Hi! How has your weekend been?

I’ve been so busy, but also so fulfilled. How cool when the two coexist, right? There was this one moment though, one that no one knows about, and I want to share it with you. But first, a funny moment from work to set the scene.

A COSMICALLY BEAUTIFUL KIND OF HELL

A customer asked me how I looked so lovely and fresh first thing in the morning and it made me laugh.

I had been up all night writing and had to ice roll my face and smother it in hyaluronic acid just to look alive. I can’t help it. I lose all track of time and space when I’m writing and then it’s the middle of the night and I know my alarm is only handful of hours away but I still feel the need to listen to music and contemplate everything that has ever happened to me for at least half of an hour before falling asleep. The problem is, that process usually just inspires more writing and then the whole cycle repeats itself. What can I say. Anyone with any inclination to write has to accept that they are an absolute servant to the sentences that are forever forming in their minds. It’s why the center console of my car is full of napkins with half-finished thoughts scrawled across them or why I regularly have to stop everything to jot something down for later. It’s totally awful. But in the best way that I have ever known. It’s a cosmic, beautiful hell and I wouldn’t choose any other home.

A RAW, MESSY MOMENT

I want to share something with you.

On Friday night I got off of work around six and stepped out onto the streets that were already packed with people walking to bars and restaurants. It occurred to me only then that it was a Friday and that, yes, that’s right, this is what people do on Fridays. Personally, I was on my way home to cook dinner and watch the season finale of Survivor. Maybe read a book or pour my heart onto paper. Maybe open all of the windows and play Amos Lee or Nora Jones while dancing in my kitchen. And this was great. These are things I love to do. I enjoy them more than going out and being with people my age on most days. Yet the feeling of missing out on something still lingered on my skin.

And then, randomly, a few hours later, I looked outside and saw my fifteen year old neighbor outside with her boyfriend. He was teaching her little brother how to throw a baseball. It was pure and sweet and all of the things. It shouldn’t have affected me. But those were things I never had at fifteen. Most days I forget about that because it was years ago and who the hell was really that happy at fifteen anyway? But then I saw these kids and it made me remember. And then I realized that I’m twenty and that sometimes I still feel like I’m missing out, like I’m maybe wasting my youth.

And let’s be clear, I don’t really believe this. I love how I live my life. I love the things that I do and I have this crazy strong sense of identity and purpose that most twenty-year olds I know express feeling a total lack of. Apparently, you’re not really supposed to know who you are or what you want when you’re young. I’ve always seemed to know these things. And because of that, I usually don’t care about what I “should be doing”.

But sometimes I still break down. Sometimes, I still feel like I am doing something wrong, like my Friday nights should look a certain way that they don’t. It’s this feeling of missing out that has haunted me my whole life. And the funny thing is, I know that I’m not. I know that it’s just a feeling. But it can really gut you all the same. So I wrote this in my journal on Friday night and it’s messy and it’s full of secrets and I’m going to share it with you because of these things. Would I ever tell anyone that I cried after seeing some teenagers holding hands? No. But I’m telling you.

FROM MY JOURNAL

I just saw my fifteen year old neighbor outside with her boyfriend and immediately turned on my heels. That is a world that I don’t care to revisit. That is a world I clawed my way out of with bare hands and a broken heart. But it was too late. I already saw it and so I was already remembering. I fell right to the floor and tried to find my breathe but it was no where. Where was air? Why were there not any windows open? I felt like I was on fire. Naturally, my hands were already trying to put every sensation into writing. I don’t even remember picking up the pen. But I must have because I dropped it mid-sentence. I stood up. I opened the biggest window I could find, stuck my head out of it, and took such a deep breath that I felt as if I had been underwater, held under by a wave.

Suddenly, I could hear again. I could see again. My lungs were remembering the basic motion of survival again. The air was so cool and so sweet and I couldn’t drink it in fast enough. So I crawled right out of the window. I sat down on the cold, solid earth and cried under the most beautiful sky I had seen a while. It’s nice to stare into something that is endless, something that you know goes on forever. It reminds you that whatever you are feeling isn’t, and won’t. The almost-summer breeze kissed my skin and told me things I never knew. Like how I would be alright because this world is so big. It’s so big that you will never be able to wrap your mind all of the way around it, let alone your arms. And how lovely because that means that there is more than enough space for you and all that you carry. It’s so so so so big and you have so much left to see and so much left to feel and you have not met all of the people that you are going to love yet. You have not met all of the people who are going to love you yet. So I’m sorry that no one held your hand at fifteen but this life is bigger and better than that and I think you know that.

That’s what the breeze whispered into my ear. That’s what I mean when I say that I feel held by the arms of the earth, that it catches me every time that I fall.

MORE ON HOW WRITING SAVES ME

I wanted to share this because, yes, I am happier than I have ever been and I am so excited about my life and where it is going and how the world has been feeling to walk upon. But I still have moments. They are messy and scary and dark and then they go away. The going away used to take a long time and now it doesn’t. That’s what I know.

I also know that when I was sitting on the ground alone, feeling all of these things, it was writing that came like a lantern in the dark for me. I knew I was coming out of it when my mind started to think of how I would write about what I had just felt, of what meaning and medicine I would extract from it all. I was sitting there with tears still on my cheeks and all I could think about was how to tell it. I don’t know what I would do, I really don’t, if I didn’t have that need. It makes everything, absolutely everything, worth it.

Which is also to say, thank you for all of your support and love. Writing these posts has become the highlight of my days.

Happy Sunday. ❤

With love, -m.

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