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."

"Soon this place will be too small"

Writers scribbling in the midst of grief have noted the ways in which writing about the experience from the inside creates something new, namely, a safe or safe-ish place to rest. A net, a landing point, a dock from which to view the turbulent and troubled waters without having to wade in it every moment of the day. In a word: relief. The act of creation forces the creator to establish a new world with new rules and structure and form, an act that is sustaining not only in an emotion and a human way, but also in an artistic way."
From Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp


For as many times as I've done it, you would think that letting go is something that comes easy to me. And yet I still find myself fighting against it, my heart suffering from whiplash and weathered by the elements.
There is something they don't tell you about the moment when you alter your position to the universe.
My hands and feet are cold, I am filled with reckless ambition, I have avoided mirrors and sharp corners and acidic foods simply because this is what you do when you have been stripped down to a new layer of skin.
Sometimes I think it would be easier if I could plot my relation to the universe with a simple formula, putting things into neat little boxes.
I am angry because...
I am sad because...
But sometimes there is no explanation, only still silence. It is in that silence I can hear my own heartbeat like a machine gun as it slams into my chest wall.

Don't write if you don't feel up to it, people cautioned me when I told them I had started to write {about Ronan}. But it didn't matter if I felt up to it. It was my responsibility; it was my job. It ordered chaos, focused energy, provided a way of "bearing up" that no period of restfulness could possibly accomplish. In other words, rendering loss was a way of honoring life

I have spent months writing about grief, running it over in my hands, preserving it in every way that I can. I have spent days chasing after life, wondering what exactly constitutes life, and love, and always altering my position to both.
I have said the words I love you many times, and most of them meant Please don't leave me here alone
I write in my own blood, until my heart is exposed on the page. Sometimes I wonder if this also constitutes as art. I wonder if there is something beautiful in being so exposed and fragile.
I have been digging through my own ashes, pulling the gore from my chest with my bare hands, staring at myself and realizing that my horror and my wonder are colliding in this very moment in a place under my skin, that I am both.

After a second suicide attempt, Mary awakens on the bank of the Thames, having just been rescued from the water. This event marks a kind of rebirth for her, an awakening.
'We must go on living' Mary concluded, 'It is our duty'

And so, in the darkness, I am working to build a life for myself. I am capturing moments of beauty, storing them, treasuring them. I often feel like I am laboring long hours, and in the end I can only hope the outcome has been worth the heartache.
There is great heartache that comes with letting yourself be loved, I have decided. I am continually altering my place in the universe, constantly shifting, expanding and shrinking, pulling in and releasing with open hands.
There is nothing left inside of me to offer right now. My hands are empty, my body turning in on itself, my eyes always looking for glimmers of hope.
Somehow, as hard as I have tried to hold onto the past, this feels like starting over.
As much as I have made myself believe I must hold onto the pain and grief, never forget the extremes it has taken to become this person, right now it feels like I am awakening into spring, a new beginning.
There comes a time when you must taste hope for what is really is, and open your heart once more to the potential.
I have held things (people, pain, stories, grief, moments) close to my heart claiming that I would never let go of these that have impacted me so greatly
But sometimes it is time to let go
And you must stand in the wind with your arms raised to the heavens and trust that this is how it is, how it is supposed to be

I stared at him and tickled him and kissed him and wished that my words, anything, could save him. But no, writing would not save Ronan. But, I thought, it might save me

