*coughs quietly* (10.30.17)

Someone turned on the rewind and reflect button in my brain. This is the only reason I can think I'm up at three in the morning when I have work at eight tomorrow. In a way I can't remember since high school, I have become overcome with the desire to look critically at key points and decipher the changes. I'm sure it's the birthday possibly meeting with my trauma for the umpteenth time.

Oh well!

A Look Back:

Name: Hunter
Age:18
Hair color: green
Number of tattoos: almost 1
Love life: Kinda dating maybe?
Job: Professional Kid Companion

I had just graduated high school, I had just quit my part time job at Old Navy to pursue school. I later realized gas and books cost money, so I started babysitting for coin. I also had just gotten my first tattoo, chopped all my hair off, and gotten my first boyfriend. I was so scared and excited for the future. The later it got into the year the more I realized school was hard for me. I didn't come by it easy, and my mental health was suffering. It was also around this time I started birth control, and my monthly menstrual cycle went from seven days of hell to four days of mild discomfort. This was also my first interaction with making doctors appointments.

Name: Hunter
Age: 19
Hair color: silver
Number of tattoos: 3
Love life: Tumultuously in love
Job: Sometimes bookseller

Figuring out school wasn't going to work, I flunked out of one of my only semesters of school. Hands down this is the most shameful thing I've done. I felt like I wasn't good enough and that I was a loser and a failure. That started to show more at home, and in my budding relationship. I learned you can't be insecure of yourself if you're going to love someone else, and gods do I love him. I also learned that no matter what I want, sometimes friendships just don't work. It made me appreciate the friends I have even more. I had just picked up a part time seasonal cashiering job with the bookstore I had wanted to work in since I was eight. All while I spent a week crashing at peoples houses and sleeping in my car. I gained a better understanding of the work behind love, and I lost a chunk of my bumper. I got a promotion and soon realized how much work being a 'grown up' was going to take. My mental health took another dive, but I had a great support system to fall into. I lost family, in so many different ways. I held onto so many stupid grudges that I wish I could have let go of sooner.

Name: Hunter (sometimes sister, and sometimes Bunny)
Age: 20
Hair color: Faded pinky-red
Number of tattoos: TBA
Love life: Happy and counting
Job: Head Cashier, Author

I now dive into the unknown again. Two years feels much larger in my head. I go back to poems and stories and journal entries from this time, and it's like reading in a different persons voice. I was jaded and I absolutely thought I knew everything. I was incorrect, I hardly know anything. While life at twenty is very different from what I had imagined, I'm excited to see what it brings. Who knows, maybe I'll have some life changing revelation. Maybe my book will hit the NYT bestsellers list immediately! Or maybe I'll have worked my way up the book selling chain.

All I know is that I'm wishing you and myself best wishes.

..// Jukebox \\..

Rewind on Spotify

I'm a bad writer (who is totally okay with that.)

Hey there,
Using a blog for it's intended purpose feels weird these days. I used to keep blogs like online diaries, hoping to be plucked from obscurity like Milk and Honey (R. Kaur). Unfortunately that never happened and now I just have a truly remarkable log of all my most embarrassing thoughts, tantrums, and occasional flashes of brilliance. Writing those blogs (and this one) encouraged my love of words and the way you could string them together.
But I have a confession.

I'm a really bad writer.

First off, I don't write enough. I've been working on the same three stories off and on for like 5 years. I'm less then 5k for each one. I post poetry when I get emotional or if I have an extra special thing to say.
Second, my poetry isn't really that great. A lot of it is rushed and ill composed, lacking in theme and structure. Following that, they get repetitive (though arguably Shakespeare wrote like 100+ sonnets about the same 5 people *hint: none of them his wife.) How many poems comparing love/life/ the human soul/etc. to starlight does the world really need.

However I have one thing a lot of 'good' writers lack;
The drive to get better. For a while my poetry was getting pretty good (it's 'cause I started writing them and then waiting to publish and editing.) So, yeah, I'm kinda bad at being a writer, but I can get better.

