{ 10 / 10 / 17 }

signal

wave across the water for me

let me know

that you'll be waiting ever for me

oh, i've been travelling

waiting for a moment of peace

these stormy weathers

got me thinking of how i want it to be

signal

light a thousand fires on me

give me no doubt

that i'm the one that never has to leave

oh, i've been divided

time and time again you keep the peace

give me shelter

let me be the (wo)man i wanted to be

//

everyone is in the back room taking their lunch and i'm sitting at my desk with a 140-calorie bag of popcorn and saint-saens in my headphones. somehow, even more things have to change.

//

at this stage, that seems like such an unlikely outcome.
but at this stage, any outcome would be as unlikely as the next.
what do you do when you really have no way of predicting an outcome?
you have no choice but to keep walking forward.
to watch the infrastructure of the future come together all around you.

i can't say i like it all that much, but the alternative is to stop moving until something seems certain...and i feel like the only certainty in life is that nothing is certain. ever.

i've had my time not to move.
and i don't want that anymore.

//

feeling many things in this season:
nothing is sure
nothing is forever
i can and should make choices that are healthy for me
^ people may not like how they are affected when i do so
   ^ that is not my problem
it is okay not to know
it is okay to let go
it is okay to say no
it is okay to let my true self show
i am stronger and deeper than anyone really knows
i can change and evolve; i don't have to stay the same
i might not be interesting enough for some people but that doesn't make me uninteresting
i might not be beautiful enough for some people but that doesn't make me ugly
i might be too interesting for some people but that doesn't mean i'm too much
i might be too much for some people but that doesn't make them bad people







//

embracing the new,
the fresh start,
the leaving what was,
the lack of knowing,
the exploration, the putting to rest, the discovery.

{ time out }

today was a distinctly good day. it started with a full hour of daydreaming in the cool morning air, watching shadows play on the ceiling. from there it went to clean hair (a rarity these days) to coffee to a kick-ass salad and the smell of towels fresh from the dryer. i wrote letters this afternoon, watched a movie on tv, let the knots of the week loosen and unravel. and tonight i turned out all the lights, lit my favorite blood orange candle, and practiced yoga in the dark to the soundtrack of my own breath. sometimes i need that - to turn everything off but the sensation of being in my own body. it reduces everything to the simplest form for me, streamlines my mind. it helps me to get grounded and calls me to rise higher, both.

//

that being said, and although i often wax eloquently about it, yoga isn't easy for me. i'm not a naturally willowy zenlike bendy person. i'm solid and athletic and compact. i often yearn for the slender limbs of my instructor, since it seems like being less muscular would make many of the poses easier to achieve. but i guess that's the point --- yoga isn't about achievement, which is why it's something i want to keep doing. it's something i can continually strive to do better, but it's not something anyone can really master in the sense of arriving at a point where she doesn't need to try at or do it anymore.

i think maybe there aren't a lot of things like that in the world.

//

[everything after this point is stream of consciousness that is probably more suitable for a personal journal nobody else would ever see...it's not well written but it contains some thoughts and questions that are vital to me right now. if you keep reading, no judgment on writing or style or syntax allowed.]

articulating and maintaining boundaries with people is something i'm working on right now. the need i have to please everyone has shrunk considerably over the past several years, but it's still something i have to constantly manage. keeping a healthy distance from the people i love is a complicated thing for several reasons; one, it feels like something i shouldn't have or want to do. two, i think a common understanding of love is being so close to someone that boundaries don't exist --- i.e. you can tell someone anything, you can call upon her at any time of day or night, and maybe most of all, you can expect that she will drop anything and deny her own needs for your sake. funny, isn't it, that the concept of "selfless" love often means a selfishness on the taking side, with an expectation that the other is the one giving all? and then the giver is in a position to feel guilty if she chooses not to give up on herself in order to give all to another.

i'm not talking about anything new here, of course - but the concept of self and love is tricky terrain for me. i am a high introvert with specific needs for solitude and distance and safe borders, but (for reasons i won't go into now) my fear of abandonment often leads me to disregard those needs in favor of proving my indispensability to others. i've been doing this for the majority of my life and have had to dispossess people of the expectation that i will completely ignore my own needs to meet theirs. it is exhausting, requires vigilance, and is often met with resistance and incredulity. i can hardly blame people - they've become accustomed to my habitual accommodation. building healthy walls after years of letting everyone blast through them to the very heart of me is one of my most important endeavors right now. i think in theory people support me caring for myself, but when that means they don't get as immediate or as big a cut of me as they were looking for, they don't like it as much.

this has made for a handful of uncomfortable conversations lately. in the rougher moments i wonder if the stress involved on my part is worth it - in many ways it would be easier to submit to momentum and just keep behaving the way i always have, making everyone else happy. but when i'm able to persevere through the discomfort and move beyond it, i feel nothing but an undeniable resounding rightness. the problem with setting my boundaries according to what will keep everyone else happy is that i often suffer, and greatly, as a result.

i am not a wildly popular person, but the people who depend on me, really depend on me. i feel the weight of so many expectations and the pressure to perform/entertain/support at a high level - and if i haven't gotten enough sleep or had enough time to myself or a dozen other things that contribute to my ability to function well, i will find a way to show up for everyone else and in doing so, bail on myself. i have to stop doing this. backing the hell up and finding balance means frustrating people and receiving backlash ("why didn't you respond to my email/text message in less time?" "when are we ever going to hang out again?" "why are you pulling away? let me be there for you", to name a few). because the answers to those questions go something like this:

i work a high-demand, fast-paced, socially demanding job that takes all my energy
i know i was instantaneously available before, but that took a toll and i can't do it anymore
i need time
i need space
this doesn't mean i don't care for and love you
i don't know when i will be ready to see you again
you can be here for me by staying where you are for the time being

people do. not. like this.
i don't know what i can do about it.
well, nothing.
unfortunately everyone is going to have to deal with it until i've had some time to recover and figure out what is best for me.
i think it's hard for people to understand that as an INTJ and an aquarius and as the person i am, the more space i am given, the more quickly i will feel ready to let them in. we all (myself included) want to grasp and squeeze the things we love in constant close proximity for fear we we will lose them. but i should know as surely as i know my own soul that holding on too tightly only smothers the thing...potentially to death.

so what can i let go?
what am i holding too tightly that could find its true beauty if i loosened my grip?
what weight could be lifted if i opened my hands?
what wisdom or truth could alight on my hands, if i opened them?
what could be different/better about me if the space i need felt more protected and respected?

{ contributors, lately }

i'm living a chapter of such overwhelming (exhilarating, but overwhelming nonetheless) change. it seems like almost everything i read (and i'm trying to read a lot, both to inform me further and to get out of my own head from time to time) provokes, inspires, evokes, ignites.

my thoughts on so many things are still in formative stages. i'm not afraid of wandering inarticulately for pages to the one paragraph i really needed to write, but for now most of my figurings-out are being punched out in a private journal.

here are some pieces of what i've been reading, reacting to, and thinking about lately. when i was younger i would've clipped and kept the physical articles, and as a natural-born archivist/cataloger of life, that's a hard tendency to break. i'm making myself recycle the articles, and i'm keeping track of some of it here. i still hand-copy passages from books and magazines into my journal on a regular basis, though. i don't think i'll ever completely stop doing that.

