"even my skin held memory"
For the past few years, August has felt like a cool breeze. It's a moment of breath, of reprieve. I live quieter in August, pondering in my heart everything I've stored up in the months past, and this August is no exception.
This August, I'm participating in a project hosted by Morgan Day Cecil called #justbeherewithme. The intention is to be more present in our lives by logging off social media for a day, a week or the whole month of August. I've dedicated my Sunday's to being social media free, and while my fingers crave the familiar scroll of the smart phone, I'm finding much more room to be present.
I'm learning to be present with my story. Continuing the work I started at the end of July, I'm taking a break from the public sector of blogging and documenting my personal story in my journal. Some days its hard to even scratch the words out, despite knowing I'll be the only one to read them. Some days writing them feels like a cathartic release.
"I think you need to speak it. I think you need to be as specific as possible and allow the space to empty on its own"
Writing these words, adventuring through my past, it feels like building monuments. "Thank you," I whisper to each segment as I finish with it, "But I no longer need you anymore." And by doing so I'm slowly undressing the layers of shame and guilt I've worn for so many years.
I'm finding the memories of the past are so deeply a part of me that even my skin holds the memory. My body remembers, even when my mind forgets. Which means this month has also meant hours laboring in pain as I ache to give birth to this story, practicing yoga, having honest conversations with the people I love and letting them help to begin building something anew in me. Every positive touch, is wiping over the old pathways where love = pain and rewriting it with the message love = love. The brave act of letting others hold me in my story is turning out to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever done, and the giving and receiving of this love, this medicine, is an honor. I'm also learning to keep some of this love, this medicine, for myself, as I'm finally in a place of speaking words of love over myself.
In August, I'm participating in a yoga challenge called #thisisagoodbody over on instagram (with the exception of Sundays, of course, which we're all taking off to find a few sacred moments). We're getting honest about things like shame, and this vulnerability is changing me. By combining honesty with movement, my heart is transforming. I'm discovering just how much negativity and shame I held around my body that I didn't even realize was there, and I'm beginning to work through that.
This season, which technically began in late July, is so healing and powerful. I've been hesitant to write about it, not only because it is so achingly personal but because finding the right words to convey the tender places of my heart lately is a seemingly impossible task. I'm finding freedom in places I never expected to find it. I'm stretching my heart wide open, going back into the past so I can move forward into my future. I'm speaking up and saying what for years I kept silent, using the voice that for so long I let others take from me.
I'm being present and honest with this moment, with the people I love, with myself and my story. And I proclaim over all of it goodness.

Thanks for the memories

Today was my last high school English class, and I found myself getting slightly sentimental
We sat there in our desks discussing Hamlet and grammar and I wanted to be the one to scream "Remember this."
Remember this because I never thought it would happen but it did and now it's here and it's beautiful and I never want to let it go.
I wanted champagne. I wanted toasts and balloons and pictures. I wanted speeches and moments I can hang on my wall.
Instead I got smiles and laughter and the way his eyes sparkled and I willed myself not to forget a single moment of it.
I want to stay like this forever. In this place where I know there will always be a twinkling eye to greet me every morning, and that even if I don't want to I will laugh. Sometimes there will be embarrassing pictures on my phone. Sometimes there will be cartoons on the side of my homework that I didn't draw there. Sometimes I will be annoyed with these people as much as I enjoy them, and sometimes I will experience both in the same breath.
But at the end of the day we had this. We had this room, and this class, and each other. And maybe I'm the crazy one for wanting to hold on to this for as long as I possibly can.
I know I can't keep it clenched between my fists, that moving on is inevitable.
And maybe all this is was a shout into the void, but it was something. I have to believe it was something. It won't last and it's built on teenage emotion and being shoved in a classroom together for an hour a day, five days a week, but it's something.
 When I entered this class, I never expected to find what I did. I learned Shakespeare, and that people are amazing. If you let them, they'll surprise you.
In this moment, we are beautiful.
In this moment, I swear we are infinite.

