Thursday Morning Reflections

My body was stiffened in the night.
It could not quiet.
I felt like my very marrow was freezing.
The dog Doumba nestled in my stomach.

If the dog is cold...

I woke up in the morning
grateful that the ice in my blood has halted
and in the freezing of the night
I had been inert in this devastating weight of isolation.

It's time to invent
build
and create.

I'm bent on finding myself again
in the midst of this chaos.









I received calls after calls last night.
I was happy to be connected.
I'm so scared of loneliness.
Even as I acknowledge needing it.

I realize, however, the knowledge I get from reflecting with my friends -
In their need, I see my need.
I understand their wants.
And I can see what they're all hiding.
It all boils down to being wanted.
And we are all skipping the Appreciation step
to get to Integrity, yes, Decker.

The ways in which we protect ourselves, including pushing away what we want the most.
To be closer with others, to be Seen exactly as who we are, without judgment, shame, - to be accepted as individuals and as creatures who are of our own - one universal being.

How much of it that I do, even in minutely different ways. But they're all subtle, the ways in which we are different, are we not? On the grand scale of things.

I'm grateful to have so many mirrors.




My head spins. I need to vomit.
The cold has bit me hard.
I haven't felt like this - since before Christmas when I accidentally, unintentionally took acid.

I start up my longing - it is comforting, familiar. It nestles me in which my mother never has, and although it doesn't nourish me, the fantasy of it sustains me - for now.

Without my imagination, I am ordinary.
I breathe, I sustain, I am another figure on the street.
In my mind, I am a creature both powerful and tragically beautiful.
My emotions are my weapons
and All will hear it
All will understand
and the self-importance of my said emotions
will Impact impact impact...

How ridiculous is that?

I'm just okay with you laughing at my silliness.
I am so grateful for the loves in my life to hold space for me.
Here I go.




Reflections on this moment, this month, this year:

I quit my desk job. No regrets here.
I celebrate my 24th birthday with loving amazing chosen family.
I find myself unemployed.
I start an uneasy relationship with Job Hunting.
I become an occasional vagabond in the city.
I develop a quiet, nearly unacknowledged love for this Southern Gentleman.
I become closer to a woman who knows my heart and speaks my tongue.
With her, I get clear on who I am and what I want: that I am a Romantic inspired by relationships of all kinds (and especially the Intimate ones), I should not be ashamed of said Romanticism, and in the realm of my Intimate Relationships, I only want ONE to sustain me, to drive deeper with, to sit and be with despite all the turmoil of potential mundane ordinariness... I believe I can find the romanticism in that (note Harryette Mullen story - mundane turned gorgeous).
My mom and I have a fight. I didn't cry. I just realize that I didn't want to pretend that I'm okay with the message she continuously gives me: I don't want you, have never wanted you.
I leave home. Now I am a true vagabond.
In reflection, I cry in coffee shops: All my life, I have come to you with my heart, telling you that I am your daughter. Never could you receive that; you can only reflect that you can't be my mother. I am going to take my heart elsewhere - for myself. I refuse to repeat the actions of five-year-old Cindy.
In my sadness, I feel closer to Southern Gentleman. I believe we start the relating cycle in which we connect in our vulnerability. I love this, and fear my volatility (which is my word of the month, apparently).
In the midst of my heart opening, jealousy attacked, then acknowledged, and we sink into deeper vulnerability.
I audition to join a group of my friends. Community, my ass. I am angry that I have to audition. I am Enough, and if you need me to jump hoops, you are not worthy of Me.
I take my Southern Gentleman to the airport, and sitting in the passenger drop-off zone, he kisses me tenderly and tells me that he'll miss me.
We mention letter-writing, so I wait.
I get stranded on the mountain at this house we fondly call Beloit. My immobility causes a fear in me - my fear of stagnancy becomes loud and evident.
I go shopping with McD and unexpectedly started tripping on a psychedelic. I had accidentally taken a friend's pill in the morning, thinking it was an Altoid. The only bad part of this trip was that it was unintentional.
Finally, my Lover comes home from New York. I know what to say to him. We parted ways. Now he is simply dear to me, even when he drives me angry.
I go in for my yearly check-up. I am traumatized by my yearly check-ups. Especially in a Planned Parenthood clinic surrounded by teenage couples asking for condoms. There's a layer of humiliation here.
"Community" cannot extend to me, but out of its ashes, we create Treehouse. I am closer to being Myself and with Family, I hope.
I continue to be closer to Lady Loom. She makes me feel like I am okay to be Me. And I am less alone.
My body is wrecked with Tension. My Big Brother named it as I was driving. Tears rolled down my face when he acknowledged that I am experiencing Trauma. I am Surviving on the edge - in one month, I had lost my job, my blood family, a physical home. I barely have money, I feel resistance around asking to sleep on people's couches, and I have to learn how to ask for help - when I had pretended to be strong all of my life. Strong and not needing help.
Christmas greets me. I feel the loss of my family, but I had a chosen family of friends, and we delighted ourselves in getting closer. Even if it meant that my resentment, jealousy, and anger came up. But embracing that was appreciation, curiosity, and a lot of love.
I learn that my trust has been crossed. I had been violated by my Ex-Lover. I confront him, and learn that he is one of the few people that I trust so much with my vulnerability. That is hard to find. I sobbed in his arms because of his wounding, and all of the wounding that has been done to me. This month has been harsh.
Lady Loom and DK break up. I hear their sadness, their stories.
I begin understanding the prisms of their relationship. Loom asks me to mediate.
I see their triggers, the pain. I move in to mirror my understanding.
They return to each other. I am assured a place in their wedding.
My Southern Gentleman calls me. I had been in Waiting (which had evolved to panic/frenzy/little bits of negative resignation) and was happy and overjoyed to hear him, in all of our awkwardness.
I'm waiting for the New Year. I am enjoying my growing pains.


This year:
I take Bryan on as a lover. With him, I explore jealousy in a polygamous relationship.
I grow distant from my college friends.
I learn a lot from community; lots of self-growth.
Revelations upon revelations.
I start letting go my attachments to my old emotions.
I let go of attachments of my Personality, including my role in theatre, writing, and self-expected sustainability.
I continuously get self-renewed. Flowing quicker.
I get clear on what I want in relationships.
I am a year older.

I love/am impacted by people this year:
Michael Mojica
Arjang Taiby
Elizabeth Loomis
Daniel Kendall
Bryan Bayer
Oanh Thanh
Michael McDonald
Dalton K. Finney
Maria Chiang
Derek Pankaew
Keli McArthur
Breann Petree
Lucy Beckwith
Charlotte Gulezian
Rachel Mayes
Drew Schober
ASF Family
and of course, My Birth Family

Favorite Harryette

Resonating light.




The Gene for Music
by Harryette Mullen

He wants to know if I am happy here and have I eaten any apples yet. I tell him no, I like to let them fall off the trees and rot. They won't turn red and the ones I like to eat are red, but these sweeten the air with their decay. They are eaten. They are never wasted. They have their use, when they fall, never far from proverbial tree. Yellow apples falling with brown leaves more slowly onto grass that's greener than ever. Green in winter, tawner in summer. Don't burn. Consume yourself more slowly.

Right now the ground is damp and marshy. In summer there were many fires. Some started maliciously, others were spontaneous. Apple trees are here but he's not sure they belong. He dreams of rice growing where they are, a hilarious dream. The blood of agrarian ancestors does him no good. Some of his favorite trees are books. Besides, if he grew rice, which anyone knows he'd never do, where would the squirrels live? The black one was the aggressor, chasing tail. She flicked her tail in his face.

Squirrels multiply on his tree-filled acres. The sky is clear blue. A cloudless sky with two airplanes flying at different angles. Each is given a line, a path to fly in. The pilots communicate with someone on the ground. They all communicate with precise machines that very rarely make a fatal error. The ground is damp and moldy and a fire not likely to start int he air this time of year. Spontaneous combustion, midair collision. Try not to burn. Try not to alarm. The phone rang but she didn't answer it. Later he will ask her where she went and she will say, "To the laundromat or the library, I forget which." He might seem hurt but his honesty will prevail and he'll become earnest and blunt. That's when he starts to smoke. He'll want to get to the bottom of it, clear the air, work it through. At times like these he's most endearing and yet she'll have no place to hide because the house has no walls.

He can see her from another room. He likes to whisper at her while a record is playing. That's how cool he can be. He'll ask which books she's been reading. She could give him a list and we could discuss them later. We could gossip about books, which was one of his favorite activities. He didn't want to forbid her singing in the bathtub, but she would notice that he flinched a little, so she tried not to do it when he was around. She had not inherited the gene for music, just as his blood had distinguished itself from the red stuff of his ancestors. At all times he tried to indulge her, having heard the story of her austere childhood. She in turn would try to soothe and distract him from the score of abandonments that caused him such pain when remembered. They both had violent histories but longed to live in peace and so it was a pact sealed in blood, a sweetheart contract in which there were provisions for each to get the upper hand. Even though she bled every month, she always had someone to blame; while he noted that each time he touched her, her body was there, which had not always been the case with her predecessors.

