my last post on blogger before the great big move to wordpress.

it's been a strange and wonky stretch of time, these last few months.

good and bad and a little unbearable and at times, heaven.

a stretch of time in which i've felt both deeply mired in the muck and as though i'm hurtling, lightening speed, into the great unknown.

i have this very vivid memory of being twelve years old and climbing up to the see the delicate arch in utah and how that trek went on forever. i never thought we'd get there. the land was so flat and so brown and so long before me and the sun was high overhead and i couldn't imagine an end. and then, just when i thought i couldn't go any further, we curved round a huge stone wall and there it was.

and i was breathless. it took my breath away.

that thing, that arch, that magnificent sliver made by mother nature's careful hands.

few times in my life have i seen something so beautiful--the sort of thing that people marvel at even in photos, but photos will never do justice.

it was so much more than my small mind could have ever conceived.

it was sometime between late december and middle of january that i realized the eating disorder was done.

just like that, gone.

i shouldn't say just like that--it was an arduous and often impossible journey. but the moment of its departure went unnoticed.

t.s. elliot got it right: not with a bang but a whimper.

there's that phrase: you'll struggle with this for the rest of your life. and oh how i loathed that phrase and fought against that phrase and worked to make that phrase obsolete.

but here, on the other side, i've come to realize it's not the eating disorder i may struggle with the rest of my life, but all the other things that i emptied into it.

fear and anxiety and a propensity to get sad. startlingly deep emotional reactions that overwhelm and unnerve. lack of confidence. questions of worth.

and with the eating disorder said and done those things are now illuminated with stark clarity. and a whole new journey begins. and it's just as hard and i'm sure it'll be just as good...

but what the hell.

you know?

because no one prepared me for this.

in fact each time i face something that i thought would be easier without an eating disorder and it's not--well, each time there is disappointment and dare i say, a little heartache.

each time feels like a small loss.

i came through the other side and it's a whole new set of struggles. or well, the struggles that were always there, but now there's no pretending.

there is only honesty--ruthless and brutal honesty. and a little floundering.

someone left a comment the other day saying, when are you not sad. not with a question mark though, just a period.

and all i could do was laugh because she has a point and imagine how i feel living it? i know, i really, really know.

ba-hambug. (and a little laughter along the way).

but just the other day natalie said something that made me a take a quick breath, oh! of course!

it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made. 

isn't that perfect? it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made.

and natalie and i, we both want to be exceptional. and so yes, it may take a little bit longer.

and the flip side of that? an easy path does not make for exceptional people.

exceptional people are forged by the hard and the difficult and the sad.

which is to say the hard and the difficult and the sad are all great gifts.

and perhaps this may be simplistic, but makes it all a bit more bearable--provides perspective.

it took a long time for that delicate arch to be made.

and it took a long time for me to reach it at the age of twelve.

but good lord was it worth the wait.

it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made. indeed.

round these parts

 

 

the weather right now is a knock-down-drag-out fight between late winter and early summer. 

which means i'm perpetually dressed for the wrong season. sandals when everyone else is in boots. winter coats when there's no need.

to say the whole thing is frustrating would be a pretty apt description. but the trees are beginning to bloom and the selection of flowers at the grocery store is becoming more interesting and varied.

i first fell in love with this corner of brooklyn that i now call home just about a year ago. it was springtime affair. love at first sight. and to see it again in this light brings such joy. i'm breathless in anticipation for the explosion of green that is surely imminent.

with a good book forever in my purse, a polka-dotted scarf round my neck, red lips, and light pouring into my home each morning i'm doing all that i can to enjoy life in this moment.

things i wish people had told me a really long time ago

1. on that moment someone says to you it'll come when you least expect it:

(or, another favorite, when you stop looking).

these expressions are the equivalent of someone saying it'll be in the last place you look, when you've lost something.

which is to say, correct. but also asinine.

of course it's the last place you look. which might also be the first, and how can both those things be true? it might also be the second place you look or the four-hundred-and-sixty-third place. there's no telling.

2. when someone asks why you didn't like a particular man who had great affection for you, your response need be nothing more than a simple because.  

because. period.

one word.

that response is wholly enough. affection given freely (which is the only way it can be given) does not mean you must reward it or reciprocate it. hell, you don't even have to be flattered by it.

but if that word alone does not suffice, how about this: because i didn't. 

because because.

because i didn't like his laugh and i didn't like his smell. because at the end of our third date my only thought was please don't let this man kiss me, please don't let him touch me. 

the body knows. it always knows. and it'll tell you. but you have to listen.

a man's affection (or rather, any romantic partner's affection) is a starting point. a fork in the road. the absolute minimum of what must be expected. and if you choose to walk in the other direction, so be it. a man's affection is not a life raft, nor is it a fainting couch on which to collapse. to accept or not is your choice. and you need not explain that to anyone.

