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. 

This Might Be a New Year's Post

Here's the truth:

When I try to put 2014 into words, I stumble.

when I think back on 2014, no words come to mind.  Just pictures.

Just memories.

It was one hell of a year, though- if I'm honest.

In late 2013, as I normally do, I predicted that the theme for 2014 would be summed up by one word: unity.

I can't begin to tell you how deeply that word has invaded my life over the past year.

Unity.
To live and breathe in unison, understanding and supporting and praying for each other.  This is something that my family has had experience re-learning over the past 12 months, starting in February when my sister and niece moved in with us, because her husband suddenly decided he didn't want to be a husband anymore.  Or a father.

One day, she came over to visit for the afternoon- and she never went home to her old life.

God has been merciful this year, and full of grace, as always, but there has been a heartache cast over 2014 that none of us predicted, expected, or asked for.

My family's hurts are just some of many that all humanity has experienced over the past 12 months.  I know individuals who have struggled far more than I have, and who have carried a far deeper hurt than I ever could.  Again, God has been merciful this year.

He has brought us back together under one roof, and as I reflect over the past year and all of the jagged ups and the rollicking downs it carried with it, I feel moved to tears by something that runs very deep within my heart.  When I think of the faces belonging to my father, mother, sister, niece, unity pierces my very being.  We are one.  We have sheltered storms.  We have broken barriers.  We have fought the enemy in many ways.  We are still fighting.  God has made us warriors, with the hearts of warriors, and we are united.

I love them more now than I have ever loved them before in my entire life.

2014 was not all struggle, though.

There's a good bit to be said for a lot of happy memories that I made in 2014 as well.

I belly-laughed more times than I can count, and I died my hair bright orange.

I  fell in love with this quote, " Wilderness is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread." -Edward Abbey, and I fell in love with adventuring.

I watched my niece grow a little more every single day, and learn how to use her hands and mouth and to hear words come bubbling forth in tiny sentence spurts.  Now she sings at full volume "Let it go, let it go!" And she brings a smile to my face, daily. Her world is clouded, but she is a brazen beam of light.

I went to my first major league soccer game and I made new friends.

I met one of my biggest inspirations at a book signing of his in downtown Portland. His name is Chris Burkard, and he's the realest, most down-to-earth, insanely gifted nature and surf photographer/adventurer I've ever come across. A true pioneer. I got to tell him one of his trips inspired the Cali roadtrip Bek and I took 2 summers ago all the way down Highway 101 and Highway 1. He smiled like a little kid.

I ate a lot of really good food and took a lot of work trips to Bellevue/Seattle and got to spend a good portion of all those work trips playing with my friends.

I skated more this year than I have since I first learned how when I lived at the beach, and I taught myself how to disassemble and reassemble a skateboard.

I went to California a lot.

I saw a lot of amazing concerts, including my spirit animal Cher, and my not-so-secret crush, Justin Timberlake.

I felt the thrill of riding on the back of a friend's motorcycle for the very first time.

I watched my sister exercise the deepest amount of strength I have ever seen come forth from one person. She is a true warrior and I am humbled by her fortitude.  I am proud of her perseverance.

I spent my first ever cage dive surrounded by my three best friends and I stared my future directly in the face, and experienced that elusive moment of discovering exactly what it is you want to do with the rest of your life.

I climbed to the bottom of so many waterfalls, and stuck my feet in so many mountain streams.

I canoed.  I ran. I renewed my passport. I ignored all the signs that read "stay on the path."

I beached. I worked my ass off.  I painted so many walls. I celebrated a lot of weddings.

I took a lot of road trips with really fantastic people.

I flew to SoCal on a whim and saw One Direction live at one of the world's biggest stadiums with 90,000 screaming teenage girls, and I survived.

I watched Christian Hosoi's small son touch the sky at the Vans Skate Park in Orange.

I climbed 1,000 very old steps to watch a Hawaiian sunset from the top of a mountain.

I cage-dove with sharks, twice. Twice!

I drank a lot of smoothies.

I cliff-jumped off the side of a waterfall.

I bought a ukulele, and learned how to play it.

I crashed an ATV into a tree on a ranch in Hawaii.  I got back on. I raced around hairpin turns and figure 8s and I was good at it.

