wild melody

dear little one, i know you feel confused right now. you feel uncomfortable, unsafe, sad, icky, & guilty. i wish i could tell you to share what happened with someone. but i don't know if any adults in your life have the toolkit to handle this. i know you'll carry this day embedded in your body for decades. i can't fix that. i can't stop it from happening in the first place. oh, how i wish i could! so the most important thing i want to tell you is this: what happened was not your fault. look at me baby girl-- you are not dirty, you are not evil, this was not a sin you committed. you didn't want this. but you didn't know how to get out of it without hurting him. it's not your fault that you didn't understand the magnitude of what was happening. this was a yucky moment where you were sinned against. (maybe. i don't know how to classify it really) im sorry the church would spend the next decade of your life pounding into your head that you must ha...

*notes scribbled in my phone recently after listening to podcasts about the white supremacy rampant in evangelical christianity*  i think that day i went to the garage and screamed at the sky, i was becoming an atheist. i was desperately pleading with God to show up bc i didn't believe he existed anymore, bc he hadn't met me. bc i could explain every supposed spiritual comfort with science, with delusion. i felt fooled abandoned desolate i was overwhelmed by loss and i didn't have a language or a means of articulating what was happening in my brain. i didn't choose God bc i was so sure He was real. i loudly proclaimed & inked it on my skin that I was choosing him bc i was so afraid he wasn't.  i was so scared, so lost. so i forced it. i thought i could choose to believe and silence all my questions but i couldn't. i truly believe i found God again somehow in ukraine.  but i think what i'm walking through now is the fallout of having really been an agnost...

you're listening, focusing on the top of her head as she leans out over the fence to avoid looking at either of us. this story isn't pretty, or neat, or easy to tell. her voice rises & falls with the rhythm of the waves. i'm trying to focus, trying to listen. but i can see your face. so i am lost somewhere in one of my universes. the one i hate the most, where puzzle pieces & numbers & fragments of color that i don't recall even seeing, much less taking note of; suddenly collide into a picture. an image i didn't see coming. (how is it that i never see these truth bombs coming until they are fully formed in my mind? who invented this instant connect-the-dots processor? can i return it for a refund? i'd rather realize things slowly or not at all. the human mind needs time to figure these things out thank you very much) so many small gestures & individual words & moments of frustration make sense now. i get it. i don't know what i...

i have so many ideas, moments, snapshots, thoughts locked inside. pivotal & mundane, deep & lighthearted. all of it wants out, all of it i'm afraid i'll forget; none of it seems to have language. where is the expression format for those of us who struggle with words? sometimes i wonder how such a (supposedly) small human can hold so much. at least, i am told that i am small, people try to pick me up--which ends badly for them-- (i'm a grown-ass woman what.the.hell do they expect?!) or ask how i reach things & tell me "your feet can't be tired you're so tiny they carry no weight" (america explain) & the whole world can see over my head & also runs me over because of that last phrase. in fact one of my friends recently picked up my disgusting work shoes because he couldn't believe how little it was. i don't *feel* small. this is my skin, and i can't compare it to any other skin. it's always been a funny reminder, like ...

“what are your dreams for your thirties?”  i know she’s talking to me but it hits me with the force of a stone fist to the chest. how can she drop such an earth-shattering sentence in the middle of yoga? i glance at our bird to my right, buying time.  “me or liliya?” “you, obviously.” “oh.” my thoughts scramble as liliya laughs and says something about how she has two years left how can she think about that yet?  “i’ve known what my goal for thirty was since i was 27.” i say, trying to stop the words bc i can’t —don’t want —to explain them. now both friends are looking at me expectantly and i.... am empty. my mind is a mess bc feelings. all these emotions of pain & regret & the deep excruciating ache of loss swirls up to my throat. the familiar suffocation of T I M E slowly covers my heart.  i have several flashes of realization at the same time: these girls love me.   i have to face this grief. i can’t run from it anyway. none of ...

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....

"life doesn't discriminate between the sinners & the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes. we keep living anyway--we rise & we fall & we break and we make our mistakes; and if there's a reason I'm still alive when so many have died, than I'm willing to wait for it."  this song, oddly enough gives me hope. (the whole musical has become something of a personal anthem but that's a bizarre twisting path deep into my heart and mind that i'm unable--unwilling to take others down at the moment). it's true, life is indiscriminately harsh (with breaks of sunshine and rest). God directly alters at times, yes. but more often He lets the long long leash of natural law & free will play out. as He works within the laws of natural science He created rather than bending them; just so in all of life. He redeems more than He rescues. He's not at odds with the patterns of life. He created it, and when the fall altered it He chose a quie...

