excerpt from a drunken love note; part 2

You wouldn't: but if you were to put it to me -- I bet I would fall at your feet. It doesn't serve anybody to let me get away with it. 

Monday, I tried to say a lot of things to my shrink. 49 minutes later maybe I had said a thing or two. Then said that I was grateful for you and all you've been for me and I got all fucky. 

I'm in so much trouble tomorrow but I'm just gonna run with it now to say thanks. I want to be as good to you as you are to me.. xx 

Letting go

Let go of all thoughts that don't make you feel empowered and strong.

Let go of feeling guilty for doing what you truly want to do.

Let go of the fear of the unknown; take one small step and watch the path reveal itself.

Let go of regrets; at one point in your life, that “whatever” was exactly what you wanted.

Let go of worrying; worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.

Let go of blaming anyone for anything; be accountable for your own life. If you don’t like something, you have two choices, accept it or change it.

Let go of thinking you are damaged; you matter, and the world needs you just as you are.

Let go of thinking your dreams are not important; always follow your heart.

Let go of being the “go-to person” for everyone, all the time; stop blowing yourself off and take care of yourself first … because you matter.

Let go of thinking everyone else is happier, more successful or better off than you. You are right where you need to be. Your journey is unfolding perfectly for you.

Let go of thinking there's a right and wrong way to do things or to see the world. Enjoy the contrast and celebrate the diversity and richness of life.

Let go of cheating on your future with your past. It’s time to move on and tell a new story.

Let go of thinking you are not where you should be. You are right where you need to be to get to where you want to go, so start asking yourself where you want to go.

Let go of anger toward ex lovers and family. We all deserve happiness and love; just because it is over doesn’t mean the love was wrong.

Let go of the need to do more and be more; for today, you've done the best you can, and that's enough.

Let go of thinking you have to know how to make it happen; we learn the way on the way.

Let go of trying to save or change people. Everyone has her own path, and the best thing you can do is work on yourself and stop focusing on others.

Let go of trying to fit in and be accepted by everyone. Your uniqueness is what makes you outstanding.

Let go of self-hate. You are not the shape of your body or the number on the scale. Who you are matters, and the world needs you as you are. Celebrate you.

healing

If you don’t feel strong right now, that’s okay. Don’t pursue strength; pursue healing. Because your strength is in your healing.

dear human

dear human,

you’ve got it all wrong. you didn’t come here to master unconditional love. that is where you came from and where you’ll return.

you came here to learn personal love.
universal love.
messy love.
sweaty love.
crazy love.
broken love.
whole love.

infused with divinity. lived through the grace of stumbling. demonstrated through the beauty of messing up. often.

you didn’t come here to be perfect. you already are.
you came here to be gorgeously human. flawed and fabulous. and then to rise again into remembering.

but unconditional love? stop telling that story.

love, in truth, doesn’t need any other adjectives. it doesn’t require modifiers. it doesn’t require the condition of perfection.

it only asks that you show up. and do your best. that you stay present and feel fully. that you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as you.

it’s enough. it’s plenty.

i love you

People say I love you all the time - when they say, ‘take an umbrella, it’s raining,’ or ‘hurry back,’ or even ‘watch out, you’ll break your neck.’ There are hundreds of ways of wording it - you just have to listen for it, my dear.

the best and truest way i've heard empathy explained

hearts

For our hearts are not pure; our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace; and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. The wrestling is who we are. How we wrestle is who we are. What we want to be is never what we are. Not yet. Maybe that’s why we have these relentless engines in our chests, driving us toward what we might be.  | Brian Doyle

an excerpt from a drunken love note

This morning I woke up...as one does.

You were next to me.

There was light to see, but it was mostly grey. There were sounds to hear, but it was mostly quiet....It felt early.

In summer, light precedes day; the sounds follow.  In winter: immersed in blackness, it starts alone.  Sound and light: one has a sense of when mixture has been reached...day.

Lights, commotion, awareness: it's time to get up.

It felt like it was maybe time to get up...I laid there looking and listening.  There were colors....and noises...I turned to you.

