Platforms.

You are a platform.

You rise high above the floor. 

Steep, tall, daunting.

When I climb onto your platform, my toes peek out over the edge, and I nervously curl them over the rough concrete in anticipation of the coming jump. How can I depart from you? How can I let myself lurch forward into the unknown?

I live in constant fear of the plummeting free fall so inevitable when standing on your platform.

I'm up here, and the wind gently nips at my shirtsleeves, and I try not to think about the dizzying, breathtaking, all-encompassing height from which I currently sit atop the world, sotospeak. I close my eyes and there's a faint salty smell, mixed with tobacco leaves and pool chlorine. This smell encapsulates all the best parts of you, and also some of the worst parts of you. Like Fleetwood Mac, "damn your love- damn your lies." 

God, for a platform though, you are sturdy. I can feel your balance and your weight and your constancy beneath my feet. 

When I jump off your platform, I dive into a world that is beyond myself, finally. Beyond my nerves, beyond my fear, beyond my chaotic self-conscious wreckage that screams doubt from the tops of its' worn-down lungs. 

My self-destruction locomotive chugga-chugga-chugs to a full stop and I'm left with this annoying sense of satisfaction, and a competitive curiosity which burns brighter than the brightest white light. 

I miss you, it would seem. 

I find myself thinking about you, and I find myself wondering. 

What does the platform think these days? What does the platform do? Does the platform miss me? Does the platform wonder where I am, too?

I love the self I was around you more than any other self I've ever been, and I have a lot of selfs in the closet of my past. 

This particular self was caught in a world that burst with all the colors in your rainbow. 

It always starts accidentally. I rewatch your favorite movie on Netflix without meaning to, and then I find myself listening to Jack Johnson and arguing with strangers about David Bowie and existentialism, convincing myself that I still know you better than anyone else. Then the next thing I know, I'm wearing red lipstick again and driving a little more recklessly. I allow my mind to stray back to memories of us from so long ago.

I pushed, you pulled. Push. Pull. Push. Pull. 

Hated the way you would call me on the carpet, but secretly loved that you were the only one to call me on my bullshit. Our fights were outrageous but I still count them among my favorite memories. You were the only one who never tried to control me and you respected the hell out of me and you treated me like it. So you supported me, and you raised me a little higher, you thrust me a little taller into the breeze and casually pushed me off the edge and I leapt off your platform. 

I leapt and I dove and I twirled and I laughed and I rose into a higher level of self-acceptance and then I would fall back into your arms. (Landing back in you was my very favorite part.) 

I jumped beyond myself. Because I jumped from your platform. 

One day, I grew wings. I grew wings and I flew far away from you, and I kept looking back over my shoulder- but you only grew smaller and smaller in the distance.  I tried to fly back, but by then you had disappeared. 

Now I sit here, many years and days later, a little wine drunk at 1AM after re-watching your favorite movie and I find myself thinking once again, for the first time in a long time, about you. About the way I pushed, and the way you pulled. 

You are my favorite platform. You always have been. 

November

I wish that tomorrow I could wake up on the Oregon coast and take a long, early morning walk. 

I wish I could stay there for days.

 And then, after the crashing waves smooth the jagged edges of my soul, I wish I could hop on a plane to a hot island in the middle of the ocean, and forget about everything but 50 shades of blue and the way the humid air spreads so much warmth into your body, you can feel it seeping into your organs and tissues and pores like a miracle elixir. 

Today was the first day I finally admitted to myself that Fall is here. It's been a gorgeous October- I know it has, but that doesn't change the fact that I've hated every minute of it.

Fall is a crippling reminder that winter is approaching and the days have gotten so short, the mornings so cold, the skies so abysmally grey; it's hard to cope with the darkness. 

I scroll and I scroll through Instagram posts of users that I have chosen to follow for the sole reason that they fill my feed with beautiful photographs of warm, faraway places and I can feel my bones freezing a little bit more with every double-tap.

I'm not ready for winter, but winter is rapidly approaching. 

This is the crux of life, isn't it? 

We're never ready for what's coming, but it's always looming around the next corner.

November is always the hardest month, and I've been living in fear of this looming calendar month for the past eight weeks. 

