pickupthepen

[pickupthepen]

The Bathroom Window at Spruce

This story takes place in my absolute favorite place I've ever lived in my adult life. I called this place the Spruce House. 

I woke up on a sunny, warm morning in the springtime in San Francisco. I don’t need to tell you that sunny, warm days are few and far between here, because you’re already probably well aware of our self-proclaimed perfect climate whose temperature rarely falls below 55 degrees, and yet never quite above 70 (shout out to any conservative reading this who simultaneously denies climate change while taking sick pleasure in the fact that it is ruining our flawless earthly thermostat). It was a beautiful morning, and a nice reprieve in a phase of my life that felt out of control. I was new to San Francisco, I was young, and I admittedly hadn't gotten a grip on my life yet. I am still known for losing my keys, leaving wallets in Ubers, forgetting my work badge, and appearing to be a human being that has no idea what the hell is going on... ever, but that reputation can be credited to this time in my life, as I don’t lose anything anymore. 

I was usually expected at the office around 8:30 a.m., but Trisha, my manager, and I were anticipated to be onsite with a customer at noon, so when the light pierced my vision through the east facing window at around 8, I decided to take my time in getting ready. I was going to do it slowly today, and make sure no stone in my daily preparation went unturned. I heard the rest of my roommates leave well before I was fully awake, and having the house to myself, I made no haste in making my way to the bathroom to begin my morning routine.

Now, something you probably don’t know about San Francisco- most apartments that young adults like me live in are shotgun style, four bedroom apartments in one of the levels of a multi-story Victorian (or other) house. All four small bedrooms lay on one end of a long, straight hallway, and the kitchen and “living room” are placed at the other. In the middle- the split bathroom. A split bathroom is actually two bathrooms, splitting the bathtub/sink on one side of the hallway and the toilet on the other, so that one roommate can shower in aromatic peace while another does their “business”.

I walked down the hallway without my phone, without pants, and I went into the room with the toilet and closed the door. When I was done, I stood up, leaned forward to reach for the doorknob, and turned. As I pulled, the doorknob came off the door with my hand. I looked down in momentary confusion. I stuck it back in and turned the knob again. When I pulled, out came the contraption once more.

I stuck my fingers in the hole to pull on the door, but the latch bolt (the curved guy that goes in and out when you twist the doorknob) was lodged in the strike plate (the piece of metal that covers the hole in the door frame). I pulled on the door as hard as I could, but it was effectively closed- I needed the knob. 

I stepped back and sat down on the toilet, intellectually paralyzed. I was staring down at this piece of equipment in my hand and the only eloquent response that came to mind was “Fuck!” This was followed by an immediate rush of doomsday preparation. I believed, immediately, that my life was about to fall apart. I was already late for work. I had been missing emails and losing my keys. My mind was everywhere. I thought, “I can’t seem to get my shit together” and I hoped this day was the beginning of my redemption, but here I was sitting in this bathroom with the doorknob in my hand. I didn't have my phone so I couldn't call my roommates for help, so I figured I better fucking figure out a way out of this bathroom on my own.

I started with the low hanging fruit. I examined the mechanics of the door itself, and I realized I had to figure out a way to turn the latch so that the bolt would pull out of the wall. I tried with my fingers, but they weren’t strong enough to twist the rusty latch. I remembered how the doorknob was difficult to turn when it was intact, so I knew I wasn’t going to accomplish the same turn without equally forceful torque. 

I tried again to reinstall the knob. I stuck it back into the door to see if it would work as status quo. I realized once I had tried a few times that the doorknob was spinning and it was coming in and out of the door but it wasn’t grabbing anything. This meant, I learned later, that the spindle, or the rod-like piece of metal extending from the knob, wasn’t hooking into the latch. So, I took a good look at this piece of metal and I saw that it was worn from use (the hexagonal circumference was now circular), and there wasn’t anything I could do to get it back in working condition without tools. The doorknob wasn't going to do it’s job, so I took it apart, and I tried to stick the spindle into the latch and turn it with my fingers, but again, no luck. The panic began to set in, I could feel my chest tighten as my breathing became heavier.

I looked around at everything in the bathroom and began calculating what I could use to help me to get that damn door open. I started with the first things that I could see. I unhinged the pull string from the lamp and attempted to tie it into the latch to see if I could spin it with force, but the angle was wrong. I tried to reenact 007′s credit card trick with the piece of string by looping it around the latch bolt and cleverly flossing it back and forth, but the curved edge of the lever was on my side, so the maneuver would work if I were on the outside of the door but not from where I was standing.

With every idea that failed, my panic took deeper control. Around this time in my life, I was really into meditation. I decided I needed to sit down and breathe in order to think straight, because with a calm mind, I knew I could analytically explore pieces of my psyche that lay dormant. I sat for what I believed was ten minutes or until something came to me. I began a series of iterations- sit, breathe, and once an idea comes, try it.

Two hours passed and I couldn’t get anything to work. I went through countless phases of focused silence, catching an idea as it popped into my mind only to have it fail, and sitting on the cold tile floor in the bathroom, sans pants. After every subtle option, my last ditch effort was to knock the fucker down, but I had about a foot and a half of running space and I realized, after almost breaking my shoulder, that the door was on my side of the door frame. I wasn’t just up against the latch bolt, I was up against the entire wall. I even took the pins out of the door’s hinges and tried to pull the door out of the frame toward me, but I don’t need to explain in great detail why that didn’t work. I realized I wasn’t getting this door open- I was stuck.

At which point, I was overcome by a feeling of hopelessness, and I came to an impasse. I knew I had two options left- I either sit here and wait for my roommates to come home (I did the math- I had at least ten hours to sit, and if I stayed locked away in the toilet room for ten hours, I would likely lose my job), or I escape. 

This was a one way option, a high risk option. I could leave, but I couldn’t come back. There was a small window above the toilet, and on other side of the small window was my neighbor’s roof. And between the small window and my neighbors roof was about seven feet of horizontal distance. And between the window and the ground was about five stories of vertical distance. I could jump, but I couldn’t fail. If I succeeded, there was no getting back into the bathroom.

So, a number of things could go wrong in the worst ways. The idea was that I could re-enter via our roof through my roommate’s window, which backed up against the neighbor’s roof, but if that plan didn’t work, I'd be stranded on top of our house and I'd have to call down to someone on the street and ask them to dial 9-11. I could already see the whole thing playing out- the firetrucks pulling up, hoisting me via ladder to the busy street corner in Laurel Village, the strangers who would watch in awe at my bare ass coming down with fully uniformed men, the look on my roommate’s face when I told her what happened and that we’d have to replace the locks again, and the look on my manager’s face when she’d realized she couldn’t put someone like me in front of customers. It wasn’t an ideal scenario for my career or my living situation. It wasn’t an ideal scenario.

I found myself sitting in this bathroom with an incredible amount of time under my belt. I felt as though I was beginning to lose my mind in the form of sheer, stunned panic. Aside from the very real fear that I would be terminated for not showing up to work without warning, I didn’t think I could sit in a 3 by 5 foot white room for 12 hours. I thought of the men at Alcatraz and the isolation chambers. I had only been in here for two hours and I could already feel myself physically suffocating. I could meditate for a couple hours, sure. I could force myself to be okay with being stranded for as long as it worked, but I couldn't do it for the whole day. My psyche would surely fall apart.

I decided after careful deliberation, that I may have had no other choice. I hopped up onto the toilet, I pried open the window (whose seal was painted over) with all of my might and I wedged myself into the opening. I stared down at the ground below me with nothing for my feet to prop onto. I considered taking the risk, the actual non-metaphorical leap. I was willing to get to a mental place where jumping was an action I could take, but I was not yet in that space. A shiver went down my spine, and I slinked back into the bathroom and sat on the floor to begin meditating again. I wanted to find another way, I had to find another way- to think through it enough, to find something I hadn’t seen yet, but there wasn’t another way. This was it.

My dilemma repeated itself- “I can’t sit in here forever.” And then “I can’t sit here forever” became “I can’t sit in here much longer.” And then “I can’t sit in here much longer” became “I can’t sit in here anymore.” After what felt like about 20 minutes of heated internal debate, I wedged myself back into the opening of the window, I took a deep breath, and I jumped. My arms caught the edge of my neighbors roof and I kicked my knee up over the side. I tumbled onto the roof and gasped. I made it!

I tiptoed over to the front of the neighbor’s roof- I made sure to do this very lightly because the only thing worse than calling to a stranger from my roof in my underwear would be to fall through my finicky neighbor’s roof into her living room while she was enjoying her morning coffee (or possibly lunch at this point).

I jumped over to my roommate’s window, and I took a moment with myself before I found out for sure whether or not I was fucked.

“Please, for the love of God, please let me have this,” and I pulled.

It was open. It was open! It was fucking open!!

I tumbled in and ran to my room and immediately called Trisha. I looked down at my phone’s screen as it rang- it was 10:30am. She answered, and out of breath, I shouted “Trisha! I’ve been locked in my bathroom!”

She dejectedly responded, “Just come. Just get dressed and come.”

I showered off the soot and dirt, I got dressed, and I went.

Now, this was a time in my life when stories like this were not hard to come by. Everything I've told you is true, and I'm well aware that recalling this story for those that I tell stories might give you the impression that I was an absolute mess way back then. Well, I was, so good catch. 

I hesitated for years putting this story in ink. I felt an indescribable pressure to put some moral or learned lesson on the end of it, justifying just how out of control my life was way back then and making it very clear that I am no longer the girl who jumps onto roofs, but, is it not clear that I am no longer that girl? Do I even have to defend her, or the woman I am today? Hopefully not.

I have no moral for you today, my friend, only a silly story about the Spruce House and the window in the bathroom. 

I fucking made it.

[pickupthepen]

I’m Not From Here

I’m gonna be honest with you,

I don’t always like this life. I don’t mean my life, but the stark coldness of real life. 

The banality of it all can feel so pointless and awful. I was never able to tell which pieces of my psyche made me think this way, but, oh, the annoyance- I look around at everyone in the world, wondering if they’re playing out their roles and never questioning who they are and what they’re doing. Are they all on autopilot? Some righteous thing inside of me looks down upon people who place importance in what I would deem the lesser things in life, like diets and workout plans, like TV shows. I have very little patience for people that never talk about their pain, that never explore the corners of their own minds in a way that is more connected to the self than simply studying information in order to regurgitate political and scientific facts at dinner parties. All to seem like someone who is an intellectual, even in the rare instances in which they already are. 

I look around at the girls on my morning commute and wonder how many of them wake up, put on their makeup, buckle into perfect heels and wrap themselves in the same tan pea coats in order to match this city’s stylistic flare. I think to myself that maybe they’re trying to eventually find themselves in a relationship with a good enough man, to move into a modest home, have a couple kids and settle into life only to spend their days looking forward to this season’s Starbucks flavor or yet another version of the Apple Watch. I wonder if they’re drowning out an inability to know thyself, or if I’m projecting my own resistance to reality onto them and they’re really just happy droning along, asleep, reading the lines in their scripts about brunch, their boyfriends and overpriced pillows at West Elm.

I wonder why I have such a visceral reaction to their presence in my window into life. Perhaps I’m scared of caving toward complacency. Perhaps I’m terrified that I’ll give in, become like them, one among many, forgettable.

I’ve always believed that quests for a grandiose, beautiful love and self expression in the form of magnificent art was the most noble thing we can do as human beings in this lifetime. I’ve wondered if it’s the Libra in me, although many laugh when I explain that the more basic nature in my desire to be adorned in the most glamorous and opulent elements of this world may be attributed to something arguably pseudoscientific. They tell me that the placement of the stars at the moment of my birth has nothing to do with why I am the way that I am, but every description of a Libra woman has always fit me, when it was done right. Whether or not it truly explains my nature, I’d rather live in a world where the stars and the moon have an impact on my spirit than to give full credit to an organized resume about the pragmatism of my becoming. That’s a choice that I’ve made for myself, and I reserve the right to take on whatever perspectives and outlooks on life that I choose. Doesn’t everyone? Do the tan pea coat girls deserve that as well? 

