Blue Fever: Act II

We ran before we could crawl. We ran a lot back then, back and forth to different houses, different days, different rules and different parents. No one talked except for the kids and we were screaming we were screaming so loud but no one listened and we swallowed feelings and learned how to hide emotions and unlearned how to use voices while the adults yelled at us and communicated to each other through court documents. 

I grew up and out of that and had 100 golden weekends of swimming and laughing and exploring and learning and drawing and turning my parents into grandparents and running around finding new adventures. I couldn't afford them then and I paid for it later. I thought I slowed down in my mid-20s but I was just caught up in someone else's running. I was running interference between other adults who were only communicating through court documents. But I had 100 golden weekends. I taught the kids how to swim and kept the house when they left. 

I paid for that later, too. 

There's a mosquito in my room. I like her today but I don't want to share her. I'm hoping my bug bites and anxious scratches won't give me away. He jumps in the shower so he doesn't smell like her. He's wearing jeans in the summer. We are both lying. No one is comfortable. We never got comfortable. 

So I'm running. I'm running again. This house has eaten me alive in ways my anxiety never could, from the inside out starting from childhood. I learned to swim in this pool. I taught two kids to swim in this pool. I inhaled too many chlorinated memories over the years and it's toxic now because I never knew chlorine could be so poisonous so I wish I never swam those extra laps at 3 AM when I was just trying to regulate my own nervous system by jumping in the icy December waters. I've stopped calling them my kids. They were never my kids. 

"The difference between medicine and poison is the dose."  

Who am I if not what this house made me? The people I ask that of tell me that I will still be the same granddaughter and game night hostess and writer and creator and lover and employee and friend and mother and everything I have always been even when I leave this house. And I get that we can never go home but why aren't we talking about the fact that we can never really escape it either? Fucked up foundations are hard to repair and nearly impossible to unlearn so I run and I run and I run but I usually wake up in this house like it's Groundhog Day. You'll still be you, they tell me and I reconfigure my face into a smile the way I've reconfigured the living room furniture six times because I don't have the heart to tell them I don't want to be that person anymore. 

Because that's not a person. That's a collection of trauma responses. 

I'm not a person, I'm a job title who builds ships in a bottle. My cup is half empty but I'm pouring full throttle. I'm feeling dangerously low and high on that feeling again, I thrive in the empty spaces and the survival races and in seeing the faces of those I love beam with delight no matter what mine looks like. Give me the chaos and the R&D and the envisioning phase. Call me back for implementation and install but lets not pretend I'll stick around after your go-live date. I'll launch you and leave you. You knew what this was. I was hired for this. I was chosen for this. I was born and consequently made for this after years of running whatever was broken around me. Give me half a chance and twice the pressure. I am begging. I am tired. I am tired of begging. 

Thank god we never got to the point where we were communicating through court documents. 

It's cold here now, I live in a hotel room and the nightmares are back. This isn't a hotel room it's my new house but I'd be more comfortable at a fucking Marriott. This is the last time I'll move that sewing machine table. It's too heavy and I don't know how to sew anyway I don't even know why I wanted it in the first place. I don't have emotional permanence so maybe that's why I keep so much furniture and so many blankets and so many glasses that I stole from bars just to remember just to try to remember I thought I was getting good at remembering and I was doing okay I remember I remember the 17th of November even though we never really celebrated it.  

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo." 

What a mess we made, there are boxes everywhere and hangers in trash bags and loose ends on all the blankets and here it is, here it is again this feeling that I was on my best behavior and it just wasn't enough and I was scared and all I remember now is running and I am running and jesus christ I forgot how much I love running I have so much good much music to run to now and people to call who love my marathons and I don't think for one second about those people who I can't ever call again because they knew what this was and I'm crying in the rain and I'm crying on the bench and I want grandma to know how I saved us all but I really didn't save anyone and I wasn't the one who refurbished the bench but the bench is here because no matter how far you run wherever you go there you are. 

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?"

I met a girl once and she was beautiful--she was loveable--she was funny and bright and smart in a weird way like how when the sunset has colors you don't expect and she grieved deeply because she loved so much and so hard and she danced under the moon and measured her life in coffee spoons and she wasn't concerned with how she was perceived she just kind of moved in and out of scene and in and out of focus and showed up at the best times like some manic pixie dream girl Mary Poppins and pulled magic tricks out of her bag but the bag wasn't a bag it was baggage that she used to help dig other people out of despair and she liked eyeshadow and had a favorite perfume and I really miss her, I want to be her again. 

I wish she didn't look so good in your shirt. I wish I didn't have to give his back.  

Fuck pretty much all of this. I have never been so lost and so confused and yet still so sure that I am on the right path. I wonder how the people I love are doing I have checked on Sister an annoying amount because I need her to be okay so I can be okay and that is not fair because we may never be okay I think we are just getting used to running and losing and unlearning. 

I turned myself into an emotional IV drip for other people and I am pretty empty my loves but I'll keep going keep trying keep pouring from an empty cup I can do this I can run this I can unlearn this I can remember. Soon I will threaten to pull my own plug out of the wall they built their house on--enjoy the standoff enjoy the silence enjoy the ride enjoy it, my gift to you. 

Sometimes my biggest asset is how much of a liability I can be. 

"That is not it at all 
That is not what I meant, at all." 

I'm blending my T.S. Elliot poems again. I like when I get this way. I love this mania. I was so depressed for so long. There was a mosquito in my room. I was so anxious I was so sad I was so worried and I was projecting oh god how we projected. I am too many things in too many different directions and I can't wait to feel things again. I am allowed to feel. 

This is the way the game ends
This is the way the blog ends
This is the way thirteen years of my life ends
Not with a blush but a whisper. 

Blue Fever: Act I

There's a mosquito in our room. 

Well, the room. I guess it isn't ours and maybe that's some of the problem. But it's here, buzzing around an otherwise silent landscape of cotton peaks and valleys as I adjust and readjust and try to get comfortable. I know I'm not falling asleep any time soon but maybe I can get comfortable. There's a patch of light trickling in from the other room and every so often I can see the mosquito zipping back and forth between us. I never remember to turn off the light in the room where the bar is and I think it's because I'm half-heartedly trying to get caught mid-cocktail-party-for-one. He is unaffected, both by the mosquito and by the amount of whiskey that routinely disappears overnight. If you can sleep through one, you can sleep through the other. Maybe it's no surprise everyone is asleep--this much be exhausting to watch.   

There's a mosquito in the room. The maddening part is not the buzzing that has become siren-like in the last hour, but the steady whispers underneath the shrill battle cry. I swear I can hear her talking to me. Of course it's a her. It's always a woman. And I can tell because she bites. The bite doesn't hurt so much but the poison is itchy. My veins are full of it by now, I'm sure. I can feel the heat of it surging in my bloodstream as my heart rate sprints to catch up with my racing thoughts. I could leave the room or at least watch TV to drown her out but no--tonight I think I'll listen. I'll even give her a megaphone. What does she need? What do you need, baby?

I wonder how she got in here. I always close the screen door behind me when I retreat to the back porch. I haven't gone out the front door in days. Maybe it was just the right timing. We must have done some beautifully coordinated dance, if it were visible, some extravagant choreography where I managed to get outside with coffee, cigarettes and phone all in hand and the weight of the world on my shoulders all while remembering to close the door and there she was, staying out of sight and out of mind with a singular goal of coming after me later. Maybe I just let my guard down--phone, coffee, cigarettes AND the weight of the world is a lot to juggle. 

Maybe she was here before me. 

Maybe she got here first and I'm the third wheel. 

Either way, there is a mosquito in the room. Would it be different if it were our room? How is this not waking him up? Between my endless and utterly futile attempts to settle down and settle in and her incessant fucking whispering, how is this not a bigger problem for both of us? Why am I the only one being ambushed? Is he just used to mosquitos? Better at them?

I can see the iceberg tip of his shoulder jutting out from our sea of blankets. I Titanic my way into his sharp edges for a snuggle, burying my face between his shoulder blades and tucking my knees behind his. I know it won't last long but I do this most nights when I need a hug; I just motherfucking take one, and he kind of likes it. But it gets too hot or too needy or too something and at the first sign of his discomfort I bail back to my side. Women and mosquitos first. We leave him be. 