She listened to his lists and made her own in secret. A grocery list was necessary because he avoided buying food, preferring to spend cash on inessentials because they bought more satisfaction. "But you," he told her, "are impossible to satisfy because you never seem to want, except to sleep and eat." She lives in his house like a sleepy cat though once he joked he might pay to keep her here, because even a woman with no wants must have money to supply her needs.

He never seems to sleep or eat but lives on a mysterious energy source, adapted for life on her planet. That's why she can't laugh at her jokes, because humor is local. He was born far away but feels at home. Or he was born close to home but feels far from there now. Nothing touches him now except her hands, her mouth. He touches her hair. Her wet hair. He makes her a gift of his solitude. Solitude is something she misses. He takes hers with him when he leaves. She goes out on short walks, looking at sidewalks. He takes her to mountains and deserts. He seeks out old trees. They walk until she's out of breath. "Chill," he says, and she feels cold, suddenly noticing the air.

Survivor's Edge

This morning I poured soy milk into my granola and immediately noticed the clumping nature. I threw the bowl out, and noticed a pain. It's that same tension I get when a friend suggests that we go out for a meal. It occurs as panic. I calculate. I'm feeling guilt. Wasting. I'm living on an edge, and that edge is called Survival. It's painful, and it's real, and it was more intense when I couldn't name it, didn't know what the pain was that I felt when it came to spending money and eating. It was hidden under my gratitude, that the given moment included being supported by friends who are there for me emotionally, that I can sleep warmly every night, that I can get a hot shower and a space to process. When that pain was named, that I was living on the survivor's edge of coping, that energy moved. And I am still grateful, hopeful, wanting without limits.

Stop waiting. Feel everything. Love achingly. Give impeccably. Let go.

David Deida

The Breadth of this 24th Year Thus Far on This 24th

I am in Shadow Land.




The eclipse was hanging. Tied to a string, tied to the black ceiling. Hanging with the racing fog marooned over San Francisco. I was hanging with the eclipse. My skin got dewy and I blinked back some. Coming back to my body, I felt shame for not hanging in his atmosphere. But have I ever? Does he even noticed that I like playing with the stars - or can I notice him? Over the bridge, we sit in terse silence. He asked knowingly, "do you have a withhold for me?" I replied, "yes." Later, I laid across the bed to watch him undress for the last time. His skin was cold under the duvet. His body vibrated, from cold, from anticipation, I'm not sure. But as he turned his face to me, I felt a projected sadness for him. But I had pushed that sadness down, deep. I don't truly anticipate true sadness from him. I gave him my withhold, that I am wanting something More, something that he can't provide. I wanted to take away our name Lovers, and the chapter holding our lovership came to a close. He told me that he was sad. He told me that he mourned our sexual relationship. I tried to feel him, the mourning, the disappointment, and especially the jealousy that he has for my future love. But I couldn't feel anything that originated from Me.




She assured me that my cervix bleeding can be normal during a pap smear. Her attempt at reassurance made me glance down, and my head spun at the sight of all that red.




Joni Mitchell's River

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

Her voice was thick with mourning. She asked a disheartening question. I had no answers.




You know where I am?
I am in the indigo particles of the rainbow.
Trembling, I colored cautiously on his canvas. Then waited.
Waited.
Still waiting.
That excitement of back and forth, giddy whirlwind of school childish love - crushes - object of affection (or obsession), you know... - has simmered to pure anxiety.
I feel silly, foolish.
That's the problem with running around with your heart cupped in your hands, palms up. It's bound to get dropped, mushed, stabbed, kicked, and other excursions of heart pain.
They never said that vulnerability is a pretty sight.
But it's pretty damn beautiful.




We leapt away from the breaking glass. Later I tiptoed through the shards.




One morning, she readied for a day of Christmas shopping. Upon her friend Michael's arrival for the outing, she quickened her pace: hair-brushing, lotion rubbing, mint in mouth, socks before shoes. Hey, she's a girl. They got in Michael's car, drove to the spirits store, parked the car, found the bottle of liqueur Michael was eyeing for his dad, purchased it, got back in the car, drove to the annual crafts fair in the South of Market area, parked. Inside the exhibition center, she was in awe of the artistry and creativity of the work on display. They spoke to different places of her, leapt out at her even. She never thought she'd have the experience of art leaping out at her... Suddenly she felt a lurch in her stomach and her head spins. I must not be taking very good care of myself, she thought. She wondered if sitting down and getting a bite to eat would help with the dizzying sensations. She spoke aloud, almost unconsciously, "I need to feel my feet." Michael, who was preoccupied with his Christmas list, shot her a look of confusion. "That's a weird thing to say, even coming from you," he observed. His comment stopped her dead in her tracks. The mint she ate that morning wasn't MINTY. Story to be continued...

Risk of Birth Defects

Paranoia is the unwarranted fear that people are out to get you.

My Birthday

Word of the Day for Sunday, November 28, 2010

namaste \NUHM-uh-stey\, noun:

1. A conventional Hindu expression on meeting or parting, used by the speaker usually while holding the palms together vertically in front of the bosom.
2. A conventional Hindu expression on meeting or parting, frequently a part of yoga practice.

Before my Birthday...

I want:
- a haircut + a wax
- my disc drive on my laptop to get fixed
- to have a Victorian photoshoot on Alcatraz with Keli and Dalton (story board to be posted soon); ***new as of 11/18/10: Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice through image and music; more concrete storyboarding soon***
- to create/launch my photo website; ***Derek says he'll help!***
- a job in the city/East Bay; ***new as of 11/20/10: I got a job!***
- a home with my chosen family

For my birthday, I want:
- FRIENDS FRIENDS FRIENDS - my friends, lovers, and friendlies to celebrate ME
- experience lots of overwhelming, emotional ART
- to go ice skating downtown San Francisco; ***new as of 11/20/10: meet in Union Square at noon!
- actually BE in a photoshoot with all of my friends (and my cats)
- eat curry or soup
- play games (i.e. Dominion with Decker)
- to get loved up by/with my best friends by a fireplace underneath layers of blankets with hot drinks; ***at Beloit!***

November 28th Babies - I share my birthday with William Blake and Jon Stewart!

Black Friday shopping:
- phone accessories: cover, screen protector, car charger
- boots (don't really need these... just WANT)
- finger accessories

To be continued!

A Poem by Oriah

Bringing light to my own relationship with my mother - and my breasts.

My Breasts

My breasts
are my mother's breasts
sagging, stretched, flattened
large brown-pink nipples
flecked with small dots
like the tiny bumps on the uncooked turkey
where feather quills have been removed.
The areola is edged with thin blue veins
and sometimes sprouts wiry hairs
to be plucked.

At nine years old
I walk into the bathroom
filled with warm steam
and the scent of Chantilly Lace talcum powder
and look away quickly
when my eyes touch my mother's breasts
as she bends over to dry her feet.
But she catches me
and answers my look
with a slash of her voice.
"Yes, this is what you did to me-
you and your brother.
My breasts got smaller with each of you.
Good thing I didn't nurse or I'd have
nothing left."

Year later I’ll realize it’s not
the size that is mourned
but the smooth firmness
and the delicate shell pink
of unstretched nipples
reaching up to meet the world.

At nine, I look down at my blue sneakers
ashamed at the ugliness of life
and wonder what she feels she has left
for herself.

She tells me how she refused to nurse
repeating the story
of the woman next to her in the maternity ward.
The nurse yelled at the woman for
eating too much fruit,
said it had caused her nursing baby's bottom
to turn red and raw.
I have heard this story so often I can see it:
the nurse in starched white reliable efficiency
indignantly removing the offending fruit basket;
the woman in her pink bathrobe
indulgently lying in bed
her face stricken with shame at her gluttony;
the baby, its bottom like raw meat
wailing in agony.
There is a fierceness in my mother
as she tells the story and adds,
"Who needed that!
You had to watch everything you ate
couldn't go anywhere."

I wonder where she wanted to go.

I wonder how so many untruths
so much shame
could be sown and cultivated so quickly
and so strongly
that a whole generation of women
stopped the impulse of millennia
to suckle their babies.

Her doctor, she tells me, was old-fashioned
and angry at her decision.
Asked her what she thought those things were for,
anyway - putting under sweaters?
I see her in the red matching sweater set as she tells
me proudly how she held to her choice.
It must have taken great courage
at nineteen
alone in his office
to defy the absolute authority
of God the Father, the Doctor.

When two hard bumps appear on my chest
like traitors in our midst
I say nothing
until she accuses me
of stuffing the front pockets
of my peach-coloured blouse
with Kleenex.
Ignoring my denials
she rams a hand
into the offending pocket
and opens her eyes in surprise
as I wince in pain
and she finds
no tissue.

The bumps grow,
never large
but round enough
to bring forth my Grandmother's
declaration that those of us
without bras
or girdles
or corsets
or stockings
are all "bouncing around like cows."
I never saw my grandmother's breasts
behind their cages
of linen and wire
and do not dare to
imagine them
even now.