3. sometimes you just need someone to pass the lonely with.

and that is okay.

affection can be real and true and good and going absolutely nowhere.

some men will highlight your loneliness. draw attention to it, make it worse. their hand on your knee a distancing thing. and some men will raze that loneliness with a single glance. these are the men who will reveal themselves as home in the span of a night--in the length of time it takes to drink a glass of wine. these are the men who you will move mountains for--they are rare and remarkable and between the two of you a sort of alchemy takes flight.

and then there are the men who you want to kiss--the men you want to adore, but will never fall in love with. so kiss them. and go to breakfast with them. let them buy you dinner. take them to the movies and ruin summers with them.

people speak in directives about love. love entirely or not at all. take the whole of it or none of it. nothing in between.

but the thing is, sometimes the in-between is really good. it  is something-else-entirely and sometimes something-else-entirely is entirely right. for a time, it is entirely right. rich and fertile practice ground. a meaningful passing of the time.

sometimes something-else is the comfort of a man’s arm wrapped around you—the immediacy of its warmth and touch, but nothing else. it is not home and it is not the promise of home. but it is nonetheless healing and restorative. and it is your choice.

and that's okay.

man, i wish someone had told me it was okay a good long while ago.

you do not have to live your life according to the prevailing opinions about love and making a life. you have only to be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what it is you want and what it is you'll accept one-day-at-a-time.

there is but one magnolia tree where i live.

and returning home tonight after a fifteen hour day it was all of the sudden in bloom. 

full bloom. perfect and pink and full against the darkening sky--april and its promise of rain. 

april and its gift of rain.

and green. 

and trees in bloom.

i never understood spring until i moved to new york. 

but i'm pretty sure if there is a meaning to this life, it has very much to do--everything to do--with the cycle of trees and how when spring arrives the leaves come back. 

day by day, old joy comes back to me | noah & the whale

home, sweet home.

the thing may tilt to the side, but it's light and airy and home and now that my mom's finally seen it (she's visiting for the week and i'd like that some things be done in person) i figured i'd share some photos here. it's been over a month now and i've yet to install the shelves in the kitchen or figure out how to give the windows a really good scrub. i've got no bathmat and no dishtowels to speak of, but i'm hoping to accomplish a few of those things this next week. 


there is a sense that twenty years from now i'll look back on this time, fully aware of just how sacred this experience was--so i'm doing my very best to soak up each and every moment. 

the journey home {off switch magazine}

In the fourth grade I went to the rodeo with my friend Rachel Keenan. The two of us climbed onto the sizzler, a spinning contraption in the parking lot outside, and just as I turned to complain that it wasn’t spinning and sizzling fast enough, the thing started moving with such force that I couldn’t lift my head from the seat. I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed so hard.

I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking about that moment of late, but I have. And I’ve been thinking about how just after my college auditions I took a cab with my mother to the airport and fell asleep with my head in her lap. These are the moments that make a life. These small, seemingly insignificant moments that only in hindsight can a person point to and say yes, that moment there—that was a really good day.

The night I moved I sat on the floor of my new apartment, boxes everywhere, the bedframe pushed up against one of the curtain-less windows. I was freshly showered, a glass of Oyster Bay Savinguon Blanc next to me, and as tired as I’ve ever been. It was the end of an impossibly long day in which, with the help of my two best girlfriends, I packed everything of worth into a U-haul and hurtled south to Brooklyn, where we then pushed and pulled and dragged all that worth up three flights of stairs into a tiny studio apartment that leans, just a little, to the right.

We did it ourselves, the three of us, Kim and Ashlea and me. And at some point during the worst of it Ashlea made me promise that for the next move I’d hire a company and we’d sit in lawn chairs drinking sweet drinks with small umbrellas while we watched as someone else did what we were doing now. Stuck between the second and third floor, my arms shaking under the weight of a box of books I wasn’t now sure I needed, I gave in: yes, next time, yes—but please God, don’t let that next time come anytime soon.

There were countless moments during the day in which I thought, for sure, we wouldn’t make it—we couldn’t possibly come out the other side. So at the end of it all, that box of books tucked safely away, we each poured a glass of wine, took a shower, and readied ourselves for a celebratory dinner. Even as it was happening, I knew. Even as I watched the girls search through my clothes and put on makeup and laugh, I thought, well, this here, we’re living through the best of it. This is one of those moments. It was remarkable in that hindsight wasn’t necessary. I could feel the moment printing itself on me even as it was happening. A tangible sort of happiness.

I don’t remember much of what followed--what we ate once we finally got out the door or what was said as night crept towards morning, but I do remember that at the end of it all, in those slow and sacred hours when the night is a particular sort of black, the sky opened up and it rained.

A cleansing. A fresh start. A new world.

I moved to New York at the age of eighteen and have spent the subsequent eight years here looking for a home—searching for a place where those moments that make a life—those moments that occasionally happen at the rodeo or in the airport or after an impossibly long day—could accumulate, take root and grow.

The night of the move, Kim, searching through my stuff for a pair of shoes, asked in which box I had put my high heels.

