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.

I have always belonged to the light (National Poetry Writing Month)

April is National Poetry month and this year I have the privilege of joining some amazing writers in participating in Napowrimo, or national poetry writing month. Basically the goal of this is to write one poem every day for the month of April
It has turned out to be challenging. Most of what I've been writing has been squeezed into small bits of time, rushed elegance.
Many, if not all, of the poems I've written this month (6 so far) have been dedicated to a person. A guy in an interview I read, someone I met over lunch, my younger self, someone who changed my life.
And by writing these poems, carving out these moments for elegance and beauty and poetry, dedicating them to people, it feels almost like a spiritual practice, like for a brief moment in time everything else falls away and there is just me, and God, and love and beauty.
So while this month is shaping up to be a challenging one, it is always turning out to be rewarding.
This is something I wrote today, unedited and lacking in proper elegance, but none the less poetry
This is my heart speaking poems


He told me my eyes looked brighter today
I imagined kaleidoscope colors spinning like a pinwheel
reminded of six years old and peppermint ice cream
of the days before my light was stolen and I forgot what it means to shine
I felt lighter today
felt hopeful, washed in grace and love
like sunbeams peeking through my ribcage after a long winter
like purple tulips and rain on the tin roof, washing away my yesterday and new life blooming
I felt the breath today
reminded of the release, finally feeling peace settle on my skin
it whispered to me softly, like I've always been in the light
and maybe I have
The night nips at my heels, trying to pull me in, calling my name
But let this be my battle cry, my sweet release, my remedy
"I have always belonged to the light"

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

Where I stood

The sun warmed my shoulders as I sat at the kitchen table, listening to Missy Higgins and writing about nostalgia and hope and grief and everything beautiful.
March has been good to me, in a way I never expected.
The first words I wrote this month, as it came to me full of untold secrets, were "I'm not great at ending things."
It began quietly unfolding as I wrote of bad haircuts, watching Julia Robert's movies and saying goodbye. I wrote about grief, pain, still (always) trying to analyze the hole in my chest that came from losing too many people and things that I love.
I fought with myself, constantly wrestling against the idea that there had to be something more, examining my pain under a microscope and trying to make sense of it.
I tried to find myself amidst the unknown, often stumbling over my own edges.
And then there came a moment, and maybe they all come something like this, where I tripped over myself and fell into what I had been looking for.
For a brief moment in time, there was nothing left to say. No apologies sneaking out in the form of poetry, no love letters slipping out of the pen every time it hit the paper. There was just the sound of my heart, and I was learning how to listen to it.
During this month of March I often fought between my heart and my head. I felt like I needed constant reassurance that everything was ok and that I was ok.
And I encountered something I am still trying to explain, and can only describe as radical grace.
In my running away from myself I ran face first, full speed into radical grace, radical faith, radical love and hope.
I had some real, honest conversations with people about my life and where I've been and where I want to go, and maybe I was a little bit surprised by the responses I got. Because sometimes if you give people a chance, they will surprise you and it will be great.
For the first time in forever I realized how loved I am (even if that's something I am still trying to understand)
I laughed and cried and struggled and fought against myself and for myself a lot this month. I got real, got scared, got excited, got honest, got loved.
And I made some big decisions about my future, which are slowly unfolding into something beautiful.
For me, I think March was about beginning that journey to find myself, and listening to my heart and being honest about that. And while that's been my intention I definitely experienced it in a really real and crazy way.
Listening to Missy Higgins and writing in the sunshine was a perfect way for me to wrap up this beautiful, crazy month of grace.
And while I don't know what the next month or few months or year will hold for me I can only hope it involves more of this radical kind of love, and grace and faith. I can only hope it involves more of this being cracked open, because this, I am learning, is how the light gets in.
Even if it's painful
Even if it's hard
I am learning to open myself up to the light and to love and to others and to myself


Sit down on the top there. After all, you climbed all the way up. You did that. Not me. Not your past. You: here and now. It was a steep climb and you almost fell but you didn't. Go on and sit down. And when the trees ask you to stay awhile, tell them "yes, yes, I plan to. In fact, I have always been here. I have always been the light

Hoarding: Buried Alive

Hoarder
I say the word sometimes, stringing it along with the other things I call myself in the dark, things that you couldn't possibly say aloud
Except that I did
I think there are parts of yourself, memories, that you keep closed off.
For me it's old relationships, that boy who broke me into a million tiny pieces, each boy that followed, hours spent fighting for my life and against it, the addictions you pick up in order to preserve your sanity (Everyone has them)
I cling to my stories, use them as protection, keep them in glass jars in formaldehyde on shelves in the cellar.
Grief. Pain. Loss. Depression. Addiction. Sickness.
Sometimes happy memories too, but I find that the moments that have rocked my world so profoundly are usually the ones where I have fallen to my knees in desperation.
I keep these stories, these moments, these memories close to me because they are mine, and also because there seems to be something sacred hidden in them.
There is something unspeakably sacred about the moments that have changed you as a person, and there is something to be said for writing about those moments for all they are worth. Turning them into poetry or a blog post or a journal entry.
This past week I haven't been writing much. I've been fiercely guarding my little story, tucking it up against my chest whispering the same words over and over again
"Shhhh, it's ok, I'm right here. You're ok. I love you."
I've been speaking my truth out loud, to others and also to myself. It is liberating, but also terrifying. I am realizing how I am the only thing standing in my way.
I am calling conditions, calling out my own crap and things that belong to others that I've been hoarding for far too long
The friendship that no longer exists, the relationships I haven't fully let go of, that one time when I slipped on that one day however many years ago
I realized how much I have been holding onto things that aren't mine, and holding onto all this stuff that is mine but that I've been convincing myself is necessary
I am learning to find that fine line, between being there for myself and protecting my little budding story, and calling conditions.
I think if you hold onto all those stories, the guilt and the lies and the shame and the pain, it will bury you alive. It did me.
I also think if you deny your story, and your truth, you will be buried beneath an entirely different sort of mountain.
I'm not there yet, but I'm trying. It is a constant tug of war, between letting go and holding onto and sheltering my story and throwing it all out there (I think sometimes they are the same thing) and in the end I have learned (am learning) I can only say this: Ok. I understand you are feeling... It's ok, I'm right here, and I love you
I am learning to listen to my own truth and it sounds a lot like this...
I am
I am
I am

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