Beware the Ides of March

This photo maybe inspired the movie with the plastic fish and lizards with belly buttons. Honestly, I love that movie. We need weird movies.

I flipped my calendar over to March today and there was a little voice in my head saying, "The ides of March, beware the ides of March."

So, at the beginning of every March since middle school (when I first read the complete works of Shakespeare and Julius Caesar because I had a need to be pretentious) I have always thought of Rome and betrayal and less dramatically - pizza - but this month I have been trying to use my wariness of the ides of March to my advantage. I am going to try and determine what serves me and what does not and make adjustments. I am going to try to prioritize sleep and schoolwork and movement. I am going to apply for real world jobs so I can pay my bills and student debt when I graduate. I am going to write all my essays without using AI, even though it makes my life wayyy easier to use it. But I shall resist.

March is additionally interesting because it is my birth month. I am going to turn 25.

Supposedly my frontal lobe will develop and I will have made it to a quarter century. I am grateful, (but also like hella tired sometimes of the living for the sake of living). Like I love my friends and new ideas and cool clothes and yummy treats and great movies. But, what is my purpose? Will I amount to anything? Will I ever fall in love with someone that loves me back at the same time that I love them? Why do I care so much about love?

I should be asleep right now. But your girl is on her hypomanic grind right now and even though I took my sleep medication over an hour ago, I am still not tired. I have to be up in five hours to begin my day. So hopefully after writing this, my mind will decide that it knows how to sleep again.

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I still hate politics in America. I hate the idea that bad things are happening to real people with families and friends and lovers and jobs and hobbies. I am in my bed with my favorite stuffed animal, Percival, the heater is running, my clothes are clean, and my pantry is full while other people's lives fall apart. Obviously not mine. I want to be more politically vocal, but I am still afraid. The other part of me is angry that anything I do won't really change things in the end after all. It all feels like a twisted joke and I hate it.

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Sometimes I make playlists about people that are imaginary. Like for my boyfriend's little sister when I don't have a boyfriend. Or perhaps the one for this boy I tutor on weekends because he likes background music, but not words -- even though I have never been a tutor. Or I make them for scenarios, like just in case I break up with a cowboy. Or the one where I fall in love with a stranger in Europe. Sometimes they are just themes or patterns. I am starting one with eyes as the cover of each song I include on the playlist. And I just began my summer playlist, but it only has two songs so far.

Music is fucked up because it takes a feeling and puts it in a little bottle that you can bring with you. I wish feelings and songs in bottles were entirely separate. Yet, I am sometimes glad that they are not. I still cry when I hear songs like Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby. And a different part of me cries when I hear Angels Like You. And yet another part of me when I hear Knuckle Velvet. They are all about hurting loved ones, sure. But that does not make them remotely the same.

Funny how sadness is not the same. Each person's loneliness is separate.

I am going to try go to sleep again. Until next time. Beware the Ides of March.

-

I wrote this in purple pen

We try to arrange eternity

into these things called hours

and then fall apart ourselves.

Why must we be

always

in the posture of someone else.

Paired with thoughts of me.

(of me) (of me).

Silence asks to be shaped.

Poetry is not to make us grand

but rather

to provide an access point

I wish I knew to what.

-

Yours Truly,

Macy