"I think I deserve something beautiful"

“You know what I felt this morning, Delia? Nothing. No passion, no spark, no faith, no heat, no nothing! I think I’ve really gotten past the point where I can be calling this a ‘bad moment’… This is worse than death to me, the idea that this is the person I’m going to be from now on… There’s like nothing – I have no pulse! I used to have this appetite for food, for my life, and it is just gone! I want to go someplace where I can marvel at something, anything.”


A year ago I was sitting in my basement praying for my life to change. I wanted to marvel at something, to actually be alive and experience my life. I felt exhausted with the idea of my life.
I was watching a movie about a woman who goes to Italy in order to find herself. I'm a sucker for movies like that, where the main character goes on a journey and ends up finding out things about herself she had been searching for.
I decided to create my own Italy. I needed something risky and exciting and new.
I decided to enroll in public high school.


"I'm not checking out, I need to change"


As the weeks leading up to my dramatic re-entry into high school passed, I began to see this more as a bad decision and less of the something new I had been hoping for. All the unknowns seemed to be looming over my head. The what if's became big and daunting.
I entered my first day of classes fearful of this big new world I had been thrown into. I felt like a fish out of water.
So many times in that first month I remember crying because I was completely overwhelmed. I remember sitting and forcing myself to find the good things that happened in each day because otherwise I would be overcome with this sense of dread.
In September I remember thinking I would never make it until June.
And then something began to change...
It is now May and in a few days I will be graduating. I will be leaving this world and entering a new one. And the day that once seemed unconceivable is now here.
I would be lying if I said I was ready for it to come
This past year has been a challenging one. I have learned so much, about subjects like biology and history, but also about myself.
I have met so many amazing, incredible people, and made friendships that I cherish.
I have laughed a lot, cried a lot, stumbled and failed more times than I would like to admit.
But I have also succeeded in more ways than I can count.
And the thought of saying goodbye to all of this in just a few weeks terrifies me.
The place I was so hesitant to walk into now feels like home to me. The self discovery that has taken place inside of those walls amazes me. The people I have met are beautiful.
I went into this year searching for something beautiful, something marvelous, something new. I wanted my life to change.
And now, a full year after that incident in my basement, I can safely say that it has.
I have seen beauty. I have experienced love. I have learned lessons about biology and history, and what it means to be human and new experiences. I have laughed and cried and loved and been stressed out and sometimes I can only stand back and marvel at the wonder of it all.
In September I never expected the profound impact that this place would have on my life, and how it would shape me in just a few short months. I am walking out of this experience existing more than I did when I entered in.


"I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person - the magnification of one life - is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody's but my own"

2013 Reflections

On New Year's Eve of 2012, I received an email from a friend. I was feeling unsocial, uncomfortable in my own skin, and anxious. Her message ended up becoming a mantra of sorts for my year: Wishing you Poetry and Stars.
And, looking back on the year I had in 2013, it was filled with poetry and stars, just not in the way I expected.
One thing I tried to do in 2013 was to write. And I did, almost daily. I kept a running tab, wrote entries filled with whatever I was thinking about that day. Some months I wrote every day, and other months I wrote only a few times per week. But looking back on those entries, on the music I listened to in 2013, on the mementos I kept pinned to my wall and on shelves in containers, I get to see how far I've come in the last year, how I've changed, how I've grown.
This is my sentimental reflection on 2013, a goodbye echoing out as I ready myself for a new hello.

January
January began with hope, the desire to be better. It began with metaphors and stories and wishful thinking, the way January usually begins. I thought a lot about redemption, about the meaning of home, and struggled with finding peace within myself.
January was a month filled with hope and the promise of new beginnings. I was blissfully happy, learning to find myself in the world.

February
February began with thoughts of love and the transformation into a lion hearted girl. I was still wistful, happy in a way I couldn't quite understand. By the final day in February, my world began to crack. I didn't know then it was in preparation for the break that would upend my life.