I met and hugged the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, New Found Glory, outside a tiny venue in downtown Seattle.

I rediscovered my long-lost love for the Ninja Turtles.

I spent my 21st birthday being rolled around in a wheelchair at Disney World by my crazy family.

I healed from a heartbreak that cast a dark shadow over most of 2013.

I fell in love with music again.

I rebuilt bridges that I had long since burned.

I learned how to feel comfortable in my own skin, again.

I rang in the New Year with new friends and also friends older than the flood- there was singing, dancing, glass-raising, hugging, and a love running very deep that can only be found in a group of people who have known each other for the longest time.

I spent the first day of 2015 back beside my favorite ocean, on my favorite stretch of northern Oregon coastline, with my closest friend and my sweet pup. The sun shone warm all day long, and the tunes were only the best of the best.

Unity happens in a lot of different ways. As I look back over 2014, I'm proud of the things we've all accomplished, and I'm excited for whatever journey 2015 brings to me. I'll gladly step out the door and get carried away on an adventure any day, and I hope that's exactly what 2015 will bring, a year full of adventures.

"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice."
-T.S. Elliot.

Riverside Sitting.

Sometimes I wish I could float down a river, the way a fallen leaf glides through the ripples and follows the current down.

Effortless.

Bobbling.

No movement, no drowning, no struggle.

I think I would just lay flat on the surface.  Straight as a board, eyes turned up towards the heaven, watching clouds and branches and stars and birds pass in a continual motion; a never-ending forward movement.

I heard a question the other day:

"Would you rather loose all your old memories and only make new ones, or loose the ability to make new memories and live the rest of your life only with the old memories you've made so far?"

Right now, in this moment, I would like to make new memories and forget all the old ones.

I would like to just move forward.

I think we constantly underestimate the beauty of what it means to be a blank slate.

This life is sad, and I don't write anymore because I'm tired of regurgitating the feelings I've already felt.  Why make yourself relive the pain if the first time you felt it was bad enough?

Sure, there's flaws with this theory.  You could talk about catharsis, healing, training your mind to constantly be searching for inspiration which is a natural combatant for depression.  All of that is true.

For the past two years, I've felt like stopping my creativity has been a way to protect myself from a million and one tiny little hurts that have happened.  I don't regret that.  I laughed more, because I could put things behind me and leave them there.  I stressed less because I wasn't trying to turn my anxiety into art.  I focused on becoming logical and business-like and that grew me up in ways I can't begin to describe.

Today I come back to the written word with a heavy heart, which is ironic because I've been running away from writing every time I've had a heavy heart for the past two years.

But today, as I sit here, in my car by the river, 10 AM blaring from my dashboard clock, I come back to the written word.

There are lives caught in the balance today all over the world, the outcomes of which nobody knows for certain, but the resounding knowledge is that there isn't much time left. For cancer-wracked bodies, lives plagued by old age and terrible hunger. For you, for me.

When I watch the leaves float down the river, I am jealous because those leaves have all the time in the world.

For them, there is no cancer, there is no death.  There is no repression, there's no stopper in the flow of creative thought.  There's only the long outstretch of constant forward motion.

I know in the deepest center of my soul that God has designed everything for a reason, and I have had enough experience with the flat-out unknown and inexplicable in my life that I know full well trusting in Him is the only way to navigate through it all. "If you don't swim, you'll drown."

We're still intellectual beings, though.  He created us that way. And sometimes, even though in the deepest center of your soul you are trusting in Him, you find yourself sitting by the river watching Autumn unfold, repeatedly asking the question "why?"

Leaves never have to ask why.

Maybe that's the real reason I wish I could be one of them right now.

I can't promise that this is a return to writing for me, because I don't know that returning to writing will improve my life.

What I do know is that today I was moved to pick up my pen, and that movement was sparked by a very profound sorrow which has forecasted the remainder of today.

In which, instead of focusing on a million and one tiny little hurts, I will focus on sending up a million and one tiny little prayers for peace upon hurting people.

That is something only humans and angels can do, and that alone is reason enough to keep moving forward.

Crying to Ben Folds

Thursday morning. 8:49 am.  Stop and go traffic.