Maybe I really do live halfway in this plane and halfway in another. I don’t give a fuck about worldly banality. I like witnessing myself as a goddess. I like believing that there are ways to communicate with the universe, and I like being one with the trees and the rain, as sisters. 

And so, interestingly, believing that I've already been granted access to the beginnings of my ability to express and appreciate artwork, I’ve spent my entire adult life in search of an indescribable, beautiful love. A magical love. A love that feels like something, a love that can be written about, a love that is hung up there, with the moon and the stars. And I’ve come to realize that I’m willing to make an exchange on my reputation to find a love like that. I was willing to pursue women instead of men because I put true love above societal pressure to be “normal”. And I started following leads where I felt my heartstrings tugging instead of settling for potential partners that felt safe and “healthy”. Likely a problem, though- when I meet women who spark inspiration in me, I become completely submerged, I am untied. 

I am engulfed in the waves of fiery romance, and then, because these relationships often have no grounds in reality, and aren’t stable or safe, they inevitably end. When they do, I am thrusted back into reality, no longer toeing the line between realms. Suddenly, I see the world without its magic filter and it disgusts me. Then, I look at those girls on the bus and I hate them, and I desperately fear becoming like them, and terror takes me into its dark caverns as I worry that the universe’s will for me is to release the spiritual pieces of myself and fall into the tan peacoat army line. 

I become disgusted by my own reality that involves sidewalks in Mission Bay, slow progression in gyms, long walks alone in neighborhoods with houses that I will never afford and a familiarity with my bedroom that never seems to truly change at all, and the elements of day to day life dissolve into god damn insufficiency. I resent trash days and the dishwasher and Netflix and grocery stores and every human that wants to talk to me that doesn’t remind me of my spirit world. I am angry with them for making it seem like this plane’s vapid reality is the only one that exists, for arguing that it is and attempting to convince me that the true joys in life come from a friendship with it’s most boring moments. And so I embark on love again and again and again, perhaps in an attempt to escape myself, and definitely in an attempt to escape reality. And I beg whatever god there might be to not let reality be all there is. And I hate you for trying to pull me down toward Earth- I want the stars. 

Months ago, as I grieved the ending of yet another romance, I begged my friend Brynn, through tears, to not ask me to be less. She looked at me, perplexed and asked what made me think that anyone wanted me to be “less”, whatever that means. “Don’t ask me to change, don’t ask me to give up on this piece of myself.” I felt as though love would never stay if I were a spirit monkey from forest realms, and I came to believe that I must eventually choose between two roads that diverge- to be who I am, to wander the earth with freedom, but to know heartbreak countless times over, or to love modestly, to put on a tan peacoat and forego all the wonderful corners of my spirit realm. I incorrectly came to believe, probably from this particular mindset, that the Earth itself was asking me to give up my hunt for explosive love and grandiose art and to take my head out of the clouds. “But I like being in the clouds”. Brynn made herself clear as I went on- she was asking only that I walk away from any love when pain outweighs joy, when what is being taken from me outbids what is being given- something I could never quite do.

“Could they ever live together-” I asked, “magic and reality?” I really wanted to know if deep, grandiose, wonderful love had a place in the same realm as Netflix and laundry.

“I think so,” she answered.

As time passed, as my worlds shifted and I diligently sorted through which cracks in my heart needed to be healed from the inside out and which human beings from earth needed to be let go of, I caught a metaphorical glimpse of myself in the mirror- hunched and tired. I saw for the first time that disappointment is inevitable and that it’s not the fault of my lofty spirit that romances have ended for me. I also learned that it’s okay to be changed by these things, it’s okay to carry them with us like battle scars, it’s okay to talk to other people about them for our own comfort and for the benefit of shared experience, but it’s not necessary to become reduced by them, or to even consider that we must as a rule of thumb.

After yet another heartache, I didn’t want to be asked to be less because I didn’t want to be less. I didn’t want to willingly become a girl that was bruised and broken by her experiences- or rather a sad girl that let life minimize her, a girl that wasn’t more than having been abandoned by those she wanted to love. I didn’t want to hide in the shadows, away from the world, sinking into my own body simply because I couldn’t face standing up and fearlessly looking directly in the eye of the dragon, my future. I didn’t want to become girl that never glitters because I have known disappointment, never having taken time to appreciate and love all the happiness in my life. I didn’t want to be nothing more than my trauma, my sicknesses and the painful moments from my past. I wanted to be more than that, and I wondered if I could take a deep breath, stand back up, lift my skirt, and dip one foot right back into the spirit realm.

And so I did.

There are just some things about us that cannot be taken away, no matter what. 

I thought of those girls, sitting across the Muni aisle, eyes deep in a book about love. Do you want what I want, tan pea coat girl? Are you more like me than I think, or are you just as firmly planted in reality as I have guessed? I wondered how many of them have fallen into line unwillingly, questioning if a spirit realm exists, if there’s a way to access it, feeling stuck without a direction in which to move, and so, marching forward in their fixed position. I wondered how many of them have fallen into line unknowingly, how many are complacent, how many believe that there is nothing more, and so will never look, will never question, will never dive. I wonder if I used the word “complacent” just then to take a sword to the word “happy”, because I’ve been unable to see that “happy” does not have a ubiquitous definition.

Maybe they don’t want this. Maybe they don’t need to be like me. I don’t want to be like them, but I am already unlike them. And so, I released the grip on my righteous throne, because perhaps no one would be any better if they were different, not star women, not girls in tan pea coats, not you, not I.

Can you breathe, star woman? Can you just breathe? Can you write poems about lost love without standing on a soapbox about knowing thyself? Can you know sadness without begging to not become “less”? Can you wrap yourself in silk scarves and intricate patterns without arraigning staple fashion items and the women who choose to wear them? Can you let your light seep out of your cracks and shine onto others who might understand and feel the same, with little regard for those who don’t and can’t? Can you embrace the straddle between realms, and witness the divine birth of goddesses who have, until this very moment, been afraid to glitter without recourse? Can you please unbutton your blouse, and just breathe?

If you’re reading this and you think I'm crazy, I welcome you and I see why you may not understand. My deepest apologies to anyone who owns a tan pea coat. If you are like me, I’m sure you already know what I mean. If you want to be more like me, I don’t know, my friend, maybe you should try and be more like you.

Best wishes.

[pickupthepen]

Best Wishes

The truth about something- many years ago in a budding spring, I wrote a poem. I don’t write poems often, and I’m not sure I've crafted many of my own since this one. Sometimes I dig it back up and comb through its lines. I haven’t altered it once. 

I don’t ever explain the back story of this piece of writing to friends with whom I share it. I don’t quite think the back story matters. Even if I let in on its intended recipient, I don’t know if its content would be cheapened or clarified by a verbose introduction. So, I keep the poem tucked away, and I pass it along when I pass by other humans who fancy an expression of self via written word. I wonder if I should share it with you.

Would you care? Would you read it? Would you wonder if the girl who wrote it was ascending a soapbox about love or if she was simply illustrating her own experiences of the heart? Would you think, perhaps correctly, that the girl who wrote it is still very alive in the woman who writes you letters?

My gift to you is a relic from the girl I once was- a poem, an artifact with lingering remnants of a child who learned that her value lay in the intensity with which she is adored, and who never quite found the thing that satiated the fantasy of that big love from silver screens.

Critique all you like- I have no moral conclusions for you today, only the ripened words from the heart of a girl who eventually learned how to walk on her own two feet.

Insert abrupt address, to whom it may concern, to you:

Impossible. Unfit. Configured. Customized. Defective.

How was it written? Was it written wrong?

Did all those fantasies of big love come from somewhere within?

Or was it my crux, my flaw, the bugged script that unraveled what was meant to be?

If so, I mourn the years wasted in delusion. It’s never worked- to love and be loved. In family, in friendship, yes, I’ve felt it, I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it.

In romance, all that’s left is a list of a few “I don’t love you back”, the rare “you don’t love me back” and mostly “I don’t know love”.

Maybe I fell in love with impossibility long ago. Maybe it’s the rush, the mystery, the suggestion that I love most. Maybe I haven’t learned how it should taste. How it should sound. Maybe it’s been here before and I missed it, like the passing of a familiar song when my heart and my head are lost in the black, knotted web of thought. Thought.

But I chase and I follow, and when I draw near, I recoil. I run.

I hate the slow burn of finality. Never say “forever”. I despise the seriousness of it all. I can’t. I won’t. It would suffocate me. It might kill me. What if it’s wrong? What if I miss out on the real thing because I settled for some thing?

My heart and my mind, the paradoxical partnership. I breathe a thick, wet cloud of contradiction. No answers- only more confusion. I walk blindly, stumbling.

So I’ll tell you how I love being on my own. How it’s safer here. How I value my autonomy. And I’ll tell you how I burn with desire, still, to find it one day- but not today. I’ll tease the flame and bare to it my soul, and I’ll throw ice and water and sand when it grows too tall, aiming to capture me in its blaze.  

I don’t know love and love has never known me. We are two birds, pecking and picking, soaring and diving, twisting in and around one another- never meeting, never landing. My lungs are filled by the winds that lift my bones. The freedom, the passion, and the curiosity. The longing- I have forgotten what the branches, the grass and the Earth feel like between my toes.

Never,

ever,

sing for me.

Best wishes.

[pickupthepen]

Little Demon

Hi there.

I want to tell you a story. A few years ago, back when I was consulting for 21st Century Fox, I found myself wandering in an airport market at LaGuardia, in search of my usual Diet Coke and, as always, perusing the book selection. As my eyes glazed over the occasional best sellers that were faced forward so shoppers could see the covers and make impulse choices on pretty colors and a couple of words printed in script typeface, my eyes locked on the name “Anne Lamott” on a little orange paperback. My mind clapped- “ha!” Not long before that, I was floating in her pool in Marin as she asked me how my relationship was going. She always had a handful of wonderfully eloquent words of wisdom to offer in moments like those, and I let her in on my heartache. I always forget what she does to afford a mission-style mansion and a gorgeous pool like that, and I’m always still a little surprised to see her name in bookstores. I wouldn’t say I’m a loyal fan of her work, but I bought the book- “Hallelujah Anyway”- and left it under a pillow in my NY boutique hotel room. That relationship ended, and I haven’t seen Anne in longer than I would like to admit.

Years later, this past weekend in particular, I sat in my neighborhood bookstore in a chair, staring down the Religion/Spirituality section. I may have been there for hours- I’m not sure. I read every book title, every back. I imprinted every cover into my mind’s eye. If you want to know the truth, I was hoping there’d be something there, something to take my mind off of what I was feeling, something that’d give me the secret to figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing with my hands and my heart, or some place to travel far away from this seat. Maybe my name would be up there one day after I find what is that I think I need. I’m always hoping that something as simple as a book can fix what feels broken, or maybe to find some way to keep what I fear losing. That’s why there are so many of these books to read, right?

But a question really worth asking myself, which I did, in fact, come around to asking- how many books would it take for me to get there? Could I find the right one, the key? How many “Hallelujahs Anyway” or hours floating in a pool with Anne is it going to take for me to figure it all out? What is “it”? How many books about travel, food and adventure will it take for me to have the courage to leave corporate life? How many tarot readings, meditation sessions, long conversations with friends, buddhist teachers, Tolle and Watts tapes, or “spiritual” instagram posts do I have to scroll through before I can be my authentic self, whatever the hell that means? How much studying will I have to do in order to feel the freedom of the wind blowing through my hair? Do you see what I mean?

Okay, take a step back. 

I want to paint a picture of my morning. Let me tell you about a girl named Sally. We have a unique friendship- our circles never really overlap, but every once in a while, we stay up late together. We cook, we talk about who we’ve loved and what we’ve lost, the things we battle in our hearts, what it means to be women of dignity and grace in the workplace, and that not all is as it seems. On occasion, we play a game where we ask questions in rapid succession to see if we can tap into what our intuition knows to be true, and we laugh at our answers. This weekend I asked her, “Do you think I’m psychic?”, and she quickly replied, “Yes!” Sally and I have built our friendship upon the foundation of honesty, and no one really knows how deep our commitment to one another goes. I kind of like that you don’t get to see everything about who we are as two people whose paths have crossed- it’s for us. I will say that she is an irreplaceable part of my life, that I’ve walked the beach in her hometown under a moonlit sky, and that I adore her mother. I’ve looked out at the stars above the San Francisco skyline from the windows of her Castro lair. I’ve heard her cry. She’s heard me cry. She’s my friend- a very important one.

