A year ago....London calls, and home beckons...

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"And in the end, we were all just humans drunk, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The dishwasher hums.  The washing machine churns.  It’s a Saturday night and I listen to him lull her to sleep.  A year ago this weekend I was in London.  I was leaving Noely, Tree and Simon at a train station as I took the journey to Hackney to end the last night, in the wee hours of the morn, in Johanna’s kitchen with her and Amanda.  Things have changed.  A lot.

A year ago at this time I was on an incredible spiritual journey.  I was deeply in therapy; I was working with a Shaman.  I had made a difficult conscious choice to change my life.  At whatever cost that came.  I had decided that I would be alone, for the rest of my life if that is what it all would mean, to find the only true love that I could ever really hold on to.  Myself.  A year ago today, I decided that although I was broken, I was not unfixable.  A year ago today, I decided to rewrite my story.

And so, surprisingly even to me, I did just that.  I took all of my broken bits, beautiful moments, tragedy and confusion and pieced myself together again, one stitch at a time.  Had I met him any sooner, I would’ve blindly walked passed him.  I wasn’t ready.  Not for him. Most certainly not for her.  I was only beginning to grasp the concept of letting go of all that which I could not control.  I was only beginning to grasp that this, all of this, was about so much more if I could only allow myself to see it.

To seek peace – at whatever cost seems like a strange concept really.  Shouldn’t it just be a natural state?  For many perhaps.  Not for me.  It had never been my way.  I always thought too much, felt too much, saw too much.  The majority of my life had been spent trying to save other people all of the while feeling completely selfish in doing what I wanted.  To clarify, some may have felt shorted by me, however I could never find a way to express that it was just that others needed me more.  Until I guess the moment arose that I realized perhaps I needed me more.

I dreamt of London last night and it wasn’t until I sat down to write tonight that I realized the timing.  A year ago today I was in the flurry of a soulful hurricane.  Myself, everyone around me igniting.  Everything I touched kept leading others and myself on a path.  In no grammatical eloquence I can only say it this way – it was the trippiest time of my fucking life.  The Universe was this orb following me.  Pushing me.  Putting me on airplanes, and in circumstances that tested everything about myself that I was supposed to learn and show others.  It was a release and absorption all at once.  The noise of it all was deafening.  

It would be a lie to say that I haven’t been distracted a bit over the past many months.  Of all of that.  The intensity.  The spirituality.  I have him now.  And her now, and my focus has shifted.  But it’s brought about challenge.  Another journey.  Another path. 

Tonight however I am consumed with that time.  The urge to remember that it is about so much more. I hold things within myself again, like I used to.  My back aches for no reason because I don’t know how to release.  I don’t know how to express love and confusion.  I don’t know how to show gratitude with all that I have but to acknowledge and embrace how far I have come.  I don’t know.  How do you hold on to who you have become and release the only thing you have ever known about yourself?  If that even makes sense.

Each night, when I go to sleep, and each morning when I wake, I feel peace.  For both I do with a boy who has decided to hop on my crazy train and embrace the fact that I talk to the Universe, drink too much wine, have more plans than we could ever have time for, buy way too much shit for his daughter than necessary, have long philosophical talks with most of my ex’s and dance randomly in my kitchen.  For that, I would trade nothing. 

However tonight, I wish he knew me a year ago.  Although he was to meet me only a couple short months later, I wish he knew me, as lights burnt out as I walked passed them, as I sought comfort in the stories of strangers, as all of this was unfolding, the finding of me so that I could finally know him. And maybe tonight, I miss me a bit, because she hides sometimes in the shadows of the now…but she is there, fire in her belly, passport in hand….ready…and perhaps the her of then is my clarity of now.  I don’t know.  I’m still learning.

A year ago tomorrow Amanda and I rode in a cab to Heathrow.  She said to me, “You’re a really beautiful person you know, I wish you believed it….” I cried and said, “I wish I did too.” Perhaps now, I believe it a bit more.  All of these things that I’ve done.  All of these things that I have seen.  They are a story within a story.  Perhaps even tonight is too and a decade from now it will be told in a different way, in a different version, with different people around.  But tonight, embodied by a year ago, I am wrapped in the blanked of my now and it is worthy of acknowledgment.