It's the grey.

I wake up in the mornings and I walk out my front door and my heart sinks into my liver.  Grey. Lifeless. Stark.

The air smells like death, because the earth is beginning to freeze every night. 

Work is cold. Evening lectures are cold. Everything is cold. 

My hands, face and lips begin to dry out as if I'm the one who's beginning to freeze over and decay.

There's no miracle elixir humidity here. No sunshine to be felt inside your internal organs.  

Grey is not to be underestimated. 

Grey is a constant uphill battle.

Whether or not we have it easy as PNW natives because our winters aren't considered harsh, grey is not easily navigated, and there are many mornings  you just don't want to wake up to a world of grey. Unfortunately, sometimes that's all you get to do. 

A Box of Sharp Objects

I shouldn't be here.

I shouldn't be here, looking at this blank screen, my only thoughts about the next words to write down. I shouldn't be here, in the state of mind this blog topic will cover.

There's this thing called college, and these semi-regular things called midterms, and this endless war raging against my chemistry course, and that is where I should be. On the front lines of that battle ground, fighting for a grade that will win the war.

 But here is where I am.

A scared soldier, fleeing from battle. Abandoning the war.

I'm having a hard time caring about my grades this term. I'm having a hard time engaging in my courses. I'm having a hard time engaging myself in work, in relationships, in conversation.

I have been fighting another battle (and loosing) over the past few months,with anxiety. We all know by now that this doesn't qualify as news- it's the same old story, going round and round and round year after year. Sleepless nights, a mind plagued by unhealthy patterns, nervous breakdowns, upset adrenal glands, severe relational withdrawal, unintentional self-starvation, the repetitive click-click-click of laptop keys as I put the process into words here in this space.

This time around, things have been different. The supplements that normally restore my adrenal glands haven't been working. The lavender pills that I take daily to teach my brain to ignore negative thoughts and let them pass without question, and to ease my body into a calm state of bliss have failed miserably at keeping anxiety attacks at bay.

For the first time in my life, my foolproof combination of early bedtimes, healthy eating habits,stress-relieving supplements, and daily Bible reading has failed to keep my head above the water.

My anxiety is out of control: I'm afraid to drive my car anywhere besides work and school. I never want to leave my house. Social gatherings are an anxiety attack in the bathroom waiting to happen. Loud noises, unexpected questions, prolonged eye contact, spontaneous decisions, elevated voices, anything outside of the carefully constructed routine I've planned for myself causes an overwhelming wave of panic to crash over me. It's flat-out impossible to navigate, and the weight of simple decisions and balancing routines has been crushing the delicate lungs inside my rib cage until I can no longer breathe.

On a Monday morning at work, eyes blurred with tears, I typed out an email to my supplement-slinging naturopath, hoping she had another combination of vegetable pills, or essential oil drops, or some sort of soothing herbal balm to smear on my forehead. Anything that would take this anxiety away. Within minutes she responded, and as I scanned her email, one sentence jumped out immediately.

I'm sorry you're still going through this. I'm writing you a prescription for Xanax, and I strongly recommend taking a neurotransmitter test so we can better understand your brain chemistry, if you're open to that.

Eyes closed. Hand over heart. Heart beat thudding loudly into my ear drums. You're broken. A dark whisper crept into my mind as I locked myself in one of the soundproof rooms in our back hallway and called my mom, crying.

It was a reaction that I didn't understand, and I still don't to be honest. All of my adult life, I have strongly advocated the use of prescription medication for mental illness. I have had closest friends experience overwhelming trauma that led them to require medication which helped them get through the pain. Re-training your brain requires heavy duty artillery sometimes, and that has never been a conviction that I struggled with. Members of my own family have needed prescription drugs to fight their own battles with anxiety and depression, and I have never understood the so-called "Christian" mindset that some people have which says that taking prescription meds is a sin, or that mental illness isn't real. Please, sit down and stop talking.

And yet- when it came to my own name being typed across that little green Costco pharmacy bottle, I lost it.

In some ways, I felt relief. I felt validated. Like I could finally accept the fact that I'm not crazy- I'm not inflicting any of this on myself, I have an actual problem that I physiologically cannot control. I am not being punished by God.