//

on being a blogger and sharing personally in the public sphere, by audrey rogers (here)

I am struggling to find ways to stay relevant and compelling to you kind women who read Frassy but I’ll start simply, by vowing to be a friend you can relate to, rather than a girl you envy. That isn’t me. I am just like you. I have financial struggles, I cry more often than I’d like to admit and so often, I feel truly so lost and so completely clueless. But I do feel positive about being more personal and taking this blog in all kinds of new honest directions, one day at a time.


on a solitary togetherness, by audrey rogers (here)

I’m moody, prone to a vague confusing sort of melancholy, aloof in ways I don’t even realize and I often enjoy being a loner. But above all, I’m not searching for a man like a puzzle piece to complete me. There is no frantic hunt in my heart to snag a husband. I’m happy the way I am – I’m not looking to be soaked up  into someone else’s life. I’m looking for a man who can meet me in the middle, a relationship where our lives unite but don’t become one.

on the new norm and "the new shame" - excerpts from nip. tuck. or else. by joel stein for time

You're going to get a cosmetic procedure for the same reason you wear makeup: because every other woman is.

It's not fair that --- in 2015, with a woman leading the race for the Democratic nomination for President --- in addition to dieting, coloring your hair, applying makeup and working out, you now have to let some doctor push syringes in your cheeks just to look presentable. It's not fair that you have to put your surgery on your credit card just so the other moms on the playground don't overestimate your age. It's not fair that you may risk your life going under general anesthesia just to keep up.

Abigail Brooks, the director of women's studies at Providence College...worries that [the] pressure is not only exhausting but also keeps women forever 21 emotionally [as well as physically].

Not having work done is now the new shame.

on the newest graduation gift - excerpts from the truth about freezing your eggs, by charlotte alter for time

The appeal is al much about feminism as it is about fertility: for a generation of women who feel they can control everything but their biology, freezing their eggs seems like a way to shatter the last gender barrier.

"There's almost a 'check the box' attitude about it: I got my teeth cleaned, I filed my taxes, I froze my eggs," says Sarah Elizabeth Richards, author of Motherhood, Rescheduled. "Protecting your fertility is just one more aspect of being a successful woman. Almost like taking out an IRA."

For many women, freezing their eggs is as much about fear as it is about hope. Fear that they won't find the right partner, fear that prioritizing pregnancy could have consequences at work, fear that their fertility will suddenly plummet...For them, freezing their eggs is as much a way to find peace of mind int he short term as it is about a future family.

[Vicki] Rokhlin put her eggs on ice while still in her 20s. "I'm doing this now so that I'm not 34 wanting to have kids and putting so much pressure on my body," she says. "I really believe this will start being a gift which parents give to their daughters when they graduate college, so that they don't feel this cataclysmic pressure to follow a timeline."

in answer to the question, "are we alone in the universe?"

Captain Janeway spent seven long years in the Delta Quadrant, 75,000 light-years from home, battling alien species of every conceivable kind, so if you were to pose the question to her, she would throw back her then-handsome head and, regarding the questioner with a touch of pity and a scintilla of scorn, would open her mouth and laugh with the abandon of the fully confident. Fictional characters are often given to such displays of hubris.

I, on the other hand, confront this question with the same wide-eyed, full-hearted innocence I bring to bear on all that is impenetrably mysterious. I read, I think, I observe, I listen, I weep, and in the end, I am resigned to the limits of my own imagination. I simply look heavenward and whisper, "I hope not."

{ Kate Mulgrew, actor known for Star Trek: Voyager }

//

after being wrecked on every level watching interstellar about a month ago, reading kate mulgrew's words bring tears to my eyes. often i feel a very distinct need to be strong, full of knowledge and airtight opinions, unbreakable, unbending even, impenetrable, immovable, hard. but perhaps to truly discover new things and moreso, to become something new, i must also be able to...

be wide-eyed.
be wholeheartedly innocent.
listen.
weep.
hope.

{ let it all out now }

i think you know
we waited too long, now i have to go
i don't know why
we break so hard

last night, driving home, both hands gripping the wheel
i thought i don't think i've ever been this sad about anything
(not even being let go and forgotten all those times)
and i felt so helpless and infuriated and silly,
trying to keep the car on the road while i caught my breath,
choking on disappointment and injustice and death.

//

i feel on the verge of snapping lately, everything so sharply and urgently in focus that i can't process it. everything pressing in, needing me, now. i feel squarely in touch with myself --- what i need and want --- and how starkly that compares to what the world is and needs and wants from me. it's liberating and jarring and terrifying, realising i'm at odds with so much. how big a misfit i am. all my life i wanted to fit in: i dreamed of having blonde hair and blue eyes, stick-like limbs, gap jeans, spray-on deodorant, doc martens. how little it all matters now, how i wish i could've understood how profoundly all that is for shit in the end. how much more it mattered that i was hard-working and had deeply private thoughts and loved to read and felt things so strongly even if my body never gave those feelings away. 

i'm sitting here with tears running down my face thinking of all that time and energy wasted wishing i was anything other than what i was. i wish i could go back and tell my younger self to get started learning how to listen to and accept myself instead of trying (and failing) to measure up to the flimsy vanilla standard being perpetually shoved into my face (that i swallowed thirstily, to be fair). it was agonizing not to look like the popular girls or wear the right clothes back then. i've always felt like an ugly duckling, the odd one out, so crudely rendered compared to the much-more-desirable caucasian woman. i think i will always feel that way. and any attention i get i meet warily, since i've only ever been of use to men in their attempts to get to my friends.

the damages that are done,

the damages i facilitated.

the aftermath.

so much to undo all the internal harm.

//

i've almost stopped browsing social media entirely --- i post to it, but i try not to peruse it. doing so tends to water all kinds of ugly seeds in my prickly soul, and i learned this in a devastating way after a breakup. thing is, i'm a bit of a masochist, so sometimes the worse something makes me feel, the more i do it (revisiting an ex's profile with newly-posted photos of his honeymoon? count me in). and although i'm a reasonably disciplined person 93% of the time, the other 7% of the time i'm a first-rate binger. so the easiest thing for me to do is stay off something altogether than randomly allow myself to hop on every once in awhile, only to emerge 2 hours later with absolutely nothing meaningful added to my life, feeling like shit.

that being said, every once in awhile the chutes and ladders of social media lead me to something that does add meaning to my life. i recently stumbled upon audrey rogers. her style and gorgeous images attracted my attention, but her thoughts kept my interest. in particular, the ones shared below:

Time – now that is something to really concern ourselves with. We don’t have an endless amount, we are all going to one day die and yet we still choose to spend entire hours of our existence internally insulting and abusing ourselves. We must be fools.

--- for full blog post, go here

woke up this morning, hating every bone in my body, tugging at clothes that all felt too tight. no matter how lovely we might look to anyone else, we all, as women, tend to prefer we believe we look completely vile. it's so sad, so terribly sad how easy our self confidence is grabbed from us on an almost daily basis. I do everything I can to resist, but still somehow falter sometimes. And so here I am, having a fucking great time in nothing more than a very tight bodice, because it's all part of the fight. Fighting to love yourself - it's incredibly hard, but to not struggle, to not resist, to not fight - well that's for the weak. And we as women are strong. We deserve to find that strength in life - the strength to love our thighs or countless freckles or round stomachs and to proudly flaunt them in any which way we prefer. One day, my body will no longer be walking this earth - I refuse to spend the days I have here internally insulting the skin I live in. Life is just too short for that shit, really, way way way too short.
--- for a beautiful, thought-provoking instagram feed, go here

//

i disappoint people. i can become reclusive. that deeply-feeling soul i've been struggling to manage all my life is sometimes easily bruised. and when it is, i am angry with myself for being so damn sensitive. so i hide. you'd think all this self-awareness would help me recognize when all this is occurring and not withdraw, but that's like saying if a turtle knows it's green, it should be able to stop itself being green. i haven't quite figured out how to fix my tendency to bruise easily and i'm not quite sure it's something i need to fix. i have attachment issues that originate with being given up as an infant and passed through the arms of strangers for the first several months of my life. it's not an excuse, it's my reality. and i'm trying to come to terms with it so i can have constructive relationships. but the reality of life is that people leave. they get married, they move away, they get busy. and we can be far away from the people we sleep next to, the people we value the most, the people we can't and don't want to live without. we can be far away from ourselves, for fuck's sake. being near to things is not easy (not for me). i have lost many along the way who wanted to be nearer, i have hurt them, they have tried very hard and still not gotten close.

i am sorry.
know that i'm struggling with it too. every day.