A song starts playing on your iPod, the intro unfamiliar, yet the voice so clearly penetrates layer after layer of your subconscious and strikes the center of your heart. Kill shot. You know exactly what this is.

This is a Ben Folds ballad. Doesn't matter which one, they're all good.

Briefly, your mind darts back to that one conversation around the dinner table you had with two of your closest friends when Ben Folds happened to come up in conversation.  "I'm not going to lie," you remember starting, "The man makes me bawl like a baby sometimes."

"Oh... I know," Your friend nods her head in agreement, then looks up sheepishly, "Sometimes, I just lie awake at night with my headphones.  And I don't even know why, I just start crying. I have nothing to cry about, but it always happens when I'm listening to Ben Folds."

Words cannot even describe the warmth that spread all over when you realized you were not the only one who experienced emotional trauma at the hands of a Ben Folds ballad.

As your mind turns over that memory, you find yourself thinking, "Don't start crying."

But it is too late.

Suddenly the words come crashing over you.

"I love you more than any man has loved before.
I love you more than all the stars up in the sky.
I think that we should settle down and live happily forever after
What do you think of that?" (One Down, Ben Folds.)

Boom. Water works.

Why?

Isolated, the lyrics aren't even that great.  Just reading them off the screen sounds a little lame, but gosh.  It's all in the set-up folks.  Preceding and following these lines is a song purely about meeting a lyric deadline, and complaining about whiny musicians in today's music industry.  Suddenly these lines hit you like a brick wall out of nowhere and it knocks you so far over that you have no choice but to burst into tears.

Or that's all that I was left with, anyway.

Needless to say, any morning started by a case of the cries while moments away from arriving at work is never really a good morning.  To top it off, a migraine has been a-brewin' all day long in this silly head of mine, so most of my workday was spent cradling my forehead in my left hand, feeling my temple throb in the most unholy of manners, while turning off all the lights in the office with my right hand because they are too damn bright and that is most annoying.

Brighter than the office track lighting, however, is the inevitable change that is coagulating on the horizon. Yes. Coagulating.

Suddenly, I'm being forced to actually plan my life farther than 6 months down the road and I'm learning some things about my decisions that have surprised me.  I don't want to give a lot away, right now, so forgive my vagueness- just know that it's a good sort of surprise.  It's kind of like finding something you didn't know you'd lost, but now that you've found it, you realized you've been missing it terribly all along, "Oh, there you are."

Still, the winds of change are starting to twist and turn and there's always that feeling of loosing your footing. I think, in a way, I'm looking forward to loosing my footing for a little while.

I can feel my identity starting to move forward into a new phase of life, and I'm running, breathless, to keep up with it.

There are still a few constants, however.  People that will always stand beside you, during every horizon of coagulation. I've been reflecting a lot over the past week about these people in my life and I can say right now that it's hard to find the words to express my gratitude for having them by my side.

They're the kind of people who know you better than you know yourself.  When you're tapping your foot idly, they know that you're frustrated about something because it's impossible for you to sit still when you're frustrated.  Then they confront you about it, and you vehemently deny it, and stop moving your foot- all the while not realizing your fingers have started tapping involuntarily in place of your foot.  With a gentle smile, they motion to your hands. Oof.  Point proven.

They're the kind of people who grab your hands on days when you are at your lowest level of self worth, and they force you to look into their eyes, while they proceed to tell you exactly why it is that you are special, and why you should love yourself better, the way they love you.

They're the kind of people who no matter how far away they are, you can feel immediately close to them by just spending an afternoon on the phone with them while researching international volunteer programs.  You don't even have to talk to each other. They're just there, at the other end of the phone, and you draw comfort from that.

They're the kind of people who love you enough to tell you the hard things, the gritty things, the things you don't want to hear, but you need to hear.  They're not afraid to kick your ass when it needs to be kicked.  Those are the people you need in your life.  Of course, if you're as lucky as I am, they'll kick your ass and offer you homemade cookies or lemon cake at the same time, because they love you and they don't want to see you hurting.

I've been blessed with a happy few individuals who have been there for me in immeasurable ways for the past four or five years. They have stood with me through the silt and the sludge of turbulent teenage years, and they have allowed me to walk beside them during their toughest moments, as well.