You were beautiful....you had been with me all night and yet you looked like you had just arrived...like you had come from afar and collapsed next to me. 

I let you be...I had my morning.

You woke up and you apologized.  

I told you I was just doing what I would have been doing anyway, but that was a lie....I knew it as soon as I said it.  It would not have been the same.  Having you there, my morning felt different than 'my' usual morning.  It felt peaceful and free.  I liked knowing you were there.  I drank coffee and read my book and cut the top off that Mr. Brown can.  I was doing what I might have been doing anyway, but it felt different.

best argument to date

"My body, my choice" only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.

Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies. 

souce: betterthanabortion.tumblr.com

isn't it

“It’s exciting when you find parts of yourself in someone else.”

child and adult

“Your needs don’t make you too much. They don’t make you selfish or weak or greedy. They make you human. We all have needs. And those hungers aren’t something we should feel ashamed of. They’re normal, we didn’t get enough of them as children hungers. Affections we’ve been deprived of by the people who are supposed to care for us. Connections we needed to feel whole and spaces we needed to feel safe. Cravings we’ve been taught we didn’t deserve. Appetites we’ve learned to suppress and fill with guilt. Again and again we’ve neglected our needs because we’ve been taught that they were too much— that we were too much. But we don’t have to any longer. You don’t have to. Whether you need support, alone time, affection, connection, validation, or reassurance that you are loved — it is more than okay to ask for what you need. Making your needs known isn’t about being demanding or selfish. It’s about self-care. It’s about creating a safer space for yourself. It’s about using your voice and speaking your truth. It’s about giving yourself permission to take up space. It’s about listening to your hungers and honoring them. It’s about honoring yourself.”

your person

“You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.”

regret or lack thereof

He was average. Like every man before. He wore sadness like it was a distancing thing. And spoke of attachment as though it was a fool’s errand. He lived in a perpetual state of preparation for the next-worst-thing—holding everything and everyone at arm’s length, thinking he could outsmart sadness, as though it had anything to do with thought.

Lying in bed one night I asked him a question and in the silence preceding his answer I could feel his mind working so very hard—sorting through the muck and mess. And in the space before his words all I could think was, I’m too well. I’m too well for this particular man’s particular muck…and well…fuck.

I believe we are made by what breaks us. We are forged by the dark and rocky terrain of moving-forward. And I think there’s something holy about the trudge of it—the slow movement, the body’s ability to continue on when every bit of it feels cold and still and tired.

But you can’t give that wish to a person. You can wish something for them, but you cannot wish it upon them. And you cannot get close to–or be intimate–or fall in love with a person who is so mired in their own shit that they’ll do anything they can to pretend there’s not a stink about it.






--meg fee

Jack.

Jack was my last psych assessment of the day yesterday.  
Jack came hobbling in with one crutch.  I could hear him reciting his girlfriend woes all the way down the hall to the registrar woman bringing him to me.

Jack was missing a tooth. He asked me if he could take his coat off.  "Of course", I said.

Jack had never been to therapy before.  He told me that his girlfriend whom he is living with has told him he has issues with anger; he dreams at night and is "yelling in tongues to the devil and in different languages".  I nod.   He admits, yes, he is very sad, indeed.

Jack says, "I'm getting hot" as more and more words come tumbling out of his mouth. Mind racing faster than the words can come. Spilling.  He asks if he can take his button up shirt off.  No one ever asks that.  There is rarely consideration or appropriateness.  And why would there be? Consideration and appropriateness are learned. I say, "Of course".  
It strikes me that Jack "dressed up" for our meeting.  Underneath the button up shirt, he has a stained white t-shirt and underneath that an A-shirt.  His chocolate brown arms are wide and his muscles are tightly corded.  I find myself thinking of slaves and maybe it's because Jack is enslaved.  

Jack starts to sob. Out of nowhere, seemingly. My heart constricts.  He says, just barely, "Excuse me".  
I say, "Take your time".  
He cannot compose himself. I sit with him; angling my body towards his.
He says, "Excuse me", again.
I say, "Take your time. Just take your time".
It occurs to me that Jack has never had time to take.  In fact, his time has always been taken.

