A lot of artists use struggle and hurt to make art

I've done it too

I’ve written about my need for independence

About the little girl who I was

And about how lonely this world can be

I haven’t explored who I am in love

Because that’s a person who I am still getting to know

She is intensely vulnerable

She is much more patient and willing to change

She is still getting used to the safety that he brings

And she is shaking with terror at the thought of being left alone again

These past few years have brought me a lot of realizations

I’ve learned so much more about my body and my brain

And I’ve felt them at war with each other

I have fallen into a hole deeper than I ever imagined

Some would write themselves out of it

I can’t.

I read stories I wrote year ago, and it it's as if a stranger wrote them

I can’t imagine them coming from me

I can’t imagine anything being created by me ever again

All I feel is the weight in my chest forcing my heart to pump harder and faster to stay alive

All I hear is the thoughts in my head telling me that I’m useless

An anchor attached to my loved ones

All I see is the fat stretching out angry red skin in the mirror

Eyes that seem to always be holding back tears

Or, even worse, not holding them back

This shit.

It chases me in my dreams

It won’t let me rest

I wake up in fogs of anxiety and panic

I turn to see him sleeping soundly and am all at once

So grateful that his body lets him sleep

And so jealous of the rest he gets

Why not me?

When do I get to sleep?

I would tear this matter out of my chest if it were really there

I would open my skin with my own fingernails

If it would help

If it were as simple as bleeding it out, I wouldn't hesitate

If it would make it easier for me to be around people again

To not be fearful of every sound, every dark corner

Of being left

Of failing at work

Of failing my loved ones

Of not being enough

Of being left alone

Of deserving to be left alone

Of never getting back to who I was

A person who I wasn’t even that fond of to begin with

I wrack my brain for a way to turn this into art

It can’t be that hard

It’s never been this hard

Will it always be this hard?

I take my pills every day

I step out into the sun

I move my body

I take breaths so slow and deep that a yogi would be proud

It helps

Sometimes

For a blissful moment, that I am grateful for,

Then the world speeds back up and I’m me again

No amount of words can change it

So why bother?

I do bother

Because this can’t be forever, can it?

Please don’t let this be forever

Please tell me this is just a part of my life that I will write about one day

Home

-->

10/14/18

There is a sweet little spot waiting for us

Full of big light filled windows and oddly large mirrors

Hard wood floors, blank walls, and old appliances

Right now it’s quiet, still, and empty

It’s an open promise

Endless possibility

Tomorrow you will hand money to a stranger and then poof

It will be ours

As fast as that

As quickly as a page turned in a storybook

Ours to fill with pictures and paintings

With my clicking keyboard

With your music

With my humming and goofy accents

With your sweet singing voice that you think I don’t notice

With our laughter

Our sighs

Our steps

Our movement

Together

Right now it’s me before we met

Even as we were meeting

How could I know that you would make my life impossibly bright?

That you would make a home inside me

And paint me in a new light

Find beauty in hidden corners

Smooth out the sharp edges

While loving the roughness you found there

I thought this step would be scary

I thought I would have too much to hide

But it’s the opposite

Our little spot is patiently waiting

And it’s time to go home

Two years down, so many more to go

Once upon a time
a girl started making some plans

She didn't ask for permission
She belonged to no one and no one belonged to her
The clock struck 12 and she was off

Her youngest niece was kind enough to make her appearance in the nick of time
Her friends sent her off with cake and love
Her parents tried to talk her out of it- but not really

There was a part of her that started the sentence "when I get to California...." more times than anyone could count
There was an air mattress waiting and not much else
There was an idea of what her life would look like when she got there

It was more beautiful than she remembered
It was lonelier than she had anticipated
It was hard to get through the nights when her life back home was already asleep

But she was too stubborn to fail
But she was almost too stubborn to let herself fall
But she let her go and found someone to belong with

And nothing looked the way she had expected
And she worried that her greatest professional achievement would be the perfect cappuccino
And she wished, just once, that she could tell a customer to Fuck Off

In between the mountains and palm trees and a bay breeze
In between trips to a city that had always wanted to call home
In between car rides with the windows down every month of the year

