An open letter to my doctors

I want to tell you something.
See, I'm not very good at math. I barely passed high school math class (and by barely I mean scraping by with a 52%) and the very idea of chemistry put knots in my stomach. I never understood numbers and letters combined with numbers and graphs and formulas. I do know that you plug numbers or letters into this formula and do all the right steps and on the other side you're supposed to come out with the right answer.
I've never been good at math, but I do know something about creativity. I'm a writer. I spend hours analyzing conversations, observing people, studying every tiny detail. I pick up on things normal people don't pick up on because I know how to look for them. In fact, I've written poems about the sound of your shoe. I make stories where sometimes there are no stories, but I guess then I would also have to argue that there are stories everywhere if you know where to look for them.
That's the difference between you and me, I think. You spend hours pouring over charts and lab results, plugging numbers into a formula and then graphing a picture of how you think things should be. And I spend hours categorizing each separate emotion and reaction into a different shade of purple, pouring over old stories and new poetry until finally stumbling upon the realization that sometimes you have to make your own stories about how things happen.
Sometimes there is no formula, and I know that's maybe hard for your scientist brains to believe. But I believe there isn't an exact science for anything, only many different shades of grey.
Akira Kurosawa once said "to be an artist means never to avert one's eyes."
I don't get the pleasure of averting my eyes. This pain stretches out before me and you try and plug it in to a formula and analyze it. I, who have been trained to absorb it and internalize it and regurgitate it out in the form of a story, instead turn it into a myth.
The sleepless nights, the cracking of joints upon rolling out of bed in the morning, the anxiety knot that sits in the pit of my stomach without ever fully going away, they all tell a story. They don't tell a story that's in any of the books I've read, so I'm doing what all good creative types do and going off the grid, writing a story of my own.
You are taking my story and plugging it into something I don't fully understand. You speak to me in all your fancy formula words, and they mean little to me because you are speaking a language I don't understand. I am the writer of myths, the house of stories, the mother of pain, and right now I am afraid so I need you to speak to me in words I understand. I know that its easy to avert your eyes from this part, the messy part, the part where all of these plot twists don't fit into that nice, fancy formula of yours, and believe me I wish I could avert my eyes too. I understand you're trying your best to give me answers, but believe it or not sometimes that's not what I need.
I need to not feel like Frankenstein's monster. I need you to put down your analyzing tools and your critical judgement calls for a few minutes to look at the story. I need you to understand that sometimes there are stories that don't follow an outline, patterns that cannot fit into your formulas, and I need you to reassure me that it is not I who failed the treatment, that it is not I who have become Frankenstein's monster. I need you to stand by your man, because that is what you do, even if your man doesn't end up the way you thought he would.
I need you to look at the bigger story, not just the graph of symptoms and problem areas. That's one thing I'm learning here at college, that you can't pick some parts and throw away the rest.
I guess what I'm saying is that I understand your medical brains don't work in terms of stories, but mine does. I am making a story to make all of this make a little more sense to me, seem a little less scary and threatening. It is in the stories you write yourself that you can talk the monster down into becoming a mouse. And I need you to put down your fancy words and charts and realize that you are dealing with a person, not a patient number. I need you to stand by your man. I need you to, at least for a moment, entertain me and my crazy idea of myths because its all I have.
I need you to, for a moment, not avert your eyes. I need you to, for a moment, become an artist. Look up from your charts and see the person on the other end of it all. Maybe for a moment wear the hat of a myth maker, a story teller, a crazy poet who finds details in the sounds of shoes (I can teach you if you want). Let me become your muse.
Because I promise you, there's a lot more story here than what can fit into your formulas.

Little Star

Once upon a time there was a star. He was just a little star, and he was surrounded by other stars that shone brighter than him and he didn't feel like he belonged. One day the little star decided he would travel to the darkest part of the sky so that he could shine the brightest. The little star began moving across the sky.  That same night two kids were wandering in the forest. It was getting late and dark and they needed to find their way home. "Let's follow that star," they decided. So they followed the little star and he guided them out of the forest. Even though he was surrounded by bigger and brighter stars it was his light that showed them the way out of the darkness. So little star stayed.

