The Violence of Blue Stars

When the Stars Go Blue
Ryan Adams
comes next on the playlist
dances into my ears
careens into my ribs

cracks
me
open

reminds me to breathe

It's the
talking to pine-cones and
the fear of roller-coasters and
the drowning in
voices and

I was a stranger
child

It speaks of
my desperation
I lied to
make you love me
I hid in the dark but
no one was
coming

I meant to say
"I'm sorry"
but I said
"Don't leave me"

This feeling is
bloodshed
the things we have
been through
the way my cheek
was pressed down on
cold Italian cobblestone

and on the dorm room bed

and on the grit of
where I should not
have stumbled

I said no
but they didn't
hear me

It's the reverberation
the cyclical effort
the love I gave

compulsory

The waves I choke on
endlessly

The woman I tried
to be-
come
sing with me

Do I preach
to the choir?

I see me at
maybe fifteen
and the mix CD
is in my
mini-boombox

Elder millenial
nostalgic becoming -
ache with me

That friend
I wanted
to absorb
wanted to breathe her
wanted to fuck her

I had no language

She said
"This is Ryan Adams,"
and I said
"It's good."

And pretended to
enjoy
as I was destined
to continue
to do

A decade later
I still feel gravel
in my teeth

Roommates>Lovers

I have found it is far easier
to live with a roommate
Than a lover

While I worry for her in
the general sense
(car wrecks, alien abductions,
etc.)
I do not begin
to wring my hands
at the dark sky when
she has not yet come home

I do not worry about
what she is drinking
(or with whom)
And she has yet to punch
a hole of passion
in the plaster just to the left
of my face

She has yet to lie
about her location
or her company

(Or rather, I have yet
to psychotically verify
her claims with a
"friendly drive-by")

She has no power to,
by the sum of her choices,
make my bed feel bigger

It is always half empty
And I am always reaching for no one
in fitful sleep

And she cannot help that
my "Lonely" is now
a chronic disease

The turn of the lock awakens
no wild expectations

She could not come home with flowers
and fix what I have done

Le Chaos

I.
I was brushing up on my French this morning for the first time in, I don't know, over half a decade, and I really think the French are onto something.

Here I was, wondering to myself, '"Who decided that the word for 'cat' is a masculine noun in French? Aren't cats supposed to be feminine creatures?" Then again, I am realizing, who decided cats were feminine and dogs were masculine? "Man's best friend," and all that nonsense. I haven't seen many women so avoidant as felines; it's generally men that so quickly flip the switch between laying their head on your chest and adamantly shunning your advances for days on end.

II.
The hospital is so busy today, so noisy and unruly, but I wonder to myself, looking at my neediest patient, if he misses the feeling of human touch. How long has it been since he felt the brush of skin on skin?

I put my gloves on anyway.

III.
Sitting outside of any McDonald's in the main stretch of my city, you will hear classical music playing rather-too-loudly over speakers situated in the doorways.
"Why do they DO that?" I remember asking my father, when I was too old to think in fragments but too young to turn my feelings off.
"They play the music like that to keep homeless people away," he said matter-of-factly, and kept walking.
I remember, even then, realizing how ridiculous that was. How distasteful. My heart felt like it had torn open, just a sliver, but still. What evil person thought to themselves that beauty was best used as a weapon? And how did they know that the urine-soaked vagrant hadn't played violin before he slept on the pavement?

IV.
Maybe that's how hearts grow so big in the first place. Like any other muscle, they tear under stress, and grow a little larger.

Is it any wonder my chest feels insurmountably heavy?

V.
I thought that by now I'd have found a new way of writing. Less T.S. Eliot copycatting with the Roman numerals, less talk of "heart" as though it were anything but a physical mass, a vital organ. I thought there'd be less cheese on the pasta now, so to speak. But here I am, as close to thirty as to sixteen, and I'm still pouring prose merely confessional in nature. Nothing new under the sun, always Biblical allusions and forgetting that "effect" is a noun but "affect" is both a verb and a psychological term...it's hard to say what, exactly, I wanted, but I think "to be smarter" begins to scratch the surface.