...and it's for my city. ((this tragedy isn't truly mine. everything should be centered around the victims, their families and friends; and the close knit LGBT community reeling today. that's why i'm writing this on my private blog. i need to process, i need a safe place to sort myself out away from public eye. but i know it's incredibly inappropriate to claim this has hurt me personally when others have had the fabric of their hearts torn in shreds.))   what? it feels surreal. Orlando isn't even a real city. i've often thought whoever taglined it "the city beautiful" apparently never traveled to cities like Washington DC, Savannah GA, Cardiff Wales or Vancouver BC, CA. it's always seemed like the kid brother who can't keep up with the big kids. trying to be cool with his untied shoelaces and popsicle-stained mouth, running after the vans-wearing teenagers on their skateboards. like "we've got the basketball team Shaq played fo...

You delight in showing mercy delight it's not a duty, or a chore; you're not angry or annoyed that i need your mercy more than the earth needs rain. you are not exacting, frustrated, judgmental. i live under this burden of exact cause and effect. this belief that every action can only add up to it's deserving consequence. that any good or forward motion must be earned and fought for with the absolute best you can give; but even then don't get your hopes up...because your best isn't always enough. there is no entitlement, life owes you nothing and fairness only comes into play when you screw up. punishments and consequences of mistakes always pay out--even though the rewards and fruit for hard work, diligence and effort don't. but that's not life with you. it's a perspective i've been partly given and partly created. You are   g r a c i o u s.  i'm supposed to be free! not only from sin; but from this burden of fear & failure meaning t...

the courage of stars... how light carries on  how rare & beautiful it truly is  that we exist  i'd give anything to hear, you say it one more time the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes  -saturn from space II, Atlas project by sleeping at last   (( if only i could couch my thoughts & ideas & emotions in such a vehicle as this. grateful for right-brained artists whose hearts beat out into words. so the left-brainers like me can say "yes! that's my heart, thank you for giving it wings." ))

all the things i want to say, but can't. the stories i've drifted into for a few sentences, the moments another soul hovers between life and death. the people i could have helped more, the ones i reached deep down and found a level beyond "all" to give from; and the majority in the middle whom i strove to do my best for. family dynamics. loneliness. sometimes the deepest loneliness includes family surrounding you and sometimes it's a singular pronoun for days. the brokenness of wounds that aren't physical but often seem to damage deeper than the physiologic ones i'm treating. the peace that real love and true family brings to chaos and pain and suffering. so much i've witnessed...but i have no words. or rather, i have no way to free them. the hawk of my high school days that used to beat around in my chest cavity longing for freedom seems to have returned. i don't know where to begin. i don't know how to put stories that aren't mine...

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” --Atticus Finch (to kill a mockingbird) I find few things more frustrating than if I open my mouth about my experience as a woman and a man jumps in to point out all the reasons my reality isn't valid. I shut down faster than an open submarine hatch; but it's not because you're convincing. It's because I'm quick to realize you can't listen. you'll never find empathy when you're more concerned with changing my mind so i don't see you as some sort of monster just because you're male. FYI, if I'm being honest I probably already figured out you're not...See, I have brothers, cousins, best friends who I know are good honest men because action proves character. I've also had men I thought were friends who proved to be the kind who view every woman's body as something made for them....

Kyev, 2013 if i could bottle it up  found a video tonight from 2012 of driving through Kyev in the middle of the night on a 10 hour trip to camp. lizzy & i were the only Americans at the time...background of mingled Russian & Ukrainian, the city lights blurring past, stupid american pop songs on the radio ("call me maybe"--we looked at each other & died laughing at what they would say if they understood it). lily & lizzy were talking about some deep philosophy: how people's souls have depths-- some are lakes, others oceans; i zoned away to absorb the moment. i have so many precious moments stored up in my heart. swimming in the river with abi & lily in the early morning, lizzy & lily & i singing on the dock by the old house, kolya & his guitar on a blanket with julia under the stars on the soccer field, watching the faces of children explode as they're praised. i wish i could share those moments with others. share the polaroi...

"...they were all very well meaning, but [...] they'd say was 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' the problem with that was [...] I felt like I was actually broken. That things could happen in your life that would just break a man, that not only you wouldn't be stronger--but that you would never again have what you had before. And I felt that things had slipped in such a way that I would never be able to recover." i was moved to the point of aching throat from tears unshed by this story. i found it after listening to the Ted talk "A Story of Knots & Surgeons" which was moving; but this version of the story was far more powerful. because it was relatable. It enabled me to identify my own pain, to remember that ( i am not alone ) & ( you are far from the only one walking through this ) are not empty words i tell myself. they're real. oh & btw, i too want to punch people in the face when they say "everything ha...