There isn’t a box, I said. I don’t own any.

--because I need some for this outfit, she continued, only to stop, turn her head. What do you mean? What do you mean you don’t own any?

I just—well, I don’t.

What?! She screeched. Why?

Because I don’t like them. Don’t worry about it, girls in Brooklyn don’t wear heels, I finished.

This isn’t entirely true. Girls here wear clogs and platforms and winter boots well into summer months, but heels—the kind of heels that Kim was talking about—you’d be hard pressed to find them here.

Perhaps this is one of the ways I knew that after eight years of Manhattan living Brooklyn was the place to be.

No high heels and an abundance of trees.

Now that I am here in this small neighborhood with which I am undoubtedly, unquestionably, desperately in love I wonder why I didn’t move sooner.

But the thing is, I didn’t know at eighteen that I would be the girl to eschew high heels. Didn’t know I’d be the girl to use the word eschew. Didn’t know I’d wake each morning and make myself a latte. Didn’t know it’d be men with dark hair and deep-set eyes that would invariably undo me.

I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know heartbreak. I didn’t know loss. And I sure as hell didn’t know failure. And without these things I knew very little of myself. It has taken eight years and many, many mistakes to piece together a picture of who I am and what I want.

And it is upon these things that a home is built.

I used to think that the I-don’t-knows were the point of this life. Which is to say the things that transcended understanding were what gave meaning to this earth-bound existence. But as I get older (and, I hope, a little wiser) the I-don’t-knows don’t hold so much sway. I like not only to love something, but to know why I love it—to be able to say why I love it.

The area in which I live now—the area I will proudly tell people I am building a home in—well, it was love at first sight. And immediately I knew I could explain and give voice to my wonder: the trees—the explosion of green, the Catholic Church one block south, the absence of tall buildings, the front yards and back yards and corner bars, the pace with which I naturally walk here—slower—markedly different from the speed I use to dodge tourists in midtown Manhattan.

Eight years ago I would have gotten off the train at Carroll street and I would have been smitten, but I couldn’t have told you why. I only know now—I can only say now because I know myself. Because I’ve circled back to that girl I was at five, at eight—the one who without fear got on the sizzler—the one who at seventeen chose a conservatory theatre program over an ivy league education—a fearless creature was she: a girl who knew she’d always take trees over concrete; a girl not interested in bright lights or sky-high heels or the cutout of a city skyline; the girl who would grow up to fall in love with a small and diverse neighborhood, who would love the old New York with its cobblestone streets and turn of the century charm.

Eight years. It took eight years in Manhattan to build a home within myself. To forget who I was and what I knew and what I wanted so that I could be surprised and delighted and totally in awe as I journeyed back to myself.

I didn’t move to Brooklyn any sooner because I wouldn’t have known it was for me. The eight year old in me would have known, yes, but I had yet to reclaim her. And now that I have, all I can say is, holy hell was it worth the wait.

south of 14th street.

photo via. 

Standing in the kitchen, my now roommate asks where I am moving.

Carroll Gardens, I say.

That's really far from here, she replies.

Yeah. That's kind of the point.

And that is about as much as we say, one to the other, punting more silence than words.

I remember when on of my dearest friends, who I met just over a year ago-when I was already so much better--said, I never go above fourteenth. And how at that time I hardly went below it.

14th street, the dividing line. Demarcation of past and present.

I'll still go above it. To get to work, to pay my bills. To take classes. But I wonder if now I'll still feel the pull of the Upper West Side where I spent those formative years in school, if I'll still head there to run errands which, in all honesty, can be done anywhere.

I wonder if in moving so far from here and that being the point I am attempting to raze the past. To raze the New York I knew when life was such that people said to me well, at least you have your health, me knowing that was the one thing I did not have. And how to exist is not to live. How it was not a life then.

In deconstructing my room now, in slowly packing box after box, I come across photos from five years ago when we went as a family to Australia. There are two photos of me with my mother. One in front of the ocean, the other in front of a Christmas tree, and in both I am large. Big. Rounded face, wide torso. I'll happily tell people that I gained forty pounds, but with almost no pictures spanning those six years I don't think about the reality of what that looked like. I'll think about how it made me feel and the logistics of what a person must do in order to gain so much weight, but I won't think about what I saw in the mirror or what the click of a camera revealed--that's mostly too hard.

I'm not sure how I have these two photos--how they survived the usual single rip that led to the trashcan. But sitting on the floor, the past in my hands, I find I am so grateful for them. That happened, I didn't make it up. I didn't dream it. What luck that they survived to see this day. What luck that I survived to live this day.

I am surprised by this, but, I find I am thankful for these two photos in the way that I am thankful to have a singular photo of the man I once loved looking at me as one hopes to be looked at. Once upon a time, he saw me. Once upon a time that happened. I suppose I will put these two photos in the same box in which I have tucked his photo. I won't need to look at any of the three, but will be glad to have them all.

Yes, there is a part of me looking for a new New York. I can confidently say that. A New York for the woman I am now--the one who has her health. And so has life.

