new york city | a love letter through the lens

When things were harder, which is to say, I was less well and life was less full, I was so very good about carving out time and space each day to just be with myself. Doesn't that sound so terribly...something...new-agey or pretentious...I don't know. But I was so good about doing some things--that now as I look back--I realize those things are forms of meditation in their own rite. Because they quiet the mind and connect me to the truest, deepest part of myself (yeah, yeah, this whole thing is sounding spacey and cliche--but that doesn't make it any less true).

The Canon around my neck--the weight of it in my hands, I find that tremendously grounding.

So two mornings ago I rose extra early, threw on an easy sundress, my best pair of sunnies. And just walked. Camera in tow. Looked at the buildings and streets I see every day through more discerning eyes. And I clicked.

Because while I'm not a skilled photographer by any means, the act of it brings me round to myself.

Holding a camera. Seeking out new music. Stillness in the morning. Baths. Lit candles. Lattes. Writing. Always writing. These are the things that engage me with my life.

And just because the need for these things isn't as immediate as it once was, well it doesn't mean the need is any less (if that makes sense). And what this really means is, I sort of have to have a radical commitment to the simple things. To both my awareness and appreciation of them.

i just need to complain for a moment (read at your own peril).

  The thing about getting bed bugs for a second time is that it puts your life in a rather harsh perspective.

Who gets bed bugs twice? my friend Joy asked, over meatballs and mac and cheese a little white wine (well, wine for me, growing baby for her).

The first time I got them I was living in an apartment with three other girls. They were concentrated in a room a just up the hall and off to the side. So I was mostly safe from their reach, wasn’t bit more than two or three times. But the thing about dealing with them—which is to say, attempting to eradicate them—which is to say, attempting to decimate the little blood-sucking disaster of a bug by any means possible—is whether you have a wee of case or not, you have to package everything up into plastic bags. And then you have to live out of said plastic bags for like six weeks.

Six weeks.

It’s miserable. The whole ordeal is absolutely miserable.

They don’t pose a huge threat to your physical health. If you google at all, that becomes clear.

But last go round they precipitated a nasty case of the blues (which google makes clear is quite common).

So this go round, I braced myself. Kept my eyes on the horizon and watched as the sadness approached.

And for about a week there, I didn’t think it would end well. Not well at all.

You’re meant to be able to see the things, the bugs—they are meant to leave some trace. You’re supposed to be able to find them hiding in seams, spot their tracks (which is a nice way of saying blood and feces) on your clean, white linen sheets.

But this go round they remained invisible to me.

Which made me feel crazy.

Because the only evidence of their nightly terror was the welts my body bore.

And I am, as it turns out, highly—highly—allergic (this is of interest because not everyone is).

Seventeen bites I awoke to one morning. After spending the night on an air mattress on the living room floor.

Seventeen bites.

As a species we’ve evolved to protect our sleep. So much of what we’ve done over the past two hundred thousand years is to figure out how to sleep more safely. Mostly because sleep—good sleep, restful sleep—is incredibly important for cognitive function, and health, and most other good things.

Two months into a new apartment and there are plastic bags everywhere. Some clear. Some not. (Which feels like a metaphor for my life).

Every morning is a so-not-fun-treasure-hunt for what I will need to get through the day.

The thing about bed bugs—the upside, if you will, is that you become rather ruthless about sorting through all your stuff (even more ruthless than when you move). And having just moved, I know this with a high level of certainty.

It is not lost on me that my new year’s resolution was to live with less stuff.

Ah, the irony.

Because here I am, knee-deep into the new year and wouldn’t you know, less stuff.

Suddenly the clothes that don’t fit are in a trash bag in the entry hall. The suitcase with the busted wheels is out the door. And all those fancy-glossy-pacific-northwest-isnpired-magazines that I’ve been keeping because I thought they’d sit so well in that one-day-home—gone, tossed.

Live with less stuff. Or live where you are. Imperfect as it is.

But holy shit is it imperfect.

And I’m really trying to be okay with it. To hook into that notion that all this mess is in service of a something else. And that wrong turns are better than right turns and on and on. But some days it’s so hard.