//

do you ever feel like just being alive means
you could be accused
of having bitten off more
than you could chew?

{ the hard things }

before you begin to read this post, know that a.) it's long, b.) it's very roughly written, and c.) when i found myself at the point where the writing ends, i knew there was so much more to say but i simply couldn't go on. i knew i needed to write some of this out after a conversation i had earlier today, and i almost didn't because i think i knew i'd be starting on something that wouldn't necessarily find a timely (or easy) end. but i started anyway, and found myself having stumbled to a raw and ragged place, unable to go any further. this is actually my favorite kind of writing --- the kind that brings you to a place even you couldn't have known you were going, a place you absolutely needed to go, and couldn't have gotten to without just sitting down and letting the words pour out --- but it's also the most revealing and painful kind of writing, for me. all this to say, my thoughts end somewhat abruptly, sadly, and without a redemptive final paragraph. if you're here, and if you make it to the end, you're a dear enough friend or kind enough soul that you will understand...thank you, really, for being here.

--------------------------------

{ TODAY }
today has been a good day, full and also full of quiet.

i organised a matinée with close friends followed by a meal together which started with small talk about our respective holidays. one of the things that puts me at odds with the typical way most people navigate social situations is that i'm only mildly interested in chronological retellings and factual accounts. i much prefer to know what people were feeling and thinking during events. but i recognise that most people need to warm up to deeper subjects, so i do my best to ask appropriate questions and nod in the right places. i'm probably portraying myself as disinterested and rude, and people who know me superficially very well may think me abrupt and detached. it's a common criticism of INTJs: seemingly aloof. but i promise i'm quite interested in people and care deeply about them --- i'm just not a gushy, bubbly, touchy, readily open person. but don't mistake my disregard for social rituals (another INTJ quality) for a disengaged or uncaring spirit. whether i let you see it or not, i am always engaged, constantly processing, and if anything, i care too much about too many things. i'm usually processing and decompressing from any social encounter for hours, even days, after it's happened.

where were we? oh, today.

i came home and went about a few household tasks in complete silence as the early winter darkness dripped slowly from the sky like paint over the edge of the world. when i was ready, i lit a candle and completed today's yoga practice (a 30-day, new-year-new-start project by a yogi i started following earlier this year). it was good. it felt good.

{ 30 DAYS OF YOGA }
i'm not a person who usually makes concrete resolutions (see explanation for that and much more in last year's first post), and although this year is no exception, i do have a few loose ideas about directions i'd like to continue moving in throughout 2015. more on this later.

i never would've decided in advance to embark on any sort of fitness challenge to begin the new year (way too bandwagonny), but when i saw that this particular instructor who i happen to really enjoy (i've determined that at least 65% of sticking with any fitness session depends on whether you jive with the instructor) was doing a 30-day fresh start sort of thing, i decided to join. she's forgiving enough in her presentation not to scare me off ("this is not a challenge") while maintaining enough structure (videos posted at a certain time each day) to keep me attracted. because i'm that difficult person that can usually figure out what she wants once someone tells her what to do (and yeah, i usually end up doing the opposite of what i'm told i should), this is a hard balance to strike.

anyway, enough over-explaining. as of day two, this is what i've learned:

• i don't breathe properly, or nearly enough. in fact, over the past several (very stressful) months, i've found myself on multiple occasions not to be breathing at all. my chest will tighten, my jaw will begin to ache, and i'll become aware that i've literally been holding my breath. i haven't gotten to the bottom of why. i'm an intense person and sometimes i think i'm just concentrating so hard that i forget to exhale. as simple as it is, it's been helpful to have someone encourage me, multiple times over the course of a forty-minute period, to "find my breath."
• i store more tension in my body than i knew. it's a well-known fact that we all hold tension in our bodies in different ways, and apparently holding my breath and clenching my jaw are two of my favorites. in any case, lifting weights and yoga are helping me to breathe, and therefore manage and release tension in my body.
• awareness is key. even at day two, i can feel where i'm consistently tight and also where i'm already starting to release and lengthen. i think a general un-awareness of my physical self is a side effect of having been brought up in a conservative evangelical environment (and i say that without bitterness --- it just wasn't a subculture where close attention to the physicality of self was cultivated or encouraged). i also think my brain, heart, and soul are over-used (i'd even say abused) in my current job, so i'm often focused on restoring those parts of myself and the body falls by the wayside. if only i'd realised sooner just how integrated we all are --- all parts of us. as i've focused more on the health of my body over the past six months, the health of my mind and heart have grown by leaps and bounds. maybe it's just timing, or the result of years of seeking and trying, but health in these two latter areas is something i've been pursuing for a long time. i don't believe it's pure coincidence that tending to my body has launched my mind and heart to better places.

{ THE HARD THINGS }
i found myself sharing some truth with my friends today about what it means to be adopted. one of them, a woman my mom's age who has four adopted children of her own, received my words with emphatic understanding. the others sat quietly, sometimes with quizzical looks on their faces. i'll be the first to say adoption is incredible. and right on the heels of that, i'll say there are things i wish i knew, things i wish my parents knew. adoption is wonderful but, like any big important things in life, it's not to be taken lightly or perceived one-dimensionally. like anything else, it has its ecstasy and its fucked-upedness (please pardon my profanity and my made-up words, sometimes nothing but those two things will do).

i've referenced this before, but being given up for adoption leaves what i've come to think of as a shadow, or a bruise, on a person for his or her entire life. it's a void whose depth and darkness is unfathomable. i believe we can learn to manage and live with this void, but i don't believe there's anything on earth that can fulfill it.

this causes all kinds of complications for reasons you can probably figure out on your own. in particular, it puts stress on your relationship with your parents as well as any romantic relationship you may have.

the way adoption is in our world, people who hope to adopt are usually saving money and undergoing inspections and agonizing on waitlists for months, maybe years, before a child becomes available. everything about this is one-sided. potential adoptive parents build expansive and elaborate mansions of longing and expectation --- how could they not? they place unbelievable hope and love on the idea of their potential child.

meanwhile, the child is being given up, abandoned, fostered, transferred, maybe neglected, quite possibly loved, in one or more environments, none of which are with its biological mother or family. i don't care how young the child is, this has an irreversible and lasting effect. i was adopted as an infant by loving parents and fostered by a caring woman before that. i still believe that being separated from my biological mother in the first few months of my life bruised me in a fundamental way that has shaped how i understand relationship, attachment, and love to this day. in fact, the younger the child, the more primal i believe the bruise to be: how does an infant process or articulate how unwanted, lonesome, and lost it feels?

so you throw these two opposite things together. you put a tiny child in the echoing palace of a complete stranger's hope and expectation (and if it's a couple, that palace is twice as monstrous and unfamiliar). at this point i'm painting quite a dismal picture of adoption, aren't i? to be clear, i don't resent being adopted. i'm thankful beyond expression for my parents. but now that i'm older and have the tools to process and articulate myself, i think there are unavoidable truths about the whole thing that need to be given voice. it's not to say it shouldn't be done. but i'm a person who believes thought and truth are power. had my parents known any of this, might they have handled me differently? hypotheticals don't really work in reverse. but i believe that applied constructively, they can help us as we look forward.