This morning, after having cursed Anne for writing books that never fixed me, and that I never even gave a chance, I opened Instagram and one of her posts was at the top.

“What if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn’t go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you have a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.” -Anne Lamott

Trust me, I immediately realized the irony of having condemned Instagram to be a worthless wasteland with no real influence or value and to have my morning turned around by Anne’s post of text on a purple background (she’s a writer, not a designer). I thought about how Anne, although so far from me in this moment, was so close. She whispered to me, not knowing that I’d read what she had written, another one of her eloquent words of wisdom. What I would give to go back to her pool that sunny afternoon and listen once more to her words. What did she tell me way back then? What was she trying to tell me? I remember her seeming a bit ambivalent, as if my relationship wasn’t what I really needed to examine. I can almost see her watch me miss the point, thinking “this girl will understand one day, but not today.”

I thought, “I should tell Sally about this.” I thought of all those daydreams that I carry with me when I walk around the city, and I wrote them to her in a list. I told her about how I did want to learn how to land that big jump at Breckinridge, even though I never have. I told her about my daydreams of sitting on Edmond’s sailboat with him in the Aegean Sea, eating and singing together. I mentioned learning a new language, not to be a pretty girl who speaks in pretty tongues, but because I love learning, I find language fascinating (obviously), and fuck y’all, I want to! I told her about how I want to write a book, but every time the thought of what you might think of me crosses my mind, I stop. I told her about my imaginations of a blues band with my father- he’d play guitar, and I'd sing. I think about that a lot, but perhaps that’s the only daydream that can never come to life. I want to drive around the vast wastelands of Alaska, and sit under the stars. I want to climb mountains. I want to dance until I can’t walk with Allison in Berlin. I want to redesign a kitchen and prepare recipes in a workshop of my making. I want all of it. 

Amidst my daydreams, pontifications over Anne’s words, and texts to Sally, I received a message from my best friend. She had slept through her final exam for an important class. Minutes later, another came through- she talked to her professor, she’s going to take the test tomorrow, so now she has more time to study and to sleep. Hah, opportunity. Her dad always says, “when the garbage truck comes by, fill it up!” Then, suddenly, it popped in my mind that I hadn’t checked my mail in weeks, and my heart sank. I jetted up, set the pile on my desk, and sorted through each envelope. I always fear having missed something- I normally keep a watchful eye over my finances and commitments, but sometimes things slip through. I thought about my best friend and how I could channel her experience from this morning in embracing failure, and if there were some error that I had fallen blind to, I could fix it. But, I found no such ominous piece of mail in that pile, only a couple fliers, a beautifully designed AirBnB magazine, and a postcard with an image of ice and a man in a red jacket that read- 

“Hello from afar, you little demon. It’s cold and absolutely beautiful here, may it give you some inspiration, because all I can say to you is to live your life for you, to the fullest, and joyously each and every day. Until March, from Antarctica. 

-Edmond” 

Life’s gorgeous gems always have a magical way of landing where they began, don’t they? I seem to have a magical way of finding great joy in being wrong. Maybe the universe wants me to see that not every moment is a triumph over an obstacle- sometimes I’m allowed to simply relish in happiness. What might I miss when I’m strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing? What might I miss when I obsess over answers, and perhaps more accurately, a way to change how I feel?

I began writing you this letter in a moment of fear. I was hoping to convey some sort of message that there aren’t any real answers to feeling better, to being better, to having better. I was hoping I could find melancholic and meaningful wisdom within my soul about the realities of life- I wanted to say that there are no secrets messages in books, that the words that I choose don’t really matter, that we have so very little in life that we can control, and only a bit that we really know. I thought I had a really good idea about there not being a way to untangle yourself from confusion and uncertainty, so you might as well give up and stop buying those god damned books. But Anne’s words have changed the way I look through my lens out at the world in a number of ways. My best friend’s words change my perspective (and make me laugh) every single day. Sally’s words inspire me, and bring me home. This morning, Edmond’s words reminded me of who I am, what I believe in, and where I want to go. There still isn’t much I have control over, but I have more choices in this life than I sometimes admit, and I often pretend that I am completely powerless for fear that if my life were in my own hands in any way, I’d fuck it up. That being said, I know that I always choose my words methodically and with intention, and with that, I have the power to be radically honest. I can tell you what I desire, what has broken me, and stories of my past that have shaped the woman that I am growing into. When I release these words, out unto the stars, the earth begins to shift.

So, as always in my letters for you, my dear friend, I will say something honest: Sometimes I’m fucking terrified of life. Uh, redact that- I am often terrified of life. I want every item on that list of daydreams that I sent Sally, but I fear what I might lose when I walk away from certainty and the things that I rely upon. I fear deeply that I will never be loved or understood- that is a fear that I know very well, and that I’m not alone in carrying with me. I’m scared that I might lose my whole life to complacency, to playing it safe. I’m terrified that I am going to wake up at 75 and I will never have told anyone that I was deeply, madly in love with them because I was so fearful that I didn’t deserve to hear it back. I’m scared that I will have forgotten how to dance with freedom and power, that I'll have never left the safety of carefully curated sentences, paid bills, aced exams, tennis opponents that I can easily beat, jobs that I know how to do without flexing my mind, practical homes, acceptable relationships, inexpensive sheets, reasonable methods of transportation, and a blog that no one fucking reads because I refuse to be vulnerable (ok I'm getting a little dramatic). I’m just saying- I’m scared of settling, whatever that means, and not having at least tried to leap for something higher.

I think about climbing- I’m scared of what will happen when I jump for the next hold on a bouldering problem that is just out of reach. I think, “when I hit the ground, will I be ok?” But what if I never leapt? Would I be able tell you about that second when I jump, how my stomach drops, my hand slaps the rock, and to my surprise I find myself hanging on, lifting myself to stand on top of that boulder? I wouldn’t even know how to begin to describe a moment like that, had I never experienced it, and that’s mine to keep. I also wouldn’t be able to tell you that I have missed those holds more often than I have landed them, and I’ve always been okay. That’s really worth saying. 

If I never finished anything I started writing, would these words sit inside of me for the rest of eternity, would I lay to rest wishing someone had come here and finally felt as though they had a companion in grief, joy and downright lunacy? What if I played by the rules, and never wrote in a fucking curse word? What if I played by the rules? If I were never honest about what’s really inside of my heart, I wouldn’t have the friendships with Sally and Edmond that I do. If were never candid about having made friends with dishonesty, I wouldn’t have Caroline Godfrey. If I never told anyone about my love for women, I wouldn’t be able to tell my mother about how my heart sometimes hurts in romance, and to be held by her words of encouragement and love. I might have missed out on sharing myself with my own mother, and I might have missed out on hearing the hilarious words “that lesbian conference that you go to” come out of her mouth. If I hadn’t admitted to myself that I had become a prisoner of alcohol, I might not even have my life. Actually, I know for certain that I wouldn’t have my life, because every moment worth remembering came after the first time I muttered the words, “I’m Casey, and I'm an alcoholic.” I have a list of a million beautiful things which I have earned from honesty and trust in myself and others, but I will save them for another rainy day (it didn’t rain today but you know what I mean). To make this list complete: If I didn't know any of these lovely human beings, I wouldn’t have mornings like this morning, where everything seemed to make sense again, and I finally felt woven right back into our web of diamonds and silk.

I know I need to end somewhere, and I feel compelled to leave you with an idea. What if you did have some sort of control over how your life unfolds? What if Tolle isn’t exactly right when he says that you’re just being thrashed around by circumstance as the universe reveals itself as you, and that the only choice you have is to either wake up or stay asleep? I challenge you to consider that every move you make pushes your needle toward either courage or fear, freedom or complacency, love or isolation, inspiration or apathy. Every choice and every word matters, and you can choose. You can choose. And if you need a place to begin, you can start by taking a moment to ask yourself what is true for you, finding wonder in those with whom you share your life, and by going out into the world, because all of it is yours. If you don’t, like Anne said, it might break your heart. Leap, my darling friend, courageous human, and say something honest.

Best wishes.

[pickupthepen]

People I Can’t Thank

Christine. My roommate. You are still the only person I know that laughed as hard as you did by yourself in the dead of night. You walked with me through Atlanta streets when I cried. You were patient with me as I began my first years of addiction. You never once judged me or made me feel like a burden. You told me, when we ran into each other years later, that you were proud of who I was becoming. You made an effort to understand when you didn’t have to, and you were kind in moments when your kindness was not earned. I can't thank you, because you died under a tree in Arizona almost a decade ago. Maybe it’s true that if there is a God, it takes the best souls from this Earth first. For teaching me what it means to let another human follow their own path- thank you.

Keri Chang. Keri Chang who worked at the Smoothie King. Keri Chang who introduced me to cigarettes. Keri Chang who let me sleep in her bedroom when I found myself 25 miles from my university apartment after a drunken night out. Keri Chang, who I once ran into at a bar in my hometown. I was too drunk to remember what we talked about, or what you looked like, and I have never regretted a blackout more. You were the first friend to love me more than I loved myself. You were the first person to help me see what I was worth. You wouldn’t let me be less than the version of myself that you saw in me, not because you were jealous, and not because you didn’t want me to have fun, but because you loved me, a realization I had little too late. I have tried so hard to find you and I have failed. But, for the type of love that I’d later learn to recognize in my best friends- thank you.

Alison. Alison something. I can still see your tan sweater in my mind’s eye. I see your wavy, maybe straight, dirty blonde or perhaps brown hair in the sunset in Hayes Valley. I called you in a blackout from Livermore, CA two nights before that one begging for help. You sought me out, and invited me to meet. My words took solace on your shoulder. You walked me to the first meeting of the rest of my sobriety. I don’t know where you are, if you’re sober, or even your last name, but I want you know that you saved me. I know you didn’t have to call me back, but you did, and for the gift of my life- thank you.

Brittney. Our time together was shorter than it should have been- and I was too young, stubborn and stupid to let our relationship unfold as it was unfolding. I’m so deeply sorry. I know I will never get to kiss you again on your rooftop, or watch you methodically pack your snowboarding bag, or lay in your lap while during a game of Clue, but I want you to know that I did adore your tender smile, your compassion, and your appreciation for the special things about other people. I want you to know that even though I didn’t understand you then, I can see some things I didn’t see before, and although it’s far too late, I do wish I could have been better. I can’t thank you, because you asked me to say nothing. So, for showing me how much I love soy lattes, tarot cards and beautiful brunettes- thank you. 

[pickupthepen]

The Last Time

There are a couple places in my life that I have loved- actual physical locations. I loved a bedroom in a house on Spruce Street in San Francisco. I’ve loved a couple boulders on lakes’ edges. I love the foot of my mother’s bed. 

There’s a loft at my gym, which used to be... I’m not sure- maybe a mechanic’s shop. A staircase leads to a platform high above all the climbing walls. At night, I lay up in that loft, with all the world bustling below. The sky is dark out in the bay, and I lay alone. I have known few happy places such as this. Sometimes I imagine what my answer would be if anyone were to ask my why I come up here. A good enough response might be that it’s just part of my workout- that it helps me to be a better climber. But honestly, you probably don’t care why I do it, and no one has ever asked. I like being up there while the world turns just beneath my feet. I like the feeling in my muscles when they are too fatigued to move another inch. I like listening to my breath as it fights to get in and out. I love this little place where I get to be with myself. I love it. 

I have thought a lot over the course of the past year about how I would tell its story. Maybe I’d have some advice on how to survive after a breakup. Maybe I’d have some final moral about what it means to accept change through these kinds of things. Maybe I’d write poems about self-love, self-worth, growth and internal power and what it means to move on. I don’t have any poems, but I seem to have a collection of memories, new friends, a couple learned skills and interests. I have a lucky little appreciation for the small things again, like the way my protein drinks say “extremely perishable”- extreme! I have gotten to know my own voice which I have used when I’ve had the courage. I’ve experienced levels of more awakened awareness, and in some ways I’ve backtracked in that. Growth! Okay...