In other ways, I felt a little shocked. Is my anxiety that bad? I don't really have that large of a problem, do I? Can this really be happening?  I thought I was stronger than this.
Pride is like a jagged little pill. (Borrowing this coined phrase from none other than Alanis Morissette. hashtag:keepingitreal.)

It burns the entire way down, and as soon as its in your system, it turns into a warm little gas that spreads through your entire body, and soon it becomes a part of you that you don't even realize is there.

It's been about a week now, and I'm still adjusting to the new pills. I haven't been taking them constantly- I'm trying to take them only when I can feel the anxiety coming on. Right now, they're really good at making me extremely drowsy. Today, I took a 3 hour nap instead of studying for my midterm, and then I came here to write it all down.

I don't know what this next stage of life looks like, but what I do know is that this is a new phase of normal for me: adjusting to life with benzos and trying to find healing through the process.

It's a collection of jagged, broken pieces all stock-piled together to form a nice, whole little collection.

A box of sharp objects that I can't hide anymore.

No matter how strongly I feel as though I'm not supposed to be here, here is where I am.













 

Back Again.

I wish I could explain how scary it is, sitting here, watching my cursor blink repeatedly between words. I constantly hear in my head all the words I have to offer, but sitting down to task takes much more than time, it takes courage I seldom have. It's just like walking, babe, one foot in front of the other, I try to self-soothe because self-soothing is comforting. Hesitation has become my closest writing companion.

Writing is hard to walk away from, but it's harder to return to, in my opinion.

Just like life, right?

Goodbyes are hard, but returning to what you walked away from, or allowing whomever walked away from you back into your life- that's the really hard thing.

Tonight I thought about running away from home.

(Spoiler alert: I didn't.)

Not in the visceral sense.  I'm not a huge fan of the idea of abandoning every aspect of your life, just to feel the rush of escape. 

But I did want to just keep driving down the interstate, and leave tomorrow behind in Portland.  I miss the coast, I miss the ocean.  I had even already planned what I was going to say to my boss after not showing up to work tomorrow (it went along the lines of, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission...?) 

But then, I realized I had promised my weekend to dog-sitting for friends, and have a rodeo date with my sister on Saturday night, and my beachin'-for-the-weekend plans came to an abrupt halt.

Now my iPhone alarm for tomorrow morning reads "DON'T FORGET LIBBY!"

So don't worry, Libs, I won't forget you, or that I must stop on my way to work to feed you and give you fresh water.  I promise.

Now I'm lying in my bed, with my dog chewing aggressively on a nylabone, listening to old Jimmy Eat World and Jackson Browne songs and waiting for the half-a-lorazepam I took 20 minutes ago to kick in so I can actually get some sleep tonight.

Sleep has not been forthcoming much lately, I can't really remember a time in life when I've ever felt this tired. On average, I get about 3-4 hours of real sleep a night. The other hours are spent in a strange paralytic state in which I'm either awake, or lightly asleep, still completely aware of my surroundings, but unable to move.

Whatever is causing this lovely new development in my sleep life is probably linked to the rise in anxiety that has reached an all-time height the past few weeks.

Anxiety, sleeplessness, writing.

They're a sexy little love triangle, aren't they?

It's a funny thing, codependency.

You can't have sleeplessness without anxiety, and you can't battle exhaustion and panic without writing, because it all has to come out somehow.  I'd love to tell you that inspiration has brought me back to writing, or healing, or excitement, or determination even.

The truth is, though, that I'm going through one of those spells I used to get when my brain refuses to cope (Refuses to cope with what? you ask, Life, I mutter blankly), and everything spirals downward, fast.  What used to help back then was writing, and even without contemplating whether or not writing would be beneficial this time around, here I am. Writing it down. Because I don't have to wonder, or question, or contemplate. The reality is that writing helps. Period.

Writing and prayer and prescription drugs and clean sheets and stress-relieving lotion and real sleep and peace from the Holy Spirit that you request daily.

So here I am, lovers- back again.

Cursor blinking repeatedly, awaiting each next move.

