jennyeatsbabies.

i dont feel attractive to you anymore.

maybe that’s why im so angry—so sad. i don’t look anything like her, and you loved her most.

i would give anything to be taller, to be longer—to be skinnier: to have you feel for me what you felt for her. i would give anything to be not me.

“I can see why people consider you a different kind of smart; the kind that 
doesn’t result from getting straight A’s in class; the kind of smart that 
comes through seeing the world as contingencies of good and bad.

I do want to say that what some may call your outlook “gloomy” is actually 
comforting for me, because you are constantly aware of the less fruitful 
parts of life - the anxiety, the anger, the pain. Comforting because you, 
unlike many, see things in more complexity, reaching depths in a way 
experienced chess players do - thinking many steps ahead of time, yet also 
thinking about the swarms of past and previous moves that cannot be 
changed. And you are getting through it all without too much a detriment, or at least it seems to be.”

Today you asked me why I don’t write about us anymore. Today I told you it’s because we started fighting, and the romance in perfection had left us.

But it’s not that, and you know it isn’t—it’s because I’m selfish and afraid that if I write about you too much I won’t dote on you enough and we’ll be gone: just more writings in a little girl’s archive: it’s because I’m too busy loving you to care for words. It’s because what is there left to explain, other than you’re the stars in my eyes and the ones that light the skies?

What is there left to explain, other than you and I are the source of cliches: the kind of couple that can finish eachother’s sentences and thoughts and souls—what is there left to explain: that two months together and now eight hours apart we function like fish without water, trying to fill our tank with tears?

It’s because you love me that I somehow a writer’s heart is too full to write: too content with lovemaking on sateen sheets and cuddling on leather sofas and stealing touches on bodies we already own. It’s because I love you that writing about us takes second to us.

I think when you’re in a relationship long enough—put two people, completely unfiltered and finally free of social reigns and mind-numbing self-solitary confinement you start trying to hold yourself together and wishing that the honeymoon period never ended.

maybe its the grocery shopping or maybe its the way i bury my face in your chest when the old ladies cutting deli meats smile at us and call me pretty—or maybe its the way i wear your shirt without undergarments, scuttled under your desk to fix your speakers: the way you look at me when im naked and forever is a word that becomes real inbetween the thoughts of love in our mind.

maybe its the way you hold my waist—your lips against my tummy and your heart catching mine inbetween kisses that makes all the unsureities of the world less frightening.

or maybe it’s a collection of all these things: the way you love the gap sweater i bought for you on sale more than your emenegildo zegna and the way you steal kisses from me when i’m asleep—the gentle sway of you when i wake and the feeling of home when my head is against your heart that makes me want to live.

the other boys would have told me to reach for the stars—but it’s you and father who would have stolen me the sky.

it’s six am soon, and before it turns light ill find my way back into your arms: and maybe it’s there that i’ll finally stay home.

Watching brides pick out their dresses with fathers at their side make me wonder what it was that I did wrong.

November is coming.

The days get colder, and it seems like your warmth was just a dream.

I don’t know if it’s been six years or seven—or maybe it’s five and maybe it’s eight, but all I know is that I miss you so.

It’s weird going from not belonging to anyone and then allowing yourself another.

It’s weird waking up one day next to the person you love and feeling content—and it’s weird waking up the next with him thousands of miles away.

I don’t know how to accept that there are other girls in the world: how to not understand the way Snow White’s stepmother hated not being the fairest of them all, and how to get that you love me because of just me.

It’s weird romanticizing childish thoughts of relationships for your whole entire life, and then finally being in one.

I thought I would find someone who thinks I’m the most beautiful girl in the world, but those are silly thoughts saved for story books and fairy tales, aren’t they?

I wonder how to fight these insecurities that eat me whole: how to stop my mind from these terrible thoughts, and what to do when I can’t help the sadness.

Waking up your boyfriend who slept at 10pm at 3am in the morning with a kiss on the cheek and pleading eyes is probably single-handedly the best thing in a relationship.

“Play with me” — and I laughed then, because you tried so hard to be awake and I enjoyed the pain your body went through because of your love for me—the way your tired eyes forced themselves open, but the way your lips never showed defeat.

I miss you.

There’s this odd feeling where I look at the clock and it’s 7:30 am, but the look on your face lets me know it doesn’t matter.

I can’t remember the times or the exact moments in space, but I can remember your movements throughout the bed: the way you fuss when you can’t sleep—the aches in your back translated through small, uncomfortable adjustments and the way you have the childish need to horde pillows under your head and around your body.

Even when you’re sleeping and bathed in night, the words “I love you” make it out of your mouth like clockwork: the repetition removing the loneliness in the enveloping night.

You ask me why I don’t like pillows, and I snuggle my head into your chest and show you why the beating of your heart and firmness of your chest was always the better alternative.

Sometimes we wake up together: because you’re fussy and want me to switch sides—to change the shoulder I had rested upon—and you kiss my cheeks and nuzzle my forehead until we’re both asleep again and I’m safe in your arms like I’ve never been before.

The hotel beds drive you to insanity, and cuddling makes your back ache but you do it anyway because you’re a silly boy, and we only have four more days until our two week vacation comes to an end and I wish I had saved more moments in jars and photos, but all I have left is words and the way the LA hills look when the sun comes up to touch your face.