History is not something to be taken lightly, you know?  When you have years and years of memories compiled with people that you love, treasure that.  Take care of it.  Be good to it, because there's nothing worse than having to start over.  There's nothing worse than loosing those people because you've taken them for granted, or you've assumed that everything in your relationship is hunky-dory when it's really not, because they could be falling apart.  You could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and their world could be moving on without you.

They're the kind of people you love so much, that a silly song on the radio or a commercial on TV can catapult you into an emotional roller coaster of soaring joy and overwhelming love-that-is-so-deep-it-hurts because it reminded you of them, and their impact and their presence in your life.  Hold onto those people.

I plan on holding on so tight to mine.

My kind of people who will listen to Ben Folds with me on repeat and not only forgive, but accept my silent waves of tears caused by a silly adoration of a Southern pianist with a gift for sass and poetry.

Which, to bring this completely full circle, I just have to add that on my way home from work tonight I found myself crying, again, to Ben Folds, but to a different song this time.  Thus, for the second time today, I found myself crying to Ben Folds, and that, honestly, has to be a new record.

For those of you who have been there for me, rock-bottom and sky-high, thank you.  I love you.

Always.

June Gloom.

Hurts come in little waves.

Saturday mornings dawn earlier than desired, you're suddenly awake by 7:45am and you have a dauntingly wide open day ahead of you.

You've become so enveloped in work that you don't know how to weekend anymore.

People slip in and out of your life, like little clouds. They appear suddenly on the horizon, and then they lazily drift away once enough time has been invested into your relationship. You don't keep in touch with them anymore.  You don't let them know when you're sitting at the coffee shop minutes away from their house.  You don't text a "How have you been?" even though they're constantly on your mind.

You just stop trying, sometimes.

After two episodes of Freaks and Geeks re-runs and half a container of last night's Chinese food for breakfast, it's only 10am and you're already tired of today.  The weekend you were so looking forward to has become obsolete; now you're counting the hours until it's over and you can go back to work.

There's probably 300 books on your bookshelf, more than half of which are still unread, but you can't commit to any of them.  So you just keep buying new ones.

Kurt Vonnegut says "So it goes," and Salinger quips, "Very big deal."

There's a floor to mop and laundry to rotate, guitar strings to buy, and cash to withdraw from the ATM.

But what happens after you finish those errands?

Where do you go?

I miss the ocean today.

I wish I could see the swell.

I wish I could hear the thunder of surf instead of voices.

"You can't go to the ocean today," A voice whispers from the back of my mind, the same voice that whispered the same lie to me last weekend.  It's a voice that stems from fear.  Fear of being alone when I get there. "Your guitar needs new strings.  That card you've been meaning to send won't send itself."

In weakness, I surrender to this voice.

Maybe I'll get there next weekend.

My Yoga Mat

The smell my yoga mat carries is one of my favorite smells.

Though it spends most of its life rolled up and tucked away in the corner of my bedroom, next to my dresser, it carries with it a special thing called love.

I fling it out before me and it settles, unrolled, onto my carpet.

It is aqua blue with navy lotus flowers painted all over, and it sparkles with flecks of sand, still, even though the last time I did yoga on the beach was over two years ago.

During mat sequences, particularly during child's pose, I rest my forehead against the soft blue and breathe deeply in. Eyes closed, I distinctly smell every place my yoga mat has ever traveled to.  I smell the shampoo from the downstairs carpet in our living room, I smell a lingering, but faint, pine tree smell mixed with cigar smoke from when I used to visit Becca at her house in Washington.  I smell the clear, strong smell of sand, and I feel the granules stick to my arms. Easily, I smell the musty old house I lived in during the Summer of 2012.  I smell a tiny hint of pine-sol from the bedroom floor in the rental condo we stayed in when my family went to Disneyworld several years ago. I can smell various lotions and perfumes which have loosed themselves from my body and mixed with the fibers of the mat. Distinctly, my nose can pick out the slight burnt scent of sun damage from countless afternoons spent sunbathing in the backyard, using my mat as a cushion to soften the cement patio.

