Becoming Whole

Recently I was given the amazing opportunity to write for this little literary publication called the Feminist Wire.
It's my first published piece outside of a blog, and the staff there were amazing to work with.
The piece I shared on the wire is part of a bigger collection of things I'm writing: most of them messy and unedited, raw and real. It's a collection of essays on love, and addiction, depression and motherhood and what it means to be human.
It started out as a running journal, a way to keep track of my thoughts while my boyfriend was gone and I was lonely because he jokingly said before he left that while he was gone I should write a book.
So I did.
And now my little creative project is over 100 pages long and still being added to, and houses some of my favorite pieces I've ever written.
I was honored that the Wire was willing to host this tiny piece of my heart. I know it is in great hands, and I am so proud to share it.
http://thefeministwire.com/2015/06/college-feminisms-becoming-whole/

“A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, so does God. that’s why you can see the grand canyon from the moon.”

For the Creators (Thank you and keep going)

Most days I feel really lucky to be a writer. Being a creator, in any capacity, is a beautiful, heartbreaking, soul filling undertaking. It can often feel like a solitary journey, as I spend most of my time in my room curled up in my chair writing stories that (for now) for the most part nobody will ever read. And sometimes I think I should stop, but my heart beats stories, and poems and lyrics and I can stop writing like I can stop breathing.
A while ago I had the privilege of attending one of the best concerts I've ever been to. This morning as I was curled up with my coffee, a good book and music created by my amazingly talented friend, I was reminded how much I need creative people in my life. The post I wrote then resonates with me now.
This one is for all the creative people, the writers and musicians and painters and anyone who creates in any capacity. Thank you for creating. The world needs you. I need you.

People pay for concert tickets to be entertained. I come to be inspired. I sit before the artist, hands open wide, holding out my heart and saying “Can you open this for me?”

 The best ones can. The best ones take a wild swing and crack open the rough exterior enough for me to feel something for a designated period of time. The ones that can’t allow me to walk away feeling disappointed, clinging to any and all belief that art is like a stripper of the soul.

…

As I sat in that chair, pressed between my mother and a stranger, hot, sticky and sweaty bodies crowding into a stadium the very size of an NHL hockey arena, nothing else mattered. At least that’s what I told myself.

 For the next 90 minutes I let the music flow through me like a drug, let it slip all tension from my veins into its medicating chill.

 I think rock concerts are a little bit like church. I think one of the ways I experience God isn’t when His people are gathered together singing His name, though surely in that too, but when hundreds of strangers come together to drink and laugh and celebrate good music.

 For the next few hours it doesn’t matter that I normally wouldn’t say hello to the woman on my left if I passed her on the street. It doesn’t matter that I’ll never see 99% of these people again. It doesn’t matter that when tomorrow comes the band will move on to inspire a new city of wanna-be-believers and the woman on my left will return to her dead end job she hates and the guy sitting in the aisle below me will still go home alone after breaking up with his girlfriend and the young girl over there with her hand’s in the air will go back to a school where she’s bullied day in and day out for being different, or that when tomorrow rears its head I will march with all the false bravery I can muster into a doctor’s office and pretend I am not scared to death. What matters is that we have tonight.

 Cell phone flashlights lighting up the stage and loud, off key, drunken singing and I want to know what it would be like to be an artist who inspires this many people. I want to make people forget about tomorrow and live in the moment, to truly feel something – maybe for the first time – and to laugh and kiss and make messes and make art and make babies (and how maybe all of these are the same thing).

 Tonight it doesn’t matter who we are before we walked in the door. We’re all united, coming together for one purpose. And I think that’s a lot like church. I think it’s every chapel and cathedral I want to worship in. I think it’s every mind blowing, good song that makes me want to believe in better things that I want to dance to.

 I want to play these songs blasting in the car on my way to work and remember this moment, and how alive I felt, and how nothing else mattered because I had right now.

…

Creative people inspire me.

 Their passion is contagious and their dedication infectious and their excitement makes me delirious. It makes me want to stay up all night crafting something that really matters with my own two hands that I can look at in the morning and whisper in holy reverence, “My God, did I really make that?”

 It makes me want to feel, and to capture that exact feeling on a notebook or a canvas or my kitchen wall.

 Creative people inspire me to create. They inspire me to feel, to be present, to live and laugh and love and not worry about getting hurt along the way because even a few bruises make damn good art.

 Their creative energy passes through them into me like it’s a form of osmosis, like a blood transfusion, and I know to them I’m just another face in the crowd but I want to grab the face of the lead singer and look into his eyes and tell him thank you for daring to create bravely.

 Because the world needs more people to come alive, to truly say what they think and think what they say and to let their thoughts and feelings be the lifeblood that guides them. Because I need them. I need more people awake and alive, daring greatly and failing miserably and then trying again bravely all in the name of good art. I need them standing around me continuing to create and inspiring me with words and pictures and lyrics and beats, because it’s like they are standing around me with hands up, keeping me safe and reminding me to do my thing.

 Us artists, we’re a special breed, one I feel honored to be among. I feel honored to be a part of the movers and shakers of this world who want more beauty and light and unity and feeling. The genuine souls, the ones that create bravely, are the kind of people I want to surround myself with. The intimacy created between you and a few thousand strangers, that’s what I want to witness over and over again, letting it change me.

 I want to be around people who birth beautiful things: even when it’s hard, even when the world says you should quit. It inspires me to keep writing my own birth story, to gently shepherd out this huge story blossoming inside my ribcage.

 I want my life to be this story, this art, this creation. I want every moment I am alive and breathing to bear witness to the fact that I lived and loved and maybe I failed but at least I tried.

 And with every broken bone, I swear I lived

They line up: various shades of colors all neatly organized on a beige towel spread out on the white tile of the bathroom floor. Pinks, greens, purples, various shades of tan and cream and bronze. Neatly lined up makeup brushes frame the disorganized masterpiece. It’s like a canopy, a fencing in, a box. Within it everything is concealed, closed up and contained.

