this month, this year.

all i can do i ride my bike and be thankful. yesterday, at 5:30 i rode from downtown to my little home in east village and thought over and over again, what is this feeling springing up in my heart over and over again? its as if my limbs are waking up again after sitting for too long. is this hope? is this joy?

all i can do is let it all go, hold on to grace and let go of all explanations. i recognize that in the process, i've lost friends, a reputation, perhaps respect. i've lost love and safety and so few people know why.

but this is what i do have - i have courage, a sister, and hope. it has been so long since i've had such a clear sense that something good is coming.

what is that good thing? when i got to my neighborhood i rode over the FDR into the 6th st projects. a father and his son told me i had a nice smile and a little girl on her tricycle liked my eyes. that good thing is a home and a family and the most beautiful neighbors.

its a little whisper telling me, there is so much more to come. hope expectant, for the first time in years, hope expectant.

losing

Over here i keep mentioning that i've lost, which is really how i feel about life right now. daily i walk through the streets of new york feeling stripped and barren. or, like right now, i run back to connecticut to hide and take cover. even now, i am covered in blankets and quilts and the comfort of a little new england cottage sequestered in the woods.

in the morning, my mother and i sit in our back yard watching frogs jump in and out of our little pond, sipping our coffee, discussing the day that i'll get married on this little hill. there will be rose gold and pearls and a handful of people who have become a transplant family. it will be private because we are private. it will be simple because we are simple. there will be love.

this is a conversation i always have running through my mind. when i was young, i would walk through our corn fields and our garden trellis and sing a little wedding song to myself. i've never wanted to begin a new home away from this old one. i never believed there could be a greater accomplishment than to spend a life loving one man.

all of this now strikes me as odd. i have no pearls, and i have no love. in fact, at this exact time last year i gave them up and wept and wept and cried out to the L-RD, you are the greatest pearl, and then lived for twelve months giving to swine what he had already purchased.

that's too aloof. these conversations strike me as odd because i am so aware of my aloneness and vulnerability. since the spring, i have watched, one by one, things and people i care about go away. its loss -that's the only word for it.

i built a home in those californian hills. i carved out a life and a space and drove away from it all, promising myself that family matters and there was more of a life to live. the sweetest bearded man is gone. we didn't fight each other. he looked so tenderly at me and believed in me and said goodbye. i wonder what would happen if i had just turned around and come back and laid my body at the foot of his bed until LA was ours.

since new york, i sit quietly in my room feeling shaky, but not enough to weep. i was afraid of these streets for so long, afraid of traveling north along the east river. friends have left, jobs have left. some of them i kicked out, some of them chose it. either way they are gone. i am quiet about it - afraid to acknowledge that i miss them or long, unable to fight someone's decision or my own. the low tide is so strong, i put my trust in the gravity of the moon; i put my trust in the L-RD. i have to. i have nothing left to hold on to instead.

my insides are weak. my veins and my heart are drooping. i walk meekly, i bow my head. thinking that after all this loss, there must only be the prayer: i have so little, i need so much.

therefore i will block her path with thornbushes;
i will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
she will look for them but not find them.
then she will say
'i will go back to my husband as at first,
for then i was better off than now.

make it stop

I've been reading this and this. all while listening to this and reading this.

over and over again I hear the voice of my brother, in all of his wisdom, "silence only serves patriarchy".

despite being inclined to damn all patriarchies, I'm not willing to just yet. instead, perhaps its enough to say "silence only defends evil".

where abuse exists, our voice must be loud enough to make it stop.

what I thought about after watching the dark night rises is that recovering from a broken heart is hard work. difficult after being so depleted. how does one get their spirit back? their heart? I have been trying for three years, coming up empty handed, still at a loss, still so empty.