Bad things don't happen on yoga mats.  Did you know that?  I'm fairly certain it's science and can be proven indisputably.

Here's what does happen on yoga mats:

• Relaxation
• Strengthening
• Surrender
• Laughter
• Happy fingers and toes
• Sun Salutations
• Acceptance
• Renewal
• Yoga
• Stretching
• Learning to love yourself
• Becoming a Warrior
• Breathing
• Stress-Relief
• Steadfastness
• Prayer

Also, memories.  Memories are made on yoga mats, and they're the best sort of memories, because they're tied to nothing but good feelings which cannot be altered.

Tonight, I'm thanking God for my steadfast friend which has seen me through many phases of my life.  Still, after seeing me at my worst and best, it lies outstretched, always ready to help me re-group. 

"Not my circus.  Not my monkeys."
-Polish Proverb

Zelda Fitzgerald Was A Flying Fish.

I will not begin this post with an apology for my absence.

If you humor me for a moment, allow me to promise you that there are currently several drafts in my post columns which I tried on numerous occasions to squeeze out.

Both written weeks apart, both with a few truly honest sentences.  Mostly they're overtaken by excess verbiage and unnecessary tone.  I squeezed and I squeezed and I tried so very hard to make the words come, but I just didn't have any. I wanted to come back to this space, I wanted to experience the vulnerability and the gentle acceptance. But I had nothing.

Months and months have passed in silence.

No posts, no prose, no journal entries, no half-conscious notes scribbled on scraps of paper.  Just white noise.  The sound of my computer keys clacking away at work, the labored snores from my short-snouted puppy, the crinkling sound of unwrapping dozens of icy hot patches.

I was tapped. Today, however, I seem to have been given another chance.

A few days ago, I watched a deliciously vibrant episode of BBC's Blue Planet in which David Attenborough was movingly narrating the lifespan of flying fish.

This very unique specimen of the ocean is considered important, and rare, because it is constantly hunted by almost all of the ocean's greatest predators.  Marlins, sailfish, larger species of tuna, varieties of whales, most medium-sized sharks, all of them chase, track, prey upon these beautiful little creatures, who spend their entire life cycle fleeing from the murky threats behind them. Their constant vigilance, if you will, (forgive me) allows them the unique opportunity, however, to experience periodic moments of glorious rest in which they burst forth from the watery depths and soar over the surface of the sea. For those few seconds, they are able to forget their predatory followers which haunt every stroke of fin.

All of creation chases after those who are born with the ability to fly.

I am reminded by this of a book I am currently reading, which, in total transparency, I just bought today (but am already almost 100 pages into) which is a biographical study on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald.

A name which, I'm sure, is unknown and unrecognized by many- upon which I cannot pass any judgement or opinion.  I never paid her much mind in the past, either.

Zelda Fitzgerald was married for many years to a luminescent, naturally-gifted author prevalent in the 1920s:  Mr.  F.  Scott himself.

For the past four or five years of my life, I have had the deepest of emotional affairs in my mind with F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man who regrettably died almost 70 years ago.

I am of the opinion that F.S.F is one of the greatest literary voices of the 20th century.  Topped only by Ernest Hemingway, by most literary standards, but I prefer Fitz's writing miles above Hemingway's.  This can possibly be attributed solely to his expansive use of the word 'nebulous' in all his writings. I digress.

I first took attention to Zelda Fitzgerald after watching Midnight in Paris a few nights ago. It felt sort of immediate, suddenly I was extremely distracted from the rest of the movie because I realized I knew so much about the writing of Fitzgerald, but I have never once paid any second thoughts to his life story, or the woman he spent 20 tumultuous years married to. Forget Owen Wilson and his terrible acting, who on earth was the real Zelda Fitzgerald?

Instinctively, I knew she must be some heroine in order to capture the calculating psyche and the roving heart of this particular writer.  I had to know more.

From what I've read and researched over the past 48 hours, it seems to me that Zelda was a very similar creature to one of those incandescent, flying osteichthyes. She was free. A wanderer of dimensions and realms and outside social norms and class structures. Constantly sought after by predators.  Quite possibly ruined by the most extravagant predator of all, after spending twenty years of her tragically short life by his side.  (She died in an sanitarium fire, locked inside one of the rooms.)

