still life romance

(original post: september 3, 2007)

such smiles,
in your heads,
painted underneath
dropping suns
and ocean
foam at your feet.
smiles splashed
from ear to ear,
against your skull
and down your spine.
it's lovely, there,
in memories and dusk,
with smiles and
skin
and fake kodak settings,
hurt forgotton
in the panorama
of the picture,
and it's beautiful, it's
so easy
to fall back inside,
to let the bad things
slide
and forget
the chaos behind the
smiles.
no,
you'll be happy
there,
amongst the silence
in the 5x8 walls,
living in
a picture-perfect
glossy
and heads so full
of smile and lies.
enjoy
your soulless nights
and careless hearts,
the ocean waves
nipping at your feet
cold,
but fake even now.

k.


i had this boyfriend once who told me that he had fallen in love with me from a picture. before i had ever even met him, he had come over to our house and he had seen me inside a picture frame with my two best friends and knew that he wanted me from that moment on.
at first, i found this romantic, a love at first sight kind of notion, and we dated, for just under a year. until he went psycho on me, and went to rehab for a coke addiction i don't really know if he had. there was a shrine and a dui involved too, but that's another story for another day.
anyway, he said that to me at the very beginning of our relationship, and it slowly started to eat away at me as things went on. how do you fall in love with a picture? what does that mean? what does that say about how well he knows me, falling complacent with a two dimentional glossy from a time he never even knew about...
i slowly began to realize he fell in love not with the girl who trips over air, snorts when she laughs, has a generally messy repretoire with spaghetti and red wine, eats with her fingers, has pummeled ballet hobbit feet...
but rather he fell in love with the idea of what i could be. what i was in that foreign moment that happened to be capured in time and displayed on our coffee table in the living room. he fell in love with the idea of me, two dimentional and blonde, sticking my tongue out at the camera.
him saying that to me should've been the selling point for me to throw a red flag penalty and say, whoa, mister, you are way out of line.
but of course, i didn't, and it was an obstacle laden relationship from that point on. who woulda thunk it? man, was he crazy. i mean, bat-shit, balls to the wall nuts. corn nuts. that's some serious shit. but really good writing.
so we broke up when he decided to abandon me and go to rehab that his work was paying for, for an addiction that he never really had, and i moved in with those same two girls that have never failed to save me. the same picture was up on the living room table, and i had to look at it every day when i sat down on the couches, thinking about the same thing...
how could i be so dumb? i knew when he said he fell in love with me from a picture that it bothered me, in the back of my mind, and i pushed it out. because the blinders were on, because i wanted to believe i loved him too. but that wasn't true love. he fell in love with a two dimentional kathryne, without flaws and insecurities and idiocincracies... which, i have to say, is not who i am.
living up to that one picture was the hardest thing to do for me in that relationship, ironically enough. most girls get in a relationship and are intimidated by another girl who is friends with the significant other. i was intimidated by a inanimate framed picture of myself. i'm so wierd.
but for just cause. i could never be what that picture was to him. never, not in a million years, cause me in that picture was not who i was in real life. we all have these images of ourselves that are tangible, that lay in frames and photo albums, of our good sides and funny faces and aspects of our personalities that are captured in a single milisecond of time, to be for forever. but that's all they are - an aspect of who we are. one thing out of many that create everything who we are.
you can love a picture all you want. this is my best side, loo how cute we were that night, this was so funny it made me piss my pants after we took this picture... that's all fine. but when it's done and said, there are things that a picture can't tell. i don't think erick knew that the picture he fell in love with, behind all those smiles, was a girl who had just relapsed in bulimia and vomited everything she ate back up. that picture was taken at one of the lowest points in my life, but i plastered a smile on my face and posed for the camera anyway. he fell in love with a lie.
so, pictures, to me... well, that's all they are. they aren't a window to the past. they are a posed rendition of a moment. and you can't fall in love with one, because it's not real. it will never manifest, become something that is true, ever again. you can't get those good old times back.
you can only create newer ones.
unless of course, you go to rehab for cocaine. that pretty much stops time in general. look at erick, and lindsay lohan... but they probably deserve eachother anyway. they would make great picture babies.