The Unsent Letter

I want to preface that I have not touched this blog in 5 years. I'm dusting it off and a lot of its immaturity but it's still me and bits of the story. All of the archived posts on here were really me processing losing someone that had been in my life for a very long time and sorting who I was without him. Therapy and a release. I read a lot of it tonight and I had many internal eye rolls. BUT, I'm going to keep them on here as reminders. I hope to bring a higher level of content moving forward. Before I do however, I found this nugget in my Google drive from eons ago. I think this was the last bit for me, the closure in a sense. And then, I stopped writing for a long time and began living (except for a few bits here and there on LinkedIn). To kick off the un-dusting of my blog, I thought it fitting to start at the end - which was really my beginning.

Years ago I had taken a day trip outside of London with my friend Marc. I’m not even sure of the name of where we went. We happened into this tiny vintage book store – everything was sort of old and dusty and it seemed like hours we just perused books and read old inscriptions from people who no longer existed. I gravitated towards a book titled, “Many things have happened since he died and here are the highlights.” It was a newer book and seemed misplaced amongst all of the leather bound dusty scented pages everywhere. Because it was the runt of the store, I had to have it. I tend to gravitate towards all things seemingly lost.

 
It’s a strange book – a bit chaotic and sporadic. Some pages only having one word. But it’s the story of a woman grieving, processing, random thoughts, memories. I still have the book. I thought of it tonight. I thought of the many things that have happened since you’ve been gone. It has felt like years. It goes something like this….

At first, I aligned myself with my status quo numbing of the soul with wine and cigarettes until one day I woke up and had lost the taste for numb and wine and even cigarettes. I woke up one day and just needed to run. And so I ran.

 
Then, I realized that my room, with a myriad amount of crap strewn everywhere for weeks wasn’t helping so I began to organize and clean and get my life aligned.

Most days, I wake up and if time permits, I stare into empty space for as long as possible. If I’m forced to engage with the world to pay my bills, I do what I have to do. Most days, I prefer to be alone and in silence. Which, for me, is the opposite of my usual coping mechanism of surrounding myself consistently with others. I’ve lost my will to speak and those around me don’t ask or speak of you and I’m not quite sure which is worse. My friends now just give me that look of sympathy, and empathy and we distract ourselves with discussions of all things unrelated to me.. It’s as if time has stood still and my silent resignation I assume says enough. Or, just the look on my face – perhaps that speaks volumes as well. Something behind my eyes is lost. It’s obvious even to strangers.

 
About a week ago I was at the gym. I guess it had been a hard day and I guess I was running…hard, in a way that perhaps was more than just running but trying to run away from myself. I was soaked, and spinning and nauseous but I just kept going because I didn’t know what to do if I stopped and then there was this hand on my arm. This woman kept her hand on my arm. She stared at me and I stared at her and we said nothing. It was this moment, and it was as if she was saying, “I know. Slow down, pace yourself, you, all of this, is not going anywhere no matter how hard or fast you try…give it time…” so I slowed down. And that was that moment. I find comfort in knowing there are other intuitive’s out there. I needed that help – in that moment. Then, I basically almost puked my guts out.

 
I cry a lot. Not in a sobbing way. In a more quiet, unbeknownst to me tears are streaming down my face in the most random of moments kind of way. At first, I wouldn’t allow it. I would swallow it back, swallow some wine and fight. Now, I’ve given up and given in and I just let it be what it is. There’s a grieving process and I need to let myself go through it. The other day I fell down the stairs (yes, I was dead sober). It sort of jolted me. And I cried half out of fear and half out of feeling alone and then I just sat there, on the floor – maybe for an hour, looking out my front door, realizing I had given up on ever seeing you walk through it again. And then I picked myself up, because that is all that you can do.

Last night, I sat outside for a while. The air has had that warmth of another season coming and after two trips to the gym and the realization that I couldn’t in fact do anything else but just be home and with myself I gave in and just thought. I thought about trying to reconcile my belief in us – having loved you before I ever actually knew you. I thought about trying to reconcile my belief in our house on the beach and our happily ever after. I thought about how to reconcile the belief that you hold a piece of my soul that I’m not quite sure how to replace…I don’t allow for wishes, or hopeful thought, it’s not healthy or relevant at this point and I can’t reconcile much, so I whispered thoughts into the air, took a brief step into your mind and then stepped quickly out and went to sleep.

I dream a lot. They are all very clear. Most times painful but it’s all that I have and mostly the only way that I can see your face so there’s a sort of anguished comfort in them.

 
I tried to go on a date. It didn’t work. I couldn’t do it. I’m not ready. I appreciate having the choice to be alone. And alone I will be until I wake up one morning and have found complete acceptance.