On the old mattress there was a dip where I slept, carved out from someone else who jumped ship. I used to try to fit my knees where I thought hers went--it never really worked out. But the new mattress, our mattress, doesn't have that. And I'd like to write something nice about blank slates, but not tonight. Tonight The Mosquito has granted me an audience, and I can't be late. She's whispering. Well then, tell me your secrets. Fuck, tell me his. 

I am back in the room with the bar. Thank god I left that light on. Oh, maybe that's the real reason I do this... last call is when I say it is. When the mosquito lets me sleep. But now it's diet Dr. Pepper and whichever bottle I can reach first. Tastes like college. Tastes like home. Tastes like here. 

Are you still coming? Am I still home?

I write myself a note on the mirror. I can't wait to talk about this and I have to remember whatever this is. I'll write it here in an eyeliner I know I can't cry away. And I'll see it. And I'll know. I'm dancing around living room now. It's quiet here. My cheeks are red and I can't see into the room. I lost my glasses. I lost the mosquito. I'm writing in my head. I always am. I'm singing out loud. I usually am not. I am acting so silly now but we'll have a conversation and that will be better. I'll get better. It gets better. 

Sometimes the conversations are more important than the actions and sometimes they just... aren't. I'm back in the room. I'm out of diet Dr. Pepper. I'm tired of drinking out of the bottle. I lost my favorite glass. I erased the note on the mirror. I am embarrassed about it. I won't remember.

There are mosquitos in our room. Too many. I hope they start with my eyeballs so I don't have to watch what I'm doing to myself. 

I stretch my arms up and get them over the blanket cocoon I've swaddled myself in--I hope they go after the tattoo I am sick of looking at while they're at it. One by one I feel the mosquitoes settling in a way that I simply cannot. They sink into me and I feed into them, which invites more and more. Oh, I left the kitchen light on too. That's new. The siren-whispers are a melody now. I know this song. Fuck, I left the speaker outside. Oh well. I think this could work out. I think I can do this. It's a chorus. Ouch. They are whispering questions. In a round. Sounds pretty at first but it gets painfully repetitively. 

Why did you... Who do you think... Where did you even... How could you have... What were you... When were you last... Why didn't you... 

It's not the bite that stings, it's the poison that itches. 

It's a symphony now, a swarm. It's a cloud of tiny wings and shouted whispers of every mistake I've ever made. It's the first time I realized as a child that I wasn't invited to someone's birthday party. It's crying the entire flight from Liverpool to Chicago. It's the trail of drunken tears I left across Tampa when someone I didn't even really respect betrayed me. It's the way I can tell when I don't have someone's full attention and my insides turn into the queasy stomach I developed when I was eight years old. It's every time I had to to get on a plane when my work there wasn't even close to done. It's not having the patience sometimes. It's digging into an old notebook to be disgusted by who I was and what I was writing not but six months ago. It's that same notebook which has "be kind" written on the outside but on the inside screams "this is who you really are." It's every time I remember that I used to fight hurricanes and now the slightest summer shower ruins my trip to the grocery store and I don't leave the house for three more days. It's every last goodbye that I didn't know would be the last one. It's every book I never read, it's every bar conversation I faked my way through, it's every time I drank too much and listened to Brand New just so I could cry and try to feel something. It's that I still like Brand New. It's all the times I said maybe when I should have said no. It's the dreams I still have. It's the ambition and drive I forgot how to have. It's the dishes in the sink. It's the makeup I forgot to take off. It's wondering why they love me but being afraid to ask. Because the answer is that they really don't, because I had that chance and tossed it from the car window on the side of I-75 somewhere like the ashes of a cigarette that I didn't really want in the first place. Because of course I did. Because no one could ever love me. Not this me, not the one whispering with mosquitos at night, opening all the doors and windows and inviting all their mosquito friends. I don't even like her. It's guilt. It's shame. It's imposter syndrome. It's wanting to be seen but not wanting to be found out. It's anxiety. And it's here for me. But it's also here for me. It is so here for me.

There's a mosquito in the room. There has been a mosquito in every room, every hotel room, every his-hers-and-ours room, every space I can remember and probably the ones I don't. She's done whispering, so I think I can sleep soon. 

My sisters will ask. My Bestie will check because he knows that the day after I get a lot of mosquito bites I'm not necessarily sore but I am tender. I'll hide a few bites to keep just for myself. In a time where I am so concerned about infection rates and viral outbreaks, it's nice to have a sickness that is mine and mine alone. An invisible illness. Something I can scratch at again and again when no one is looking and not have to worry about it spreading. 

There's a mosquito in our room. I wonder if she's as tired as I am, especially on nights when I fight her so hard. I can't help but feel bad for her. 

I wonder what eats her alive at night. 

Home is where the (follow your) heart is.

I know it only takes about three minutes for the sun in India to consume your entire body and soul, but I choose to wait outside the hotel anyway. Ram ji won't be late--he never is. This is my third trip to Jaipur and my third hotel in this city, but it's mostly the same as the other ones. Everything is always marble and someone is always cleaning it. It's like they don't want me to know I'm in a dusty desert. Walls around the hotel are covered in Bougenvilla that reminds me of my grandmother every time I look at it, and they do a pretty good job of blocking out what's around me. There's new construction in the lot next door and just looking at the bamboo scaffolding that stretches eight shaky stories high makes my stomach turn.

I hear him before I see him. The engine revs and then he brakes suddenly so that the tires of the company car screech on the freshly-swept marble driveway. Ram sees me sitting on the marble steps next to security (no matter which hotel I'm at, he knows where to look for me). We make eye contact and I can see him giggle as I let out a laugh that echoes off the marble surrounding me. I grab my bag and sprint to the car before the hotel doorman can open the car door for me. The staff at The Lalit doesn't know me yet, and I don't feel like breaking them in because I'm moving to the Marriott in four days anyway, but Ram ji knows better than to try to open the door for me anymore. It took over 30 hours all said and done for me to get to the hotel, about 45 minutes to put my suitcase down and shower, and in 10 minutes I'll be in the office again. I'm home.

Follow your heart. I say "follow your heart" so much at work that people make fun of me about it. It started as a sarcastic response to people not following directions. Oh, the report is wrong? Well, follow your heart, I guess. But it morphed into meaning "you choose, you be in charge this time. I don't need to explain this to you. There's no right or wrong answer. Just follow your heart.

I celebrated my birthday a little early while I was in India. They bought me a heart-shaped cake.

Hospitality in India makes "southern hospitality" look like garbage. "Guests are gods" is a frequent saying that I hear and while it makes me feel icky, I try to let strangers and friends alike take care of me in a way that is sweet but entirely excessive. I can't drive. I can't speak the language. I'm not allowed to go anywhere by myself. I can't order a simple beer at the hotel bar without having it brought to me on a tray for no reason and presented with great pomp and circumstance, but you know what I can do? I can keep housekeeping out of my room. And they hate it. They catch me in the hallway and ask if everything is okay (it is) if I need more towels (I don't) or if I need my minibar restocked (I do, but I just need one day where I have to go get my own bottled water from downstairs, so no, thank you.) The constant aim to please is nice but the complete lack of independence is suffocating. And one time the housekeeper cleaned out my hairbrush and I still don't know how I feel about that, to be honest.

I threw the bartenders for a huge loop the second time I stayed in Jaipur. I cleared our empty glasses from the table and brought them inside while I was getting another round and they panicked. I tried explaining that I used to bartend and it's no big deal, but they tried explaining that it's their job and they are happy to serve and I don't think we got anywhere, really. I made my Indian Coworkers-Turned-Brothers explain in Hindi that I don't want a glass with my bottled beer, I don't need the over the top service, I just want to have a few drinks with friends and relax. It went okay. Two days later I was at the same hotel with the same staff and I ordered the same single beer and he brought it to me with a glass but sheepishly said, "Boss is watching, ma'am. I must bring glass but please don't use if you don't want to."

Unlearning things is hard, I get it. Especially for a bartender.

Two more days after that, I was sitting outside on the patio (mind you this was back in January, so not heatstroke weather yet, but still warm) and I watched this couple totally berate my favorite Baby Bartender because the champagne glasses weren't chilled enough. Listen, I don't care how hard you chill glasses, they have about 45 seconds OUTSIDE in INDIA before they are melting off the edge of the table, Dali style. But this guy didn't seem to get that. And he was rude to the bartender (not cool) and then was a complete dick and lied about the bartender being rude when the manager came over. I. Lost. My. Shit. Between my limited Hindi and the manager's broken English, I think we both understood that The Couple were awful people and Baby Bartender was "reprimanded" for appearances but let's all calm down and not lose our shit over hot champagne flutes.