Thanks for listening.  

Traffic

"I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you." – Dirty Dancing

How do I write this in a way that makes sense?

I sat tonight, having just watched a movie, having just done some reading, having had a solid workout, feeling good – then out of nowhere my heart started to hurt….literally – I could physically feel my heart.  A weird uncomfortable ache and it had nothing to do with me but it overcame nonetheless.  The appetite for the dinner I had slowly been cooking for hours, lost.  A blanket of sadness overcame.

The life of an empath I presume.  It had nothing to do with me but I couldn’t reach the source – it was too far away.  I could only just feel the feelings. And so I wallowed within them and prayed for light for those I love. 

The road is difficult.  There is a place here by the ocean.  It’s beautiful.  We call it Sandy Point.  You have to drive 6 miles to get there.  Part of the road is paved and smooth.  The other bit rocky and dirt and you have to drive slow.  But it’s worth it when you get to the end and it’s beautiful, tranquil and perfect.  My church.  Symbolic enough I presume.  Life.  The journey to get to the beautiful bits.

It’s going to be ok.  That I know.  This is all just some weird transition of time and space.  As my old friend John wrote, “All I want is someone to pull me out, I’m stuck in a traffic jam and there’s nowhere to run for miles…..” That’s us.  Stuck right now.  In a way.  But not really.  Traffic still moves….it's still going somewhere.  We are what we believe. We are still moving as slowly as it as it all seems.

Last night I stood in fields of mud.  Each step I tried to take, my legs were pulled and everything was heavy, but I eventually pulled my feet forward.  I made it across.  Isn’t that this?  Mud?  Life. 

When is the last time that you believed that you were beautiful?  You are.  We are.  Be.  Release.  Stand in mud and laugh your ass off.  Know that every morning you wake up you have a chance to begin again.  That’s what I’m choosing.  What other alternative do we have?  Believe in things.  Believe in you.  Sacrifice.  Give.  Love. Forget what you need to and remember that which fills.

It’s a fucked up journey and tonight I have no answers except I love.  That’s all I know to do.  Love.  And I crave those those that fill me with it. It's all we want really - to be stuck and to have something, someone to pull us out. 

xo

Thanks for listening.

Hollow

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

-Robert Frost

There is a quiet sometimes.  A mild buzzing of white noise throughout my house.  I sat in my kitchen today and listened to the quiet undertones of silence.  I stared at my phone.  Attempting to will a message from the Universe to appear.  It didn’t work.  The silence remained.

Most times, the silence soothes me.  My life is always so chaotic, running here and there, in and out, up and down that I usually welcome the melody that flows within the lack of noise.  Not today.  Today it wrenched in my stomach a bit as I sat fiddling with the bracelets that line my wrist.  I wanted for something more.  A phone call.  A plane ride.  An escape.  The need to be anywhere except for here consumed me.

I stared out the window, looking at the now empty trees.  I felt empty too.  In that moment I wanted something that I rarely do, for someone to be standing behind me with their arms wrapped around me so that maybe I could remember what it was like to feel something again.  Strange to feel everything and nothing all the same.  And I hold it all under this blanket of silence.  Which seems ironic for someone who always expresses herself.  But there’s a difference between what I speak and what I feel.  That, I keep to myself with the exception of a select few.  Yes, there’s a great difference. 

Today I feel strained.  Stifled.  As if something is sitting on my chest and I can’t quite breathe right.  As if something is about to surface that I’ve been pushing down, trying to avoid.  As I write, tears stream down my cheeks and I have no explanation for it.  There is no apparent cause.  There is only silence.  Perhaps that is the cause.  I’m not sure. 

Hollow.  Hollow is the word that keeps whispering across my mind.  Hollow like the empty trees.  

Orange Kitchens

It was a lazy Saturday.  I was at peace.  More so than I had been in a long time, regardless of the many circumstances around me that would normally deter that.

I lay in bed….for hours.  I slept.  Something I never do.   

The alarm went off.  Ughhhh I thought to myself.  It was 6:30 PM.  I was supposed to be at Becky’s in 30 minutes.  I wanted nothing to do with leaving where I was.  Me, in my orb of tranquility.

