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

Mornings are the Worst

I wake up slowly, the grey November seeping into my consciousness, warding away dream remnants, chasing out the wishes of a bright summer. It all comes back to me, my skin crawling with familiar regret, my head filling like a pitcher with a year's worth of memory. It's been a long time since there were two of us in this bed, but in sleep I still feel the safety of presence, the warmth of a body no longer there. 

I drink enough coffee to bring the dead to life. I smoke enough cigarettes to calm my sunrise nerves. I blaze through the past on a bullet train of thought. Reminiscent nostalgia takeover. I am no longer my own. 

"What a waste of a heart," I say to myself. "To spend so much love on a soul who cannot even feel it." 

Like putting money down the sink disposal and throwing the switch, I just keep tossing these sentiments out into the universe. My chest keeps pulling me, magnetic, towards the future, where it hopes it will find him waiting with flowers. 

But all the benches we pass, my heart and I, are empty, all the grocery store lines devoid of familiar faces, and the fantasies we weave of serendipitous events fade into the background of reality with every passing bleak twenty-four hours. No letters are ever ours to open, no two AM phone calls ever missed as we sleep. My heart and I, we are disappointed, still hoping for better, kicking through the dirty snow of shame. 

Keep Dancing

                The gym is quiet, almost eerily so. A few burly men lift weights in the corner. One woman, sickly thin, frantically runs on the treadmill. It’s 11 pm, Friday night, at the local 24 Hour Fitness. My responsible friends are all asleep; my friends determined to explode through their early twenties like dynamite are out drinking vodka tonics and going home with strangers. And I’m here, alone. But I prefer it that way, anymore. I’ve started to enjoy my own company.

                I walk, silently, practicing being graceful, into the studio, the room with all the mirrors. You know the one. Zumba happens here. Kickboxing and spin classes happen here. Depressed, heavy-eyed young women choreograph dances in the middle of the night here. (Or is that just me?)

                I toss my gigantic fringed purse onto the floor. The loud thud reminds me that I need to clean it out. There are about seven lipsticks in there. Crumpled bills line the whole bottom of the bag. Coins and my keys jangle together in an irritating melody. There’s a book in there on how to overcome your daddy issues, right next to a book called How Not to Write a Novel. My wallet, fat with coupons that will never be used, pokes precariously through the top. There’s also, of course, my phone, a couple of McDonald’s toys that I never unwrapped for my daughter, and three e-cigarettes, all out of juice and with dead batteries (the quitting smoking thing isn’t going so well for me).

                The purse, like my life, is basically a mess. I try not to overthink this as I take the speaker and set it up right in front of the mirrors. I turn on all the lights in the room. Sitting on the floor, I begin to stretch, remembering with a deep nostalgia that I used to be able to do the splits in high school. My grandmother, who is in her seventies, can still do the splits, and has showed me many times. It’s like a party trick that she pulls out at Christmas. I’m so disappointed that I, at twenty-three, with fifteen years of dance classes behind me, can barely even lean forward, at this point, if my legs are in a v.

                I stare into my eyes in the mirror. I am stretching. This burns. This feels good. My eyes are, as I mentioned, heavy with depression and exhaustion. But god damn it, I’m going to dance tonight. I came here to dance my sadness out. I came here to dance you away.

                Moments later, the music is starting. I stand still through the intro, launching myself into motion as the lyrics unfold. I try not to feel it, try to push it away with my body, try to push through it with the fluidity of my movements, but it still comes up. That feeling of heaviness, of sorrow. I’m choreographing this dance for you. It hurts me to admit it, but the dance is yours. It’s about you. I can’t deny that it’s about you.

                My first memory is from the backstage area at a dance recital. I was three years old, and in a bright yellow costume. My mom even let me wear lipstick, so the stage lights wouldn’t wash me out. I think the song I was dancing to was “Lollipop.” I had a gorgeous Italian spitfire as a dance teacher. The memory has nothing to do with the actual dancing, but I think there’s something telling about this. Even in my very first memory as a child, I was preparing to go on stage and dance.

                There’s always been something in me that wanted to perform, that wanted to be seen. I was a cheer captain in high school. I was the social butterfly at all of my jobs as a young adult. I remember bringing my guitar to work one day when I was a button-pushing, paper-stapling tax assistant, and playing and singing on the roof for a handful of coworkers. I used to busk on the streets of my hometown, even. Something about the spotlight suited me.