Four months later I was back at the same hotel with the same staff and I ordered the same beer and The Manager proudly brought it to me WITHOUT a glass and smiled. "The way you like. We remember." And I was home.

We can learn. We can unlearn. We can remember.

Neither one of my parents live in a house where I was raised anymore, but I somehow live in the house I "grew up" in. It's the only house I've ever known for my whole life. It was Grandma's. Then it was Grandad's. Now it is Uncle's, but for a little while longer, it is mine. It is the place that I made a home for two sweet little boys and all that's left of them are a hole in a wall from doorknob during an intense game of hide-and-seek and one orange hula hoop. I've painted and repainted rooms. I've moved furniture and housed different kinds of orphans. And it's weird to live in a place that is home and used to be my home and very shortly will never be home again. But when I get here after long work trips or fun trips or fun work trips, it is nice to be home. (For about three days, and then I get antsy.)

Germany was the coldest. We'd just come from India, and snow fell onto my messy airplane hair as we walked into the hotel. My dad always tells this funny story about being stationed in Germany and how the windows open out and not up, so I was able to tell my Bestie who loves the cold how to let the snow into his hotel room and I swear to God I've never felt so useful.

Germany was the coldest for other reasons, darker reasons. I've tried to write about them since they happened, failing miserably each time. Here's the gist: I desperately wanted to visit a WWII concentration camp memorial site. I had NO FUCKING CLUE how traumatic it would be, but I knew I wanted to go. Bestie obliged. I think we both felt a duty to go, an obligation to the past but also an acknowledgment of our present, a window of what happens when we forget that those who look or sound or love differently than us are still human beings despite our differences.

For as long as we could, we walked around Neuengamme on the self-guided tour and Bestie watched as my empathy shattered into a thousand teardrops. He stood on the second story of the "welcome center" as I knelt on the first floor staring and weeping at the banners of names that stretched from floor to ceiling and grew exponentially as the years of the war waged on. We looked at the Book of the Dead. We saw the kilns where clay was baked into bricks and the carts that carried those bricks to the banks of the Elbe river. We read about how those kilns and carts later held only bodies.

Bestie is without a doubt one of the closest people to me and I swear to God or whatever semblance of a higher power that I felt no presence of that day, I have never been so far away from someone right goddamn next to me. We looked at each other occasionally, pointing out placards or ducking around a crumbled stone wall to reveal some new monument to tragedy. We walked and read and cried and whispered. I stared at the water for a long time. The wind was creepy. There was no one there but us. We drove through a thriving neighborhood to get there. We traveled so far to get there.

We can learn. We can unlearn. We can remember. 

Bestie and I often tell the fun story of driving down the autobahn at 200+ km/hr in a BMW i8 (it's a funny story how we even got that car, actually) when we talk about Germany. And I think we both try to tell our Neuengamme stories in ways that we have found words for. But I think it's important to note how both of those stories happened on the same day, and maybe that's why we drove so fucking fast--to get away from that horrible place. We just wanted to go home.

I called Lover that night from across the world, although I don't know if he was Lover proper at that time (what is time?) but I remember wanting the warmth of his voice above all else. Try as he might, it took me months to warm back up again.

I think Austin, TX was the hottest. I abandoned makeup that weekend because we walked everywhere and it just melted off my face. There were too many mosh pits and crowded sidewalks and steamy bars for me to give a damn what my face looked like. And the only person whose opinion I gave any fucks about was with me and like I said, he gave negative fucks. I remember (vaguely) seeing this fun graffiti saying "the only magic I still believe in is love." Okay, I don't remember seeing it all, but drunk me was so struck by it that even she snapped a fuzzy picture of it. I go back to that picture, that trip, all the time. It was home. 

We can remember. 

I think Huntsville has always been the warmest. In the darkest months of my entire life I was given shelter from the bitter cold of loss and grief and rejection. Did I want the blankets? Nope, I walked around in shorts and sports bras, just to prove to myself how strong I was. Or maybe I just wanted to be numb. But I was given coffee and whiskey and honest to god conversation, all the best things to warm a broken soul. I was given an India-esque hospitality without a colonial right to it, a German nod to history without any backstory necessary and a familiarity that I haven't felt since the orange hula hoop mattered. I was given bars or the absence of them; the presence of others or the solitude of the backyard; the freedom to wander and the absolute luxury to be lost. I wouldn't hear it for months, and I wouldn't believe it for longer, but I was loved there. I was given the freedom, the chance and the choice to be me again. I wasted a lot of time being someone else.

We can unlearn. 

Follow your heart. Home is where the heart is. I guess that's why my house has always been the coldest. My heart hasn't been here in years. So many versions of my heart have shattered into pieces on the tile floor I remember Grandma being so excited about getting. This is where she died. I was here when Ro died. This is where someone I thought I loved tried to kill me. I am watching Sister die. She is going through her own renaissance, for sure, and I envy it because I don't think I have it in me again. Not here, anyway. I am dying again. I am dying here again. I don't know if the next place I end up will be hot or cold. Or if I will be receptive to any temperature at all. It's a choice, I guess. But I am scared. 

And when I get this way, I try to remember. I try to unlearn. Because we can learn. And I know the next place has you. And for longer than I know how to admit, you have always been home. I am trying to follow my heart but take my head with me. 

I can learn. 

Are you still coming? Am I still home? 

Dear Lover: You are the ONLY exception.

Now Listening: The Only Exception by Paramore*


When I was younger
I saw my daddy cry
And curse at the wind

I only saw him cry twice. But as I get older I see him curse at the wind more and more. You were with me at the hospital the last time I saw it; I returned the favor of sharing that intensely personal moment by snapping at you. I saw your face crumble and your body language shut down and shut me out in the waiting area of the emergency room where you'd sat with me for hours and I SWEAR I wanted at that moment to stop everything and fix it but I didn't know how to and I couldn't focus. So I just turned my attention to my wounded father and drowned myself in the paperwork he was too broken to handle. I know I apologized later as we drove down the not even close to lit Highway 92 and I know you forgave me, but I know that doesn't make it any better. 

He broke his own heart
And I watched
As he tried to reassemble it

Nothing kills me more than watching my own parents grow up. And older. I saw how grandchildren changed them and I will see that again on my moms' (not a grammar issue--I have two moms) side soon. (NEPHEW IS COMING.) But they (my three parents, total) are older, and I am older now too, and while I don't always agree with their sacrifices, I acknowledge that they made them with the best intentions in mind. It's like a fucked-up Rubik's cube where the algorithm always morphs into chaos. (I know, that math probably isn't right, but just bear with me.) I just want credit for the sacrifices I made too. I suffered too. I went without too. And in their own ways, my mom and dad have tried to make up for it. Because that's how time works, and just a few weeks ago my mother squeezed my hand in the theater as we watched the live-action Aladdin movie during the song I'm sure I sang incessantly as a 1st grader, but the Disney magic was gone. And my dad tried to get me a treat after the last doctor's appointment he went to when it was my turn to drive him back and forth. He tried. They tried. But I'm not seven anymore, and those Disney sing-alongs and Twix bars are just forgotten nostalgia for me, but probably muscle memory for them. And yeah, it was sad in both cases watching everyone's coping mechanisms and behavior patterns fall into the rushing river of time to be swept away and drowned forever, but this is how time works and it's weird to remind my parents of that sometimes. I don't really want yesterday back--just tell me now that yesterday mattered.

And my momma swore
That she would never let herself forget

But she did. She forgot a lot of things that I have to remember and I don't think it is fair. But it's not fair what happened to her, either. Empathy is hard. And hating your parents as a teenager is so easy because you understand the results of their choices, you live them, but you don't quite get why they made those choices. Why they were gone, or angry, or tired, or frustrated. And by the time I was a grown-up with my own kids, I was too tired and she was too busy being the grandma and we just let it go in favor of two perfect little boys having a united front to always fall back on. But what happens when those two beautiful innocent lynchpins of your adult relationship with your mom are gone, suddenly? Well, you revert, I guess. Here we are, both women, both hurting, both without the vocabulary to explain to each other why those hard choices had to be made. You just lie in the bed of consequences you made and dare the other to set it on fire. Because there's nothing left to lose. You get through it, but you don't really deal with it. You hold each other on Mother's Day on the floor of the dart room (it used to be your brother's room... time is a real bitch for the oldest AND youngest, I guess) while everyone else is in the kitchen. It's just one mother with her oldest daughter, and one mother without anything to show for it--not just twice for the two little boys who are gone but also for the little one who never was because, as I mentioned, life isn't fair. And sometimes it's not viable, either. Viable... sustainable... whatever... I guess it doesn't really matter for either of us now.