Feels just like coming home, doesn't it?

. 

How this Self-Proclaimed Conservationist Feels About Earth Day

Earth day is a tricky one for me. 

Personally, I do believe in science. After all, my plan is to become a biologist, which is the scientific study of living things. The earth is alive, and science would have us believe that it is suffering beyond repair. I understand that. In some points, I agree with that. Particularly regarding the current sad state of our world oceans. Humans are apt at destroying living things.

Which brings me to my next point: I also believe in a creator who is more powerful than science. He created science. He created everything. God is a god of atoms and molecules and numbers and everything on earth is made up of either atoms or molecules or numbers. Which us science-brained folk really love, because patterns are freaking awesome. I digress.

In the beginning, God charged man with stewarding over the earth. And we were careful at first. We've gotten a little sloppy since then and some species and whole people groups have suffered and some natural resources have been drained. Misguided, yes. Wrong, I tend to think so. Unforgivable damage? Unknown. The fact is that God is still in control here, and he has never once given us direction to spread hysteria or panic about the state of the earth. Nor has he ever given us a command to worship the earth. He has charged us with taking care of it. Treating it with respect. I think we could all probably work on collectively respecting the planet a little more. But it's hard for me to sit down and share "Happy Earth Day!" Posts that are littered with guilt-tripping facts about the current amount of trees in the rainforest, or how rapidly the polar ice caps are melting. Because scare-tactics don't work. We can't bully the nations into conserving more water. We should respectfully, inwardly consider that excess usages of water is a gift to us considering most other people in other countries have no water to waste, but am I going to yell condemnation on you for taking 2 showers a day? No. The only way to make a change is to commit to making one yourself, one day at a time, if you feel so inclined. 

Find something you feel strongly about and continue to feel strongly about it. Pray about it, research it, find support groups and scientific educational groups regarding it that aren't radical, that aren't based on misquoted, guilt-tripping facts. Donate money if you feel inclined, but don't feel like you have to. Money doesn't solve everything. For me, my little niche in this Christian-conservationist worldview, is shark conservation. That's what I feel strongly about in regards to helping preserve on this earth. For you it might be figuring out how to recycle rainwater in the Amazon so people can drink clean water, or to stop the mass slaughtering of dolphins in Asia every year, or using chemical-free products in your own home and biking to work. Whatever you feel strongly about and feel comfortable about in your walk with the Lord, that's what you should do. That's how we're really going to make a difference. 

So yes. Let's celebrate earth. Let's celebrate the great and awesome and beautiful and mysterious planet God gave us to live on.

But let's not pretend for one minute that we're big enough or important enough to save this planet. We're here to steward it. God's the only one big enough to save it. And that decision is up to him.

Wild Hearted Woman

I didn't have a great relationship with my grandmother, even though she was the only remaining grandparent I had left. We were never very close.

I'd built up so many bitter memories of missed birthday parties, piano recitals, gigs and school plays that my heart had no room to receive anything else from her.

She had grown cantankerous, temperamental in her old age.  I remember one afternoon I drove out to see her after she had cataract surgery, I took her out to lunch and spent the entire meal listening to her complain about her children, her sister, her grandchildren.  What a disappointment we all were to her. What a waste, her family had been.

Needless to say, none of that was fun to listen to, but I dismissed it.  In one ear and out the other; I had learned long ago not to need anything from my grandmother.  Not validation, not praise, not support, not appreciation- I knew better than to expect anything more.

We finished our meal, settled the bill, and drove back to her house. Hugs, kisses, "Love you, grandma,"  "Love you too, sweetie."

And then I drove away.

She passed away a few months after that. She took a very bad fall, and was unable to reach a phone.  She laid on the floor for several days before my aunt discovered her, and she was rushed to the hospital, very weak, very sick.

A week later, she died.

Her body was under complete attack from lung cancer, 60 years of nonstop smoking, an enemy that cannot be defeated.

I watched her breath her very last, surrounded by all of her children, their children, her great-grandchildren. Both of my sisters held my hands tightly as we watched her small chest heave and rattle and tears ran down all of our faces. Death is final, no matter what your relationship. I wish I could say that her passing had caused me to feel differently about our relationship, and that the finality of her death caused me to miss her in some ways.