                When I met you, your eyes were the spotlight. Your gaze was my stage. I remember playing guitar for you, too, in parking lots and bedrooms. You used to make me feel like the most important person in the world. Hanging on my every word, actively engaging every syllable. “Is he always so intense?” my mother asked when she met you. But that’s what I loved about you. Your intensity. Every moment with you, I felt like I had won something, like I had done something right and been something significant. The best writer, the best mother, the best fiancée, the most beautiful girl in the room – I felt like I was all of these things when I was with you.

                You’re gone now, I know it, and as I twirl around the room, occasionally falling on the floor in total frustration, I feel the weight of it, the weight of your absence. I can’t find the right movements for this eight count. I can’t find the right words to express how much I miss you. The air is a thick fog, and I often break down in this bright room full of mirrors, watching my contorted face cry for you like a lost child cries for their parents.

                It hurts.

                I face the mirrors again, red faced, mascara-smeared. “Five, six, seven, eight,” I mutter to myself, and begin again. And again. And again.

                If this is the only way I can get it right, if this is the only way that I can articulate what is wrong and what has changed, if this is the only way that I can fill the void that you left, that I can pick up the garbage in your wake, then I will keep dancing until my legs break beneath me.

                I’ll keep dancing until I don’t feel so alone.

               

To the Mystical Palm Tree on Coronado Beach

I.

The black coffee tastes, artificially, of hazelnuts. The keyboard is sticky – from leftover tears or yesterday’s lunch, I cannot be sure. The GM of our company is doing rounds this morning, and gives me a dirty look upon viewing my sweatpants and tank top. My yellow tennis shoes are spotted with dirt. There is no makeup on my face. I am hungover and high on pain pills. I must leave this place, I think to myself. I am fading into nothing, I am going crazy, I must leave.

II.

The trouble of it is, Walker doesn’t want me anymore.

He with his beard. He with his real job, his bachelor’s degree. He with his girlfriend who looks rather manly. He with his ambitions and dreams. He wanted to go to Europe with me, he had said once. He wanted to take me everywhere. Let us take the world by storm. Show me off to the masses. “This is my woman. This is my love.” He wanted these things once. He doesn’t seem to want them now.

I eye him from my cubicle – the back of his head, the green of his shirt, sure to be bringing out, right now, the very-green of his eyes. I am a fifteen second walk across the office from him, but it feels like the Grand Canyon has been placed between us.

He sat me down yesterday, and said to me, “I have to stay with Kat. I cannot leave her for you like I promised I would.”

 

III.

At home, I climb the ladder to heaven. I pop three pills at a time, wash them down with stale soda water (which I suppose is just water). This is the way I have been dealing with the darkness.

I sit in front of my computer. My fingers fuzzy. My head fuzzy. My lips turned up ever so slightly at the edges into an imperceptible little smile.

“I’m going to get the fuck out of here,” I say out loud to no one.

I think what I mean is, “I’m going to kill myself.” But what I do instead is buy a one-way Greyhound ticket to San Diego. I’ve never been there before. It sounds like it should be lovely this time of year.

IV.

To the mystical palm tree on Coronado Beach; to the piece of pink gum on the cobblestone in the Gaslamp District; to the tan faces of the women of SoCal; to the rich fuck who will snub me when I ask for directions; to the homeless man who will offer me his last dollar as I busk on the corner; to the vagabond I will fall in love with; to the cupcake shop worker I will fist fight on the corner of seventh and Island; to the hot sand and to the warm ocean; to the sky and to the inevitable afternoon rain in June; I implore you all to consider me a nomad in a strange land. Consider me lost. Consider me fragile, no, consider me broken already into a million pieces. Consider me your friend. Consider me your lover. Consider my wounds, my flaws, my masks. Take me into your arms and let me weep at the feeling of finally, finally being home.

Please, please, change my miserable life.

V.

When I board the bus that will stop to connect in Las Vegas, I laugh to myself at the absurdity of what I’m doing. I have a backpack full of clothes and my guitar in its case. I left all my pills at home. Withdrawal is sure to be a bitch.

When I said goodbye to Walker, all my cubicle decorations sitting in a box in my hands, he eyed me blankly, with no desire in his face, and said “Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Here I am finding a seat. Here I am accepting a Reese’s from an old man. Here I am striking up a conversation with the ten year old across the aisle from me. Here I am leaning my head on a stranger’s shoulder. Here I am making out with that stranger an hour later.

There’s something about getting up and leaving forever that sits just right with me. I’m sure my mother will miss me. But this feels right.

VI.

The bus screeches to a noisy stop in a seemingly deserted part of town. I feel nothing.

My feet take me onto the city sidewalk. I feel nothing.

I walk, walk, walk towards the heart of the downtown, reaching forward, ever forward, to feel something. To feel just one more thing before I die.

A Surgeon of Sorts

I.