There was her body
Unpredictable, seemingly rebelling, mad at someone
Feeling alien, skin too tight and ill more often than well
Causing more trouble than it's worth

These were her true warrior moments
These were the times she learned how to ask for help
These were the ways that she pushed herself to love herself

Two years passed in a cliche blink of an eye
Two years were what she needed to trust her instincts
Two years to shift her life closer to what she had planned
Two years is not nothing

Maybe in another two, there will me countless more monsters slain
Maybe in another two, I'll laugh at what I want in this moment
Maybe in another two, I'll have what I want in this moment

There is always time to make more plans

Fences

WE connect through stories

We share with each other

We read and watch both lies and truth

I could write about a cold grey world in a distant future

I could weave in details to an exposition that subtly mirror who we are today

I could give you charming heroes with wit and strength who look and sound just like you and me

But for one,

Its been done before

And for two,

Its becoming less necessary every day

But the truth can be hard to face

And it can be impossible to hold a mirror to our own flaws

So lets read it like this:

One upon a time women lost the battle against their assaulters

Once upon a time, our leaders closed the door in the face of those seeking sanctuary

Once upon a time slavery was abolished so that black children could be killed as free people

And the government fenced us in and locked us out

We stayed home and let the fences grew higher and higher

Because we felt alone

Because we felt scared but also safe in our anonymity

And the monsters were real though they looked like us

And the woodland animals sat this one out

And they painted us as witches though we tried to be heroes

But the white knights were too busy mansplaining in the comments section

And the wizard were detained at the gate TSA searching their robes

So the happy ending lives in us

Or not at all

And we have to live in the stories of others

Or drown alone in our own passivity

My body

There are currently tears streaming down my cheeks. Which is much less unusual than it used to be.
I used to be much more composed than this.
I think this is what happens when you are at odds with your body. Because the last time I cried this much was when I was a teenager coming to terms with the fact that I am fat.
A fact that society and my parents helped me to understand. I might not have gotten there on my own.

I've been thinking so much about bodies.
Women's bodies in particular.
How having them makes us liable to get yelled at, followed, and grabbed.
Even though we are built this way to create life.
My sister-in-laws (whom I love. Whom I consider to be more sisters than in-laws because they make my brothers so happy that I would thank them every day if I could without making it weird) have made, or are making, life.
Little faces that have my brothers expressions. Little hands that grab mine. Little hearts that live in my heart.
My body could do that too. That's why I get called at, followed, complimented in vulgar ways even though I am still fat. (and some ways still that teenager realizing she's fat)
But I would rather it didn't. I would be no good for that little body that would come from my body.
So I take a daily pill.
To prevent the making of life.
But, oh, what it does to my body.
Now my body is bigger, and more sensitive.
And it makes tears all the time. For extended periods of time. Sometimes over nothing.
Sometimes at the worst times.
In public,
In front of my boyfriend,
At work.

So I went to the doctor to try to make a change.
I made myself even more vulnerable
And now I know that my body is also infected
Its "abnormal"
So I have to go back and let the doctor open me wider and look closer
And now I'm terrified of this body and what it could do to me
Is it because you know that I hate you? That I wish you looked like other bodies?
Is it because I made all those jokes about you, terrified that they would be made behind my back if I didn't?
I want to love you. I do.
But society says no.
And because of you I get yelled at, followed, and (statistically) probably one day grabbed.
I should care for you because our government does not
But you don't feel like mine
If anything, I am yours
You call the shots, bring the tears, and cause monthly pain that makes me double over and bite through my lip

Today I'm crying.
Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Maybe one day I'll figure out how to love you the way they tell me I should
Maybe one day I'll get rid of the fat or learn to love it
I know for certain that if I every do decide to make a new life, I will teach self-love first and always
I will help bridge the gap between my baby and their body and I will arm them with the power to see beauty in themselves as much as in others

Starts and stops

This was meant to be a collection of fiction. The plan was always to write truths, but to wrap the truths in beautiful lies. But there has been a dreaded 5 letter word that starts with B and ends with K. I won't say it and I won't write it.
There have been beginnings and the beginnings of middles, but no ends.
But I thought that maybe if I listed out the starts for myself then one would jump out and beg to be finished.
These are the sentences that are followed by a blinking curser or a blank page. Characters held in corners, waiting to be told what to do next. Characters waiting to tell me what they will do next.


