Today I celebrate one year of self-discovery, 12 months of wringing the hate from my heart drop by drop, 52 weeks of mental growth, 365 days worth of the strength used to get out of bed each and every one of those mornings, 525, 949 minutes of pushing forward and away from this exact day one year ago. And here I sit, challenging myself to a year of digging deeper, looking closer, and seeing clearer.
-tbrumm
I rode your roller coaster for years, our relationship a theme park I made a home. There’s a reason roller coasters last three minutes on average, because who can handle more than that? Who can stomach the drops and the tremendous resistance pushing you backward while you’re trying your hardest to move forward?
-tbrumm
“What would make you perfectly content with your life?”
I didn’t know the answer or where to find it. I felt then as I do now, that I could have the entire world in the palm of my hand and still, not only want, but expect more. Perhaps that’s how we should all feel in our twenties, maybe it’s that ambition that gets us through our initiation into adulthood, and that may also very well have been the demise of every romantic relationship I’ve ever had.
-tbrumm
A moment to live for: it’s Christmas time in Detroit and I’m sitting in my best friends living room located in a 1920s apartment on Jefferson that her and her boyfriend rent together. He throws St. Paul and The Broken Bones on the record player and he, his two friends, Sarah, and myself all decide that “Call Me” is the song we need to hear right in this moment. In the moments that follow the bluesy tune dances on our ear drums while we pass a bowl full of weed around the room which I have Sarah light for me every time it lands on me and we sip Soft Parade out of bottles that are still wearing the winter chill they caught during the walk from the car to the building and I look out the window at the Detroit river and all that Windsor, Canada offers just on the other side and I remember all of the times Sarah and I crossed the border as teenagers to drink and dance in bars and have sing alongs with homeless men playing acoustic guitars on the street, a street we’d walk down hand in hand once the jäger hit us. And I realize that’s just one of many streets I’ve gone down with her by my side and it’s no different here on Jefferson, or on Broadway in Soho, or on a dirt road outside of a stilted mansion on the island of Kauai; Sarah always reminds me that I’m right where I need to be.
-tbrumm
I tried to remember that I’d still have tomorrow, that there would continue to be blue skies and cold beer and a million other reasons for the world to keep turning, but the bombs exploding in my chest were so distracting.
-tbrumm
There’s a difference between being sad and missing someone. Sometimes we’re sad because we don’t miss them at all. We’re sad to have realized the reality is that we’re better off without that thing we thought we couldn’t live without, didn’t want to live without. We’re sad that we no longer believe ourselves when we say that it was or will be worth it. We’re sad to have to agree with our friends when they say we deserve better. Because we didn’t want better, we wanted what we had. Mostly we’re sad that somebody or something yanked us from the fairytale we insisted on living in and introduced us to the cold and lonely world of reality, where people leave and love fades.
-tbrumm
Every time he hurts you there is just enough forgiveness and making up to fill the time between this betrayal and the next. There is always a next. And you think that by forgiving him you’re breaking new ground, you’re getting to a part of him no one else ever has and so you dig through dirt hoping you might uncover an artifact that will be worth the past couple years of your life. He has swallowed you whole and you swim around in the word vomit while picking out the words and phrases you like most; only focusing on the ones that make it hurt a little less to know that this is the kind of love you think you deserve. You’re drowning. You fill your pockets with the bullshit that comes out of his mouth and you look up from the ocean floor wondering how you got here. He says this is the best he’s got and you decide it’s not so bad holding your breath as he tells you how beautiful you are when you’re blue in the face.
-tbrumm
Every morning I wake up and I tell myself, “Today, you’ll be stronger.” And I repeat it over and over in my mind until I’m almost certain that I wouldn’t follow him to hell, not even if he asked me with his lips. I anxiously wait for his name to appear so that I can demonstrate my new found strength, a stone cold silence. A silence that says “I don’t want to” rather than “I can’t”. But just seeing his name reminds me of how I wake up alone and shivering and how warm it is standing in the eye of his man made hurricane even if I’m there drowning. And so every day I fail. Every day I accept his invitation-stripping myself of every cold weather accessory, every emotional barrier, every band-aid covering old wounds and I lay myself in front of him completely bare; for him to love, to criticize, to miss, to place blame on, to lust after, to laugh at, to step on to reach higher ground – whatever he needs me for, just as long as he needs me.
-tbrumm
Four November’s ago I was riding around Detroit in a pink hummer limo celebrating my life. I thought that at 21 years old I had lived an entire life and I spent that birthday celebrating the Midwestern successes I was taught to be proud of: college graduation in the spring, maintaining friendships that started in adolescence, making my own car payment, etc. I thought I knew the world because I knew the ins and outs of the very small world I created for myself. Now, four years later, I look back and realize my life hadn’t even begun, that the world is infinitely larger than I could have imagined from the suburbia I grew up in. My life only began when I moved to New York. I was only beginning to test the waters of a very deep well; one full of opportunity, new friends, different cultures, delicious food, inspiration on every street corner, and for me, an endless supply of humility. New York has a way of reminding you that you aren’t shit, that your 21st birthday was merely the dusk before the dawn. There are millions of other people sharing this city with you and they’re all equally, if not more, talented than you. Likely, they worked just as hard, were just as brave and courageous, and left just as much behind in order to be here, in this city, living the life they dreamed about as children, the same way you did. So here’s to everyone who dreamed big, to myself for having 25 years worth of fight inside of me, and to all the lessons I’ve yet to learn.
-tbrumm
I just stopped writing. There came a point where it hurt too much to let the pain travel all the way from my heart to my fingertips and on to a page. I didn’t want to dig that deep into myself, leaving a hole I’d inevitably try to fill up again with something or someone I needed to learn to live without. Even if living without them felt like the closest I’ve ever been to dying, it had to be done. So I swallowed my words and held on to my hurt just to know I had something nobody could take away from me.
-tbrumm
tbrumm 