Every so often I ask him to tell me a story. Tonight he told me this one, and I loved it so much. I think I may not be the only storyteller in this relationship

The Creation of Space

I haven't been writing much lately. More savoring, more collecting. What I have been is personal, the delicate stories of others that I have been so honored to receive, and my own emotional stumbling as I begin to process what this last month has looked like for me. Then there are days when I feel like I need to write down the stories I'm collecting inside of me but they all feel so personal, so precious, so not mine and so mine but still needing the time to be rolled over inside of me and many times I end up sitting in front of a blank screen.
...
I'm sitting at my desk at 1pm, drinking peppermint tea out of my cup that proudly declares, "Good Morning, Gorgeous." It's not morning, but some days are like that. I'm bundled up in a big sweater belonging not to me, under a blanket and in front of the open window.
I'm in the process of reminding myself what matters. It seems selfish really, in a world full of people asking for my attention and homework that demands to be done and a life that demands to be lived to pull back, place my hand over my heart and whisper, "No, this is what matters."
I've been in a state of relative dis-ease health wise lately. Little blue pill bottles lined up on my shelf seem to stand in mockery, showing me again how I failed. I stare at them, willing them to work, willing my body to begin working on it's own and no longer need their assistance.
I read this week that it is foolish for someone to think that one sick body part will not effect all the others, but I kind of did think that. So this one nerve in my body isn't doing it's job, but I have been almost drill sergeant in my commands to my other body parts to do their job, and perhaps work overtime to compensate. Unfortunately that is not the case, and I'm feeling the fatigue in all parts of my body.
I routinely quote movies, and after watching Hotel Transylvania 2 my boyfriend and I regularly quote the line to each other, "I just need to feel loved." Last night, in all seriousness, I used that line.
I feel pulled by so many things, am working so hard to put up this façade and be the strong one and have it all together. Sometimes I don't even realize myself what I'm doing until it all comes crashing down around me and I'm left surrounded by the ruin of it all.
I've been working so hard and pushing myself that I don't acknowledge that I'm exhausted and frustrated and feeling empty.
My friend called last week, and challenged me to take care of myself. The goal was to practice yoga at least once that week, and to text her once I had completed my task.
I texted her yesterday morning, and in my text I included a simple line that I learned this summer, one I didn't realize the importance of until I said it.
Alisha has received medicine.
I have pill bottles lined up on the shelf, doctors working to treat my body, but I've been denying myself the medicine I really need. I slipped into my disguise of everything is alright and I just pushed on and did what needed to be done.
And I agree that there is a time for that.
But there is also a time for acknowledging the heaviness. The stories I've been hearing remind me of things in my own past, and I want to be there and help but I can't unless I take care of myself first. I need to acknowledge the ugly bits of my own story before I can help others with theirs. I am sick, and without acknowledging that ugly illness grief I can't begin healing.
I think there is great power in acknowledging our own stories, and sharing them.

We have to be able to name the chains, and then, I think, we have to be able to confess them. To openly admit, “This, right here, this pulls at me. This controls me. This makes me act a certain way. This distracts me from the Center, from the Core, from seeking first God.”

I'm on this journey of the heart, one that was made clear to me when I started this school year but I still resist so much. It's not easy naming your chains, and the process of becoming free is hard. I didn't know that when I started. But claiming that freedom, and taking back my ground is hard.
Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve to walk there, on that ground of freedom. Sometimes I feel like I'm swinging an ax at a big old tree and barely even making a dent. The negative tapes I hear in my head are too loud, there's too much pain, I can't even begin to tackle these things and have it really make a difference.
Right now, much of this practice is about creating space. I'm creating space for these stories, to tell the truth, to get brave again, to love myself, to be loved by others. Space to fight, to take back my heart and mind and soul and body and voice.
This practice, this daily creation of space, however that looks, is medicine. It's healing, and uncurling the ache and it's beautiful.
Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you're supposed to be

