One of my friends — well, it doesn’t really matter how it happened. But we talked about our smile lines for a moment.

This entry is already beginning in a way that I dislike. I’ve halted, stuttered and stopped and nothing about the way that I write seems to flow anymore. But it doesn’t matter, not right now, I’ll acknowledge my shame in my weakening craft later.

I looked into the mirror and I wasn’t exactly sure who I saw. I recognize the face, the lines of my jaw and the soft, dark skin under my eyes. Though there’s nothing particularly spectacular about the blue of my irises, I’ve realized that those dark pupils had weight. They were pitch black irons, and to me it was like seeing through an immeasurable ocean to a dark anchor resting on white sand below.

What boat bobs on those unsettled waves, tethered there, I do not know.

All I know that is she has proved sea worthy so far. The creaks of her wooden planes do not pitch high, as they did when new lumber would be under pressure. This noise has grown seasoned, and groans throughout the entire vessel. There have been places that her sails have been patched, and a great many causes and their flags had been pulled up to display. She has had more than her share of salt crusted, sodden white sheets pulled up in surrender. The sound those flags make during a storm, when they droop with the weight of water and slap the rigging is northing short of terrifying.

No flag snaps crisp in the air now, she is a vessel that is waiting for the captain to catch a breath.

They say when a door is shut, that a window’s gonna open sometime. What happens when that door shuts and you find yourself in an entirely different house? What you thought you were gonna be seein’ out the window is something else entirely. You can’t stay inside, because it isn’t your room anymore. The floorboards don’t squeak the same when you walk over them, and you certainly didn’t pick out the goofy lookin’ wallpaper. You either gotta step out into a yard you know nothing about, or wrench that door open and figure out just what sort of house you’ve gotten yourself into.

Occasionally you find some stuff that’s yours. Maybe some pictures scattered under the bed. You’re looking at them, and you know that you’ve been pals with them. But just like everything else that’s changed around you, they’re not the same people anymore either. You don’t know whether you’re supposed to be disappointed or angry – or hell, maybe you could be a little relieved.

But the part of you that remembers your old house, it’s not ready to let go of all those echoes. It can’t see, it won’t see, the way everything has turned out. Because you know that when you finally go out that window, some of those folks won’t be there anymore. You’re going to forget some of those memories that really defined who you were for the longest time.

But here’s the thing, I figure – you spend so much time looking around on how everything’s gotten up and damn well done a one eighty on you, you don’t notice that it everything looks so funny because while you were distracted someone snuck in and changed out your eyes.

Nothing changed. It was always your room, always your yard – but one morning you woke up and you saw everything differently.

Sometimes, sometimes, you could touch something and remember. But it’s never going to be the same again. All you have got to go on is sensations that crumble like ash the moment you try to push any deeper. An’ old song that sounds so damn familiar, but you can’t remember the lyrics or why it had you bawlin’ in the car when it started playing.

But I’m okay, I’m going to be more than okay. Because even if I didn’t have that window, I have a hatchet. And if I had too, I’d bust my way out in a storm of bricks and plaster.

Another snippet morning, I believe. It was a cool wet day, which threw my memories into autumn mode. I only seem to focus on certain events around that time of year. They’re chilly and bittersweet, and they just wouldn’t do without the crunch of spent leaves beneath my feet. That strong autumn wind, for me, exists to sweep my attentions away from wandering headlong into the past.

Whatever is going on, it’s still evolving, still being nurtured deep down inside of me. But the roots of the very thing have already begun to show, changing the way I think and feel. This is the creation of wising up. I’ve walked down that path of temptation, stumbled out onto the other side and learned to heal from my wounds without scarring. I’m certain I’m the same girl, deep down, and that my potential for loving is still a well which continues to remain bottomless for me. 

But I’ve casually learned to separate that fleshy part of me from that insistent white-knight soul of mine. I know there is an animal inside of me that wants to submit, to give into the simple pleasures of life that most think naught twice over. She’s a creature that wants free of my personal bondage to put herself into someone else’s. I cannot abide by this. Where she goes, I go, and there is not a decision yet that she’s tried to make that I’ve vehemently fought every inch of the way.

I thought I could live in coexistence with her. But as I’ve grown older, her demands border on the impossible and dangerous – they have no concern for me. She’s no longer welcome, she endangers too many of the things I care for. She can starve. I will not give in. There’s too much I stand to lose. 

I’ve finally realized what I’m fighting for.