To be truthfully honest, not much changed after her death.  I still felt angry about how our time was spent together, or rather, how our time wasn't spent together. After her memorial, life went invariably on, and I haven't really looked back since.

Except for today.

Today I found myself driving around the town she had lived in for most of her adult life, the town my parents grew up and went to school in, found each other and fell in love and got married in; the town I spent so much of my early childhood in.

Our family dentist operates out of that town, and there I found myself after an early morning teeth cleaning, driving around just to stir up memories.

It's a sunny, early spring day. The temperature is surprisingly warm, and cherry blossoms are just starting to bloom.  It's a year ago this week that my grandmother passed away, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been thinking about her a lot the past few days.

It started out as a drive throughout the downtown city square, listening to an old Tony Bennett CD from the 70s that had actually belonged to my grandmother.  I nicked it from a stack of CDs that my dad brought back from her house in the weeks after she died, when her kids tried to sort and sift through piles of her belongings and divvied up who would take what of the smaller, less valuable items.

Just something to remember her by, I had thought to myself as I tucked it away, under my arm.  I do actually remember running through the halls of her house as a child, the voice of Tony Bennett drifting throughout the rooms, warming the house from the inside out.

I kept the CD in my car, and today was only the second time I've listened to it since her passing.

Pretty soon, I found myself driving past the house she lived in most recently, and the house my grandparents shared when grandpa was still alive.  The house with the in-ground pool and a full-size entertainment bar in the back room.

Memories flashed back from driving up her driveway the night of her memorial, and of the slideshow my cousin's daughter had put together in her memory.  The albums and photographs we had all compiled and arranged into a sort of shrine to her life, the hugs and the strange feeling of gathering the entire family into her house without her presence in our midst.

I remembered summers spent in the pool out back, where I learned how to dive off a diving board, and where I graduated from water wings to diving goggles.

I remembered wind chimes.  I remembered her letting me help plant flowers in her garden.

When I got a little older, she let me put makeup all over her face and do her hair.

I remembered how the kitchen counters were always messy and how the dishes were never done.

I remembered the two separate bedrooms, one for my grandpa, and one for my grandma, and I remembered never understanding why they were never in the same room at the same time.

As I passed both of the houses, and continued on my way homewards, I could feel the sensation of emotions starting to well up, but no tears came.  I felt a little sad, a little nostalgic, a little sense of wonder, a little remorse for the fact that the past cannot be changed or altered.

My CD had run its' course, and I was hurriedly leaving that town far in my rear-view, so I decided to leave that moment in the past and switched out Tony Bennett for a little Taylor Swift and broke out my sunglasses.

As I drove, I couldn't shake the memories of my grandmother, though. I thought about her life, where she came from, what had happened to her, whom she had loved, how that had destroyed her, the children she raised, the children she hurt, the ones, in turn, who hurt her.

I realized today that my grandmother was a wild-hearted woman.

Circumstance and tradition and the century she was born into held her locked into one place, one lifestyle, one marriage, but what I remember of my grandmother the most was the look on her face when the sky shone down on her skin and the wind whipped against her frame, and everything about her was wild.

Her heart would sing in those moments. She longed to run wild with the wind.  She longed to pick up and go and never look back. I didn't see it then, but I saw it today in every memory of her face that I have gathered over the past 21 years.

When I would catch her staring out her kitchen window, lost in a world of thought millions of miles away, I saw it.

When her tone of voice would soften as she recounted the travels that accompanied her youth, always the stories were of her and my grandpa travelling together, but I saw how she wished she had adventured more, on her own.

When she would vigorously warn against falling in love, because men will break your heart ten ways to Sunday, and how she applauded women near and far for being their own captains.

 Her favorite people were the wild ones, the looser ones, the unpredictable ones, the loud ones.  She just wanted to run wild with them.

I believe that my grandmother loved her life, and her children, even though she was often poor at showing it.  I do.

But I also don't really believe that my grandmother ever wanted to be a wife, or a mother, or a grandmother.  I don't think she ever found a way to express that. I believe a lot of hurt was left in the wake of that failure of expression. 

