mountain mama

for a time in my life where I should have been listening to the happy john denver songs with my friends but ended up listening to the sad johnny cash ones.  

sorry if i say some things i mean

this is an apology for the things I had to say about you to get over you

- Trista Mateer

I don't think I had ever really been mad at a person in my entire life until you. which sucks. I have written and rewritten this at least 6 times and some times I'm mad and some times I'm not. all of those times I wanted to not be mad though, which I hope counts for something. 

Here's what it is. 

I liked you more than I thought I did. And you liked me less than I thought you did.
For me, actions speak louder than words and there were things you did but there was also a lot of stuff that you didn't do. and thats the stuff that makes me mad. Not even at you really. but mad at me for not seeing those gaps, those things that I needed you to do that you didn't. all those times you didn't hold my hand, i felt them. I felt every time you didn't look at me. every time you didn't tell someone about me, i heard it.

this could be longer,
when I was young someone told me that two people can go through the same thing and come out different. they told me you don't have to be what you go through. There is an egg and a potato and you put them both in boiling water and one comes out hard and one comes out soft. what i'm trying to say is that every day i pray to be like those stupid, soft, boiled potatoes.

what I'm tyring to say is that I didn't want to feel the way I felt. what i'm trying to say is i'm sorry for the things I had to say about you to get over you.

How I felt without really saying it:

like when the lumineers said it wasn't easy to be happy for you 

like when lauv said im SO tired of love songs
or when lauv said I don't want to be sad forever. or when katy perry said I guess it's never really over.

like when his hands were on my thighs and I felt nothing.
like that video of the girl throwing up the peace sign while crying

like when his hand was on my hand.

when your hand wasn't on my hand.

when God said it is not good for man to be alone and I froze.
like how I couldn't listen to music for a month.


here is how I really felt. one day I was cleaning out my closet in my old house. inside a box was a piece of paper with a list of my favorite things and you weren't on it. i'd give anything to feel like that. 

nice to meet me

(hi, im date mike. nice to meet me)

(hi, im 2019 hannah, nice to meet me)

u ever had an identity crisis? u ever wonder if always having an identidty crisis is part of ur identidty? I want to be me at all time but who even is she? What does she like and what are her passions? Does she have any and is it ok if she doesn't? What if she used to do a lot of things before she even realized they were ~things~ and now she doesn't do them anymore? What if its like how I used to type in CAPS all the time but then I got a new computer that doesn't have a CAPS LOCK so now I am just too lazy to type in caps all the time. maybe it's like that. Maybe I am just too lazy to be me. Which is lame. Does that make being lazy my passion? can lazy and passion even go together? I can be passionately lazy but can I be lazily passionate? I don't even think I want to be that so I'm not going to worry about it.
Everyone has a thing and I wanna know what my thing is. Will somebody please tell me my thing??

I'll tell you what my thing is. Making everyone look at the trees outside. 90s r&b. Having an insatiable craving for juice. Not knowing my lefts and rights. HAVING A PERM. Crying about the elderly. Cool shoes. This.

Things that were once my thing that I would still like to be my thing: This. roller skating, typing in caps, writing about love, avidly reading the onion, taking pictures of the sky, making the bible seem cool, being the first person to say hi in public, writing people notes, reading, having knee caluses from praying, wack clothes.

Things that were once my thing that I don't want to be my thing anymore: weird lying for no reason, not thinking I am attractive, hating fitness, being a middle finger addict, binging tv in solitude, not having a healthy balance between solitude and camaraderie. 

Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten. - ezra koenig

u dont kno me: a ROUGH draft

these people be up in here acting like they know me or they "get" me!!! well that is really nice of you and I appreciate your concern and all I'm just not sure how you know ME when I don't even know me ok?? you think you've got me figured out but you don't know jack~~!!!!!!!!! i WILL take some responsibility because I shouldda been more clear and specific and maybe I needed to enunciate more so that you wouldn't misinterpret but I guess I didn't realize that I was even being interpreted in the first place. I thought we spoke the same language and I we didn't need one of those interpreter people? you only need those when two people who don't speak the same language so I guess we don't speak the same language
anymore. the things you say to me ring loud and clear in my ears. They must be ringing in your's too because you never hear me. you don't listen. you think this is about you?? I wish this was about something as small as you.

We all end up like our parents

I once knew a boy who carved his name on to every tree and person he ran into. And just like everyone said, it killed them all. I once knew a boy who made doors out of people and never stopped slamming. The doors got bruised and everyone said "that means he likes you". I once knew a boy who always wanted to hold hands. I once knew a boy who's father died in his arms. I once knew a boy who didn't borrow a single thing in his entire life. I once knew a boy who wanted money. I once knew a boy who loved to ride bikes. I once knew a boy who was lost. I once knew a boy who made me feel safe. I once knew a boy who would check for monsters under my bed.

