after everything

As the smoke clears, I awaken and entangle you from me. Would it make you feel better to watch me while I bleed? All my windows still are broken, but I'm standing on my feet. -Demi Lovato, "Skyscraper"

i need a sleuth, not a spectator

When I was younger, I read quite an amount of books and watched a lot of (usually indie) films about mentally unstable people. Sometimes I did this while pretending I was actually holed up in a treehouse instead of on a squeaky leather couch. The movies sometimes got a little too crazy but the books always left me feeling empty, because I became obsessed with wanting to friend the crazy protagonist, as God knows my real friends were too normal to pay much understanding to me (I still feel that way sometimes though I'm now therapy-free).

***

I have a lot of bottled-up fears. One day I will stick them in a real bottle and watch them float across the Atlantic Ocean. Then people in Europe or Africa will find them and uncover my fingerprints and travel to America just to cradle me and tell me I'm stronger than these fears. Unless my bottles fail and someone in America finds them and tosses them away. (I'm sorry.) Americans are just not as romantic in my head.

***

Independence Day came and left. I wonder why we've reduced holiday celebrations to days off and fireworks and lots of barbequed food. Or repetitive songs and pretty lights and lots of baked food. Or just simply a lot of food. (With plenty of leftovers). And I don't even know what Labor Day is for anymore.