Russian Roulette

"Open your eyes, look within.  Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" - Bob Marley

I stood in line tonight at the grocery.  As I idly scanned my Facebook feed from my phone while my groceries were being bagged, the elderly bagger named Louie nudged me and said, “We’ve been having a discussion tonight and I wanted to get your opinion on something.”  I looked up at him intently.  “Shoot.” I stated.  “If someone offered you a billion dollars to play Russian Roulette would you take it?  You’d only have a one in 6 chance of dying. 1 out of 6 bullets.”  Without hesitation I responded, “Not a chance in Hell Louie.  Not a chance in Hell.”  He winked. “Me either kid.  Me either.” And so we went on about our ritual.

For some reason, driving home the conversation stuck with me.  More so because I’m not sure if a few years ago I would’ve answered the question so quickly and with such unabashed confidence in knowing my retort.  A few years ago I was lucky to get through my days without wishing that this life would somehow just vaporize into thin air.  

Every step for many years felt as if I was running in cement.  Going nowhere fast and if something didn’t change I was going to be frozen there, a statue of myself ‘The Girl Who Couldn’t Get Away From Herself’ they would’ve called me.  Repeating the same patterns of behavior over and over again expecting different results.  Yes, the definition of insanity.  I was the poster girl.  I had everything externally, an insane career, piles of friends, jaunting around the world just because but on the inside…I was vacant.  A shadow.  Some sort of lost semblance of something that I was supposed to be but couldn’t find my way to. There had to be more.  I had to be more.  

And then one day, after something insignificant, out of nowhere I decided that I no longer needed to carry these weights.  I could be something different.  Something better.  As long as it took, I would pull myself out of this drowning of the self.  I would find light.  And so I did.

It wasn’t easy.  It required a concentrated effort to unravel myself from myself.  Every time I went to react, I chose to act instead.  I chose to consciously and purposely move instead of chaotically flounder.  What did I want the outcome to be was the penetrating thought with my every word, with my every movement.  If I wanted love, I had to project love.  If I wanted peace, I had to seek it.  If I wanted understanding, I had to understand.  If I wanted something to be beautiful, I had to first believe that I was, in whatever form.  If I wanted forgiveness, I had to forgive myself first and foremost.  

I dusted off the hope chest of myself and went through each shred of paper, photograph, poem, travel, lover, lesson and embraced them all….one by one.  I incorporated the pieces of me into a wholeness of the being that I was now.  I took the 14 year girl in me who had been stopped in her tracks with anguish and held her hand and let her know that she was ok.  I had this now and we were gonna be just fine.  I stared my 30 year old self in the face, hugged her really fucking hard and said, “You will get through this and be far greater than you could ever comprehend.”  And I let her rest.  

I decided to be a little bit more gentle with myself.  To drink less wine.  Absorb more air.  I decided to envision, visualize, believe.  I would whisper as I drove for miles in my car, in the middle of the night, “Wherever you are, the rest of my life, I love you, I’m grateful for you and I’m ready when you are…”  I allowed myself the ability to wait patiently, to flow with the current instead of fighting the tide.  I would get where I needed to go if I could just float.  Just be.

And slowly but surely, it came.  Because slowly but surely I was ready to see it, to embrace it.  To recognize it.

There are a thousand cliches of self help.  But in the end, it’s two words.  Help yourself.  Stop waiting for some lightening to crack from the sky of your being to jolt a change forward.  Be your own electricity.  Stop grunting and start being.  There is no elixir.  There is no magic moment. It’s one foot in front of the other, doing the next right thing.  Being the next right thing.  It’s about being a boomerang.  What you project out will be what comes back.  It’s about releasing yourself of instant gratification and having patience with the process. It’s about having a process.  

I still falter. I am human.  But I would so much rather this, the strangely beautifully confusing moments to be my story than the last moment being that I was stupid enough to lose out on the next chapter because I might be willing to play a stupid game of staring down the barrel of something I might not be able to come back from. 

This is beautiful.  This is life and this is enough.  I am enough.

Thanks for listening.