 …

I woke up in the morning, the sun playing peekaboo through the window shades, to a sizeable knot of dread sitting in the center of my stomach.

 Good morning, I whispered to the lump.

 Good morning, the lump replied, I’m scared

Scared

 I held the word close to my chest like a mother nursing her young, running my fingers over every aspect of its protruding evidence. I held in my hands the weighted memories of the months gone by, how each and every moment I’d held trembled within my grasp until it finally shattered into a precarious nothing.

 Whenever I tried to mend, I mutilated. Every broken relationship, broken dream, broken heart I tried to knit together between my palms resulted in uneven, jagged edges stitches, various staples, tape and glue holding together this scrappy mirage of what my life was supposed to look like.

 And the immense nature of this seeming failure weighed heavy on my shoulders and presented itself as a lump in my stomach that whispered good morning to me as I fluttered open my eyelashes upon the arrival of the dawn.

 Come, I told the lump, It’s alright to be scared. Let me hold you

…

I’ve never been good at being the warrior type. My swords are sharp words, my shield the practiced plastic smile. I hide behind the candy apple red lipstick and the gentle smell of perfume, turning myself overnight from victim to vixen.

 I spend too much time hiding under covers, crying in bathrooms, putting on a brave face for the world because once I was taught that showing emotion was a sign of failure and ever since then I promised to never let them see me cry.

 Everything became effortless. Life became alright. I didn’t ask because I convinced myself I didn’t need and if I didn’t need anything from anyone I couldn’t be cut down and left bleeding when they walked away because I wasn’t the girl of the day, or the hour, or the moment.

 I was a cadaver, an empty body reached for, a substitute, something, anything to distract from the present moment. I was an object of their lust, their passionate desire, their drunken denial that anything was wrong. I became parts of their stories but as quickly as I would slide into a role in their narrative I forgot the role in my own.

 …

Get up.

His playful teasing, the way he refused to pay extra attention to my weak points, running over them with a fine tooth comb, obsessing about the details, it made me stronger.

 In a way, it was a ripping off the mask. It was looking at it the same time as he was looking through it, looking at me while he was looking past me.

 Little moments would come when I wasn’t paying attention, when I was walking to class or cleaning my plate or standing in the hallway. Little moments, like his eyes watching me, like the way he told me to wear a coat, all these little chinks in my armor as I was getting ready for class on a Tuesday.

…

And it unnerved me. Because I’ve practiced the smile and I’ve learned the right way to act so they don’t question and I’ve tried to distance myself from the world so it can’t hurt me and then there is this moment when someone looks right into you, a moment when you look into yourself, and everything shifts ever so slightly.

Not noticeably, not much, but one day it’s a Monday and you’re getting ready for class and you’re late or maybe you’re early and you forgot to brush your teeth or put on deodorant and you’re jumping into your shoes at the same time that you’re shoving yesterday’s homework into your bag and there you are.

 Standing in the mirror, this frazzled mess, but you see this girl and you know her. And your eyes hold hers for a moment too long and you realize that this girl in the mirror is not poised, not perfect. It’s only 7am and the day hasn’t had time yet to make her hard and she’s still soft and round, like a peach.

 And this girl is strong, and weak, and loud and quiet and curves and edges and soft and hard and it doesn’t matter. She’s not hiding behind the paper doll smile. She’s putting on her boots or knotting up her hair or applying that final coat of red lipstick.

Heartless

I've been doing a lot of self reflection lately, more so than usual. I've been writing a lot of honest truths, most of which I don't share because they're too real, too vulnerable.
I wrote this months ago. I don't remember the context. I don't even relate to it in the same way anymore. But reading it I can still remember being in that place of honesty.

My body smells like honey.

 When I was 6 years old, my grandpa took me to a bee keeper’s home, where we wandered the rows and rows of boxes that provided homes for the bees.

 I was deathly afraid of getting stung, so I stuck close to his side, finding safety and shelter under my grandfather’s arm. At the end of the tour, the owner offered us some honey.  I enjoyed it on a fresh piece of bread, savoring the taste of it under my tongue.

 There are some things I am unwilling to say goodbye to. There are some childhood memories I hold on to with such ferocity the only way to pry them from my fingers would be with a crowbar. I have bruises on each of my knuckles from the whacks I have received as they have tried to pry my innocence from my grasp.

 My fingers are calloused from holding on, even in all the steely roughness that the past contains. My palms are no longer smooth and soft, but instead take on the form of a solider preparing for battle. I have a gun slung over my right shoulder, my face smudged with dirt, the smoke so stifling I can barely take in a full breath but still I gasp, hoping that through the fog some fresh oxygen will land on my lips and be a respite for my aching soul, a balm for when everything feels like a wildfire.

 I have lived my life in the trenches, learned from the best what it means to always be in control, have been taught to grow inward not outward, to hide my flaws and mask my shame. I still remember the whispers of the voices that begged me to never forget who I am, like long before I had a chance to discover it for myself my destiny was thrust upon me.

 Like a label that stuck, every word they said to me only made me more jaded in my pursuits, more vicious and unkind.

 Have you heard them recently?

 They say I am heartless.

 They say that beneath this steely shell there is nothing but unwavering nothingness, blackness that has consumed the core of me. There is nothing good left in this body, only manipulation and lies that have created my identity.

 If I was heartless the world would not carry so much weight that I would stumble under the load of it all. I would not care so much about this thing inside of my chest that beats, starts and stops, without logic or reason. I would not spend nights sitting awake because only the midnight sky understands what it’s like to be a soldier always running away from the one thing they keep pointing you towards.

 I am always missing the target. I am a bullet perfected for a mission, robot in my animations, cowardice in my courage.

 I have perfected my craft, become good at this one thing, and while it was what they asked of me they still have the nerve to stand before me and demand I change.