Standing in the kitchen, my roommate asks what stop I'll live off. And while I don't say it to her, I think, the one adjacent to a Momofuku Milk Bar. No longer will I have to pass a group of men with following eyes to enter the subway, instead the danger will be chocolate. And soft serve. And warm, baked goods. I'm moving to  a veritable candy land--a grown-up-willy-wonka-dream-world where sweets are just the start. I'm pinching myself with how lucky this feels.

Somewhere in this search for a new apartment--and the discussion of a need for a home--my father warned that perhaps I was looking at it from the wrong angle. That maybe home wasn't dependent on a place. And I knew what he was getting at. Sort of. And so as I searched there came this realization, this thought, I am home now. In my body. I am at home in my body and it's certainly the first time since I moved to New York that I can say that. And maybe that's why I couldn't find a home all the time before. Because I wasn't at home with myself. In my own skin. In my own life. In health. And this realization, this thought that I carry home with me, well it shifts things. It is a freedom of monumental worth.

The freedom to fall in love with Carroll Gardens. But not to need it. The freedom to want to move there simply because I like it. Not for any other reason than that I find it heart-achingly beautiful and I think I might be really happy there. The freedom to say that I carry my home with me and the home I know might really like this place. This place with a Momofuku Milk Bar and tree lined streets, this place so deliciously south of 14th.

South to Brooklyn.

Riding the A train downtown, I think, not much more of this. Today I will pull the money from the bank, today I will sign a lease, and in ten days I will move to Brooklyn. No more frustration at looking up in hopes of seeing  the 125^th street  station, only to be greeted by the yellow stripes of 145^th. No more inching past 135^th. No more gypsy cab drivers who stand at the mouth of subway offering rides and sidelong glances that distill my womanhood to nothing more than curves and cutouts. No more nine-flight escalators stuck behind the person too lazy or too tired or too indignant to walk down. No more of the slow and silent panic that waiting for the A train in the bunker that is 181 elicits.

And no more of the crowded elevator up to the street when riding the 1 train late at night. No more listening as men speak in a langue they wrongly assume I cannot understand.

I have lived in Manhattan for eight years now. It is a number that both alarms and amazes. Eight years.

In ten days this will change. In ten days I will fill a truck with only the furniture that will fit into a small studio apartment and I will hurtle south. To Brooklyn. The southerner in me appreciates this. Victory by degrees.

It is a quiet place—quieter, at least, abundant in trees and coffee shops, and I am undoubtedly, indubitably, indefatigably in love.

With the beer garden across the street and the Catholic church around the corner and the small restaurant that upon entering my father declared like a small pub in London.

I’ve spent eight years in New York searching for a home. Not just searching for the place, but the meaning of the thing. The meaning of the thing at this in between phase in my life when home is not the people that I’m with—no parents, no husband, no children—because it’s just me. For the time being, it’s just me. And home is…

Undefined. Or unanswerable. Or undiscovered. As of yet.

I don’t know if Brooklyn will feel like home any more than any place before it: 66^th Street, 104^th, 80^th, Washington Heights. But the word of the place—the word of the little pocket I’ve fallen in love with—the word of the neighborhood I’ll soon call my own—I’m pretty sure it’s my word.

And that’s something. 

snow and a word.

i look around me and i see where friends have paired off. long relationships, some leading to marriage. children entering the fray. successes becoming more frequent, more exciting.

and i feel...less than.

so much less than.

i'm twenty-six trying to find an apartment to live alone in for the first time in my life. less than.

a set of keys. belonging to me. to use when walking through a door, into a space, that will be mine. for a time. no one's mess but my own, no one else's nutella on the shelf tempting me, a culture for living that i dictate. no shuffle-step around other people's values or wants and needs. no toilet seat left up. no wondering which of the many shampoo bottles is mine, or which head of lettuce is mine, or how the electric bill got so high. less unknown. more comfort.

but still. less than. 

no committed relationship. no dream job. still the nagging question of what-the-hell-am-i-doing-with-my-life. 

last night i snuck away from a table of my dearest friends to use the bathroom. and as i stood there, letting the water wash over my hands, taking long and deep breaths, there came a thought: it will come in an avalanche. it'll come with such force and ferocity that you best get your survival kit ready. 

sometimes life is like that. isn't it? even the success has the potential to knock your legs out from under you and send you tumbling down the mountain.

faith.

imagination.

i can't imagine it getting better. i can't imagine feeling a love returned. or working and making money at the very things i've wanted all my life to do. i can't imagine a family in front of me. or an apartment i'll share with people i'd trek to the ends of the earth for. i suppose as you get older life gives you evidence that these things happen and that patience and small, slow steps do pay off. but in the blindness of youth i am thrashing.

i'm still just trying to find my word.

remember that great passage in eat, pray, love?

"Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever the majority thought might be--that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there."

i had to go back to the book to look up what new york's word was. i knew it began with the letter a, but i kept coming back to greed. so avarice, then? it's actually achievement. which i think i can get behind. but in the heart of the city i think that achievement is laced on every level with a hefty dose of avarice, and that stops me short in my tracks.

there is a moment when you realize everything you ever wanted is nothing you want now. less than.

which is not entirely true, of course, you want much of the same things, but holy hell if it hasn't shifted and changed and totally turned on its head.

i don't like manhattan. i really don't. i don't like that the amount of advertisements i see in any given day is more than some people see in their life. i don't like the hustle and bustle and fast-paced rushing to some place else. always some place else. i don't like the only way to get to the A train from where i now live is to walk past a corner of men who make me feel small by the way their eyes follow and peel. and so okay, it's cultural, maybe. but why does their culture get to supersede mine? and why is new york small enough that you always run into people you don't want to see, but big enough that even when you walk several blocks out of your way you never see the people you most want to.

there are parts of this city that i adore. the west village, bits of the lower east side, tribeca right up against the water there--but these are the parts are less densely populated. where life moves with more ease. they are the corners and cracks where achievement is laced with something altogether else: peace, family, and a thing i've yet to name--something centered and whole. these, of course, are the parts of the city that i can't afford. and so the achievement i need now is laced with the need for money.

money. less than. 


it'll come in an avalanche. 


it just feels so darn far away. and my faith in that future, in that hefty proclamation wanes.

i want to be more than. or just enough. i want to make those i love proud, i want to live in a place where the word is my own. balance. i'm pretty sure my word is balance. ironic, since i'm a libra.

time to make it snow.

on learning to say shut up.

growing up, shut-up was not allowed in our house.

with good reason. it's a powerful little phrase. it packs a punch. and there wasn't a place for it in our home.

it's an expression that's overused. taken too lightly. made casual by how commonly it's tossed out.

but it's got some claws that one.

i can be far too judgmental. it's one of my worst traits. absolutely not something i'm proud of.

i'm judgmental of myself, of others (equal opportunist here), i make assumptions and take things too personally. and then, adding insult to injury, i rarely say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said.

but i'm working on it. and sometimes, shut up, as it turns out, is a great place to start.

i found myself in a situation recently with someone i barely knew and the conversation moved swiftly from global warming to scientific research to antidepressants.

ah antidepressants. why would anyone take them when they're known to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts? he asked.

a perfectly valid question. mostly posed by those who've never been in the grips of a knock-out-drag-down fight with the disease.

the thing is, that question is not terribly well informed. it's one-dimensional in nature. there are so many questions that can and must be asked. and that one is just the start. and to begin and end there is too miss the point entirely.

perhaps it was the way he asked it that pissed me off. perhaps it was his judgement that really drove me nuts. perhaps it was that after asking the question he just kept talking, with none of what he said grounded in experience.

here's the whole of my philosophy on depression: unless you've ever suffered from it, you don't get to judge those who have. unless you've gone to the mouth of the thing and managed to gather up your mangled limbs and trek back out, then shut up. because you haven't a clue. unless you've watched, helpless, as someone you've loved has lost the fight or lost years of their life to it, you do not get to stand on the sidelines and pass a judgment. and you certainly don't have the right to give voice to that judgement. so again. shut. the hell. up. because, with all due respect, you sound like an idiot. 


so is my stance on love. and relationships. no love story (throughout the entire human history!) has ever repeated. yes, similarities abound, absolutely. but my love story does not, nor cannot compare to yours. but because we all have experience with love, we assume we know. and so we judge. from the outside, we judge and we assume. he's all wrong for her, one of them must be cheating, and on and on the wheel does turn. but we are not there when two people fall into bed at night, nor are we there in the morning when a small pulse passes between two hands, a signal to begin the day. we are not there. and because we are not there, on the inside of the thing, we do not get to judge.

so we best just shut up (and trust me, i include myself in this).

the love stories that have colored my life have been mostly private. i keep them as such because in my experience people attempt to make small what i hold to be most dear, most true. well i've been in love, so i know. well i have more experience, so i get to say. 

you do know? how do you know? you do have more experience? how do you know you have more experience? is it that your love stories have followed a more traditional course that you're entitled to sit there on your high horse and pass a judgement?

shut. up. 

listening is a powerful thing. and there is certainly a place for silence.

moving on. growing up. and the confidence to say it.

i'll miss the corner cafe. the short trek to it. just one half of a block. the lattes that have become both ritual and story. i'll miss hector poking his head out from the kitchen to say hello in spanish. the granite bar and tiled floor, the ever-changing art adorning the walls. the quiet familiarity of the place.

i'll miss the wine store across the street. the one so large it feels out of place in manhattan. painted in colors that bring to mind the open air, mountains, and a drier climate.

i'll miss the way the light plays off the red-bricked building across the way. the building that each saturday men and boys enter into, through an unmarked door on the first floor. i'll miss the curiosity that parade elicits.