 VI.
Sometimes I wonder if I would feel more comfortable if everyone who touched me wore latex gloves, too. Not because I don't like to be touched - on the contrary, I crave it in unbearable waves like a dope fiend at the end of his stash. Maybe it would just feel more "correct." Something in me repeats, with the rhythm of a torture device, that I am untouchable, false, diseased. If you get too close, I might never stop writing about you. If you keep your hands on me too long, I may never cease wishing you'd put them there again. Maybe a protective layer, present at all times, a reminder that love is not ethereal but chemical, would serve me well in my search for peace.

VII.
I am half a step away from becoming a nihilist. I just wish someone would push me over the line. I don't want to say, when asked why I'm cold and unfeeling, that I became that way of my own free will.

VIII.
It's the feelings that will get to you. It's your right brain that's out to kill you. It's love that is going to eventually kill us all.

Pragmatic marriage-pushers say that love is a choice, but that isn't the kind of love I'm talking about, and they know it. I don't know a lot of people who chose to stay together merely for the good of their children, or for the strength of their assets, or for the convictions of their religion, and found themselves in a heap on the bathroom floor by the sum of their choices. I'm not talking about magnanimous compassion, or Christian charity, or tireless devotion, when I say that love is the culprit, the thief in the night. I'm talking about being set on fire, with a love so white-hot that walking away would be suicide. I'm talking about the love that brought me to the brink of insanity, motioned broadly at the canyon, and left me with only a penny to throw over the edge for my wishes.

IX.
Something about the fact that "chaos" is "chaos" in French and English brings me such comfort in these moments of lone silence. The word itself carries the vibration of the state of being. They couldn't think of any better way to say, "Everything is a fucking mess, and you can't save me."

Math for Mourning Lovers

I have broken my love down

To a mathematical equation

Stumbled upon a truth that has applied

Each time I've drowned in an ocean

Of anguish for love that was lost

My mourning lasts exactly

1.5 times the length of the relationship

From the day of its conquering

To the day I release it completely

(Don't ask how I discovered this

I think too much about this shit)

But what this means for me today

This horrifyingly exact truth

Is that these last twinges of dulling grief

For you

Have only thirty days left to live

I feel like a soldier

I feel like a survivor

Only one more moon cycle until

I no longer have to taste your absence

On my breath 

The Sunset Struggle

The weight of all these sorrows is
So unbearably heavy
At times suffocating and grey
A thick fog of toxicity
(I need fresh air)

The sky provides no relief
Streaked with the citrus and fresh blood
Of a July evening
That only serves as a reminder of where I am not
(I feel older than the calendar says I am)

I want to sink into it
That sky-scape watercolor reality
But instead bury myself in the bed that once
Belonged to two people
And now only to one

Sabbath Thoughts

Thankful for the challenges, loving every minute of even the hardest lessons, because I'm in the classroom that was shaped for me. Thinking a lot about aliens, always feeling the presence of angels, surrounding myself with light. Feeling into the static, wondering why I don't fit into the sound, what strings are attaching me to the last of the broken signals? Wonder and amazement at the things that haven't changed. Some energetic connections never dissipate - magnetism, past lives, maybe it's all love but it feels a lot like screaming into a pillow. Sometimes the reverberations only go so far. Some people don't WANT to be touched, some people are afraid to be free, so let them be afraid. There will always be fences and I will always be wearing a skirt too short to jump them while still looking lady like, but I never did care about social graces. I've been running in heels and giving where I'll never receive for so long that it's starting to feel like a calling. Care for the sick, heal the wounded, be the muse that never gets gifted with anything permanent. I may be a stumbling block, or a drug you can't stop hitting, a sign in your path like the yellow butterflies that keep following me down these city blocks, but at least in my own transience, I never break the bonds. My mortality makes me feel alive. 

I know I am invincible. 

All-powerful hands hold up this ship. Wisdom comes with never belonging, accidents happen, but I'm always tripping forward. Falling on my face into the next square on the board. At least it's been soft landings these days. At least on the ground, I remember to pray.

Sour Diesel

We should go get Ben and Jerry's.

We should go get Smashburger. 

We should go get more of this fucking peanut brittle.

I want to violently make love to whoever invented peanut brittle.

No. What we should DO...is RIVER RAFTING. 

We need to get off the grid. 

We need to start a commune.

We need to grow our own kale to make awful tasting smoothies with.

I want bacon.

I want to understand why humans can't seem to mate for life.