 They whisper that long ago I should have out grown my childish games and that I should change who I am, that a real lady is required to be seen but not heard, gentle in her pursuits, calm in her demeanor and never letting another see her sweat. She is an object crafted for perfection, a vision of beauty, a creation that, when held in perfect purity, is like none other.

 She is the unattainable, the desirable, the flawless and unclaimed.

 She is everything I will never be. I am learning to be ok with this.

 She is a pearl, and I am a bullet. Both crafted from something else but our paths never intersect.

 I was a pearl once.

 I was good, and noble, honest and true, pure and upstanding. I was the epitome of everything they want me to be and then some.

 And then they say life happened, as they shake their heads, like somehow changing and allowing yourself to be hurt by this world is a crime, that you are no longer as valuable as the day you opened yourself up to the world.

 Maybe I wasn’t made to be a pearl. Maybe the grizzly harshness of the war always intrigued me, always held a certain appeal.

 I tore my skin apart, ripped my body to shreds, to try and be who I thought they wanted, to be who I thought I wanted.  The dream was dangling in front of me and I would stop at nothing to get it.

 Skinner, smarter, faster, sharper, with less bold turns and razor edges. This is the girl who gets it all. This is the one they stare at as she enters the room because she is everything they ever wanted, a pearl in the highest regard.

 She is everything I will never be.

 A good friend told me that some women are just made for the war, their bodies less soft and round and instead sharper, built like a bullet as it flies from the gun. He recognized the wild passion inside of me and touched it ever so gently. He taught me how to be brave, how to be smart, how to protect myself, how to shoot. He ran his fingers over my casing, seeing me for all I was and not looking the other way. I never appreciated his fingers around my frame when I had the chance.

 They say I am heartless because of this, calloused and bruised, no longer a prized pearl but instead something of far less importance. I am not who they want me to be, and sometimes I’m not so sure I am who I want to be.

 This thing I call a heart that sits in my hand has notches in it from everything in this world that has ever left its mark on me. I keep it in a shell for safe keeping. Every once in a while I bring it out, thrusting it upon someone and asking them to hold it for a while. Most of the time I’m asking them not to break it.

 When it comes back, tattered and bruised, with the edges fraying, I gently polish it with a cloth, binding the wounds and putting it back in the box for safe keeping.

 They still have the tenacity to say I am heartless.

 I say come, inhale this smell that rises off of my body. It is the smell of everything I refuse to let go of, even if it kills me. It is the innocence and the gentleness, the soft nature and the calm demeanor that I refuse to let go of.

 I know it’s still there, tucked away into a secret corner of my tattered heart, because I can still smell the honey.

I thought I'd be here by now

 I want to be free.

I thought of the words as I watched them dancing, carelessly and effortlessly like they existed for no other purpose than to be fully alive in this moment.

 I hadn’t been free in a long time, not since I learned that it meant to be conscious of my body, since I learned to become who they wanted me to be, fit into the roles I was meant to play, even if that meant losing myself.

 I imagine you have hit an all-time low when you are envious of the birds, with the way they soar unchained and belonging to nothing except themselves.

 I want to be free.

 Even observing their freedom made my heart leap with possibility, despite the part of me that insisted I remain in my seat, sit quietly, not out of place.  I watched with a strange mix of envy and desire, a longing inside of me to exist outside of myself.

 I want that I could only whisper, like a child in a candy store.

 Whatever that is, I want that.

 For so long I have belonged to someone else. I have made myself smaller, my edges harsher or gentler, pushing and pulling and tugging and stretching and simplifying.

 I am tired of being the person I am expected to be.

 I am tired of waiting for the answer to be yes.

 Tears stream down my cheeks, as they always do the moment I experience a gasp of fresh air only to find myself choking on polluted oxygen a while later.

 I have spent my whole life reigning myself in, letting fear hold me in place. I am tired of listening to the voice in my head that says I am never enough. That these scars I wear are like chains around my ankles, holding me in place.

 I want to be free.

Dialog with a stripper

The idea of becoming scares me

I think there are moments when every writer forgets they are actually a writer. Suddenly you become the worst person in the world, and your mind is filled with words like lazy and unproductive and destined to fail. This is called the inside of my head when I am going through writer's block.

I sat in English class this morning, where my teacher read us a poem written during the siege of Sarajevo. The poet said that writing through the war was hard, but what was harder was not writing.

She asked us to write our responses, and I wrote that writers get naked for a living.

It's a line in a poem by Rudy Francisco, in which he compares being a writer to being a stripper.

A certain degree of honesty, and probably fearless stupidity, is needed to share your soul with the world. The most intimate, honest details of yourself are on display for other people and some people call me brave.

He looked in my eyes and told me this was a good starting place, but a starting place for what?

What will honesty and a few pennies in my back pocket buy me?

And when they say love doesn't pay the bills they mean it.

One of my biggest fears is that I will lose myself to a job I hate, to a life I resent, to something that feels forced and so unlike me.

Writing is one of those careers that makes people question your sanity. Writers always get this reputation for being crazy, and maybe we are.

Maybe it takes a little bit of crazy to bear your soul for the world to see, to turn your deepest failures and disappointments into poetry, to stand naked in front of people you've never even met, and some you have, and bear your soul, saying "Will you take this for me?"

Sometimes I'm scared that they will break it.

Most times I remember I don't have a whole lot left to lose.

I'm not sure which one scares me more.

When I was little, the first time I heard the word stripper used in a sentence, I laughed. As I got older, I began to see more of myself in the moment when I'd first heard that word. I was always taking off layers, spreading myself thin trying to get attention and fill this void inside of me. My sanity was a small price to pay for feeling worthy.

You probably know more of my secrets than you think you do.

And don't get me wrong, I love what I do. I can't imagine doing anything else. Writing is like breathing the purest oxygen, it's making love all over again every time I pick up the pencil and put it to paper, it's how I'm finding my sanity again.

But there are days when I am lost in the business of it all, when being a struggling artist sounds less romantic and more desperate, when self doubt plagues my mind and writer's block leaves me lacking inspiration and creativity and the feeling of fullness I have come to marvel at as it blossoms to life inside of me.

