Wake.

There is a silence that breathes louder than my distractions and it's living in my numb.
I feel words but they cannot find my lips; they gather like the autumn leaves upon my doorstep.

Comatose.

I float, alive and weightless, above the truths of my reality in the hopes that they will disappear.
They have not.

Linger longer near these terrors and you'll come to understand my listless air. Yet, there are no excuses I can hold tightly; I am wholly responsible for my current disrepair. I see my faults more plainly than these lines that define my weathered hands. I could run from these fears forever, but I cannot escape their source within me.

Here's that moment where I wrestle a "yes" from this hearts beating breath; trapping my fleeting feet beneath duty and raw hunger. Give me a few seconds to collect courage and dim the lights on my souls childish outrage and I promise I'll begin.

Begin to turn and run towards the fears conceived in pain.
Begin to feel enough to have to choose to forgive.
Begin to remember what an unguarded heart even sounds like.

I will begin.

To the first.

All your letters... I finally let them go.
I remember the time when I thought I'd never have to and that it was ok to hold onto them for memories sake, but yesterday a different point of view found me.

I took the time to carefully read each one... my fingers feeling the familiar textures of the different types of papers you used for each letter and note.
I saw the moments that accompanied each word.
I heard your voice bending to the inflection of your thoughts in each phrase.
I felt the sparkle in your eyes as if you were standing right there bleeding your love onto the pages.
I wasn't just reading and remembering your letters; I was reading and remembering you.

I let my wounds and their protest drift far from my mind in that moment and I chose to remember you.

Just you.

Not the pain, not the conflict; only you.
And within that window in time I loved you as you were... where we were.

But this time was different because I didn't want to go back.
I wanted to remember you well, to remember you beautiful... And I did.
But I realized that after months of begging my soul to forget you, my heart had finally made its way back to me.
Suddenly there's room for something new and I no longer ache for you.

My tears fell freely upon the pages in my lap and I felt the weight of that defining moment. I could have wept as each one slipped from my fingers into the grossly undistinguished trash bag assigned to the ending of this process.

As I started to breathe in the new borders to this season that I'm entering, I knew that I couldn't take these pieces of you with me. You can't be the memorial that I run to when I feel scared and alone.
As I pack my life and my memories away to see a new time and space, I quietly lay you aside and whisper my goodbye.

I don't believe that I'll ever forget you...
But this is where I make room for all things new.
This is where I take one more step of letting you go completely.
This isn't where I bitterly get over you; this is where I peacefully move on.

This is where my love goes free.

numb.

It's one more drink;
one more hit;
one more day spent in bed.

It's one more hour of living vicariously through another fictional happy ending sitting stationary staring at the screen set before you;
one more haircut to be the answer to your dissatisfaction;
one more minor manipulation prescribed to fix your devastating self loathing.

It's one more risk;
one more near death experience;
merely one more cut just to focus on the pain.

It's one more surface friend to keep you from even just one moment of terrifying silence;
one more makeshift lover for fear of ever being the one caught alone.



So when do you know when you're just filling the space to numb the ache?
At what point does it become just another way to medicate?

Today.

Today I wasn't ready to let myself figure it out.

Find me breathing

If I were to paint my life I would paint it always on the edge of the shoreline. Sometimes I imagine that my heart swells just because it carries some of the dangerously beautiful ocean within it, almost as if it was born of it. There are moments that I forget my place and begin to feel the breathless ache for what could only be called home. I don’t know when it started, but as far back as I can remember I’ve always known this love affair with the ocean.



It was only a year ago that one of my dear friends started to point out a consistent problem in my day to day; I simply wasn’t breathing. At first I thought she was crazy and I gave her a hard time for making an issue out of nothing, but I slowly realized that she was right. I was living off of shallow breaths and never taking the time to breathe deeply like my body needed me to.  Now it wasn’t until this past September that I realized the significance behind my breathing problem... and it’s directly connected to my relationship with the beach.