March
March was grief, and brokenness. It was falling to the floor screaming and standing beside a grave with no explanation, only anguish. It was everything I didn't know how to understand, and everything I never wanted to have to learn. It was discovering the meaning of strength, daily. It was a time when my heart was broken, shattered into a million pieces I didn't know how to fix.

April
Looking back, I barely remember April. The days seem to run together, one moment fading into the next, none of them feeling real. I was still broken. I craved darkness, silence, solitude. I was restless, and angry. I tried to write through my pain, most of the words leaving my body bereft, inconsolable, and fierce. I watched too much television in an attempt to ignore the world that miraculously kept turning in despite of my brokenness.

May
May felt like another round of bad luck, like the blackness had swallowed me whole. The wound I had been trying to heal in April felt split open again, and I was bleeding all over the floor. I cried more in the first part of May then I remember doing before: in a parking lot, on the kitchen floor, in a doctor's office where suddenly the roles were reversed, and too often, in my own bed, crying myself to sleep. I held onto hope like if I curled my fingers around it tight enough, then it couldn't be broken. I went inward, taking stock of my life, bracing myself for the pieces of my world that kept falling in.

June
June was for rituals, for clinging to ceremonies. I was desperately searching for a way to be full again. I did a lot of yoga, ate well, and searched for people who were bravely walking through brokenness. Words weren't as easy to come by, and if I sat in the silence for too long I started to feel the voices in my head begin to take over. I chased sanity as if it was something I could grab, locking my fingers around it and holding it tight.

July
The discomfort I felt inside my own body grew heavier. I slept in hotel rooms and thought about death, and life, and living. My body felt broken, my mind felt broken, my heart felt broken. As many strings as I pulled, hoping to hold my life together, it kept unraveling. I felt like a stranger in my own skin. I had a restless mind and a restless heart, and I didn't know how to sit with myself and not run away from the pain, in some way or another.

August
August was for lusting after life, trying to swallow it whole. I tried stupid things and not so stupid things and did what made me happy. Maybe it was covering some deeper issue I still had, maybe it was well done denial, but I felt alive for the first time in months. I felt like the world was begging to be noticed and I vowed to take advantage of every moment.

September
September welcomed new things. It began with a desire to be brave, to experience life, and ended in quiet reflection. I was introduced to a world that challenged me, intrigued me and mystified me (and still does.) It was my first introduction to some amazing people. I wrestled with myself, asking a lot of questions, some that didn't have answers.

October
The broken heart was analyzed as more losses fell, reminding me of the grief that had draped itself over my life. It was death, and letting go. It was also welcoming new life, stretching to make room to accommodate it all. It was driving down back roads and listening to loud music and falling in and out of love daily.

November
November was for fiction, for distractions. It was poetry in dark closets and too many hours spent staring at the wall. It was the month when I turned another year older, which was both exciting and something I dreaded in the same moment. I was stuck in my head too much, as I always am. The world felt like it was moving too fast for me to keep up. I felt helpless to stop the spinning of my own mind. It was also a month of gathering stories, memorizing faces, collecting moments.

December
December was the apology I never knew how to write. It was days upon days lived in a perpetual state of fear, of panic, of grief. It was losing my mind slowly. I didn't try to understand it all. I went through the motions. I didn't write, didn't let my mind run away with the endless possibilities that were churning inside of my skull. I didn't let the brokenness of the month, and of all the months that have come before it, catch up with me.