 
I don’t believe that I smile often these days, and if I do, passing by someone in the office, I sort of grimace and wince and think to myself how strained it all seems. It’s sort of a robotic state but as Winston Churchill said, “When you’re going through Hell, keep going…” so I keep going. A coworker said to me recently, “I haven’t seen your smile in a long time.” It’s annoying being the bubbly chic. The entire world watches impatiently waiting for you to come back. I’ll be back when I’m ready.

I’ve planned a few trips. I guess I look forward to them. Distractions really. It’s an odd state of existence, trying to live your life and go on and let go of something that you love and that for so many years you held on to. It’s like fighting a current and you can’t swim and it’s beating the shit out of you but you have to stay afloat and you know that eventually, you could just stop fighting it and let it take you wherever it’s supposed to. I’m not sure which phase of that I’m in. I’m fighting for something; I just don’t know what yet. I guess it’s still sort of murky waters.

When you send your obscure “Hey – I hope you’re well” texts – I understand that the meaning behind them is, “I miss you and I love you” – I appreciate that. I also appreciate what you can’t say and do and the reasons why you don’t. But, in the end, fortunately or unfortunately for me, nobody knows your mind better than I do – so I get it and as much as it’s sort of a mild sting – in truth, it’s good to know that I’m thought of. That I meant something. Because isn’t that why we’re all here really? To mean something? To be remembered.

I’m doing ok. I’m existing, floating, focusing on finding physical strength in the hopes that it will somehow transcend into emotional strength that I feel greatly lacking as of late. I miss you. Perhaps more than I had expected. After all, I lived many years without you. I guess this time my love for you was different. A more ‘real’ and simple, less chaotic type of love if that makes sense. It was easy back then to release myself from the drama. Now, it’s releasing me of you and well, in many ways, it has hurt more. I had thought this was the rest of my life. Now, I’m trying to work through the steps needed to create a different version of that.

In the end, I think it’s ok to realize that you’ll just love some people forever and maybe you aren’t supposed to be with them for whatever reason that is and maybe you don’t realize that until whatever reason that is walks into your life. Perhaps there are other reasons for both of us. I’m not sure. Haven’t got to that place yet. Time heals a lot. Time makes sense of a lot.

 
So, many things have happened since you’ve been gone. Those are some of the highlights. I don’t expect or need a response. I write this not to provoke any semblance of guilt – all of this is my choice and I am aware of that. I could have a part of you if I wanted, however I want all or nothing. I guess it’s the Taurus in me and I tend to believe that well, that’s what love is.

 
Wanting all of someone.

 
I’ve tried to write for myself so many times and I just haven’t been able to find any clarity beyond two paragraphs but somehow, tonight, writing to you, I could release some. So this is for me. So thanks for that, and thanks for listening. It was a much needed purge.

Hey – I hope you are well.

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/

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.  

Chapter One

“Tarah.” I look up, startled.  “Hi Ken, what’s up?” I say to the kind executive hovering over my desk.  A sweet man.  Always smiling.  “When you get a minute can you pop by my office?” “Sure,” I respond having no idea what he wants to chat about.  Likely a marketing program or something of the sort for partners. 

I finish up whatever it was that I was doing and go to see him.  At the time I was working for a small, informal start up.  Open door offices, 20-somethings everywhere.  I had sort of fallen into the gig.  I was a therapist by trade, turned bead store owner in Burlington, VT, turned lost in translations in Stamford, CT where I ended up by shear acts of fate with my then fiancé.  I had gone from a world of bong hits, tapestries and beads to a corporate start up to help pay the bills.  Lost would be an understatement but we do things for love, and so there I was.

I peak into his office and knock quietly on his door.  “Hey, is now good?” I whisper?  “Yes, come in, shut the door.”  Hmmm.  I sit down, notepad and pen in hand.  Ready to strategize.  “Tarah, I’m worried about you.”  I look around, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.  “I’m not sure what you mean, Ken?”  I had thought none of it was obvious.  I mean, I'm the happy perky girl in the office?  I’ve always prided myself as being a chameleon.  I can fake a smile better than most.  “You’re disappearing in front of me,” he said.  “Look at you, you’re skin and bones.  I’ve been watching you disappear for months now.”  Really, I thought.  I mean, yes, had I gone from a size 10 to a size 4 in a matter of a few months.  Sure.  But I had poised it all as the Atkins diet to which I was experiencing tremendous results.  I thought I had them fooled.  I just can’t eat when I am stressed and ‘stress’ would mildly put what my life had become.