Lost in the cavernous grief that enveloped me, freakishly attached to our dead affection, I waltzed, clumsily, with all memory of you. The good and the bad, I stitched in lumps to my skin, voluntarily cancers, consensually received tumors of self-loathing, longing, and loss. Trembling from the weight of all this decaying baggage, I tried to dance, awkwardly, through the dark, constantly knocking things over with this piece of you or that one, flailing, nearly collapsing, beneath the burden of your broken corpse.

II. 

I desperately looked for a surgeon of sorts, to separate you from me, but found that the knife and scalpel were clutched in my hands - that I had to bleed, awake, for my freedom.

III.

I walked the path I'm on alone, alone for what seems like an eternity, before I found someone who noticed my scars, the places where you were cut away from me, and called them "beautiful." But he was not the doctor. He is not my savior.

Looking back with an honest eye, neither were you.

How Beautiful

Extracting feeling from a moment already lived, feeling a year-old ray of sunlight hitting my face, taking myself back to the summer when everything was beautiful, I lose myself, suddenly. I lose myself in you. 

How beautiful it was, to be loved well by you. How beautiful, to see you kneeling there before me, the smell of gunpowder and grass all in the air, the spotlight on us, the crowd's eyes on us. How beautiful it was, to say "Yes." 

And how beautiful it was, that day at the lake, to be happy again, to feel alive like I never had before. How beautiful it was, to feel your body next to mine as I drifted into sleep. How beautiful, to let the wind in through the window. How beautiful our life was together.

Let's forget about the ending, my darling, my runaway, my lost-at-sea. Let's forget about the space between you and me. Let's forsake our memories of a red-hot January, when our screams did carry through the neighbor's walls, let's forsake it all. I'm letting go of it all.

I'm letting go.

I'm letting go of the hatred, the anger, the fear, the rage, the depression, the darkness I held so near to me. I'm letting go of our last goodbye, your face all grey, your bones visible through your marked skin. I'm letting go of the worst of it, but I'm holding onto what we had.

How beautiful it was, watching my daughter run into your arms. How beautiful it was, watching you grow and change beside me. How beautiful it was, being your everything, your family. How beautiful we were in the mirror together. How well we fit.

These are the things I will remember. 

The best of our love, I will remember you by. 

Thank you for everything.

I will never forget. 

Into the Labyrinth

After the light in my eyes had gone out, once I had hit the bottom layer of hell in his absence, I decided to begin the upward journey, the adventure into my core. I didn't have a map to take with me, or any provisions, but a sense of curiosity at what I would find there. With his back turned to me, his gaze fixed on his own path, I found it easier to go forward without looking over my shoulder. 

So I started into the labyrinth of my self, color before me and a graveyard behind. Mirrors abounded on the maze walls; never in my life had I seen my face so often, and with such clarity. I looked into my own eyes at every turn, on every corner, and saw within myself a lost and broken child. "Come with me," I said to her, gently. "I think I know how to get us out of here." 

I've been shaking ever since I started forward, but my steps echo with the sound of love. I think of him every time I turn around, the ache never lessening, the nightmares of his stone-cold face never failing to catch me in my deepest sleep. But I can feel, in the ache, a possibility blooming. I just want to be someone that he could be proud of, but I have to be proud of me first. 

How did I go so long without embracing myself? How did I live twenty two years without realizing that I fit perfectly in my own arms? How did I get so far without seeing this light? 

Lost within my center, I feel a new completeness that just can't be described. Do I miss him? I more than miss him. He was my rock. You don't understand. Even the worst, most horrid terrors could be escaped in his presence. Even the deepest, most inescapable nightmares melted away when I woke up next to him. But he's lost to me now, lost in his own maze. Somehow, slowly, in dreams and in waking, I'm letting go of his hand. I'm learning to walk on baby-fawn legs. I'm navigating my inner sanctuary like I was made to do it. And I was. I was. This is what I was made to do.

I wear jewelry these days, to remind myself I deserve to be adorned in beauty. I speak kindly to my reflections in the hall of glass. I almost lost my life to the clutches of hopelessness and self-hate. I won't allow them to try to kill me again. They don't have the password at the door anymore. They don't belong inside. 

Grounded in confidence, splashing paint across the stars, I walk in health, alive. How fortunate I am, to be alive. Love radiates from me. Truth is spoken through me. I can see my future through a hole in the wall. I've never felt so close to the clouds in my existence.

I've never been more alone.

I've never been more in love.

I've never been more alive.

