wild melody

i sat on the front steps in a corner of brooklyn, too close to government housing to be "cool" but too close to hipsters to be really "scary". trying to read the pages of my new-used book. sun was warm, breeze was cold, & i was really hoping to embrace sunday afternoon. except it was hard to focus on the words. my damn heart wouldn't be silent. so instead i give up. look up. i see you 5 houses down, also reading on your stoop but my glance keeps going. i think i hate that you can focus and i can't at the moment. breathe. if you can't escape your head, you might as well live in it. dive into the moment. there's a story for all the souls sharing this corner of the world with me. i invent some, deduce others: the two old men playing chess in the housing project gated yard a few sidewalk cracks to the left? they've been enemies since grade school. one traveled the world as a grip for a documentary filmmaker, but he's come home to care...

twenty nine. two months in, and i'm thinking this is going to be a hard year. but one that i hope proves to be integral to growth, to healing; to looking back next year from a better place. it seems i can't heal emotionally until i confront the lion in the corner. it's the scariest of all my demons. it's the pieces of me that were most damaged by abuse and that were at one time most important. the fragments of memory still hurt when i bump into them. i don't know how to begin, where to start, what this looks like. but i know i need it. i can't wait anymore. i can't let fear keep me from moving forward. it's a strange thing, that i can't move on emotionally until i sort out who i am spiritually. the two shouldn't be connected in my head. but here they are. proclaiming loudly that they're as intertwined as clouds in a sky. i can't have one without the other. i am terrified. i'm more scared of God than i am my father at this...

damn i miss you. it's been 8 years now, and there are many days i don't. there are times i still think "i want to show perpa this!" but it's decreased to a wee blip of missing most days. not today.     (will the non-linear chaos of grief ever stop surprising me?) today it's the kind of sting that makes me breathe a little slower, as if it's a true physical ache and shallower inhales will ease it. today, it stabs me with a fierce shock, the way a mountain lake ices warm skin like a seizure. i wish i could jump in my car and speed my way across the st john's... i call it the house that built me, you know from the miranda lambert song? i need it. i need a forehead kiss. & your hug, smelling like outdoors & sunshine, wood dust & old spice; stability. i need a cup of coffee. the strong black brew with cream to make it "blonde & bitter". (i still can't recreate that perfection). in my favorite mug. mint green with the ha...

"Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you chose to call it an epic; that's when you start to see what celebration is.  When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong that's celebration."  __shauna niequist how i want this courage, this kind of fierce, joyful defiance. help me let go of my perspective so it may unbend & flex into something that can find celebration. may i find the epic within the ugliness. may i see beautiful here, in the uncertainty of my tomorrows. may i create restful solitude from within the loneliness. may i trade in the hollow for healing; the cynical & bitter for wide-eyed hope. fill me. here, in the in-between; let me become a woman who creates ...

i just finished brain on fire. everybody should read it.  it sparked a lot of thought about things i already think about--how to fight against mental illness stigma, how to create greater empathy from the neuro-"typical" of us. how to understand better & reach out to include better & what are the best ways to communicate love to those who battle mental illness. i think this book could do some good in that direction. but also. damn. i never had autoimmune encephalopathy i never hallucinated or experienced psychosis. i'm very grateful for this, and i wouldn't say that i have come close to experiencing what susannah did. it's incomparable. but the first part of the book...shocked me with how releatable it was? the memories it stirred. i know what it's like to cave in, to lose pieces of your thought patterns and feel disconnected from your own neurons, to hide it for so long until you appear to flip personalities overnight but really you've...

i told You to come after me. i challenged you, last year; to prove you loved me. remember God? even though i say i believe you died on a cross to save me from myself. from striving for morality but always too broken, from the failures & mistakes & chains of my humanity, the sharp taste of death being an end. but i asked, if you really want me? well that feels like a fairytale. it seems distant and strange. so even though i have the sacrifice of your life. i demanded more. because i didn't i didn't believe you would respond i thought you would say: "you're ungrateful look what i have already done? why can't you accept it just open your eyes i already proved my love you are selfish, blind, lazy too ignorant or too willful too scared? to receive it. why would i waste any more on you? there's a limit. you are too much." i'm still holding my breath for the harshness. after all the tiny love letters, all the individual alphabe...

this isn't supposed to be like this. i'm the bad guy in this scenario, i hurt you. unintentionally. but, if there's blame to lay somewhere my door is the only one fitting. i shouldn't have this war between mind & heart. my heart shouldn't be acting like it's broken. i know it seemed disconnected when you asked. but i really was thinking about grace. how much i don't deserve you. how incapable i am in this moment of my life to give you what you deserve. you didn't find me at my worst; but i'm still climbing up from it. i can't pretend that's ok. i can't give you part of me, when you should have all. i can't give you pieces when i would want all. i also couldn't say that if i had ever for one moment considered that an option...i don't know. it never crossed my mind. there's a lot of feeling hiding behind the things i don't allow my mind to access. damn... but even then i wouldn't have let myself fall for you....