Sometimes there's nothing you can do, no matter what sacrifice you are willing to make.

For those of you who are not into subtlety, I had a miscarriage a few years ago, and I pretty much die a little bit more inside about it every day. Some days because I am mourning it and some days because I am grateful it happened before I could even get excited about anything. Before I could tell anyone. Before I could even believe it myself. Before Things Got Bad. Which is worse?  

Out of three kids, two are safe--the ones who were never mine. The one who could have been? Well, I guess I am the reason we can't have nice things. 

And that was the day that I promised
I'd never sing of love
If it does not exist, but darlin'

My favorite part of my last trip to see you was how you called me "darling" in front of your class and all the kids groaned like we were their parents kissing in front of the stove and dancing in the kitchen before dinner. I don't have a memory like that from my own childhood, and I don't know if you do either, but it seems like a cute Norman Rockwell thing to aspire to, right? 

My idea of love and what it looks like has changed so much in the last year. Not just with you but with everyone. I think the Greeks (or someone) had like eight words for different kinds of love. Like familial love, and the love of sour patch kids, and the way you love the feel of water dripping over your closed eyelids in the shower after a three-day bender trying to escape your problems. Or something like that. Anyway, I know it's always easy for me to say " I love you" and I know it's hard for you to hear (or hard to believe, or trust or something) but it's not a throwaway thing at the end of a phone call for me. I have always meant it every time, as much as I could at the time. As much as I knew how. I love freely and recklessly, and yeah, that's lead to me pouring time and energy into people who weren't worth it or didn't (or couldn't) stick around. But I mean it. I mean it every time. Give me some time and I promise I'll show you.  

You are, the only exception

I know I am not easy to love, or even like sometimes, or even deal with most of the time. I don't do it to be coy or cute or playful. I am legitimately trying. 

You are, the only exception

You're the only person who's seen all the deep dark scars I keep hidden. Do I wear face makeup? No--I don't know how to apply foundation and I think it's stupid anyway. But I've gone through great lengths to keep my emotional bruises hidden. Except for with you. 

You are, the only exception

I can cry about how I am in this weird state of growing up but also losing children but also gaining some more baby birds and also raising adults and also trying to find myself and you never. bat. an. eyelash. (You have beautiful eyelashes, by the way.) 

You are, the only exception

For the record, I don't even like this song. I didn't like it when it came out in 2009 and I definitely don't like it now because I've been listening to it on repeat for almost six hours while I try to eek these last meaningful words out of my tired, rusted fingers. 

You are the only exception

Maybe I know, somewhere
Deep in my soul
That love never lasts

Maybe it doesn't. I don't know--what the fuck do I know? But I like to think it does. I want to think that every person I ever loved, romantic or otherwise, has a little piece of me that they keep tucked away for rainy days. Like the stuffed animal we all took to college but kept hidden. But even that gets tattered, and if you left it in a box in your mother's garage for 12 years and then rediscovered it later when even the memories had faded, does it even matter anymore? But there are things that can outlast our fickle notions of love... things like trust and honesty and loyalty and compassion. Man... it's almost like I'm learning something...or something.

And we've got to find other ways
To make it alone
But keep a straight face

It's reeeeeeeeeallllly hard being away from you most of the time, but especially on nights like tonight. My poker face sucks, also. 

And I've always lived like this
Keeping a comfortable distance
And up until now
I had sworn to myself that I'm content
With loneliness

But it would be hard even if you were here with me in the room where The Walls Are Too Blue. I recognize that. You can't fix real estate Bob or how I'm sad about Roland or worried for Mark or anxious about a thousand things that aren't really the problem. But you'd try, I know that. You'd let me do that thing I like where I rest my forehead right into your collarbone and tangle my legs into yours until I can't feel the arm I'm lying on and I have to move but you know It's Not Over and you curl over with me so that we fall into new human peaks and valleys of knees and elbows as many times as it takes or as many episodes of West Wing as we are awake for until I fall into a fitful sleep and you have to ease me out of nightmares as the sun comes up. 

Because none of it was ever worth the risk

I'll have every nightmare twice over if it means waking up next to you. 

I'm in this weird place where I don't trust myself. I think I know what I'm doing, but I've made an awful lot of Fucked Up Choices lately. I used to be so "shoot now, ask questions later" but I see where that got me. I am trying to be more rational. More discerning with my attention. More judicious about how I dole out my time. More careful with who (whom!) I let in. 

But, you are, the only exception

I swear I sat by the trampoline and thought about it. I didn't know that it would be this hard. I didn't know I was so broken. I'm so sorry. 

You are, the only exception

I really appreciate how you don't like when I say "I'm broken." Because I'm not, I guess. Just wounded. I'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll get it figured.

You are, the only exception

You told me once that you should be the exception. And it shook me. You know, "shook" as the youth would say. But you ARE. I PROMISE. And I know I do a shit job of SHOWING you most (all) of the time but you are. That's why (maybe) DEFINITELY why you get all of the ugly parts of me. "He just didn't understand your darkness," you said to me once. You didn't even know how much you meant it. I didn't know (at the time) how much it meant. But here it is. You wanted it all. Here you go. I know it sucks. I'll get better. I'll be better. I'll be me again. 

You are, the only exception

OKAY okay okayyyyyyyy being able to articulate it doesn't mean I can live it. Can you be patient with me a little longer while I work on me? Like you always have been? Like since a decade ago when I was scared? 

I've got a tight grip on reality
But I can't let go of what's in front of me here

Reality SUCKS. (Hey, remember that time you made me watch Reality Bites because I'm so pop-culture illiterate? I do..) The last five years of my life WERE NEVER WORTH THE RISK (SEE ABOVE) and I know yours weren't either. It HURTS. People SUCK. Bitches be TRIPPIN'.

BUT WE HAVE SUCH A BADASS THING! Let's not waste it because I'm broken. I mean...

I'm so glad we were both still risk-takers when we re-met. One more chancers. One last time. 

I know you're leaving in the morning when you wake up
Leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream

Nightmares are my least favorite thing about The Thing that I am going through. I HATE that my favorite part of waking up next to you is often ruined by the hazy remnants of a door slamming, or incessant teasing, or something as innocent as a child's first day of school or as damaging as the feeling of a pinewood dresser digging into your shoulder as you're thrown against it. 

I know the logistics of Us are hard and I'm trying to cope with the coming and going as best as I can. I know I suck at it. I know it's harder at my house. I know I try to inject life into this place via family dinners and Instant Pot Days and Hey Let's Watch a Random Netflix Documentary Nights with friends but when all those people leave it's just me and THIS FUCKING HOUSE and I know you pay for that when you answer my early morning phone calls. And I am sorry for it. And I am sad about it. Death and decay are etched into every square inch of the drywall around here, and it's hard not to give in to that atrophy and entropy sometimes. I can tell you; don't ask me to show you.     

You are, the only exception

I would show you. I already have. I'm sorry those dents in the wall and on the counters are so attached to my skin.   

You are, the only exception

I'm sorry for that time I was embarrassed and you expertly led me to the pool without question. We can talk about it if you want. I can talk about it. Even here. BECAUSE FUCK THESE PEOPLE. And also, more importantly, you make me feel fearless and I know that my awkward feelings about writing pale in comparison to the people who don't have a voice. I can help people. I have before. Just IMAGINE what I can do with you by my side. LOOK AT WHAT I'VE ALREADY DONE. Oh, babe, you have no idea. I called crying about the miscarriage section alone TWICE because...

You are, the only exception 

I literally just answered a work email that I had no business answering at 3 AM not due to lack of knowledge but because I AM MID EXISTENTIAL CRISIS AND CAN'T THEY JUST FIGURE IT OUT??

You are, the only exception

I'm sure they could figure it out, but goddamit I love being involved and it's MY lab I have to at least keep up with the smart people, right? Thank you so much for rearranging your house every time I come over so that I have a yoga studio and an office and A Crying Room. You are pretty fucking spectacular. Do you know that?

