I am really glad I did not give up.

I've reached a moment in my life where I just have wanted to be alone--- and I don't mean alone like away from other people.. I have wanted to be alone from my own self. I haven't wanted to write, have consciously resisted it. Truth is, I would love to say I know why but I don't. I have barely cried at all since November. I didn't cry more than for a little while the entire time I was driving across the country with Bryan. When I think about that, I wonder about all of this. I wonder why I don't feel sensitive to anything anymore and I hope that it's just a phase like everything else, I hope there's something left, I hope there are always more tears. I don't want to be sad--- I just want to feel something enough to cry over it.

There was a moment in the airport... My mom was drinking dunkin donuts next to me, we're just sitting waiting for two hours to board our plane, and I think of how alone I felt the second you said bye, and it was like my heart just stopped. I remember looking at my mom with wet eyes and her looking at me and she didn't ask me if I was okay... she knew just to let me be. She knew how I felt, somehow, without me saying anything. I think of this and I think of my mom's big blue eyes and I think of how for the first time she was seeing me in the middle of romance as opposed to in between it or somewhere around it- she saw the separating, the part that I had always just dealt with alone. And it was new for both of us. In a good way. Even in the sadness, there was so much undeniable love.

It's hard for me to say what comes next because I don't know. I just know that this time, like every time, I am all in as much as I know how to be. I am just praying that this lack of tears doesn't mean that I've stopped feeling as much or that I've lost my way. I am hoping I am just stronger in new ways. And that when I do finally face myself, I will feel it all and somehow I will be better because of it. Better than what, I don't know. I am not sure what to do other than just keep trying.

There's no way to know for certain, but I think I am happy.

Somewhere between doubt and magic, I am manic for you; yearning

for something more, he tells me. Stimulating commitments, he tells me. It's you, he tells

everyone. It's not his fault. It's the way things work best. It's best, for me, to keep them

far away--- across oceans, across deserts, anywhere but here. Because here, I am sad

or scared, usually. There is always darkness. Sometimes there is fog. And, of course, 

there is happiness. But the hard part is not the change itself, but the changing, the shift, 

the look on my face as my eyes roll to the back of my head and I am fainting into another

place, a place where it is cloudy and soft, and easy to get lost. So, I do my best to keep

my distance, to keep distance, to keep distant-- just enough to be in love and just enough

to destroy everything I love. This is the way of my world, the way things go here, the way

you and I only needed to meet one time for my entire life to change. This is the way things

go in a perfect world. I am still left crying.

It's not that I haven't written anything, it's more like I don't know how to finish writing any of the things I've started to write. I feel good about my life, I feel good about the way things look, I feel strongly that leaving California was the right thing, I feel like I miss the weather there but it wasn't worth my loneliness or mental health, I miss being alone kind of but I am so grateful to see my sister and my best friends all the time and I never have to be alone. I am bored in a lot of ways but also grateful for this time of peace because I think pretty soon my life will be crazy again and really it was crazy for a minute there when I was an elf. I am not interested in giving of myself right now because I can't, because I am still weak, because I am still recovering, and I hope that what comes of this process is good, and maybe important. For now, I am grateful grateful with hands in the air and also extra hands to hold the people who have been holding me and extra hands still to type with and to write with and to make spinach salad with every single day. I have learned how to make coffee, and I've written a poem, and I've accepted a job. And for the first time in so long I feel truly happy to be alive in my body and in my self because of who I am. Being miserable is so confusing when it happens for so long because you begin to wonder if you existed in the first place. And after a very long time, it begins to feel more and more like you never did and you just watch yourself doing all these things and you hear yourself talking to all these people and it feels like nothing. Nothing is still something though and I hope that that somethingnothingness was for something. Okay.

what smiles make me think about

Living the life that made me again but I am different now even if I don't feel that way. It is undeniable. It is the way of the world. It is the way the earth moves. It is the way bodies sway. It is the way the world has unwound before me and as I walked in circles, new paths formed but I didn't take them, even the ones I did take never met my footprints, hopping on stones like a child, like the child, like me, like how I am never growing up, like how I see that in you, like how I hate that I don't even know you at all. In the way things go, this is how we ended up, and I am looking at the sky and seeing a reflection of the way I didn't go, the way maybe I ran away or maybe, for the sake of my sanity, I walked slowly in the direction of what I needed. I'm not sure yet how I ended up here or what it was exactly, just when you told me we belonged there, I knew I had to go. Constantly on a mission to prove I am air, I am movement, I do not belong anywhere, I am unchained, I am untrainable, I am in the wide sky with wings spread and when I look down, I will not see you holding me by kite strings: I will see the world looking up at me shouting "glorious birds, glorious birds!" and they will know what you never figured out. The world is waiting for your miracle and I am just sitting in the living room wearing sparkle tights and being happy to know that I know nothing. If the sky chooses to fall into my chicken soup, I will just be glad to have anything at all.