I have so much regret, so many messes to clean, so much dust to sweep. I am so sorry.

pyrrhic victory after pyrrhic victory. that it ever started means that we've lost. I've lost, so has he.

only love to you.

i did not know that one simple move could change the course of so many things. is any move simple? is any transplant of hearts and bodies a simple task? or it is against us, as i suspect, to uproot from the people and souls and soils we've planted ourselves in.

blow after blow, in the last two weeks, everything has changed. and one final blow tonight. one final connection severed; the most important one.

all i can say is: go. go in the direction your heart has always dreamed and bloom there. let me be proud. let me go as well, to sift. you, my dear, are on the brink of discovery. and while we stood at the brink of love, while we held each other's bodies close, we knew it was only for a bit. i adore you. i simply adore you. but go, go make music and dream dreams and have thoughts that you need to have. do not follow me.

and simply, thank you. and simply thank you for not asking me to come, nor dismissing mine. and simply, in the goodbye, my heart only swells one more time to affirm: i am the luckiest to know that you are alive. and to have my heart moved by you and changed by you is something in only count as good even in my longing to have you come back.

at night, i will whisper 'come back,' but i will not beg or plead or beg your pardon. i will not apologize for the threadbare faith i am but only hanging onto, mock it though you do. if its only that veil that keeps us apart, than you deserve the credit for your integrity - for your respect to not ask me to take one final swipe against it and come all back into your life. you deserve my admiration, from afar. i can only say you are good. i can only say i am so thankful to have known a man like you. your kaleidoscope heart revealing itself is so many hidden ways. i love it. i do, i love it.

and i too, have paths to find, a veil to darn, a strength to rediscover. i will sing as the barren women, singing as in the days of her youth. tents rebuilt, a life restored. and thank you to you, for seeing that strength as it was seeping out of me. and only love to you, one day we will meet again. only love to you.

tonight i sat as i watched friends lives fall apart and come together over love. over a glass of wine. over fear and hate and sorrow.

i sat, mostly silent, hesitant to ever share my own stories of love and fear and hate and sorrow.

and when it was time to go home, i went home alone, wishing for hand from california to guide me back, safely, to my bed and say goodnight. but instead i recited the promises that i have abandoned. faithfulness, love, true.

i miss your kisses and your eyes and your gentleness, i do. i miss your giggle and your bright face when i walked into the room. i miss your wit and your puns and your compassion.

but in this season and in this time it feels imperative to be alone. i left you, full of regret and wishing that i didn't have to and the one who brought me home has left again. but it seems so important to sit in my own thoughts and slowly make my coffee in the morning. only to drink it alone as i recite psalm 23 one more time. "i shall not want".

but i do want. i do want to be safe, and i want to have never left a beating heart hurting and i want mine to not be so acquainted with sorrow. i do want to know how i will pay rent again and to understand the coming and going of the tides. i do want joy.

you are coming and going with the tides. you are going. i have left. when a raven dies, its murder never flies over the spot where he died again. please tell me that doesn't mean we won't meet again. so much of my hope in the world right now is rested in the golden threads woven in your heart.

this season is hard and weak and lonely. in the best way, it is lonely. in the best way, it is honest. i carry a heart full of regret.

I am desperate to love the L-RD.


This is not to say I desperately love the L-RD.

everybody sees that you're blown apart

lately i cannot live a day without graceland or psalm 23. i cannot leave my brick walls too often from fear of how my fragile inner walls might collapse from attack. the world attacks with its spears and arrows and i am already down. i sit in this mighty fortress on 2nd street and clean and decorate and redecorate and build shelves and chests. and using all these tools makes me feel stronger in the midst of the weakest period of my life.

and what prompts these tears? these inner shakes that leave me curled up silently when no one is home? it is the unpacking of books and memories and riding my bicycle down the streets that used to be home. it is hate. it is reading the old notes and letters that were once the beginning of the rest of my life and then remembering they were all ruined with hate.

how can it be that this is how it ends? how little i planned the last few years, and what a mess i have made.

and so i recite, in the midst of the brink of so many tears that i am always balancing on, 'the L-RD is my shepherd, i shall not want'. i imagine the table he prepares for me as enemies scoff in my ear. i imagine what it might feel like to lie in green pastures, to sit beside quite waters, to fear no evil. because, dear L-RD, i fear the evil i have encountered. i fear it in the hollows of my ribs right down to where a mighty heart once beat.

all that has reduced me to these fragile bones reminds me to hope for the only thing that will satisfy. i need goodness and love to follow me, i need my head to be poured over in oil. i need to be hidden and kept so safe. in fact, i've never felt such a need for safety in my entire life.

one of the most romantic things i've read in a while.

i just love old people, and new york.