Surviving a breakup is a lot like the phoenix burning in the ashes. I remember feeling like my body was being torn apart from a thousand angles. My whole life as I knew it seemed to burn in a day- the day she walked away. It is incredible, indescribable emotional pain, and if you’re going through it now, I implore you to dig deep in yourself and find me understanding what you are feeling. I could feel every cell in my body screaming at me for help, and I, with no power to offer assistance to myself, sat motionless. Sometimes it was very physical- a lack of breath, a lack of concentration, a lack of...

and then from the ashes, burning coals of newly fertilized soil, pieces of myself began to slowly grow in. It has taken a year- an entire year to remember that I am breathing again, and I’m not exactly sure when the deep breaths began. In the beginning, I almost cherished the agony. I held onto it because letting go felt like giving up, like accepting not having this person in my life anymore. I couldn’t bear walking forward without her. I felt like every way in which I used to be in control of my own life was beyond me, but time dragged me forward.

And yet, I don’t quite know what practical steps to offer someone who is on the precipice of this particular flavor of grief, other than my own realization that despite how I fought, how I begged, and all the ways I tried to convince myself that there was some way to muscle myself out of feeling that fucking bad, there wasn’t, and it eventually passed.

One by one, rainstorms flew in and watered my grasses. Each breath lightened by a small percentage as months passed. Each session in the climbing gym, I grew stronger, one day at a time. Every moment with my best friends, I laughed a little deeper, and listened with richer intensity.

Memories that ripped my heart out became memories that made me sad, memories that made me sad became memories that felt more like distant childhood memories, and the space between those memories grew until they didn’t spontaneously electrocute my mind and body any longer. Anger faded, and my love for camping, hip-hop and musicals, new ice cream flavors, and a deeper appreciation for my people and my brother slowly and methodically took its place. 

I fell in love with quiet, simple moments with myself. I fell in love with a good song on the bus ride home, a new recipe, a re-budding mint plant, and a moment alone on top of a loft in a climbing gym. It’s almost like I didn’t even play a role in moving on- more like moving on moved through me. 

I didn’t write you this letter to tell you about my breakup. I didn’t write it to tell you that time heals all- sometimes it doesn’t and most times it does. I didn’t write to tell you it’ll be okay, that you’ll figure it out, or that you’ll smile again. You will, and you don’t need my words for that to be true.

I’m writing to tell you about something else that happened. I’m writing to tell you that the story of this magnificent life that I play such a painfully small role in took the place of the story of my breakup. I’ve had to sit still and carefully think back on how things have changed and from where I came because all that I did to keep my purpose at the center of that story failed to keep it alive. Time kept moving, I moved with it, and the story of my breakup dissolved. I learned in a year that there is more to life than a story of how to survive something, and I can only share what I’ve learned as an exercise in witnessing how the past year has unfolded.

I’ve accidentally stumbled into a new world in which I am aware of the weight and depth of my choices. My desires have shifted from wanting to survive, to wanting to be better- to be an adult, to know childlike joy, and to strive for more. I’ve made decisions in the past year that will undoubtedly alter the course of my life, and I’ve made decisions in the past few weeks that already have. I’ve committed to my current location, I’ve committed to a new career, I’ve walked away from the one that saw me to where I am now, and I’ve decided to take my place in the fellowship that has promised to hold me, and has consistently and painstakingly kept that promise. It is true- we are always one decision, one moment away from an entirely new life, and this life, terrifying and wonderful, began the night that I didn’t die when someone broke my heart. 

I don’t know what else awaits me, but I know that in time, all will change. 

I have loved a few places in my life, and although I haven’t always liked it, I’ve learned to love where I am now. This is the first time I’ve written words about our breakup from a healed heart space, and it is likely the last time I will write about it at all. Here’s to leaving things where they belong, to new frontiers, and to happy little quiet moments alone.

Best Wishes. 

[pickupthepen]

The Creek

I am upon the ending of this chapter.

I began this blog two years ago from a conference room in Las Vegas. Diya, my mentor, was sitting to my right. I always forget what happened in Vegas that year. We lost a friend, my project manager, Rachel. We smiled and hugged each other on Monday afternoon, and on Tuesday morning, she was gone. They told me they would eventually let me know what happened to my friend- the woman who I ate risotto with in San Antonio, but they never did, and I still don’t know. I’ve lost two others- one to a motorcycle crash in the country in Georgia, and another to a lightning bolt that stole her heart on a hike in Arizona. It’s funny, isn’t it? One minute they’re here, and the next they’re in the hereafter. I used to stare at Rachel’s Facebook, etching her face into my memory. You might not remember to think about them, but I do.

You may be thinking that this will be a morbid little essay of mine. That is not my intention. My ending has nothing to do with actual death- more a metaphysical one. However, their endings remind me of what it’s like to walk forward into an entirely new world. The death of my relationship with alcohol reminds me of what it’s like to walk forward into an entirely new world. The fading memories of all the ways my heart has been shattered remind me of what it’s like to walk forward into an entirely new world. 

And here I go again.

You see, two weeks ago, I sat on the edge of a creek for an uncomfortably extended period of time. The beginning of the journey that I set out on at the beginning of the year in no way warned me of what was to come. This journey was about finding my purpose- about finding out who I am. I want to tell you what I saw that chilly morning in Half Moon Bay, but it is better kept with me, my goddess and my guide. I will tell you that I emerged quite the same girl that walked in, but a switch was flipped, and a crank was turned, and gears clicked, and clicked and clicked...

I see that I am now no longer the girl that hiked up the hill into the forest in May. I am no longer the girl who ached in her hotel room in Denver in March- alone in the dark. I am no longer the child who walked along the edge of the beach in January, following the dolphins and wondering if this was my time to change. The woman that is to come has begun to sprout out of me. 

The past four months have been an ever grinding transformation. The past two years have been grueling and magnificent. I genuinely thought that I was feeding a positive characteristic in myself- one that values companionship in the workplace, not paranoid vigilance over a career that exists to support a beautiful life and the creation of a dignified woman. I thought that I was working my body toward optimization, not depleting and disrespecting it. Skinny isn’t a virtue. I thought that I was showing myself that I am sensual and attractive, desirable- not replaying old scenarios, hoping that I can wring new outcomes out of a past that craves to be healed from the inside out. I thought that I was embodying the best version of myself that I could possibly be, not showing my friends and community a cheery, happy, fucking fake smile. I could not see, but next the creek, next to the water that flowed without any regard to how anyone may ask it to, I saw something, and every single day it has screeched louder at me, and yanked me into the bottom of that creek, looking upward and outward, wondering who the fuck I am, and if the truth about me is somewhere inside.

Weeks later, I sat on my bed and listened as my best friend warned me that I am the boy whistling the dark. I stood, befuddled, as a strong woman that I admire told me to give up on my bullshit, bullshit I had forgotten to question. I sat, still, as my therapist asked me to think harder, to find the truth. I gleamed in the sunlight as my sponsor reminded me that life is to be lived, and not in constant fear of making mistakes, but in trust that what is meant to be will come. Do you know that the words, “what is for you won’t go by you” are tattooed on my arm? Do I? 

It’s funny (frustrating) to me that whenever I’ve set out on a plan to grow and to be better, my world begins to shift and move. I can feel cracks in the Earth. Situations and people and interactions begin aligning with what I’ve asked for. I do not simply wake up the next morning mature, patient and strong. I wake to the path into the gauntlet, and I trudge until I can see the way through. Do you want to love deeply? The world will show that love is not what you think it is. Do you want to be strong and capable? The world will bring you boulders to lift. Do you want to see justice in this life? The world will show you injustice, and beg you to act. Do you want freedom? The world will tighten your shackles to remind you that they’re there. Do you know what the word “trudge” means? Do you want to live?  

Maybe there’s a deeper laugh inside of me. Maybe there are more ways to feel free. Maybe there are new beginnings. Maybe I can show more and be less afraid to be exactly who I am. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of this, and I don’t know if I’ve ever helped. I don’t know if my words here have made as much of an impact as the words that I have uttered deep into the night with the women who have offered me care and to whom I have attempted to return that care. I don’t know what is at the end of this transformation, but I know it has begun. And where transformation begins, bullshit must end. Was I writing to tell you the truth? Or was I writing to make you think that I have everything figured out, that I’ve thought it through? I am no longer following happy leads. I am no longer writing hopeful stories about how to survive emotional pain- there’s no manual (but for real- stop fucking texting your ex!). I won’t tell you any more about what I learned from my breakup, because if you want to know, you can sit deep into the night with me. I will tell you that it fucking sucked. I will never again sit idle and watch my vehement humanity waste away into Pollyanna crap. This is the end. I didn’t move forward from the agony of losing friends to death, I didn’t get sober, I didn’t lose the woman I loved most, to tell you that life is beautiful in the end and that all is well. I rose from the ashes to tell you that there is great pain in this life, and that if you look hard enough, there is magnificent meaning.

I want you to know that Rachel was one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever met. She loved her sons, she adored her husband, and she had an absolutely divine laugh.

But she’s gone- forever. She doesn’t get to come home and live with full abandon. She can’t come back and decide to be wildly herself (she absolutely was already). She can’t be any more honest. She can’t overcome any more challenges. She can’t smile and laugh just one more of those deep, belly aching laughs ever again. She can’t reveal any more about what makes her tick, and what makes her hurt, so that she can breathe a little more easily. But you can- so why the fuck aren’t you?

There is more truth to be found for you and I. 

And god damn, if you want to know where to begin if you’re trying to go anywhere, try and sit by a creek for a while... or maybe just tell someone where you want to go.

Best wishes.

[pickupthepen]

Vulnerable

I am about to make a point. Hear me out.

I’ll start with Mari A. How do I know about Mari A.? Well, I have a friend named Sam, and I met Sam about three years ago on a street corner in the Richmond District of San Francisco. I had just had a fallout with my ex-something, and I saw him, walked right up to him and asked him if he’d walk to the liquor store with me to buy a Diet Coke. Sam is one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met and one of my most beloved partners in the journey. Sam’s changed a lot since then, and so have I. A handful of years, a friendship that I cannot put to words and a whole, entire podcast later, I found Mari A. Sam interviewed her.

Now, let me start again by saying that I do adore Mari’s work. She’s a creative- like me, and she puts profoundly complex, nuanced feelings and rules for surviving into simple, little lists and graphics. Sam’s expression is through recorded word and writing, and Mari’s is paper and watercolor. One of these lists is named “My Personal Rules for Vulnerability”, and rule #2 reads “Share to a Broad Audience (Internet, Books) Only What I’ve Healed From.”

Okay, let me start somewhere else. I graduated college four years ago. That’s one more than I’ve known Sam. In that year, I applied for 6 jobs, accepted one offer, spent 4 months in California, relapsed on booze, got sober again in Georgia, dated a woman long distance, got dumped by that woman, lost 40 pounds, and moved back to California. I’ve healed from everything that happened in that year. I’ve healed from the breakup that happened the night before I decided to move to San Francisco. I’ve healed from the 3 month bender that left me completely spiritually and emotionally shattered. I’ve healed from the pain of admitting my sexuality to myself and others around me.

I’ve healed from that year, and I put it down on paper. I’ve healed mostly from what has occurred from the following three years, and I’ve put it right in here. I wrote about that relationship and that I came to forgive myself for all the times I told myself that having been heartbroken was something to be ashamed of. I wrote about college and my painful time there, and that’s it’s okay to not have to be everything I want the world to think I am. I wrote about hating Burning Man, and that disappointment is a beautiful part of life. I wrote about losing the woman I thought I would love forever, and that I found true love in the form of friends, family and sister-women. I wrote about gratitude, and that in the wake of doubt, bitterness, and rage, one may still be able to find glimmers of hope. 

This time, I’m going to write about vulnerability. But it’s not going to be what you think. If you’re reading this, and you’re wondering if I’m going to mention you- I’m not. And the reason that I will not tell you why I cried today, why I cried yesterday, why I see a therapist, what I talk to my sponsor about on Sunday afternoons, what I pray about, what I’ve learned from late night tarot sessions, or the words that I give to my friends at three in the morning when I just need someone to send the vibrations of their voice into my heart, is my friend named Caroline. 