I once knew a boy who thought he was smarter than me. I once knew a boy who wanted to fix the world, he wanted to be a builder and a healer and a teacher, and then he gave up. I once knew a boy who had to carry his own father to a hospital. I once knew a boy who always wanted to know what was on my mind but would never let me talk. I once knew a boy who wanted to get to know me.

I once knew a boy who bought expansive gifts that didn't mean anything. I once knew a boy who made homemade gifts that still didn't mean anything. I once knew a boy who broke my heart. I once knew a boy who wanted to get to know me, so we did all his favorite hobbies and he then insisted that they were mine. Hunting, really? I once knew a boy who thought every thing he said should be stitched in gold on the front of pillows. I once knew a boy who said he loved me. I once knew a boy who used his fists instead of words. I once knew a boy who cried every year around Christmas time. 

I once knew a boy who hated his father. I once knew a boy who regretted it.

It's funny how one boy can be so many things.

I knew I deserved better, I just didn't know how to make him better.

does anyone blog anymore?

I'm just here to touch base. To see if there is anything here. To see if I can still do this. To see why I do this. To see if there is anything left in this computer screen. To see if there is anything left in this heart that hasn't' been written about. I know the answer to that is no, there is a LOT left but I guess the real question is what is left in my heart that I am willing to write about? Willing to let you read and hear and know about me. Remember that time I wrote about going streaking? Better yet, remember that time I went streaking? I don't know if I would tell you that now. I'm not sure I would know how to do it. How do people even talk to each other or become friends or get married? How does that happen what are the steps where is the YouTube tutorial for it. I need a play-by-play.
I left for a year and a half and you didn't talk to me and I thought you hated me and I came back and you cried and I'm not even sure what our relationship was like before I left but I know you didn't hug me this much.
I wrote out a list of all the things I have left inside of me that I can't tell you. I lied I didn't even write it. I just thought them in my brain. I can't even tell myself them. There are things I have never said out-loud and that's crazy. Things that my voice and my ears and my eyes don't even know about me. Just my heart. My soft weird droopy heart. And I think that might be why I cry all the time. I can't fit anything else in there its so stretched and leaky and misshaped. Sometimes I'm scared to pick up a pencil because I don't know what will come out. I can't even use a pen anymore it's too permanent. How was anyone brave enough to etch something in stone? The 10 Commandments must be the real deal because there was no eraser for that. I'm sick of changing my mind and I'm sick of sensationalism and really all the ~isms~ honestly. I just want to be all in on something and hold nothing back. But I don't know what that something is.
I can't be me here not because I am scared of you or them or whoever reads this but because some days I can't be me around me. I don't even know me anymore and all anyone asks me about is what my favorite music is and I don't know how to answer it and its so dumb.
There are things we don't talk about on the first date and
there are things we don't talk about until you're married and
there are things we don't talk about.

fo sho

how does anyone know anything for sure?
everyday I change my posture and every day it is wrong.
I'm not thinking about you and be grateful. I'm the critic. But you aren't allowed to hate anything. NO DON'T TELL ME. I have to hate it myself. But first I need a blank slate. Will you hand me that blank slate over there? The one next to the box wrench? NO the other box wrench. What's a person gotta do to get a blank slate around here??
A boy sitting across from me in the library brushed his foot against mine on accident and I didn't think about marriage once.
I am supposed to be doing homework right now and I am supposed to be majoring in interior design but I'm not doing either of those things.
How does anyone know anything for sure?
I keep getting 100% on my English homework but I keep missing class so my grade is still awful. Why is it so hard to do good things for ourselves?
Who would win in a fight? A Daughter or her Father?
Sometimes/all the time I read through the comments on my blog just to remind myself that I used to be good at something. I never read the actual posts because I'm the critic.
Now I just look at pictures to use for blog posts and wait around for something to come to me.
WHO CARES ABOUT VSCO
I have over 200 pictures on my computer in my "bloggin" file
when I was little my mom couldn't take me shopping because when she would ask if I wanted the purple or the blue coat I'd cry for 20 minutes because they were both great and puffy and had a lot of pockets and how was anyone expected to choose between two such fantastic coats? Even when I thought out the pros and cons of each coat they were both equally suitable coats and it sent me into hysterics. Then my mother would remind me that some people can't afford coats and that I was lucky and then we would leave the department store without a coat and I'd slowly stop crying because #1 it was embarrassing for everyone and #2 my cold shoulders were my own fault.
College is the same thing.
How can anyone know anything for sure.