There are days when being a writer feels a lot like being a stripper, and I wonder why I'm standing here naked, bearing my soul with all it's scars and tattered edges.

I tell my version of the truth, hand my heart over to people with whom it will never be properly introduced. Sometimes I forget to tie my shoelaces and end up tripping over myself on my way out the front door to make something beautiful.

Sometimes my beautiful ambition turns into standing on the street corner with a bloody nose and a bruised eye without my clothes. My soul is dangling outside of my body and I wonder why I love this job so much.

Sometimes the things you love have the power to destroy you. And sometimes they also have the power to put you back together.

For me, writing is both. It is my destroyer, and my redeemer. It is everything beautiful, the first thing I want to do when I wake up in the morning, the thing I want to spend my whole life doing, how I interpret the world.

It is messy and honest and bold and beautiful and if you give me five minutes of your time I'll entertain you by stripping down to my soul and letting you sneak a peek.

I only ask that you are gentle with it.

Because after the night is over and I've covered my soul with layers again I still have to go home.

Love is (Not a feeling)

I've been writing a lot this month. Mostly losing myself in poetry, with the way it sits on my tongue and the way it sounds like a revival when I hear it spoken out loud. But also in a stories I've been working on, and essays and in journal entries.
This is a little bit from one of the stories I've been working on.

I can feel the slow deterioration of my body.

Every aching muscle sending off vibrations in my being echoes his name. Sometimes I think that these days his name resides in every part of me, that it is there just nestled between bones and muscles, tucked away in corners of organs, just waiting for a nerve impulse to send it shooting up my spinal cord.


It is these days when I feel as though I am collapsing into the sun.
 
I can almost visualize the tantalizing physique, the outline of my ribcage as it glistens in the sunlight. There are cob webs hanging off the top ribs, dusty gathered upon the surface. Some have been cracked, and you can see the fragments of bone hanging on loosely, see the scars from where the wounds were ripped open repeatedly, never left to set in the way they were supposed to.


The warm water licks my skin and it is as if I am baptizing myself, submerging myself in liquid and trying to scrub the dirty from my skin, rinse away the guilt and the regret with the apricot shampoo.

Whenever I think I am moving on, that there is a slightest chance I can be more than who I’ve been, something comes and sets me back. I can feel the metaphorical kicks to my stomach, my spine as I am curled up in a fetal position. I am vibrating, perched delicately upon this idea of wholeness, only to feel the stitches being pulled from my sides, feel the broken ribs piercing through my heart reminding me of all the times…

All the times I have stood up against a giant only to walk away with my head hung in failure. All the times I have wanted to believe in love and only come away with empty hands stained red as I try to stop the bleeding. All the times there has been this voice in my head that tells me I am unworthy, that I will never be the person I want to be, that I will never walk away unafraid and unscathed. Sometimes I think I feel too much.
 
I can feel myself caving in under the weight of the words every time a pretty boy tells me I am only good for one thing, every time I close my eyes and remember his hands on my skin for the first time and the last time, every time I see those eyes in my dreams that now belong to a boy who is buried under six feet of ground that is growing up around him. This is a living metaphor for beauty rising out of death, the world awakening after it has been shunned and ripped apart.


But ever since he left, ever since I first felt the taste of desperation and please love me on my tongue, ever since I learned that feeling something is preferable to feeling nothing and even the bruises are an angry man’s way at muttering a prayer, I have felt myself becoming skin and bones.

There is a shelf in my closet belonging to clothes that no longer fit me, are baggy when I try to pull them over my hipbones, that sit crooked on my shoulders.

I am dissolving.


In the very same way I am sitting in a tub of water praying for purification I don’t know if I have any right to ask for. How many times can you say the words Father, I have sinned and still expect forgiveness to come like deliverance to come like an answer to every prayer I’ve ever prayed, even the ones that are an embrace and a thrust apart in the same breath, I love you and I hate you intermingled into one raspy sound.

How many times can you wear another man’s weight upon your shoulders and claim it as your own? I am hunched over, my shoulder muscles separating from the bone because of all this weight I’ve forced upon them.

Someone told me after the funeral that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changed forms. It was meant to be an encouragement, and in some ways it was. Because after that moment I felt him everywhere, in the trees and the mountains and the puddles that whispered back to me the reflection of a girl collapsing in. But I also began to wonder if the weight I’ve been carrying isn’t mine at all, just transferred in from other people because it can’t be destroyed.

It sits upon my shoulders, falling onto the first strong branch that awaits its arrival. Maybe I am the girl standing with her hands raised to the winds, collecting anguished fragments of brokenness that settle on my hips and crack my ribs with every breath I breathe.

From down the hall I can hear them, dancing in the kitchen or playing another round of Monopoly with the radio on because these days the silence is deafening. I understand it because these days the sound of my own heart is strong enough to send shivers up my spine.


I am rubbing my skin raw, turning it red with unspoken apologies and guilt that is not mine to carry but I hoist it onto my shoulders anyway, swallow it back like I am downing a shot of whiskey, a twinge as I feel it settle inside.


This is the only way I know how to survive.


I wonder how many times you can pray for mercy before God becomes tired of listening.