I sat there stoically but his kindness and concern and the fact that I could no longer mask the darkness broke my will.  Tears began to stream down my face.  “I’m not in a good place, Ken.  I haven’t been for a long time.”  “Are you physically ok?” he asks.  “Yes.”  “Well, then how can I help you, what can we do to fix this?” “There’s nothing you can do.  I can’t talk about it.” And I couldn’t.  What I was involved in, what was happening.  It was left behind closed doors for only me and another to discuss.  It was dark and chaotic and it was breaking me day by day. 

He sat there quietly.  Lovingly.  Worried.  I sat there crying as he handed me a tissue.  “Tarah, will you talk to someone?  I have a friend.  Someone who can help you.  If you can’t talk to me, you have to talk to someone.  You’re disappearing Tarah.”  “Maybe” I whisper.  Do I need help?  Can I really not fix this on my own?  Can I really not unravel myself from it?  I look down at my shrinking skin, feeling my empty stomach roll.  Feeling naked with the knowledge that I can no longer hide this.  Feeling lost.  So fucking lost.  Ken quietly scribbles a name and number on a piece of paper.  Hands it to me and says, “He can help Tarah.  Just please think about it.  I’m here if you need someone for whatever it is that’s going on.  I mean that.”  “Thank you,” I whisper and scuffle quickly out of his office. 

I rush outside, sit on a bench, inhale a cigarette and think.  Everything had happened so fast.  All of ‘this’.  These are things you don’t plan.  Choosing a path.  The wrong path.  I think of him.  I change my thought.  Focus Tarah.  For Christ’s sake.  Look at you.  I waver between disbelief, concern, embarrassment and denial.  Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to talk to someone?  I hadn’t been able to talk to anyone.  Not my best friend, not my sister.  No one.  It was all inside.  And all that I was keeping inside was conveying itself through my physical being.  It was eating away at me.  As he said, I was disappearing.

I go back inside.  I walk to the bathroom to wash the smell of smoke off my hands and I stare at myself in the mirror.  My eyes, dark.  Sullen.  Large almond pockets sitting in the midst of a face that was blank, weak.  How could he love me and think this is beautiful?  I reminded myself that I made a stellar chameleon and stroll back to my desk.

After a few hours, I ducked into a conference room.  Cell phone and this strange persons number in my hand.  I sit in darkness.  I was thankful for a room with no windows.  I take a deep breath and dial.  “This is John,” says the gentle elderly voice on the other end of the line.  I sort of stutter a bit, “Hi..erm..this is Tarah…”  “Tarah, I’ve been hoping you’d call, Ken’s told me all about you.”  What the fuck could he have told you?  We barely know one other, I think.  I’m sweating.  Face flushed.  Pissed.  Annoyed.  Sad.  “I really don’t know what to say,” I mumble.  Which was true.  “Well let me talk for a minute and you can listen.”  I like this.  Someone taking charge.  “I’m a bit of an unconventional therapist.  I focus on addiction and codependency.  I’m a recovering addict so I can understand the depths of addiction.  Both emotionally and physically.  ” Note to self to Google codependency.  “I’m here to help you.  Talk things through.  All I ask is throughout our work you believe in something.  Even if that something is a door knob.  I need you to believe in something.  We will have one hour sessions via phone as many times a week as you need.  I charge $100 an hour.  I don’t take insurance.”  Hmmm….via phone?  Interesting.  Hadn’t tried this before.  I might like it.  Not having to look someone in the eye.  Not having to show someone my truth.  This might work.  He asks me some questions about my life, my being, my situation.  I answer as minimally as possible. In truth, the guy was freaking me out with his openness and honesty.  He had me summed up in a matter of minutes and I had spoken so little.  “So Tarah, would you like to try this?”  What could I say, I needed help, and I needed to talk to someone.  Maybe this guy was it.  In the very least I didn’t have to look him in the eye.  “Ok, let’s give it a try,” I grumble.  “Perfect, how does Thursday at 6PM work for you?” Great, I think.  I can smoke butts, drink wine and get therapised.  This is getting better by the minute.  “Perfect,” I grumble again. 

“Tarah, are you going to let me love you?” he says kindly before we hang up. What type of god damned perverted freak is this?  I stand stupefied, staring at my phone.  “What!?” I yelp.  “Are you going to let me love you?  Because it’s clear right now that you can’t love yourself and until we can get you there, I’m going to need you to let me love you.”  I soften.  Makes sense.  Kind of.  Weirdo.  “I’ll try.”  “Good, speak to you Thursday.  And Tarah, remember, you are wanted, needed and loved.”  Click. 

And so it began.  The fixing of Tarah and the revealing of him and me.