I ask Jack about his strengths. Qualities, characteristics about himself that are positive. I ask him what he likes to do.  He lights up.  He had a subcontracting business for twenty years. "I like laboring work."
He lost that work. And everything else.  
Crack will do that. So will alcohol.
So will poverty, loss of a parents, gang wars, public housing, judgment, lack of support, no one to believe in you and growing up black in this country.

Before Jack lost it all, he had a girl he very much loved, I think. He had a child with her. He moved her and her children and his own child to Lansdale, PA.  "I got her a real nice house too.  Kids shouldn't grow up in Philly."

Jack stares off into the distance.  His voice cracks.  "I  miss my son.  I call him and he won't call me back.  They make it hard to come back."
His son is 14 years old.

Jack has been clean and sober for three years.  I think to myself, it's always what comes after the sobriety that is the hardest. When life slaps you in the face and condemns you for all you've done and no matter how you try to make reparations, you are reminded that you still have to pay.  You will always pay.  

I wonder about the concept of forgiveness.  I think the concept of forgiveness is kind of part of the problem here.

Jack tells me that a neighbor grabbed him by the shoulders one day when he was coked up and told him he could do better.  That's what it took.  The neighbor died.  Jack is racked with tears and an inability to catch his breath over this loss.

I ask about suicidal thoughts.  Jack says that after his father died, he sat in the dark room alone.  With a gun in his hand.  
I don't even question how he had a gun at 15.  In retrospect, that's even sadder.
His mom happened to come home.  She took the gun from him.
Jack sobs.
I say, "Sounds like you scared the hell out of her."
He looks at me, "I didn't even think about that."
I wonder if it was the wrong thing to say.

Jack joined a new church last week. He said he went to both services. He was there all day.  He says he felt peace.  He felt relief.  He just stayed all day because it felt better.  I give a silent thanks for the power of religion/faith/spirituality. Oh, when it does good, it does good.

We talk more. Well, Jack talks. I more listen. There's never enough listening.  
Sometimes Jack laughs at things I say.  They're not funny nor meant to be.
But his laugh is wonderful and I'll take it.

Jack tells me of going to his brother's home last weekend to watch the Eagles.  To eat some food. He tells me how he wanted to leave. That he wants to be with his brothers, but his brothers are also scary.  They're drug dealers.  They have bright, shiny, fancy things as a result.  His brother kept pushing him down when he tried to stand up. Chokehold.  Jack takes his fork and jabs at his thigh.  He can finally leave.
He takes a rest a few blocks down.
He sees his bother's Cadillac drive up. "He wants to fight, I think".  He sees two cop cars following the Cadillac.  Charged with simple assault.  He goes to jail.  Given the top bunk despite having a hurt back.  Falls off the bunk and hurts his leg.  This was the beginning of October.  Finds out it's been broken this whole time. Didn't find out until November 6th.  

He asks me if I'm married. I say, "I'm not".  He doesn't understand.  He asks a lot of different ways how that's possible.  My answers mostly remain the same, "I couldn't tell ya".  And I couldn't. I have no idea.
A knowing look suddenly comes over his face.  He says, "Ah. A bull just hasn't been able to catch ya yet."
I smile.  His sentiment is sweet.  The thought passes of me rejecting offers left and right.  Not so much.  

Jack looks at me. He says, "I'm cooler now. I'm going to put my shirt back on".
His movements are jerky.  He takes odd pauses. His sudden stops and eye contact are slightly disconcerting.  I make a psychiatry appointment for next week. I explain the same things more than a few times. 

He looks at me.  Stares.  Again, I wait it out.  He says, "I feel better. I didn't know I was allowed to talk. I never did."

This is part of Jack's story.  I hope he gets to tell more of it.  I hope someone listens. I hope he can organize his narrative. I hope he can have a space to grieve. 
I'm very still when Jack finally leaves. 
I hope not that Jack survives. 
I hope that Jack lives.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.”

in which i answer some things asked by someone i don't know on the internet

1. If tomorrow was your last day on earth, what would your last meal be? You get three courses (starter, entree and dessert).