Judging by the sound of it, they were terrible for each other.  They destroyed one another, from the ground up.  Yet the love they had for each other is described in the most incomparable manner as being so crazily passionate, utterly obsessive, and enigmatically competitive to the greatest fault. It completely swallowed them whole.

I realize now that all of the words used in all of his books to describe these powerhouse female characters of unrivaled beauty, charm, otherworldly graces and tragic idiosyncrasies were born from the very heart and soul of his own wife whom he hated and adored all at once. He is renowned for writing his conversations with Zelda down word-for-word and recycling her verbatim phrases into his stories.

Then again, perhaps she wasn't so free after all.

I continued to ponder this woman's life as I ran an errand to Fred Meyers tonight to pick up gold fish crackers and lactose free milk.  (Such is the life of the unmarried, college-student aunt.)

The sun had just set and the world was awash between lingering daylight and forthcoming night.  It's supposed to be hot here tomorrow, upwards of 70 degrees, and you could smell the not-too-distant forecasted sunshine all over the fields, trees and neighborhoods of suburbia.

The opening notes of Hey Jude began to play from my car stereo; around and around the thoughts whizzed through my brain.  Flying fish, Zelda Fitzgerald, deep sea exploration, an often-imagined precious little boy named Jude, twilight in Spring and Summer, bioluminescence, new books, na na na na-na-na-na, travels to South Africa, feelings of writing, and memories of childhood all rotating together on a lazily circling carousel inside my mind.

"Let it out and let it in..."

These words washed over me and I sort of just smiled to myself.

I'm happy that I'm not the same type of woman that Zelda Fitzgerald was, even though sometimes I try to convince myself that navigating a man like F. Scott would be a fine accomplishment to have under my belt.

I'm happy that I am not one of those flying-fish-women, caught between two separate realities, morphed into one giant juxtaposition of constantly fleeing a looming something in the background.

I'm simply me, and I'm simply here, and there is a surplus of time ahead to accomplish all of my dreams.

I don't have anything to run away from.  I can simply let it out and let it in, continue to let it be, and walk confidently forward into whatever lies ahead in the nebulous expanse of blue and green and glittering creation.

And that is exactly what I plan to do.

Goodnight, lovers.

The Jason Mraz Manifesto

If you're friends with me, be it in person or on Facebook, you know something about me.

If you work with me, you also know this fact about me, because you hear it what must seem like daily on my office Pandora station.

I love the music of Jason Mraz.  I love it with my whole heart.

I can't pinpoint the exact reason for why his music speaks to me on such a mind blowing scale, it just does. His music has a spirit of joy, adventure, contentment and, well, sunshine that is absolutely contagious to me.  I think if I could live in the songwriting style of any performing artist, I would live in the crux of Jason Mraz's inspiration. There's laughter, wordplay, sarcasm, wisdom, God, stars, rainstorms, sweet lovin's, beautiful ocean waves, a lack of hesitation, an abundance of happiness, co-dependence on real people, and a thirst for living in the moment.

I want all of these things in the everyday routine of my life. 

I want to live my life like it's a Jason Mraz melody.  What does that look like?

How do I make that happen? Where do I start?

Well lovers, allow me to expand.

It looks like a manifesto;  a manifesto that I started working on tonight, amidst piles of forgotten memories and favorite books as I took a little trip down memory lane, through my library, and compiled a list of near-and-dears to my heart; a collection of contented sighs and quiet wishes that I can actively participate in every single day. 

Yes, for the past two hours, I've been sitting on my bed, after a thorough gutting of my most hallowed literary library.  I pulled out every book that has monumentally altered my personhood, and threw them all over my bed, pages falling open and underlinings popcorning out at me from between chapters.  I picked each one up, felt it in my hands, opened up to a random page and let time take its natural course through a reliving of the relationship I once had with the exact book between my fingers. 

All the while, I listened to "Love Is A Four Letter Word" and realized the album in question seems to have been written precisely for this exact role, to become my bold, red-letter undertaking.

Particularly, this song.