There is something about my brother-in-law that makes my words stick in my throat.

She came in and sat down next to me, but it was all wrong.

“I don’t know what you write about how you make me feel.”

The sign hanging above the door was made of wood and chipping away in the corner. 

There once was a photographer who lived alone.

Lying in bed, you stare up at the ceiling trying to breath under the heavy arm draped across your chest. 

Once upon a time, the world needed help. 

Letters

My parents received a letter that was addressed to me in their care.
Because they're my parents; they opened it.
It was a letter to myself that I had been forced to write at last years graduation ceremony for the service position I held for 10 months.
I sent it to my parents because I wasn't sure where I would be in a year.

Because I'm me; I didn't take it very seriously.
I called myself "darling" and "princess," and (much to my dads unjustified dismay) I used the word shit. Several times.
I did record some wishes for myself. A wish that 12 months after writing the letter I would not have yet failed yet in my California Girl dream and returned home to Boston. A wish that I would find a fulfilling career. So probably not the bakery that I work at now.
I did not mention any dreams about where I might be living.
But from where I write these words; in an old messy apartment with flickering electricity, sinking bathroom floor, and permanently stained kitchen- this is probably not what I had in mind.
But it is in a beautiful town on a beautiful street and I can walk to a job that pays my affordable rent.

The short scrawling note says nothing about romance.
It makes no mention of my heart, neither then nor now.
A year ago, I had no clue that in the same week that my parents called so my mother could read my own words to me over the phone (which was an eerie experience to say the least) I would wake up on a day off, go for a walk to get myself some coffee, and then sit down to write another letter.
A letter to someone else.
Because I'm still me; I express my emotions through letters and words.
And though I certainly didn't see it coming then, I am in love now.
But I would never want to send a letter to warn the version of me who sat in the reception hall, uncomfortable in her business casual clothes, rolling her eyes and (most likely) a stray curl between two fingers.
I would never want to ruin the surprise of what else was waiting for me here on the West coast.
Someone wonderful, and smart and funny and a terrific pain in the butt.
Someone to tell secrets to and laugh with. Someone who lets me sing into the breeze as the world passes by through the cars open windows.
I won't write myself another letter to open in a year.
I won't ask myself about whats changed and whats stayed the same.
I don't want to know that shit.
I don't want to now what comes next.
Because I have always been me; and I did something to deserve him.
And I can't wait to see what comes next.

Words about my dad.

I open the mail, which does not need a return address because I would recognize my dads sprawling letters or my moms perfectly executed curls of ink anywhere.
I find, as expected, at least two articles cut out from The Globe.
In pen, above the title, my name in all caps followed by a barely legible note.
My dad sends me every single article that is about writing, about good people trying to help the homeless, or has a picture of a dog. But, he especially sends me every single article that he thinks is well-written or is formatted in an interesting way. And the note always says something like "this reminds me of that story you wrote," or "this made me think of you," or "you can write something like this and send it in."
Some parents are quiet about their pride.
Not mine.
My dad documents every single moment of his visit with his granddaughters. We've always made fun of him for being unable to look at them without looking through the lens, but I've also always known that these pictures will be sent to my grandparents who only get to see their great-granddaughters every few years. And now that I have moved to California, they are for me too. So I don't feel like I am missing out on my nieces lives.
My dad does this for me, despite the fact that I moved to the West coast without a plan or a job.
He sends me well-written articles despite the fact that I decided to get my MFA in creative writing without taking a single writing class.
He informs me of social justice events despite the fact that I would rather make too little money working at a non-profit than make a stable income as a teacher.
He asks about the man I am in love with, despite the fact that he has not met him yet.
He gives me endless hours of advice verging on lectures. But that is because he is worried.
Because he is my dad.
And I am his daughter, so sometimes I roll my eyes. And sometimes I get frustrated with his point of view and try to scold him into seeing mine.
We don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to gender roles and identity. And sometimes I feel like he doesn't get me because I get red in the face explaining my views on marriage and children.
But the day after I refuse to stop correcting little things like his use of the word "waitress," I get a letter in the mail. Three articles in all. One about love, one about friendship, one sweet piece about the author finding beauty in the survival of a tree. Three little snapshots that I identify with. It's like three little pieces of the puzzle that make up my personality.
And I know that it's my dads way of telling me that he sees me every day in the good parts of his world. And when he doesn't have the words to tell me that, he sends it to me with the words of others.