i'll miss the river. especially on those days it's so quiet and still, the air so clear, that i feel i can reach my thumb and forefinger to the opposing bank and drag it towards me. tangible. i'll miss the way the spring air angles against the bluffs, and the trees reborn, swaddled in green.

to be honest though, i've mostly stopped noticing it. the water. the green. the very thing i first fell in love with--i've mostly stopped seeing it. i didn't mean for that to happen. it just did.

surely i'll miss the eccentricities of this very small and very specific corner of manhattan--washington heights, hudson heights. so close to water, right up against no longer used train tracks. i'll feel nostalgic for this suspended moment in time in which i stumbled into womanhood.

but it's not enough. those things i love are simply not enough anymore.

no one tells you that one of the joys of getting older is the confidence in that phrase: not. good. enough.

you know yourself better, priorities come into focus, and lies are easier to unearth.

you learn, with grace, to let some things go: friendships that were more a product of youth and need than anything else. men who diminish your worth and underestimate your intelligence.

you care less about satisfying everyone--being thought of as kind. you invest far less time in pretense because time is in fact a commodity and so you give it to those you love--your friends and your family and yourself. and you stop apologizing for that. you make decisions. and you move on. and you let go when need be.

and where need be. corners and cafes and shared apartments.

growing up, it turns out, has its perks.

gathering storm clouds.

i had to write an essay recently and after four drafts of pure drivel this came out. it was an attempt at explaining the last few years in the very short span of two pages. some of it is recycled and much of it is known, but i thought i'd share anyway...

It must happen silently. The slipping from one's skin. On long subway rides and quiet mornings. In the middle of a crowded room or alone in an unknown city. Perhaps it exits the body like a breath. Such a sad quiet thing, the loss of one’s self.

My story isn't singular and I can't say that it's particularly interesting. There was the usual depression and the usual difficulty getting out of bed, but that's not really of import, nor is it what I remember. Instead my mind continuously circles back to a night late in December nearly three years ago. I walked down a freshly blanketed street, white with snow, my suitcase trailing, leaving behind two clean lines. The air was perfect and clean and there was this sense not just of returning home, but of returning to myself. Oh, here I am, came a thought, dropping down weightless from the nearly black sky. And then another, I didn’t even know I had gone. Until that moment, until that quiet walk, neither thought had ever occurred to me. It was only upon the start of the long sojourn back--that beginning of the bildungsroman—that I became aware of the loss I had suffered. Funny thing about sadness, the kind sneaks and steals whole years from your life—it doesn't just steal time, it takes the whole of the person—skewing memory and experience, wiping whole moments from one's life. 

What occurs to me now, courtesy of the lovely gift of hindsight, is that I had begun writing just months before this revelation. It began innocently enough. I wrote about silly things. Morning lattes and fresh flowers. Men with deep-set eyes and long lashes. Cobblestone streets. I used words to dream my way out of sadness. And before I knew it, words were moving up and through that I hardly knew were in me. Stories were everywhere. And everything, even the worst of it, especially the worst of it—the anger and frustration, the sense of unknown—was part of a tale and thus worthy of a voice. And so I became worthy of a voice. The words had lungs, the words breathed life, revealed life, unraveled and unfurled that which I had hidden for so long. I credit writing with returning me to myself. And so while my loss may have been marked by silence, the return was anything but. I was a writer. Without my words ever being published or seen, I knew at the core of it all, I was a storyteller.

Writing to me seems much like gathering storm clouds. That is to say, nearly impossible. But then such is life. It is nearly impossible and absolutely frustrating and more often than not, a great mystery. But when things get tricky on my end, when upheaval reigns, and nothing is clearer than murky, when I feel most alone, I remember I am filled with words, and their endless, malleable patterns. And so I am never without. There is the loss of one’s self. And there is life after. And the life after, it's just so much better. You walk home one December night, snow collecting in your shoes and find you’re a better person, filled with the love of small, tangible, wriggly words--and those words open worlds and life thrums along. Only different, better.

I don’t yet know what my life will be. I don’t know if I’ll author a book or make a living speaking the words of others. It is all so unknown. But I do know who I am, and the rest is adventure. And heaven help me because I’m yearning for some adventure. 

a place to go forward from.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      my bed is unmade. the laundry is piled high in the corner. i've had more to drink in the last few weeks than i have in the last few years (keep in mind, that's not saying much, i'm not really a drinker. but still.). i raced through all of season two of downton abbey because pbs is only meant to have it online for like ten days more--most of that racing was done in the wee hours of the morning after long nights and longer days. i had my tarot cards read nearly a week ago and i keep thinking about it, which, as it turns out, was the one thing i was warned against--over-thinking (me, an over-thinker? nah). i cracked my iPhone two days ago, was nearly attacked on the subway (wrong place, wrong time. not to worry that'll be a story i'll give more detail when time allows), was half-jokingly proposed marriage to (i half-jokingly accepted), and when forced to answer, listed utah as my happy place (a park city ski vacation is just around the corner. but is there snow out there?).