And at least it's better then pumping out 150+ that are all basically the same (*coughPATTERSONcough*)
-H.L.Vand

Then the Cavalry Came Rushing in. (5.11.17)

All life to me seems a stormy sea,
Till your hand holds mine.
Love, dear, oh you wild thing.
Some kind of otherworldly trance
Sets into my bones
As I lock into you.

Star-bound lover, how cruel of fate to tie us up so tangled.
As if pale Death thought he could keep me from you.
With his hands full of stolen hearts.
Not on my word, for it is us together
That can bend the hands of Time.

All I know is what I've seen,
And everyday this world grows darker.
Let us be the beacons we so desperately needed,
Allow all your light to shine through
And I will magnify it in all regards.

Through this misty forest,
Something new peeks through.
The feeling a small ocean thralled girl had never felt before.
Not hope, for that we have in spades.
But happiness, for the first time in forever.

We lucky few who tore through the fray,
Are charged with a glorious purpose,
To heal those who were wounded fighting by our sides.
Darling, now it's time to get better.

Desire (5.13.17)

There is a place where I go,
When the load is too much to handle.
A place to rest and let the problems tumble,
Off my back.
Where I know they'll land safe.

In this place of holographic hue,
Prismatic sprays across the rocks.
Endless stars giggle and flicker above me.
Within this grove of weeping willows
I whisper
All the things that I desire.

The feel of skin against mine,
Sweet chocolate and fresh sunshine.
This place to take reprieve from the storm.

While I am alone here,
I am never lonely.
You see, sometimes, if I'm very quite
I can hear The Universe whisper back to me.
Through the ever falling water off the boulders
That contain my secret grove.

It says in a quite, nearly not there, voice.
"I have given you that which you desire."
And I remember the freckles in your eyes
The way they shine at me after a heavy rain.

The Universe has granted me my peace in you.

Hurts Like Scabs (4.17.17)

You walk into a pitch dark room,
The only light from the open door you came through.
The stale scent of stagnant water hits you first,
Then a tang, like metal, sinks inside your nostrils.
The air is tangible and cold, still it is too dark for you to see.
You recognize the ground is concrete
At the same time you realize you've lost your shoes.
The chill sets deeper in your bones,
You notice you're without your clothes
Completely exposed to this endless dark room.
Through the 'you' shaped shadow you see a pile
Dead center in the room.
Every cell screams for you to stand still.
The grit from the floor digs into the souls of your feet,
Still you push forward into the shadows.
With a creak and a snap, the door closes behind you,
As you knew it would.
So there you stand in the pitch,
Shade coalesces into bonds,
The already cloying air clots further,
You can feel it like memory foam sandwiching you still.
Nakedness, cold fear, and alone.
Wetness rolls down the side of the hollow of your cheek
You're crying-
You didn't even know.

Back Ally Bar Fight with Your Heart (04.01.17)

Welcome back to the dirt.
Hands, rotting and crumbling,
Something not quite dead.
Little shambling thing,
Created just to move.

Can you still feel the breath leave your lungs?
How did you end up here?
Black, blue, bloodied.
By some unknowable force.
Did you tell anyone you were wandering alone?

Smart girls know to only walk on well lit streets.
You weren't a smart girl, were you?
Treading where others refused to go,
Running through where trouble resides.
And now you'll never be found.

You died gasping,
Grasping for someones hand.
No one came.
Perhaps, by chance,
Some kind rain will come
And wash you all away.

Interesting Developmental Magic. (03.30.17)

Violence isn't your vice, it's mine.
Amongst other things, like my Lust or Pride.
You've seen the sinner hiding behind these eyes,
You reach out in absolution.

You seek to do the impossible,
To leash a hurricane and contain sunshine in smile.
Somehow, with a strange and developmental magic,
I believe you might just pull it off.

I stand like a grecian statue
Aphrodite who walks with wolves,
You do not fall to worship, but stand at attention.
Arms, like oceans, waiting for my embrace.

We are two sides to one story,
Water and fire tumbling into one another
Some cosmic stardust binding me to you.
Because you do not quiver.

I am carved from the toughest stuff,
Strong as a bull, and stubborn as one too.
Somehow, through an interesting propriety,
You are strong enough to hold me.