This year is the first time in years that my family did not go to Long Beach Island (or any beach for that matter) for vacation. I realized after September came and went that every year for the past ten years we’ve held our breaths till we were able to rest our weary hearts at the shoreline. I don’t know that we planned it to be that way, but its as if we waited to release a sigh of relief and breathe deeply till we were standing at the ocean letting go of a years worth of pain held in. At least that’s how I’ve related to the shore…



I’ve never been one to rush into the ocean upon arrival after three hours of driving, almost as if the childlike buttons lining my heart have been stuck in sleep and cannot be accessed without the hand of another holding mine and leading the way.

I approach the ocean much like a long lost love that I must slowly take in and remember...  it takes time. I stand at the edge of the shoreline and let my toes sink in, only hoping that somehow that will keep me rooted there forever. I then begin to give all my senses a chance to slowly be awakened to the ache that will finally be met with what feels like a comforting embrace, and finally, I exhale the breath held for far too long and I begin to breathe.



It’s there that I wrestle with the questions that have merely accompanied the weight that I slowly push from my heavy heart. My chest aches from the pounding of the unknown upon my humanity; the tension of waiting within the confusing in-between. But still, my heart melts with every deep breath taken and then released and I begin to imagine myself captured only by this dangerous beauty before me. This is the moment that reaches into the depths of my soul and whispers, “You are far from alone, My love… I am with you.”



This is home.



Now I realize that I can’t spend my life holding my breath and living off of what can only be known as shallow and barely there, and I’ve begun to practice the art of remembering to breathe. It takes time.



But here I am… if you look you’ll find me breathing.

Beautiful

Growing up I was that girl that just "didn't care" about her appearance and never obsessed about her weight.
My clothes were always at least 4 sizes too big for me and if you asked me what my favorite color was my answer would have been, "Um... I guess earth tones..." (I'm not going to pretend like I don't STILL love my earth tones). My poor mother practically begged me to explore a little more color in my wardrobe. But I fought passionately for my right to look frumpy and unfeminine. It's somewhat painful to look at pictures from those years because of how truly terrible it was.

Much has changed since those days.. I take care of my hair and much prefer to wear it down rather than pull it back like I always did before. I wear the basics when it comes the makeup and I'm not afraid to doll up when the occasion calls for it. I wear skinny jeans and I own at least one pink shirt that I, in fact, have worn more than once. The sure sign of a changed woman, right?

Maybe...

I'm beginning to wonder if that little girl with the raspy voice and the collection of army men ever really stopped hiding from the risk of not being found beautiful. Here I am at 22 years old and I'm more aware of my weight and what my eyes can only judge to be "mediocre" than I've ever been before. I never thought I'd be one of those girls that constantly picks their physical appearance apart as if tearing stitches from a garment to prove how very cheap and worthless it really is.
I suddenly care... I suddenly own the sad and shallow belief that a big portion of my worth can be gauged by how much attention, or lack thereof, I get when I leave the safety of my apartment and brave the public eye. It sickens me... I don't even know this person I've let myself become.
I'm convinced that my self loathing can only be rooted out from within... It's this whole choice to love yourself and accept yourself that I've been fighting with for my entire life. Whether I'm hiding my femininity and "not caring" about how i look by wearing a trash bag, or if I'm trying on every single article of clothing in my wardrobe to find something that will make me feel beautiful and yet still feeling defeated when I've thrown the very last shirt on the floor, alas, either way I am found without love for myself.
In the end this really isn't about my physical appearance... I am left feeling wanting when I judge myself,
body and soul. The moment that I cannot embrace a piece of myself I begin to try and improve/manipulate another part of myself to draw attention away from the insufficiencies I've found. That's not what we call balanced or healthy. It's not how i was made to live... bound by my own rejection of self, and beauty therein.

I want to be whole... I want to love myself enough that I can also love others well. I want to believe the truth about what it means to be seen as captivating. I want to accept and embrace the beauty that knows my name and my frame.

I want to just be.