You’re still sleeping now, and watching you makes this world feel like home.

Sometimes I wake up from bad dreams, and the surprise that follows when I realize I’m stuck in an entanglement of legs and arms always catches me off-guard. Sometimes I wake up from bad dreams, and wonder what I did to deserve such an amazing boy.

I love you mostest.

It frightens me how much terror runs through my veins when I think about seeing you again—the way my skin yearns for your touch and the way I can’t help but feel terrified at how much I love you: how every part of me feels pushed up against yours and the way my fingertips trace your trembling masculinity.

I love you, I love you—and I don’t know how not to.

Today two of the greatest highschool friends I’ve ever had are gone from this city. Today, I’ve lost more of my closest friends.

Today, it seems like distance has taken away everything that I had once caried about.

There’s this odd numbing sensation: this feeling in the pit of your heart that stops you from ever really loving anything whole. And it’s because of this, isn’t it? That I’ve never had anything close—so distance just becomes a normality, and hurting just another part of the deal.

Everything feels so far away that the days we’ve spent together feel too unreal: and it feels like if I ever say a word, everything will just disappear like it did before—everyone will leave me, and these fighting matches will be replaced with silent wars and I wonder what will become of me after so many more years of you and I wonder, will there ever be an end to you, Mommy Dearest?

I dislike this constant feeling of being too afraid to say something on my mind in fear of hurting you.

I dislike this constant feeling of inadequacy.

I remember the summer of freshman year we spent together. I remember trying to teach you games when you were too  busy enrolling in honors—I remember showing you some of my writing, and the day you had enough.

“You’re smarter than me” you told me, and you hung up the call.

You were frustrated and angry, and I didn’t understand.

You’re a Harvard kid now: an international trustee and it makes me laugh how you never understood that you had it all.

“You see things differently than I do. I don’t get things like you do. I can read and do chemistry and calculus and equations, and I can do them better than anyone else—but you’re different Jenny. You’re smarter.”

And it was such a funny statement—something everyone’s always told me. Valedictorian after valedictorian and I thought it was so stupid.

I don’t know what smarter means. I don’t know why I can’t do arithmetic and can’t understand angles—I don’t know why people tell me these things when they’re untrue to make me feel better about having such an unprofitable mind and simple heart.

I wanted to be like you so bad: to continue on no matter how much I hated it but it seems like daddy was right and Jenny Vu could never do something she didn’t love. 

Hedgepeth said the difference between me and her was that she was bathed in Excellency, and I in something different—something that he couldn’t explain to me: that I was supposed to do something more.

McKinney and Debra say I’m not an academia, because I didn’t want to be—not because I couldn’t—because everyone thinks I could do whatever I wanted to and I don’t know if that’s true anymore. 

Everyone I’ve met has told me I have potential: that I can be something great. Teachers meet me with expectation, and no matter how many failures or incompletes they refuse to leave in outrage or disappointment—refuse to believe they were ever wrong about me.

It’s frustrating to not want to be what everyone else wants me to be.

It’s frustrating to be stubborn and hard-headed, and it’s frustrating to not have been a less complicated girl.

It’s frustrating to not be good at the things that matter now, and it’s frustrating that you’ve been my mother for eighteen years and you’ve never read a word that I’ve written.

Sometimes I think we’re okay—that our relationship is fine and our friendship was what it used to be but then reality sets in and nothing is as it used to be.

I remember our forty-eight hour skype calls and how we made friendship through the distance: how crying was never alone and this game was more fun that it ever used to be.

I remember when we stopped talking and you asked me for a goodbye letter: for closure and how you were angry I never gave it to you. I remember saying goodbye to my dad in the morning, and not having him the next and how there wasn’t a good in any bye anymore—and how I ended relationships by myself with that compound word: the way boys would call the next day and the days after that. They used to sulk and post messages on social networking sites to show the world their pain, to let me know they cared—but that wasn’t it at all, was it?

It was that I never used to care—not at all, not really. But I remember you leaving me and playing games until the numbness faded—but it didn’t and I sat there with my monitor finally off and I cried until I couldn’t anymore and I can still taste the poor bitterness on my tongue in becoming one of the boys that I used to pity. 

I had refused to say goodbye until you came back, because you did and they always do—because I’m Jenny Vu and nobody who loves me leaves me if I love them too: but today I realized it was you who left so long before—it was you who had said goodbye, regardless of whether or not I said it too and it was you who was the first boy to ever make me cry.

I’ve never known a bestfriend like you before—because Chelsea and Alexandria they’re all different: but you differed in sex and I loved you still. You were the first boy to ever hear me sleep like that—to hear the way I wake in panic, and the way sometimes my body wakes in tears. You were the first to make me realize alone wasn’t really lonely anymore—and the one who allowed me to love him in the end.

I understand how our friendship was unorthodox: but it wasn’t for us. I was broken to the core and you fixed me until you couldn’t take it anymore: and I don’t know how I was so blind to the way I was so selfish with your love.

I hurt you, and I didn’t know until you told me so—months too late and crying would never fix the way you’ll never love me the same, but I do it anyway and sometimes you cry too and tell me it’s not my fault: but it is, isn’t it?

I was always your number one girl NA, and it’s odd how much I took you for granted—how I was your first choice, your priority above it all—how you loved me, despite my flaws and for the first time in so long I let you and you left me, because they always do.