Beautiful - a 5 minute Friday guest post

She is amazing. She is beautiful and intelligent and witty and on the bad days she sends me John Green videos. She is one of the most wonderful people I've ever had the privilege of meeting.
This girl is so amazing I would read her grocery lists (On occasion I have!) so I knew anything she would write would be fantastic, so when I asked her to write for 5 minutes straight about being a writer, and when she gave me this amazing little jewel of work, I was overjoyed. I was even more excited when she agreed to let me post her 5 minute, unedited blurb on my blog.
And Sami - thank you for letting me have the privilege of sharing your words with the world. You are amazing, and I am so honored I have the privilege of calling you my friend


"I first became acutely aware of my body image in eighth grade, right before graduation. Lori Anne wrote in my yearbook, "you are the skinniest girl I have ever met," and I knew she was serious - but I also thought her crazy.
I had not thought of myself as skinny since hitting puberty. I danced and had thighs, and if you dance and have things, you are not skinny, at least not when you are young and competitive. I felt lost between accepting a complement and denying its reality and confused about what was reality. Around then, I also had these fancy portraits taken in a brown dress, and my parents couldn't believe I looked so old. I couldn't wait to not look so young. I loved it. I remember looking at the huge portrait when it was hung, and thinking, I look like an adult.
 And I felt like it too, then. If you look like an age, you feel that age, if only for a few moments. I guess it's the same with beauty. If you look like Beauty, you know, with a capital B, like the societal type, then you feel like it - but when you're just you, and the subtler lowercase beauty, it's not so easy or automatic to feel."

Five Minute Friday: Writer

I haven't done five minute Fridays for a while, but today my friend dared me to write about today's word, and I agreed. And while it's too messy and unruly for my perfectionist self, it is mine.
Today's word was writer, and here's what I think of when I hear that word


There are days when I don't feel like a writer
days when I trip over my metaphors and choke on the words that I am trying to birth and every attempt to get this story right comes out forced and complicated
There are days when it feels like I am barren, like there is nothing left inside of me. These are the days when writing feels more like a curse than a blessing. I wish I could turn off the flow of words that are in my brain.
Being a writer is insanity, it's humbling and awe inspiring and I am so grateful for the opportunity to be welcomed into this secret community of other budding writers
Being a writer is frustrating, and I have quickly become my own worst critic. It is constantly tripping over shoelaces and tying up loose ends, maybe just as much as it is birthing this precious story I have been given
Carrying this story is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Drawing on my personal experiences to tell this story that I feel so profoundly inside of me is something that is taking more courage than I thought I possessed
Today is one of those days when I don't feel like a writer.
I am letting the world happen to me, despite wanting to control every unruly bit. I am falling in love with music and jotting love poems down onto napkins and staying up too late reading a book that makes my soul sight "Yeah, I've been there."
But I think maybe this is all part of becoming a writer too.
If I want to stand on my own two feet I must expand as much as I withdraw, must push out as I bring in. It's a gentle give and take, a craft I am still learning
But despite it's hardships, it is a craft I am proud to be a part of, something so beautiful and vital to my survival
Writing is like breathing, like wild chaos, like a beautiful disaster
and I am in love with every minute of it

Sunday Dinner

I imagine hosting a Sunday dinner
Autumn leaves delicately balancing on branches and the sun beating down on my shoulders
The table is set with potato salad and apple pie and lemonade
It feels like coming home
Someone will play guitar and we will sing, loudly and off key.
There will be dancing, and we will spin until we get dizzy
And as the sun sets, we will sit before the crackling fire and exchange stories and drink hot coffee out of tin cups
I am learning there is something unspeakably beautiful about being in the presence of someone who loves you
There is something unexplainable about speaking your truth, the best and the worst parts of yourself, without trying to justify or explain. And if you give people a chance, I am learning sometimes they might surprise you
We will sit under the stars and tell our stories, one after another, words rolling out of our mouths. It will feel something like becoming holy, something like being reminded of who you really are, something like stepping into sunlight after so long stumbling in the dark
I pour you another cup of coffee
There is something about being here, in this place, with this food and these friends, that makes you feel nourished, feel like you are perhaps becoming whole again
You, my love, are so much more than broken
Remember that, okay?
I have many things in my heart, many unanswered questions
but when you lean in and ask
How are you?
I will watch you, memorizing the colors in your eyes and the love radiating into my body and I will say
good

Skinny Love

She sat in the driver’s seat of her car, in the parking lot, taking one ragged breath followed by another.

 There are moments, she decided, when your past and your future collide and it feels like an accident. There is broken glass and screeching tired and screaming and your right hand shakes as you try to hold the pen between your fingers.

 There are moments when there is no truth left in you to be spoken, and that is when you need to speak the truth most.

 The words slipped from her lips like turpentine, running like naked hooligans up and down the aisles before she had a chance to capture them, smooth down their cowlicks and straighten their collars. They simply existed without her knowledge, tumbling out of her mouth one after another like small towheaded children rolling down a grassy hill in June.

 And while she rambled on, all the while feeling this intersection between who you have been and who you want to be, he watched her. His eyes were unwavering, despite how many times she looked to see if he had shifted his glance, or flinched, cringed at the sight of her horror and her wonder being birthed into existence.

 To find your truth, sometimes you have to get on all fours in the ashes and dig through them, sifting through the rubble with bare hands. It is messy, and there are things pulled from the ground that you would rather have stayed unearthed, but this is how you grow. You speak your shame, illuminating it as it bursts into being. And by speaking the words aloud, they lose some of their power.

  He watched her, hands curled around his coffee cup, and the way his eyes penetrated her being unnerved her. It was like the moment before the crash, when you are trying to brace yourself for impact. She kept waiting for the fallout, the one that always followed. She was waiting for him to condemn her, like she had done to herself all these years. She was looking for justification but he wasn’t giving her any.

 She hadn’t known unconditional, unwavering love until she looked into his eyes. He had listened to her story, untamed and wild, and chosen not to look away. And she could feel it, the quiet roar within her starting to grow louder

 Do you not know how strong my love for you is?

 We are each given a story, a truth. It is raw and unedited, sometimes messy, sometimes reckless. Sometimes your heart is wearing so many scars it looks like someone has taken a paintbrush to it, because there have been too many times you have tried to paint over the broken places, finding love in places where it doesn’t belong.

 Her heart was wind worn, falling apart at the seams. There are marks from all the staples and tape and glue she tried to use to hold herself together, one for every man she romanced in attempts to numb the pain and she wears them like notches on a bedpost.

 And as she sat alone, reflecting on the way He had looked at her, chosen her, put his claim on a bruised and bleeding heart, whispering this one is mine over the girl who has called herself unlovable, her body shook with the emotion that was coursing through her veins.