Gilead

There are nights when I feel weak
Depleted, lacking, always reaching for something that isn't there, trying to get a grip
My hands are cracked from all the hurt I have tried to hold in them, my throat is hoarse from all the words I tried to say, there is a hole in the pit of my stomach the size of a peach pit from everything I've tried to swallow, tried to stuff inside, tried to grow inside of myself
There are days when I pause and ask if it's all worth it, this whole living honestly thing, because living with a heart wide open means you are wide open when the stones get thrown
Sometimes I wonder if this is what healing feels like, this lacking, trying to hold everything with arms getting tired, heart chapped by the wind because it's been on your sleeve, exposed to the elements, for quite some time now
I feel an evident lacking tonight
Lacking motivation, lacking wisdom, lacking the ability to turn simple words into something poetic, lacking blood
I think this is all part of living with your heart wide open, living from that place of honesty. It is incredibly hard, and your heart gets bruised and there are times when you want to take back your open hands and close your fists so tightly nothing can get through, nothing can hurt you
Living honestly means sometimes there is crying, messy crying, and there are meltdowns in the bathroom and there is standing in front of the mirror trying to get yourself together and there are sleepless nights and evidence of lacking and weakness
Living honestly, openly, engaging in this give and take with myself and the people around me and the universe, it is depleting, and exhausting, and hard. Being real and looking myself in the mess and accepting that, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see a girl who doesn't know if she's worth loving today, with all the imperfections, when I'm not nice, when I am selfish and exhausted and depleted.
And then I take a moment, and I step back, and I realize there is beauty in this too
Because now I can write pages and pages on his eyes, her laugh, being surrounded by people and witnessing beautiful words and moments and conversations.
And if I acknowledge the hard parts of living honestly, I also must acknowledge the good
How it has allowed me to love myself and accept myself, even when it's messy
How it has allowed me to become a beauty seeker
How it has given me moments of connection and interactions with amazing people
Living honestly means you take the good and the bad, and I guess you set up a monument for both.
You acknowledge the good and the bad
I have books filled with memories of all the good things, the beautiful moments that made me so grateful to be here and to be alive and to be human
And I have a box filled with all those painful reminders, the physical and metaphorical scars I wish I didn't have to carry around with me but are such an important part of my story
Lately I've been hearing a lot about monuments, and naming the important things in your life
A while ago I came up with a word I wanted my life to embody, and looking at it now I think it's starting to blossom into existence


Gilead: A place of healing

Truth Telling

I told the truth today
Sometimes the truth isn't what you want to hear.
Sometimes the truth is messy. It gets all over your hands and stuck in your hair and tracks mud through the house
Sometimes the truth is bold and loud and demanding, roaring and stomping and bellowing
Sometimes the truth comes softly, in whispers, on the wind and through other people and through the voices in your own head
Sometimes the truth is scary


One of the things I've been trying to do for a while now is to live my truth. That is easier said than done. It's hard to live your truth when you're grumpy and angry and annoyed or when you're sad and scared. It's hard to keep living from that honest place when it feels like there is nothing left.
And yet, at the same time, I know that maintaining that honesty and that truth telling is a huge part of my healing journey


So I've been gathering wisdom, learning from poets and teachers and brilliant minds.
They are teaching me to live in this skin I'm not sure I belong in, how to breathe in acceptance and live from that place of honesty
Even if it hurts
Even if it's hard
To open my hands to accept whatever comes, and to give whatever I can
To let myself feel even the ugliest, messiest parts of this life, and love myself anyway


And I look at myself at the end of the day, tired eyes and messy hair with a long to-do list and a mind running circles around itself trying to get it all right (Because even with all I'm learning, I'm still trying to get it right)
And I can honestly say that today I told the truth

Here's to love

Here's to messy love, the kind that leaves you with a broken heart, extreme emotions
Here's to family love, and the amazing people who make up mine and  remind me that family isn't just where you come from, it's where you belong
Here's to friend love, and the beautiful, crazy individuals who laugh with me, cry with me, learn with me, share with me, and support me even when I don't deserve it
Here's to your first love, and the boy who takes your breath away
Here's to your last love, someday, and the person who loves you when you're young and also when you're older
Here's to all the loves in between, the people who hold your heart, and sometimes break it, and all they teach you along the way
Here's to the first person who gave me a valentine
Here's to loving yourself
Here's to loving other people
Here's to being loved
Here's to the old ones, the young ones, the free spirits and the workaholics, to everyone who is waiting to be loved and not realizing they already are
Here's to the newlyweds, and the couples who have been married for 50 years
Here's to the people who fight for love
Here's to the people love crept up on
Here's to sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers and friends and boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives and memories
Here's to love, in every shape and form, because it is all beautiful

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"