I want to be able to see the color of Barack Obama's aura.

Feel my pulse.

Tell me a story.

Fuck, man, not that story.

This is boring. 

Shia LaBeouf as Savior - A BPD Narrative

"Shia LaBeouf is so weird," everyone says, but secretly, I think I, and I alone, understand  him. As we speak, at this very moment, Shia is traveling through my state, the state I have called "home" for better or for worse my entire twenty-three years of life. Tweeting the coordinates of his location in regular intervals, he's allowing local folks who still care about him and his celebrity to "Take Him Anywhere" - I guess it's an art project of sorts, but to me, it feels like someone threw a rope down my well of depression. This is it. This is what's going to save me. 

I am going to go take Shia up on his offer, and damn it, I am going to show him a good time.

I roll up to greet him like I'm in a high speed chase. No one, and I mean NO ONE, will get to him as fast as I can. He gets in the car. He seems more nervous than me. I try to put him at ease, immediately begin to call him "Shy" - an affectionate nickname that takes him off guard because I'm clearly so *not* star struck by him and see that he's like, you know, a *real person.* He easily makes me laugh like, belly-laughs with the snorts interjected that I may as well have trademarked by now. He loves my snorts. He dances to my music in my passenger seat. He tells me, with conviction, that he really DID find Jesus after Nymphomaniac parts 1 and 2. That was a true story. He still won't judge me for my smoking habit, though. He doesn't even complain about the ash all over the car. 

He has mental illness issues too, he says? What a surprise! We joke about the various medications that we've tried (I say, "Dude, how is Risperidol even LEGAL??" and he says, "I KNOW!!") He tells me all about his breakdowns and his run-ins with the law. I hold his hand and let him get upset. He's vulnerable about the stories he's telling, openly remorseful about the messes he's made. We're about to cross state lines - we don't even know where we're going. 

"Do you want me to drive a while?" he asks. He looks so earnest, I am reminded of his Even Stevens days, when I first fell in love with him. "Sure," I say. I haven't been driven around in such a long time. It's such a relief, not having to control anything. I trust him behind the wheel more than I trust myself. 

Somehow we end up in some Mormon-run town in Utah by nightfall. We check into a cheap motel. He doesn't even try to make a move - he can see in my face how fragile I am right now, so all we do is sleep. He lets me be the big spoon. I've always preferred being the big spoon. We fall asleep, feeling safe, warm, understood. In the morning he tells me, "I don't think I ever actually want you to leave." 

So I don't. We just keep driving. Adventuring. Bonding. Cue the pieced-together montage of all our video clips - the Grand Canyon, the desert, the rest stop in Nevada when the engine overheats. Not to worry, he just buys me a new car. He's not flashy or gross about it, but he is, after all, a millionaire, who seems to be falling in love with me. He buys me an old VW hippie van, because I told him weeks ago that I've always wanted one. I am flabbergasted. He hugs me tight while I cry overwhelmed tears.

Of course, we end up eloping in Las Vegas. It's only been a few months since we met. The magazines briefly speculate, "Are they insane? Will this even last?" To both, we answer "YES." Cue the music. Fade to black.

The rest of the story I make up, it doesn't matter. I mean, I'm married to SHIA LABEOUF, what else could I want?? I guess I trail into thinking that he could get me hooked up with some editors and a nice agent. Maybe I could write a novel that DOESN'T suck. It would help, especially, if he woke me up in the morning with his motivational "JUST. DO IT," and a cup of coffee in hand. He's so damn thoughtful that way.

(Snap back to reality, as the Eminem song goes. 

Oh...wait...where am I? How long have I been sitting in the car? Why am I in my pajamas? Is it REALLY 2pm? My mouth tastes like metal. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm going to die. God, please don't let me die.)

End scene

Was That ME?

Sometimes it just blows my mind that about four years ago, I had the mental and emotional capacity to travel alone across the country on a bus. Like, I packed my own bag! I booked my own hostel! I busked on my own street corner and made my own friends and I don't even think I really panicked when I found out I was pregnant and had to come home! Who WAS that reckless, hair-in-the wind gypsy? Was that ME?

And sometimes it just blows my mind that about two years ago, I was engaged, and I was living with my fiance, and that I was not only working two jobs, but also (sometimes - keyword sometimes) doing laundry, and dishes, and cooking food, and playing with my baby girl, and maintaining a semi-healthy adult relationship. Who the hell WAS that responsible, domesticated wife-and-mother? Was that ME?

