What I did wrong is be myself, in whatever form. I was myself and that was wrong, as it usually is to some extent. It's like the sight and smell of me, the true sight and smell, is enough to cause the ranks fear beyond all other possibilities of fear. Or maybe, being so self consumed to believe one's personality is going to bring the downfall of the world is exactly my downfall. I get that now. It's too late, though.

But in all positives, I think that it's time to start looking at greener pastures (poetry, mfa, keeping my art secret, dying my hair). This world is so frail and disposable these days that I wonder why I fight for anything at all. Respect for me? No one has respect anymore. It's a dying concept. I need to accept these mere facts: respect is dead, chivalry was dead a long time ago, politicians are liars and we're all going to die anyway. These are sad facts and concepts, I am aware. I'm sound like a harking gray cloud. BUT there are positives. You move on from that, you expect it and make something new. You GROW. The positives are that I can choose, even still, to be the person I want to be and maybe it will be refreshing to someone, on some rare occasion. I know respect is dead, so why not surprise someone? I mean, you never know, right? Someone is just dying, absolutely dying, to grab my body and mind and not dispose of it into the great garbage heap of their history. But in all life's paradoxes, in the end, I am only another person and that is the most freeing aspect of it all.

I can't expect anything of anybody. The only thing I can expect is not to go absolutely bat shit crazy when something doesn't go my way. Nothing is going my way these days, so why lose my mind in the process? I mean, really. Now where are the strawberries...!?

I have so many explicatives to share but instead I am going to swallow them into the little cesspool in my chest, where all things go to burn and keep me fueling for the rest of my life.

I am so tired of men treating me like shit. I'll just say it. I'm tired of being treated like shit by men. I know that by making such a thing declarative, I frighten the hell out of them anyway. I know that it will never stop and I don't want to battle it by making myself look repulsive and homeless like I have in the past. I just, I just need to start slapping people more. I just need to not be afraid to stand my ground.

It doesn't matter where I am. I am disrespected at a restaurant, while walking, at my own home, at the bar, at school. My only safe haven is at work, where I am surrounded mostly by men, all of who stay away from me, treat me like a friend and respect my space.

I have had problems in the past but it has been getting worse. Every single time I do anything anywhere on the weekends, or even during the weekdays (if I go out), I am disrespected. When I think that someone actually cares about me, I am disrespected. It seems that I am going to continue to wade through refuse and at this point I do not care; I will tell you to your face that you're a dick and that's it.

Some of these men are pushy. None of them are attractive when they're doing it, either. In this town, most people aren't single. The men who are single are single for a reason. And then there is me, a woman, who is single for a reason. It's not because I am crazy, it's because it's by choice. I can't seem to meet anyone who even remotely attempts to meet me where it counts and if the opportunity comes around I am too disrespected to look past it.

I begin to wonder if I am diseased, or corrupted more than I know. It seems everyone else is meeting gentlemen except me. I'd like to be in love but I am tired of all of the disrespect that it brings. If that means love, then I don't want love. I want nothing of it. I must have forgotten what a wasteland being single can be. It isn't that I don't want to "have fun" but I want to mean something. Yeah, I can get philosophical and say that I don't mean anything. Maybe that will help me wade through the numbed out malaise that is so much of life these days.

But whatever, so what? Get used to it. I mean, what am I complaining about, right? Shouldn't I LIKE this attention? I know there is no better feeling than being treated like scum because you are attractive to someone's genitals. I mean, hell, I can't get anyone to give a shit about my art or my poetry but I can certainly make them give a shit about sticking something in my orifices. Great. Now my life is so complete. People can take me so seriously. Everything is just magically going to materialize now in the life of Audrey. Maybe we'd all like some good old fashioned respect? Is that so hard these days? Or what is it? Old fashioned? We're postmodern now, postmodern, disrespectful, "life has no meaning," assholes.

Attempting to make this public again

There's something that feels good when in my research I find a female poet who makes me feel okay, like somehow I am not as disengaged as I feel, like somehow my words have legitimacy instead of mistake. My insecurities with my writing disassemble in these moments. I feel like crying to someone, but that someone is dead and living in the screen in front of me. The dead speak to me. It's nice to be alone. They're always the ones that weren't so molded and had the strength to forgo some kind of security in conforming to a particular way of being that would automatically leave them in the mother's womb of society. They always die too early to be anything else.