Shit. shit, shit, shit. All of it. I just want all of the food.  Can I get multiple things in each course? Sure, I can. It's my last day on earth. Therefore; Starter: guacamole, ceasar salad, and french onion soup, heavy on the melty cheese please.  Entree: Gnocchi slathered in some sort of buttery, cheesy alfredo sauce. Also, some fingerling potatoes. Also, a shrimp burrito.   Dessert: Any messy concoction of peanut butter, milk chocolate, pretzels, cookie dough, oreos, brownies....all preferably in the form of an ice cream cake. Please and thank you.

2. What are you three all time favorite movies?

Good Will Hunting; When Harry Met Sally; Beginners

3. Best concert you’ve ever been to?

Ray Lamontagne. November 2012. Wellmont Theater. Greatest performance of life.

4. Would you ever move to a foreign country for a year? If so, where?

I would sit my pretty little ass on some cliff perch on the Amalfi Coast. Clearly, I'm not interested in branching out.

5. One person that is alive that you detest.

Chris Christie. I think he is a horrible and evil human being about whom I cannot find one redeeming factor.  And another, more individualized person of the same name, who is callous and self-righteous and selfishly careless with anyone put in his path.

6. What has been the worst and best meal of your life?

Food questions.  Can't get enough of 'em.  Best meal of my life was at a restaurant in Manhattan, the name of which now escapes me.  Well, that's lame.  In Philadelphia, best meals have been at Vedge, Ela and Amada.  I simply can't choose. I won't! Worst meal? Shoot. What does it mean if I can't think of one?

7. Tell us a secret that nobody (or very few people know about).

Given that maybe one person even reads this thing, that wouldn't be such a big deal. But, secrets are sometimes for a reason. So here's a childhood one:  I stole bubble gum from Shop-Rite when I was about 7yo and my mom found it in my dresser and told me the police were coming to get me because that's what happens to people who steal. I sat on the couch in our front room for almost an hour crying and looking out the window waiting for the police to come pick me up.  I would not recommend this kind of parenting.  

8. When was the last time you cried? Why?

Last week, a kid I've been working with around his homosexuality for the past two years sat in front of me and sobbed uncontrollably for almost a full 45 minutes.  Every time he would pull himself together, it would start again.  He didn't understand why he was so triggered when he had "really come so far" in his acceptance of self.  I held it together until he left. And then I cried. Because this "fight" is never really over. I don't care if you're Dan Savage. It's never over. And sometimes I get scared it never will be. And it makes me feel powerless and hateful at all the people in this country who are shadows of human beings and think they have some sort of "unalienable" right to exercise their hatred and intrinsic power of their majority over others.

10. Worst date you’ve ever been on? 

I once went on a blind date with a guido dressed in a partially unbuttoned collared shirt, complete with a gold cross, while rolling up in an M3, talking only about himself, disagreeing with any liberal point I made, offering to buy me a Corona and then saying could I actually spot him, and then freaking out because he thought his car got stolen (who fucking told you to drive an M3 into Philadelphia?).  This all resulted in him making a completely uncalled for move in the car and me running out of the car while trying to disentangle myself from his umbilical cord which was still attached to his mother.  That was my one and only experience with blind dates.  Oh, and the last time I let my mom set me up.

11. Give me three deal-breakers in a man or woman.

Not knowing the difference between being nice and being kind; no sense of humor; shorter than me.

hurling crowbirds at mockingbars

it was not my intention to make such a
production of the emptiness between us
playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.

it’s just that I coulda swore 

you had sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it

Selves.

"I go through phases. 

Some days I feel like the person I’m supposed to be, 

and then some days I turn into no one at all. 

There is both me and my silhouette. 