2013 was a year of firsts, a year of being completely broken open. As a whole it was probably filled with more tears than any other year, more grief, more moments I didn't know how to comprehend. I told my secrets to the stars and wrote poetry on the side of coffee cups and crawled my way up out of the grief.
I'm coming out of 2013 not at all the same person who walked into it. I've been forever changed by the things that happened this year. I questioned my whole life, and am on a quest for answers. I cried, screamed, felt and wrote my way through this year. Because sometimes that's the only way you can do it.
I carry more anger now, am more jaded, more scarred. The world doesn't make sense to me anymore, not in the way it used to.
But, despite all the grief I carry with me from this past year, it was also full of good things. I felt the world inside of myself, and started (As I always am) making peace with it. While I lost people, I also met some amazing people, people who make me laugh and fill me with hope and encourage me to be a better person, to "write with blood" and to experience life. I had moments when I felt truly alive. I fell in love with people, with things, with the world despite it's brokenness.

"You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things"

"Sometimes its the smallest things that save us: the weather growing cold, a child's smile, and a cup of excellent coffee."

Life Keeps Moving On

My jaw pops every time I chew a bite of my not dinner dinner (a half-eaten blueberry bagel). Sulfur water is woven into my hair, reminding me of what it felt like to be alive and it’s a feeling I don’t ever want to lose. I’m avoiding washing my hair because of it.

 My nail beds are chipped and cracked, pulling apart at the seams, and my elbows are rubbed red. I’m not exactly sure why but if I had to guess it would probably have something to do with change, and this thing that is inside of me pushing and trying to get out.

 I keep thinking of this moment, in early August, when I was petrified by the idea of change. He told me that that’s life and it happens that way for a reason and then he told me that it would all be alright and that he would be coming home to me soon and I realize now he was only half lying. Because in life there is always that constant state of change and I’m always caught hanging somewhere in the balance of it all and sooner or later, in some way or another, everything does turn out alright. But he never did come home to me.

 I sat on the side of a mountain, with my feet tucked up beneath me, and I thought about how sometimes people let you down and it’s all you can do to not be disappointed. Even though he promised he would try to not break your heart, he did anyway and what once seemed like magic is now fraying at the edges and sometimes you just have to take what someone can give you and use that to build your own world. I used to think I could fit into this fairytale of a life he wanted, even if it wasn’t what I wanted. And even though my mama said to never change for anyone I would have done it anyway because I thought maybe for once in my life I could finally be the princess in a fairytale. But I think trying to fit into a fairytale that isn’t your fairytale just leaves you with a broken heart. He’s still the prince, but there’s another girl playing Cinderella.

 I wasn’t foolish enough to think that life wasn’t ever going to change, but in some naïve way I did think things were going to stay the same. I thought that promises made during one of those swing set summers of my childhood would be kept because that’s what love is, it’s keeping the promise anyway. And I’m still in this town where I grew up and a college acceptance letter came in the mail, but there was no phone call or text message to share the news. And I get that people grow up and things change but all I can think of is the promise, and that love is keeping the promise anyway.

It’s October now and this year has proven to me how much things can change. I’m empty handed and heavy hearted. This life I’m living is making me tired and sometimes I forget why I’m even doing it until one morning I wake up and something makes all the loving worth the pain and it gets just a little easier to breathe, a little easier to remember who I am.

The Feeling Of Found

The feeling of being found is not something I take lightly.
I fall in love with words.
Stories whispered so quietly they barely reach my ears in voices dripping with mystery and promise, stories that are so beautiful that even reading them feels like an invasion.
I've never met the person who wrote me this beautiful story and left it for me to find, like pieces of treasure blown by the breeze, and yet I have fallen in love with the way that reading simple words on a page could stir something inside of me that has been dormant for so long.
I fall in love with feelings.
The feeling of being found in a crowded room, of how you said my name like it was some exotic and beautiful thing. The feelings I didn't know lived inside of me anymore until you spoke my name and made me beautiful and breathed life back into these tired bones.
In these days when everything feels so new and overwhelming and foreign, when its so easy just to get lost, the feeling of being found is not something to be taken lightly. I've fallen in love with the feeling of being found, in whatever form it finds me.

“Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he'd taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his.
The fire of Brigan's heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love.”  

And then it was time to let go...