To whom it may concern...

I recently turned 30.
A  girl can't hit a mark like that without getting a little introspective.
Not a girl like me.
I began taking note of myself.
And before I knew it, I had made a list
Because I haven't changed much

1.  I still toss words around all day before I set them down
2. I still think comfort means my dads old clothes
3. I still get caught up in tiny details to procrastinate what I fear about the big picture
4. I still think that love is big and wonderful and magic. But it can't be your whole world
5. I still want to perfect everything immediately and feel like a failure when I can't
6. I still love to end on an even number

But there's a a lot that's new

1. I call myself a writer out loud 
2. I'm on a new coast, in a wonderland far from home
3. I am in love
4. I have lost my security blanket "Everything will be better once I move to California"
5. Every day I care less and less about what others think about me
6. I value balance in all things

I have been thinking a lot about clothes lately. 

How does a former emo girl age gracefully?

How does she honor her inner hellions desire to remain a non-conformist while trying to pick out something flattering?

How does she deal with 30?

Same way she rallies to go out when her inner grandma wants to stay in.

With red lipstick. 

Needs and Wants

I'm feeling a bit lost and directionless
a bit dis en fran chised 
A little out of control
which no one likes
  And I like even less.

They tell me they love me
But sometimes my skin stretches and hardens like a barrier
The words knock themselves against it until they're black and blue
And I see them
But I can't feel them from my tower

This isn't what I sat down to write
This is words flowing
without any permission given
Soaked in self pity and a little girls boredom
Because Ok
My life isn't perfect
neither is yours
And I have what I need
I hope you do too
It's just that what I want feels out of reach
But Ok
I just don't feel as great as I thought I would
I need to shift the focus but I can't find the lens
I need to fix it instead of dwelling in metaphors
I want a quick fix
But theres a reason those don't really exist
Even Wonder Woman needed two separate lives to keep her shit together

Maybe the grossest thing I've ever written.

Disney taught me about love when I was a little girl
Fairy tales with fairy tale endings
I knew what I wanted
I was hopeless
I sighed and dreamed
I believed in romance

But as I slipped out of my teens,
I decided that the rules had changed
I told my best friend that I believed
But not in me
I didn't call it cynicism

I grew into who I wanted to be
Not without scrapes and bruises along the way
But I decided to love me on my own
And I did
And I didn't need anyone else

And then I moved
And I changed again
And I keep thinking about who I was before
and before that

In todays world of screens and auto-correct
Nothing beats that feeling when your crush is crushing back
I'm not the little girl expecting sunsets and roses
But I do belive in me
And in us.

A Story from the Road

They were out of Arlington before anyone knew that they were gone. They had passed out early the night before, exhausted from a day of touring the monuments. No one stirred as they packed their bags and grabbed Snacks, they were used to being unnoticed. Their aunt hadn't driven in years, not since an almost fatal collision scared her into taking the bus permanently. It could be years before she noticed that her car was missing from the garage down the street.

   He took the first driving shift because he was older by 5 minuets. She was happy to sleep through the border into the next state. The post card with the picture of the San Antonio river walk was on the dashboard, it had been sent a year ago. "Love Dad," had been almost entirely smudged away by her thumb. She liked to trace the curves to see if any of them mirrored the lines of her own writing.

"What if he's not there anymore?" She asked again.

"It's as good a place to start as any," he said. "Put your seatbelt on, you know we can't get pulled over."

The sun was only just beginning to light the sky. Their aunts alarm broke into the relative darkness and she reached out to postpone her day for another five minuets. 

words

I can’t find my journal

Can’t find my vehicle for getting words to ink

So this will have to suffice

But see how even on screen I skip to the next line

Expecting the page to end

To meet the edge

What does that say?