So, to go back to my rambly but brief history of Casey’s first year of post-college adulthood, I’ll tell you about when I went back to Georgia. I met Caroline on a Wednesday night in Atlanta. I remember her face, I remember her hair, and I remember her fucking amazing laugh. I didn’t know that night that I had found the person that I would one day refer to as my platonic soulmate and mean it. I sometimes want so desperately to tell everyone about how we met. I want to tell you why I walked up to her that night, what she had done, and what it meant for me. But I won’t. 

I won’t do it because if I did, I’d take something valuable from it. I’d take its sanctity. I’d do a dishonor to something that holds power and weight between us and couldn’t possibly be translated here. What I will tell you is that our friendship was born in a moment of vulnerability. I will also tell you that we have worked on this relationship- that it’s not just a story of two people who were meant to know one another. We’ve given years, commitment, and unconditional love. 

Caroline was the first person I ever met who truly understood what I was feeling and thinking. We now live 3000 miles apart, and I can still see the image in my mind of the way she leans her head on her hand when we sit on her couch and talk. Caroline and I have a rule that we can’t hang out on the first night that I arrive in Atlanta, because I always bail last minute, and we’ve adjusted our expectations. She told me on the night before I moved to California not to call anyone when I arrived because that moment was for me, and I have never felt more respected and appreciated as a human being than I did in that moment. 

What Caroline has taught me about vulnerability is that I don’t have to go around shouting from rooftops everything that sings or screams inside of my heart, all the ways that I’ve been imperfect, or how I have loved in order to make a connection with you. I can tell you about how I’ve learned to be a better friend, how I’ve learned to let another person love me for who I am, and how I feel about true love in the form of a best friend, but you don’t need to know about what we say on that couch, the reasons why we call at three in the morning, or how we met. She taught me that when the moment is right, and if I channel a tiny bit of courage, when I unveil myself, I might reach the one human being that is ready to take it all in. 

I always start these posts with the urge to completely untether everything that inside of me. And damn, even that gratitude list I wrote was initially meant to be a way to poetically unleash all that I am fucking upset about. I started today with the intention of telling you why I think Mari is wrong- why I think I should be able to throw caution to the wind and put my vulnerability on a shrine. But I remembered a few very important things.

I remembered the things I tell my therapist and my sponsor, and how I’m willing to tell you what I do to take care of myself and to heal, but that there are some things that stay safe with us. I remembered the relationships and connections that I have that are so beautiful because they are light and fun. I remembered that the connections that I am most vulnerable in have taken root in time and effort. I’ve learned that boundary setting, and boundary honoring, is a practice that works both ways between two people, and with myself. I learned today that Mari was right. Damn. 

So the question then becomes this- how I can I share with you what I feel and know and honor myself and the things that are sacred to my process? Can I be brave and dignified at the same time? Have you earned it? Have I?

Well, I’ll give up a few things. I’m going through it. I’m still healing from the breakup. I’m annoyed that it’s taking so long, but I know in time it will heal. The rest of the story will stay with Sam, Caroline, Holly and Elizabeth. I’ve seriously reconsidered whether or not I can justify spending the rest of my life in San Francisco, and I have plans to relocate somewhere that I can build a real life in the next few years. That realization is thanks to a person whom I owe immense amounts of gratitude, and who I will cherish having met forever. All the reasons why and how will stay with my mentor, my therapist, and with her. I struggle with work-life balance, and I am working on setting boundaries while maintaining myself as a professional woman in the workplace. I’ll tell you that it requires goal setting and doing shit I don’t want to do when I don’t want to do it, but the pieces that I haven’t discovered yet will remain in my heart’s chamber until I’m ready to tell you about the fallout and the growth. I am releasing friendships that no longer serve my well-being. I am working on communicating that kindly and with love, but that is an ever evolving process. I am discovering my purpose, and at times it has been painful, but I’m walking. I’m happy that some have asked about it and have come along for the journey. If you have, thank you for walking up to me. 

And for you: when all is said and done, be a flower in the garden, be one with the sun.

That’s all I got for ya.

@bymariandrew

MY PERSONAL RULES FOR VULNERABILITY

1. Reveal secrets and wounds to love interests only as they are earned- not to test anyone’s immediate acceptance of me or to judge their reaction

2. Share to a broad audience (internet, books) only what I’ve healed from

3. Keep a lot only for myself- true vulnerability requires discernment

4. Do not tell every single thing that has ever happened to me on a first date as a sign of affection

5. Use vulnerability as a tool for deeper connection, empowerment, survival. Do not use it as a tool for manipulation, revenge, gossip, making people feel sorry for me, any ego-driven purpose (I hope this is always a DUH but it seems worth noting)

6. By definition, vulnerability means putting yourself out there. It’s a big risk, and one I must be willing to make. I risk that the reaction won’t be what I wanted. I have to be okay with that and own my stories anyway. 

[pickupthepen]

Grateful

There’s always that thing when I’m writing something new. That “thing” pretty demonstratively says “things” to me like “don’t say it in that way” and “make that different”. It thinks about the people that I don’t want to read this and wonder certain things about me. Specific people, yes. It thinks about the people that I do want to read this and think that I have finally figured it out. What if I mentioned that person’s name? What if I told you the truth about that story about that thing that wasn’t as cool or dramatic as I would like you, specifically, to believe when you read it? What if I kept out the details that were actually wild, dark and uncomfortable? How am I ever going to write something worth reading if everything I put down is contrived bullshit?

I do it in private, too. I write words with my pen, in my journal, that I know I’ll never let your eyes touch, and I still alter what I put down. This makes me think of my gratitude lists. What happens when I tweak them to make it seem like I have a lot of great things going on, instead of the things that I am genuinely, honestly grateful for. Every day, I write down in a little booklet that my ex gave me (I crossed her name out where she said “To Casey with love”. Lie. I crossed out the word “love”). What happens when the surprise that I write is that I saw someone I haven’t seen in a while, and not that I forgot something at work and it took me by surprise to have to deal with the aftermath of my mistake? What happens when I write that I was surprised that the sunset was orange today, and not that a friend looked at me and cried, and I experienced a new moment of compassion that actually surprised me, and I cried back? What happens when I don’t give my words everything inside of me?

They’re fucking lame. 

So- to get back on track with you, I want you to know that if you’re reading this, no matter who you are, you will read the same words whether you are my family member, my friend that sits close, my friend that I watch from afar, an actual spiritual or professional adviser of mine, a person that I want to think some thing about me, a person that I don’t a give a shit what you think, a coworker, someone I barely know, someone I don’t know, or someone that I want to know in all ways. And what you will get is the truth, as if you weren’t reading my words at all. All of this started so that I could break the harness around myself that keeps me in the dark from you- that gets to accuse you of thinking you know me when you “absolutely cannot”. So if it concerns you in any molecular way: this is my annual release.

To you: 

I did write a gratitude list tonight. I was panicking about my world that seriously feels like it’s crumbling around me and I remembered that sometimes counting up the good things is a great way to shift my gaze from all that is dissolving to all that is left. But it begged the question of how earnest I am approaching these “lists”. 

I’m not grateful for coffee- I just like it... a lot. I’m not grateful for music and concerts. I am genuinely grateful for my friends- but not all of them. I’m grateful for the real ones- the ones that stick around when who I am is not pretty. I’m not grateful for having the things that people tell me are the “wonderful things”. Sure, I get to travel a lot, but you don’t see the nights that I cry in my hotel room because I am so deeply lonely. Yeah, I have a home base in California, but I miss my brother. Mhmm, I have the means to dress nicely and eat white table lunches with fancy friends, but sometimes all I crave is to be eating Chinese food on the couch with my best friend while I bat away her big eyed black cat. You- I wonder if you understand that not all is as it seems. 

Most of the time, I’m not even grateful for sobriety, and yet it hits the last line every single day. But you know what? Being able to enjoy a glass of wine with my mother on a rainy Sunday afternoon sounds fucking fantastic, and I can’t do it. Not having to wake up and declare how I will be of service to others sounds really relaxing. Not having to meditate and pray to a Universe I don’t understand seems more “normal”, but I do it every day. And no, it’s not because I think that an awakened life is more magical than a glass of wine on a Friday night- it’s because if I have that glass of wine I will inevitably attempt to destroy myself, so I do this so I can keep surviving, because I still believe that I want to survive more than I want to escape. And it’s not more complicated or honest than that. A glass of red wine and I cannot coexist, and in some moments, that is nothing but sad. And you, if you believe that it isn’t true that people like me burn in the fire of alcohol’s blaze if we come close, I wonder if you’re as blind as those who believe that existing in a world as an “other” is inherently superior, and that this is never to be questioned. 

I’m not grateful that I’m wandering alone again. I guess I am happy to have an opportunity to explore a familiar new world of unknowing and curiosity, confusion, potential, but how many times in the past year did I forget to acknowledge that running around as a young, single woman, away from her family with no real home and no real sense of stillness is terrifying? How many times did I write in my book that a blank slate sometimes seems as white and as bleak as purgatory? Even though I wasn’t courageous enough to write it down- it’s why I went back to that old love over and over. I’m not grateful to her for releasing me- I’m not ready to give that to her yet. I’m not comfortable with the idea that when we finally walk away from the pieces of glass on the floor, bloodied and cut, despite all the help we receive, the walk is taken alone and the person who promised to walk beside us doesn’t come. I’m not grateful for all endings, because although I do understand that insufficiency must end to begin moving toward the greater good, it’s an awfully big pill to swallow to come to terms with the fact that we can love someone to the depths of our core, and they can leave whenever they want, for whatever reason they want, and they owe us nothing. Damn. And you, if you don’t already understand that not only is it inevitable that we carry pieces of these things with us, and that it is perfectly fucking fine, I beg of you to entertain the notion that maybe grief and rage live in our rib cage longer than we’d nobly expect, that it’s not always a choice, and perhaps there is nothing to be done about it- especially not feeble attempts at being grateful for the “bright side”. 

I’m not grateful that I spend most weekends attempting to catch up on work that slipped between my fingers during the week. I’m not grateful that sometimes my best attempt at getting freedom is to spend money to do something fun and then allowing my internal dictator to sentence punishment for having spent money that could have been better placed in something more reasonable. I’m not always grateful for reason, and I do not believe being reasonable is the superior virtue as a rule. I also do not believe that I am somehow less capable of living a sustainable, fulfilling life because the practical elements of this world aren’t as interesting to me as the fantastical ones. I’m not grateful that I practice countless hours every week in therapy, in twelve stepping and in spirituality and purpose, and the road keeps revealing itself to be windier and longer and steeper. I’m not grateful for the hard curves because they’re supposed to somehow make the exciting peaks more justifiably exhilarating. I don’t think that I have to be grateful for the things that are dismal, sludgy and lonely, because they, according to someone, mean something positive about this life. In a matter of fact, blunt way, life is sometimes unforgiving and cruel, and that’s that. But now I’m in dark imaginings, so now I will make one more attempt at being truly honest. This is my very long winded approach at telling you what I have been grateful for today (or the shittiest, chattiest gratitude list you’ve ever gotten), and maybe, because I adore you so very much, I’ll tell you the truth.

I am grateful for:

1. My best friend. Hey Caroline, if you’re reading this, I’m not fucking sorry that you’re right on the top. I’m grateful that I can express adoration at every whim, and my love is received and reciprocated, if even with a joke. This is a friendship that was born in solidarity and one moment of vulnerability, and I’m fucking grateful that as years pass and after countless phone calls, missed phone calls, conversations in parking lots, tears, wheezing laughter, commitment, dedication, and really weirdly unconditional love, I’m only more sure that I was supposed to know you, and that you were supposed to know me, too. Even if there may be no such thing as the divine or fate, then I am at peace because I have luck... and I have you.