I have learned that oftentimes my words stir others or offend them. I fear it. I fear the day I have to explain myself or defend my words because they are somehow connected to my character. I've been hiding this blog for awhile because its negativity streams from the innermost realms of my perception and onto the Internet where anything can be viewed and left for judgment. Old friends of mine perception of me had turned into a sassy, delusional, gin drunk girl living in a college town to a person who seemed to probe too far, too long and too much. In essence, I had dropped all of my petals and died a little upon moving to Kansas City two years ago. I rubbed some the wrong way because I was so tired of all of the things that kept happening to me.

But this blog isn't a blog, it's a thing that helps fuel my creative desire to write anything at all. Part of that desire is somewhat voyeuristic. My attempts to inject the blood back into it, and my poetry, have proved faulty. I can say that I have reached the point where I do not care. Ultimately, if I am a writer and even more intimately, a poet, I can't fear what people may think about my words. I can't be debilitated by criticisms of the past that have turned into demons instead of a force to help me grow and expand.

If I am crazy then you've never met a person who is crazy. You've never visited them like I have. If I am angry, cynical and busy spouting rash indecencies instead of backing up my opinions with enough facts for you, then you must not be paying attention to what is happening in front of you. If I am faulty or stupid or not what someone wants me to be in their imagination then I am not for them. Instead maybe they need a woman, or a poet, or an artist, or a friend, who embodies something less honest and more run down to a pulp by the flatness of our society. In that case, I don't need you. We're all going to be buried in the same dirt. This is all good enough for me to project my insecurities on this blog, or on a wall somewhere, and yell at them like a session in therapy. I may just do that. I'm doing it right now. Who do I need? No, just me. Just me.

sensitive nervous system

After doing more research on my persistent migraines I have come to the conclusion that while there are physical triggers that send me off, I have an overactive and sensitive nervous system. That is about it. I inherited something lucky. So not only am I emotionally, spiritually and mentally hypersensitive I am now physically hypersensitive and things such as drinking or eating triggers and/or being stressed and dehydrated mixed with stressful people, department stores, loud things, perfume, etc, cause me to be in mind numbing pain and make me want to throw up on the polished floors.

In fact, this happened to me earlier today. Somehow I ended up at Kohl's and the migraine hit new levels. I wanted to throw up in the store. Somehow the thought of it seemed pleasurable. I have an affinity for throwing up in parking lots in suburbia. One time I threw up in front of my parents in the Cinzetti's parking lot after my birthday party the night before. It turns out that not only was my stomach extra sensitive but I had a migraine at the time. I was so hungover it was hard to tell, so it's not a surprise I couldn't hold in puke after the swerving ride on I-35.

And the strangest things have been happening. I have been hallucinating. Okay, I'm not people, but just shapes that correspond with whatever strange issue is going on in my body. Most people have these right before their migraines but I just have them and there is no migraine. I saw snow falling while I was standing in the bathroom on Tuesday night. Migraines have been interesting me in a way I never thought possible. I am trying to teach myself to find the pain pleasurable. When I was younger I had trained myself to find pleasure in menstrual cramps because I was so filled with euphoria that I was not pregnant. I have yet to find a burst of euphoria in the migraine, so I am searching for a new way to perceive it.

It's clear I have been able to disregard these physical occurrences and not make myself believe I have schizophrenia or something fun like that. Sometimes I talk to myself if I am home alone and trying to get things straight in my head but I can't say there is another character there attempting to appear. I don't see people, or aliens, but if that ever happens I am going straight to the doctor and saying bye bye to my future. So far, I get Van Gogh esque migraine aura escapades all over my field of vision.

Things have been curious lately, beyond my ridiculous health issues. Now that I have real health insurance I guess I could go experience an MRI or something.

Nineteen's Bluez

Everyone dropped out
when they were sixteen.
I watched my friends turn into pedophiles,
sex addicts, sexual predators.
I saw them listed,
screwed into society.
They tried to eat me up
while I sat in a candy bowl
on the coffee table.
They tried to lure me in bedrooms
with cocaine and kisses and threats,
like I was rolled flat
with bobby pins sticking out,
waiting for my drug
dream to manifest.
I never felt a thing.
I left them in exchange
for real debt.
Now I owe them shaved legs
and apologies for leaving.
I owe my youth to them
so they do not fear their death.