living is poetic

I allowed myself an audible burp one time a couple months ago and ever since then I haven't been able to control them.
rather than doing my laundry I just keep buying more underwear.
I'm learning that some things are probably best to keep to yourself.
While leaving the bathroom of the doctors office holding a cup of my own urine I passed by a boy who can only really be described as a Greek god in sweatpants. I was mortified when he looked at me until he raised his own cup up to mine, as if he had just finished giving a toast at his sister's wedding, and said "cheers".
the only real poetic thing about love is that it is that anyone can do it.
I have ripped approximately 12 pairs of pants in my life
Typically I can't stay awake for more than four hours at a time, but no one seems to be too concerned about it.
I wear my shirt inside out so often that you would think I am trying to start a new trend
I have come to the realization that my daily life could be called a number of things. Poetic is not one of them.
But the fact that I am here, the fact that literally billions of things had to have happened in order for me to happen, the fact that when I was born I became improbable and unpredictable. The fact that I am here.
That is something.

In the grand scheme of things,
we’re all dust.
People like to use this
to make a point–
nihilistic nay-saying
about how
“nothing matters”
and
everything dies.
But if we’re nothing,
we’re a whole lot of it.
So that’s something,
right?

— Ashe Vernon

ouch

I've got Achilles heel's all over my body. One is for the kids with cancer
another is for anything homeless.
My wrists? My neighbor's
How can you teach your mother to love herself?
The elderly. Unlikely friends. People.
Why do so many people have terrible parents?
I'm always giving pieces of myself to people, I can't help it but
I always feel empty afterwards.
and I've got one for you too. It's in my throat.
It's on my finger tips
Behind mt ears, my toes, inside my stomach. my knees, my elbows. my skin.
forget it.
I'm Achilles. You're the river.
I'm dipped in you and you get all of it. Everyone else can have my heel.
I've never felt like this before, what is it?
Maybe this is why my mother was always asking if I had found somebody yet.

She just wants me to stop aching all over.

She thinks a boy can solve that.

She thinks a boy can solve everything.

How do you teach your mother to love herself? 

Maybe this is it.

You may not have the answers, but when I'm with you I don't worry about the questions.

if my heart were a house

Inspired by this poem.

If my heart were a house

There aren't any birds to wake you up in the morning but the sunrise and sound of dogs running across the hardwood floor seem to do the trick. It smells like that apple pie I got from the farmers market and a bath with candles is always ready. It has a Cheaper By the Dozen chaos to it and enough people to match. There is always company. The yard has a giant willow tree in the front, with all my pictures and passed notes and movie tickets hanging from its branches. And the lawn is be covered in bike crashes and and memories and bad dance moves because I can't keep it all inside. There is a room in the basement filled with pillows for the hard times and a room stacked with books for when you're ready to get back up and learn from it all. The bedrooms are always messy. Fresh flowers on all the tables and fresh fruit stockpiled in the fridge. A front porch swings all the way around the house and it has creaky rocking chairs that you made for me and ice lemonade that I made for you. a room with all the scraped knees and broken china and mud tracks, and room where He's fixing it all. The dog is buried in the back. And so is the other one, and the fish, and the sister, and the friend, and everyone else. Instead of headstones we planted yellow roses. In one corner is my grandparent's orchard and in the other is my mother's tomato plants and a pond with a rope swing somewhere in the middle. We never mow the lawn but somehow we never need to. The fireplace cracks a smile and at night there are always fire flies. No fence. It's hard to leave the house, it's harder to leave the yard. But I always bring someone new with me whenever I come back.
In the front there is a door mat saying Finally

is every blog post about starting over?

A lot has been going on. But I am happy to say I am fine. And you are too. Even if you don't feel it. We used to talk about art school and business school and how business school was the easy way and art school was the hard one. Which is ironic because I am majoring in Interior Design because I thought it would be easier than marketing or journalism. But once again I am not sure. This single phrase must be the mantra for every post high school but pre college graduate. And I blame you people. You writers and story tellers and world creators. Addie Lamb has a secret blog and I found it (I'm so sorry for telling you like this) and it reminded me of why I wanted to write in the first place, and it was just like, THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE STUFF I AM TALKING ABOUT THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO FOR FOREVER. RIGHT HERE. The same way I felt after reading Mindy Kaling's book and Ellen's and Tina's. What can I say, funny ladies writing memoirs is my weakness. Enough of all this serious mumbo jumbo that I've been trying to do but I keep finding that everyone does it so much better than me. It's fun to read in a weird "omg my heart is breaking and I'm crying but it sounds so beautiful I have to keep reading" sort of way. But it's horribly depressing and agonizing and frustrating to write. I feel like I always had to be brooding and cynical about something. So I am giving up. I'll leave that to the real poets and romantics that I long tried to transform myself into.
I'm not sure what way to end this post, other than to let you know its going to start getting a lot brighter around here.