes, I try hard not to say anything that will twist the knife which he feels to be already lodged in his heart. I think I twist it anyway, unintentionally, because no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, he is not getting better, the light in his eyes does not turn around, the waterfall of his tears does not stop, the invisible knife in his heart is still firmly lodged there.

So he turns from me to the Jim Beam, seeking consolation there. And for a short time, for a few hours a day, he finds in it what I cannot give him: oblivion. His eyes get glassier as the day progresses, but this time, this has not so much to do with the tears. In the late afternoon, a smile slowly spreads across his face. I know that he has reached the point where blocking out the past is finally manageable to him and the point where he can focus on the present is at hand. The crevasses around his eyes once more turn into laughter lines, his eyes light up and the light they project is not so sad anymore, not so painful. I joke with him and laugh with him, myself now being catapulted from the present into the past, to the father I used to know, the one who was always laughing, always pulling harmless pranks on others, always the life of the party. I remember him well, and I am glad that for a few brief moments of time, he is with me again in this dark, smelly, dusty, oppressive room.

But when I take a really close look at the light coming from his eyes, I realize that it is golden-brown. Just like the Jim Beam sitting on the coffee table in front of him.

Dreaming of Swimming

I am still functioning. That is not the same as living; in fact, it is as far removed from living, as keeping your head over water is from swimming. Nonetheless, it is much better than only existing, because when you are only existing, then that is akin to already having your head under water, which is just one tiny step away from drowning, really. My head is mostly over water. Yet. On some days I am not sure where in this metaphor I currently find myself: drowning - keeping my head over water - swimming. And sometimes I ask myself if there is something beyond swimming. Like synchronized swimming with others, maybe. And if there is, then is there also such a thing as synchronized keeping-one's-head-over-water?

"Hang in there, kitty cat, you can do it!" My father is standing by the edge of the swimming pool, cheering me on. I am desperately trying to keep my head over water, aided by two cotton water wings which are connected to each other by a strap going under my chest. I am working on my first swimming badge, and am proud to be the youngest child going for it this year. "That's it, very good, don't give up!" shouts my father. At this particular moment, his cheering is all that is keeping me over water, as my strength is quickly fading and only my will and his will combined are keeping me going. I finally make it and the badge is mine, to be proudly worn on my bathing suit from this day on. This cotton patch is the main reason I was going for the swimming badge in the first place, as it has a pretty picture of an orange seahorse on it. Here now is the undeniable proof that this girl can keep her head over water for a certain amount of time.

The bathing suit with the pretty swimming badge applied to it is long gone. So is my father, who is no longer standing by the edge of the swimming pool which is my life and cheering me on. He is much too busy getting his own head over water every now and then, to take a deep breath to help him fight drowning when he goes under again. Because as far as I can tell, that is what he is doing most of the time.

Therein exactly lies the difficulty, you see. Looking on from the outside, it is very hard to tell if someone is merely existing, perhaps even functioning, or, at best, living. This has to do with two factors: one's own perception of the situation, and the correct estimation of the perception of self of the other. Let me explain: if I say of myself that I am keeping my head over water, then it does not necessarily mean that another person in the same situation might not perceive herself to be going under, or, quite the opposite, swimming. Perception of self thus varies with the self. The correct estimation of the perception of self of the other, then, means that I can never with complete accuracy say if the other person is currently under water, keeping her head over water, or swimming.

To make this even more complicated, I would like to assert that there are people who lack any such self-reflection of their situation in life. Maybe there is no room for these kinds of people in my metaphor. Or maybe they require an extension of the metaphor: they are not in the water, but on the water, in a boat without paddles or rudder. Because paddles and rudder, like swimming, always imply that you are going in a specific direction, towards something. These kind of people however do not even realize that they are in a boat on the water, thus they are merely bobbing up and down, and see neither the swimmers going past them towards their destination, nor the ones fighting to keep their heads over water, nor the ones going under and maybe drowning. Apart from the swimmers, the people in the boat are probably the happiest ones.

Again I find myself working on a swimming badge, and this time it's the big one, the one that says that this girl can not only keep her head above water for a certain amount of time, but actually swim towards something without losing her breath or strength and going under. This time there is no swimming instructor, however, and no one to cheer me on. I am all alone in this ocean of life, trying to find a way to become a true swimmer. Some days I succeed, others I manage to barely keep my head over water, and sometimes I even go under for a short time. What I have realized in all the years that lie between my first attempt at a swimming badge and now, though, is that there are others who will sometimes tread the same waters as I. And if one of us happens to be going under at such a time, the other will lend a helping hand, and together we will keep our heads over water until we have regained our breath and strength, together.

War

What are we?
Like madmen, searching in vain
We are running through life
With our eyes shut
Like windows in the winter

We are lost in ourselves
With no regard for each other
Children of Chaos
Lovers of Hate
Mates of Destruction

What are we?
We are Deathbringers

Death

Death -
the Black Rider
the Red Demon
the ice-cold touch of the Fiery God
blinding darkness
endless fall
drowning in pain
from the loss of

Life?

For Rikard

Sometimes when I'm sad
and lonely and blue
I think of a friend
a friend who is true

I think of his smile
and of his warm hand
that's holding the mine
and helps me to stand

That's giving me strength
and hope fresh and new
that friend holding me
my friend, that is you.