And then it was time to let go
It should be the name of a season, or a day of the week, at the very least.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, And then it was time to let go

This is what I've been thinking of these past few days.
And then it was time to let go
Time to let go of dreams that aren't happening for me right now
Time to let go of pieces of the past I've been holding on to a little too tightly
I don't know why I hold on to things so tightly, but if I had to guess I think it would have something to do with fear.
Fear that if I don't do this, if I don't go with them, if I don't chase down this dream and pursue it and manifest it RIGHT NOW then I'm not going to matter.
Fear that if I let go of the past then it won't matter and it will just fall forgotten along the shores of life.
Fear that if I stop being who I'm pretending to be and if I lay down my stories and my titles and these dreams that I had for myself since I was a little girl I won't matter anymore.
But that's the thing, even if I have nothing I matter. You matter. That little kid in Africa matters and that homeless man on the corner matters and we matter.
And its nothing I did or didn't do and its nothing I said or didn't say and its not because of which stories I held on to and which ones I let go of.
I matter. My being here matters. My story matters and my pain matters and my life matters.
And yours does too.
And then it was time to let go
You know its time because you feel it. You get tired of carrying around this thing that isn't yours to carry anymore. And, for me, I believed I mattered even if...
Even if I let go of the pieces of the past I've been hauling around behind me for far too long now.
Even if I choose to be here in this moment, accepting that this dream I once had isn't happening for me right now and that's ok and it's even ok if dreams change.

I get attached to things, to stories and to dreams and to people and things. With every step closer to letting go, I wonder if I'm making a mistake. Even if my arms are heavy and my arms are tired, I will hold on to this thing or this dream or this story or this pain or this whatever with white knuckles.
I'm afraid to let go because I'm afraid of the unknown.
I like predictable and comfortable and even if its painful I know what's coming. I'm not one to really enjoy surprises and curveballs and I like to be in control.
But that's the thing, I can stay in the comfortable and the predictable and the known but it is only in the different and unpredictable that my life will change.
Change takes place when I am ready to let go of what I know and walk full speed, face first in to the dark. That's faith.
And letting go requires a leap of faith. It requires trusting in life and in yourself and in a God who works everything out for your good and His glory.
And then it was time to let go
And I knew this because I could feel it. It was something deep inside of me, making me believe that even if I let go I mattered. It was knowing that change happens in the unpredictable, the things that rock my world, and it is trusting in a God who loves me and knows everything that is on my path. It's the feeling in my chest, the antsy-ness I get when I know it's time to move on.
I only have so much room in my arms to hold things. And I get to decide what I hold. And I choose people. I choose love and joy and hope.
And in order to make room for those things that I want, I need to let go of what no longer serves me.
The journey that wasn't meant for me to take yet
The story I've been holding on to for too long, letting it define me
And then it was time to let go

A semi-autobiography

    i.            Words flow from me like a river. Warm in my belly they sit like soup. Gently, with butterfly like fingers, like soft, flowing ribbons they caress my insides. “Speak your truth,” They whisper to me. I barely have the ears to listen.  Like a river it flows from me, pain like a white, radiant light comes from my spine, my shoulders, and my hips. This pain transforms. It spins me like a spider weaving its web, stitching into me fibers of silver and gold. Stories balance precariously on my tongue and I soak up information, lapping it up like a dog, drinking it in like a traveler in the desert thirsty for a cool drink. Transformed, spinning in this web, I shift and change. Truths are spoken and tiny hands pick up each heel, pressing me onward. Their belief, this radiant form of love, it changes me. With a gentle spirit I open myself upwards to the sun, letting the rays and all their glory penetrate my very being. The babbling brook whispers my name and her laughter catches the wind. I have folded myself into this universe, wrapped myself in the golden rays of the truth. Wrapped in sunlight and silk from the spider’s web, I walk forward.