In fact, "Living in the Moment" has become the title track to this little project, nestled lovingly in my black moleskine notebook.  I even took the liberty of putting into practice one of life's newest old lessons that I'm learning this year:  I wrote the entire thing in pencil, in place of ink.

So below, my dears, I'm going to share with you my goals for the upcoming future. 

Keep in mind that there are many things I want out of life which I have chosen to exclude from this list, because this little beauty is not all-inclusive.  It's rather exclusive, actually.  Mostly because it's themed to a particular man's particular style of musical creativity. 

Themes are good, though, every now and then- particularly when they're strong enough to stand alone.

So here you go:  The Jason Mraz Manifesto, inspired by the album: Love Is A Four Letter Word.

• Before reading further, I must place the direct lyrics which started this project here.  Taken from the song, "Living in the Moment." 
  
  And if I fall asleep, I know you'll be the one
  Who'll always remind me to live in the moment.
  To live my life easy and breezy with peace in my mind
  Peace in my heart, peace in my soul
  Wherever I'm going, I'm already home. 

• I will eat more lettuces, french beans, and radishes, but I will not steal them as little Peter Rabbit did, stealing his vegetables from the fearsome Mr. McGregor's garden.
  
•  I will remember the lesson Dr. Seuss taught me when I was very young: every day is a great day for Up.
  
• I will spend more time admiring the stars and learning the names of the constellations, like I did as a little girl.
  
• Peter Pan's last words to Wendy were, "Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing."  -  I will practice Wendy's patience, and I will always be waiting to hear the sound of your rooster crow one last time.
  
• "Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways who was driven
  far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
  Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
  Many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea." - Opening of Homer's Odyssey.  I will strive to remember these words as often as I can, so that I, too, may be a person of "many ways."
  
• I will try to help people often. And in these acts of service to other human beings, I will remember Annie Dillard's words as a beacon to always practice kindness and gentleness, "Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain." (from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.)
  
• I will find my Walden.  I will live deliberately.  (I must take this moment to bless Henry David Thoreau for writing one of the most important books I have ever read.)
  
• I will continue my love affair with Holden Caulfield.
  
• I will capture my own castle. ( I will also share this Dodie Smith masterpiece with another living soul, so they, too, can capture their own castle.)
  
• I'll work really friggin' hard for a shot at a Silver Lining. (Excelsior!)
  
• To rekindle in my heart the aggressive, compassionate drive that Annie Sullivan possessed, to channel the deep love that she felt for Helen Keller, "To know with one word, and I can put the world in your hand!" - This will be my future, to work a miracle in someone else's life.
  
• To pray every single night that I will grow a heart as big as Mamma T's.
  "God has created us so we do small things with great love.  I believe in that great love, that comes, or should come, from our heart, should start at home with my family, my neighbors across the street, these right next door.  And this love should then reach everyone." -Mother Theresa.
  
• I will continually re-read my battleworn copy of Passion and Purity, and take sweet Elisabeth Elliott's word to heart about falling in love with a man who's future belongs solely to the work of God.  "The things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God."
  
• I'll actually read that cheesy marriage book I got at a white elephant Christmas party two years ago, instead of gripe about its very existence.  (Funny memory, at that same white elephant party, I also won a kneeboard.)
  
• Every damn day: "Smile, Liz, from your liver" will be my mantra.  Thanks, Ketut.  (From Eat, Pray, Love.)
  
• "As I once became part of them, all these creatures of the sea are now a part of me, in my mind, in my soul, in my dreams." -Chris Newbert. I feel this speaks for itself.
  
• Researching ancient shark folklore will be a "happy soul" past-time.
  
• I'm going to spend some of my tax return on supporting my favorite photographer, because his work captures all of the joy in my heart. (Shout out to Chris Burkard and his California Surf Project, which has been lovingly tucked under my arm and close to my heart for almost three years now. Below is just a fleeting example of his soul-wrenching gift.)

• I will study long and hard how to attain a spirit as elegant as the spirit which belongs to the lovely Audrey Hepburn.
  
• I will love my puppy.
  
• I will pray for the soul of the little boy my family is now sponsoring in Ethiopia, and I will write him letters and send him cards with candy inside of them.
  
• "One day you'll find that I have gone, for tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun", will be the new song of my heart.  Thanks, John, Paul, George and Ringo.
  