That tapping and typing will do in a pinch

But I breathe words to life on blue and parchment

rather than blinking black on indifferent white light

There is a lot that I want today

I want to learn to be stronger

I want to do the hard things that will make me better

I want to stop hesitating

I want to burn bright in actions not just words

I wish I could write my future the way I write the lives of my characters

I want to live poetry so I don’t have to write it.

This is not a poem.

Sometimes I feel as though I am living in a whirlwind.

But the wind is stirred by everyone else but me

You are joining your lives with others

You are creating new lives

I am moving slowly while you all orbit around me

I could step into the circle, but I hesitate every time I see an opening

No, not yet.

Next time.

Maybe.

The only wrong choice is to not choose.

I can put the words in ink on my skin

I can say them in the mirror to myself

I can write them to you.

But it’s easier to find excuses to put them off

And go search for a lost object instead.

For Country

This is piece I wrote today in class after hearing about a friend who just passed away.
I didn't know him very well, but he was an amazing writer and had a contagiously bright personality.


BY the time I got the news, it was too late, and it's not like I could have done anything anyway, but once you were alive and present and once you were laughing and making us laugh and once you loved your mommas jumbalaya and warm summer nights in the South...but now you can't love anything or anyone because someone ended you with a knife I imagine the neon glow of a blinking sign on a cold hard concrete they made you fade away like the night breeze cools the rice that you used to chase with an already cool beer and I know that I couldn't have stopped them but  all you have now is the earth above and the earth below and all I have now is the pen and the words to write it

Just an object

From a distance, it is  utterly ordinary. Thin and still. One color, maybe three at the most. On its own, useless, not even heavy enough to hold a piece of paper in place against the threat of an agitating breeze. But placed in my hand, or your hand, it is a tool.
It is the tool.
On skin, on paper, on my favorite pair of jeans from high school, the ones covered in slogans and doodles.
Manipulated by human fingers, clutched in frantic sweaty palms. Or calmly sweeping back and fourth. Suddenly words and scrawls are painted across a surface that was once empty.
The pen brings life to the lifeless. As it warms between our thumb and pointer finger. As it rests against knuckle and middle finger. We use it and bring it to life as the words breath life into the page.
Ink flows, words appear, and the pen has a purpose.
Divine and beautiful or angry and erratic.
The words may be terms of endearment or expressions of hate.
The pen is Switzerland. The pen is neutral.
The pen doesn't give a shit of you love or loath.
The pen moves or dries up.
Or leaks and drips and forms little bubbles of blue/black spit across the page as you work.
The pen has a job to do. The pen never stays still for long.
When the words are in motion, so is the pen.

Me Writing about Myself

Having faith in yourself can be terrifying.
Saying YES to yourself feels so scary
I went through and deleted story fragments from here today
Not because I don't want to share with you, but because I want to share with the world

Because.

I have decided to trust myself,
to hope with a heavy amount of realism
that someday
someone
will want to publish words that I have strung together
That means that they can't be sitting here waiting

Just like I can't sit here waiting.

For me,
this act of hope is bravery.
It is part of a series of things that I am doing for myself
In an effort to become someone that I enjoy being
Someone I believe in.

I am staying quiet and listening more
I have gotten rid of the word hate, erased it from my every day vocabulary
I am forcing myself to take deeper breaths
concentrating on the action
waiting for it to become habitual.

I am taking care of myself
Not because I am all that I've got
I have a lot of people
and they deserve the best version of me
And so do I.

Breaking the silence with silence

I have restricted myself to written language today
I havent spoken a single word since I woke up

And it's been wonderful.

The most noise I made was when I ran the dishwasher.
Which is actually considerably loud.

I've spent the day thinking,
drinking coffee, staying warm, and doing this

Staying quiet is a thing that I'm doing just for me.
I'm being selfish and keeping myself to myself
And it's making a little grin stick to the corner of my lips

I'm thinking about all the sounds we make every day
Noises for each other to announce our presence in a room
To remind each other that we are here
To say "you're funny"
or
"I think I'm funny"


It's so nice to just
shhhh
to announce nothing
to no one
for just a little while

Needs and wants

Someone I love dearly forced me to write a poem and read it out loud.
So putting it here is way less scary than that.