Blurbling.

There was fog then, in the darkness I could still muster a semblance of a face, a face like your face but I didn't know what it looked like yet, in the middle of the day, the way I know now, and now I see it all the time without a body, without anything but falling and it's just not that way. And we are with other people sometimes and we are alone so much more often without anybody knowing, without me knowing for sure. And I'm not sure yet that THAT is what is going on and I am not sure yet if I know who I am talking about, but when I woke up one morning, the fog lifted and God's golden stare came shooting out of my pores exactly like how you would hope it would.

So now I ask you this: LET ME IN.

Sometimes, when I am with myself in words like the way I am now, I am away from fog and from me but I am always in it except for months it was somebody else writing and hoping I would catch up. I remember when you wrote all the negative thoughts you had thought and threw them away, I could feel myself being ripped up and thrown away--- and it was weird because I don't even know what you wrote. And I am not mad about it. It was just something I could feel.

I am still sorting things out, but there will be a small apartment and a place where I can write. And there will be a stillness and a sound here. I will invite you over and even a casual conversation will feel exactly like cuddling.

“Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.” 
― Nicole Krauss

Feeling better.

For the second time in my life, I begin a cross country trek with Bryan Wilson Bramlett. Shy of one month, three years ago we did this trip the other way, taking the long way, taking our time, taking in one another. The dynamic has changed in many ways and the relationship I share with him now is different, too. It's not something I can easily explain to people, but the people around me / close to me seem to have it figured out on some level, the level of acceptance I guess, and that's good enough. He's kind enough to co pilot this journey for me, which feels like it will likely be more emotional than the reverse, and I am grateful for his friendship as I fumble my way back to the dirty south.

I don't know how to begin getting into how this happened, really, or what made me feel like returning. I could give a million reasons of why this is the right thing to do. Somehow, though, my natural self judgment is embarrassed--- though near everyone in my life has been ultra supportive and understanding. I'm not sure how much I support me yet, even though it's the right thing. Life is just so big, and it's scary to think you might be missing out on something by leaving, or like you missed out on something by being gone. 

I keep reminding myself that I'm not who I was back then, which is a blessing and also part of the problem. My joy levels right now are what feels like at an all time low but my optimism is high, surging through me like love, like heat. I'm counting on that to help me as I process another one of these adventures.

As I read back on what I wrote already, it's hard to see myself in it. I can't feel myself at all right now, out of touch with everything but on the right track. I don't know. I just felt like I needed to get a little of this out before beginning. The past two weeks have been the highlight of the last year for me, feeling loved and taken care of living with Sara and Julie, feeling valued with all the goodbyes and sweet words, feeling so sure about this one life choice even if I have no clue what I'm doing next. It's really important sometimes to just not know what the heck you're doing, just follow, just listen, just go. Sometimes, that's all. Just go. I still have stuff to cram into my itty bitty trunk, so I'm going to do that. And I'm going to be okay.

See ya on the other side 

It's hard to get to how I feel about things because this whole thing isn't about how I feel so much as how I am. You see, for once, not based in emotions, but based in a state of things, the way things are, the way we are, the way I am, the way I have been my whole life but so very out of context. Do I have the nerve to just say it?

I need help.

It's without a doubt one of the most confusing things to say out loud because things are fine. Everything seems fine. I go home and my house is here and it's good and things are fine and we have running water and I feel selfish for sleeping for 14 hours but it just is what is happening. And I'm not eating or I'm eating too much. Or I don't know. In the middle of all of this, I have just been hiding from it. It wouldn't have been easier two months ago and it won't be easier two months from now-- sometimes things just are. And sometimes things are at the risk of what you need. And I see potential for a downward slope and so I do what I can to be stronger than I have been in my life. I don't know. It helps to know it's not anyone else's business and in some ways it helps just not to talk about it, helps to know I know I am doing the right thing, helps to know I am headed to safety, helps to hear that it will all be over soon, helps to know I am not alone. Helps to not be alone.