And sometimes it just BLOWS MY FUCKING MIND that only about three months ago, I was writing all the time, and performing every week, drinking vodka with abandon, becoming a regular at the Mercury, having no trouble with my words, with my words, with my words...

Who was that confident, sure-of-herself poet? Was that ME?

Because I can't even remember how to put the tip of the pen on the paper. I can't even remember how to open my lips to speak. I don't think I should be allowed to touch another human for at least half a decade, for fear of creating a mess like the last one, and you can't let me travel, because I get lost as soon as I walk out of my front door. How could I possibly be the same woman that did all these things? How is it that I, who am now afraid of going outside, once jumped on a Greyhound with the intention of never coming home? How is it that I once thought of myself as brave and now have to shut my closet doors in the dark and sleep with my head under the covers?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how little kids hide behind grown ups when they're afraid. I'm starting to think it should be the other way around. We have so much more to be afraid of. I have so much more to be afraid of.

My "Special Trip"

Super special moment this morning.

So I come into work...Monday morning...I have only finished about a quarter of my venti coffee...naturally, I am grumpy. We are all grumpy. It is the first day of the work week, and I am properly dressed for such - my wig is squeezing my head, my five-inch heels are squeezing my feet, my waist trainer is squeezing my internal organs. I feel, basically, like the life is being squeezed out of me.

Enter, coworker. I am in my cubicle, answering emails, minding my own damn business, when he peeks his head around the corner and says, "So, I heard you took a special trip on Thursday!" He's smiling. 

I swivel in my chair. Stare at him. At first, I am confused...did he REALLY just say that? Then, I am enraged. DID HE REALLY...just say that? Then I am calm. Of course he said that.

For your information, guy-I-only-marginally-know, YES, I took a fucking "special trip" on Thursday. The grin on your face only further confirms your tone - condescending, teasing, joking. My friend, this is not something to joke about. Allow me to beat you over the head with the baseball bat of my crazy.

Yes, my friend - on Thursday, April 21, at 2:30 pm, I had to drive myself to the crisis center (which is code for "pre-psych ward") because I was experiencing an absolutely terrifying episode of dissociation, psychosis, and amnesia. I calmly checked myself in, calmly spoke to each mental health professional, calmly explained that I was having an out-of-body experience, calmly waited for SEVEN HOURS to be admitted into the psychiatric hospital. 

(I admit, that when no one was in the room, between bouts of being calm, I wept bitterly, because life is unfair and most people don't have to deal with this shit.) 

Then I calmly drove myself to the psychiatric hospital, calmly did my paperwork, calmly did my admissions interviews, only to be told by the admitting Doctor that they COULD NOT HELP ME. That I needed to see a neurologist. That psych meds could not fix what I was experiencing. And still, I was calm. I did not scream. I did not go crazy. I just drove myself home. Brushed it off as a wasted day. Pretended it didn't happen. None of it felt real anyway.

So I calmly went through my weekend. I calmly wrapped myself in the cocoon of solitude. I calmly binged on Netflix, calmly ate delivered Chinese food, calmly did not leave the house. Then I calmly coaxed myself outside, calmly interacted with friends, calmly informed everyone that I wasn't dead and it was okay, even though it wasn't okay. Even though it is still not okay.

This morning, I calmly put on my work clothes, my wig, my makeup, my perfume. I calmly prepared myself to interact with people all day. Calmly prepared myself to explain my absences last week to everyone. Calmly put my hands on the bathroom counter and breathed, telling myself, "This is real. You are not dreaming. Do not do anything stupid." 

Now I show up at work fifteen minutes early, after CALMLY handling this exhausting battle, with few moments of panic, few moments of visible insanity, for NINE YEARS, and you want to ask me about my "trip"? Like I went on the Magic Fucking School Bus to Mars? 

You are, without a doubt, the most insensitive motherfucker around in this moment.

But I just took another sip of my coffee and said, "Yup. I sure did."

Spiritual Confusion

I was nine years old the first time I found myself “spiritually confused,” I remember the incident very clearly. I was in my fourth grade Sunday school class, and my extremely charismatic Sunday school teacher, who had recently anointed me with oil and “the power of Queen Esther,” sat my class down and told them to ask her anything. It was an open forum about the Bible and God. Young minds were being encouraged to explore. But I don’t think she was quite ready for my question.