Because people can be shitty. And selfish. And unkind. And totally not great on every level. But you can’t change that. You can only change how you react to it. Which is hard, and a little unfair, but more rewarding in the end (or so I’m told—and so I’ve occasionally found to be true).

I’m trying to rise above, but today, well, today I don’t feel like rising.

Because there’s a lot of garbage bags around, and what’s worth saving and what’s worth tossing isn’t terribly clear.

**Also currently accepting reasons to move someplace else...like Chicago (because as my cousin said, New York is totally rejecting me--who get's beg bugs twice, indeed?!)**

having a witness | laura jane williams

What follows is the fourth in a series about wanting men/not needing them.

And because I know some pretty spectacular women, I asked them to weigh in on the subject.

Laura is one of my very favorite people in this world (and we've never even met).

I came across her blog not terribly long ago and was immediately smitten. It is, without question, one of my very favorite places on the internet. She is ruthlessly honest and brazenly self-aware--and the older I get, the more I think those things might actually be the answer to all questions. Which is to say she's got some stuff figured out--even if it's just the willingness to say, you know, I'm still not there yet--I don't know. 

So, lucky you all (and lucky me), her response:

afterlight-2

The thing is, it’s about having a witness to my life.

I didn’t understand for such a very long time. I’d had my heart crumpled young - too young, really. I was too naïve to understand that he was the making of me, not the breaking—and that misunderstanding coloured my choices for days that became weeks that became, in the end, about five years of healing. It took many forms: promiscuity, celibacy, travel: searching so that I got my answers but was still puzzled as to the question.

But, you see, because of all that, I’m really fucking proud of who I am. And the woman I’ve become? She wants to share her life with a man. A husband.

It’s not a desperate kind of want. It isn’t sleeplessness nights and pints of ice-cream salted with the tears of singledom. It’s not the ticking of a biological clock, nor the irritatingly true knowledge that rent would be cheaper split by two. It’s not about sex. I’m not searching for my other half, the soulmate who will make me whole. I’m not incomplete.

I’m not incomplete.

The obvious, practical stuff aside – making my own money, being able to change the fuse on a lamp, backpacking solo and how to figure out interest rates and train timetables and reverse parking and the best way to mow the lawn – emotionally, I’m ripe.

Beyoncé said it best (because she always does): you have to have a life, before you can be somebody’s wife. Oh baby, have I had a life. I’ve cried tears enough to earn the right to be empathetic and strong with the man who will feel courage from standing by my side. I’ve laughed so much that I’ll be able to make the future father of my children see the funny side of our lost luggage, or the leak in the ceiling, or even, with enough time, the tragedy that’ll blindsid us both one sunny Friday afternoon.

Make no mistake, I’ve experienced so much anger and frustration, that when he thinks he can’t take anymore – of work, of family, of the tiredness of life – well, I understand the difference between psychological space from words, and the closeness of my chin on his shoulder, just for a minute. I’ve known the aching for roots, so we can build a home together, somewhere in the world. And I’ve developed a taste for freedom, too.

I don’t need a yes man, and won’t be a yes woman, either.

This man, my husband, the one I’m ready for, he’ll have lived as well. He’ll be whole from experience. I don’t need a project, somebody to mother. He doesn’t have to be broken to be interesting (why do we always look for them to be broken?) but there’ll be cracks in us both that being together will help mend. He’ll know himself, and his self-kindness will teach me to go easier on myself. His manners will make me more accountable to those around me, and possibly his ambition will guide my own. I might be whole, but I’m not perfect; I still have more to learn, than has been learnt. But I’ll navigate those lessons eventually, with or without him. I don’t need him.

It’d be hella fun to do this next part of growing, of understanding, of learning and becoming together, though.

This want, it’s a want for watching how he talks to his parents over dinner, so that I get insight into how I engage with my own mum and dad. I want long and lazy Sunday afternoons wrapped around each other in bed, surprising myself with truths that feel safe to share in dappled, early evening light. I want blazing, heated rows in the aisle of Ikea over everything and nothing at all, friends over to our apartment for dinner, children who look like me and sound like him – everything it takes to unfold another human being so that I might unfold myself.

