Conversations Among the Ruins

He had waited until I wouldn't take him back again to scream at me that I killed his unborn child. He said to me that yeah, I'm pretty.
But I'd be prettier dead and bloated in a car trunk. He threatened to blackmail me and called me white trash, said I was a burnt out hooker with missing teeth.
He laughed with his girlfriend on the internet about what an episode I am, and he told me a person like him shouldn't have ever even looked at a person like me.
I don't remember the rest, all I really had to say to him was a calm
"It is unfortunate you feel that way."

When you fall in love with somebody to find yourself it's a catastrophe when you find the rest of them instead and believe in anything they say
you are.

I laughed my ass off when he got his girlfriend pregnant three months after we broke up. I laughed because it hurt and he always used to tell me
"Can't you just laugh? It's easier."
How could a person like that hurt a person like me?

I always thought I loved him in retrospect he wasn't ever any of the things I thought I saw in him. I live in the house now where we would fly out here to sit in, ripping a bong until we passed out, waking up to go get married, alone on this neon street.

I really did sink into that so fast. It's incredible, when you're so lost, the things you re work to believe in to convince yourself to settle for.

So much time has passed and at this point I really just hope he finds himself in a better place. Sometimes I am happy for how happy he must be. The rest of the time I forget about him effortlessly.

On my twenty seventh birthday his daughter was born. And I"m here, thousands of miles away,

hoping he will teach his daughter

life a better way

than he thought he deserved

to teach life

to me.

"What you need to know is that I never stay. I don't sleep next to people because I don't want them goddamn sleeping next to me. If I wanted to watch somebody sleep, I'll go to their funeral."

I had finished my dirty martini on a Lake Shore Drive balcony. He flicked his cigarette and laughed. "You're such a beautiful bitch Heather."

And I guess, at that time, I was. An orange plastic doll on a twenty five pound weight drop because my boyfriend dumped me to become a superstar record producer. I wasn't a nice person I a was a girl with a pound of makeup on my face and a heart that existed as an agenda. Kill them like they just killed you.

And you beautiful bitch orange plastic girl.

I am writing to say goodbye to you.

You took all of your strength that you went through so much to get and turned it into narcissism based image obsession. I had to serve steak to fathers that stared at my ass with their children to pay off all of the credit cards you maxed out buying a new wardrobe in a desperate act of trying to turn into somebody that he didn't reject. There's always worse, god don't we know that as my dad once remarked to me, but you hurt people and in the end you hurt yourself the most. You hurt me. I am the other you. I'm the person you look into the mirror and see with puffy eyes, where you do that thing and say under your breath

"Oh. God."

It is my reflection that has every single article of clothing on your bed before you go to work in the morning because you're too fat. I am the person you showed to other people. The insecure, scared, totally clueless child like girl that every boyfriend you've ever had turned around and said "I just can't deal with your past." And I am the girl that they ignored to a degree of which I cannot remember from the time I was four until I was seventeen.

You were so sure about how great you were because you didn't do drugs anymore. You got a 4.0 through every single CADC class you took, except you were drunk every night and into the morning of the week for it. You developed a script about how much you didn't fucking care about anybody, and you set people that loved you deeply up so that they would hurt like you hurt and it would be all their fault.

And you stared at them, said fuck you, and walked away.

And I am telling you, I am writing that script, and it is going to burn in the desert. I watch you

barfing up Dewars on LaSalle at five am in your sexy shoes and tiny dress, and I see you, puking up salad because they didn't put the dressing on the side, cracked out on redbull and five hour energy at midnight because you had to present yourself at your job for fourteen hours straight. I can feel you lecturing about how together you are and how far you have made it, and how hard you would stare into the mirror when you would hear your mother scream when you got home because of how much she could still scare you.

I hear you say "I am going to fucking stab you." I hear you say "I wish I had a gun." I hear you say "I want to break somebodies fucking face." When it is our face that you want to break, it is your own heart you want to stab, and sleeping with a pistol under our pillow still, if you think about it hard enough, shifts the sun to where you won't ever find it again.

You got me through so much. I got to be the hot girl. The hot crazy untouchable girl that walked through it and learned about music, wrote a novel, and coldly informed anybody that was or wasn't asking

"I do not stay."

So
Since that is the case, my narcissistic image presenting always photo ready little demon, I think it is time that you and I part ways, as you are me and I am you, but I have picked up your pieces, it was a hell of a sweep job, and I am ready to dump them. It is time for a goodbye.

I cannot keep walking with all of that weight. I look like fucking hell a great deal of the time right now but that hell is mine and mine only. I'm not trying to cover that shit up with a battle shield by Urban Decay. I can't even afford that now anyway, nor will I ever get to a point again where I will consider it worth it.