2. Freedom- that I reserve the right to make any choice I want, and that there are always choices to be made. Being “stuck” is an illusion. There is always another way. There is always another job, another home, another love, another friend, another place to leave and another place to arrive, and the choices we make to go here and there, they know no limits in time or quantity. I can change my mind whenever I want, and when the moment is right, or not quite right yet, or really wildly wrong, I can make whatever choice I think I need to make, and ALL will be well with me, with you, and with the world around us. Eventually at least.

3. That I don’t know shit- that I can’t actually tell the future. That every day I could actually be shattered by surprise- good or bad. And not that I don’t still want to read your tarot cards (I kind of don’t, but I will if it’s important to you), but a deck of cards can’t predict that you’re going to get a raise next month, and writing a relationship ideal can’t actually manifest the perfect dude with perfect eyes that understands everything about you, and writing a list of all your fears won’t protect you from encountering them, and thinking about all the things you want and don’t want won’t change what you fuckin’ get. Meditation can’t force you to have zero reaction at work next week when that problematic man ridicules you in front of your team, or next month in the middle of a Saturday run because grief for lost friends doesn’t send warnings when it wants to swallow you whole. You will be surprised- there are things coming that will bring you joy that you have never known, and there are things coming that will just shy of kill you in every possible way, and you don’t know anything about when or why or how. If that’s not beautiful, lovely and exciting, then what fucking is?

4. My people- I cannot express my bewilderment at the actual fact that I have friends that not only understand what type of human being I am in every city in the United States that I have visited, but that they understand because they are like me. They seek me out in the same way I seek them. We are looking for the same companionship. It’s fucking magical to miss the girls in San Antonio that I met years ago. It’s wildly lovely to be able show up for tacos in Denver with those who I have known since I arrived in this place, and to feel like I’ve been here the whole time. It’s unimaginable to me that friends in San Francisco call when I’ve been gone and ask that I come home, because I’m missed. And how could I express enough gratitude when I show up to dinner in Atlanta after having my heart broken, because the ones that gave me a home and life when I crawled to their door still remember how much we love each other? I can’t, but I’ll try. 

5. My love- the way I love you. The way I love this life. The way I love my friends so purely, for every flaw and magical piece of each of their souls. The way I love my brother, and how I adore everything that he is. The way I love dogs, art, and seeing people laugh until they cry. I’m grateful for the fact that I long for those that I love, and when I finally reunite with them, I embrace them with my mind, my heart and my arms. I am grateful, not ashamed, for the way I love in romance and friendship- it’s a love that is accepting, forgiving, vulnerable, and a little outlandish. And although I’m not exactly grateful for the ones who left, or the ones who took advantage of the painstaking way I fight for the love between us, I am grateful to know that every time I choose to open the doors again, my capacity has not dwindled or lessened in quality, and I am only ever more generous with what I have to give, more in touch with everything that I feel, and more in love with my own lovely little heart. I am sorry, though, to everyone who I beg to play with my hair. Actually, no, I’m not. Play with my hair.

5. Robi Feliz Saphyra- Every single day, I am remembered, and I remember her.

6. Second chances- but hear me out. It’s not about the promises or being present. It’s not about being a better person or not being a shit show anymore, it’s not even about survival- I’d be mirroring a message from others if I were to say that were true for me, and that’s not what I’m here for. It’s about that bonus round that Norman talks about. When I sat in that cold chair in the church that first Monday night, I had no idea that I was actually pressing the “reset” button. I genuinely anticipated not surviving my twenties, and with good reason. That room was the last corner on the block for me and the dead body I dragged in there, and everything, everything, magical and wonderful and wild that I count of importance has happened between that night and now. 

In this second life, I have known a pain that is richer than any I have ever experienced, and a joy that is deeper than any I ever thought I could. I have learned what it means to be a spiritual being, to be an artist, to have a true friend, and to be a true friend. I have begun a lifetime of healing and thriving. This bonus round has given life and rebirth to the woman I was always meant to be, and I’m not only grateful to have evaded a hopeless future, but that angels in the form of the women who surround me have kept me safe and taught me how to walk again. 

7. Last, I am grateful for you. This is my midnight flare- a signal that wonders if anyone else has ever felt the same- if anyone else is out there. And if there’s any chance that you’ve stumbled into this weird, crazy fucking blog of mine, then you’ve caught the flame. I’m grateful that in this moment, wherever you are,  however the time and whatever it is that makes you tick or is eating you alive, we’re here, you and I, and that’s all that there is. 

Best wishes.

[pickupthepen]

Not You

This is the end of the filter. 

This is the last time I change my words to ensure your comfort. 

Not you.

You don’t get to have what I am giving. You. You precede your words with a declaration of honesty. Desperation is your scent. I saw it in your eyes on the sidewalk as you smoked. You lied to your friends when you told them that you never said the things my own ears heard you say. You were a liar. I lied too. I was a liar. But you see, bicycle woman, you do not get to text me two years after our ending to catch me in the middle of my grand burn to call me back over to your imprisoned room and fuck me in the middle of the night so you can heat your heart with the flame of reeling back in someone you used to know. You do not get to feel my fire. Your bed will never know my skin again. Not you. 

You do not get to tell me what my heart knows. You do not understand that it beats differently than yours. Maybe you just don’t see that not every human being wants to love the way you love. I don’t doubt your capacity, but you do not get to take what is mine. My fierce adoration. The way I make love. Maybe you love the way my hips sway when they dance for you, but if you don’t love the way they bounce when they dance to those old songs from my neighborhood, then you don’t love my hips. I know that the way I left unzipped confusion in you, but I had no choice other than to leave. My love is not yours to add to your collection, and not that you’d ever ask, but you will never get an answer again. Not you.

You will never come home. This isn’t your home anymore. I am not your fucking stop on the way to something greater. I am not your propulsion. I am not your warm hug at night when all else has failed you. I asked you not to sing for me, and you wrote operas of our future. After all of my reluctance, the tugging at my heart to reopen, and my willingness to remove bricks from my fort, when I finally sang back, you were already singing for her, and her, and her. You are the night that shadows truth. You are the sun that bleaches authenticity. I hope you find your exhilaration in the swift grasp of the ones who can’t love you back, but you will not call me in the dead of winter to remind yourself that I still love you. You breathe in only, and you taught me to only breathe out. You will never steal my lungs again. You will never hear my voice whisper melodies of how wonderful you are. May your sleep be still, and your dreams forever lack the hopes of winning me back. Not you.

But you, the ever beating drum of pushing and pulling. You, the steady. You reach into me for a truth you know exists so that you may see me unfold. We work. We lean. We always meet here. Your tears for my lost desires, your urges toward tallness, they remind me of the love I will give to the one who will never ask me to be small, who I would never ask to be small. My teacher.

And you, the beauty. You, the passionate. You who always calls. You who always answers. You let yourself weave like the eternal river. Strong. Soft. Persistent. The way you say “no” when no yes can be said, and what we know strengthens each time we speak what is real. You give yourself. You teach me how to give myself. We invest. Your loyalty to a friendship that is more meaningful than someone to do something with on a Friday night, your laughter in the moments when I didn’t think I’d turn a head, your depth, they remind me of the one who will love you as much as I do. My best friend.

And you, my arch, my pinnacle. You, the imperfect. You are a gorgeous assortment of diamonds, emeralds, and pretzels. You are a shapeshifter, a student. Your love for me exceeds all bounds. My love for you is the eternal. It exists in my bones, in my blood, in my red hair. My love for you lives in every cell that you made. You are my earth and my sky. The way you sing in a lonely room, the way your joy infects all the ones who walk through your open door, and your rage and your tears and the way you don’t even know the extent to which I adore you, they remind me of the one you will love simply because I do. My mother.

Whoever you are, I will not ask you to stay. I will not ask you to return the gift I will give to you. I will never have to ask, and neither will you. We will never have to win or be won. You will never spend a day questioning whether I want to feel your skin on mine, or hear you sing, or hold a candle for you, because every day we will lift our boulders together. If you are not the one who will look into my eyes as they tear, if you are not the one who will sit with my mother at the table, if you are not the one who will believe that my best friend is made of magic and stardust, if you are not the one who will feel the chords of the universe and the songs that we love, if you are not the one who will commit herself to truth, if you are not the one who breathes fire for who she is, if you are not the one who can unbutton her exterior and expose her gorgeous flaws, if you are not the one who will stay, and if you are not the one who would chose me over and over and over again, the same way that I painstakingly, passionately, and gently choose her, then walk the fuck away from me, because it’s not you. 

[pickupthepen]

The Break

You have survived the first 48 hours of the most devastating break-up you have experienced in your life. Now, I know you will look back on this ten years from now and smirk at the idea that a year long relationship broke you open the way that it did, but you have compassion for the girl that cried after those 6 months with the frat boy, and you still love the girl that didn’t know what to do when the first lady she ever loved left her to fend for herself in San Francisco, so try and hold some space for compassion for the woman you are right now. 

I know you’re not shy about how you feel. You’re sad, angry and you’re confused. It’s intense and it’s piercing. It sometimes consumes you, and it sometimes sits on the edge of your shoulder blade, out of sight so that you may breathe for just a second. You’ve sobbed twice at San Francisco’s Delta Terminal after two different people told you they didn’t love you back, and one of those times was yesterday morning. You asked her to kiss you before she left the departure drop-off, and it was the farthest you’ve ever felt from her. 

“I love you so much.”

“I know.”

Then she got in the car, said something to herself, and drove away. I remember, and I know how deeply it cut. I know.

But what I’m writing- what I’m asking you to remember- is not the fact that you knew in that very moment that everything you had planned was slipping loose from your grip, or the feeling of loving someone so deeply and knowing that love wasn’t going to come back to you, or even your disappointment as all the trust you once placed in another human dissolved into the afternoon sun. Think not about why it happened or what you could have done differently. I’m not writing you to have you ruminate on the way it was. No. You’ve been here before, you’ve continued breathing before, and you’ve stood on your own feet to rebuild your life before. You’re not new to this. What I’m here hoping to have you remember is everything that comes after that moment- everything that you miss when you choose to not look. 

You made phone calls, you made important decisions and you asked your higher power to show you what to do. You sought guidance from friends and teachers... and you waited. And I’m going to remind you of everything beautiful that happened to you in these past two days.

Your Friends

I hope you never forget what those who love you have done for you. 

Your friend invited you to come sleep with her and called you every morning to check in. Your mother drove to the airport to drive you home safely. She stayed up with you and talked. She held you in the morning as you cried. She took you for coffee. Another friend took you climbing and made you a second cup of coffee. She asked you what you needed when you teared up at the dinner table. Her dad sat you in his office and reminded you that this is all a part of life and growing up. 

Your coworker made a promise to guide you through your job for the next few weeks so that you’d feel safe. Your best friend answered the phone and told you she wasn’t going to tell you anything to make you feel better, but that she’d help you figure out what to do. She called you again the next morning and processed all of this with you for hours, and she called you again that night- to talk. Another friend told you she was proud of you and sent you an essay she wrote when she experienced the same thing. And another friend answered the phone and promised to help you search for a new apartment. And your old roommate asked if you wanted to hang out when you got home so that you didn’t have to be alone. 

Your mother took you to get your nose pierced- even though she was furious that you were doing it. And your father called you after your AA meeting to make sure you were okay. And your mom stayed up for hours talking through it all again. And your dog stared at you the entire time you were in the house and followed your every move. And yet another friend answered the phone, checked in again and again, and asked another mutual friend to check in on you, who assured you that when you were ready to come home and pick up the pieces, she’d walk every step of the way with you. 

So if you try to tell yourself that you aren’t loved or that you are incapable of being loved, you are a fucking idiot, because it’s all around you, and you know that none of that bullshit is true. 

What About the Small Moments?

You called your friend while the REI girl was in the back getting your shoes, and you cringed at how rude this was when she returned and you had to give half of your attention to each person trying to help you. You apologized and told her why you weren’t paying attention, and she spent ten minutes explaining that breakups are human, that they only serve to show us more about ourselves, that our twenties are about growth and learning, and that you’d better get out there and give that bouldering wall everything you’ve got.

Then you sat on the floor with a friend at the climbing gym and geeked out about how watching yourself progress was the best part, about how it’s all about risk and trust, and how you learn how to have faith in your hands, and the wall, and the eyes watching. And as you both looked up to watch a grungy climber leap up for his next hold and nail it, you felt butterflies in your stomach. This is it.