I hopped in the shower.  As I buffed and scrubbed, I groaned internally.  There was a friend of a friend visiting.  I was already exhausted at the thought of entertaining someone new and pretending to be interested in anything outside of what I knew.  We all have those moments, when you want to just rest in your inner circle and your ability to be cordial wanes. 

It was an unseasonably warm October night.  It felt closer to summer than Fall and so I threw on cut off’s, an oversized white t-shirt I had bought in London the weekend before and a rustic chambray shirt I had recently purchased trying to convince myself that I could bring the style back.  Slid on my Frye’s, opted out of makeup because I had no concern for what I would look like, slapped my hair into a bun, grabbed some wine and Crabbies at the liquor store and headed on my way.

I stumbled into Becky’s with Libby nipping at my knees and did my usual boisterous hello.  There were my friends, old and new, sitting around the table…and there was he.  The friend of a friend.  The person I had begrudgingly already been annoyed with before I had met him, knowing full well that everyone would rely on me to be his source of entertainment because that’s what I excelled at. 

To describe energy is impossible.  There is nothing that suits it.  There are no words.  What he looked like was nothing that resonated within me.  In fact, I’m not sure now it even does.  I know that he is beautiful but it means nothing – if that makes sense? It was this confusing, exhilarating energy that flowed between us that sort of knocked me out of my stability.  I walked slowly into the living room cursing myself for looking like a homeless person and for not preparing myself.  Why the Hell don’t I ever know when these people will come into my life?  Can’t someone give a sign? Something so in the very least so that I look like whom I can be?  Why have 3 people fallen into my life when I am at the most very careless version of myself?  I digress.

There he was.  There I was.  Energy illuminated.  However this time, I told myself not to succumb to it.  I had been there before.  It hurt in the end because most soul connections such as this appear to teach you something and then leave - and that leaving can be wrenching.  It was a road I wasn’t going to walk.  So I was I.  I subliminally threw my hands to the Universe and just enjoyed my night - I could do this...make nothing of it.  Ignore it.  

I saw his eyes consistently on me - as I moved he seemed to move around me and I always found us encircling each other.  I blamed the booze.  I chatted him up with careless banter and although I wanted to make the entire room disappear and tell him that I missed him and fill him on all of the things that happened since I had seen him last so many lifetimes ago, I did nothing.  Because these things, if you don’t understand them, are too much for others to take. And how do you explain things to a stranger that you've already met?  You can't. 

We all decided that after hours of libations we should walk downtown.  After all, we had a visitor in our presence; the local dive bar was a crucial tourist attraction to chalk off of the list. 

I walked in the street and immediately he was beside me.  Becky bellowed in the background to slow down so that her heels could keep up….in truth, I ignored her, I wanted that moment.  He and me.  As we walked, I counted, unnoticed by all, 5 streetlights blew out as we past them.  Energy is everywhere.  It at times knows far more than we do.  

Rounds of drinks flowed.  Whiskey.  Laughter.  He kept looking.  Curious.  At one point I covered my eyes.  The intensity of his stare too much.  He grabbed my hands. “Why,” he asked.  “It’s too much, you’re looking through me,” I replied peeking out of my fingers.  He laughed.  The knowing. 

The night went on.  Laughter.  Libations.  Haze.  I had offered up my house as a hostel given that we had more visitors in town than Becky’s house could hold and some had agreed to take me up on it. 

We walked home and held hands.  Two strangers.  Holding hands as if they had known each other for a hundred lifetimes.  I gave them a tour of the house.  He attempted to kiss me in every room.  “No.” quite simply was my response.  I had no interest.  I mean, there was interest but I already knew the ending and so I felt the need to protect my heart. But there was this gravity pulling.  It's so difficult to resist that type of pull when it's everything for the most part, we as humans seek.

Eventually, the world went to sleep except us and we lost friends in empty bedrooms.  I stood in my living room, explaining the two prints on the wall, being photographs that I had taken, that I was so proud of…he walked slowly toward me, he cupped my face with both of his hands, and I gave in. 

To be kissed, to be kissed soulfully, is something that there are not words for.  To have energy that you can’t explain, to have words that make no sense because they seem so trivial – that they can only resonate in contact, that is everything.  And so, I guess that was that moment, and the many that proceeded.  And so I did something I hadn’t done in a decade….I let a soul mate in.