 

   ii.             The world is not my playground.  Thoughts spiral down, around, thoughts of love and loss and forever. I thought I knew what these things meant, once. But as it would seem, I am an impostor, lying in my own skin. I do not know the meaning of these delicately bound objects. Who does know, I wonder, as I watch the robin build his nest for the coming summer. I feel the sun on my shoulders, the grass under my bare feet. I have it hanging on my wall: love, and yet I am bereft to find the meaning. Because once I thought I loved you, and you were afraid and fled. And I understand, my darling. And yet I dreamt of losing you and I fought against time and space to save you. Your brow is knit tight, your lips pursed closed, and I wonder at your thoughts. I’d throw a penny in every wishing well for you to tell me your utmost desires. What is it that keeps you up all night? What is it that makes your heart sing? What is it, my love? What is it that makes you angry and what makes you at peace? But, like the robin, you are just beyond my reach. And so I will sit in silence, watching, marveling at the beauty that you are. I will watch as you fly away. And I will hope for the day you will come back to my tender garden. I will wait for the day when the beauty of a robin will finally be enough for my wandering heart.

 

  iii.            The memory of you is stored there. Right there, in the pocket of empty space running up my spine, from my tailbone into my shoulders. Some days I scarcely notice the ache from the absence of you. Other days it is all I can think of. The missing is not so much pain, not anymore. It isn’t joy either. I would say it is light grey, like the sun shining through the clouds right before they are about to break after a rainstorm. The world smells fresh and the earth is damp and if I sink my toes into it long enough, I can feel you in the rain. It is stillness. The missing of you is stillness. It isn’t a throbbing absence, not pulsating inside of me. It is more like this empty pocket of space, just there. Most days it doesn’t hurt. It just feels empty. And on those days I’ll put on your sweater, stand on the back porch and wait for rain.

 

     iv.            Soon this space will be too small. I push against the edges of this old box. Like toes in shoes, I am pressed up against the edges. I shift and make myself more comfortable in this space which I am rapidly outgrowing. I feel the tension from being pressed tight, no room to expand. So I must gain courage. I must walk in love, in truth. I must be willing to lose sight of the shore, becoming vulnerable and taking risks. It is there I will taste healing, savoring the taste of solace on my tongue, drinking in marvelous beauty, open to embracing creativity and my truth. With one final push this old rowboat is out to sea. My hands shake as I grip the oars, pushing myself farther and farther away from the shore with each stroke.
Attraversiamo – Let’s cross over.

 

v.            Something always brings me back to you. Like tangles in my hair and the blue heart drawn on the inside of my favorite pair of jeans. It’s a touch stone, I think. It’s like the universe holds it breath in anticipation for this moment, the moment I’ll come back. Because I always do. I’m a gypsy at heart but I can never stay gone for long. I tell myself I’m really leaving this time but we both know it’s a lie. I’m not capable of leaving. I will always come back, floating in on the wind. It’s because you’re a touch stone. It’s because, hard as I try, I can never look into my eyes without seeing the reflection of yours.

 

vi.            And so I wait. For love, for peace, for reunion, for words that last longer than a few moments, for a place my body knows how to stay. I build myself into people. There’s a piece of me there, right under your left ear, and that person has a tiny piece on their big toe. I toss my heart like ashes in the wind and hoping where they fall will be somewhere safe. That’s why I spend so much time running, I think. I’m trying to find myself. I’ve forgotten that here already holds the biggest piece of me.

 

vii.            I ask my empty hands what it all means. I ask myself what it means to love, to let go. I feel the empty space as I sit and I wonder how much longer I will feel the absence like the lack of fluid around my spinal column. I ask them what it  means. I ask them if this time I’m really letting go.

 

viii.            My hands have yet to write the answer.

Who Makes the Rules?

You don't have to put yourself in a box. Boxes are small. You can't breathe in a box. You don't have to label yourself. Labels peel off. They fall off in the washing machine. They itch and make us uncomfortable.