Don’t forget that you laughed so hard and you smiled so widely. You sang Hey Ya when it played on the radio. You talked about how deeply you love your brother. You sat and let yourself have nowhere to be. You embraced the idea that this is who you are, and not only is it okay, but this place, whatever it is, wouldn’t be half as bright without you in it.

The rain. Do you remember the rain? Do you remember the fog? Do you remember feeling of the wind on your face? I hope you remember how many deep breaths you took in and how many you released back out. I hope you remember the softness of the blanket your mother wrapped around you, and I hope you remember the way that it smelled. I want you to remember how heavy Rosemary the pug is and how difficult it is to pick her up. I want you to remember the smell of the acetone at the nail salon. Remember the taste of the chicken soup. Remember the weight of the blanket on the bed you grew up in. Remember the way the light peeked through your door, and remember how still your entire world sat under your hips. And when you find that you can’t remember any of this anymore, seek it out again- wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Breathe in. Breathe out.

What You Will Have to Remind Yourself of Every Single Day

First, Choose your words impeccably. Watch the way you speak. Are those hateful words you just thought about yourself true, or are they flimsy and weak? Are you okay or are you not okay right now? Tell the truth. Ask for help, and ask specifically and explicitly for exactly what you need. You deserve it, and you will receive it.

Second, do not apologize for who you are. Do not apologize for radical self care. Do not apologize because you think you aren’t strong. Do not apologize for yourself because you are embarrassed that this happened. Do not apologize for anything that you feel- don’t apologize for your anger, or your frustration or confusion or sadness. Don’t apologize for crying. You are loved, you are worthy of being on this planet, and you ought never apologize for your existence. 

Third, return to love with every chance you get. You have done everything you can up until now, and I know you don’t want to be reading this years from now wishing that you hadn’t hurt anyone the way that you did. So choose now to always act gracefully and lovingly, and in the moments that you can’t, do not act. 

Fourth, You’re special. You are. Never let anyone convince you of anything else. And when they roll your eyes because you refuse to believe that you are just like all the others and there isn’t something magical and amazing about you that no other human embodies, hold your torch higher, flex your back taller and breath in your wild spirit. And never, ever, ever beg anyone to love you. You’re better than that... and you know it. 

Fifth, You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you will not walk one day through this without a carrier, whether what holds you is human, AA, the Universe itself, or your own loving heart that has never doubted you.

And last, You have a purpose and it is not up to you how that purpose is fulfilled. You will fulfill it. You are allowed to make mistakes, I promise you will, and none of them will derail you from a path that will lead you to where you’re supposed to be. What you do next doesn’t matter- so stop worrying. Try and understand the gravity and depth of this idea. Embrace it’s radicalness. It doesn’t matter what you do next. The Universe will sort out the “how’s”, and when the time is right, you’ll know what to do. So, keep breathing. In. Out. Keep waiting. Keep stepping. Keep listening. Tomorrow, the sun will rise, and anything could happen.

[pickupthepen]

The Burn

When I got sober in 2015, I had no idea of the spiritual journey that I was about to embark on. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still haven’t reached even the beginnings of spiritual enlightenment, and I’m aware, but when I decided to give up drugs and alcohol, I had little to no spiritual curiosity, I didn’t believe in any sort of higher power of the universe, and I drank myself in and out of depression and oblivion every day. When I had been sober for a year, my whole work had already changed. I was meditating daily, I was attending Dharma talks and wearing mala beads that I twisted between my fingers when work days were stressful, and I felt freer than I ever had before. So naturally, when my friend, Stacy, told me about Burning Man a few months later, and told me I had to come, my judgement and reluctance faded into a childlike curiosity. 

I read an article on a burner website before we left and I desperately didn’t want my burn to be “that" burn. She hated it. She was over it. She realized out in the playa that her glory days at Burning Man were over, and she never wanted to go back. I didn’t want my experience to be like hers. I wanted to love it. I wanted to learn a lot about myself. I was afraid of what I might find. I was hopeful about certain things, and I was reluctant about others. I had expectations.

This chapter was supposed to be about all the fantastic experiences, about the humanity, about finding the God that I doubted, and maybe about standing out in the Playa alone, under the temple, looking up into the sky and feeling connected- a part of something.

I didn’t get that.

A tension hung in the air before I even left. I wanted to get out there as soon as I could- fuck the planning. My emotions had already been completely exhausted by the drama of trying to wrangle fifteen alcoholics into scheduling a life or death trip without killing each other first. There were tears before we even left San Francisco. Some of our cohort screamed accusations in Tahoe when we missed an exit (even though we didn’t miss the exit). One friend didn’t realize she had forgotten her early arrival pass until we were a few miles from Black Rock City and we had to drive back into town to print it before the local post office closed. And as soon as we arrived, in the warm night, the fighting, turned to passive aggression, turned to blatant coldness among our group began immediately.

Then, the heat. My girlfriend and I spent the majority of the trip making sure we didn’t stroke or faint from the 110 degree weather. We stopped every few streets for water breaks and spent mornings in the blistering sun to get ice for our food so it wouldn’t spoil. We slept in a tent that baked in itself during the day in a city that blasted music all through the night. There were some moments that were what I would consider quintessential “Burning Man”. I made an amulet with a hammer under a tent. I sported pink booty shorts that said “sexy” across the back. I had some impromptu frozen yogurt with a couple that was just passing by another camp I was at, looking for eggs and bacon. A man named the Ambassador fixed my bike when the chain broke. Caleb replaced the inner tube when it popped the very next day. I played an improv game with a woman whose real name is Danica Patrick. I sat at dinner with my camp as everyone shared stories of their accomplishments and embarrassments. I followed an art car that was made to look like a giant sheep at 8am as it blasted Barbra Streisand. I danced in a replica of Fern Gully. I watched a group of burners worship the sun during a sunrise yoga session at the man. Caroline and I fought each other on a podium with giant cue tips at the Gladiator camp (I lost), and they gave me a pink sticker that read “FUCK ART MAKE WAR”. I liked that.

But I never had one moment in Black Rock City that took my breath away. I had small moments of love, and some moments of emotional upheaval. I felt “it” in fractions of a second. I never felt “there”, though. It was almost like I was trying to find something, not knowing what that something was, and I was stuck in a perpetual purgatory of being too far from it to even know where to begin. I never stood out in the playa with the wind in my hair- it was too hot to stay out there long. Maybe I did feel small moments of belonging and freedom, and I certainly did feel the love, compassion and understanding that my campmates selflessly bestowed upon me, but there was no flash of light, there was no message in the sky, and no deep, flooding understanding of the universe or of myself. I didn’t think so, at least.

Then, the pain started in my throat. It felt like the night after a long concert in a smokey hall, and I know all the lyrics to every song. I thought it was the alkali in the dust and Stacy gave me some cough drops to sooth the fire. I read that the acid in vinegar would help, so I made the acquisition of pickles and olives my new daily mission. But, the sore throat turned into sneezing. The sneezing turned into coughing. The coughing buddied up with a fever and after four days, I was laying in our communal tent for hours at a time, waiting for the Tylenol to kick in and push out the body aches and chills. I wanted to leave but I didn’t want to tell anyone. This was my destiny, my adventure, my trip. Burning Man failed my expectations of spiritual enlightenment, so at the very least, I wanted to prove to myself that I could get through it, to the night the man burned, without giving up. On Thursday, though, after hours of desperately wishing for sleep in the middle of the heat, I walked to the bathroom on my own. .On the wall of the hot shit box that we sometimes call a porta-potty in the real world, I noticed someone had written “You are temporary. Do what you want. Do what you need. Do what you love. Because this, too, will pass.” It hit me- I had to go home.

I stumbled back to the camp to let Caroline know I was too sick to stay, and she happily agreed. I took two IV bags of saline to re-hydrate before our departure and we packed up the next morning. In the line on the road leading out of Black Rock City, I felt an immense wave of relief. It might have been one of the best days of my life. I desperately wanted to go home, and we were going. 

I really did want to be a “burner” before that trip. I really wanted to come home and tell all the amazing stories of the fun I had. I really tried. I wanted my Burning Man journal entry to be about the sun and the moon aligning and finding myself in the middle, but I didn’t get what I wanted, and I’m so glad that I didn’t. My heart came alive when I came home. I had forgotten how much I loved my bedroom, my dog, and laying on the couch with a good movie and my sweet girlfriend. It slipped from me that the peace from meditation could be found on my own floor. I failed to remember who I was, and didn’t realize how silly it really was to try and find myself in a hot desert in Nevada, rather than in my own heart.

Months passed, friendships faded, and I began to forget about why I felt so strongly about all of this in the first place. I became complicit in my own monotony, and I stopped praying, I stopped meditating, and I stopped asking for help. I was so angry You know what makes me feel alive? Being fucking honest. Saying something honest when I’m afraid of what that might mean. Telling you I’m scared even though I want you to think I’m strong and fearless. Asking for help in a moment of need even though I’m afraid no one will answer. I feel “spiritual” when I sit alone in a dark room with a candle lit, and I accept that in this moment, I can’t erase any discomfort or emotional pain that I feel, and I pray for something, anything out there, to just sit with me while I feel it. I’m so over pretending that the summation of “spiritual” tokens to convince others I live a spiritual life is sufficient to the kind of life I want to live, and that’s why I am not here to tell you I had an amazing beautiful glorious spiritual trip out at Burning Man. I didn’t. I couldn’t muster enough anything to fabricate something that just wasn’t there. Because as it turns out, I can’t flex hard enough or think smart enough to have a spiritual experience. 

Casey

[pickupthepen]

The Ex

How could I start this story?

Maybe I’ll start at the beginning. A Facebook page. A group of girls. A newcomer that wanted to get coffee with a potential new friend.

I remember that coffee shop in Hayes Valley. I remember the way she looked across the table at me. I remember thinking, “I could like this girl.”

I want to tell everyone what happened- what really happened. I’ve gotten a little distance from that relationship, and I can see it all a little more clearly than I did before. I’ve written hundreds of journal entries on it- on her. I’ve spent hours with friends in the middle of the night piecing it together. I’ve built friendships and I’ve destroyed friendships in the spectacle of my breakup. However, the more I write and speak and circle around it, the less I understand myself and what happened way back then. I’ve learned to shave it down a bit, and I do know that it isn’t charged with the same voltage anymore, but I still talk about it sometimes. I asked a mutual friend last night how she was doing, and I felt like I was looking through murky, cracked glass into the past.

It wasn’t the relationship, itself, that tore me apart. I mean it didn’t feel good. I was running around like a madwoman, leaving dinner to Facetime her in the car, driving the dark streets at midnight chasing our potential happy relationship, gripping onto it so that it would work out. But I disintegrated when I flew three thousand miles to her city where she broke up with me in her bed on the first night of a four-day trip. Not because I was heartbroken, not because I loved her, and not because she was the one that got away, but because I couldn’t make it work, because I couldn’t wrestle what I thought I needed out this life, and because there was unnamed suspicion in me the entirety of our affair that it just wasn’t going to happen. I did everything I could possibly do to make her mine- and she left.

Everything else was just the collateral damage in the aftermath. I get it when my friends tell me they’re frustrated because they took what felt like an eternity to heal from a relationship that was a fraction as long. I get it when they say that they don’t feel like they deserve to mourn a relationship that wasn’t a “relationship”. I get it when they tell me that they think they should be over it- that it shouldn’t still be there, ticking away at them.

I wrote in my journal every day for a period of time about how angry I felt in the morning when I woke up and that she was my first thought. I was gutted when every song i listened to during our short time trudged it all up again. I was fucking angry that she left when I needed her, and that the idea of her didn’t leave when I needed it out of my head. That’s what happens when I give humans the power to preside over me- I can’t just wave a wand and erase their influence. She became ingrained in my code. Every move was for her, even when she wasn’t watching.