I Love You Still

Super honored to have a piece of my writing published via Elephant Journal xo

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/10/i-love-you-still/

Vincent Square: Chapter 3: The Princess Royal

-->

It was an Indian summer day in late September.  Tegan and I were done with classes and we were putzing around SoHo people watching.  We often didn’t say much.  We just were.  It was an unspoken understanding between us.  Each of us had spent most of our pennies getting ourselves into school and paying rent – gathering enough money to escape but having no money to do anything once we got there.  We hadn’t many other luxuries.  I shared Ramen with him when my friends would send them from home.  Otherwise, we didn’t eat much except the one baguette we would buy ourselves a week and slowly pick at to fill the ache - and I lived off of the cartons of cigarettes sent.  Camel straight, no filters.  3 packs a day.  When you can’t eat, you fill yourself with something, so that it was. 

I was leaning against a brick wall beside a café, exhaling a cigarette when a scrawny redheaded kid came up and said, “Are you American?”  I looked around.  Was he really talking to me?  I hadn’t been speaking so it couldn’t have been my accent that gave anything away.  I was sort of a Goth loving hippy and from what I knew of I melded into most environments and I sure of shit wasn’t toting an American flag in my pocket so I was mildly taken aback and more so annoyed.  This was my home and I had believed I fit in like a camelion. 

“Yah.” I responded bluntly while staring aimlessly away from him.  “Cool…you live here?  I’m Dave.”  “Yah.” I turned to look him in the eye.  Sizing him up.  He looked decent enough.  Kind eyes, big smile.  A tad dirty.  He wasn’t lost like Tegan and I.  He was traveling.  There was a difference.  “I’m Willow.”  I extended moving my cigarette to my left hand and handing him my right. “Sorry to interrupt – I just got here and I’m trying to connect with people.  I’m camping outside of the city.  Traveling for a year or so.  London is my first stop.  Heard you asking your friend for a light so grabbed on to the assumption that you were American.”  Oh.  Ok.  I felt better now…there’s a chance I was blending. 

We talked for a bit about the fact that he had just arrived from California and was planning to camp his way around Europe and that we had a pretty large house with plenty of space so if he needed a place to crash, or to shower, he was more than welcome.  We had quickly learned the art of sharing space.  When you have a backpack, it’s like a community.  You share beds, floors, food, and stories.  You randomly knock on doors in the middle of the night of an address given to you in a drunken moment in a hostel and they actually take you in.  And so, I gave Dave our phone number, completely comfortable that at one point or another he might show up on our doorstep asking for a couch or a crumb.

Tegan and I parted ways with our new friend and headed home. 

The next day was tough.  The girls were going to Amsterdam and planning to smuggle some goodies back via tampons and the boys were heading up to Scotland.  Tegan and I didn’t have any money to go away for a long weekend of debauchery so we waved goodbye to our friends and settled into our usual night of bong hits, stories of his life working in the butter factory and my dreams of writing the great American novel, when the phone rang.

“Ughhh….” I grunted walking up the two floors to the dining room where our one house phone existed.  “Hello.”  “Hi, can I speak with Willow please?”  “Speaking.” “Hey – it’s Dave, we met yesterday in SoHo.  Dirty camper guy…” I could actually hear his ease and smile from the other end of the phone.  “Hey man, what’s up?”  “I was just calling to see what you and your roommates were doing tonight?  I met some cool dudes today that are playing in a pub tonight.  Was wondering if you wanted to come?”  Ugh, I thought to myself.  This guy totally wants to get in my pants and he’s so not my type.   But I was bored as shit and well, what could it hurt?  “Mmmmm….hmmm….ok.  Sounds cool.  Where should we meet you?”  “Victoria Station.  Upstairs, outside, I’ll find you.  8:00?”  Ughhhh….misery…god I pray he doesn’t try to touch me.  “Cool man, we’ll see you there.” Emphasizing the ‘we’ using Tegan as my imaginary boyfriend decoy just in case.

