Uncategorized

MY TWO LAST WORDS FOR YOU.

in


someone showed me a picture of you recently and you looked.         so happy.

and the gorgeous and lithe and so-obviously-cool woman next to you looked.              so happy.

and together, the two of you, looked well and good and right.
the way her head turned in to your shoulder. the way your arm snaked round her waist.

it was a sad sort of thing. me seeing this picture. me knowing that i never got that--you could never give me that. because whatever it was we shared was broken and fractured and kept hidden away from the very start.

i had a dream several months back, about jared, who we've been without for six impossible years now. and even as it was happening i knew it was more than a dream. because i got to see him and laugh with him and touch his smiling face. and the two of us had a grand time in this half-dream of mine. he seemed so exactly like himself and we spoke and laughed and talked on the last six years and then we went to a party. and you were there. and this woman was there. and she made you smile. and i turned to jared and i said, it's time to leave now. i'm gonna go. i'm not the one who makes him happy. 

and do you know what happened? he told me i couldn't go. because ours was the story that needed to be told.

it all seems so ridiculous now. it seemed ridiculous then, too.
but also very real.

and i woke up from the half-dream filled with peace because jared was always just love and so i messaged his mother to tell her that i'd felt i'd seen him and he was so very good and she responded saying that that very day would have been his twenty-seventh birthday.

thing is, days later, i was so angry. because i was walking away from you. because i was leaving. i was leaving the party in some large and cosmic and tremendously important way and he stopped me.

in looking at the photo of the two of you i think, my God--i'm not in love with this man anymore, i'll never again be in love with this man. i did leave the party. i just didn't know it.

i thought i'd carry my love for you forever. i thought it was a forever sort of thing. i'd resolved myself to that. i didn't think it'd stop me from loving others, i just thought it would live in me, mostly silent, mostly private. and so the loss of that love--well, there is a death in that. and a sadness to that death. but a birth, too.

the opposite of love is not hate. it's just the absence of it. the vacuum where it once was.

a few years ago when my adult and on-the-mend self lay next to your adult and deeply-wounded self i thought it was just that the nineteen-year-old in me was in love with the twenty-five-year-old in you. i convinced myself that it wasn't love then, it was a refraction of it. but it was. i was in love with you then as i had been all the years before.

i once told tom i had no doubt i'd one day tell you. it was just a matter of time and courage and those two things meeting and we'd not gotten there yet. and he said that just as important as the three words was to tell you that i'd been so afraid--that the fear was such a huge and vital part of the story and that you probably didn't know that. but how could you not know? and for one glimmering moment i understood--the subtraction between what i knew and what you experienced--the space between what the female mind knows and the male mind can't fathom.

but here i am, smiling from the shores of having-moved-on and it's so good. getting over you was the second hardest thing i ever did. the second best thing, too.

i won't tell you now. i won't ever tell you. because it was for me. if those three words needed to be said it was for me and i just don't need them anymore.

maybe jared was right though, maybe it is the story of you i need to tell--or the story of the last several years. maybe that's my second-beating-heart (as sugar would put it)--not you, but the story of you.

there's no love for you left. just the knowledge of those deep, unfathomable well-springs of which i am made. and for that i won't give you three words, but two:

thank you.

WEEKLY WELLNESS// to nourish

in


there was a dance in my kitchen yesterday afternoon, just as the last of the now-too-quickly-fading light crept under that wet blanket of winter night.

the lift of the faucet to fill the pitcher, the turn of the dial to warm the coffee maker, the twist of my foot to open the fridge. the flick of the match to light the candle, the shuffle of feet to get to the bath to run the water to pour the salt.

a messily orchestrated movement of steps that ended with me submerged in water, coffee mug resting on chest.

bath and latte.

the thrum of the details of everyday life.

this is the way in which i nourish myself. with a song that is that thrum of everyday life.

to nourish: provide with substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition//enhance the fertility of (soil)

when i read that definition the first time round i mistakingly read (soil) as soul and i had this really hippy-dippy moment in with i let out a huge breath and felt totally justified. yes! yes, yes! fertility of the soul, perfection! and then i realized my mistake.

such a good mistake. such a good and delicious mistake.

you know that expression,  food is love? you must. surely someone reading this has it on a sign hanging in their kitchen. and i get it, and i respect it, but the thing is, i hate it. i absolutely loathe the expression. because it's true in that it's some of the story. but it's not true in that it's not enough of the story. and i think it proves dangerous in that most people in most places think it's entirely true and so they eat and eat and eat. but most things cannot be fed by food.

food is not love. food alone is just not love. believe me, i know. for years i let it try to fill that space meant for self-love and i ended up with a lot of extra weight and a sadness far heavier than there are words to describe it.

when i first met tom he would have me fill out a sheet of paper when i ate. i was meant to say what time it was, where i was eating, what i ate, and how i was feeling. it's a pretty standard practice--he knew that, i knew that, and i wasn't terribly invested in it. i didn't do it for too long, but i have to tell you, the practice of it stuck with me and over the course of time i began to understand the method to this madness.

when i was deep in the throws of the eating disorder people would ask, well, why do you binge? what is it that brings it on? and that question would drive me nuts. it would absolutely unhinge me--because it was so very much the right question and so very much the point and i didn't have an answer. if i knew, i'd tell you. if i knew, it'd be easier. 

how i was feeling.

i used to feel like every emotion was wound into one giant ball of string and a binge was brought on by one of the strings, but all i could ever identify was the mass of the thing--everything and all at once. but slowly, over time, i began to unwind and untangle one from the other. this one here that's guilt. and this one is frustration. and here's thirst, and this one is failure, and this one is that shitty, shitty thing that that shitty, shitty person said to me. and on and on i untangled until i had a thousand separate threads spread between my hands, a bouquet of all i'd ever felt or wanted to know.

and i came to figure out that binges often occurred when i confused thirst for hunger or when i was overly tired and a good long way from bed. to drink and to sleep. basic needs. two ways in which we must nourish ourselves--a need to feed that has nothing to do with food.

to nourish: provide with substance necessary for growth, health, and good condition

to fill. to provide with sustenance. to enhance the quality of life. to drink a cup of tea. to hold something warm between the hands. to submerge the body in water. to take a bath and wash one's hair. to read. oh, to read! to challenge the mind. to call a friend. to crawl into bed. to make love. to date. to laugh. to see a film. to see the world--by boat or train or foot or through a camera lens. to do something of great risk with great love. to listen. to compose. to dance naked. to sit down to a good meal. to hear a child's footsteps against the wood floor.

to ask for help. to say no when no is what is needed. to live one's truth.

there are an infinite number of ways in which we can nourish ourselves. and to nourish one's self is to love one's self. it is to give and offer up love. it is to receive love. food is one form of nourishment, yes,  but just one. it is but a sliver of an ever-extending, all-encompassing sky.

i truly believe that when we figure out how to nourish ourselves--and the importance of it--we'll have begun the next great revolution. that will be how we change the world. that will be how we step back and see the whole of the picture. that will be when we begin to act with greater courage and greater love.

small acts, small kindnesses that we must first give to ourselves.

to feed the (soil) soul.