I was talking to my friend earlier tonight and she said something along the lines of, "I feel like I'm carrying too many stories inside of me."
I could only nod, because I'm feeling the same way right now. Too many stories, both mine and others, all loud and frantic inside my brain but unable to be written out in a coherent manner. They attach themselves to the curtains, swing from the chandeliers, misbehave like hooligans. These stories sit inside of me, like murky water, stagnant and unmoving.
...
As I was walking up the stairs of a tall office building earlier today, picking up a child welfare check for a new volunteer position that I'm really excited about, my friend called me. She asked how I was doing and I sighed, "It's been a hard last couple of days."
I went away over the weekend and the whole time I was there I felt guilty for not being here. Now I'm here, surrounded by the 'normalcy' of school and I can only wish for the freedom of there. I'm never quite feeling settled within myself.
In the last couple of days, the automatic negative thoughts I have are louder. Sometimes they roar and my voice shakes as I howl back, "You're not true!"
I'm more emotional than normal, stumbling around. I apologize for needing constant reassurance, for a sharp tongue that sometimes gets the better of me, for the burden I think I am on those I love, for needing grace and grace and grace.
I'm tired. I have this desire to give and give and give, to pour myself out into things and people that I love - after all, isn't servant hood the reoccurring theme in my classes lately? - and I always forget the little bean dangling from my wrist, the one that tells me I need to take care of myself too.
Tiny things trigger this cascade of emotion. Moments when I'm touched the wrong way, when someone says the wrong thing, when another beautiful girl in the dorm shares her heart with me, a comment said by a well meaning friend. None of these bad things, and certainly not the source of the emotional responses I've been having, and yet when stacked on top of one another, they feel like too much.
I berate myself for not being better at juggling. Then I remember that clowns juggle, and clowns are creepy, and I am grateful I'm not a clown.
...
I sat in chapel this morning, remembering the yoga challenge I did back in August. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that this is a good body. Not only this literal, physical body, though I'm still learning to redeem that too, but the body of Christ.
I was sitting in class recently and I realized that so much of what I hear and take in, I'm taking in through that 13 year old girl filter. The strongly stubborn Jesus doesn't love me and There is no such thing as a good God. And I'm afraid to say it, because I'm at Bible school after all. Aren't I supposed to be among the super spiritual, the ones that trust God in every trial and never waver? Those are my people, right?
I want those to be my people.
But my faith wavers. Some days I'm not even sure what I believe, or if I believe at all. I don't want to be here, and I don't know why I'm here. I want to pack up everything into my car and drive somewhere far away.
Family issues, struggles in my relationship, health concerns, my past, they come up and I fight the urge to say Consider this trial a pure joy? are you kidding me?
I'm not sure where I stand right now, and that feels like a very powerful thing to say. The movement I can feel happening in this body is exhausting, and strong, and often leaves me breathless. And I'm not sure yet where it will go, or what will happen.
...
Maybe some day I will have it in me to write all these stories. That was my goal with this blog, the last school year and this one. Instead I'm finding some stories you have to carry with you a good long while before they even make sense, before you can write them out and begin to make peace with them. That's kind of what my stories are like right now.
I'm practicing the giving of grace. I'll carry these stories until they release me. It's all in the process of redeeming. It's exhausting, and uncomfortable, but I whispered the words a long time ago when I decided to become a writer over my stories and I whisper it again over my heart now:
I will carry you