I hope that on the days you find me 

and all I am are darkened lines, 

you still are willing to be near me."

vulnerability

first, i cannot speak for all women
or claim a united voice,
i can only tell you my truth.

and my truth is this:
a man who is kind,
a man who listens,
a man who is vulnerable and honest,
that is the man i want to make me weak in the knees.

i can tell you that to see a man vulnerable is, at first, a scary thing.
it is scary in a way that is unnerving, unfamiliar, disruptive.
and that is on me.

the intensity of having someone be completely authentic
is unsettling because it forces acknowledgement of this truth:
in order for us to tolerate imperfection and vulnerability in other people,
we have to be able to accept what is imperfect in ourselves.

the human condition

"The human condition and social condition change.
What is the fundamental principle of the new testament?
It is one of universal love!
Loving your fellow man.
And if we get obsessed with a particular definition of that through a form of sexuality,
 then i think we're missing the centrality of what the gospel -
whether you call it a social gospel or personal gospel or a spiritual gospel - is all about.
Therefore, I go back to my question:
If you think homosexuality is an unnatural condition, then frankly, I cannot agree with you
based on any element of the signs.
And therefore if a person's sexuality is as they are made, you got to ask the second question:
Should therefore their loving relationships be legally recognized?
And the conclusion I've reached is, They should!

Before returning to the prime ministership, I wrote an essay and put it on the Internet
so everyone would know why I changed my position, the reasons for it
and it was the product of some many, many months and years of reflection.
In good Christian conscience.

--Kevin Rudd,
Australia's prime minister

the invitation

it doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. 

i want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, 

if you have been opened by life’s betrayals 

or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. 

i want to know if you can sit with pain, 

mine or your own, 

without moving 

to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

there but by grace go I

I was awoken at 1:30am by four fire trucks and three ambulances surrounding my apartment. I live on a corner with lovely east and south facing windows.
A true selling point of this apartment when I first saw it.  These windows could be mine, I thought.

I also sleep with them open as much as I can. The fire trucks basically were inside my apartment.

Flying down the stairs, I see that the building four down from me is on fire.
Smoke.
Flames.
Fear.
It all mixed into that cool air that reminds you summer is already on its way out despite it being August for two more days.

I was kind of immobilized.  Dramatic?
Do I leave my apartment?
Will this fire spread as fires in walls do and especially when home are connected in beautiful parts of this city of Philadelphia?
Oh, how fires are at the top of my list of SCARY THINGS.

Is the 4th street curse something real?
As I google furiously, I notice that firefighters had already battled a blaze earlier today within the same block vicinity.  In April, the firefighter chief tragically died in a fire that quickly licked up a fabric store and three adjoining apartments.

I went from window to window for a long time in the wee morning hours.  Watching these brave men hurry, yet methodically, to save.  Despite the loss they endured in April, they are here.  And willingly so.

I text my friend, Joy, in San Francisco, thinking this is the only time this damned three hour difference will ever come in handy.
I also flashback to 2009 when she had to literally live this nightmare.

I say, "Firefighters are kind of amazing people."

She says, "They are. They saved Cricket."

And they did.

I lay awake for most of the rest of the morning - dozing in and out of sleep - watching the lights from all of the care vehicles bounce all over the walls and ceiling.

There but by grace go I....

EXACTLY THIS.

There will be men who hurt you. 
And there will be men who make a fool of you. 
And the second is somehow far worse than the first. 
Because it is disrespectful and unkind and stitched together by small, selfish lies. 
These men—the ones that take you for a fool—these are the men more concerned with being seen as the good guy, thanactually being the good guy. 
These are the men who worship at the altar of cool and casual and isn’t-this-fun. 
The men who lack courage. 
Who say they are fearless when fear is their motivating factor.


megfee.com

The story of "Keep Calm and Carry On"

I actually couldn't be more irritated by this meme.
(An aside: Does ANYONE know how to pronounce that word?)
I hate the way it blew up and almost instantaneously became lame.
And then when I watched the story of its origin, I got even more bummed about how it got carried away.
Regardless.  I'm a sucker for anything World War II related.

http://www.wimp.com/keepcalm/

Also, I would very much like to visit Barter Books in the northeast corner of England, as a matter of fact.

pieces

“You will never be completely at home again, 

because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. 

That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” 

—Miriam Adeney

You.

My wounds are no longer fresh. 