Not too much later
on a warm summer night
parked by the lakeshore
in an old Dodge Dart
the boy whose kisses
were improving with
practice
moves his fingers tentatively
across the soft cotton of my
halter top
lightly brushing my nipples.
Bolts of electric blue
flash through me
making my back arch
and my legs tense
and my mouth ravenous on his.
My response is so explosive
he jumps
and, with one sleeve caught
on the gear shift between us,
somehow gets the other
wrapped in the steering wheel
sending a loud long blast of the horn
out over the lake.
Angry cries erupt from
others parked in nearby cars.
And I laugh and laugh from the centre
of my soft belly
until my sides ache
at our awkward innocence
and at the discovery
of the delicious and frightening desire that
pours through my limbs
from these small breasts.

A year later I arrive,
a girl from the bush of the north
in the big dark city.
I walk from the bus terminal
to my small rented room
with my back pack
long hair loose down my back
dressed in my blue jeans
and a white T-shirt
over unfettered breasts.
A man passes
stares at my chest
and speaks loudly,
"What kind of girl are you to be walking
around like that?"
I cross my arm over my breasts and feel
the crimson heat of shame.

Years later
my breasts grow with milk
straining, filling
firm and dripping
for the hungry mouths of my sons
each in his turn
drawing his life
greedily from me
with small sighs
and moans
of exquisite contentment
at all hours of day and night.
At times I sleep for an hour
trying desperately to fill myself
and awake to his cry
of hunger
or loneliness
or fear
and offering my breast
watch as he
sucks that one hour of rest
from my body
leaving me empty
and struggling to stand again.
I never regretted it
though my body struggled
and fevers raged in aching limbs.
I wanted to offer the best of what I had
for their beginnings
unsure of what wisdom I had to give
in the on-going journey.
I smiled
even at 3 a.m.
when one of them
finally finished,
stretched, arching his back
and wrinkling his velvet brow
sighed
and lay his pink cheek
shiny wet from the sweet milk
against my breast
hoping
as we all do
to sleep and dream
connected to the source of peace
and contentment.

My mother
came
and saw
and left.

Years later,
my sons half grown
and my breasts half shrunk like
those I saw on my mother
in the bathroom years ago,
a would-be lover
at a workshop on spiritual sexuality
suggests a little plastic surgery
might move me
closer to the image of the Goddess
I want to learn to embody
in the sacredness of my female form.
Closer to the image of the Goddess he is seeking,
more likely.
I move away from him
but the idea is planted
and I roll it around
like a marble in the mouth.
I collect a little information:
the costs
the risks
the options.
But only one bit sticks:
there is a loss of sensation in the nipple with implants
and a touch
a kiss
or a well-placed tongue
can still send waves of light
through my limbs
though rarely so strongly
as in the Dodge Dart
and never so unanticipated.
I will not surrender this small pleasure.

I have no daughter
in whom to leave
these stories of the breast.
Perhaps it is just as well.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 1995

My Capacity for Humanity

"What made them vulnerable made them beautiful."

Community Trials

Integrity. They talk about integrity in the community, but how is it being practiced? What is integrity if one of the rules in the Game of Intimacy is "Do What You Want" - what if there isn't enough communication? What if no one is taking accountability? If doing what you want involves hurting another individual, the sub-rule to that has to be a commitment to holding a container for that hurt, or must we be one-upping each other round after round of increasing vulnerability and left-hook pain?

This is how I feel about the promiscuity in this community. Enough is not being said, and it does not feel safe. I may be projecting because I am dating within the community. But I am trying to be as honest and open about my relationships as much as I can. And still - I don't feel safe. I don't feel like sharing partners within the community is safe. I project my shame on that, and the disrespect that I have for others is actually a disrespect for myself. I imagine the perfect unity of our Utopian Family is constant communication, openness, growing to be closer, not having open-ended hurt that splits people into chasms, cliques - and the practice of this Game of Intimacy without accountability is incredibly Unreal.

If we are to play this game, we need to play it at full-speed. Half-assing just isn't enough.

Serving the Sleepless

"My heart's overflowing with you."

Nina, Chekhov's Seagull

Cherished.

I love you - lots - so much.

#$^%$#&^

I am so incredibly angry.

I feel so wronged. But I can't say anything!!

Music for my Heart

Feel good:

Jonsi - Go Do
Gaudi - Sufani
Gaudi - Hotel Caledonia

Soooo good.

Mi Familia

(To B)

Yesterday my mom left.

We kind of knew that she would for some time. Growing up, she'd take leave of absence from family life for weeks, a month, several months. She'd want time for herself and come back with a fixed nose, a face lift, liposuction, some kind of cosmetic procedural addiction - and she'd come back seemingly more confident, more able to take a grasp on what is Us. I think this time around is eye laser surgery. Whatever she needs, I assure myself.

She was gone when I got home from work yesterday evening, and there was this part in my stomach that felt still. Replacing it was this stiffening in my lower back. When my mom is absent, I slip into a bigger mother role than I usually take. I take careful measure of what my brothers are eating, usually just by asking what they need or want. I fill in a joy of doing work around the house and being in their presence much more without my mom around. Whenever she leaves like this, we get closer. I remember when I was in the 10th grade, my mom left for several months. Every night, we'd climb into her queen size bed and slept together, holding each other. Those memories stand out really clearly for me.

Tonight, my brothers and I hung out in my brothers' room, and the youngest one taught me how to do circular breathing (I thought of you). This morning, the older one confided in me his concerns regarding Anthony's obvious ventures in internet pornography. We take chores more seriously, fulfilling responsibilities because we want to, not because they are obligations. I noticed something we never would do with my mom around. Before going to class, I ran upstairs to shower, and asked Tom, can you load out the dishwasher so I can empty the sink? His quick and attentive reply, Sure! One, he'd usually ignore such requests. Two, if I were to do that within my mom's hearing, she'd tell me that I was lazy and too reliant about duties that should only belong to me. She'd never let my brothers touch kitchen chores. She believes that belongs to the woman.

I know that my brothers and I all have this tightening around our spines. The anxiety of taking care of ourselves without the regiment of my mom's strict supervision. In some ways, I try to ease it, but I also really enjoy the way that they - and I - hold ourselves without being regimented constantly. It feels like we're empowered, and we don't take the responsibility lightly.

Just now - I remember one contributing factor to my emotional turmoil last winter before moving home. My mom had just lost her job. One day after her last day at work, she left for several months, missing my birthday and several holidays, narrowly missing Christmas. I was already floundering at that point - in the 8th show of my 12-show high-stress phase, abusing substances, feeling vulnerable and isolated, sleeping with a guy who made me feel ashamed about sleeping with him. During that time, I'd come home every other day, driving from the city. I'd make sure the refrigerator was stocked, checked if their schedules were okay for Tom to pick up Anthony from school or practice, just constantly checking, worried and unworried at the same time. One night, Tom called me to tell me he got into a car accident driving from a game in Davis - at 2am. I asked who was home with Anthony, and he said no one. It was just utter terror for me. Wanting to drive to Tom, who was actually fully capable of getting home, just shaken. And driving to Los Gatos to check in on Anthony who was either up doing homework or talking to his girlfriend, or deeply asleep. It was actually more terrifying than when we were children and I was driving without a license to get them to school every morning, and managing the funds that my mom had left at home.

I still wonder why I can't resent my mom.

Anyways. I raced home tonight to make sure that they're okay. I know that they're fully capable, and still I worry, I have a mother's worry. And yet I maintain my sister relationship in relating to them, it's what I hope for. It's strange to be proud and sad about this attachment that I have to my family. I think I'll be torn apart when/if a sharp separation needs to happen. I have a defined purpose here. That can't be enough.

I'm sorry that this is just pouring out. I imagine that you get exasperated when I talk about family matters, especially my bullshit. It's touchy for everyone.

Trying to enjoy my mom's absence. :)

Love you,
Cindy

2000 VW Golf

Your golden car looks like rusting vomit.
You show me your displeasure when I say this.
Shrugging, I never know that you didn't like this.
"I grimace! Like this!" He shows me.
I tell him,
Where I come from, grimaces are an expression of acceptance.
He countered with something about the Vietnamese.
I forget sometimes that people see me as ethnically different.
I don't see it.
When I said,
'Where I come from...'
I meant a place in myself.

My Favorite Season

The fluttering V's swimming south in the greying haze above the reddening oranges of tapered leaves obscuring the vision of my words making themselves seen in the chill that is the air blanketing a world gasping its final breaths as we find ourselves in the dying of autumn.

Impact on Tracks

They were dropped off by the last train running through town.
He told me he slept on tracks and needed some food.
At first I was abrasive. We deal with these people in the city.
He called me, "amigo." A couple of things wrong here.
But my heart said 'yes,' and I gave him my bridge toll money.
He softened, and in that moment, I got his world.
We exchanged words, and then I drove off.

Watch videos here.

The Encounter

I discover myself through Thou
and Thou discovers through I

Tonight, it will turn dark - and I accept this.

To North Berkeley

The rear view mirror reflected headlight shades across his eyes. As he entertained our backseat passengers, my heart swelled. I chose to be with this, this closeness. We are family, and I can feel the familiarity that is he, because he and I are we.

To Breann

Your slow, shy smile
spreading its way
to the ships that sail
to the depths of your heart
as he stood there radiating
about your Love together.