 You don’t get to choose your story, she decided, but you do get to make peace with it. You get to say “This is not how the story will end.”

 You get to make that choice to learn from the past, not change it, and use it to move you towards a better future.

 Despite the tears on her cheeks, there was a hopefulness in her heart that hadn’t been there for a really long time. It was the beginnings of something, a small tender shoot that, if cared for, would grow into a beautiful flower.

 It was there, waiting for her if she would only try.

 And despite the words in her head and the words on the page, she heard the silent roar leak out of her mouth: Do you not know how strong my love is?

 

If You Say So

I have been keeping my head down, avoiding Facebook, trying to pretend this day doesn't exist.
But it does
It's a whole year later and I still don't have the right words to say
Not that I haven't tried. For a whole year his name has leaked into every bit of writing.
I've fought with his memory, wrestled with my own emotions, stared at myself in the mirror so long wondering who this girl is now, and how she is supposed to react.
I have realized, in all my searching, that there is no guidebook for this. There is no one here except for me.
I have become somewhat selfish in my grief, wrapping it around me like a blanket. I don't talk about it to anyone, and am caught off guard by those who seem to put their grief on display, large pieces of it being lived out loud.
This is my memory, mine, you can't have it. This is all I have left of him. It's mine
I relive the pain over and over because is there really any other way? I could curse my writer's heart, something internal that brings up what I spent so long trying to forget every time I sit down to write or go to bed early or listen to a certain song.
And maybe I should curse my writer's heart for feeling so much, for pretending it could handle this
I'm keeping my head down, writing the same thing over and over because it is still living inside of my body. I have a playlist of songs I avoid, but some things still manage to catch me off guard, like the smell of French fries or someone named Katie. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Sue Thomas F.B.I since.
It is like my skin has been rubbed off and I am just trying to avoid sharp corners and salty foods and lemons.
I am trying to make a roadmap, to understand this, to create myths and stories until I have what I need.
For a whole year, I have screamed and wailed and cursed and tried to build something from nothing. I have avoided mirrors and sharp edges, listened to too many sad songs, written and re-written the story I am still trying to find the right words to tell.
I haven't stopped writing because there is this moment when you are writing when everything else just fades away. It is almost like a meditation, when there is just this space.
And in that space I can take a deep breath. I can hear him.
"I'm sorry," I say
"I know"
There is a breath, a pause, and then
"I'm right here," He says
"I know," I reply, "Me too."

Another breakup poem

So I've decided to share a little of what I've been working on lately, some of the writing that is making my heart sing. These pieces are personal and honest and I've decided to only share the ones where nobody really knows who they're about. So this is one of the pieces in my current Taylor-Swift-Style-Poetry stuff.

I fell in love with the world that slipped through your fingertips, the one that curled its way through your crooked gap toothed smile. You seemed comfortable in my world, like you fit. Just like the way your fingers curled around mine when we were sitting in class and you thought nobody noticed, just like the way you casually leaned over and looked at my paper, so close I could feel your breath on my skin and I thought, for the seventy sixth time, that this is what it’s like to love someone.

I can turn you into a poem. Wrap your body in words, run circles around your mind with my ribbon made of elegant prose and not-quite-there rhythm. I can turn you into a work of art; hang you on the wall of my chest like a Picasso painting. I can romanticize heartbreak and, when we end, as inevitably all relationships do, I can write you a mean breakup poem. You will become a monument, a reminder that I loved you once.


But me? You will turn me into another notch on your bedpost. I will dissolve in the cereal you eat every morning for breakfast. My name will be crossed out in your notebooks, the ink underneath bleeding through your best attempts to erase me the only proof that I was here. I will be just another girl, just another story you put on the back shelf and forgot about. I’d write a book for you, darling, but me, I’m replaceable.


They say don’t bother falling in love with a writer because she will capture your every word on paper, turn you into a shrine and dance circles around your memory, making magic out of you forgetting to put milk on the list and having to eat day old macaroni and cheese. She will turn your flaws into just another place to kiss you. And when you leave, she will spend months questioning the existence of the sun, writing more and more pages about how you loved her once, how she loved herself once.


But I think they should say to the writer not to bother falling in love with anyone. Your heart is this animal, a fragile beast. You will fall in love twelve times before breakfast. He won’t turn you into a monument and praise your memory; he’ll just forget to put milk on the list and never pick his clothes up off the floor.


If a writer falls in love, she’ll just end up writing another breakup poem.

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.

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.

"Sadness is not beautiful and you are not meant to be lonely"

He said that everything said within the four walls of this room would be safe. He said that out of twenty four hours in a day its not too much to ask for one of them being spent being yourself. He asked if it was possible to love one person every day for the rest of your life and i said yes, but i don't know if you can without losing pieces of yourself. And before you go into it i think you must ask yourself how much you're willing to lose.

I'm tired of running from my ghosts and ghouls. I can honestly say i have nothing to say to them anymore.

Behind closed doors, through the tiny window in the wooden door, i saw her collapse. I saw her fall into her mother's arms and i looked away, ashamed to have once again been witnessing a moment to which i was not invited. And i thought of dark circles under her eyes and a wrinkled tee shirt and the hollowness that appears when you're holding more secrets than you know what to do with. And i realized everyone has their own demons.

I said once that i hated secrets because too many and the weight of it can feel as though it is crushing your vital organs.
I didn't realize until it was too late that people can be hurricanes, forces of nature so destructive but so captivating. And i'm still learning that one person can be both the poison and the cure. Its ok to fall in love with a damaged little thing and its ok to love the same person through the shards of your mosaic heart and its ok. Its not a metaphor or an allegory, it just is. And maybe that has to be enough.