i can see as i begin to type that i have a lot to say, and i didn't share all of this with my friends earlier today, but i did say this: when you have a child without a family, you'd think that child's response to being wanted and loved would be pure bliss and acceptance. finally! someone to hold and keep and love me! while this might prove true for some, for me it did not and has not. i've never really enjoyed being touched. displays of physical affection often feel smothering and embarrassing. (i think part of it is just how i'm wired; touch doesn't make me feel connected to others. or is this a result of what i've been through? i'm not going into the "nature vs. nurture" argument here.) but the void i spoke of --- wouldn't you think that if love came flooding into that empty space, it would be received with relief and gratitude? finally! give me more! fill me up! but it isn't, and it's something we can all understand: when you're struck somewhere, you protect and shield that bruised and wounded place. cleansing and applying salve to it --- things that are meant to heal --- don't feel good. they cause stinging, searing pain. the thing with physical wounds is that as you see and feel them get better, the constructive and lessening pain of healing encourages you to stick with it. emotional wounds are different, and the painful process of healing, especially as a young child and even a young adult, is not as easily accepted or embraced.

moreover, even if your primal bruise recovers enough to the point where it's not crippling, the scar isn't something you want to expose. it's a shadow, a puckering on a part of your soul so deep that it's beyond words, beyond feeling, beyond sound and silence. and when someone (a parent, a lover) tries to see it, to touch you there --- the instinct is to cover yourself, to gasp, to flee.

now you can see the fuck-upedness i talked about: all you really want, more than you want just about anything, is to be seen and touched and loved. but anyone who tries to get close enough to do any of those things, anyone who says i see you, is shut out and pushed away because it just hurts too much. what i must protect my already-bruised self from above all else is further bruising in that same exact spot. the way of the world is to (in all likelihood) love and be loved by more than one person, but that means allowing attachment (at great cost) and surviving separation (deepening the wound and widening the void), probably multiple times. no wonder falling in love the first time, and eventually being discarded by that person, almost broke me. i wasn't built for it. love of any kind dives straight into that darkness where i can't breathe.

the worst part? even if i could let you close and let you stay and let you say those words...for the rest of my life i don't know if i could ever really believe you.

--------------------------------

{ too much, and it's only the beginning }

no, this isn't a picture from tonight. the me of tonight is the same as the one i'm showing you here. she's also completely different. her hair is four inches shorter, for starters.

------

i've been wanting to write something for a long time. pieces of it keep coming to me, in the moments between more immediate things. but what is more immediate than the thoughts edging their way through my crowded mind, pushing to the forefront, pressing against the inside of my skull?

------

the me of tonight just took a full six minutes off my normal walking route...by running half of it. i've been trying to walk-run: run one block, walk three. run another, walk the rest of the way home. tonight i decided to start running and walk only if i felt i couldn't run anymore. my legs carried me further than i thought they would. i am stronger than i realized. much stronger.

------

confession: sometimes (more often than i think is probably kind) i scroll through photos of the girlfriends of male celebrities i find attractive. yeah, i know that's fucking ridiculous, but it's one of my (now not-so) secret girl behaviors and i might as well be honest about it. my traitorous thumb pushes image after image of these unbelievably gorgeous creatures across my vision and i rake criticisms across my insides.

well you're obviously not his type
since he evidently gravitates toward
impossibly thin
radiantly blonde
exceptionally beautiful women

oh, not surprising:
she's minuscule 
with blue eyes
and delicate wrists, ankles, knees

an attractive person
would never find you attractive

(i mean, first of all, AS IF I'D EVER BE IN A CIRCUMSTANTIAL POSITION TO BE NOTICED, MUCH LESS ADORED, BY A CELEBRITY? okay, honey. there's the first embarrassingly fallacious part of this whole scenario. really? secondly, what is wrong with you? yeah, you aren't unbelievably fit or even remotely reminiscent of what the world would call "skinny" so unless your shoulders magically shrink by like four inches and thirty-three percent of your ass dissolves off your body and several other physically impossible things occur, i mean, please. stop.)

blonder hair, flat chest
tv says, "bigger is better"
south beach, sugar free
vogue says, "thinner is better"

pretty hurts, we shine the light on whatever's worst
perfection is a disease of a nation, pretty hurts, pretty hurts
pretty hurts, we shine the light on whatever's worst
we try to fix something but you can't fix what you can't see
it's the soul that needs the surgery
{ beyonce, "pretty hurts" }

but it's not just the devastating truth that i'll never be noticed or pursued by a breathtakingly exquisite male specimen that pulls me down. it's the belief that no intelligent, witty, strong, admirable, successful man would ever consider me worth being interested in, because i am not an intelligent, witty, strong, admirable, or successful woman. i don't say it to be pitiful. i say it because it's one of the persistent, sulfuric, unwieldy truths i've carried my entire life and will probably always carry. something about being given up as a child has left a hole in me that even the most genuine and profound love has proven unable to assuage.

ergo: needy people repulse and repel me.
because: i fear, and try to reject, my own neediness
ergo: i construct my life in order not need anyone
because: needing someone leads to disappointment
ergo: if i never need, i will never be disappointed
i mean, people, i feel anticipated guilt for when i do let myself need someone else, and he disappoints me, and he becomes aware of this, and feels badly about it. i would feel guilty for making him feel badly for disappointing me, because the fault would be mine for needing him in the first place.

oh, twisted insides.
will you ever be okay?

------

the thing is
all of this, these few measly paragraphs
are so much
but it's only a few paragraphs
in a story so heavy
i'm not sure the entire world's shoulders
are broad enough to bear

so i will bear it
as i have for thirty two years
i will carry it in these two hands
these hands that type over 100 words per minute
that produce the most beautiful handwriting
that play silent chords when the music is on
these hands that no one holds
this soul that hums
all through the night
forever, like a dream

{ the very-inside }

this morning i woke up at 4:25am and tossed fitfully until my alarm went off at 6. i dreamt i was a wolf leaping easily through the air, teeth bared, roaring in the defense of something important. i woke with a start, muscles quivering. in the pre-dawn darkness i felt powerful and alone.

----------

he came to the counter. i sneezed once, twice.
i think i'm allergic to you.

----------

you asked me to run at the front of the pack. i didn't want to obey. you stepped toward me, lowered your voice. set the pace, you said. it's you who sets the pace.

so i ran.

----------

the thing about setting the pace is that your job isn't to run faster or further than anyone else. you don't get to be spectacular in your loneliness. you run in front of everyone, but at a pace they can match. the point is to keep them close, at your hip. the point is to share breath. the point is to take the brunt of the wind in your face. to manage resistance and make a way. to protect them. to go first. to give them something to strive for without being unattainable. to forge, and remain reachable.

i think that's much more difficult than racing ahead.
much more difficult, by far.

-----------

what if it is not my lot to be spectacularly lonely?
what if it is my job to lead, but keep those who follow close?
to mentor...not to exorbitantly exceed?

i'd like to think i'm so unbelievably extraordinary that i'm not capable of taking the hands of others and showing them how to do better and be better. there's less responsibility in being a shooting star. then it's just you streaking nebulae across the sky, so beautiful and fleeting you go unseen and untouched by most. but to glimmer steadfastly amongst clusters of stars, sometimes outshone by neighboring bodies...that seems like a sacrifice. that seems noble.

i don't want to submit to that because it feels noble and martyr-like and it feeds my isolation complex. i want to firmly grasp my purpose because it's the right thing for me. i also don't want to over-reach. i don't need to do the most extreme awe-inspiring things because i see other people succeeding at them, and i don't need to feel like a sloth or a loser because i don't entertain unrealistic notions.

we're taught to dream shatteringly big dreams and crack our bootstraps like whips.
but what if some of us are meant to live simple and ordinary days?
what if, for some of us, brilliance is woven through normal and sometimes tedious lives?

i have so many questions.
i hardly know what to do.