I want to love whole-heartedly and without restraint with a man who is there when I wake up, and knows when to leave me alone and when to take the small of my back with just the right amount of pressure. Doing so will make me better, will teach me – as will letting myself lose control enough to be loved. Because, of course, that’s harder than loving when we’re all waiting to get found out that somehow, we don’t deserve it.

We do. I do. My husband does, too. We all deserve a cheerleader, a champion, an equal.

I’ve taken it this far, and I’ve done it goddamn well. If this is life alone, then life in a partnership – a coupling where we make each other better, compensate for weaknesses and amplify strengths – well, shit. That’d be some life.

part one, part two, part three, part four. part five. 

for my mother. so she knows i'm okay.

 

This year has been a series of small heartaches.

I’m not supposed to say that.

I’m supposed to say that everything is fine.

And it is. Surprisingly, miraculously, it is.

I am, for the most part, treading water quite well, actually.

But in the black-and-white-terror by which we often judge our lives, it has been a spectacularly crummy year. I say that knowing full well that everyone I love has their health and because of that my complaints are just that: complaints, and so not worth much.

But today I will have a second latte before I even leave the apartment.

The weight of some-other-life has been pressing in heavy of late. I feel it most acutely in grocery stores. Standing in aisles, the food poorly organized, the lighting harsh, and the people who work there as unhelpful as unwilling. I feel it standing in the checkout lines. The person behind me always a little too close—their items being scanned before I’ve even signed my copy of the receipt.

And I can’t help but think how those things wouldn’t happen in cities with more space.

Which may or may not be true.

But it’s true of where I grew up.

I feel so very much in-the-middle-of-things. And also nowhere at all. Which is a different sort of middle, and not a very good one.

Except that I’m not in the middle.

I’m on the other side of a long stretch of heartache.

So much, am I on the other side, that I occasionally forget. The body is adaptive in that way—protective. How expertly it smooths the edges of what once felt impossible. But every once and again a residual truth will surface and I’ll realize there’s more to go—small mountains still to move.

And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep. *

Somewhere along the way I stopped believing that good things could happen to me.

Somewhere from within the tangle of that particular devastation I stopped trusting that good things do in fact…occur. To other people, surely. But not to me.

My life would be something else entirely. Something less. And I would weather it.

It’s so ridiculous. I get that. Just saying it out loud, it’s so ridiculous. But it’s also true. And true in a way that frightens me because it’s somehow more true than other truths, and how can there be shades to truth?

And what I’m realizing is that I’ve been toting around this particular truth for far too long, totally unaware.

Meaning, I’ve let it be true. When really it’s not. And that’s on me.

Maybe it’s the last threshold. The last little bit to cross.

But when you’re nineteen years old and shit hits the fan in that way that alters your life in that unalterable way and it takes you six years just to get out of bed without considerable effort, perception and hopes and what you want for your life shifts.

And you settle.

For less.

And you accept that less for so long that it becomes a new baseline.

Until you call bullshit. And start wanting—start expecting more.

Because just to give voice to that scary truth is to dismantle it. To somehow make it less true.

Less true than other truths.

And less important and more part of the past--and the mountains get smaller and the miles less dense.

And the getting out of bed, that much easier.

Treading water starts to feel more like swimming.

Forward to that next shore.

Something about water metaphors, they really get me.

*Robert Frost. Obviously. (Obviously not being the name of the poem. And now is the moment I encourage you to go revisit his really good words.)

the fundamental truth | guest post: chelsea latimer

Over the years I’ve never quite been able to resolve for myself the “you should’t need a man” comments that come my way. Of course I don’t, I think!

The feminist in me bristles as the double standard of women-don’t-need-a-man-but-poor-Jen-Anison-that-she’s-never-found-one.

And because I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and because I think I know some pretty remarkable women, I asked them to sort through their own feelings and spit out some words.

What follows is the third in the series.