At the end of the day, crawling into bed, with a mind full of stories and a heart full of promises, sometimes it isn't enough. And there is no finely spun poetry in the world that can take the place of the truth that was never received and the words never said. There is no explanation, there is no reason, it just is. When that time comes, when the secrets and questions feel too heavy and threaten to crush your very bones, there is only one answer, one my mother told me when i was a child as she stroked my hair. "Sleep now, little one, it will all look better in the morning." Most days it does but sometimes it doesn't.

I remember him saying once that in cases of dire insanity to hug a tree. Wrap your arms around the trunk, he said, and hold on. I'm spending my days looking for the biggest oak.

I know this guy and once he sat beside me in the library. I was spending too much time staring at the wall and not enough time reading my text book and he asked me a question. I don't remember what it was but i remember that i had only been looking for a way to let all my secrets out. Because the weight of them in your arms, pressed against your ribcage, tucked up against your hipbone, running down along your spine, its heavy and it pushes and i shift in my seat with discomfort. The thing about secrets, i'm learning, is that they demand to be told. In whispered words to your childhood best friend in a garage tucked away behind the bicycles, in a journal, in a scream that shakes the earth and sends animals running and ends in shoulder shaking sobs. Secrets demand to be told or the threat settles into your bones. And i'm learning that i have too many word defying secrets.

He said that words are safe here, in this room filled with test tubes and diagrams. It feels like a place my secrets could come out of hiding if only i sat still long enough and ignored the discomfort that came with their claws on the inside of my skin. He says that there are twenty four hours in a day and for this one, in this room, you are allowed to be yourself. And i feel them like butterfly wings on the inside of my stomach. I spent a really long time running from what happened to me and i spent a long time being really uncomfortable in my skin and i feel the nudging inside of me, telling me its time to stop, time to be who i really am. The secrets don't seem so daunting here and it doesn't matter if there are no stone cold answers for my mind to chew on and mull over because my soul knows.
Here in the back corner of this biology lab my soul knows

The Land of Enchantment

I've been thinking a lot lately. Writing a lot of poetry, collecting quotes and photographs. It's an interesting time for me, one full of so much sorrow and heart ache but also full of peace.
I might not have the words to process everything right now, but I have words to make stories, and I guess in a way my creating stories is me processing it all. So here's something I wrote with the inspiration I gathered from this post

4 times in 5 days. That had to be some sort of record, even in it was only a personal one. And the tears had to be some sort of reflection of the burdened state of her heart. They were poetry in their own way, speaking when no more words could be said.

The hardest word to say is goodbye. To the man you loved with all your crooked heart, to the tiny babe who held a piece of your heart, to friends and grandparents and those barely human but very much alive. Goodbye never gets easier.

She thought about this as she walked down the road that blistery October day, her toes and the tip of her nose growing colder.

A coffin the size no coffin should be, belonging to a tiny girl who was there that day when her life changed, a girl so loved by so many who had never met her. And it reminded her of a bigger coffin, one she stood over in march and sobbed over words unsaid and promises that didn't have time to be kept. And it reminded her of the others, the coffins she never saw but the lives of those behind them that had taken a piece of her with them as they passed on into the great perhaps.

The cruelty and brutality of death must be met with the gentle hand of hope for without it everything crumbles.
Loss had put years on her. Her forehead was slightly wrinkled now, her feet colder, her body more fatigued and frail.
Being berated time after time, being forced to say the hardest word until there are no more words left, only aching sobs, it takes a toll on one's physical body.
If she were to write the names of the deceased up her arm the total would be over two dozen.
It is said there is one living person for each dead 14 and she felt she had more than her fair share of names tattooed on her skin of those who had changed her and died too soon.
When she was younger, her aunt, a seasoned veteran of life herself, used to tell her stories as she brushed out her hair. She spoke of unicorns and fairies and once she spoke of the land of enchantment.
She said the sand there was holy, and there were healing springs of life. She collected sand in plastic bags and water in tiny jars and she gave them to her friends back home. One to the divorcee, one to the motherless child, one to the ill and dying. She offered these items to her loved ones, and also offered herself.
She said perhaps we are all collecting things, filling our bags and jars. We fill and collect the offerings of others and when we are finally full we pass on.
It isn't painful, she said, rather it is more like being underwater, a breath and then as one world slips away a new one takes its place. For those left behind, though, her aunt said, when they have offered up pieces of themselves that are now gone, its the most painful thing imaginable. Suddenly you are without this part of yourself, however large or small, and you must figure out how to let it go.
People help. so do long hot showers, coffee so strong and hot it can make you wince, poetry and tears.
But in the end the only cure for the unbearable ache of saying a permanent goodbye is time itself.
One day, even if it seems unthinkable, the smile will return.
Her heart was broken. She had offered up herself to those who had gone to explore the great perhaps and the agony of living with a fractured heart was almost too much to bear.
Goodbye seems to get caught in the throat, sticky like peanut butter, and the idea of time healing all wounds seems laughable.
The idea of venturing into the great perhaps seems more appealing when you're lying on the bathroom floor with a broken heart.
But, her aunt had said, there comes a time when you must get up. Take that hot shower, stomach a cup of piping hot coffee and put one foot in front of the other. Collect moments of your own that will sustain you for a lifetime and then some extra to stow away for your own journey, when the time comes.
Swallow the hope. While it tastes sickeningly sweet in the mouth in the stomach it is a helpful remedy.
A scar will form, a reminder of the one you loved and the part of the heart that was given away, one for every unspeakable goodbye.
"Don't be afraid, my dear," her aunt had told her. "Your heart knows how to heal, even when you deem it impossible. You are a vessel, giving and collecting love. This is life."
And so, with red rimmed eyes and pale skin, she decided to get up. To shower, and make that pot of coffee and pray her aunt had been right, that over time the ache would diminish.
Besides, there was still much more loving left to do.

Paradise Valley

Sunday morning, the first day of fall. I keep the window open, crawling under blankets to ward off the chill and enjoying the smell of the brisk air.

John Mayer’s music floats through my morning as I pull on and off clothes, trying to figure out something to wear that fits the person I’m supposed to be today.