Here Be Dragons

I sat across from a girl who told me her story
With wide eyes, a face weathered by wars unspoken, exhausted and weary she sat before me, unfolding her life's story like a road map
Her hands, they told a story as they skimmed over the map, pointing out the roads she's traveled, the diners and run down motels she went into looking for a night's rest and refuge but only finding more monsters.
She said she was tired , and I could tell by the look on her face that she meant it. She looked hesitant still, hesitant to unload her baggage and her crumpled, torn road map and allow me to look over the outlines of highways and river banks.
She told me about the storm.
How this area here, the pale icy blue blob in the corner was where it began. When you're small, you do the best you can and this stain in the corner is where her hands shook and if you look closely you can see where she tried to paint the blue into an ocean, a lake, something, anything worth looking at but in the end it's only a stain.
Everyone told her the stain wasn't her fault, that just because the corner was ruined didn't mean the roadmap was useless, and she tried to believe them. But as she drove from one ghost town to the next the blob seemed to get larger and she couldn't escape it's looming permanency. She knew that her own crooked hands had been wrapped around the paintbrush, and even if the spill didn't drip from her fingertips she had tried to paint it away.
The rest of the roads, curvy and winding, seemed to be dictated by this stain.
She showed me the small towns and truck stops she'd sought as she ran away from the stain, in each one searching for love and refuge, in each one finding only more rain.
And the water began to fill her lungs, and the whole thing felt like a rainy Seattle sky and she believed them when they said the sun never shines in Seattle.
She showed me where she tried to make her own sun, roads marked brown and faded burnt orange, close but never shining vibrant. Twisting, shrinking, running, extracting, taking in, covering, revealing.
The roads, she said, never shone promised golden sunbeams.
She showed me the trees, the forest, the night. She referred to it as the moment when her body gave in, when the sickness riddled her bones, when pain became an every day fight.
Her stomach clenches tight as she tells this part, how she became another anomaly, another unexpected detour.
Her fingers trace the rough edges of the darkest days, the unmarked path traced in black ink. There are ink dots, each one representing a marker.
the day he fell, the day she cried, the day he left, the day she finally admitted she had wandered off the map into uncharted territory and there be dragons.
There be dragons
She said it's what they say when they've reached territory the map hasn't yet covered, because who knows what could be out there.
And the dragons that lurked in the unknown, they prowled at night. Some were friendlier than others. Some she learned to see behind their glistening eyes and treat kindly, others reared their ugly heads whenever the occasion presented itself.
And she, she tells me about the time when she learned to live with dragons. How everyone was afraid of this. How sometimes she was afraid of the dragons too.
How the dragons represented the storm, and all that followed.
I watch her, this dragon warrior.
She points to a spot on the map, painted a green blue with flecks of reddish gold and I ask her what it means.
She says this is now. Now, still marked by the blue paint that once stained the map, but now there are other colors too. The green is the grassy fields, the semblance of peace returning to the dark lines of the map. The reddish gold are flecks of sunbeam, of learning to be joyful.
Abuse, addiction, illness, pain, searching, empty promises, heartache, lost, darkness, dragons.
She doesn't quiver when she tells these parts of the story anymore. She used to, she says.
Now her eyes show fatigue, show pain as she runs her fingers over map lines, but there is something else too.
the knowledge that here be dragons, but this is not the end of the map. There is more map, more space, more road untraveled.
The stain at the beginning, the forest in the middle, the dragons that emerge from the shadows, they are not the end.
I get up from the mirror and walk away

Here's to the good times (A thank you letter)

This is a thank you letter


This is a thank you letter to the world that birthed me, that raised me up to become the person I am today, to the trees and the rocks and the flowers and the ocean, to the stars that formed me and then called my name, reminding me that I always belong somewhere, this one is for you.
This is a thank you letter to those who were present that night when I was born, for the doctor who said "It's a girl!", for the nurses who cleaned me up and set me in my parent's arms, who made me the most special, newest human on earth for brief seconds, this one is for you.
This is a thank you letter for my parents who chose life, who decorated my nursery and took pictures of my firsts that would fill my baby book to remind me that I didn't have only lasts, but also firsts, who stood beside my bedside time and time again, tirelessly, late into the night, standing guard like soldiers, this one is for you.
This is a thank you letter to the friends I had growing up, who taught me the basics of human interaction. Even though we were just silly kids, I always believed we could be something more.
This one is for the people who bruised my heart, the ones I can still count off on my fingers. They say you always remember the bad things more than the good things and I guess they're right. I still remember it all. But thank you anyway, because you showed me who I could be.
This one is for the missions team that summer when I was 14, who were there for me when I needed someone, who taught me that love is really the strongest force of all.
This one is for the people who told me I couldn't do it. I proved you wrong, thank you for pushing me to try.
This is a thank you to the poets, the philosophers, the kind souls who touched me with their light and reminded me that we are not alone on this gauntlet, who encouraged me, listened to me, and laughed with me. Without you I wouldn't be half the creative mind I am.
This is a thank you for the friends that saved me, the best friends who remind me who I am even when I forget
For the friends I met when I decided to fearlessly step out of my comfort zone this year, who endured stress and teachers and tests with me, but also so many laughs, debates, questions and who connected with me in such an amazing way
For the people that don't quite fit, who are pushing against labels and boxes, this one is for you
This is for the ones who told me it was ok to be loud, to use my voice, to be passionate and opinionated and fierce
This is a thank you to all the boys I wrote poems about
This is a thank you to all the amazingly strong women who taught me what it means to be a woman, to be strong and smart and kind
Here's to John Green videos on bad days, late night conversations and music
This is a thank you to the doctors who saved me, the friends who saved me, the family that saved me, the words that saved me
This is for the teachers that inspired me, the poets that moved me, the moments that screamed Remember this
Here's to road trips, country music, taking adventures and writing about them
This is a thank you to the boy on the bus that one summer, the boy in the hospital waiting room, the boy in Chapters with a book and headphones, this is for all the people who's stories I've told without knowing their names
You matter
Thank you
Here's to the good times