Chelsea is a marvel. I came across her blog years ago and often find myself emailing her with the wish (no, the plea) that she write more, more, MORE. Basically I believe her writing makes me better--a better writer yes, but more than that, a better, more fully-lived-in human being.

So without further ado, her response...

I can distinctly remember the moment when I realized I loved myself enough to share it with someone. I’d thought, in past relationships, years of dating, recovered heartbreaks and so on that I “knew myself,” and “loved myself,” but this time it was something different. It was different because I was willing to walk away if it didn’t match up to root desires. The ones that honored my spirit. The thing was, I was only allowed to do this AFTER I’d shown vulnerability. After I’d given someone a chance, let them in, relinquished the pretense. There weren’t walls, or barriers. There was openness FIRST, barriers Second.

Here’s what happened, there came a crossroads where I had to answer the question in a relationship, “Is it worth the compromise?” There were a few things, (as most relationships encounter when you’re creating space for someone in your life) where I had to shift my direct WANT for that of my Partner. This time, however as opposed to shifting, or shrinking my want for my partner, I asked an additional question on top of that one, “Will I STILL love myself after I make the compromise?” While I may have loved myself before meeting him and during our time together, even happily in a relationship- the answer on the otherside of our inevitable compromises may have been “no.” If that’s the reality that meets you on the other side of that question, but you continue anyway (which I had many times in the past) that’s when I knew that my self-love was waning. I finally got to the place where unequivocally, the answer to that had to be a loud, confident, unshakeable, YES.

Women inherently, or excuse me, HUMANS, inherently want to give and receive love. So, why would we ever look at our fellow brothers or sisters, friends, coworkers and pity their plight to find it?

To be earnestly desirous or even aware of love's power there is an initiation that happens, maybe by way of a break up, a BIG QUESTION (like the one I discovered,) an “a ha!” of sorts that leads you to a set of non-negotiables and that resides at the center of your heart, or your gut- if you’re really clear, it’s both. These include boundaries, self-love and awareness of where your joy is conceived. To be intimately, keenly comfortable with showing all the sticky, ripe, bruised aspects of your soul to someone requires an understanding of that trifecta. Time examining, trial and error, research. Know your boundaries, know your self-love; how to give it, how to get it, where it comes from and know your joy. All the reasons we forget who we are and why we want to give/receive love is lost when the answers to those questions are gray, or undefined.

Build a life for yourself, one you’re proud of. One that has filling relationships, deep connections, twinkling lights in the midst of the city or dust covered leather boots in the countryside, awe and adventure....deep self-examination and healing, intimate recognition of your insecurities, your wounds, your big hairy-scary fears. Then, when you’ve cozied up alone, naked in negative space and oversized pillows, loving all of that “Stuff,” and willing to scoot over and let someone peek in, that’s when you know that you’ve done the work. When you still want to get undressed, literally and metaphorically with someone in spite of how truly terrifying that is and say, “I’ll share everything and if you don’t stick around, or don’t like it, I know exactly how ‘without you’ feels and I’m okay.”

Being willing to become soft is neither needy, or lacking intimacy with your SELF, in actuality you may just finally (after years of self-work, nights alone, dates, cycles of life and relationships......) be ACCEPTING yourself. You are not robbed of your independence or autonomy by desiring deeper connection.

One thing I know for CERTAIN is that everything most people do, whether attached or otherwise is to come back to the one fundamental truth that gets us up out of bed every morning, that makes you stay, or leave, or work an extra hour longer to provide; the thing that makes us work hard in general to create something foundational is LOVE. Everything we do, whether we can admit it to ourselves or not has some form of love as the desired outcome attached to it. That can be romantic, familial, or self-love. Allowing someone to love you and to be in the space of desiring to give that love back in return, is not only the greatest act of self-love, but the bravest one. Articulating and surrendering yourself to the flexibility that LOVE requires, while being able to answer the question “Will I love myself on the other side of this compromise?” with a firm “YES,” is inherently feminism. As women, tenderly support the journey of the beauties around you to find love, just remember, always, ALWAYS to keep that, “yes.”

read more of Chelsea's genius stuff here.

part one, part two, part three, part four. part five. 

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