----------

i make myself cry with the dizzying force of my unknowing, my wondering.
it feels too big for me.
i shrink into my ordinariness. i can't figure it all out.
i send overwrought emails to friends and then bite my lip, wishing i hadn't.

but in the rhythms of the songs in my headphones, i hear all will be well and all will be well, sometimes with quiet building intensity, sometimes with relentless drive, sometimes in the silence, in the fermatas.

times to surface

times to dive

----------

i've never felt like less of a freak than when you wrote: you most likely feel like a freak because...
because you get it. you really get it. more than anyone.
i can explain it (and i do, chronically), but you get it before the sentences have poured out.
i can ask (and i do, repeatedly), and sometimes you answer and sometimes you ask right back.
i think it's safe to say no one in the world can dialogue with me the same way.
there's no one who can say i'm lovely while truly understanding what it means to say such a thing, while truly understanding what such a thing means to me.
oh, i am thankful.

----------

i'm in a strange place, bowing under the pull of a gravity i don't recognize.
every day i feel disoriented, keenly aware, reborn.
facing these things in a season of life i always imagined would be full of stability, security, and fulfilled dreams is challenging, discouraging, inspiring.

i am not a finished product. not even close, not even remotely.
i'm more and more unraveled all the time. with every skein that comes off, falling in tangles from my life, more is revealed --- the colors underneath. and that's the part of me that's so startling and mysterious: the inside, what i think of as the very-inside, the glossy cobalt feathers fanned across my soul's ribcage. right now a lot of what i see is indecipherable: figures without faces, shapes without any recognizable angles, characteristics, or geometry.

----------

so when your letter arrived
(rectangular: a shape i could name)
with just my initials printed across the front
(only people who aren't afraid of me address me that way)
it was like an inside joke
(the best kind)
it was like being embraced
(just as you begin to cry)
it was like being known
(how could you have known?)
it was like a neighboring star
blinking in my direction, kind and unwavering,
saying, i see you. i'm beside you.
you don't have to run
anymore.

----------

. . . .

{ toward being undone }

i stay up until 2am

i read the letters you wrote me in 2005

i toast some bread

i remember the light in your eyes,

back then

. . . still, i'm searching for something. . .

this morning i watched a makeup tutorial on youtube.
benefit porefessional
revlon colorstay
anastasia brow wiz
lorac pro palette
rimmel lash accelerator
mac msf
dose of colors

then i read stories of women in ukraine.

I heard and saw people shooting in my yard.  When the bombs explode, my windows shake like hell. I see smoke and fire from my terrace. And right now I hear the protesters sing.

And when I am home, smoking on my balcony, I think: Ukraine, we are an extremely kind and tolerant nation, but as it turned out, its better not to make us angry. We, ourselves, could never have imagined that we have such strength. We are ready to fight and to die for the basic human values: freedom, justice, and our dignity. We surprised ourselves, but the most important thing is that we are finally proud of ourselves, proud of the Ukrainian people and of our country. Now we believe in our own strength.

[W]e women of Kyiv forgot about shopping, restaurants, fashion shows, and club life. We took off our high heels, and wore helmets to protect our heads from bullets. The beautiful young faces are covered with respirators and gauze bandages. We turned into a kind of civil female front. Our hair smells of smoke and fumes ingrained in our fingers.  It's probably ugly, not fashionable, or trendy. But we never felt more confident. And, as you know, when you feel confident – you are beautiful.

only in this hyper-connected, overly weird world could a person access such triviality and gravity so easily --- almost simultaneously. it's not that beauty itself is trivial --- it's that beauty can have meaning in so many areas of life: in a perfectly styled, artificially lit bedroom. on the battered front of international conflict. our ability to access both within minutes of each other is both amazing and disorienting.

i hardly know how to navigate the disparities of the world (refuse to buy any more makeup, ever? refuse to read the news?). i spent all afternoon and evening yesterday preparing meals for the coming week in a warm, well-equipped kitchen. then i spent an hour deep-cleaning my makeup brushes. when you consider what's going on in the world, what right did i have to spend my time so uselessly?

my world right now is coming down. all the constructs, all the pillars of truth.
i have more questions than ever, and definitely more questions than answers.
i'm not just asking out of curiosity, to inquire. i'm asking because i don't know.
every wall that crumbles reveals a new wing of rooms and corridors,
windowpanes shattered, doors blown out of their frames.
i'm starting over. i don't think i'm in a hurry, though.

see, all this time i thought i was speeding toward a good and finished life.
but as it turns out, a good life is a brilliant, untimed trajectory toward being more and more undone.

{ a long(est) post for a long(ass) year }

i've been avoiding sitting down to write this, but it has to be done or it's going to keep taking up room in my chest --- room i don't have and don't want to keep giving up.
this isn't the unabashedly hopeful, endlessly inspiring first-post-of-the-year you've been seeing all over the internet. it's also not the real-but-not-too-real-and-conclusively-optimistic type of post that occasionally crops up all over the place. there you go. you've been warned.

truth: i resent this new year.
truth: i haven't put 2013 behind me.
truth: i don't have electric thrills running through me, morse-coding the knowledge that "2014 is going to be the best year yet" all over my insides.

furthermore, i've been having a hard time relating to those who plunged into the new year with brand-new souls and bright, fresh faces. i disconnected from social media because with every effusive grandiose mini-speech about how 2013 "had its ups and downs" but so-and-so "had a feeling" that 2014 "was going to blow all other years ever out of the water" i just got angrier and more disgusted.

i also found myself without any real new year's eve plans, kind of on purpose. expectations are always out of proportion for events like NYE, and that kind of situation (disproportionate expectations, underwhelming reality) always throws me off. actually, the only person i wanted to see on new year's eve was myself. for the first time in my life, i had a specific and articulated desire on this day: to spend new year's eve in solitude. to attempt to process things that have happened this year and go into the new calendar year in quiet strength. the best part was, i didn't feel at all motivated by self-pity or misanthropic tendencies. it's just that every other option seemed frivolous and distracting. it also felt like i'd be avoiding what simply and truly needed to be done --- what i simply and truly wanted to do.

i made the mistake of telling one of my coworkers about my plans, and was told more than once that it was "the dumbest idea ever." (note to self: keep all solitary plans to oneself in this extrovert-ridden world, lest one wants to be made to feel utterly defunct.) i'm ashamed to admit i ended up hanging out with aforementioned coworker because i succumbed to peer pressure (and the LIE that spending new year's eve in solitude and intention was "dumb"). it wasn't horrible --- i drank gin & tonics with her husband while she (five and a half months pregnant) made half-joking, half-bitter comments about our level of inebriation from the couch. (okay, maybe it was kind of horrible.)

so why am i here again, rambling endlessly on and posting more bedhead-centric, makeup-absent selfies? these were taken the morning of january 2nd, the day i was planning to write this post. i woke up feeling...empty. like a clean slate, but not in the way you'd think. just...like...nothing. apparently i'd successfully voided myself of expectation, and therefore, disappointment. what an achievement! and yet i didn't even feel human. hope and disappointment are essential parts of...being. the things i yearn for and the things i struggle with make me, me. the weight of them bears an impression on the earth. my loss and resilience displace the molecules around me. they make me real.