The Unquiet Awakening

Of what avail is an open eye,
if the heart is blind?

For more context: Daniel Kendall's blog

the ashes came in clouds -
they fell like snow
all about this infant planet
filled with illuminated creatures
searching for a light
that would meet it
at its fervent intensity

The cold of the stream took over my body's flow; I was washed over, rising with its swelling, sinking as it pulled itself closer to its pebbly underbelly. When the body of water and mine became in sync, I woke up to the amazement of feeling: it was as if I had returned to the familiarity of the womb of my mother's, of my own! The beauty of the surrounding energy greeted as I flowed downstream. The earthy dirt, and fair-faced trees, and aged stones all spoke, and tears began forming at my heart, curdling at something close to Awe. When my heart felt full of this - this nurtured knowing that I no longer fear Loving as fully as I want to love and a capability to be without expectation or resentment, I became open - and the tears released into the Mother-body that holds me. I no longer had control, I no longer expected self-worth - only this soft knowing of universal connectedness leading me to a love of all persons, beings, fantasies, words. It lead me to my tenderness, the child-like grief; she resides gently in me. And within that, a joy of all heaviness, lightness, unfeeling, explosions of want, jealousy, anger, sweetness - my heart felt it all, and I felt the radiance of my Being achieving this incredible spectrum of simple humanity. I sobbed loudly from the depths of my heart, and from that place, I laughed vibrantly into the canopy highs of our trees, and maybe further than that, maybe I reached the heavens. The earth breathe from my pores, and the roots of the fauna is my hair, and the water was my menstrual flow. When this subsided, the glow of feeling everything tucked underneath my skin, and I rose out of the stream, like a goddess sampling a fine universe.

I felt others grasping onto trees, watching my explosions of feeling, appreciating me, and I loved them. My big brother was walking by as I rose from the stream. I beckoned him towards me and holding his hands I felt him feel me and I laughed, because it tickled everywhere. I loved him as he continued.

I felt my lover's eyes gaze heavily down at me from his tree. Eagerly, I approached him, and feeling his heavy heart, I wrapped my arms around his backside.

My love,
our breath was hot
your cheek felt bark
and I felt the roughness
that is your cheek -
and we wonder at all the hurt -

My body trembled on yours -
the foundation of your support
was this gosling tree
mine is the hope of your carcass,
filled with the light of your spirit
that will never be wholly
accessible to my vibrant love

I cried,
I love you, I love you

and we trembled
and cried at this breathtaking hurt

Reborn
into a world
in which
I am Seen
I am Felt
I am Loved
We are children born of fire

Muggy and Hazy and Heated

I'm discovering loneliness again.

I found it in the pumpkin patches,
the season that allows me to see my breath in chilled air
scarves and hats with tassels at the ears;
I see couples hand in hand, children at play -
welcoming the festivity into their lives.

And I'm finding myself... feeling alone.
That I don't have a friend who will pick out pumpkins with me.
Or laugh with me as we dive into fallen orange leaves,
giggling as we hold each other, feeling celebration in our stomachs.

Last year, I spent my holidays with Charlotte. Halloween, dressed up and drinking on the bus, sprinting through the city. My birthday, which always sits closely by Thanksgiving. Buying presents.

This year, I'm ironically not close with anyone anymore. Not terribly close, I mean. I've grown more sensitive and expressive and happier. I greatly desire my community home - I can just do all of these holiday activities with the friends living with me. Why can't I just ask them now? Is it the physical distance that scares me, or the fear that no one will have the time and space for me?

Will I be able to ask you to spend seasons with me?

Row - by Mary Oliver

Repost from Kendra. Days when I'm woken up to words like these are the days that I remember.

You are young.

So you know everything.

You leap into the boat and begin rowing.

But listen to me.

Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt,

I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me.

There is life without love.

It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied.

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight,

the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil,

fretting around the sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth

and sense ahead the embattlement,

the long falls plunging and steaming – then row,row for your life

toward it.

Mama Come Clean

I can't say I know who you are or what it is that you fully want.
I think it's because you don't know who you are or what it is that you want.
The reason this is the case must be my fault.

I'm tired of these must's and should's.
I can only feel your resentment, anger - your complaints against my very way of being, your sweltering 24 years of rage against my very existence - that I was born.

You are my mother who couldn't be a mother.
You are the woman who offers me contempt when I wanted nurturing,
hurt when I needed to be held,
longing when I seek acceptance.

You are my mother. And I am your burden.

The Other Woman

I am the other woman
who cries when you hurt
but how do I really know
whether you hurt or not

I am the other woman
who holds back and fears
that you will overhear
the love of my making

I am the other woman
who calls you my lover's lover
my rival, shared enemy
sisters bound to this man

only that I know this no-secret
that you are the other woman
who can access the moonlit passage
to shatter my very heart

Heated History

This girl blows fuses in triple digit temperatures.

Gravestones

Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight
of being no one's sleep under so
many lids.

- Rilke

From the Book of 'We': 2004-2009 (Decker and Kendra)

I came across this book at the Beloit house and was instantly inspired by the quotes. It's essentially a memory book with experiences shared between Kendra and Decker - with amazing quotes. I feel so much around them - resonating... Here are my favorites:

The flap of the book read:

Warning!
So much as a glance at this book will either...
#1 Make you fall in love
#2 Make you join a convent
#3 Make you jealous (of us!)

Intro:

When love beckons you
Follow her
Though her ways are hard & steep...

For even as love crowns you
so does she crucify you
Even as she is for your growth
so is she for your pruning
Even as she ascends to your heights
and caresses your most tender branches that quiver in the sun
So shall she descend to your roots
and shake them in their clinging to the earth...

All of these things shall love do unto you
That you may know the secrets of your heart
and in that knowledge become a fragment of life's heart

- Kahlil Gibran

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along

- Rumi

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
...if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Mary Oliver (extended part of the quote was taken from Kendra's FB profile)
This one makes my heart ache and an excitement knowing that it's all here.

If you are waiting for anything to live and love without holding back, then you suffer
Every moment is the most important of your life
No future time is better than now to let your guard down and love

- David Deida

For this is wrong, if anything is wrong:
Not to enlarge the freedom of a love with all the inner freedom one can summon
We need, in love, to practice only this: Letting Each Other Go
For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it

- Rilke (one of my favorite writers ever)

The last quote (coupled with their wedding pictures):

You must give yourself to love, if love is what you're after
Open up your hearts to the tears and laughter
And give yourself to love
Give yourself to love

- Kate Wolf

Also, another one I took from Kendra's FB. (I imagine that she handpicked all of these quotes herself.)

When you consider the inevitability of death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we are awkward sometimes, care for another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, or enjoy a non-stop expanse of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children that we all are.

- Diane Ackerman

Hipsterism

"...the essence of being a hipster. Pretending you aren't one."

To accept ---

Tuesday, Sep 21st, 2010 -- You may have very specific objectives at work now, but they seem less important when compared to your creative aspirations. Fortunately, you understand the difference between the two. Your job is what pays the rent and puts food on your table. But your dreams feed your soul and without them your life loses meaning. Don't favor one over the other; the key to your happiness is balance.

War Takes Two

Antiwar

Also: restraints on those of us who choose the alternative: The Pope

Indo-Iranian Goddess Anahita of Water

the divinity of 'the Waters' (Aban) and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom

You are easygoing and open-minded, though passionate about your values. You have much integrity and resonate elegance and inner beauty. You are a deep thinker, caring and sensitive.

Self-Love, A New Beginning

there is so much beauty
I can see a lot of light

red tapered toes entangled
in hammock mesh rocking
to the splays of sunlight
buzzing on the brown of my skin
lighting the hairs on my arm
fueling this tender soul
with feathered amber

I have seen this light
and its energy runs in me
the child that needs nurturing
cried loudly when the healer hooked
her fingers into the folds
of my heart, punctured and wounded
inside was this frightened girl
"to be seen is a terrible thing"
it's okay, I see you and
oh! you hurt, and that hurt
was devastating and long ago
I whimpered when her fingers
mingled at the hurt, touched me there
the little girl coiling in terror
the heart that collapses,
the heart that implodes
from of all of its feeling
I felt all the wronging
that has been done to me
and the shame of the
wrongdoing that I had inflicted
in seemingly fair retribution

and that was when I saw it -
the light that is my love
I saw the shame of loving
and how I withheld it
in fear that it will turn
its starry face to me
and bite out my fragile heart
I see that I am not fragile
I am a Woman whose caves
of vast feeling and love
is a Woman gifted with the
heavens within her caves
I see that my love is my gift
my love is the doorway
to the wholeness of my Essence
that the love that I extend
is especially for me
that my love for my Self
is the gift to all
through impassioned writing
that I am loud and quiet both
that even shipwrecked and impossibly messy
I would walk up the shore with no less beauty in me
that I sing in a voice that belongs so exclusively to me
that it is anchored so fast to my soul
that I cry at night listening
to the the wonders of my Beauty
living in Song and Music and Poetry
my love and art is my fucking gift
and it is empowered, enamored
by the love that I have for myself