“So…” I started, “God knows everything, right?”

“Of course,” my teacher said.

“And God made everyone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So when God makes people, He knows everything they’re going to do in their life?”

“Yes.”

“Then why does God create people if He knows they’re going to hell?”

She paused. “That’s a very good question,” she said, “but we do have free will…”

            And thus began the paradoxes and logical fallacies. This did NOT make sense! How can you say that going to hell is the individual’s choice (based on their decision to reject Christ) if God basically made the choice for them when He created them? My addled nine-year-old brain couldn’t handle this bullshit. After a time of arguing, I remember my teacher, flustered and impatient, moving onto the next question.

            I was not a very light-hearted kid. I was very serious, very quiet, very thoughtful, and, at nine years old, perhaps already growing a little skeptical and rebellious. I questioned a lot of things, from the necessity of homework assignments, the rules of my classroom at school, and the unspoken norms of society. I was not a “Why is the sky blue?” kind of kid. I was a “Why is the world so evil and cruel?” kind of kid.

            Fast forward four years, and at thirteen, I think I was driving my mother crazy. I was drinking alcohol at parties, getting in trouble at school, and flaunting my barely-developing body every chance I got. I was depressed, anxious, almost constantly on the edge of emotional ruin. And, for the first time in my life, I openly scorned organized religion. The rules were confining, the traditions were pointless, and the theology made absolutely no sense. My parents and Christian-school teachers brushed this off as immaturity and angst. They weren’t necessarily wrong, but the questioning and doubts continued long after I stopped wearing thick eyeliner and wishing I could change my name to “Daisy.”

            All throughout high school, I spiritually “flip flopped” between two extremes. I have a feeling there are at least a few Christian school kids who can relate to this. Spiritual Emphasis Week would happen, and I would be compelled by the messages or touched by the worship. I would read a convicting Christian book directed at wayward teens, and do an immediate 180 in behavior and thought. I would go on a mission’s trip, or go to a Christian conference, and come back “changed.” But the “change” never seemed to last. After a few weeks or months, the doubts would creep in, my normal behavior would resume, and I would look back on my “spiritual high” with scorn and skepticism. “Brainwashing” was a word I used a lot back then. I also liked the words “agnostic,” “searching,” and “myth.”

            But of course, things change. This proved to be just a phase after, when I was seventeen, one of my dad’s girlfriends gave me the book Eat Pray Love. To say that it changed the landscape of my religious experience forever wouldn’t be a strong enough statement. That book changed my spiritual DNA. It opened my mind to an entirely new reality – I could believe in an all-knowing, all-loving God, and yet not buy into Christian dogma or theology. I had found what I saw as a middle ground, and I jumped on the chance to live in that fray. I reveled in it, rolled around in the dirt of it, and fell in love with it. Suddenly lacking that angst and hatred I had once directed toward my Christian upbringing, I suddenly liked words like “open-minded” and “universalism.” I liked signing my letters with the phrase “Love & light.” I meditated. I smiled at strangers. I felt like I was radiating wisdom. I felt enlightened, god damn it.

            But the pendulum still swung.

            There were still chapels to attend every Monday. There were still Bible classes to go to every day. My peers were still mostly devout evangelical Protestants, and I had no one to share this new spiritual elation with. So it died like that parabled plant that didn’t take deep enough root. I swung back and forth wildly, changing my religious and political convictions as often as I changed the color of my hair (which, if you don’t know me, was often enough to scare people). I was spiritually volatile. I was in a crisis. I was always so sure that I possessed complete certainty, but in reality, I was extremely confused.

            Eventually, blessedly, the pendulum seemed to stop swinging. I sat in one spot for a couple of years, with only occasional, short hiccups of change. I pressed into my own path. I grew in my knowledge of auras, portals, past life regression, indigo children, pendulums, crystals, shamans, reiki, chakras, ascension, enlightenment, Higher Self, spirit guides, Christ consciousness, and soul agreements. Some of my best friends were like minded, growing in their knowledge of the same New Age-y stuff as me. It was, quite possibly, the happiest time in my life. It’s hard not to be happy when you truly believe, with total assurance, that Love is god (this phrase was tattooed on my arm, to my mother’s displeasure) and that humans are inherently good. It especially made me happy to believe that all religions were equally right and equally wrong about God. God was too big and too incredible for humans to truly understand, I thought. Religions were just grasping for knowledge of the same beautiful, universal deity.