But I can still look at you and think:

 ‘you are the worst person who ever happened to me. no one else has ever treated me as badly as you did.’

Push on

“Please know there are much better things in life

than being lonely or liked or bitter or mean or self-conscious. 

We are all full of shit. 

Go love someone just because; 

I know your heart may be badly bruised, or even the victim of numerous knifings, 

but it will always heal, even if you don’t want it to; it keeps going. 

There are the most fantastic, beautiful things and people out there, I promise. 

It is up to you to find them.” 

—Chuck Palahniuk 

Movement and loss

letting go

movement

I'm currently sitting on my couch surrounded by boxes and blank walls.

It's been over two years.  It still feels like yesterday.

I'm moving a week from today.  It will be my sixth apartment in nine years in Philadelphia. I am alone.

I came into this current space fractured, injured, depleted and hopeless.  Some days, I still feel like that.  I came into this space a haunting of myself because someone who had promised to stay......didn't.  And he never explained.  And he never looked me in the eyes when he said, "I don't love you anymore.  And I've felt that way for a while". 

(I imagine the 90 pounds while soaking wet fake blonde with horse teeth girl from work that's "so cool!" helped that feeling along when god knows what happened in some gross suite in AC where he went a half hour after dropping me off from a medical procedure that involved three nerve blocks and an inability to walk.  No, really. I had to crawl to bed.  I digress.....)

My therapist says this space is full of wounded-ness.  I don't know that that's a word.  But it's true. Sort of.

She says that a new space will promote movement.  It will be a freedom to exist and grow as it won't be constricted.

To that I say, "You ever notice how a space filled with something sometimes feels better than  a space filled with nothing?".

I hid here. I cried here. I stared at the wall for hours here. I had my first ever panic attacks here.  I gained too much weight here.  I started antidepressants here.  I stared into the trees that touched my bedroom windows here.  I was/am alone here. A lot.

I'm scared to leave. I'm sad to leave.

Everything changes. Everyone leaves.

Never have I known that to be true more than I know it in the last two years.

I'm angry a lot. I'm sad a lot.

I don't know how to engage movement.  Movement feels like loss. Always.  

I understand that there stands something to be gained from loss.  There is opportunity within it.

But, I'm really, really tired of feeling loss.

My heart is really empty.  I miss belonging to someone or to someones.  I miss not having friends who became family be a few blocks away.  I miss the little girl of my best friend who I loved and loved me. Loved me plain and simple and pure.  I miss another best friend whose mind is so similar to mine that I feel he's a long lost sibling.  I miss family members that were best friends but who chose a different allegiance.  I miss the time when I believed people tried to really be the best they could be and didn't look into your eyes and tell you they loved you when they didn't.  

Maybe I never believed that.

In a week, I move seven blocks east and six blocks south.  A twenty minute walk. A neighborhood I don't know.  Further isolation in a city where I already feel really alone.

Movement.

I want to stay.

Believing in....

“You have always approached everything terribly trustfully. 

You have wanted to pet every monster.” 

—Friedrich Nietzsche 

concrete.

to be loved

“Let someone love you just the way you are – 
 as flawed as you might be, 
 as unattractive as you sometimes feel, 
 and as unaccomplished as you think you are. 
 To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, 
 out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, 
 is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark       room.” 



 —Marc Hack

heart/home

life and death

when the one i wanted, did not want me.

I was almost rabid

for love.

Would’ve lunged at any thing

thrown my way

carcass, shadow, memory, promise

shell of a man.

I thought it was better

to be loved by a dead thing

than to be left alone.

Then I loved a dead thing 

and was completely alone.

warsanshire.tumblr.com

Distress tolerance

"Sometimes I'm walking along the street and a shaft of sunlight falls in a certain way across the pavement and I just wanna cry. And then a second later, it's over. I decide because I'm an adult, to not succumb to the momentary melancholy; And I thought that sometimes with my niece, she just had a moment like that. A moment of not knowing how or why, and she just let herself go into the feeling and there was nothing anyone could do to make it any better. It was just her and the fact of being alive, colliding."