I am no longer ashamed
I am no longer hiding
this love that I felt was for
some time a burden and a curse
that I had felt too much
and expected too much
and only felt the compound
of Hurt in old salty cuts

No Longer
Instead

I seize the world in a way
that I admire in my gut

I can grow old listening
to the child's laughter in my bones
I walk, everyday,
into the terrible mess of life,
and because I survive,
because I cut my teeth
on the human fact of survival
I can share joy,
heap it on others
in bucketfuls
I can see so much in others
I am luminous in all forms of love
I strike chords with my history
forms, words, expression
because when I am open and beautiful,
I can connect with anything -
gnarly human beings, infants,
hummingbirds, the spring wind,
weary souls and fragrant pavements
whose stories I can feel
with the hardness of my feet
I can and always will want
the access to my yearning that looks
like a bird freed to life-journeying
and I love my heart aching
because it is my way of knowing
that I feel, therefore I am Human
I love my Darkness, my Harness for Hate,
the self-loathing that is just
the prickling exercise
of wanting more for myself
I can know myself all my life
or from just last night when I woke up
and feel that I've only scratched the surface
I love my cheeks
and the beautiful inlays in them
extended to my wet waiting mouth
I am worth the pain of everything
the joy of me is voluminous and sustaining
and I love the word 'sustain'
I can hold hands with my love
and we do believe in the same fairies
happiness will not be a myth to me
I believe in the goodness in others
an acceptance and belief
that is priceless and ought to be honored
I am a tenuous shot
but a bright shiny shot
and I am shiny

all of this means love
and I am loving, loving
and it is the beginning
of a beauty that is my gift

the girl long ago
no longer has to protect me
she is free to play
because the woman in me
has come to provide
and she will take care
of the girl and myself
and this woman
will take up her space
her mantle, her gift
and she will not be
afraid to use it

I write, sipping tea
and the light that I see
is the glow that is in me

On the Line

I didn't like the way that he deferred from my depression by trying to relate me to Courtenay's current experience. He may have thought that I wanted to relate to someone in that dark place, especially to someone to whom I am fond of. But not like this. In fact, I despise it. I hate him for not giving me the attention I wanted, and I hated her in that moment for being another focus that isn't me. He took that away from me - these cycles of darkness belong to me.

I think that I can't fully accept what I have because I'm always trying to match his lack of attachment. When he told me that he purged my pain during his ayahuasca journey, my only thought was that he must have been trying to open his heart to all of his girls, instead of "my God, he feels me!" The latter appreciation came later. Even only a minute later, it wasn't the only thing came up. That survival-kick always entered first. I'm triggered by pain in the moment instead of appreciating what I am given. No matter what his intentions are or how he relates to me - I diminish myself in how I see him perceive me. Not in a self-image way... but how much he values me, placing me in some sort of hierarchy of significance in his life. That might not exist. Because I know that I feel for him much more than he feels for me. So I always imagine that his words hold nothing, nothing lasting, nothing deep. I falter recognizing this, and I try so hard to feel what isn't true - that I don't care so much, that I'm open to experience. Since entering the relationship, I've been trying to take in all that is good and ignoring what hurts me. I wanted to be able to love without fear, but I've done the opposite of that. I wanted to be closer to him while being close with Courtenay, and be open to loving others. That's still not the case! I resent him and his other lovers. I close myself off in a tainted protective layer. This isn't real. This isn't me. Unattached love feels foreign and not enough. I can't always fear love like this - I Feel So Much. And by muting my love for Bryan, I can't even love myself. This isn't... fair. I feel like a Fool.

Even now, I'm feeling so much more around this than he will ever feel.

I can't even love Courtenay fully because I know that there's an unspoken part of her that truly wants Bryan too. She told me one night, "so he'll go date another one, and there will be more sharing and less of him that I'll see."

My God, she's right! There's that loving part of me that connected to her deeply because of her want. And there are deeper parts where I have already felt and acknowledged about Bryan that I know will hurt her. Can I be vulnerable enough to show this to Courtenay? To Bryan?

I can't understand why I have exposed my raw tenderness to expected pain. I can't understand if I truly love them too much to let go, or that I am addicted to the hurt.

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.

I hate being a jealous psychopath. I hate having to meter out my emotions, manipulative, insane. I hate that I'm so vulnerable, and I don't feel closer to Bryan every time I leave myself open like that. Just vulnerable and alone. I can't feel closer to anyone, and I feel like a child when I give myself in to feeling closer to others. Vulnerable and alone. I'm tired of... holding back. I've practiced my longing so hard, I'm a champion at Heart Burstin'. I'm tired of my feelings exposed without return, whichever that I express. I'm so hurt thinking that this is love. I don't know how to see through this. I don't know how to let go. I don't know if I can let go. Or that I want to.

I'm not thick-skinned. I'm not strong enough. I'm finally just... feeling.

Thank God.

A Movie Script Ending

Sometimes when I forget to be human, I go back to this band.
This song reminds me that sadness doesn't have to go unacknowledged.
God... high school.

On the Writer

Writing, or being a writer, is another facet of my personality (attachment to what I do and what I want to be). A facet that I am trying to let go in order to simply embrace the love and inspiration of being released into my ability to Express. Once I acknowledged that I write as a varied means of expression, that I an not necessarily A Writer (this is steeped in shame), my will to write without constriction became fiery. I no longer had to grapple with the title, the jobness of it all. I wanted to be A Writer since the fourth grade, when Mrs. Craig said I could. Encouraged, I spent years writing, even when the belief that it would become a "profession" was replaced with other callings, and I always returned dutifully to my words, my appreciation for it running in some deep cave. I am indebted to my gift. I will and can draw on it - without the force of it evolving into a want for renown or God only knows, sustainability.

I write, some days, with heart outstretched.

The Irony of My Unshaven Legs

Fear is personality. Whether the pattern is rooted in childhood or in momentary anguish that goes unexplored, fear is a manifestation of Ego, reoccurring in personality until We recognize that although it was once valid, the anxiety no longer has to be true.

9935 Camrose Cir.

Her disconnection received contributions from a childhood want for closeness and expressing that want to others. When the want to be closer isn't reciprocated, inadequately or at all, the child learns to make herself safe by no longer expressing her wants, withdrawing into vast rooms of repressed want, and the longing for closeness becomes the bricks building the borders of her heart.

Post Mania

Welcome to the Deconstruction Era.
Watch your step, it's a drop.

Co-Dark

Dear Boy,

Even until this day, when I attempt to surround myself a community who will Hear me, you are the only person who knows this darkness, sees when I feel it. And you never question it. Never try to comprehend it. But you are not Here to hear me.

Remembering,
Girl

Charting Course

This want for more with you
I'm angry at myself,
because it disables me from enjoying
you as you are, we as we are
At first, I made excuses
That you weren't capable
of extreme closeness, emotions,
of exclusive partnership
It is not you, as you are not Me
Even though you never made
my longing an unwanted
Even though you tried to receive
I could not feel you
acknowledging that this
these feelings are my Desire
So I bottled up the wanting
and I turned against them
Longing became toxin in my blood
for I attacked myself
The Longing is myself I now know
I told myself
that I am unworthy of you
Who am I to want something
such as Partnership with you?
I am not spiritual enough
or communicate well enough
is beautiful enough
healthy, emotionally and physically
not enough not enough
and so my Longing
became my enemy
and I shadowed my self-worth
with this attack of shame
and the deflation of personal value
This is not the first time
I have lost confidence
over a man, a man who could not reciprocate
Because I could not value myself
the man that I so wanted and thought loved
could not value and love me

I now Long to be free of wanting you. I now Long to be free, and wanting of myself.

A Call for Support

Dear Cindy,

In this upcoming week, I am taking time off from work, family, and my usual daily life. I don't know what the week will look like, what I will do, or where I will be. I am making no plans. Not anticipating results. I hope that this break will give me the freedom to just be with what is. To be with the anxiety that arises from being alone. The shame of not working towards doing or being something 'better.' To not latch onto some kind of busywork in order to distract myself. To sit with trauma and to reconcile its truths. To dissociate my identity from what I do or who I relate to. To seek community. To openly want love and closeness. To exercise my friendship in asking that you support me - that in sending you this message today, I make this request: if and when I am in need during this week, may it come in the form of a phone call or a few hours of company or even to sit with my emotional landscape, that you can be open to just Be with me. If you have any objections to this or have limits that you want acknowledged, please tell me. You're on my list of Support.

Much thanks,
Cindy

Support Messages

I need you to be
better than me;
and you need me to do
better than you.

Disarm You in the Morning

Why did I take the necessary steps to make my heart hurt?

I was content looking forward to seeing him
loving him, appreciating him tonight.

Then my curiosity got the best of me.

Why am I hurting myself like this - the jealousy,
the comparison, the loss of me feeling special -
even if I'm learning that that isn't the case.

This mold is made for a stronger woman than I.