Becoming

Barefaced, my anger bleeds colors retained too long. Surviving just beneath allegiance and it's propensity to deny; this is no newborn screaming for ignorance sake. This is the ancient brew which was placed on a shelf by idealism only to age into the brutally strong elixir merely waiting to devastate the foolishly bold lips that seek to tempt it's source.
Even I am afraid of what these rumblings will breed. I would choose to hide away rather than candidly leak this malignant toxin into the beauty around and without my troubled frame. I am not so blind as to deny how grotesquely this acrimony hangs on me. Grace and beauty cannot know my name as I am now; I can hardly choose to embrace it myself.
I am...
Unbecoming.
My bitter anger, my grief unveiled...
Unbecoming.
The conflict that breaks my neck and bends my black and white to gray...
Unbecoming.
I am...
...on the road to what's becoming of me.

Shadows of death

It's a difficult day when you begin to come to the full reality of your own humanity. The frailty of life suddenly comes crashing in and the mind can no longer live by the invincible mentality conjured up by the four year old with a sheet acting as a cape tied around her neck. Childhood never looks so sweet as in the moment you meet the fragrance of death.
At what point do we make peace with the idea of our own deaths? Has it been assigned to terminal illness or the moments before the accident that will steal your last breath? When is it ok to wrestle with whether or not you're ever going to be ready to die? When is it appropriate to look the fear of death straight in the eye and bid it farewell for the sake of fully accepting life?

I know I wasn't necessarily a normal child, but in my estimation the definition of normal has been lost somewhere in the vast sea of individuals who can all claim insanity on some level.
As a small child at the age of five I encountered this thought process about death. I wasn't looking for it, but trauma had a hand in bringing such dark topics to the forefront of my little mind.
My favorite grandfather, whom we called Dadu, gave in to a lifelong battle with depression and, quite unexpectedly, committed suicide leaving his entire family behind including my five year old self.
Suddenly the cold, hard, fact that death is not always out of your control was presented to my devastated heart. Suddenly this five year old was holding her own life in her hands questioning whether or not she had the right to live it or not. Thus began my battle of struggling with depression and being suicidal.
It wasn't because I hated my life. I had a magical childhood in most respects... I was blessed with wonderful parents who could do nothing but lavish love on their children. I wasn't looking for some sort of escape from anything. I just couldn't grasp why such a wonderful man had died. If he, being untouchable in my little mind, took his own life then why did I deserve to be alive? Incredibly twisted thoughts, I know, but I wasn't expressing them to anyone. So, unbeknownst to me, those thoughts slowly grew into solid pillars of truth within my heart. I lived most of my childhood subconsciously believing that I didn't deserve life; that I was worthless. It wasn't until I was eighteen that all of these lies began to surface. It wasn't until I stood toe to toe with my own death that I finally started to combat this secret struggle. It took time, honesty, and lots of love from the people in my life. I'm alive today because of that.
So all of that to say, that wasn't the way i would have liked to encounter the moment of wrestling with death. I would have preferred to look at it from a distance and contemplate how I was choosing to LIVE my life.
It took a few years before I could look at my own potential death in a healthy way. The moment came when I was incredibly happy and overflowing with love and joy. The question was not whether I wanted to die, or even if I was ready to die, but rather whether or not I could make peace with the idea of dying in a space of time when I didn't want to die. The question was if I died tomorrow; have I lived well? Have I loved well? Have I released well? Have I received well? Have a rejoiced well? Have I mourned well? Have I searched well? Have I accepted myself well? Could I make peace with whatever would happen next? Yes.
It was a good moment. Difficult, of course, but good.
I'll probably have more moments like that in my lifetime. Healthy ones. I can spot the unhealthy ones by now and I know what to do with those.

So for now I choose to live raw. I choose to wear the truth of my heart on my sleeve; whether it's beautiful or not.
I choose to live embracing love; even when it kills me.
I choose to live challenging every dormant corner in my soul to remember movement; even when I'm weary of growing pains.
The best part in it all is that I choose to live.