Nobody ever hurt you for that period of your life because you hurt everybody else, and I see you, stare blankly at your reflection in your office every day, laughing because you look like a fucking super model in the muted light, and how hard you jump when somebody flips the lights on.

Because I am flawed but too strong to pretend I'm not. I lost my tan baby girl you would be horrified but since

I can't see you any more
I guess that means you
can't see me

any more

either.

Onward.
HL

I keep getting closer to deciding to join a yoga based cult. I'm over here Adidas pants and chocolate chip cookies in my bed with a Dr pepper and a blank stare on my face.

I feel like the rave just stopped and all the lights went on, how you just stand there as the new air hits you and think to yourself "What the fuck do we do now, and how do we get there alive?" Except in my shedding of my party kid skin the "we" became "I" which is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I yell at her on the phone in between buying cigarettes and weaving through traffic in the sun. In the sun. In the sun. It's always fucking sunny I think to myself at a left turn lane on a Thursday afternoon. I spent the morning in a composed focused rage for a number of reasons a few worth mentioning but most all the same.

I liked this guy but since I didn't sleep with him he fucked my friend because well. He was in Vegas and that's what douche bags and whores do in Vegas. Luckily I'm too disgusted to even sensationalize it or make it a huge deal. It's just gross to me the way that people don't respect themselves and in turn nobody around them gets any respect either, so have another drink and have a nice life with all that.

Hi I'm Heather and I need a life copy edit of the people I think that i know, or in other cases, that I know too well. I would like to request you cover the floor with that chop job. I will buy you gasoline and you can use my favorite pink bic lighter. Hell. Throw it in and we'll dance away in bell covered elf boots and flowery swimming caps covered in glitter.

I need to go to burning man to lose my fucking mind and all of the idiots involved with what makes it something I need to lose. Unfortunately for everybody else, I'm probably more rational and aware than you would ever want to imagine. I wake up in the morning with Don Henley playing on my iphone, which I balance on my forehead at full volume until I can get out of bed. I make coffee and put on a button down shirt with khakis and heels and I go the fuck to work.

And my life plays out every day as she screams at me on the phone I say quietly "I am at work" I

excuse myself and walk out to the parking garage to gasp for air and scream at the top of my lungs into the phone as I crush three marlboro empty packs. Hell of a time to not have cigarettes.

I met a man yesterday and it was magic. That is another story for another day when I don't feel like cutting a bitch.

I have run out of places to run. I can tell
because all the garbage

seems to
follow.

But. I am thankful for the two packages I got in the mail from two people that I love the most. I am happy I got to wake up Michelle in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder and I am happy that I can scream at my mother on Skype about what fucking idiot scumbags I seem to only give my time to. She laughed and said "My god you thought he was your type? I really do not know what is the matter with you" Aghast.

Dust Mask,
HL

You will be
crushed
forgotten

stepped on and
discarded.

Oh you like me?
and I"m beautiful I'm
so perfect you

kissed me I
kissed your
face and I

believed it
mattered.

I told you
how special you
were and

that I always thought
you were different.

Going off to fuck
my friend and
come back and

touch my hair to
tell me how
pretty it is.

You
are
not
different.

I

flinched like you

were the thousands
I already met
in this
life and I

believed
otherwise for
a while
but you made me

wrong.

You are a
fucking drunk
self centered

son of a bitch
child slurring boy
thing.

I cut so much
shit out of my life
and you brought it here

to me
on a plate.

Running off to a
hotel room with her
back an hour later I

buttoned your shirt
in that casino and if

your lucky you will
find this before you
try to speak to me

ever again.

I was better
than you and I
thank you for that

clarity. I actually
thought

that you
were
different.

I really did.
And I am washing
my hair tonight and i

hope you get
some goddamn help
someday.

You look like shit
with that drink
in your
hand and I

could low ball you
further but I

unlike you
possess

some fucking
boundaries and will
cut it

here.

Today Mr.
Absolutely Stunning

and I had a
conversation of
sorts.

I always had this
mad crush this
obsessive smash

over him. I said
"You are
beautiful in a
raw cut way. In a

step off
way. Brilliant enough
to ignore me and

mannequin like
for an Armani
suit.

You are somebody
I do not watch nor
do I follow.

I simply wait
for you
to come to
me, which you

always
seem to do.

Art is the basis
of every
conversation

except today
I showed you mine
and you looked at me

to say

"You are the
absolute
perfect
woman."

So naturally
I narrowed my eyes

I lit
a cigarette

and mumbled

"Don't you ever
say that
to me

ever again."

So you said it
again and after
that added

"I like how it
makes you
flinch."

I never claimed
we were ever
not exactly

the same I only
burned

the parking ticket
written on

that fact.