Riddle Me Lover

My fear makes me imagine that you don't care about all of this. That you have other lovers, and I'm not particularly of any significance. My fear makes me imagine that you won't ever address this message or even want to see me when you get back. My fear makes me a fool, and as much as it hurts to be vulnerable, I need to practice engaging in my hurt as much as I engage in my tenderness and joy.

bedside journals

Inside
there is a Darkness
that will swallow me whole

Draw me out

Please

Don't leave me alone

I will find Light in the orbs of your eyes

Winter in August

I'm feeling the strike of being alone.
This is an attack of immeasurable darkness.
It's familiar and I'm scared.
I'm asking, I'm wanting: Support, please.

You're Not Tragic Enough!

So,... you're ready to fall in love?

I'm the romantic type.

What are you doing spending time not getting what you want?

Shaded Daylight

The Love
for the Self
is the
Creation
for All
Things
Good
and
Beautiful.

Goddess Worship

Why it is Wise to Worship a Woman

How To Be Alone

Pain on Delivery (But You Already Know This)

I watched myself hide. I sought out attention, but when I received it, I refused it.
I was attracted to people who I could co-feel with, those who could relate to me.
Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to sit with you for so long, Bryan;
you don't relate with me, and you don't offer the expression for me to relate with you.
The kind that feels dark and lonely and passionate and deep.
I always get this feeling that I approach you because I need to be saved from something,
but that's heart-wrenching and disappointing. I just want us to feel together.
It's so clear to me now that I want to feel you so much closer.
I'm not trying as hard as I used to to shake that out of relationships.
Meisner has taught me that what I have is enough, and if that Enough
is growing deepening grooves for us to relate with and to Love by,
that is true and simple happiness that I never thought I had deserved.
Also, I've never met a man who I will allow to meet me dead center with relating.
I feel like I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would be able to.
The best co-feeling experience recently that I've had has been with Lucy,
and I know that 85% is because she is a woman and we feel as One.

Estrangement after Summer Rent Parties [unfinished]

I stood in the kitchen, and I was very aware that I taste like some animal took a shit in my mouth.
So I sliced up some tofu and mushrooms and as soon as I put that over rice, I had no desire for it.
So I shook out some granola and fruit and as soon as I poured milk in the bowl, I had no desire for it.
I took my food outside and reclined in the red hammock, and then I started to let thought flow freely.

I think it came out earlier, but I had restraints on what I was Suppose to feel.
In fact, I was so mechanical about it, I remember tailing a car at 85 mph,
subconsciously memorizing the glimmer-blue Honda Pilot's license plate (CA 8Y11077).
(I can't remember what model it is. That's secondary. The year of its make was 2009 though.)
Eventually, the driver angrily pulled over the next lane, but confused,
I slowed down to 70 until the car behind me gave up driving in my lane.
I think I sped up again. I got home in Los Gatos in 35 minutes.

I sat in the hammock, wanting to eat, but wanting neither my tofu or my cereal,
and decided that it was best to record what is coming up for me.
As painful as this may seem within the experience,
the meta approach is thoroughly enjoyable.
I write for an audience, and my audience is specific,
and it's best to introduce my audience members to each other:
Bryan (and hopefully Courtenay), meet the people who watch me all of the time,
(they are usually behind glass windows and they sometimes provoke what happens to me),
and meet Humanity of the Future, literary scavengers of the 22nd century who document works
from this blossoming Internet age, documenting these little blog entries that are defining
the Consciousness of this One Girl's Era (The Last Years on a Human-Sustaining Earth).

Last night I felt so much - at some points, I let them become me, and others, I hid.
There were a dozen times during the party when I wanted to get in my car and say,
I don't need this. I am fatigued and unhappy and this isn't MY kind of party.
But what was stronger, and a part of what kept me there, is knowing that regret will follow above action.
Also - what IS my kind of party? Do I party? Do I even enjoy anything?
With or without others - maybe ever? Am I capable of enjoying?
The rising fear of change into possible stagnancy sends my extremist feeler self into spastic alert.

All of those little life-questioning, self-identifying puzzles throw themselves in my way.
Excuse me! Pardon me! What do you think you're doing?
I'm doing what's best for me! For maybe... the first time in my life!
Quitting theatre?! And then what will you do? Who are you without theatre and busywork?
Well... er... that's something I'm just going to have to work out.
That's reassuring. Sounds like a first-rate plan.
It's not, but it doesn't help that you're here making me feel pretty damn insecure about it.
Frankly, who would you be without my Voice of Devastating Reality?
Free of fear!
Yes, and without that fear, you'd be open to -
More hurt. But I want to hurt. I rather be open to feeling Everything, including hurt, please just let me.
I challenge you to rid me.
You don't serve me. I am seeking happiness, and you are in my way.

I watched myself hide. I sought out attention, but when I received it, I refused it.
I was attracted to people who I could co-feel with, those who could relate to me.
Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to sit with you for so long, Bryan;
you don't relate with me, and you don't offer the expression for me to relate with you.
The kind that feels dark and lonely and passionate and deep.
I always get this feeling that I approach you because I need to be saved from something,
but that's heart-wrenching and disappointing. I just want us to feel together.
It's so clear to me now that I want to feel you so much closer.
I'm not trying as hard as I used to to shake that out of relationships.
Meisner has taught me that what I have is enough, and if that Enough
is growing deepening grooves for us to relate with and to Love by,
that is true and simple happiness that I never thought I had deserved.
Also, I've never met a man who I will allow to meet me dead center with relating.
I feel like I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would be able to.
The best co-feeling experience recently that I've had has been with Lucy,
and I know that 85% is because she is a woman and we feel as One.

TennWill on Theater Mania

Link Here.

Lately, July

There is an indescribable hurt that lives inside me.

I can try to give it awareness, I can feed it attention.
She still hurts, and this fear is so vivid, she wants me to hide.





I drive on this road. It's familiar. I enjoy its curves. I enjoy the speed it lends me, the speed I'm willing to push in the dark when there aren't anyone or thing awake to see me. I put my focus out to the distance. I pull it back to the 300 feet in front of my headlights. I put it back out. Suddenly, a figure in the next lane catches my eye. I swerve. Another is caught in my headlights and I swing. I see red eyes. Brown hair. Long legs. Antlers. Deer. They stand still on the highway, nonchalant, unaware that my speeding car can easily fling their sinewy brown bodies into oblivion, which in this case, is the reservoir nestled around the corner of 92 and 280. They surround me, but I cannot slow down, my car will not stop. Eventually, I'll hit one. I scream. As scared as I am, I cannot close my eyes, and I cannot stop my driving. I will kill someone, and the regret captivates me before the action that will cause it happens.





I feel it. These mornings I wake up anxious, my heart beating louder than the hummingbirds graciously visiting my dad's garden or the sunlight spilling at my feet. When the people I want to love in my Imagination love me back, and by God, I will do anything and Be anything in order for them to love me, I wake up and they return to not seeing me, not feeling me, not there. I usually crawl out of bed, my body sustaining these visions of hate and disgust for myself. I try to be practical, I try to reason, but as soon as I try, my stomach turns itself, and nausea keeps me flattened on the bed or floor. The terror rushes blood into my brain, so I sleep, and if I sleep, I have these bad dreams, and if I don't, the visions from those dreams will replay.

Even as I write this, I admit to appreciating my Depression. He said, "I appreciate all of it, even when I don't." I wondered if he saw my gurgling self-pity, even as I connected, and smiled, and Appreciated. But he didn't see me that night. He saw past me. I wanted to give my love. He didn't see me.

I think I see a change coming, and my mood compensated before I did. That change will slow my life-rate down, so instead of playing Hurricane Cindy at 150mph, I am seeking the summer wind when I can finally just feel and do what I want to do. Oh God, as I write this, my hands tremble. Before the hurricane ends - my show opens in a few days, I still have upcoming events - I tremble with this anxiety - anxiety over a stagnancy that I have always, always equated with not being proficient enough, too much processing, TOO MUCH INDULGENCE. That as soon as I get here, I will be in the darkness that scares me, TERRIFIES me! I soften my approach: I will still be creative and occupied. All the little projects that I have been wanting time for, all of my writing that needs attention, my photography, refining my craft, attention on the Technique, I fucking NEED my life to slow down in order to be BETTER. Joni reassures me, "I am on a lonely road and I am travelin', travelin', travelin'." Mmm.. I crave that romantic darkness. I miss traveling, moving, excited, - not this one place, this goddamn town and its water tower and its huffin' and puffin' occupants. But. BUT. I cannot carry on at this hurricane, fire-lane tumble. I am not taking care of myself, and my body reacts, she tells me that I've been sick for a very long time.

I must... Muss es sein. I want to slow down. I want to let people love me, and I want to learn this painful process of loving myself. I cannot love when there is fear.





I turn the corner. San Jose heat make the cars glimmer in the sun. I signal and make another turn. I feel like there has been a car that turns with me. I check my rear view. A burgundy Lincoln. That's rare. What is even rarer is that there are no occupants in this car. I cross the intersection and the Lincoln follows. I suck the air in my cheeks as it passes in shadow and sunlight. No hands hold its steering wheel, no face checks its mirrors. I am being followed by a car, just the car. I make a final turn onto a freeway entrance and rejoin a gaggle of traffic. I look back for the burgundy Lincoln. It disappeared, probably looking for its driver.

This happened in daylight. I drove to the city, sick to my stomach, and clenched to the seat. I don't need cars without eyes following me. I feel like a fool.