http://humansofnewyork.tumblr.com/post/23504830842/ive-photographed-hundreds-of-couples-and-the

sometimes I meet people who seem to have gold woven into them. no matter how buried or hidden, there's gold strands in their hearts. maybe it's best sometimes, not to get too attached or entangled. but rather, admire their glisten and smile. knowing that to appreciate someone for their thoughts and feelings and vulnerabilities is what we're all asking for anyway. and knowing that to kiss them would not be as sweet as to let them bloom. this is what I think about after a perfect night with the newest friends who will be added to the dearest list.

would you be ashamed to sit next to me? how long is your patience? how deep is your love?

what I assumed would be true, is. I am still searching, unsatisfied, yearning. to no fault of ours, we will continue on, desperate to connect, letting each other pass for the good of our own selves, protecting. this is youth, right? struggling in loneliness to find someone who makes us less so. and when it doesn't fit, praise them for their virtues, traits, embellishments, and respectfully say goodnight.

my hands and my fingers keep cracking and peeling.

dorian grey?

some times are just sad and stressful and make my heart feel so so heavy. and then, those times are over. so, in the midst of a time when i can't quite cry, but can't quite breathe, i drink wine that i made and try to laugh as much as i can fit into a day. because one day this won't be so important anymore and i'll still always be me. and i have always liked to laugh.

just move on

just drive through those states.

this song won't quit

this is the song that i'll always listen to when i'm lonely.

in a blog about forgiveness, here is another thing that i want to say, on the record.

it is me that needs the forgiveness. it is me that needs the cool drink of water, the respite, the new life.

i've come to a point where i literally don't know how to sort it all out anymore, this mess that i keep making.

the ocean erodes us

what i want to come out and say is that perhaps i've never loved anyone. perhaps i've never loved anyone except for that one man with the dark beard.

he is more of a shadow than a man, now. like peter pan, his shadow dances independently of his body, moving wily across the interiors of my heart. often he hides in the cracks, subdued and tired until an electric pulse energizes him to remind me of what i lost.

and i want to admit this, this non-love, this lack of love, as an explanation rather than an apology. i will somberly remember that year when my heart was so hopeful. this man, an artist - a glass blower, taking my inflamed heart and expanding it, expanding it, expanding it. and there it stood, proud and open, letting the cool california breeze pass through and preparing itself to be a home, until it fell. until this delicate glass broke; until my heart shattered.

and since then i have been collecting pieces. gluing what i can back together, storing the misfits in a box. and i find that my glue is weak and i need a bigger box, and my arms are tired from carrying the burden. i feel like an old woman collecting antiques, deeply afraid that the biggest pieces will break again and again until i am left with grains of sand where a full heart once stood. the ocean erodes us.

this is all that i am. this is the account that i have for myself. an antique heart trying to maintain what still remains. desperately hoping for someone to take this box from me and build a mosaic; desperately hoping for a cool drink of water; needing something to pull me back to life.

Empty, or open-hearted? Where
A full heart spoke once, now a strong
Outline is the most I dare:
A window opening onto fair
Shining meadows of hopefulness? Or long
Silence where there once was song,
Waves of remembrance in the darkening air.
--john hollander

every time i feel the faint breeze of hope mingle with my emotions, i cling to it. remember it. what else can i possibly believe except that i'm going to make it? i am already dragging my feet through the mud, my nostrils are already singed and repulsed.

no, the only thing that will keep me going is hope.

what i feel, most of the time, is rushed, defensive, and annoyed.

what i'm experiencing is the determined part of my personality that pushes all other thoughts and emotions away in the hopes to complete just one thing.

my thing is simple, i just want independence.

the open road, a new home, best friends, and freedom of heart.

these things sound like a cool glass of water.

almost home and i can hardly stand it.

every spring i remember 34th street walking down, finding my first daffodil and bringing it into the basement.

these days, the air is sweet with jasmine and the nights are getting longer and the yellow flowers just started blooming.

and in the air is eternal longing, memories wafting through, a desire for closeness - we embrace our nakedness and hope for connection.

summer is almost here, and with it youth, and horses and the long road home.

love without antecedent.

i love my family without antecedent.

devoted.

a little something on sin

i understand sin not as something that i'm doing or not doing, thinking or not thinking, but rather, as something permanently flawed in me, a tick, an addiction, a limp that i can't get rid of. because i could be a potato and still be a sinner. and my need for a savior goes so far down, so deep, not necessarily to stop doing wrong as much as to love, to feel whole for the first time.

