I Wished Every Day Was Summer When I Was A Little Girl. No School Time, Just Bikes On The Pavement. Sun

Would you burn the olive trees if you grew them, if you felt their bark wind under your fingertips like locks of hair? Would you poison the water if it quenched your thirst, if you let the river stones touch your sole? You claim the land is yours, and you’re owed every grain of its sand but someone who loves the land would not demolish its beauty so recklessly. If that is how you treat what is yours, I dread the fate of those you call others.

Have I always sought permission so fervently, or was I confident in myself once? I can’t remember.

I am tired of hiding. Of being embarrassed. Unsure. Reluctant. Ashamed. I am tired now, more than all of those things. And it’s a fatigue I love, the sort that kicks in to spare me misfortune, and only spare me misfortune, in an awfully painless way. After all isn’t that fatigues purpose, to stop us from continuing on and hurting ourselves.

Her photo bends white at the creases, opened and closed a thousand times, my memories dull and taper away. I think of her. And I wonder what parts of her face I’ve forgotten in my desperate plea to remember every freckle on it.

The Girl who Cried Wolf

Was never met with hurried steps coming to her aid in the dead of night. The first night she watched for the beast, his golden eyes burned from a breath beyond the treeline. She shouted out for pitchforks, torches, and only felt wind and moonlight rushing to her side. Nobody believed her the first time.

Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.

Remembering him is like biting glass. I don’t know why I do it, why I keep hurting myself on the sharp details of his shattered memory. His eyes, such a pale blue, had a depth to them you wouldn’t expect like stagnant ocean water. My mouth bleeds as I masticate his face, the way words would leave his mouth; his voice is like rows of pins in my tongue. I can’t help myself but to recall him, over and over again, no matter the pain. I think that’s what draws me to recollection actually, feeling anything again. It’s the numbness that lets you drift into autopilot, living while asleep, that ruins you so much more deeply. Losing a loved one, and yourself along with them.

Life is happening, life is happening all the time. I can’t seem to catch it in between my fingers, elusive as rays of light. I cannot keep it high in my lungs, it leaves me like a breath. I am a meager stone in a fast coursing river and I watch what erodes me away. Life is cold. Invigorating. I wish I could hold its hand and study its face before it escapes me again.

Create as you would breath, constantly, to live and not to impress. It’s there in your vital honesty you’ll find what it is you’re seeking, there sitting softly in your calloused hands.

Is the joy of wearing anyone’s face, dawning any voice on command worth more to you than possessing your own? Then by all means act your life away. Express yourself in characters, distilled emotions and memories of yours, collect awards, applause, whatever it is you think will fix you, make you happy. And when the curtain is called and the limelight dims and you sit with your viewer of one and struggle to communicate to other people in real life without the hug of a facade, I want you to remember that you wanted this. You wanted to be shucked and hollowed out to be filled with the adoration of millions. Don’t step down now. There’s nothing worth returning to anyway.

-Diary of an actress