Chamomileteandpoetry - Camille Lee

An old sparkly journal is buried at the bottom of a weathered and worn, old cardboard box. Every other page has an "I ♡ Alex" written in pink ink on it. That girl used count every hand-holding, shoulder-touch, head-pat her first real crush ever gave her and wrote it all down. "He held my hand and rest his head on my shoulder." Fast forward three years and I started a new school, I'm fifteen years old and I reminisce fondly over my younger self's crush, at a party. Everyone around me mistakes my smile as lingering feelings for him, after all, I wasn't very subtle with my feelings back then. They just don't know. Now with older eyes to look back with, I realized something. I was always made of love. Love was never something I had to look for outside of me, it was always within me, I just didn't know it. I am love and love was always made of me.

—Camille Lee, love is what I was always made of

I'm terrified one day I'll look around and realize for all my platonic love, it isn't enough. For all my friends have paired off like Noah's ark, all over again, one by one, I am but the exception. The lonely outlier, the undesirable creature, alone in the raging storm of living. The one to throw overboard to make space, the easiest at least, because they know there's no one here to miss me. I watch as they gaze into the eyes of their lovers with all the romance I've longed for, talking of the new world and the "rest of their lives together" I'm sick to my stomach but I pass it off as the back and forth rocking of the ark, sea sickness— I send a silent prayer to the sky or to God or to whoever will listen to me I can't possibly be fated to live out my days alone, right?

—Camille Lee

Loneliness is a wounded beast, roaring and clawing at the walls of my heart, wailing for reprieve, relief for his suffering. A balm, a salve for injuries he can't see, with no end in sight, maybe a mercy kill is instead what he should seek. He couldn't talk and even if he tried, I doubt you'd understand his cries, "Come get me out, these four walls are so empty, somebody please come find me."

— Camille Lee, Loneliness is a wounded beast

He was the first guy, I tried the "talking stage" with. I told him slow, glacially slow, like a candle burning into the late hours of the night, but he didn't hear over his own wants, his own needs. It was part of the reason it was the end of our season, on his way out the door he broke my heart all over and I knew I dodged a bullet when his ego started talking. Suddenly, oh so suddenly, I wasn't worthy of someone like him. Suddenly my beauty was too little and there was something wrong with me, so much for "you're my ideal girl" because now apparently I "wasn't even that pretty" and my version of normal was a problem. The way I was, was a problem. You said if I'm not happy with you, I'll never find a boyfriend. At the mere age of twenty with so much life left to live ahead of me, did you really think that's what I'd believe? The audacity— to try to convince me I wasn't worth loving, if I didn't want to be with you. My only regret is I didn't laugh in your face, so much for the "talking stage."

—Camille Lee, you'll never find a boyfriend

When you're sensitive, your world is always crumbling—crumbling and rebuilding, rebuilding and crumbling, demolition and construction begin and end and begin again. I could get new carpets, new floor plan or buy furniture too—all brand new, only for another wave, another hurricane to come again and wash it all away.

— Camille Lee, the world is always ending

Honestly, it's a bit silly to think you thought you could break me. When the women in my family (on my mother's side) while loving aren't gentle, aren't kind— always, with their words especially. My grandmother wouldn't notice how hard she tugged my hair when she combed it and my mother told me from young "if you wanted a soft, gentle mommy to baby you, you aren't going to find her in me." Still, her casual, cruel comments sneak up on me, like little thieves with little knives to stab me to death, in my dreams, in my sleep. One by one, each little cut adds up. Death by a thousand cuts. You thought you could have easily taken me apart, but no, you'll have to compete with the critical voice of my mother who lives in my mind. Always loving, not always kind.

—Camille Lee, always loving but not always kind

I think I’ve always been afraid to grow up. 

When the teacher asked, “Who wants to stay in eight years old forever?” my little hand was the only one to shoot up, with all the excitement and innocence of a newborn seedling first entering the world, laid in wet paper towels in a plastic cup for a science project. This is the first time this little seedling properly greets the sun, except it never saw the sun.

The class spelling chart blocked out all the light and the seedling only knew the dark.

I was the only one to raise my hand  and just as quickly as it went up, it went right back down before the classroom erupted in laughter. 

—Camille Lee, I think I've always been afraid to grow up