You are, the only exception

Of course you know. You've been the solid rock behind all of my work endeavors from November til now. Every demo, every secret meeting, every international flight, every case of food poisoning and homesickness. Every window ledge, every Call of the Void, the understanding behind every perfected selfie, the umbrella over my head on 7th in Ybor. 

You are, the only exception

Jesus CHRIST I hate this song. 

You are, the only exception

You told me once I was a great verbal breakdancer as a writer and sometimes I wonder if that's still true. If now that you see how much it takes out of me and how I "verbal process" in person if you still admire the end result so much. Do you see now? Did you see before? Do you still love me? To be honest, this isn't my best work. But it might be my most honest. 

You are, the only exception

You really are the only exception. I've had people lie cheat and steal their way in. And I've let people waltz on in with no invitation to speak of, if we're being realsies here. I am tired. I am broken. I am busy. I am depressed. I am anxious. I am in the process of unlearning things Someone Awful taught me. I am mourning. I am so young. I am too old for this. I should know better. I should have known better. I am getting stronger every day. I am strong. I am a good big sister. I am pretty. I am smart. I am hilarious. I am good at my job. I am a fantastic hostess. I am a thoughtful gift giver. I was worthy of the Chromcast you gave me and set up for me, and those flowers, and the USF necklaces that hang in my office, and the time you spent driving me to Houston and San Antonio and Old Town Spring and wherever else, and I am worthy of the space in your closet where my favorite Converse live and the dresser drawers where my clothes are AND I SWEAR IF YOU TOOK THAT BOBBY PIN OUT OF YOUR CAR I WILL END YOU BECAUSE THEN HOW WILL THOSE OTHER HOOKERS KNOW THAT YOU ARE SPOKEN FOR and I am also very confident that I deserve a space in your heart. 

And I'm on my way to believing
Oh, and I'm on my way to believing

*I really hate this song. 

A comprehensive guide to replacing caulk.

It happens. Old houses are weird and sometimes things spring a leak while you are gone for five hours. Never mind that you work from home and are kind of a hermit these days (comparatively) so OF COURSE something like this is going to happen during the only consecutive five hours you are gone THE ENTIRE WEEK.

So, your water intake hose for the toilet in the master bathroom sprung a leak. No big deal. When you get home from your five hours (your only five fucking hours) out dancing and drinking to find yourself squish-squishing across your bathroom floor, you're gonna wanna miraculously think to turn the water off and then throw three towels and the thinnest bedsheet you own at the problem and deal with it the next day.

Alright. Now you're going to Google some shit. You're going to learn the name of the piece that is leaking and learn how to measure different things so you can buy a new one. You're gonna be smart and take the part with you to Lowe's so you make sure to get the right thing but also you're going to leave it right on the kitchen counter instead. You'll say "fuck it" because you read that there are only two possible options to buy (7/8 and something else because you suck at fractions) so you just think you'll buy both parts and return the one that doesn't fit. If you're lucky like me, you only roll into stores three deep these days because you are usually with your sister and her boyfriend, so you'll confidently trade "I think this looks right" words of affirmation with Sister's Boyfriend and get on your way. Don't forget to buy a ceiling fan on the way out because that is definitely something you need to do right then.

Sister's Boyfriend will replace the leaky hose for you because he is sweet and mechanically inclined and you asked him nicely. He is also good at replacing doorknobs, which you found out a few weeks ago.

Okie dokie, now that that's done, you'll notice that the lake you unwittingly created and left in your bathroom overnight has caused some of the decades-old caulk to come loose around the base of the toilet. NO BIG DEAL, my friend. It's easy to replace yourself and I'm going to lay some caulk-strong knowledge on you right now.

1. Timing is everything so make sure to start at a convenient time like, oh, less than 12 hours before you're hosting a family gathering at your house. 2 AM is what worked for me, but you can be flexible here.

2. Watch one and a half YouTube videos and read a WikiHow article. Congrats. You're an expert.

3. Gather your tools. This includes your beer (you've already had a few, let's be honest) and your phone charger because your phone is dying and you need music for this project. Struggle with getting it to play via casting to your tv because despite being good at your technology job you suck at technology.

4. Choose the right caulk for the job. I chose the caulk and caulk gun that my mom left on her front porch for me to pick up because I don't own any of those things.

5. Okay, so after cleaning the area thoroughly (because why not, you've been cleaning all day) you may notice that the bolts on either side of the toilet are loose. Use a wrench to tighten. Oh, did I say wrench? I meant pliers that are ill-equipped but efficient enough to do the damn thing because you used to own several wrenches but they all mysteriously vanished a few months ago when someone moved out. And while it happens less and less often, you still occasionally reach for something you know was there only to find it missing. Stuff like dish soap and your Grandmother's cookbook. It's the shittiest Easter egg hunt ever.

6. Remember all the expert knowledge you learned from your one and a half videos and that article you skimmed? Disregard anything that seems inconvenient or too time-consuming. The Science Fair is tomorrow and we need to get started on this volcano!

7. Immediately regret not putting tape on the floor. Fuck.

8. No, no, it's okay. You got this. It's oddly like icing a cake except you can't eat the frosting and licking the bowl would be disgusting. Slather way to much caulk around and then use one of the seven old washcloths you brought in with you to clean up as you go. It's really not that bad.

9. Realize you are wiping up excess caulk with a Scooby Doo washcloth and get sad. Why didn't this get packed up with the wrench? Quick, think about something else.

10. Hey remember the time your Grandmother fell in this very bathroom and you were the one to find her and you had to call 911? Remember how that was sort of the beginning of the end and she died three months later?

11. What's worse? When someone dies or when someone is dead to you?

12. Don't forget to smooth out any weird lumps or air bubbles. 

13. The cider you are drinking is way too sweet for this job so I recommend switching back to Mich Ultra here. Just kidding, you drank all the Ultra while you were mopping earlier.

14. Okay that should do it. And if not, remember: you don't have to let people use this bathroom tomorrow. Sure, the caulk may not be dry but also because your bedroom is a visual disaster that pretty accurately represents how you are fighting tooth and nail to keep your depression at bay.

15. Blog about it because you need to laugh. Don't proofread because you are a DIY rebel.

16. Fuck you, Bob Vila.   

I found a place

I found a place.

It was cold there, colder than I expected. I don't think that's typical, though. I'm not really sure; I'm not good at weather or geography. It was a new place, but it felt familiar. It felt like Sister's college town. It felt relaxed and peaceful like I was when I used to visit her there. How strange that a town can feel like a time.

I barely made it to the place. All I had to do was get to the airport. I checked in to my flight and then checked out almost completely. There are days that I can do my job in my sleep and there are days that I forgo sleep in order to work. The night before my flight was the latter. Sometimes things come up and you just have to put out fires. Even if they aren't your fires. I saw an "All My Sons" moving truck on the highway. I get that. They were all my fires.

Someone told me recently that I make references no one gets. Well, if you didn't get it, it wasn't for you.

All I had to do was get to the airport. It's weird to have so little responsibility these days, to just take care of myself and not much else. I swear I used to take care of other people, and I even think I was good at it. After I got off the plane I barely had to take care of myself. I was given coffee and spoonfuls of peanut butter with bananas and tissues and space.

Not like space space. Just space. I had a space where I put my clothes and a place where I put my jewelry and a room where I set up a workstation and I was more comfortable and productive in that environment than I have been in ages. I did get space space too. I didn't even have to ask for it, I just walked outside and stared at the rosebushes, and when that got too hard I turned the other way and stared at the bricks. Seems like I'm always in between a rose and hard place these days.

I only needed tissues once; I had lots of peanut butter and bananas.

The place has a bar because there's always a bar. And the bartenders were amazing and the patrons were stock characters and all of it was perfect. All bars can be kind of the same if you let them. Hey, how's it going? Oh just one after work. Just one before work. Did you see the game? Someone's salty ex was lurking in the corner. Someone was mourning. Someone was celebrating. Someone was rattling on excitedly while new friends hung on to every Jameson-flavored word. 