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."

Stealing Stories and Making Memories

i. I've always had a thing for Saturdays. Staying in bed watching the sun creep into my room, taking naps in the middle of the day, creating and turning in with my journal and a good book and listening to One Direction while I cook lunch.
Before I took for granted how beautiful a day is when it comes to you without any expectations. And now, while my life is full of amazing, good things, I've been quite taken by these hours that seem to fold in on one another. I've started a little love affair with Saturdays, and I couldn't be happier.

ii. On my birthday, I had a moment of panic. A moment of wanting to just stay in bed and forget that this was what day it was. Where I could blissfully ignore the calendar. I was afraid because I didn't know how to be seventeen. I was another year older, another year farther away from everything that had happened during the past year, which felt like a good thing but also made me nostalgic. And throughout the day, I kept making these mental notes. What it felt like to sit at breakfast, surrounded by family. What it felt like to look at my relationships. What it felt like to get my nose pierced, what it felt like to drink a latte while wandering around the mall, what it felt like to buy the dress. And at night, when I emptied all of what I felt onto a page, I felt full. I was leaking over, bursting with all of what I couldn't hold.
Is this what it felt like to be seventeen?
I still don't know what it feels like. I think I'm a combination of every age I've ever been and every person I've ever loved and every place I've ever gone to. I don't think there is one way to feel a certain thing. And I'm excited to figure it out, to keep collecting memories until I'm full and then empty myself out, starting all over again.

iii. I've taken to stealing things. Bit and pieces of people's stories, taking tiny fragments of something they said or did or how they moved or what someone else said or did to them. I've taken to storing them all, stealing moments that belong to other people and creating something. I think I should wear a pin on my shirt, one that warns all oncoming people that I might just write about them someday. The way he looked at me in that one moment, or the way she walked down the hallway, or the way she closed the door and stood in the closet, taking a deep breath before walking away. And I'll never know what these moments mean to other people, but I do know what they mean to me, and that's why I write about them. That's why I turn them into a song or into poetry or into a scene in a story. That's why I doodle it on the side of my math homework or pull out my guitar or throw things around in the kitchen. Because I have to put it somewhere.
See, I collect these moments.
As much as I don't like talking to new people, I love eye contact. I love the thrill I get in my chest when my eyes lock with someone else. For a minute, it feels like a collision.
Yesterday I made eye contact with someone, and I found myself thinking about that brief second for the rest of the day. Something about the look in his eye moved me, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was.
I think that when you look someone in the eye, for a split second you're inside of their world and they're inside of you. It's this exchange, only for a second. It's one of the most powerful things I've ever felt, the honesty in people's eyes for that first second when you make that connection. Its enough for me to write pages and pages, filling up notebooks.
I wonder what people see in that brief second of honesty when they look in my eyes.
So I take the honesty I see in the world, the words other people say that make me feel something, and I close my eyes, putting myself in that moment. I put myself in a story that doesn't quite belong to me, and I make something out of it. I make it mine.
And I think that's why I feel so heavy sometimes, so full. Because I collect these moments, these brief glimpses of a universe that doesn't belong to me, and I hold them. And I remember them and I make them mine. And carrying around all those stories is hard sometimes, but its what I love.
I love that honesty, I love that eye contact, I love the vulnerability that happens without saying a word. That's the kind of language I speak on a daily basis. The language of stories, the language of the heart.