 i didn't know i'd fall so desperately in love with being busy--didn't know i wouldn't mind having no time to myself in the morning, no time to leisurely enjoy my latte or read a book or sit down and put pen to paper. didn't know i wouldn't mind forfeiting certain things in exchange for others. didn't know i wouldn't mind leaving the house in the morning only to return eighteen hours later--too much of that spent on the subway. always too much on the subway. it's a whole different thing when you're busy with things that mean just a bit more.

i have friends who are doing exceptional things. tv shows and broadway productions and major motion pictures. friends who are getting engaged, married, having children. and so it may not seem like much, a tiny little play in a scrappy downtown theatre space. but after four years of not acting, well, it may not be a lot. but it's something.

these are the ways you love yourself. (to forgive).

forgive yourself the nights you climb into bed full-face of makeup, too tired to take it off. forgive yourself the days when one latte is not enough, when the two major food groups are coffee and sugar. forgive yourself that one night when at two am you woke to use the bathroom and inhaled an entire chocolate bar instead. forgive the time spent with a man you now have not one nice thing to say about. and forgive just how long it took to get over him. he was not good and not kind and he is not your fault. keep some secrets closer. forgive yourself for actually loving the gentle curve of your hips. and to hell with a society which suggests you might not or should not. they herald your womanhood, the man you marry will lose himself in them, they will hoist groceries and children. they are sturdy--anchoring you firmly to this earth. forgive the nights you cannot sleep--sadness or some unnamed force pressing heavy on your chest. forgive the mistakes of the last several years. so you made them. okay. enough. move on. the mistakes and the fault-lines, they are the foundation. forgive yourself that you did not choose an easier path. and forgive yourself the sadness you caused those around you. the broken-promises and cutting words and the things left unsaid. fear was large and biting. forgive the anger you feel. feel it and then look again with kinder eyes. forgive yourself for not handling it all better, for feeling like you let others down. the path is not done, the road is not finished, why are you trying so hard to rush the whole thing? celebrate the fact that your story has some major departures. go ahead and use that expensive serum that promises to diminish those fine lines. protect and preserve your skin. but when the day does come when forehead creases no longer fade into the background, give thanks. humanity made visible! you will be loved all the more for this. you will love yourself all the more for this.  and please, for the love of all that is good and holy forgive yourself for loving a man who cannot love you back. love him anyway. send that love into the world and let it fill you up. the only way to know the story is to go out and and write it. live your way into it. ferociously. begin to live and work and fight and love with an unparalleled ferocity. let fear dictate nothing. unfurl your chest, you have all the armor you'll ever need. see with wide eyes and don't forget to laugh.

week: oh hell, i've lost count, i don't even know anymore.

i just know that someday i'll look back on this last month, hard as it's been, as a formative moment in my life. as a time when i began to love the city as i once imagined i might. when things though small and new felt vibrant and important. when happiness grew and deepened even as i spent nearly every long subway ride taking deep breaths and fighting back tears. it's two in the morning now and i can't sleep because i'm mourning the last six years of my life. does that sound ridiculous? there's just this sense that that chapter is closing. and i should be down on my knees giving thanks for that and i am, dear heaven above, i am. it was an impossible time. and i would never go back--could never go back. and i've been coming out of it for a good long while now and i just... holy hell, there are no words for this. and even if there were, perhaps they are not mine. too sacred to share, somehow. i can't say that this next chapter will be any easier. and i sure as heck don't know what it holds, everything still feels murky and dark and totally unknown, but suddenly there is a forward motion that wasn't there before. and the only way to move on is to let go of what was. and while it was awful and terrible and i'm certainly not proud of the person i was for such a good chunk of that time, it was still formative and important. and so even as i celebrate the future, i must mourn what was. two truths, one in each hand. happy and sad. past and future. a balancing act of the two. (have i mentioned i'm a libra?).

decide what to be and go be it. * 




*the avett brothers (of course).

a sunday lover.

there comes a point every night when i crawl or hoist myself into bed and in the space between bended knees and face flat into the pillow that i give thanks for the comfort of a bed that is all my own.

for anyone who has ever shared a bed--be it a single night or several years--with someone who's not quite right, you know the joy that sleeping alone can bring. the not-quite-right provides a perspective like no other. a glorious thing that perspective is.

someone recently asked me if i mind being single? what a silly question. well, i haven't yet met someone who makes me wanna to give up my current Facebook status, so no. i don't mind it. not at all. i'm pretty sure that i wasn't so snide when responding to him, but he was angling, and i was side-stepping. (and just in case you didn't know, i'm not the girl that feels the need to list any sort of Facebook relationship status at all. so there). and why does blogger keep capitalizing Facebook for me? maybe i want a lowercase f...

damn, this was meant to be a poetic and lovely post about sundays and the space between and the yearning for a companion.

let me try again:

i don't mind this single life.

not usually.