I got lost in the place. It came over me suddenly, standing in the middle of the street I didn't know the name of on the way to an address I don't think I ever knew sober, much less could remember tipsy. I laughed so hard that the cold air hurt my lungs as I tried to calm down and make sense to my bewildered guide. I am so useless here. I can't do anything. I can't rescue anyone, I can't save anyone, I can't even get us home. And I am so, so grateful. I laughed the rest of the way home, void of responsibility and full of trust. I don't remember the last time I felt either of those things, much less at the same time.

I drank so much coffee at the place. I drink it at home now, too. I think I am probably trying to recapture the rush, but it's not quite the same. Because it wasn't just the caffeine, was it?

I was lost long before I found the place. I've shed identities and reworked images and curated a collection of sound bytes designed to answer questions without triggering new ones. I like my status reports at work because I don't have to answer things like "how are you doing?" and the equally terrible "oh my god, are you okay?"

I'm fine. All I had to do was get to the airport.

There's a difference between just being lost and knowing without a doubt that you are lost, and I'm so thankful that being lost was shoved in my face that night as we walked home. I never realized how much walking on eggshells can screw up your internal compass. No wonder I wandered so far off track.

By the way, when you imagine walking on eggshells, do you imagine that the eggs are still whole and you're trying not to break them or do you see jagged eggshells pieces that you're trying not to make worse? I mean, at that point the eggs are already cracked. Who are you trying to protect? If you say yourself you are lying, because the answer is to get away from the eggshells or put some fucking shoes on. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe you had a good reason to tread and retread something so broken that used to hold so much promise. I guess there's no right answer.

There are two things I miss. Only two. But I do not miss the eggshells. I do not miss the drama. I do not miss being afraid.

There was drama at the place, too. Because there is always drama. But it wasn't mine, I just got to watch it unfold for someone else. I felt bad about it. Responsible even, but I think that's just the eggshells talking. I don't think it was really my fault.

I was able to reset my nerves in the place. I got jumpy once. I flinched over something stupid, but we talked about it and I immediately felt okay. Safe. Heard. Validated.

I didn't make any decisions in the place. I made suggestions. I vetoed options. But I chose very little.  I did come to some conclusions. Some undeniably healthy and some that are a little scary. But I'll think about it a little more each day in a way that is manageable and not my usual method of manic hurriedness. I am really working on breaking my bad habit of trying to solve problems that don't exist yet.

I miss the place for its weather and its quaintness and the quirks of the house but much more than that I miss the person. And the cat, if I'm being completely honest. I miss watching movies and listening to music and making plans and quickly abandoning them to do nothing. I miss talking about work to someone outside of work who shows a genuine interest in what I do. I miss a thousand little things that I keep to myself because they are mine alone to treasure, but are undoubtedly written across my face when I tell stories about the place. I preemptively missed them so much at the end of my five-day trip that I stayed for two weeks instead. It worked out because I got to stay through Thanksgiving and the anniversary of Roland's death, and it was hands down the best Thanksgiving I've had since he died. So yes, I miss the place, but for someone to give me that safe space and encouragement and patience and the drinks and the tissues during The One Good Cry without asking for literally anything in return... well, I owe you forever, I guess.

But really it's not just that person. I appreciate every person who allowed me to check out as soon as I got to the airport. Some people took care of my house and some people left me alone and some people called to catch up and I think generally everyone just understood. It's nice to be unapologetically yourself and have other people try their best to understand.

"Logic only gives a man what he needs. Magic gives him what he wants."

The trip made a lot of sense, but the time was magical.

I found a place. I'm in a good place.

The Wild One, Forever.

Tom Petty died today. Or maybe he didn't really, the news is still catching up to the truth of things. It's weird how that happens, how there can be a declaration of literal life and death, and then someone can take it back. Retract it. Just kidding, I imagine news sources saying. My bad. Timing is a fickle mistress.

I posted this on Facebook yesterday:

Driving over the Howard Franklin Bridge is beautiful at sunrise. By "sunrise" I mean 8:30 AM. By "beautiful" I mean what am I doing with my life.

I honestly didn't put much thought into it, but sometimes when I blurt out dissonant observations on social media those little snippets of half-cocked snark get lots of reactions. It's weird how that happens, too. It's like other people understand what I meant even if I didn't. I imagine them imagining me driving over the bridge with my windows down and radio up, my sunglasses doing nothing for my tired eyes except to shield the driver next to me from the mascara smeared all over my eyelids. I imagine it's easy for those who know me to imagine it: "Ah yes, there goes Keri. Driving over the bridge she hates more than anything else in the world. She's mildly impressed with the clear sky and easy waters, but she's also wondering what she's doing there to see it. She knows why she's there, of course, but she's still wondering how she got there. Not "how" logistically but "how" emotionally. Yes, they are entirely different questions, especially to someone like Keri. I will give her a "like" to show my solidarity."

I mean, is that not how you imagined it?

I saw Tom Petty in concert once, sort of. I am trying to remember the specifics, but if News Sources can get their facts wrong, maybe I can too and be forgiven. My bad. It's fuzzy. It was some sort of festival or political rally or something other than a headlining tour. He was just performing at some place. And I wasn't really supposed to be there, I just happened to be on the right adventure at the right time with the right people and the right friend of a friend had a thing or knew a person and then before I really knew why or how, I was watching Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

I am an absolute sucker for a good live performance, no matter the artist or genre. Admittedly, I am not a huge Tom Petty fan. I'm not opposed, just apathetic. My favorite thing he ever did was his interview in the documentary Sound City. But what caught me by surprise immediately when I saw Tom was how intimate it was. And how familiar. And how that familiarity fed into the intimacy in a neverending feedback loop.

It was like telling a friend to grab you a drink while they're at the bar and they bring you the exact double-Jameson-and-ginger you wanted because they know you. And you take a big sip expecting some watered down bullshit, but there it is, a manifestation of the relationship you have been knowingly or unknowingly cultivating for nearly a decade. It's refreshing and overtly strong all at once. And it's easy to get drunk on; not just logistically, but emotionally.

It was like an innocuous gesture that turns unexpectedly into a great comfort, like a hand reaching out for yours in the darkness to steady you as you cross the boardwalk down to the beach. It's a kiss on the forehead that doesn't make you uneasy.

It was like how the rule of threes can be somehow comforting until a hack blog writer calls it out and ruins it, much like Jimmy Fallon laughing at his own jokes.

The night I saw Tom Petty somewhat accidentally, I knew every song, or at least some part of every song. It hit me then how pervasive his music was, how deeply ingrained in pop culture he and his music are. Whether I sought it out or not, I had been casually acquainted with Tom Petty, the Heartbreakers and their work for years, possibly forever given my age and the span of their undeniable success. And so, even just being a passive fan, I enjoyed the hell out of that night. We all went back to a bar and someone played twenty dollars worth of Tom Petty songs on the jukebox. But not the same jams we'd just experienced. These songs I didn't know as well, and when I heard "The Wild One, Forever" it really (I can't help it, sorry) struck a chord with me in a big way. It was the last verse that got me.

"Because somethin' I saw in your eyes
Told me right away
That you were gonna have to be mine
The strangest feeling came over me down inside
I knew right away 
I'd never get over how good it felt
When you finally kissed me
I will never regret,
Baby, those few hours linger on in my head forever..."

Concerts (or shows as my younger, more pretentious self would insist on saying) are a strange and wonderful phenomenon to me. You have this crazy connection with a band or a singer or the music or the live aspect of the performance or even just the lyrics and you exist on this totally different plane of reality. For a few hours, at least. Someone calls out "I love you," and you say it back and you mean it, but do you really? You're strangers. You aren't going home with them in any sense. You don't commiserate over daily life together. You aren't even friends, really. You don't meet up for drinks or a movie when you have time. You don't even live in the same state. They don't know you at all, but you think they get you. Or you get them. But it's fabricated and coerced, not just logistically but emotionally. And yet, it is still very real somehow. Visceral. Palpable. So you buy into it. Or maybe you already bought into it when you bought the tickets, and now you are just denying that you bought into it all because it makes the lie seem real and that's okay with you. OR MAYBE, on that weird Narnia-esque, Through the Looking Glass plane of reality that you find yourself on at concerts, you really do love them and there is a crazy connection and it is familiar and it is intimate and they feed into each other in a neverending feedback loop. The time-space-music dimension is a fickle mistress.