And I think maybe it’s time to start over.

I was thinking last night about how nobody ever gives you permission not to do something. You get permission to be angry, permission to hold on to all of this stuff. But nobody ever gives you permission to let go of all that. Nobody gives you permission to not hate the person who took everything from you. Nobody ever gives you permission to let go of all of the things you’ve been holding onto.

For a few years I was stuck in a place where I was just gathering up things and holding them close. I really drew into myself and then in a matter of six months or so everything that was inside of me poured out. And it was a hard six months, and it was a time where I had to start over.

The call this year to go out and to go beyond myself hasn’t been an easy one, at all. I get anxiety and these moments where I’m just paralyzed and I sit there and go “I can’t do this. What do I think I’m doing?”

I got my heart broken and I was trying to be this person who I felt like I should be. And at this point in my life, I think I’m learning that I need to give myself permission to do the things that no one gives me permission to do.

I guess in these past few weeks I’m giving myself permission to feel things a lot more than I did before. I’m giving myself permission to not be angry and to drop this and to drop that and to admit when I’m in over my head. And it’s hard, and it’s exhausting, and sometimes there is that paralyzing moment when I have no idea how I’m supposed to do this and I’ve probably cried more in this past little while than I have in a while.

But I’m giving myself permission to feel and to say No, that’s not working for me and to change things and to let go of things and add things and mix and match and mess around with my life. And I think that’s what makes an artist.

I can tell you that in the past few weeks, I’m making a lot more art and writing more and making more music than I have in a really long time, and its stuff that I’m actually happy with. And I’m writing about love and getting your heart broken and I’m answering some of my own questions and I’m getting inside of myself and I’m just feeling. I’m messing around with things and I’ve really been pushed into this place of figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t.

I think I’m more connected with myself than I have been in a while, and I’m also more outside of myself. And I’m figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t and what I need to stay sane and what I don’t need that I thought I did and I’m discovering stories and seeing people and seeing myself in a way that I don’t think I could have before.

I’ve gone through a lot in my life, and I think that for everything there is a price. And I used to think I was broken. I used to think that my heart and soul were broken beyond repair. And I do think that those four or so years of my life did cost me something. Parts of my relationships and my intelligence and control and ideologies that I had. But I’m realizing now that I didn’t lose my soul.

I think right now I’m more content than I have been in a long time. I’m on a bit of a learning curve and I’m dabbling in things and trying this and walking away from that and I’m figuring out what works for me. And it’s hard, but I’m learning what it means to fall in love again.

 And I have a feeling this next little while is going to be one where I figure out who I am and what works for me and what doesn’t and maybe breaking some rules and giving myself permission and just being. And I honestly feel somewhere inside of me that this is where I need to be.

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.”  

The Invincible Summer

Just a little something I was working on...

It's the last day of July and summer is drifting into a haze, slowly disappearing into the distance, and I wonder what has become of me.

I used to be the girl who could fill pages and pages with words that meant something. They were about love and happiness and being alive.

And now I'm... what? Now I'm a shell of that girl, the girl I used to know but now, now I haven't the slightest idea who she is.

 Sometimes I catch glimpses of her, walking down the aisle in the supermarket or in the bathroom as she's combing her hair or brushing her teeth. She's lying on the couch, sometimes, and other times I catch brief glimpses of her walking down the street, the sunlight warm on her shoulders, or in passing behind the wheel of a car she pretends to know how to drive.

But mostly I don't know who she is, or where she went to after the walls crumbled in.

If I met her for coffee one evening in a Starbucks I'd like to ask her where she went. As she sips her latte with tired eyes I'd like to ask her who she is now. What happened to the beautiful girl who wrote pages and pages in notebooks and did things like cartwheel in the grass even though she knows she's not good at it and thumb through pictures in the magazines convinced she could be among them one day.

I think she would look at me, a sad smile on her lips. She would tell me she got tired of living in a battle field. There was a war raging on and staying cost her much more than leaving ever would. She would run her hands through her hair and tell me she was still there, undercover, waiting until it was safe to come out, until the war had all but ended.

It's hard to be happy and alive and write pages and pages about things like love when you're stuck in the middle of a war with dust decorating your face and the sounds of guns merging with the sounds of the flowers growing up in the warmth of the summer.

She would tell me that beauty couldn't coexist with the war, that eventually something would get over ruled. She would place her fingers around the cup and press it to her lips, closing her eyes and savoring the sweet, rich taste on her tongue and I would watch her with a wide eyed gaze, feeling a sense of familiarity, like this was home and where I was now I was just a traveler, a foreigner.

She would tell me that while she wouldn't stay gone forever right now the best thing was to sit tight, wait. There is a time for fighting, she would say, but there is also a time for waiting and you must be very wise to know which time is which.

She would lower her voice and tell me the news like she was telling me a secret "Soon the war will be over. Just wait, you'll see. Soon the war will end and I will be back for good, I promise. You just have to wait and eventually the sun will come out again and the death and destruction that has come since the enemy invaded will be gone. You have to believe that even though it is winter now there is an invincible summer. That invincible summer will not be beaten and it is within you and it is in that summer I will be. You just have to wait. And if you get impatient, like I know you're prone to do, just look inside and find that invincible summer and it is there I will be."

I look at her, this girl I used to know, and my hands shake and I want to ask her a million questions. I want to ask her how I am supposed to survive the war and how bad the devastation will get before it’s over and if I can go with her to the place where there is this invincible summer she speaks of.

As if reading my mind, this girl I used to know continues to speak, "I know you want to come but you can't right now. I don't know how long this war will last or how hard you will have to fight to stay alive but watch closely. When it's time to move from waiting to fighting you will know. You will know how to fight when it's time. The invincible summer, it is not a place. It is within you. And I, I have not left you. I am just waiting, lying low until the war ceases. I am not gone, do not worry. I am right here, whenever you need me. Just close your eyes and take a deep breath and find that invincible summer within you and it is there I will be."