so, what i'm asking for isn't a feeling or a moment or really anything that could go away. what i'm asking for is a repair, a redo, a new man. a surgery that doesn't reverse itself.

in a word, salvation.

what makes me different from that men in prison that i drive by every day on my way to school? i haven't been caught. on the day to day, are they any different than i am?

and if the cross can go there, if you were enough to say to all of lazarus' dead cells 'live' then you must be able to do something with this heart.

because, oh my God, i have a dead heart. and the absence of goodness and love flowing through me is killing me; its running me dry.

i identify as the addict, the adulteress, the killer who cannot stop.

and if the cross means anything at all, it must mean everything. and if the cross can heal one person, it must be able to heal me.

i want to start an experiment with you, Jesus. i want to know how far the cross can reach. can you prove it? can you do anything about all this sickness?

i call out, 'i'm sorry! i'm sorry!' all day long, but i want more than forgiveness. i don't want to be a crooked arrow any longer. its not just that i want to stop doing this bad, dumb thing, its more - i don't want to be sick.

i want to be your friend.

an amendment.

there are a few things that i have discovered this year that i am thankful for, that rescue me from the mental spiral, that make me laugh, that take my attention away from all this fear.

here is a list, that does not suppose to be exhaustive, of all of those things:

yoga and my glorious yoga mat and yoga mat cleaner and all of the other expensive zenned out products that go along with giving my back sweet relief; my parents lived in california for enough time for me to sob on them more than normal and laugh; twins; a bicycle; the pacific ocean, that huge rock, the christmas tree on the pier, and sea lions; jonathan franzen and david james duncan; twins, again; gossip girl on netflix; amyleigh; pen pals; j crew's incredible turn around; ywam paris; and the rational hope and understanding that this is not forever, which both comforts me and assures me of my sanity.

a look back

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself" -Carl Jung

the new year has passed, along with a birthday, and it seems altogether too fitting to look back and reflect and wonder and account for the last three-hundred-some-odd-days i've spent breathing.

california has taken a very sensational turn from oasis to vast dessert landmarked only by fear.

it seems to me that by the time a person turns twenty-four they should have some idea what they hell they are doing or who the hell they are becoming or be able, at the very least, to rattle off a satisfactory account for themselves that, if lucky, placates the listener and inspires no further questions.

so far, however, this is not my fate.

what has been my fate in this past year were the unpleasant experiences including, but not limited to, being fired for my condescending face, subsequently living off unemployment, chronic back pain, breaking my best friend's heart, the recurring feeling that every sentence i manage to stutter does not quite make sense to those listening, and that familiar seventh-grade feeling of displacement when my pants were too short for my long legs and my breasts were the same size as my teacher's, and my hair was shorter than my ears - only this time it is my emotions, values, and upbringing that's awkwardly ill-fitted to my california-assimilated appearance. that is to say, i don't fit here in a way i haven't fit in a long time.

that is to say, for the first time in a long time, i feel Alone and Scared; paralyzed by those feelings of aloneness and scaredness and the desperate yearning for someone to recognize these thoughts and mental ramblings and embarrassingly sincere emotions and painfully sensitive nerve endings and give me the okay (validation, or love, or understanding, or at the very least, the withholding of condemnation and judgement until further notice).

instead, i have found that since my perception of self does not match my perception of the cultural ideal i have a strong tendency to shout all of the very things that exclude me from making the cut. this is why those whom i attend church with know that i strongly prefer gin martinis, moved here for the wine, smoke through anxiety, and have a propensity make jokes at my purity's expense, while in reality i often go to bed before 10, have never used my martini glasses, refuse to buy more than one bottle of wine per week, can't smoke because it limits my aerobic activity and have guarded my virginity with a fierceness that i myself do not understand.

but if there is not space for the worst of me, then it is not worth risking the best.

those things that are good, noble, or pure feel so vulnerable, those things in me untainted feel so few, that i cannot gather the courage to lay them before someone who cannot first love me for my dirt.

and this, of course, brings me back to the ache in my heart that i've only begun to say outloud. the insatiable hunger for love. the static, continual begging for grace. the terrifying need for a salvation that runs deep enough to not only cradle me but fix what feels so fundamentally, irrevocably broken in me.

it was not lazarus' faith that raised him from the dead. this has been a hopeful realization. in fact, lazarus, being dead, had really nothing to do with it.