            To say I was a hippie at the time would be fairly accurate.

­            I won’t bore anyone with too many of the details of my Christian conversion in 2012. I was pregnant with my daughter, in a toxic relationship, and terrified of the uncertainty in my future. I was extremely vulnerable. So I shouldn’t have been so surprised when I had a religious experience at church. I begged God for forgiveness, cried bitterly over lost time, took communion, and left the church “changed” again.

            This time, it stuck.

            For two and a half years, I went to church nearly every Sunday. I dedicated my daughter to Jesus. I vowed to raise her in a home based on Biblical truth. My “Love is god” tattoo was covered up by an ornate cross. My free-spirited self was shoved in a corner, replaced swiftly by a new soul I did not recognize.

            Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I found a completely different kind of happiness. It felt purposeful and mature. Somehow, for me, being a follower of Jesus Christ also meant being and adherent to the American Dream. Where I used to envision raising Paige at Burning Man, there were new visions of traditional marriage and white picket fences. I had done a 180 all over again. But my 180s started to have consequences. My relationship changed. Friendships were strained or lost completely. Priorities shifted. My mother got excited over the return of her prodigal child. I realized pretty quickly that the changes I had made could not be undone. This wasn’t high school anymore, and I was expected to have my religious views figured out. “Searching” was no longer considered kosher – I was a mother, damn it, and I squashed every religious doubt that ever came up in my heart. I went from having a wide-open mind to having a very, very closed one in a very short period of time. Deep down, it didn’t sit right with me, but everything was going so well. I didn’t want to ruin it with any kind of cynicism or admission of “not knowing.”

            But then, 2015 happened. My then-fiancé became my now-ex-fiancé. Everything fell into a kind of chaos that I had not been familiar with for years. My future that had been seemingly set in stone, seemingly certain, was now a series of blurry unknowns. I was mad at God for “taking away” the love of my life. So I stopped praying. Then I stopped caring. Then I stopped believing.

            Some days, it feels like I’m spiritually stuck in my high school years. The last year has been a series of insane changes in every aspect of my life, and I have migrated between belief systems at least a couple of times. I’ve been ecstatic over the course of the last year about new mantras and sage cleansing ceremonies, but I’ve also been ecstatic about Pentecostal prophecy and my mega-church. It’s been a very confusing twelve months, to say the least. But I can no longer swing back and forth so comfortably. I can see the ridiculousness of my position. You cannot believe in the healing power of a moonstone rod one day and the healing power of speaking in tongues the next.

            Or can you? In all honesty, I haven’t got this figured out at all. I’m trying to settle into a middle ground, with opinions and ideas that are more nuanced, but I have always been an all-or-nothing kind of person. I have always been very extreme.

            It’s hard, however, to just “pick” one belief system or the other, when both belief systems (conservative Christianity and New Age-y universalism) have so powerfully affected the direction of my life and shaped my personality. Christianity gave me my foundation. It somehow got me through high school intact and alive. It gave me hope in some of my darkest times. But my hippie-ass, cherry-picking system of belief grew me into an adult. It got me through my eating disorder. It taught me how to love my body and myself. Both belief systems have “saved” me from all kinds of shit, up to and even death.

            So I guess I’m having a moment of doubt. A long, drawn-out, irritating moment of doubt. My poor friends who have dragged me through this past era of my life must have been rolling their eyes the whole time. Certainty may be the mature thing to possess at this point in my life, but I have no certainty to speak of in this area whatsoever.

            I don’t know what would need to occur for me to be faithful to one spiritual path, once and for all. “Proof” does not normally impress my fickle heart. I have read The Case For Christ. I took an apologetics class as a junior in high school. I am well-versed in all of the reasons everyone should believe in the Bible as God’s inerrant word.

            I’m just not personally convinced.

            I have so many questions that I wish there were easy answers to, on either side of the aisle. And I have so many reasons to continue going to my church. I have plenty of reasons to raise my daughter in the Christian faith. But I also have so many personal reasons to reject Christianity as a whole. I know that what I need is more exploration, more time. And I need to give myself permission to be fickle again, to be wrong, to get messy in the mud of “What do you believe?”