reality: i am not "over" 2013.
reality: i am not ready for 2014.
reality: 2013 is over, and 2014 is here.

the flipping of a calendar page has nothing to do with what's going on inside me. i'm just not one of those people. it makes sense: it's why i've lived in the same town since i was 8 years old and for the most part, not been bothered by it. this aspect of who i am is paradoxical and hard to explain: i'm highly affected by aesthetic details, smells, and the beauty of the natural world. but details like 12/31 turning into 1/1? my soul doesn't give a shit. which is also hard to understand, because i'm very affected by symbols, so why don't i buy into the most obvious symbol of renewal known to humankind?

so: things happened in 2013. things i'll carry for the rest of my life.
also: i hate resolutions. i don't set goals because i'm terrified i won't achieve them. and being disappointed in others doesn't hold a candle to being disappointed in myself. not even close. now i'm hearing all of you saying, "but honey, if you don't set goals, there's no way you'll ever achieve them anyway...it's all in your mind! get after your life! do it! i know you can! 2014 is gonna be the best year ever!"

i've spent the last week impatiently skimming new year's resolution posts and scoffing. now before you discard me as a happiness-hating, bitter old hag, know that all that scoffing has been directed at myself. i think everything i feel toward new year's this year is small-hearted, grating, and pessimistic. i think the fact that i can't even make resolutions because i'm afraid i'm incapable of keeping them is pathetic. i'm fostering a lack of belief in my ability to surmount 2013 and i'm protecting myself from the merest possibility of failure in 2014 (which incidentally also portrays a lack of self-belief --- that i wouldn't be able to handle the sting of coming up short).

the thing is, i don't know how to fix it. it's easy enough to compile a list of things i want to do this year, but to actually believe in the person who made that list --- well, not only is that a pursuit so trite i could punch myself in the face, but --- i don't know if it's possible. and if i can't believe in myself, well --- isn't that the ultimate failure to rule all failures, the failure that precludes everything good?

at this point i'm asking myself (and if you've made it this far, you've likely been asking for the last twenty minutes): so where the hell does this leave me?

i have a lot of work to do before i'm "over" 2013. in fact, i may never "get over" 2013 --- and i'm okay with that. i think it's realistic to believe that there are things that happen in our lives that change us forever --- the pages of that chapter are wrinkled and warped, like they had water spilled on them. i don't need to pressure myself to replace ripped pages and turn in a pristinely bound year.

there are things i want to do in 2014. and they don't have to be "the biggest/best things ever." some people thrive on massively lofty goals. i don't --- they shut me down. i'm afraid to want things --- anything. but i can want things. i need to want things. i mean, forget can and want --- i do want things, so what's the point of pretending i don't in a fruitless effort to convince myself i'm impervious to hope and despair? i'm not a boundlessly energetic person, so i certainly don't have energy to spare lying to my own irrepressibly discerning soul. in that light, here's my list. it's easy and it's kind, which is just what i need.

1. what i want: to purchase a keyboard. i was born to make music and i think i might be good at it. and even if neither of those things are true, it's profoundly good for me to do musical projects. how to get it: i need to research what keyboard i want, get a price range, and start saving. i'm still paying off this new computer, so depending on the price, i might need to implement a saving project --- like putting aside money normally spent on coffee or makeup for a period of time.
2. what i want: to go west again. this is a big one --- i want to hit south dakota, idaho, and seattle this year. in fact, i feel like this is necessary to the health of my heart. how to get it: planning. and more saving. i might need to give up coffee and makeup for six months.
3. what i want: to put myself first. i've changed a lot this year. i think the desire to hibernate (that's been ongoing since october) is born out of the knowledge that i don't know myself like i used to, and that really bothers me. i want to learn the person i've become so i can try to do what's best for her. i want to listen to myself more carefully (because i was absolutely right --- i should've stayed in on new year's eve). i often feel neglected because i seem to be everyone's second string; just about everyone in my life has a significant other, a fiancé, a spouse, or a child that comes first by default. the truth is, i often put myself in that same spot: i'll take time alone if no one else has time for me. what the hell? how can i feel non-prioritized by others if i don't prioritize myself? how to get it: stay in when i feel like i should go out, but don't really want to. spend time alone on purpose, not just as a last resort when other plans fall through. indulge in my love of music. oh, and write. write. write some more.

it's not going to be easy. it's never been easy. i want to push everything away and eat cookies and watch netflix and wear yoga pants all day. i want to buy another lipstick when i'm feeling sad and restless and call it good. i want to fold and re-fold my clothing into neat color-coordinated piles in the middle of the night for that jolt (and illusion) of control. i want to disappear because that would be easier than facing the work and the wanting. i want to throw up my hands and say i don't know, i just don't know and give in because i don't know where to start. i feel like i'm on some cosmic playground trying to duck between two whirring jump ropes, bewildered and mesmerized by the motion. but what choice do i have? what can i do but begin? and if the ropes catch my heel or slap my shoulders, well, those cosmic rope-slingers will just have to start over.

i wanted to do

something, anything,

but i didn't know what to do.

so i did this.

this is my something.

{ jason watt }

{ are we there yet? }

...music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon,

are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.

{ c.s. lewis }

i was talking with a friend last night. we sat on the floor of a great empty room. our whispers were quieter and our laughing was louder because of the way the space held us.

there are people in our lives who carry a heaviness, and we don't know what to do about it. in our circles, there are things you should say to someone who's struggling, but many of us have developed an immunity to the effectiveness of these things. to the words, even.

they say there's linings made of silver

folded inside each raining cloud

well, we need someone to deliver

our silver lining now

what can you say to someone who hurts, when words aren't enough?
when there are no words?
what can do you do for someone when there's no relief?
when there are no actions gentle enough or powerful enough
to address what's happened?

and are we there yet?

are we there yet?

we didn't come to any real conclusions. i think that's the point. there are no answers for some things. in fact, we probably dishonor the eventual meaning of our pain by scrambling to erase and forget it...by trying to wring it of its meaning before the right time.

i think of simpler times: when humans rose with the sun and rested when it rested. when they worked with the earth to bear fruit, and lived on the results (or scraped by on the lack thereof). no doubt there were unhealthy family dynamics, low life expectancy, and many things unknown back then. but you strove alongside each other under the same wide-open sky, and rejoiced when the hay reached the rafters. when the coolness of night fell, so did the ceaseless movement of your hands.

i think of times now: we have more knowledge, medical advances, technology. we acquire more, we can be productive long past the setting of the sun. we live longer. but are we better off? in some ways, yes. but what's the point of stockpiling more and living longer if the things and the time don't give anything to us? my friend made the good point that physical exertion has so much to do with our well-being. survival used to depend on backbreaking work year-round. in our modern age, depending on your location, exercise is something we might have to pay to be able to do year-round. not only that, but our livelihoods don't necessitate physical activity. we have to find time (make time? sacrifice time?) for it.

i don't think people are happier now than they were before vaccinations, chemotherapy, viagra, iphones, and in-flight wifi. i just think we employ more sophisticated measures to dress up our emptinesses.

(some questions: is it the aim of life to be "happy"?)

(should it be?)