I need S P A C E
My mind gets as cramped as my legs
My breath gets stilted when my body can't move
I need to look around and see   Nothing
Hear   Nothing

Every once in a while I need
   to be alone

I need to break away
   from who I am


I need to S T O P
   Stop being a daughter
                     a friend
                     a sister
                     a woman

I need the space to hear my thoughts
 without them bouncing off and ONE
                                           or any THING

Space can be filled so easily
Quiet ends so quickly

It can be hard to Stop and be S T I L L

I need to not be needed
to not be asked to laugh, listen, explain, or answer
to anyone but myself

I need the space empty
and the mood light

Am I alone in this?

Have you ever looked at your life and suddenly realized that it has started to escalate quickly like the fight scene in Anchorman?
One minute you're walking down the street with your friends wearing your fancy suits
and the next thing you know, Ben Stiller is sporting a Mexican Mustache and Brick is killing a guy with a trident?

And nothing does a better job of reminding you how emotionally ill-equiped you are for this than that big pimple on your face
(fyi: when morosely mumbling to myself about the age gap between me and my co-workers, I was NOT hoping for clogged pores to be the solution to evening the playing field)

So being in Grad school is hard because it is a LOT of work
but NOT being in Grad school is also hard because you feel like you're not working towards what you want in life
And cleaning your room is hard because Who Has The Time?
But NOT cleaning means that you can't bare to look around because the clutter is too painfully and accurately portraying what your brain looks like
So you wade around in your own filth with your eyes half squinted shut and pretend it's not there

And pretty much everything stays hard once you're no longer spending your time playing with My Little Ponies
and even that can be difficult because they get lost and its hard to pick your favorite and once you get creative and decide to play with braids or hair gel then there is No Going back
and that ugly braid (or god-forbid the sticking-straigh-up-strand from when you thought that pink plastic needed a trim) will haunt you for the rest of your life

And you vent at all the wrong times (like writing a blog instead of an essay)
And stay quiet when you should speak up (like when you let someone dictate your choices for you)
and hold it in when you want to let it out (because screaming in public is frowned upon)
Until you are loosing track of how long you've been standing in the shower
and you realize that those frustrating sounds are coming from you
as you mentally cross of your list
and edit you list
and add to your list

When did 11am start to feel like late rather than early?
When did 5:30 become time to wake up instead of the Middle of the night?
When did my life turn into one big To-Do list?

And how am I supposed to stay classy when I never had an ounce of class to begin with?

The act of breathing in memories

What did your childhood smell and sound like?

For me, memories of childhood are of blue skies peeking out from between towering pine trees.

Childhood is the sound of girl’s voices echoing and bouncing around me like a tornado of sound.

The sound makes its way to my ears reminding me that I am in a world that we have created

It is a world where we are free to be girls

Free to be weird and loud, to walk with our arms around each other and whisper secrets and share stories about the women that we want to become

Memories of those days flow together in an endless stream of images of inside jokes and insane laughter

 In my memory, I run around in the warm summer air, leaping from rock to root not caring about properly placing my feet or worrying about being thrown off balance and crashing down to the ground

In my memory; I am simply me

I am not too fat or too loud.

I am the size and volume that I am supposes to be

There is no worry of my placement in the world

There is only the joy of playing in the sun and being surrounded by the love of a community of women and girls

And girls becoming women

My childhood was emulating girls who were older than me

It was a female thing

It was about comparing them to the woman that I wanted to be

I was a girl who clung to my childhood while being intensely aware if the fact that it would end one day

That I would be catapulted into adulthood

And I knew exactly what I wanted that to look like

But I have never been able to fully let go of the world that I created and reveled in as a young girl

So every summer, I return and return to hide myself in the shade of those same trees that sheltered me as a little girl

I crave that fresh air of Pine needles and wood

I Claw and Scrape at my memories and ignore the sweat and tears of exertion as I try desperately to keep this world intact

Because I want to share it so that I never have to leave it

 I listen to the breeze in the trees and the voices of girls calling to each other

I pretend that I am still that girl

But I have grown

And being here is no longer the same because my world is not here for me anymore

It is a new world for a new community of women

I have to find a new world to create and to shape

This world is my childhood

I found it and made it my own and

Now I treasure it and how it shaped me

We created each other

And to leave it is to leave behind a part of myself

And make room something new