Journal: 25/08/23,

(bad poetry)

my dog barks in his sleep.

my dad says he's chasing rabbits,

but I think he's running away from something

(he's always been a high anxiety type of guy).

I think he's as trapped here as I am,

but unlike him, I can't get away in my dreams.

(he at least has a captor he can tear away at with his teeth).

and you know he's not a wild animal,

he's got a pollen allergy,

but I think he craves that little rush of freedom that he can't even taste

just on our walks through townie neighbourhoods

(built by people neither one of us knows).

I can't seem to scream even when I try,

not because it doesn't work, but because I can't bring myself to decide how to do it;

in a field or in a pillow or in the face of someone I love,

or in my sleep against the wind beating on the rabbits foot hanging off of my neck.

I've got another dog, and he's more quiet.

I don't think he understands quiet like we do, my barking dog and I,

that when you're alone you have to scream to be alive.

Journal: 25/07/23,

(rants and rambles)

There's a picture on the side of my parents fridge, of me and my two sisters, a few months after our younger brother was born. We're in our old backyard, standing in front a white shed with chipping paint, wearing multicoloured bathing suits after playing in a beat-up plastic kiddie pool that my parents got from Toys R Us. We're all laughing. I'm sandwiched in the middle, my hands gripping their arms, and they kiss my cheeks. Our hair is in matching pigtails, with the matching little baby curls that we would grow out of in a few years. I think about that picture a lot.

My little brother used to come to me with every question he could think of. I was the person he asked about the big-world problems, even in elementary school. If he didn't understand something a classmate said, or something he saw on TV, or something he knew our parents didn't want him to know about, he would ask me and I would explain it. One day, my grandmother took him to an anti-abortion rally, and my mom caught me explaining to him what abortion is and why some people are for or against it. She yelled at me for inappropriatly influencing him, and he stopped coming to me with his questions. I never chased him down, after he stopped chasing me.

Nowadays, I don't think the four of us have been in the same room at the same time in weeks, despite all living in in the same house again since university let out in April. The only sibling I've said more than handful of words to in days has been my twin sister.

I probably failed my two younger siblings in a lot of ways. I didn't really get along with them when I was being a shitty teenager, to wrapped up in my own head to consider they had entire worlds in theirs too. And then I up and left for a university thats a four hour drive away with a megacity like a wall in between us. Back then I was afraid of everything, all the time, which made me angry and avoidant and over all incapable of giving them what they needed from me. Incapable of even noticing they might've wanted it. They needed their older sister, but I'm just not girl. I'm not nurturing, or confident, or protective, or socially connected. But I'm still their older sister.

Lately I don't seem to know a single non-obvious thing about their lives, and it's killing me. I don't think they would ever share information with me if there wasn't already somebody else in the room that they actually wanted to tell. It's weird to think that the people who you held hands with to go to the bathroom as a toddler don't even miss you when you're gone.

Journal: 13/07/23,

(rants and rambles)

Just got home from work and, honestly, theres no better time to start writing a blog than when I'm freshly home from work for exactly one reason: I'm tired and feeling the immediate afteraffects of capitalism, meaning we can get this out of the way quickly. I'm certain anyone whos decided to explore the world outside of spoonfed algorythmic social media content has also explored spaces that discuss politics, economical systems, and natural human compassion with more detail and education that I would ever imagine producing, so I'll keep my complaints short. All though, this isn't for you, this is for me! You're just kind enough to listen.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for the world to end, you know? Like, I almost wish I were one of those televangalists who are counting down the seconds to a rapture that's well within reach, not caring who goes down with or without them, just biding their time working Capitalist Strong and pulling their bootstraps up to their ears because to them that is, plain and simple, how you get to heaven. A place where you never have to work again. I don't think I can even believe in a world where we never have to work again, I don't know if I could picture it without feeling like a little girl dreaming about fairies in the garden. There is always going to be somebody that the rest of us have to sweep up after. Probably, that's god?

Sorry. But, I find it's more indulgent for me to humour those doomerist ideas that theres something inately wrong with us as a collective than it is for me to remind myself that we ARE a collective, and that means we have each other. It's hard to remember that we have each other, but I really have based my entire politic ideology and outlook on life in the idea that when you strip us bare of everything else, people care about other people. For so long as we have each other on this earth, we will never fully be without hope; because at any opportunity, you could take my hand, and I could take her hand, and she could take his, and on and on until we liberate those fists that are clenched so tightly to the rotting fabric ideals of our misaligned economic prospects. You and me, we aren't here to suffer. We are not here to suffer.