            But not knowing can be very uncomfortable. Watching a sunrise and not knowing the character of the creator can be unsettling for someone raised firmly in a certain religion. But at least I can see that the sunrise is beautiful. And I’m waking up to watch one more.

            Whoever made me still wants me here. I still have a reason to be on this plane of existence. And if nothing else is comforting today, that fact alone will do.

Cold Pizza and What I Wanted to Say

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

I invited her to go out to get pizza with us. It was a beautiful, seemingly simple task - catch up on the last few eras of your life with an old friend. But my heart raced. My head was spinning. I asked her a lot about her. I spoke very little about myself.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

There was plenty I could have rehashed. Plenty of stories to tell, plenty of dramas to unfold, plenty of pages of the past to revisit. But I didn't know where to start. My hands shook a little. I sipped my Coke. "Is it hot in here?" I asked.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

I tried to keep it light, airy; I tried to be the friend that she must remember. Optimistic. Fun. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at any time of morning or night. A hint of insanity behind the eyes. I tried to mimic things that THAT girl would say.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years, so maybe I have her fooled. But maybe not.

I felt so tired, so inexplicably exhausted, so profoundly dead inside. Oh sure, new romance, new job, birthdays have passed by, vacations and holidays. Things have been great. Things have been great. Isn't that what I keep telling myself? "Oh, things have been great." But I could feel an empty space inside my head, a flickering, dim light that once burned so brightly. I felt unrecognizable to her, and maybe I was.

What I wanted to say was, "There's a reason I look like a corpse. There's a reason I have bags under my eyes. There might even be a reason that my hair is orange."

What I wanted to say was, "There's also a reason I'm acting robotic. And cold. There's a lot of reasons that I can't laugh quite the same anymore."

What I wanted to say was, "It feels like I'm being slowly crushed in a trash compactor, over and over again, every single fucking day."

What I wanted to say was, "The bad outweighs the good. And I haven't read very many books lately. And really, I'm not okay."

What I wanted to say was, "Damn, it's hard to breathe in here."

What I wanted to say was, "Yeah, I lost the love of my life. And it was at LEAST half my fault, and I'm willing to admit that now. And I'll likely never get over the guilt and regret."

What I wanted to say was, "You don't get it. He's a good guy. I never deserved him in the first place."

What I wanted to do was run to the bathroom and cry.

What I actually did was, I sat there, and played with my daughter's hair. I tried to pay little attention to the lies coming out of my mouth.

What I said was, "You know, it just didn't work out. I guess that's life, sometimes." And she agreed.

The pizza was cold.

Oh, my wild heart

Oh, my wild heart. Nothing awakens you like lost love returned, does it? They tell you to be patient, and to be careful, and to be wise, but here we go off the edge of the next cliff. You always were a jumper. 

But I love you all the same.

Oh, my wild heart. You twirl in toddler-like circles, frantic, a little dancer in a kitchen asking only to be praised. And he praises you. He turns to you and says "I've always loved you," and you stop for just a moment, the stillness overtaking you like fire. It's one beautiful moment in a dumpster of harsh realities. 

Keep dancing, oh my wild heart. Even if they tell you to stop. Keep jumping, and I will follow you. Because the love that is coming is sweeter than all we've left behind. 

I Summed Myself Up (In Two Sentences)

Fragile, fickle heart, full of foolish Tomfuckery, must you beat so fast at the first sign of blossoming affection? Must you always be so hungry to feel?

I Had Seen a Ghost

The realizations trickle down slowly

From head to heart like rain on a roof

I thought I was over it

Maybe a thousand times over

But I guess the organ in my chest

Never got the memo

My inner protector can yell all she wants at you

"Go away! Shelby needs her space!"

But you still stand there, very quietly

In my dream world and waking thought

Boring holes into my skull 

With your mystifying gaze

I thought I saw you yesterday

His movements made him a dead ringer

But his shoes were the giveaway

I don't think you'd ever wear those shoes

I felt myself blush all the way into my feet

And shuffled away, my heart pounding

As my daughter asked "What's wrong Mommy?"

I guess I looked like I had seen a ghost