Waking up in a hotel room always throws me off. It takes a minute to remember where I am (or how or why) but I feel safe and at home even before I have figured out the other answers. Concerts kind of feel the same; it's raw and cathartic and dangerous, but also safe. It's structured. There are boundaries. There are rules. The hotel is not your home, but you can live there. The concert experience is not how you actually or always feel, but you can access those emotions there. For a few hours anyway.

I used to say that certain concerts changed my life. They really didn't. I've never seen a band, even one I really like, and then changed anything even remotely significant about my life or the way I live it. And it makes me a little sad to admit that, honestly. I think that's why "The Wild One, Forever" really gets to me. "I knew right away/ I'd never get over how good it felt/ when you finally kissed me/ I will never regret/ Baby, those few hours linger on in my head forever..."

Man. The speaker has really liked and/or wanted this other person for a while and been patient and been understanding and finally had that Through the Looking Glass moment and experience, it was blissful, but it was only a few hours. And while those few hours will linger on in his head forever IT WAS ONLY A FEW HOURS and from the lyrics I can't tell that anything significant has changed about his life or how he lives it at all. It's like he was at a concert with me. There was this golden moment of familiarity and intimacy and then it was over and life moves on. You wake up in the hotel and you're disoriented and then you feel safe and then you check out.

I told you all of that just to explain how "The Wild One, Forever" ended up being the only Tom Petty song in my music collection, but still a song I reach for at very specific times in my life. I imagine you imagining if there is a point to all of this. Do I ever really make a point? I'm just trying to get used to this kind of writing again. How's it going? Yeah, I'm not sure either.

Driving over the Howard Franklin bridge was actually very pretty the other morning. But it was also quite odd. I had the same feeling I'd felt so many times after really good concerts. Did that happen? Am I the same person in real life as I am in that mosh pit? Will I ever see those people again? I know it really happened, but was it real?

Those are weird rabbit holes to go down. The Night Before The Bridge, when I was in St. Pete visiting an old friend, I overheard this conversation about what a number actually is, if it's real or just some way we impose meaning onto the universe. I thought about contributing a line my friend Derek told me once: "math was not invented, it was discovered." But I don't even know if that's right. What is right? How do you define... something, something etymologically true... burden of proof... words about stuff... reference to a book I never read. The conversation moved so fast and I felt so uninformed and uninteresting and I'll be honest, I was only half listening because I was so focused on the fact that I was drinking some kind of pineapple IPA aberration and it somehow did not taste like garbage. And that is a rabbit hole of which I am really afraid. Sure, numbers are bullshit and language is a fallacy and we are all leading lives full of agony and existential choices that only bring about more suffering. Fine. BUT HOW DOES THIS BEER NOT TASTE LIKE GARBAGE?

The rest of the night was full of weird rabbit holes and that concert-going feeling. Safely dangerous. Dangerously safe. And it was incongruous in many neat but functional ways--like a quilt stitched out of cotton and plastic bags--awkward but it worked. It was undeniably fun, even down to the Britney Spears karaoke song that I really enjoyed and was judged for enjoying. (How can you not love a lost man-child with an affinity for obscure metal trying his absolute best to sing "Toxic?" Isn't that why karaoke exists?) I met new people that felt like old friends right off the bat. The beach bar had this weird crowd that liked all kinds of music and this lady (there's always one) danced to EVERY song. She danced to music between songs. She danced while she sang her own song. And then there was the bartender, a cute girl who had exactly zero time for people's bullshit. And there was the guy who sprayed his beer like a total dickbag from the stage and got shitty Budweiser all over the dancefloor, which put the Dancing Lady in actual danger. And then there was Willie, the security guy who came to clean it up and tell Tool Bag to knock it off. But the karaoke lady was already giving him the business for cursing into her microphone. She doesn't like cursing into her microphone. And then there was last call, that magical time where some people can finish up, cash out and move on and other people are relentless in trying to get that last, wholly unnecessary drink and stand around, 100% in the way. All bars can be really similar if you let them. Familiar. Intimate.

I went to St. Pete to live deliberately, and I gotta tell you, I think I nailed it. But I stayed because I felt like garbage. (Maybe that's why the pineapple IPA didn't taste like garbage?! Oh man, I have to Scientific Method the hell out of this. You know, for science.) I'd been running a fever and fighting with my sinuses, unsuccessfully. The decision to stay was the right one for safety and a thousand other reasons. And when I woke up in the hotel I felt disoriented and then I felt safe and then I left.

And driving over the bridge that morning was actually very pretty. But it was also quite odd. So I reached for my phone and played "The Wild One, Forever." I played it over and over as I made my way home, my sunglasses doing nothing to help my tired eyes except shield the driver next to me from the mascara smeared across my eyelids. Windows down, radio up, I sang the words confidently and knowingly and a little sadly, already mourning the night that was but wasn't. The stage was empty, the Dancing Lady was gone, the footprints I'd left in the sand under a bright half moon were undoubtedly washed away by now. And even if they were still there, I'd already left.

The night was amazing and scary and familiar and new and fun and safe and out of my comfort zone and unexpected and somehow already written all at the same time. It was vulnerability gift-wrapped with a pretty bow of boundaries. It was unforgettable, if only mostly remembered.

That night, however, did not change my life, even if I wanted it to, even though it had the power to do so. That many commas can't be right. But that night has changed a part of me, and maybe that will be enough to somehow upheave my life somewhere down the road if it needs it. When I need it. Timing is a fickle mistress.

And if nothing else, "I will never regret... those few hours linger on in my head forever."

Shame dying in the light of exposure.

"It’s very awkward for me to look back at how misguided and lost I was back then but like most things that make me feel awkward, in sharing them I get a tremendous freedom, my shame dying in the light of exposure." - Anthony Green 

This quote is part of a larger Instagram post by Anthony Green, lead singer of Circa Survive, a band whose music I seek when I am a particular flavor of sad. It's less depressing than it sounds; I just have soundtracks for certain moods. And certain people. It's somewhere between therapy and torture, a catharsis but also an inventory of which memories still sting. 

Maybe it is that depressing. 

I haven't written here in so long and I don't even know why anymore. I used to have really good excuses, maybe even real ones, but I don't remember half of them now. I do know that any kind of creative writing I tried to do was painful for a long time. It hurt because it poked at freshly opened wounds without the mercy of bandaging them at the end of the creative process. And it hurt because the creative process betrayed me; something I normally turned to for solace was suddenly and inexplicably barren. I stumbled into different outlets, some healthy some not. And then I started writing professionally, which made writing for myself even more of a chore. It's not supposed to feel like a chore, right? It's supposed to help, not rip the air from my lungs, right?

When I get stuck in a piece of writing, I always remind myself to answer the question. (Thank you, Mr. Resciniti.) ATQ. Answer. The. Question. I usually find that I have wandered off on some articulate but unnecessary tangent that sounds cool but doesn't add any real value. You know how babies make noise just to hear themselves talk? I stitch words into intricate quilts that will only ever see the dusty, crooked shelves of a guest room closet just to prove to myself that I still know how imagery works. So, evaluating the question and my answer to it keeps my writing honest. It keeps me honest. ATQ has been my professional motto for years, except during the detour I took through the service industry. (My motto then was Do Not Stab Rude People.) ATQ helps me focus on personal matters, too, especially when I am overthinking. So over the last year or so I was constantly asking myself questions like "Why can't you at least write about all the cool things happening right now?" and "Has writing failed you or have you failed writing?" and "Why did you abandon the only thing you're good at?" 

The answers I had for my own questions made such little sense to me that I confused the issue entirely. I was so focused on answering a question that it never occurred to me to check if I was asking the right question. I repeatedly asked myself why I couldn't connect to my own words. I wondered why my many, many attempts at writing (for Filthy Nerdy, specifically) ended up on the cutting room floor. I wanted to know what was wrong with me, how I could pen ideas that I didn't even recognize. I might as well have been asking how many teaspoons are in a mile. The answers were impossible; I didn't even understand the questions.   

I should have been asking "If writing is not helping you process what you feel, are you being honest with yourself about what you are feeling?"

The answer, of course, is no. Not even close.    

I have very little to show for the time I wasted invalidating my own feelings. When I decided that my depression and anxiety weren't topics that I could tackle with writing, I inadvertently gave them a strange power. I don't mind them existing, but I was now letting them occupy space in my head without any checks or balances. You win, I told them. I'm not even going to try to fight you.