Desirable Streetcars

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

This heart is wrenched inside and out. Feeling every pulse, the joys and pains, and finding that all of it is alright.

You're strong for a reason, Miss DuBois.

Anton H.

"The road to success is not straight, there's a curve called failure
A loop called confusion, speed bumps called friends
And red light called enemies, caution signs called family
And flat tires called jacks, but if you have a spare called determination
And an engine called perserverance, with insurance called faith
...And the drive to make it, you'll reach a place called success"

the motorcycle short story inspired by Amjad

motorcycle types

men who don't ride often
men who affirm themselves with their bikes
men who are geeks about riding
men who are daredevils
men who are hobby riders
men who are solid people
men who are willing to learn
women who are hobby riders
women who are enthusiasts
women who are dykes
women who are willing to learn
women who are just good-natured and cool
men and women who shouldn't be riding --- for an obvious reason

guy who makes motorcycle culture his life encounters these types; doesn't quite get them, respects some, has disdain for others, meets a woman biker who shares with him her experience

Stars

The glass that glimmered on the roadsides became diamonds, and I flew by, affirmed by their ironic winking perspective on aesthetics.

Prtshd

"You're not black, but you are beautiful."

Friends of the Heart

Thank you -

for revealing moments when I am not being
and appreciating me when I am -

Metal turns, the rubber burns -
I feel essences of light traveling,
being uplifted by the City of Angels.

Sentimentality is not Shameful

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

- Kahlil Gibran

Today's Tarot

Is imitation truly the sincerest form of flattery?

If we are imitating God, who in essence, is the Divine - ourselves, creators, are we reaching for the heights? Is it ourselves that we are uplifting, a worship, an appreciation for the human spirit, our experience?

Deep Impact-ing

When you consider the inevitability of death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we are awkward sometimes, care for another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, or enjoy a non-stop expanse of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children that we all are.

- Diane Ackerman

Keli Love

I want to be open with you as well, I feel myself adoring you.

love.

I'm ecstatic - completely ecstatic that I can accept someone adoring me.
Next question: WHO AM I??? = happiness!

Guilty of This

Because they have doubts about their identity, they tend to play "hide and seek" with others - hiding from people, but hoping that their absence will be noticed.

- The Wisdom of the Enneagram; Type Four: The Individualist

Relating to so many sad truths all over!


***

WIN! This type fosters personal creativity! "This is why so many playwrights, poets, and novelists are Fours."

Mind Poop now at 2:22 for Poor Souls

I think I resent people for my own pain, and I don't want to be resentful. "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

I don't want to be self-pitying.

I don't want to be toxic to myself or others.

I don't want to be here, Bryan. This bitterness, this darkness. I feel bad that I'm asking you for help - by reading - by pitying?? - no, not pitying - something - so I can be heard, but I feel like you're one of the few people who can stand me.

I'm hurting so much right now. I feel alone - and unwanted - and scared that this is loneliness, because it visits more often now, and I like being alone as much as I don't like "loneliness." I know that, right now, I feel better just by writing to you. Does that mean much? Is this okay? I also hate the fact that I always want to know if what I do is okay, because as soon as I start thinking it's "okay," - like, "is it okay if I tell you how I feel in this moment" - I get the slap on the hand telling me that it's not. Tonight I think I was made to feel that it's not okay to fall in my head, and I've known that, but I was severely confronted for it, and now I'm feeling that I'm not okay with that kind of head-on, angry, offended and defensive, name-calling, swearing, rough and raw language. Is that what it is? I'm just hurt by "tone?" No, I'm personally hurt. I don't know what this is!

I was silent, but I wanted to scream, There is no more room inside me to WITHHOLD!

But I can't trust anyone, least of all me, to relieve this. "But I just wanted to tell you - that - I'm - hurt" I wanted to tell my scene partner.

There was something you said - after my panic attack that night where I felt half the room put their hands on me with so much love, and as Breann told me later - understanding - when I looked at Aurash and saw tears in his eyes, and my heart went out to him as his was with me - and you said that this was the result of our upbringing.

[omit]

I was right to realize that working creatively and feeling so much was my happiness. Now I need to admit that there are other things that I - want? - need? - in order to be connected and happy. I'm trying to grow myself to be at that place when I'm balanced or depressed. Now I want to send this quote to Aurash and see if he relates. I selfishly want him to. Is that selfish? I feel like I'm really selfish. What I need to talk to you about later is really selfish, and it's going to be hard for me to talk about. I always feel like I confront a lot of things that need to be said to you, but as soon as I work up the courage to actually communicate those things to you, something in me diffuses them, and the hot air balloon of words to say to you turn into a gushed-out, deflated water pouch. Like I need to protect you from me - no, more like because I don't want you to hate me, or be disgusted by me - or develop distance. I don't like that about myself. I want more courage - like the tigress impression that some expressed to me at Friday's party.

I want someone to hit me with as much emotion as I generate.

Because I still feel alone. On the other side of the fence. The other kids play hahaha on the other side, hahaha they cry; and I can't even start with the first ha! let alone --- no, this is self-pitying. I hate myself when I am here. I need to stop it.

I romanticize my depression. I romanticize my profoundness.
I'm neurotic.
I'm too sensitive.
I'm too fearful.
I work too hard on myself. I don't work enough.
Women don't open up to me. I open my mouth - ah... er... mm. It's already hard enough... am I being insincere? Then they feel insincere. Ah. Er. Erm. No. Those hurt. But men hurt too. I always try to calibrate balance with men, but it's like tipping over a tree that isn't rooted, tip too far and he'll let you drop, tip too little and he won't notice, try to show how you feel... no, still nothing.
This is ridiculous. I can't see you reading this far.
I'm wanting a cap this out-pour - I'm physically exhausted.

With endless gratitude, good night.

What the Dylan?

My father made his annual drunk call last night whilst I was driving to the city.

The other night, a deer made it's way onto highway 280 around midnight. I saw him about two feet from my car through the fog as I sped at 70 miles per hour.

Anxiety dreams had me kissing or falling for an ex-classmate I was never that attracted to. Which induces stress?

And all along I had Dylan over my ears; ole Bob singing his wail.

movies and hymns

im around and i miss you and will fill your tank with gas and buy you things.

- Cory

retracing your body retraces memories maybe traumas reenact muscle spasms worsen in age a reaction to being unfeeling a large percentage of my life you called it suppression oh my God I dreamt about you last night you're always affecting me in my dreams as if you don't do that enough in my waking hours my mom and I were traveling on an open road with myself at age 9 and myself at age 5 who didn't know she was repeatedly molested and we were lead into this indoor road system like a flea market and we created edible statues and watched films swimming in the deepest recesses of my cerebrum and I miraculously found every single material object I have lost including the ring that I lost in the Pacific Ocean age 7 when Mom told me not to wear it to jump in the water but I believe and I guess already I believed at age 7 that my material possessions know its master and are magnetic to my body and geographic location so says the nice camera that is now lost to auto thieves but a woman owning a tent decided that we were stealing her paper so you showed up and we raced around the block with my age 9 self to prove that we live the fullest in our bodies you fell in a deep affection with my age 9 self so I took the lead and left you in the dust when you ran up to me breathing deeply we were in love with our selves and with each other in the purest way and we felt our bodies from our hair follicles to our sinuses and inspired I told you

I am the West

and you said

I am the Midwest

and we stood there smiling and smiling and summer came and we stood together like statues

When I woke up, ice rolled off my back to the towel beside my bed, and the ache of feeling caused me to tremble like our little bonsai trees. Your dream self afflicted my real self. I sat up, and said aloud, "But truly I am the East Orient and you are the ice deserts of Siberia."

Blustery

Today I woke up with more paranoia than I had ever imagined.

Every morning has been anxiety.

Every night, I spend hours staring at my own brain.

When I sleep, it is restless, and my body is thrashed from my own fitful tossing.

I'm fearing some imminent blackness.

Two days ago, I felt the complete distinction between lightness - and the moment it turned to darkness.

I think the more busy I am, the more distant I become from others, the less reassured I am. I'm dominated by my uncertainty and doubt. I have mistaken busyness for connection.

I am afraid. I'm afraid of environment and every single person that I can think of destroying me with their hate. I'm afraid of my circumstances collapsing on my head. I am afraid of myself, and my self hurt.

I'm entering this darkness with more tools to deal with it than ever before. This makes me believe that I will survive it, and do this strongly. I am glad for this. I am going to be magnificent. This is no longer false hope.

Oh, Boy

I feel it coming on.

The hot flashes.
The prickling of the skin.
The way he laughs at me.
How I constantly look at him.

It's inevitable.

I have a crush on another gay man.

Engaged

It's taken me three days and several hours at the office this afternoon to write this.

This morning, as I left downtown Burlingame, I wrote to a lover, "God loves me!" How often I truly believe this, I'm not sure. Somewhere, it feels like if I really believe God a) exists, b) loves me, that I'd always be loved, that I'd be capable to love and be loved.

Sappy, right?