I woke up this morning and read those words. They felt fitting, and I couldn't help but smile to myself as I read them. Last night I was pondering some of the best advice I was given when I turned 16. It was this: be 16. I thought that meant something different than it really does. I thought of it as the stereotype, the driving and going to parties and being reckless and stupid. I thought those were the unspoken rules of being 16.
But reading that article this morning, and thinking last night, I paused to ask this question: who made the rules?
Who says that you have to be this one thing? Why does everyone seem to have this inability to accept something that is raw and messy and not at all neatly packaged and tied with a string... something that doesn't fit inside a box?
Not too long ago, I told myself I didn't want to make myself smaller for anybody. I don't fit into a nice, neat box. And why should I have to? Boxes are small, and you can't breathe in a box. Boxes are cramped and you get squished and there's no room to grow in a box. There's no room to push the boundaries and expand in a box.
I heard a part of this interview yesterday with Lenny Kravitz who was talking about how his life doesn't fit into a box. He is neither black nor white. And in school, when a teacher asked him to fill out a form and it asked for his race, he didn't know which box to check. "Black," The teacher told him. His mother said this, "You are both black and white. But all anybody is ever going to see you as is black."
I am not one thing. Neither are you. I am not easily defined, a label, something able to fit into a small box. And I don't think you are either.
I can be whatever I want to be. I can put as many things after "I am ______" as I like
You can spend your life living in that box, with no space to grow and push boundaries, no room to explore, or you can spend your life creating your own life, proving all those people who said you were only one thing wrong.
I am not only one thing. I am everything.
Just because the world has this intense desire to put you in a box and pack you neatly away doesn't mean you have to listen. Break the rules. Make your own rules! This is your life and it's time you started living it.
I'm not willing to make myself smaller to try and fit into a mold.
The best advice I ever got when I turned 16 was to be 16. And that doesn't mean one thing. It means everything. It means live your life, every single minute of it, because it's your life. Own it. Embrace it. Love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aZ3gAUj9hKA

 

Bleeding Red

Grief is messy
It's scratching at the surface, under my skin
It's a discomfort that makes me want to pull out my hair
It's anger and tenacity which sometimes gets mistaken for strength
It's fear, and vulnerability
It's desperation
It's neediness
I've described it on a number of occasions as bleeding out
I got sick, and then I got diagnosed, and through out this whole ordeal I've been feeling like I'm bleeding out
It's the little things you notice first
it's the pale skin, and the tired eyes
And then comes the irritability, the anger, the moodiness
It's this ache in my chest, right where my heart is. It's gory and messy. It doesn't hurt really. It's just this small twinge whenever I walk or talk or laugh or breathe
Loneliness, desperation, neediness
These are all symptoms of the bleeding out
Maybe it's a good thing. maybe it means one day I'll have all new blood, healthy blood
But for now, it just hurts. It's sticky and red and it's not neat and pretty
I tend to edit myself a lot, to make things sound poetic and neat. I tend to miss capturing the raw and the real and the honest on paper.
In these bleeding out days, I think it's my fragility that scares me more than my mortality
Death doesn't scare me. Neither do needles, or doctors.
What scares me is this sort of desperation that needs to make everything ok, the neediness I feel, the vulnerability I am forced to succumb to.
I kept waiting for someone to notice me, to pay attention to that pale girl losing blood over there in the corner. But it didn't really happen.
No one offered to tend to my grief, or sit with me, to acknowledge that what happened to me was not ok and awful and world changing.
But the world kept spinning. Life went on.
And so I did it myself. Or I tried to.
I wrote too much and watched too much television and threw all my time and energy into eating the right foods and complained too much and avoided friends because I wasn't brave enough to trust them with my grief. After all, it was all I had left of normalcy.
I was looking for a cure, for some magic to not necessarily take away my conditions but to minimize that gaping hole in my chest it seemed only I could see and make it stop hurting, make me stop feeling like I was losing blood every time I took a breath.
I wrapped myself up tight in un-forgiveness and anger and isolated myself, tied the cocoon I'd made myself up tight and stamped it shut, locking myself inside.
With bare hands, I'm digging through all this gory, messy blood that's coming out of me.
It's not pretty, and it's not fun.
It's exhausting and lonely and it scares the crap out of me and I still don't have all the answers on how to stitch myself back together.
For now it's just duct tape and staples.
But as I look through all this gore and misfortune, as I look at myself in the mirror and see the things other people look past (The pale skin and the tired eyes, the stickiness from the metaphorical blood that keeps coming out of me), I see something else too.
I see life.
It's red and it's sticky and messy but it's a sign I'm still alive
So the blood keeps coming. Soon, I imagine, it will stop pouring out of me and I'll start to build new blood, better blood.
Soon, I imagine, it will stop hurting and aching and the grief will stop feeling so consuming and I'll stop feeling so angry and desperate and lonely and vulnerable. At least, I hope so.
But until then, until that hole in my chest stitches itself closed and the new, better blood comes and it all nudges me back up to live, I'll just sit here, with my pale skin and tired eyes and all those other symptoms of the metaphorical bleeding out that's going on inside of me, because this bleeding out is all I have left of the before.