Oddly enough, as I sped through old country roads, windows down and music blaring, I felt it was the best way to honor her memory. I felt as though if she were in the car with me, she would throw her head back and laugh, and stick her small arm through the passenger's window, to feel the breeze, too.  She'd say something unexpected about how much she liked that Taylor Swift woman, and she'd probably close her eyes and whisper, "Oh, let's just drive to the ocean."

I realized today that I'm a lot more like her than I ever realized, and as that realization came over me, so did a wave of tears that led to heavy sobs.

Today, a year to the week after her passing, I finally began to grieve for my grandmother, and for her wild heart.

"You can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that

And if he wants to leave
Then let him leave
You are terrifying
And strange and beautiful
Something not everyone knows how to love."

-Warsan Shire, For Women Who Are Difficult to Love.

Flight 383 With Service to San Jose from Portland.

My Pacific Ocean. Golden from this height, reflecting the light of the warm, magnificent sun. 

I reflect, as I sit, on the times I've spent driving the coastline it borders. Up and down, up and down. Caressed by it's cool breezes, transfixed by the voracious kelp forests that seem to spring out of nowhere, and yet go on for miles and miles; awestruck by the unique monoliths that have been carved by force throughout years of constant motion.

I thank God for the Pacific Ocean. It has cradled me from the time I was an infant, and it has carried me continually forward.

I have loved it deeply for as long as I can remember, and the call I feel I must answer to originates from far below its surface.

People look at me kind of funny when I tell them I want to be a shark biologist. "What do you do with a career like that?" 

Yes, I want to work with sharks. I want to study them, observe them, swim with them in open water, having learned how to control, not banish, fear as Jacques Cousteau would say. I want to conserve them and educate people about their importance and protect them and help others to practice respect for them.

But it's not all about sharks, not 100% of the time.

Mostly, I've come to realize that I'm here to help protect this ocean, and all the oceans around the world.

I want to cradle it as it has cradled me and I want to protect it from harm.  

Sharks, like all ocean inhabitants, must have a home, and I want their home to be healthy and safe. Strong, far from threat of depletion, stagnation, destruction, pollution.

Of course, the point must be made that nothing is new under the sun, to everything there is a season, God holds the entire world in the palm of His mighty hands. Amen and amen. Who am I to trouble myself over worries that the Creator is well aware of? God's got this under control, I realize.

But God also teaches us that He himself walks on the ocean floor, and He has instructed us to protect it, to safeguard it, to support the life that it sustains. 

Surely the Almighty doesn't need my help in keeping our oceans clean. Was I there from the beginning? No. 

 Did I witness Him stopping up the rushing waters to keep from flooding the earth? No. 

Do I know the names of every creature in every coral nook, in every deep trench, in every fizzling fissure at the bottom of every fault? No.

Will I ever walk on the ocean floor without protection? No.

But the Almighty does His work through humanity, doesn't he? Yes. 

I am to believe according to His word that I have a call on my life which He has foreordained that I must answer to, aren't I? Yes.

Surely He would not have placed this much of a stirring in my heart if it were not meant for His purpose? Yes.

Be good stewards of this earth, His command for all of us. For He has created all things, and He keeps them all in His hands, even numbering the hairs on our heads. He loves His creation. Every bird of the air, every beast of the field, every crawling thing, every living thing that swims.

I, too, love this creation, for it sings every day of the glory and love of God. I love this planet. I love this ocean.

How blessed are we to witness the physical outpouring of His creativity? How are we to honestly stand before His creation and not be brought to our knees by its beauty and the way every atom screams of His love, and His majesty?

All of us love in different ways, with different paths of communication and acts of service and declarations of respect. All of us are called to love this world in different ways. Some are called to protect human life, some are called to protect economies, religion, education, freedom. All of us are called to love one another and to be good stewards of the world we live in. 

As for me, I'll always be here, for the rest of my life, to help love this ocean, to help protect it. This is my home.

There's nothing so beautiful as the sun shining on the western coastline of the Pacific Ocean. 

Thank you Heavenly Father for this creation. For this ocean. 

You bless me by it every day.