But it's not always love that I struggle with - it's trust. Three days ago, a friend looked at me squarely in the face, and asked if I trust him to always speak truth to me. I was expressing my ongoing relationship with guilt, and the guilt of burdening others with my emotions. He asked if I would trust him enough to allow him to tell me when and if I was burdening him.

I've thought about this. Deeply.

I can't trust everyone to carry my emotions, and I certainly can't trust everyone to tell me to stop when they can't take me anymore. However, there is no room anymore in me to withhold. I've come to a juncture of enormous revelations - one being that I need to express fully, and all of myself, my entire range of experience - and I need others, in any way or connection, to fulfill that. Furthermore, I cannot and will not connect without laying myself bare to be open, and completely vulnerable to the connection and the people I care for and love.

It was in that instance, that I felt my friend's comfort and his availability. I felt it last night, walking stiffly downtown in the rain, when I felt my vulnerability penetrated by someone that I grew attached to, opened to, and the hurt was immense. It was also in that instance, that I could feel inside me the maturity of my friend's growth and journey to acceptance of his very own feeling - something that I'm still struggling to attain. As I write this, my heart swells with pride and much love for this friend, and although my fear of attachment prevents me from telling him directly, I hope he feels this, feels my happiness for him, and a hope for myself, seeing what he has been working on. My steps to overcome fear has been minuscule, but seeing his climb to openness, even in the act of being open to my sadness on a day that he woke up in darkness, has gripped me strongly these last couple of days.

A fond remembrance.

oversleeping

My coochie snorcher hurts.

This is bad news, indeed.

Fifth of May

I had on my flowing red skirt, and my hair was tied to the side, like in the eighties, but not quite. My feet were pinched; I wasn't sure if I chose the lesser of two evils by choosing flats over heels. But I felt confident: just free to feel and beautiful enough to not care, and noticing others notice me. I saw myself on a road of possibilities, and the availability for change released me into a high simply described as euphoria.

We had gotten to the Elbo Room close to 11 when the show was suppose to have kicked up. "We" were David and Jennifer, and me - all of us on a "date." I was under the assumption that we were just hanging out and spending time together, enjoy the Mission and Cinco de Mayo, R&R in the middle of the week. Over dinner, David flirted with me shamelessly, and I could feel the fear emanating from Jennifer. "I'm not here to steal your boyfriend!," I wanted to shout over our table. But I did what I do best: remain aloof. David was on crutches from playing ultimate Frisbee. I had heard the story several times - how he leaped to reach the disc in the air and landed solidly on his ankle; after retelling the story again to our painfully shy and apologetic, but amiable server, I suggested that he invented another story, preferably one involving a baby carriage in the street, and an out of control 18-wheel truck. They pretended amusement. On the club's floor, he sat while Jennifer and I tried to dance. At first, we suffered through a band who didn't understand what natural beats were; no real live music at all. I tried to make the best of it, by dancing as ridiculously as I felt the music reminded me of: the "Robot," over the top swing moves, accelerated salsa. I felt better when I made the couple laugh; I wanted them to enjoy themselves, despite the circumstances - and my presence.

Then the main act came on, and everything was instantly magic. I let the slow bluesy, but clearly canción de Cumbia wash over me, and all I felt was la musíca in my body. During the second number, un hombre was weaving through the floor, and for an instant his eyes flickered to mine as he brushed past me. A moment later, he had grabbed a hold of my hands, and we started dancing, like REALLY dancing. He lead me into spins, grabs, moments with our shoulders and smiles, mimicry with our hips and feet. He was a real dancer, and he lead me to play. I became sensitive to his ever movement, his leading, direction, I fell into his body, and he had me do whatever he wanted me to do. I closed my eyes and felt only the music, and when I opened them, he was right there, right with me. The song ended, and we grinned at each other, and said, "thank you." During that next song, David had gotten me a drink; I gulped it down without tasting. I felt thrilled, completely enthralled that a stranger and I dared to tango, and it was the most in-the-body experience that I've had without any forced context, nothing sexual or romantic, it was brief, light, and a moment in time that I swooned with no weight in my soul. I was thankful, immensely glowing with happiness, and glad that the dancer in the night had come and left, so that the experience could be defined as a simple space of lightness in being.

Unfortunately, that didn't last long. He came back the very next song, and meek in the face, lead me out to dance again. This time was the same as the first, and it was a real Cumbia song, and I was just happy to reach this elevated feeling with him again. At the end of the song, he asked if I came often then proceeded to ask for my number, which I unthinkingly gave. David, by then had been prodding me to go home, and I obliged. It was after the stranger had disappeared from my mind that I realized my date(s) had been solemn and distant. In my ecstasy, I had alienated them, but I wasn't one for any attachments except to my feeling of lightness during that time of night. And I floated home.

Rediscovering Truth

"Knowing has no worse enemy than the desire to know."

Herman Hesse

Stripes, Floral, Abstract

Consistent journeying and migration leads me to beds that are foreign and familiar at the same time.

The Good Episode

Fruit cups are still amazing.
And I still love my life.

92 degree cool

You're afraid
I'm not a psychiatrist or a therapist
but you're afraid of your Dream

Dream? Happiness?
Is there really fear in these words?
The fear of failing or falling short of what they possibly mean to me?

Thank you for the fishing line - I'm serious!
Throw that ice cold water to my face.
I can no longer hold back from my own paranoia.

Living for myself - purely for myself -
Is there ever such a thing?
Am I using my family
financial matters
my depression itself
as an excuse?




Am I ready to leave and to live my life?

I've worked with enough people
I've seen this fear
That day when you sabotaged your Dream,
I felt real empathy for you

lykke

- - - his thoughts
- - - the warmth
- - -our feet splaying
- - -over soft greens
- - I called for - dance dance dance
- - he complied - sing sing sing
- -little did I know that beauty
- -in those days would fuel the tender
- chasms of myself that I try so hard
- to protect to make disappear masquerade loss
-and avoid these jarring dreams that quake at my core
-I shame from the intricacy of my feeling

When I see your celebration - the kind that I dreamt - there would be so much pain I'd have to smile through. Unions won't measure up if one of the legs couldn't stand for my table. What a deceit to stand in for her.

April Showers Bring May Dreaming

I had a dream
that I was living
without suffocation

everything was set in threes
music was playing
I was loved, truly

but when I woke up
the weight of this world
squeezed the breath right out of me.

Life Changing Individuals

In memory of Thao.
11 years of painful growth - but what a blessing.
...I feel like this is a good song for my first baby too.

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach

Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you'd just woke up
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy”

So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me

- Brights Eyes, "First Day of My Life"

Receptor Antagonist

What is the shape of my attachment?

In its simplest definition, it is an emotional bond between human individuals.

I can easily give in to fear around what I feel as my attachment.
Anxiety of separation.
Fear of abandonment.
The person's availability to give me affirmations about myself.
***new as of 06/02/2010*** The person's availability to open themselves as deeply as I've open to them, or opening as a result of my earnest behaviour.

I develop attachment when I care deeply about another individual and how they perceive and receive me. I have a fear concerning my attachment creating inauthentic relationships, as well as its harmful effects on me when I don't receive the attention I desire. Because I have so much fear about developing attachment, I withdraw myself from individuals who are willing to commit to developing intimacy and fostering a connection with me. In order to not be contained by my fear, I am in search of rooting out the nature of my attachment, and my proactive behaviour to prevent it.

In partnerships, I am the aggressor. I like the sense of being in control; I actively bring myself into a relationship, and I actively end it when my above fears around attachment are provoked. This is not always the case, and I am hurting - and healing from the relationships where I have lost this "sense" of control. In many friendships and lovers, I become detached, reserved, and even seized up by the fear of attachment, and instead focus too much of my attention to on myself, losing opportunities for connectivity and thriving adult relationships. The moment that I feel a longing for attachment, I corner myself in my heart, and lose the intimacy with my friend or partner. I don't want them to react adversely to my attachment to our connection.

Recently, I've been told that I'm approaching attachment in the most difficult way. That I've been resisting it. If I have attachment out of seeking validation, my friend told me, then let it fill me up. Accept the urge to drink and fill the void in which I desire from my friend or partner. And as I receive this, give in to my attachment, and give in to receiving and loving this other individual. Eventually, I will have the substance (of validation) to realize my own confidence and self-love while cultivating my relationship with the other individual who I otherwise would have pushed away. That is, if I am completely aware - and accept - that this is my attachment.

When he told me this, a distinct memory stayed with me. After a difficult break-up, I would find the impulse to take long drives in the night to move the energy of my sadness. The deeper impulse would ensue: I would drive by the home of my ex. It was not out of the want of knowing if he was home, or that I'd hope to run into him. It was a driving need to have an awareness of his presence, and though in my gut, I thought about how wrong and insane and "attached" it was, I allowed myself to do it, night after night for months. After some time, the desire sloughed off, as well as the sadness for his absence. I filled up the vacuum with a harmless (but gas-consuming) attachment.

I'm realizing more that with every connection and developing relationship that I would have attachment, especially if I care for the other person, and grow with them. I just need to understand that there's an acceptance for this, as well as an awareness of the separation of truthful love and self-validation. If I can fully let go of the shame (immense back story for this), then I can walk into intimate space without fear.