(what is happiness?)

so how to ward off pervasive discontentment? how to preserve the precious infrastructures of our souls? how to guard our borders against the ever-advancing desert, slow the creep of choking ivy, stand firm in the gale forces of time?

this is too much

this is too much for me to hold

this is too much for me to hold

create. make something. anything.
fold your clothing beautifully. arrange it by color.
look back on yourself as a child, bereft in ways you didn't ask for and couldn't understand.
embrace that child. tell her you see her. tell her she was loved. always.
treat yourself to a good meal.
let someone talk about themselves for way too long,
even if you really wanted to talk about yourself (especially then).
let her talk until the moment you realize she is shouldering things
whose depth and complexity you underestimated.
look her in the eye. tell her, there's something better for you.
i don't know when it'll come. but i'm here until it does.
eat a chocolate frosted doughnut.
smile at the warmth of your latté.
paint your nails rose gold. wrap a scarf around your neck.
stay up way too late. sing until you're hoarse.
don't forget the past. forgive it. forgive life for disappointing you.
buy a new lipstick.
be willing to live awhile with uncomfortable, open, endless space ---
believe and see that something sparkles, far-off, in the void.

and are we there yet?

photo: taken at dusk today

lyrics: ingrid michaelson

{ going, going, --- }

i am traveling west. it's been a long time coming, and i am going.

--------

i've always struggled with letting people know me, because...how can i possibly explain myself to my own satisfaction? you can be known by your words, your blog, by photos of your ordinary moments. someone can see my face (or in my case, half my face, most of the time) hundreds of times from miles away and have some inkling of what i am. i can tell you things about me, the small things you might never notice and the odd things you don't care about. but how does it all come together? and how do i keep people from misconstruing me based on the fragments they collect? like, don't emphasize that too much, and i only react that way sometimes, and i'm sorry, did i say this? what i really meant was...

it's a thing, you know --- trying to ration and control others' perception of me when i know full well that each person will see, receive, and process me differently and almost none of that is up to me. i can be deliberate about portraying myself a certain way, but that doesn't mean i'll come across that way. i realize i'm describing a very normal part of everyday human interaction that a lot of people may not think about as much (as intensely) as i do. but it scares me a little --- allowing the "real me" to interface with others, not knowing what they'll think.

--------

i'm visiting dear friends during the next week and i've found myself randomly blurting out what i think could be unappealing details about myself ( i make high-pitched noises when i get excited and i don't dress as nicely as that other person you know ) in correspondence about planned events. last night i was packing and questioned myself. why do you keep doing that? the truth is, i don't spend a lot of concentrated time with anyone ( oh the freedom of a single girl ), and the thought of being in close proximity with people who haven't spent a lot of time with me before makes me anxious. 'cause you know what? i'm kind of weird.

but i mean what if my conversation isn't intelligent enough for her? and what if my beliefs are underdeveloped, in his opinion? and what if i don't know anything about the earth and she thinks that's stupid? and just plain, what if they don't like me? what if they think it's disturbing that i talk to myself? what if they think i'm obnoxious and unrefined?

--------

so, a few things i'm forcing my mind to realize:
1. i can't control whether people like me or how much they like (or dislike) me;
2. the dearests i'm visiting are way more accepting than my mean brain thinks;
3. i'm probably not that obnoxious; and
4. i believe there is joy unknowable to me unless i engage deeply with other humans.

introvert i may be, but that doesn't mean i suck at being with people...and it doesn't mean i don't need them. my personality type is often thought to be aloof. i've been accused of being "stuck up" all my life. the truth is, i don't necessarily see a lot of value in conventional social norms. in any case, i'm packing up my stuff and my self and flying west....and despite my slight nervousness, i am fully expecting the best.

miss neurotic, signing off...

{ the first last days }

if only everything was this simple and true.

yellow on black on white,

boundaries clearly defined.

--------

i never seem to set my expectations just right. but sometimes i do. i control my own churning weather system and i'm opening my umbrella just as the rain falls, rip, slide, click. then i have to smile through the storm, because gosh darn it, i was ready.

--------

am i fooling myself in seeing that hairline fracture of sadness in your bones, imperceptible to everyone but me? i think i know you better than anyone, and i think i might always will. i think you might know it too, though i don't imagine you'd ever let yourself entertain the thought. i think it's too scary for you. and i understand how, in your position, it would be. doesn't change anything, though.

our soulmates aren't always the ones we stay with forever.
there's something tragic but beautiful about that, isn't there?

there are disappointments

that last as long as life.

{ henry james }

--------

i'm not saying you should be with me, i'm just saying we'll always be someone to each other. the years will probably wear that down to nothing. but your outline will burn the backs of my eyes from time to time. sometimes it makes me smile, sometimes it hurts in a way nothing else does. but that's how it's going to be, an achy front moving through my body every once in awhile. i know this and when the pressure systems shift, i will be ready.

--------

{ here today, ____ tomorrow }

i'm here.

i haven't felt the urge to blog for several weeks. work has been busier, and since i'm without a functional personal computer right now, i don't spend as much time with technology. in this modern age it seems atrocious that i haven't had a working home computer for a few years, doesn't it? i blame my aversion to dropping very large sums of money, my inability to decide which machine i really want, and the rise of the magnificently computer-like smartphone.

but i've been here, and i've been going through a weird phase of figuring out what to disconnect from. the first thing to go was facebook, and i find i'm so much happier now that i'm oblivious of everyone's relationship status, picture-perfect holidays, baby gripes, and need for rides to the airport. don't get me wrong, it's all well and good if you're engaged, making homemade cranberry garland, wondering why your child's vomit is teal-colored, or traveling every other weekend. but the lack of fuel for my internal comparison fires has been so healthy.

in a lot of ways i feel like i've emerged from another layer of the chrysalis --- and i feel strange, just-born, unaccustomed to the world in my fragile new skin. it's an invigorating, curious, and baffling stage of life to be in at my age. at one time long ago i thought i'd be established in the world by now, firmly rooted in domesticity with a husband and at least two children. as it is, i am unmoored. and while i'm afforded all sorts of freedom and flexibility, at times i feel lost, attached to nothing.

i'm finding myself, and sometimes i get tired of searching.
i'm beginning to write again, but it's hard.
for so long i haven't wanted to immortalize my feelings.
now i think i have to write to figure some things out,
but i'm out of practice. and i think --- yes ---
i harbor some fear of what i'll produce if i begin again.
not that it will be bad, but that it will be good
and then i'll have to figure out what to do about that.

i suppose there's nothing to do but start.
i've always felt that's the hardest part.
how do we find our courage? by simply beginning?

{ in }

haven't had many words lately. not many i wanted to internet-ize, anyway.

but it's 8:25am, i've already had 17 inane questions from my boss,

my eyes have the "morning-after-crying" puff, and i'm feeling chatty.

good luck.

first of all, i want this fishtail.

(at tory burch via 9to5chic)

secondly, things i've observed that are "in" right now and (my take on them):

1. wedge sneakers (want)
2. dry shampoo (intimidated)
3. #nyfw (#woulddie)
4. bb cream and now cc cream (curious)
5. style bloggers w/ photog boyfriends/husbands (thoroughly envious)
6. gone girl by gillian flynn (mesmerized)
7. instagram (i am an instacrack baby)
8. bold lips (hesitant)
9. lobster rolls (never had one)
10. WANEGBT (if you don't know already, don't bother)

now you're all going to google #10, and when you do, you're going to roll your eyes/groan/hate yourself/hate me for making you find out. i'm just saying, i already know. so you don't need to leave me any huff in the comments. you know, for all you rampant commenters. 

thirdly,

life is hard.

life is harder for some and easier for others and there's all sorts of relativity and subsequent guilt (and subsequent further difficulty, because we allllll know the only thing better than feeling badly about something is making yourself feel badly about feeling badly about it)(i need to find new emotional hobbies) involved with acknowledging and verbalizing that life feels hard. and maybe that's the right way to say it --- life feels hard --- because then the subjectivity of life and its events and our perceptions of everything, well, it's all implied.

life feels hard.