I didn’t hold on because I was simply unwilling to let go. My reluctance to release the grip on I had on her couldn’t be explained only by my inability to accept life as it was. I was stuck. I wanted “us” so badly, that I made it real, and even when I could see, objectively, that it wasn’t real, it was still very real. Maybe I should say I brainwashed myself. Maybe I should be a little kinder. It became bigger than me. I tried to reclaim my relationship from her so intently that I found my world crumbling around me. Three months after she told me she didn’t want to be with me, three months of every breathe screaming her name, I walked back into her house, I lied to her about what I really wanted, and tugged at her until she told me she couldn’t even be friends with me- that she didn’t trust me. Plain and simple, I tried to get her back, I stepped on whoever was in the way in the process, and it still didn’t work. She didn’t want me.

I let myself become a monster because I wanted to be loved. Forget giving it, I just wanted it for myself.

It’s been a year since I talked to her- well, almost. I still see her around, but I don’t stick around long enough to have to speak. I’m afraid of what I might feel. It’s easier to pretend she doesn’t exist, and when I have to acknowledge that she is a human being that still walks this earth, it’s easier to pretend that I know about her- that I know she’s sick in relationships, in sobriety, and in health. From what I hear, she hasn’t changed. I don’t know. I don’t think know her at all.

I don’t even know who I was back then. My former self feels like a stranger. Talking about that relationship today feels like a dance, a performance to convince myself that my heartache was valid. I want so desperately to have been someone who mattered, and who deserved to feel human feelings, to be real, that I wonder often if I didn’t make the whole thing up. Was it a dream?

I don’t have a Hollywood ending to this story. I can’t say that I had some grand shift and learned something about the Universe’s will for me and why it all had to happen, and a beautiful explosion of self-realization opened a new world of liberation and happiness like I’ve never felt before. But I will tell you that it has gotten better. Time, and a lot of it, has brought me closer to freedom from all of that. I have realized that I have no say in how long pieces of my heart take to heal. I’m not in control of how quickly I can learn something new or shift out of an old pattern. I’m not interested in erasing the yuck of my past anymore, only because I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. It’s still there. It still happened. Perhaps it had to happen the way it did.

It’s funny- the way we interact with each other around heartbreak. When my friends are in pain, it feels so unoriginal and cliche. I often push to deliver a message that would wake them from their trance and help them re-enter the real world where they can be independent and proud. But when my heart breaks, it feels as though no one in this life or the lives before could have ever felt anything like this. It’s unique and profound, as if I coined the idea that a human could be in agony over lost love.

All I can say is that heartbreak probably isn’t as binary as I’d have it be. Healing isn’t black and white. Some days I’m still angry. Some days I’m less angry. My mornings’ first thoughts no longer sing of what I lost. Most days I don’t even think about her. The memories often pass like a ship in the distance, and I have the ability to sit and watch, unmoved by them. On occasion, I relive them. They play like an old movie I used to watch when I was a kid, but I no longer watch them hoping that I’ll rectify the pain or find justice. I watch only in the way that I would watch those old movies, remembering what it felt like when they were important to me, and reminiscing on the girl who used to watch.

I wish I could go back and talk to that girl to let her know that I would speak more softly about all of this pain when some time had passed, but since I can’t, I’m grateful for the human beings that reminded me that I’m still alive, and that all that pain could be condensed and transformed into passion and fire- true love not in the form of romance. Every day I think I find a little more clarity and calm in myself. I find peace with my anger, peace with my confusion, peace with every way that I was and still am an imperfect person. Peace with me, peace with her, peace with us. A little bit, at least.

[pickupthepen]

The School

I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, but I sure as hell act like one of those Harvard kids that won’t shut up about Cambridge twelve years after graduation. I still have some residue in my lungs from my self-assignment of being the “smart kid” that got into the engineering university. It was my last hope for worthiness when looks, personality, friendships, talent, athleticism, and everything else seemed to fail me.

“Well at least I’m smart! Smarter than you.”

Sometimes I let my veil of self-confidence about it all slip a little, and I’ll tell you about how I hated almost every second of those excruciating five years with every fiber of my being, but I’m interrupted by “you had to be smart to go there” and “you got the degree, now you can do anything!” I twisted between being filled with pride about those five years and everything I survived and hating every second of it to the tip of my spine.

I had the whole plan mapped out when I got the acceptance letter. Actually, it wasn’t a letter, it was a browser screen. I logged in on a Friday night to check my acceptance status and my parents took me to sushi to celebrate. The plan was in motion! I had been saving my Smoothie King checks to pay for the sorority, I got into the best freshman dorm, and I’d be building rockets and making millions in no time.

I didn’t get into the sorority. I told people I walked out of rush because it was overwhelming and I didn’t see myself pledging- I dropped because ZTA cut me and the first step of the plan- to get into my dad’s college sweetheart’s sorority and be the perfect collegiate daughter- was shattered. That was the very first time in my life that I was heartbroken. I had a second, brief, encounter with heartbreak and an emotionally unavailable man not long after, and then my heart didn’t break again for five years.

Those years were spent in bleak purgatory. I nearly failed a handful classes in which I poured my blood. I switched from one major to another because the buildings smelled weird and I was afraid of failing intensive courses. I discovered early on that I could drink during lectures. I spent a summer experimenting with alcoholism for the first time. I blacked out at football games. Sometimes people hit me. I paced behind other students in labs. I copied homework. I felt stupid. I dated a well-liked fraternity guy for a summer. I went, unwelcome, on a beach weekend with another. I spent mornings cramming for quizzes and exams. I turned in some good work. I turned in some really fucking bad work. I counted the hours that I studied, hoping that if they piled higher, my grades would, too. I loathed that library that I only graced with my presence when a test was coming up. I guzzled high gravity beers in my car in the gym parking lot before morning lectures. My hands trembled as I typed notes in almost all of my classes. I was consciously aware of the way the my professors looked at me and couldn’t remember who I was. I got C’s in classes that I gave little effort. I blamed it on the drinking. I drove to a nearby university for AA meetings and got a little sober time. Then, C’s became D’s. Then I drank again. Then I got sober again. I sat by the campanile on a perfect, warm, breezy day, and I wished I could be anywhere, anywhere else.

Then, at the very end, it all turned for a moment. I survived my last two semesters without a drink. I was gifted with new types friendships - real friendships. I sat in the front row on Wednesdays at open mic to see Wood perform. I watched the Babadook from under a blanket with Mala. I went through my python script, line by line, to make sure it was perfect, and it was. I got straight A’s. Our team won the senior design project competition. I began walking down every street on campus, my campus, confident and proud. I got a call from the perfect job in the Bay Area and laughed through tears as I accepted their offer. I was suspended in a temporary bliss.

The night before graduation, I sat on the football field and I stared, soulless and empty as the fireworks erupted and my classmates sang the fight song. The year of contentment was but a reprieve, and all at once, every moment, every notion or wink at my own failure as a person crashed on me. My vacation from myself was over, and my distraction had come to an end. I felt like a fraud. I knew I didn’t deserve all the praise I was receiving, and two weeks later, with 8 months of sobriety, I chugged a beer in my parents’ garage and shot-off on my last bender. I still swing on a pendulum between success and failure, genuineness and fraud, pain and peace, and sometimes, if I try hard enough, I am queen, impostor, thief, judge, poet, zen-master, child, hangman and ghost at the same time.

Some days I’m still there, on that field, hiding from every pair of eyes that see through my not-so-polished exterior into the reality of my inadequacy.  Truth be told, an atom-sized piece of my heart is still afraid that I’m just alright. I wish I could tell you that I don’t sometimes still tote around my “smart” badge because I’m terrified of the cataclysm of of the final realization that I am just... average. Some days the domineering commander in the back of my mind calls out orders that matter what I do, if I gave it everything I had, it would just be mediocre. After all those years, whether I was consumed by addiction or pushed my limits with my studies or recreated myself in pursuit of acceptance, I faced an uninspired, forgettable, boring phony at the end. I couldn’t see, through everything I did, what I was worth and why I deserved to exist. I fell through myself. 

Most days I’m here, though. Often, I can feel all the great moments that have happened since then. I think about the time my friend and I chased the cops down California Street in San Francisco to see where they were going. I have experienced freedom. I can sometimes taste the difference between the times in life that felt hard, and the times that didn’t. I can sometimes see clearly that none of this would make any more sense if I didn’t experience pain, if I was never liquefied by heartbreak, if I wasn’t an alcoholic, or if I didn’t have to trudge through the mud sometimes.

Interestingly enough, because of the burning of the tower of my identity, I was accidentally given birth to the resilient, passionate, tenacious woman I was always desperate to become. Every day, I am more lovingly accepting of the messy, imperfect collage of myself, and I sing my experiences and heartache from rooftops so that someone might see it one day and say, “I’ve felt like that, too.”  Maybe I’ve finally accepted that being a mediocre is quite alright, because “mediocre” isn’t really a thing. Lovely.

[pickupthepen]

The Intro

Hello.

Welcome to my realm, my heart.

I wonder who you are, and where you came from. What a divine connection that’s happening in this very moment. I sometimes believe in the fantasy that the words of my favorite poets and artists came falling out of the clouds and landed on the paper, somehow unreeling the twine in my heart and cosmically, accidentally putting words to the frequencies of my soul that went unwritten for so many years. I forget the reality of the artist, that those words came from the same vibrations that swing in my mind. Appreciating a poem is like dancing with a friend, someone who, although far away in place and time, has understood what is written inside the same way I have. As I write, I wonder if anyone will ever read my words and dance with me. I wonder if you’ll feel the same. I wonder if I’m not just tossing words and space into the sky, never to be seen again.

I grew up in the suburbs of Georgia. It was poignantly uneventful. I played tennis, I swam, I ran, my mother bought me the right clothes so that I could be accepted and embraced by my classmates and friends, I listened to music and felt the Universe even back then, and nothing remarkable really ever happened. When I was in middle school, my literature teachers told me I had skill in writing. I don’t believe that it was skill, but more an expression that came easy. I could ask for others to read my words, and they told me they felt that thing that I intended to catalyze. As long as my words were honest, as long as they spoke truth, they were infallibly more than a young child’s musings. They were potential. I could see colors on the different paths and subjects in life. They told us we would have to choose between math & science or literature & the arts, and the arts’ cool blues and browns embraced me tighter than the cold, cut corners of the gold and silver science.

That is, until, I was told I was average, and I set out on a warpath to prove to the world that I could do anything. I was going to be the best, and I got close, because I believed a dark lie that to be good enough, I must be better than everyone and everything- that I’d have to be on top. I got A’s, I got into the engineering school, I won the capstone presentation, I got the degree, and I lost so much. I lost the artist, I lost the friend, I lost the vibrations and the fire and I sold all of it to prove that I was more than mediocre.

I sold the key to buy the lock. I was swallowed by addiction. My compass pointed to survival rather than vigor and passion. I dove into the pit of my soul, and I came back renewed, albeit doubtful, but lined with a new outlook, a new plan, and a new director, whose lines sound a hell of a lot better than the pathetic, sniveling “please love me”s of this woman’s predecessor . I now stand on my feet, I don’t crawl before anyone.

And so, the writer is back. I am Casey. I am deeply in love with humans. I have known indescribable pain. I am an alcoholic. I am sober. I am an imperfect friend. I am an artist, a painter, a student. I am a daughter. I am a coworker. I am a sister. I am the smitten partner of a beautifully human woman. I am a wildfire. I am free. I am the child of a Goddess that I had to strip myself of everything I thought I knew in order to begin to know. I am the phoenix, reborn from the ashes. I am the owl, with secrets and stories from tales of my past. I am done hiding, I am done silencing the words so that those few may miss the opportunity to tell me I am not worthy, that I am not entitled to my place on this Earth. I am alive, and I am here to share with you what I have kept hidden for so long, with a tinge of hope that you might read my words, you might understand, and you might have felt the same. Because the magic, the power of the word, means nothing if it is folded away between sheets of letters and prayers. Our stories may  have never met, our hearts may have never sung together, and our frequencies may have never aligned without the raw, unprovoked, bare, vulnerable power of the unmasked, shared artwork. I can only make you one promise, these words will be honest, these words will be true. May you find something in yourself that we have shared, may we have something in common, my friend.

These are my musings, my letters, my poems.

This is my voice.