“Teeeeg.  Get off your ass and shower.  We’re going out.  I HAVE PLANS.  ME!  PLANS!  Up up, shower shower.”  Blank eyes stare back at me.  I know this look.  “T.  I’m not going anywhere.  I’m good here.  I can’t even afford a pint.”  “Dude, I’ll buy you a pint, a got some cash in the mail today.  You can’t leave me with the redhead to myself.  I can’t bear rejecting him.  But we need to get out.  C’mon!!”  “Nope.”  I’ll be here when you get home but I’m not going.”

“Shit.” I respond as I storm up the stairs to try to find some non-flannel, emo, hippy ensemble suitable for a night of doing something more.

“Do I look ok?” I grumble as Tegan lay on my bed watching me get ready.  “You look like that chic from Popeye.  What’s her name?” “Uhm…Olive Oil or something…”  “Yah.  Her.  You look like her.” “She’s ugly.  Thanks.”  “No man, I meant long and like thin and shit.  You look cool.”  “I hate you.  Have another hit – it makes you incredibly literate, asshole.”  I bend down to kiss him on the cheek.  “You sure you won’t come?”  He doesn’t respond.  “Fine, you better be awake for the recap when I get back.  Love you butter boy.  Later.”  And there I went out.  My first big night in the city all on my lonesome. 

Dave was there, at the top of the stairs, smiling his innocent, life is good smile.  We walked a few blocks chatting about life as a roaming 20-something year old.  We were all in some way trying to live out our own version of Dharma Bums and could all on some level relate.

Eventually we ended up in front of the Princess Royal Pub.  “Here we are.  I think…” Dave muttered.  “Sweet” was my retort.  We ordered pints – and sat down and suddenly I became overwhelmed with the need to set things straight.  And so I went on a rant.  “Hey man, it’s great to meat you and it’s cool to have new friends but I have to just put this out there that if you think this is a ‘date’ it’s not a ‘date’ and there isn’t a chance in Hell that we’d ever hook up.  OK?  I have no interest and I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.  Sorry.  Just needed to make sure we were clear.”

Silence.

Dave erupts in laughter.  I shift uncomfortably.  What the fuck is so funny?

“Dude, I appreciate your honesty but I have no interest in you either.  My girlfriend is meeting me here next week and we’re doing this trip together.  I was just trying to make some friends while I was hanging out here until we started the trip.” 

“Oh.”

His mocking smile was annoying as shit but I couldn’t help but laugh as well.  I mean seriously – I just assumed he wanted me.  But I had barely said two words to him – why would he?  Eventually when I got over the weird ego bruise of the guy I totally wasn’t interested in not being interested in me, we began to have a blast together.  Turned out we had loads in common and I felt as if I had met one of the good people.  Those that are who they represent themselves to be.  Say what they mean.  Mean what they say, all that jazz. 

Eventually we got more rowdy, got locals involved, started doing shots, laughing with folks, playing music on the jukebox and toasting to random encounters in SoHo. Out of nowhere and in the midst of laughing I turned my head.  The door to the pub opened.  It was as simple as that.  A door opening.

All feeling left my being.  Light and energy shifted and moved and jolted between me and the doorway of the pub.  In the silence of a second my hand fell loose and the pint in my hand crashed to bits on the floor.  My stare never waivered.  A part of myself was walking through the door and the other part of me was standing still while glass shattered all around me.  It was nothing about him.  Not his piercing blue eyes and raven black hair.  It had nothing to do with the fact that he looked as if he didn’t belong among us – in truth; I never saw any of that.  All that I saw was a blinding light of a link to a soul that had been a part of my story for lifetimes and here, in this life I had waited 20 years to find him and now I had.  In London.  He was standing across the room from me and for all that I didn’t know about whom he was or why I was finding him now, I had missed him so much. 

“Dude, you ok?  What the Hell man, you trashed?” Dave mumbled in a drunken stupor.  My head heavy and lost but snapping back to reality…“That’s my soul mate” the only words I could mumble as I stared straight ahead – at him.  “Who…?” Dave’s voice trailed off while following my stare.  “No shit.”  He let out a laugh.  “That’s Josiah.  That’s the dude that I met today busking in the street.  And the other guy – Noah.  The guy behind him.  That’s them.  That’s why we are here.  Ha.” 

Indeed.  That is why I was there.  Finally.  My reason found me.