in a way i feel like the girl who is an aspen grove, and someone pierced the first original tree, and all the ghostly beautiful trunks are hollowing out and dying. and i'm watching it all happen, thinking, but i am the girl whose soul is stately and gorgeous enough to house the earth's most profound mysteries and it's perplexing and incredibly tragic. most tragic of all are my feelings of helplessness as the parchment of my stately soul flakes off, cast away by the winds of events i can't control. i've always been able to stand through anything on the endless tide of determination ellipsing (that's not a word, but now it is) through my being. only i've been moored on a wet slappy sandbar for what feels like years. where is my sea, i'm asking. i can't live this way, all the salt in my eyes and none at my feet.

i barely know what i'm saying anymore.

or maybe i do, maybe i know exactly what i see and what i have to do. and all of it scares the marrow of my bones, so i'm hunched over hugging my knees wishing some unearthly prince would come and bear me away on the wings of a perfectly orchestrated dawn. wishing i looked as pretty as the girls in the movies, distressed, blinking through their desolation and completely unaware that they're about to be rescued. 

what i do know is that i have to stay in this.

i can't go to some other dreamplace where the edges of all these jagged things are blurry and each frame is full of bokeh and you can see the sun rays slanting down on effortlessly tousled bedsheets, couture gowns, hair. i can't escape from how i feel, how life feels, from life itself. i mean, i could, but i can't want to. because i sense that now is a VFIT (VeryFuckingImportantTime) for me to commit to myself, to be on my own side, to stand up disheveled and declare that i am not leaving myself and things will get better and good is on its way and i will live as if i really do believe that and i am in. i am in i am in i am in.

{ this, green, and the other thing }

1. summer green, 2. strange happenings.

-------------

i just made the final payment on this stupid car business. i had a plan to pay it down a bit at a time to make it more manageable, but i felt so impatient about still having something owed every time i checked my online banking. so although it makes my heart jump to flush that much money out of my accounts at once, it does feel good to have it finished and done.

still, it dampens my spirits a bit.

--------------

i'm shamefully bad at staying in touch with people. i'm like a snail. the weather outside my shell seems threatening, so i retract and go into complete autonomous mode.

so while i know i'm at fault for this, i find myself extremely irritated by a certain entity in my life that simply fails to communicate about logistical things on a regular basis. like, is this thing that we've been talking about happening, or not? after a certain number of inquiries, i feel like a nag continuing to ask. but i can't always assume whatever is in question isn't happening just because i don't hear anything.

eventually i simply have to assume, move forward as if said thing is not occurring, and consider it a missed opportunity if at the last minute i receive word that it is happening after all. but one, it's very hard for me to let go, two, it's even harder for me not to know, and three, well, it's just inconsiderate.

things like this are why i snail up. seriously.

--------------

but i am not giving up on humanity.
because that would mean giving up on myself, too.
and i just can't do that.

i'm going to listen to music, loudly, while flipping pancakes.
i'm getting up at 4am tomorrow to catch the sun rising over my great sparkling city.
i'm getting lost at the public library.
i'm driving with the windows down, which also means i'm whirling through the grocery store with messy, messy hair. i just strut through the cereal aisle and pretend i'm a sexy, deliberately tousled woman.

oh! i'm noticing that this song has a banjo part i never heard before.
i'm putting on a dress and i'm eating potato chips.
i'm still standing.

she

{ to... }

to grieve without fear of judgment
to feel okay without answering that phone call
to sit in a movie by yourself and feel surprisingly whole
to remember her long dress, her hawk eyes, her stella artois
to touch the light with your fingertips
to realize you alone can console yourself
to write on the wall at midnight
to feel the power of your own voice rising
to be struck with determination in the moments before sleep
to think maybe you can do this, broken as you are
to hear him sing the words you will never be alone
to realize there is no checkpoint, no winner, and no finish line
these are all a series of imperfect moments strung intermittently along the cord of time


--- s.r.

lux nova || kelsey hannah

{ walk on }

in these heels?

gladly.

------------

the late warm breezes of eleven, twelve o' clock, stir something in me i forgot was there. i want to forget it, because it hurts to want things lately, and everything seems so far out of my grasp. sometimes i'm motivated by futility, and sometimes it utterly defeats me. i used to be a get-mad-and-get-even-with-life person; perhaps i've mellowed with age, but disappointment seems to send me further into introspection and withdrawal lately. the world seems to revolve and i am rooted in one place, developmentally and domestically stunted. my life is barely a toddler's age compared to my married, housed, jobbed, grad schooled, be-childrened friends. and while everyone tells me to exercise the freedom that so blessedly comes with such an unattached existence, ultimately this advice rings hollow. because who in her right mind would rather be as alone as i am instead of anchored to a life with someone else that has chosen her?

i'm sure this whiny diatribe reads incredibly immature and myopic, but what else do i know? and it's universally true that what everyone else has or doesn't have always appeals more than our own circumstances. but even that perspective doesn't erase the steady hunger today. i am old(er). i'm past the age where women get excited about going out in stilettos for cosmos at crowded bars with friends. perhaps i need to rediscover my youthful, energetic, domestically ambitious inner goddess. or perhaps i was born with an old soul and have never possessed the dogged determination to remain sparkly-eyed no matter how disappointed i am. everything in me is prodding everything else in me, saying, "make the most of this time in your life, change could come at any moment!" somehow i picture this part of my soul as an irritatingly perky blonde petite person with false eyelashes. and she's wearing a romper.

another part of me is quietly saying, don't you know how brilliant you really are, stop wallowing and just be patient. this is the part of me that looks most like myself. not beautiful, but maybe she is brilliant and that's what truly matters to those who truly matter. but as someone who's always been more attractive on the inside, trust me when i say it only gets more difficult to be overlooked by those who have much more to offer on the outside. what i need is someone with the right kind of vision to finally see me. and even now my inner critic says, you only "need" what you let yourself need...and as long as you "need" someone else, you'll never, ever be in a good place to have him, even if he does exist.

since this reads like the pathetic tear-stained journal of a spinster headed for eternal cat lady land, i'm going to stop. all of this is more for my own purge and processing purposes anyway, and it happens to be spilling like raw diamonds onto this white rectangular plate...

------------

if the time has come to abandon everything you've known

to move toward something you can't conceive of

to trust your body in its forward motion despite the reluctance of your mind

to feel the fading light of what was burning on the curve of a shoulder blade

to blink against the gathering breeze of what will be

to shield your heart and shield your eyes

to swallow the unspoken

to sit up in the swells and trust the undertow

to stand at the edge of midnight and morning and decide

to stop and gaze at all the stars

to let the tears run their course

to die, and sleep, and rise again ---

walk on. if you can do it i can

and i'm trusting you all the way.

{ falling & standing }

{ a ruffle and a penelope }

there are moments in life that are filled with such light and clarity...and while this seems like something you'd yearn for, i often find that the clearest moments in my life are those that hurt the most. usually it's finally sinking in that i have to let go. move on. keep walking forward. and because i have a heart that tends to hold tightly to the past, facing the present and embracing the unknown future have always been hard for me. it takes years.

there are years that question

and years that answer

{ zora neale hurston }

many of my lightest / heaviest moments have happened beneath the wide sky of idaho over the past three years. the space in the west fills me with a loneliness and a hope that's impossible to describe. i feel minuscule next to the golden hills, like the tiniest sparkle in the valleys at sundown. it's so good for my soul it hurts.

i just discovered a cache of unedited and unshared photos from my spur-of-the-moment trip to idaho last july. i needed to get out of my hometown desperately and found deep solace in the west, in the home of one of the people on this earth who understands me best --- meaning she always finds a way to draw me out of the shadow and shelter me beneath her wings at the same time.

thank God for all of these things,
for the burdens and the light.


she