Margot-Take this Waltz

Valentimes.

you learn how to love, by loving yourself. 
because some days it comes easily, and some days its much harder than it should be. 
you learn that love is patience. 
and overwhelming kindness. 
that love is acceptance and forgiveness and the strength to try again tomorrow. 
and if you can't love yourself in that way that is whole and broken and completely exhausting, 
then you have no hope at ever loving another living soul.






-Sharlyn Emily

shifting

“Close some doors. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.” 

—Paulo Coehlo 

Faded intimacy.

I am the bobby pins you find in corners of your room that seemed empty and clean yesterday.

I am the color of the walls in your bathroom with uneven strokes and gaps of white. I am the lavender.

I am the dent on the right hand side of your mattress whose dip cannot be undone after four years.

I am the rickety glass table we got from Ikea and put together and had dinners at when I would actually cook.

I am the the deleted pictures of us from the picture frame still likely displayed in the living room.

I am the faint stain on the underside of the middle cushion of your couch that came from a from the perfect first date story.

I am seltzer and ice cream and half eaten chocolates and gin and Keurig coffee and five different kinds of cereal and Awake Tazo tea.

I am the way I folded your shirts and paired up your socks.

I am the reason your Netflix still recommends psychological dramas and stupid romantic comedies.

I am the ice cream maker, the mixer, the glass fish bottle openers from Mexico that still sit in your cabinets.

I am all of the groceries and dates I paid for this time two years ago.  And I am your monthly condo association fees your are now paying in full at the condo you still live in.

I am the puppy store by the Target.

I am Target and Ikea and Best Buy.

I am the drive into the suburbs.  

I am the doctor's office on Broad Street right before City Hall.

I am the made up songs and dances to words about you.

I am the next apartment you'll live in that actually has windows in the bedroom.

I am the scent of vanilla and Hanae Mori.

I am Prohibition and Lagunitas.

I am the half uneaten french fries you didn't finish on your plate.

I am the chair beside your mom  and the conversation she is having about her sadness and pain and misery.

I am the sheets on your bed and the bathmat and the towels you still use.

I am the mounain of snow for tubing at different resorts in NY and PA.

I am the hug from behind. The emptiness of your lap.

I am just someone your next girlfriend will be better than.

I am the bobby pins.







adapted from the thought catalog

Loss

The love.

Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become, to become the kind of love I want to be…….and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.

Narrative

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.”

 —Anne Lamott 

Underneath

“People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”

Huh.

Demand A Plan

I refuse to write about Sandy Hook.  I refuse to write about the blame, the sorrow, the need for compassion, the argument around the placement of religion.  I refuse to make this tragedy about me in the sense that I wax poetic in a way that soothes only my narcissistic wounds.  Because that's what all the posts I have read on personal blogs have been.  Writing from this perspective does not feel authentic or purposeful.  Then again, I can't instruct others how to conduct their personal blogs.

But here's what I'm doing on mine:

Head over to Demandaplan.org and start making your voice heard.  Be the advocate and change agent to those who are suffering firsthand from their loss and may not have the strength to do it themselves at this point in time.

Sign the petition.

Then, draft your letter to President Obama and Congress and tell them why you want more sensible and appropriate gun laws.  They take care of all the rest.  All you have to do is wax poetic.....only hopefully with some sense of outcome at the end of it.

Here is my letter:

Dear Sen. Robert Casey, Sen. Patrick Toomey, Rep. Robert Brady, and President Barack Obama:

I support Common Sense Legislation to End Gun Violence because we all deserve to feel as safe as we possibly can in this country. As a clinical social worker in the particularly violent city of Philadelphia, I interact daily with individuals who have been affected by gun violence. Everyday, I work to help people heal from posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, paranoia and overall fear. I have committed my life to working with those individuals in our communities who are downtrodden, under-educated, underprivileged and simply surviving. I am doing my part to ensure that these individuals learn the skills to ensure their right to live, rather than to survive. Help me by doing your part to decrease access to weapons. To create another barrier for those that are too entrenched in a culture of desperation and hopelessness as I work to do my job.