but sundays are different. sundays i feel the absence upon waking. it is on sundays that i long for a brunch companion. or someone to help me with the new york time's puzzle. someone for whom to make an extra bit of coffee. someone to fall back into bed around noon with.

a sunday someone.




one of my girlfriends recently said she was in search of a part-time lover.

i'll take one just for sundays, please.

in inches.

i ran down the hill toward home.

home for now.

the air was cool, bordering on blistery, but certainly not becoming of february.

my feet throbbed and i wondered why i had chosen to wear my blue-suede-pumps to work--where was the sense in that?

it was close to two, middle of the night, exhaustion creeping in that uncomfortable way around the back of the head.

this is your becoming, this is your becoming, i repeated, calling forth the wisdom of my elders and betters.

i could make a list of everything that's upsetting me. and in three months time most of the issues will have passed or receded or proved blessings. i know this. there is comfort in this.

and yet, three years ago i might have said the same, but there are still those few, same uncomfortable, unanswered questions. the same unanswered love, the same unfulfilled home in this city.

this is your becoming.

it can change in a new york minute. that's what they say. but it's been eight years now and any good changes have been a fight. slow and painstaking and absolutely measured in inches--won in inches and years. nothing resembling a minute.

this is your becoming.

you see, most days i feel like i'm banging my head against the same damn walls and lord i need a good cry, but hell if it'll come.

this is your becoming.

just one good thing, i think. one good, unexpected little miracle. let it surprise me.

that's all i want.

i sit with that wish. for a good long while i let it take up just enough space, careful it doesn't consume.

and then, just the other day, while listening to the avett brothers and paging through a script on the long, unforgiving train to the outer-fringes of brooklyn, there is a thought:

you are the miracle.

this is my becoming.

i am the miracle. my very existence. the breath that rises and falls. the little rebel heart that continues to pump blood, continues to fall in love even when i can't see the sense, or summon the strength. the will to be better, to be more, to see wider and love more freely, i. am. the miracle.

the rest will come. because i exist and i want and i'm willing to fight--even in inches. each day is more, even when it feels little and ugly--the day is more. the inches will add up, the inches will accumulate.

this is my becoming.
i am the miracle. 

playing the numbers.

sometimes i have to pull out the really rational (and, i fear, underutilized) part of myself--the part that knows life is just a number's game.

the harder i work, the more i fail, the more i experience, the more growing-pains push me this way and that, the more i come up against what i fear and the more i don't get what i want, the longer it takes to meet this person or that person or get this or do that, well...

the chances of the good happening--of that one thing or one person or one job or one moment that could turn the course, dictate the path, illuminate--the chances get better each day.

it's a number's game. my chance of success increases each day it doesn't happen.

sometimes it's hard to remember that when my head is stuck in the mud of a very busy block of weeks and the universe seems to have just thrown a few things at me that while livable, feel like what-are-the-chances, cruel twists of fate.

a few months ago i was lying in bed, terrified by the idea that i might actually get what i want, and there was this thought: too soon. too soon, it hasn't been hard enough yet.

(hasn't been hard enough, yet?! bite your tongue, ms. fee, not a helpful thought).

dearest universe: i'd like to take that back--that thought, if you might be so kind as to allow me. okay, well, not take it back, but amend it, or just altogether change it. not too soon, it's definitely been hard enough. perhaps that particular story isn't finished yet, and that's okay. but some of the other stuff, not too soon. not too soon. 

i think i'm ready. i'm ready.

so i'll do my best to keep showing up, and if you wouldn't mind just fudging the numbers a bit in my favor? well, that would be swell.

okay. deep breath. onto and into the day...




image: brian w. ferry

the kind of woman i want to be:

i want to take my makeup off every night before bed.
i want to floss my teeth just as often as is recommended.
i want to wear high heels. or not.
i want a little garden. whether it be mounted on a wall, contained in a window-box, or a full backyard plot, i want my own greens. want to mark time by their progress. want to pick them fresh for dinner.
i want to bike to the farmer's market. i want to like green tea. or not. but drink it anyway.
i want my food to be rich in the colors of the earth.
i want to live near the water. or the mountains. or both. i want to pray and give thanks beneath trees that reach upward and out.
i want balance. balance between investing in all the right things and paying attention and putting in the work and then letting it go and not giving two shits.
i want to turn off the lights when i leave a room. and i want to find a partner who can honor that.
i want pictures everywhere. frames everywhere. i want the words hung right up there on the wall. i want to wake early. to move my body because it's good for my heart. because it keeps me light and kind. i want breakfast in bed on saturday mornings. and fresh flowers and gifts for no reason at all. i want to be the kind of friend who honors commitments, takes the time to make the call, sends ridiculous emails just because, who speaks truly and freely, and plans birthday trips to paris.
i want to wear colorful socks and knee-length skirts. bright lipstick and my hair in a high bun.
i want to never go another six-year-period without owning a pair of bluejeans.
i want to return to a bar just because i thought the bartender was cute. and i want to sit late into the night, as darkness folds over itself, falling in love, if only for a morning.