7 Quick Takes ~ Volume 9

1. I haven't posted regularly for a long time, and I miss it. I miss having conversations with you beautiful people at my kitchen table, even though we really may be hours apart. I don't know when I'm going to be back to blogging regularly. Until then, please feel free to enjoy me in tiny bursts when I do decide to get my butt over here and blog something :)

2. I guess one of the more important things I should mention is that I totally changed my diet. A friend recommended this to me at the end of June, as she had already started on this new diet change and it was working well for her and she thought maybe it would help me as I had been having really bad stomach pain. I was skeptical, but after finding some recipes online that fit with this new diet, I made the switch. It's been almost 2 weeks and I feel great!

3. So, as for the diet change, I made the switch to NO white flours or refined sugars. I'm also limiting the amounts of gluten in my diet. I've defiantly been noticing the changes. For one, my stomach pain has been cut in half! It is less frequent, and I haven't had any severe pain episodes. (YAY!!!!) Also, I've noticed I have had a lot more energy (No longer needing a rest in the afternoons and actually feeling rested when I get up in the mornings) I also haven't found myself missing junk foods that much, as I am in love with finding new ways to make my every day diet taste great.

4. I was stuck at number 4. And I wrote this big long thing, quoting the words of Taylor Swift and people, and then decided I didn't like it so I erased it all. :)

5. So, July is almost over, which makes me sad. Even though this summer hasn't really felt like summer, it's nice to not have any school. I am excited for August though. August brings Vegas, and the GSD convention (Read something yesterday that I loved: GSD stands for Got Super Determination. Isn't that right?) This summer has been more work then I intended, more figuring things out, more trying to figure out where I'm going, more healing and journeying and stumbling and waiting.

6. For those of you who didn't know, for school in September, I'm doing half and half. (Am I the only one who thinks that makes me sound like a cup of coffee?) For one of my math classes (I'm doing two) and my chem and physics, I am going to the Catholic School in Sexsmith, where my siblings go. And for the rest of my classes, I'll be doing online. This next year is going to be a big year for me. It's grade 11, the year before my last one. It's when I'm actually old enough to start thinking about careers and going to college (WHAT?!?! I can't be that old already!) And it's scary, trying to figure out what you might want to be for the rest of your life, and having all this pressure on you to be good enough. But you know what? I'm learning it's ok if I don't always see the path I'm going to take, sometimes it's ok if I just see the next step.

7. I was going to write about something here, but there's this tiny butterfly outside my window who is distracting me. It's reminding me of change, and that one day the caterpillar wakes up and becomes a butterfly, that when a caterpillar thinks his life is over, he becomes a butterfly, and that to become a butterfly, you must want to fly so much you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
Change is sometimes a good thing... and one of these days I'm going to break out of this cocoon and fly

Happy Friday!