Each time I sat down to write, no matter the topic, my words inevitably turned to the battle raging inside my head. My inability to get out of bed. My lack of interest in things I used to love. The steady whispers of self-doubt. I wasn't constantly miserable, but I was having a harder and harder time each day connecting to things that were supposed to matter. I grew apathetic little by little until I'd pushed away most of my relationships and responsibilities. It didn't seem destructive, in fact, it felt very safe. I felt safe, swaddled in my own depression. But every time I set out to write about anything, there it was, threatening to come spilling out and ruin my carefully woven stories of "I'm just tired" and "I already have plans that day." I spent exhausting amounts of energy on looking high-functioning, because looking okay was easier than being okay. Mind you, I wasn't a danger to myself or anyone else, but I wasn't being honest either, and that lack of authenticity started to eat at me from the inside out. Disconnecting from my true self prevented me from connecting with anything positive. And so when writing threatened to reveal what I was hiding, I stopped trying to write before it could betray me. You can't quit, you're fired.          

So I was stuck under my own emotional avalanche with no means to dig my way out. And worse yet, when I couldn't figure out why I was stuck, I just started lying to myself about it. You're not stuck, you're busy. It's not you, you just need a new outlet. Yeah, you probably just outgrew the only form of self-expression that ever made you feel whole since you first discovered you could entertain through writing at the ripe old age of eight. Case closed! Nice work, Nancy Drew.          

What a schmuck. I am working on limiting negative self-talk, because I hear it can really screw with you, but I really fucked this one up. I wasn't honest with myself about what and how I felt, and instead of admitting this, I marginalized my emotions until they turned into resentments that I was kind enough to take out on myself and those around me. And the worst thing I did was trick myself into thinking that I was somehow above my beloved, neurotic, late-night blogging as a way to get ideas out of my head and process them. I convinced myself that I now inhabited a place where my shit was together and I didn't need to whine philosophical to friends and strangers in an attempt to A) understand my own struggles and B) use them to connect with others. I refused to believe that I could be so fulfilled and so empty all at once, so I buried the empty under carefully curated Facebook posts and a schedule that kept me perpetually behind. Look at how busy I am! See how rapidly every aspect of my life is changing? Broken people can't possibly get this much accomplished. I couldn't possibly be broken. Still. Or ever again.          

Now that it's over, I don't know why I was so afraid. 

"It’s very awkward for me to look back at how misguided and lost I was..."   

Yesterday I found out that a really good friend of mine had to say goodbye to her dog of 15 years. I sent her this haiku: 

I am sad for you. 
May your dog rest peacefully. 
I'm bad at feelings. 

I was trying to make her smile, but I was also being serious. I wanted to reach out and give her some words, but I quickly realized that I didn't have any good ones. Now, I have dealt with more death in the last few years than I ever could have expected -- friends, family, mentors, acquaintances; sudden tragedies, drawn out departures, childhood cancer and a suicide. In more ways than I can explain right now, I have become so familiar with grief that I often mistake mourning for something I am as opposed to an emotion I occasionally feel. But if I'm so comfortable in this shroud of a second skin, why could I not come up with something remotely appropriate to say?     

I'm bad at feelings. Since when? For as long as I can remember, the only thing I was better at than feelings was expressing them, specifically through writing. Like, here, here's something that spilled out of me because I was feeling. And this one? More of the feels. Here I was feeling feisty. And here I felt pretty smug. I wrote this because I felt like making people laugh. And this one? I vividly remember feeling incredibly bored so I wrote about the first thing I pulled out of my purse, which happened to be a name tag. 

My grandmother used to say, "Emotions aren't right or wrong, they just are." It's something I hear myself saying a lot, too, something I've been telling everyone except myself lately. They just are. So how can I be "bad" at them, and why would I feed myself this garbage narrative? And why did I believe it for so long?

I think I wanted to believe that since I couldn't (or wouldn't) access my depression through writing, why then, I must not be depressed at all!  

Great news, right? Time to start caring about something, anything, right? I was trying to rationalize my way out of my feelings because I didn't understand them. I was trying to write on a dry erase board with chalk. I was trying to take pictures with a toaster or eat soup with a fork. And instead of simply realizing that I was using the wrong tool, I told myself that I was bad at eating or photography or writing, which isn't true at all. I distanced myself from writing and being truly vulnerable, the things that could have helped me, by telling myself that I was not good at them anyway. Depression is quite smart and will go to great lengths to protect itself.   

For the record, if either one of my sisters had come to me with "I am learning a lot personally and professionally and I'm finding myself in these new positions of trust and authority that make me want to stifle my own feelings in order to meet some self-imposed, unrealistic expectations that I picked up on accident" I would immediately shut it down. I'd tell her that progress isn't always linear, there is no point in life where anyone has it all figured out, other people's opinions of you should always be secondary to your own opinion of you, and it's not worth compromising your boundaries to make other people more comfortable. So the fact that it took me a year to say it to myself is pretty frustrating. It's absurd, really. But I am grateful it didn't take longer. I don't even know what happened today to break the spell -- suddenly I was writing and then I spent all day writing and rewriting. I think I wanted to blog about Christmas cards, to be honest.       

Now that it's over, I can't remember why I was so afraid.  

"It’s very awkward for me to look back at how misguided and lost I was back then but like most things that make me feel awkward, in sharing them I get a tremendous freedom..." 

I am back to embracing feelings. I give myself permission to experience things, even trivial things, pretty deeply. I use these feelings to navigate the world around me and connect with people. It might sound melodramatic, but I get just as excited over doing flashcards with the boys as I get upset over catching every red light on the way home. My compulsion to explore my own thoughts keeps me surprisingly balanced; I might have some low lows but the highs more than make up for it. The current state of my mental health is not the result of my inability to feel happiness, but rather my capacity to feel all emotions, positive and negative. I am an empath, meaning I can feel and take on the energy of others. It gets overwhelming, and if I don't take care of myself, it gets pretty nasty. I carried so many burdens that were never mine to carry.  
     
I can be decisively logical at times, but what I've learned about myself recently is that I prefer to feel my way through life. My intuition is directly tied to my empathy and compassion. Maybe I could use a better head to heart ratio sometimes, but I'm okay with being emotive first and analytical second. As long as I am managing it in a healthy way.     

Somewhere along the way I got scared. Scared to feel, scared to write about it, scared to even acknowledge my fears, lest I be judged for not being a million percent confident all the time. I don't know now why I expected that of myself -- I don't think anyone else did. But as I took on new roles at work and within my own family, I mistakenly took on a vow of silence that kept me from speaking up about my own feelings and emotional needs. In my quest to love and protect those close to me, in trying to forge new identities that would keep us all safe, I ended up losing myself. 

It took a while to realize I was gone and longer to decide if I cared.  

I found myself here, in this blog, where I left off years ago. I cringe at the things I wrote, the weird things I overshared and the unabashed way I poured my heart and soul into posts about drinking someone's orange juice and having a crush on a college professor. It's all incredibly embarrassing to read now, but it's nice to be reminded that I used to have no fear. I used to be brave, or at least less concerned about how I was perceived. If I felt something, anything really, I was bound to write about it. I want to get back to that. (It may not be as public from here on out, but I had to prove I could plaster my neuroses on FN one last time.)

"It’s very awkward for me to look back at how misguided and lost I was back then but like most things that make me feel awkward, in sharing them I get a tremendous freedom, my shame dying in the light of exposure."

SHAME DYING IN THE LIGHT OF EXPOSURE. I get goosebumps each time I read this line.  

I can be a good bonus mom and still have days where I am 100% winging it. (I am told this is called parenting.)

I can have anxiety without suffering from it.  

I can be challenged at work without falling apart.  

I can be in a great relationship and still forget how to love myself occasionally. 

I am allowed to be dissatisfied with shallow friendships that revolve around alcohol. 

I am not a bad person for saying no or setting healthy boundaries. 

I am allowed to be scared of change. (Which is convenient, because I am terrified.)  

I am allowed to overshare really personal things on the internet because they are my stories to tell, and I firmly believe that if it helps one person it is worth the embarrassment.  

I give myself permission to engage with my own emotions in a constructive way so that they do not control me. 

I can grieve long past the imaginary statute of limitations society places on death. I can heal on my own timeline.

I am not responsible for anyone's emotions or happiness but my own. 

I am getting used to feeling feelings again, but I think I am starting to feel tremendously free. And awkward. But also free. And now that it's over, I can't remember why I was so afraid.