Forest Green

I've started identifying each day with a color
Blood red, harsh pink, ocean blue
I write every day that today is harsh pink or today is burnt orange
I've been taking notes
Some of them in a running word document I have on my computer titled Remember this.
Remember the way you feel right now, remembering how it all was, remember how you felt, remember this. Sometimes the words are coherent, detailed accounts of what happened. Sometimes they are feelings, words I shouldn't say but write anyway, the honest truth. Sometimes it is only a sentence, or a color.
Today is blood red
There are years for questions and years for answers and so far this year has been one for being stripped bare, standing naked in front of people, wearing my heart on my sleeve, gasping for air, trying to understand this. I'm not exactly sure what kind of year that is, but I know this last month and a bit has felt like a sledge hammer to the stomach, kicking my spine. I keep choking on the truth, acting like I have something to prove.
I've been writing a lot, most of it broken records, the same thing repeated in a million different ways. It's not always polite and I'm learning that sometimes honesty isn't polite. I'm over using the word metaphor and the truth is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow.
Today is forest green. It's wrapping my mind around the truth and trying to get it right. It's too much poetry, not enough honesty.


"There are places inside me I'm still learning to love. They are shaped like God or cigarette smoke"

Storage Space

I go through periods where all I can do is write. If I don't, the words settle in my stomach and make me ill. I write about Sunday mornings lying in bed, about boys who drive black cars, about the smell of the library after lunch and the sound of shoes on the hard floor and the way he watches me.
Other times, I feel barren and dried up. There are no words, nothing that comes effortlessly and flows. Every word takes thought, meticulously transferred from my mind to my tongue to my paper. I feel every nerve moving as I run the pen along the page, feel the work it takes to be the translator.
It is in these barren times I find myself collecting moments. Analyzing how it feels to lie in bed on a Sunday morning, studying the science of how things work and why, capturing the particles that wind themselves into old movie theater seats and the first snow fall.
I like the writing phases a lot more. I like having words, letting them pour effortlessly out from under my tongue. But I'm finding that being still has its beauty too.

I saw a trailer for a movie once where the girl pulled feathers out of her spine. Even though I've never seen the movie, for some reason that image is stuck in my mind. These past few days my skin has been peeling, I'm warmer than usual and there's scratching under my skin. It happens sometimes, part of a transition I suppose. And I can't help but check for feathers.
I feel hurricanes in the pockets of fluid between my bones and I feel tornados making ash out of my bones and I feel stars twinkling in my blood stream. Sometimes it feels like poetry and other times it just feels like a natural disaster lying dormant beneath my skin, a trauma waiting to happen.
People ask me if I'm ok and I am. It's just that I'm restless, tired of waiting for this transition to happen. I'm using my fingernails to claw back this layer of skin, revealing a newer, pinker layer underneath, fresh and ready to be worn away. I feel more fragile when this layer of skin has been worn through, done its job and ready to be replaced. When I'm in transition, I absorb everything like its life giving oxygen. I become very aware of the storm brewing inside of me.

My knees knock together. I unravel myself like a sweater. I am composed of moments and I feel as though I only have room to hold a few at a time. It almost feels like I'm a hoarder, pressing these moments into nooks and crannies inside my body where they don't belong but its simply because I'm all out of storage space. I peel back layers of flesh to make room for new skin, unworn, unscarred skin. My hands shake from pulling away the peeling layers.
Sometimes I feel like a car crash waiting to happen. I see the headlights before me, see the moon above me, and I brace for impact. When I hit, everything explodes and I think I'm raining stars.

Autumn

"Tell me it's all going to be ok," I said in an email. "You can lie if you have to, I just need to hear that it's all going to be ok."
"It's not," She told me, "It's going to be what it is. But you're going to be ok."

It was the last Wednesday in October and I was driving down the back roads at night, the radio playing so loud it drowned out my thoughts. As loud as it was, something about the whole thing felt still. Even though I was tucked safely behind the windshield of my car, it was like I could feel the wind coming through, going right through my sweater and the layers of my skin and blowing between each rib that makes up my ribcage, whipping away all the thoughts and fears and needs I had and leaving only stillness and serenity. And for a split second, it was all ok. Everything I needed was right here, for one minute. I felt full but for the first time in days that feeling of fullness didn't hurt. It felt like safety, security, solace.
I'm not sure if it's possible to find Holy Ground in the driver's seat of an old Jetta but if it is, I think I found it.

I have this friend who says things I think about saying but never do. And I told her this one day, sitting in a school assembly squished between her and another person. She told me that I should say it anyway, and who cares what people think.

I watched a spoken word once about apologizing for taking up space. It was late June and I decided to stop making apologizes for how I chose to live my life. "I'm sorry," I said rather defiantly, "But I'm not sorry."
I'm not sorry for saying I love you and meaning it.
I'm not sorry for loving too much.
I'm not sorry for believing in God and love and magic and the hidden power that comes in a box of hair dye and a tube of red lipstick.
I'm not sorry for not being the person you want me to be and I'm not sorry for needing you and I'm not sorry for not having it in me to be the person who can still look at you the same way and not be bitter and not be the person who has these moments where all I feel is the pain and it hurts so much I can't breathe and a scream gets trapped in my lungs where it turns to ash.

As I lay here, with all of these feelings pressing hard up against my bone, I remind myself of this. I remind myself that one day all of this will have burned down to ash that I will then scatter in the wind of the wide open space I've learned to call home and it won't hurt as much as the burning of it all.
And I remind myself that life will be what it is, but everything I need is right here, even if I don't see it yet, and that no matter what happens I will be ok.

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.

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.