Patches

I am holding myself together with patches. I patch the holes, trying to make more patches than leaks. It's a trying task and doesn't leave much time for writing. At least not much time for writing about anything people would want to hear. Maybe one day soon I'll get my words figured out and be able to write more than grocery lists and silly little stories and heartbreakingly honest journal entries. Maybe I'll figure out how to write what I think and put it here, or there, or get it out somewhere besides my own head. Until then, here's one of those silly little stories. If you read between the lines, maybe you'll get a glimpse into what I've been thinking about these days.

She wanted to write but all she knew how to write were love stories and grocery lists.
Life was spinning fast, like a globe being spun around and around in a pair of tiny, grubby hands, and everything was bright like the fourth of July and she was still trying to decide if it was a comforting glow or the worrisome blaze of a fire threatening to wreak havoc on the little life she had made for herself.
She constructed her life like a patch quilt, the kind her grandmother always used to make for her. She added pieces until she had what resembled a blanket but really was just a large square constructed of smaller squares, the stitches uneven and jagged. She collected these patches like girl scout badges. One for moving out on her own, another for getting a cat, a third for remembering to take out the garbage on Thursday nights. There was one for remembering to buy groceries every week so her fridge was not bare and empty, holding only melting ice cream, salsa and a loaf of bread. Patches were collected for calling mom on Sundays and paying bills on time and eating three meals a day. The patches she collected for falling in love and being in a committed relationship were prettier than just the plain patterns of everyday living. These patches were warm, with shades of oranges and reds and pinks. They were smooth, like satin and silk, and warm like flannel. These patches were lovingly stitched next to the patches earned for everyday chores and showing up to work on time.
Just as her grandmother was a quilter, she was a writer though she hadn't earned a writing patch in a long time. It seems the only things she could write about were the items she needed to get at the market that week - apples, milk, bread, Oreos, carrot sticks, toilet paper, eggs - and love stories about the grand tales of falling in, and then out of, love with a boy everyone says is made for you. It wasn't that she doubted he was a good man, a wonderful man. It was just that he had plans, big plans, plans that did not consist of living in a one bedroom apartment waitressing to pay the bills until her writing career finally went somewhere. No, his plans consisted of her becoming the perfect housewife as he pursued politics in the big city. She knew they wouldn't get anywhere, of course, at least not together. Sooner or later he would realize she could never be the kind of person he wanted her to be and he would leave, find someone better suited to his tastes. He would realize that sometimes she could barely earn the taking out the garbage patch or the one for paying the bills on time much less earn the patch for becoming a perfect trophy wife. Her counters were covered in crumbs and unopened mail and an unopened birthday package from her mother from three months ago. She couldn't even remember to put new toilet paper on the roll when the old one was used up and she still had an empty toilet paper tube sitting on the roll, waiting to be changed out with a new one. She only had one coffee mug and a bowl and she stole plastic cutlery from fast food restaurants.
She was a writer, a brilliant one, and yet all she could seem to write about was the food she needed to buy for the week - apples, milk, bread, Oreos, carrot sticks, toilet paper, eggs - and about a boy who would never love her the same way she loved him. For him it was only who she could become and for her it was different. She saw who he was. She wished he could see himself through her eyes, the way he looked first thing in the morning, with bleary eyes, not yet having had his coffee and before reading the paper. It was kind of tragic, if you stopped to think about it. She kept waiting for him to love her back the way she loved him and she also had this vague sense of knowing that it would never happen. He would never love her back. And writing about that was just writing the same sentence over and over again.
Please love me.
So instead she would write grocery lists and wait for fate to change things as fate always seems to have a way of doing and she would add patches to her life like the ones earned for taking out the trash on time and paying the bills and not forgetting to call her mother. She would wait until she found inspiration in words once again, when everything worth writing about didn't seem so sad and tragic. While waiting for her own art to take shape, she would become an artist like her grandmother, slowly quilting her life.