 

Dear Life,

Give me the mountains in all their regality, and the moon in its mystery, and the stars that nudge me ever forward into the void. Give me tattooed skin and wild hair, a blood stained wall in my inner sanctuary. Give me vodka sodas, give me Camel Whites, give me something to hold in my hands as I die to myself. Give me lawlessness, and give me liberty, and please, for the love of God, give me hope that the roof will someday pop off this dusty house.

Give me a beacon of insanity in a world gone grey.

Give me back my light, and give me all your love, and give me all the bravery that one small body can hold inside. Give me cowardice and fear and avarice. Give me vices, give me virtues, give me my humanity. Give me sunshine to nurture, rain to ponder, and snow to seethe inwardly, that I may remember it’s not all roses. Give me roses. Give me thorns. Give me practical gardening tools.

Hold me close to your center. Love me and nourish me and make it all too complicated to comprehend. Allow me to sit here on my fence. Allow me to sit here in my head. Allow me to be seated in awe of you, my teacher.

Give me all of it. Everything that’s meant for me. I’m ready now.

The Unholy Trinity

I. Ambivalence 

With white knuckled hands, you ripped my body apart, piece by piece. You put my blood on your doorpost, scattered my ashes in the fields where no rain would come, made a peace offering with what little was left of me. You tortured me into silence, now expecting me to speak? You press your lips to mine with a hum in your cavernous mouth, with a scorched elation buzzing through your veins, a fire just behind your irises. Oh my love, my love! My frustrating love. You of the sunshine, you of the bitter blizzards, you bipolar movement of my pen and my noose, how do I go about it - wrapping my arms around the corpse of our ecstasy?

II. Admiration

A shaman, a muse, a traveler through my mind, a couch surfing maniac abounding in the thoughts I think, a socket to plug my nonsense into - you serve so many purposes in my land of make believe.

In the matrix, you are separate from me. In our egos, we dance on opposite sides of the sticky gym floor. In our separation, we forget what we once were. You taught me how to love. How could I cease to know the rhythm of the song you spoke into being for me? How could I forget the face of my dearest friend? 

In reality, we are one. Everything is one. There is no duality, there are no faces, no voices to argue, no space in between. In the void, it's you and me, two drops in one sea, and we are a we, and I'm perfectly happy.

III. Adoration

I did not clean the kitchen quite as often as I should have. It took me a week just to finish folding the laundry. I expected much of you and sometimes gave the lesser offering at the altar - Cain slaying his brother in a fit of rage. My heart couldn't take the sheer volume of love that you brought to the table.

And the hell I put you through at times, well that was undeserved. You were flawless to me, a celestial being, pure light surpassing all time and space. Your presence was the antidote to all things. Your heart was the color of my every day. 

Now I have to bring my own hues to the picture, paint with my own brushes. It's so hard not to miss you. 

Now I breathe the night air in deep, and beg the stars to say hello to you for me. (Are we staring, together, at the same one?) 

My Wretched Friend

I watch your complacency like one would watch a dying animal. I watch you from afar, most times, with sympathy and a vague disgust. Heart full of useless love, wasted love, I watch your eyes grow emptier, your smile turn to plastic. I told you, my wretched friend, that I don't think you're happy, and you nearly agreed, but hesitated, and tripped over yourself, memories of our drunk nights filling your head, but the forefront overtaken by the way things appear to be. So concerned with the shoulds, the musts and must nots, you never seem to see your own misery, until I appear to remind you. Collapsing into each other like stars, we only create voids and questions, the answers never appearing, at least not with clarity, nothing solid and real beneath our feet. We only dare to dream of what is possible to build in the space between us, and then turn our backs on it swiftly, remembering, as it were, that the stone you're made of is not the kind that can truly love. No, the stone you're made of is not the kind that could ever love me. 

Still

And still, you exist, somewhere up north, and of course, in the confines of every breath in my lungs. Still, you visit me, in dreams and in dreams of dreams, to the sound of country music and an opening front door and wedding bells. Still, you haunt my eyes in shadows, coloring my face with your wraith-like presence, my cheeks flushing with a warmth untrue. You ring in my ears like a lie, keep my bed cold like a blankety mist, and hold me in sleep, ever so restless. My essence is made up of words you have spoken. In places I cannot separate you from me, cannot untangle your deeds from my perception; my glasses are tinted the color of your eyes. Your body may be miles away, your voice carrying to ears not mine, your time eaten away by the exterior void, but a piece of you follows me, and a piece of me lays in the dark with you, holding out hope for the maybes and the could bes, grasping for straws in a desolate room that we once inhabited together, now vacant. You echo through and fill the space with confidence, still, the marks on your arms still a nightmare that I live in, over and over, just whispering prayers for you and watching the horizon, hoping to see your figure, looming, to swallow my life again.