• I will follow more writing prompts.  (Now accepting applications!)
  
• In closing, I'll try to remember daily a few of Albus Dumbledore's precious words on love: 
  "To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.  It is in your very skin."  I will remember this on days when I need to recall that Christ's self-sacrificial heart, and the beloved books of my youth, are all of the same genre.  For which, I am eternally thankful.

So there you have it, friends, lovers, dears.  This is my Jason Mraz Manifesto. 

Cheers to pursuing peace, and finding it in the most beloved corners of your daily life.

May the absolute sweetest dreams find their way to you, tonight!

All my love,

Hannah

This Is Not A New Year's Post

I've been struggling for the past 24 days with whether or not to write a New Year's post.

If anything, I've really decided against doing it.  The newness of this year is something I don't really feel like discussing.

If I'm going to be honest, the past 24 days of 2014 have really just firmed up the tidy little ending to a chaotic year, and the only thoughts the New Year has brought me are of its predecessor and all the many things that happened during 2013.

And so, in place of heralding in the current Ano Nuevo, I'd like to give a little salute'n'boot to 2013, and to tip my hat in honor of some things I learned along the way.

This isn't a re-cap, it's not a summation of events, it's not even going to be all that descriptive.  If you're looking to know exactly what's going on in my life, you're not going to find it here.  Nor are you going to discover what I've been up to since the last time I posted, which was the day before Thanksgiving.  If you want to know those things, call me.  It may be the age of technology and all, but hey, I'll tell you one thing: if you really want to make an impression on someone, call them.   Ask them how their life is going.  Be present.

(I digress.)

If, however, you enjoy my vaguely perilous dogmatic excerpts, and are no stranger to indistinct commentaries on the nuances of average, please, be my guest to continue reading.

THINGS I LEARNED IN 2013:

• I learned how to parallel park an all-wheel-drive wagon. (No small feat, I assure you.)
• I learned more about piano servicing than the average non-musical, non-technical person should ever know.
• I learned the difficult truth that when someone tells you they want to accompany you "always and forever" no matter where you go, the proper response is not to blurt out, "Well, that's just not realistic."
• I learned about the precious gift which is the type of smile you can hear in someone's voice. 
• I learned that the internet is capable of changing people in unexpected ways.
• I learned my identity in Christ.
• I learned that whenever a cute guy driving a huge RV towing a dune buggy and full to the brim of laughing twenty-somethings leans out of his window to yell, "Hiiii!  You're really pretty!!!!" In the middle of Sunday evening traffic in Santa Barbara, CA, you should accept the fact that you're beautiful, whether or not you agree. 
• I learned that some people have mermaid blood.
• I learned the difference between "I love you," and "I miss you."
• I learned that sharks have very similarly structured eyes to humans, and unlike most in the animal kingdom, they can see vividly in color.
• I learned that loneliness is not a curse, although it is a struggle to navigate.
• I learned that saying goodbye is the hardest possible thing to do.
• I learned that you are never too old to ride the teacups at Disneyland.
• I learned that I am surprisingly good at office administration.
• I learned that loved ones can hurt you.  Deeply.
• I learned that people cannot be navigated.
• I learned the fondness I have for the diversity of a certain four-lettered word.
• I learned that tragedy strikes in the most raw, intimate, and devastating manners possible.
• I learned the power of a good voicemail.
• I learned that sometimes, the only proper response is to scream out, "ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING!" at the top of your lungs.
• I learned how lost you feel when you compromise one of the most beautiful, priceless relationships in your life.
• I learned that Michigan is known as the "mitten state."
• I learned that it is one-hundred percent possible to miss someone you've only met once, and are likely to never meet again.
• I learned that God walks on the Ocean floor.
• Finally, I learned that no matter how old you keep getting, you never stop learning new things.

2013 was a riotous stampede of rust and wreckage.

Thanks for the memories.

XoXo,

Hannah

The Day Before Thanksgiving

T-minus one hour and 13 minutes until Thanksgiving 2013, lovers.

I've been busy today, as is the rest of America.

Unconventionally busy, though.  This year is decidedly different from years before.  My family, for instance, is spending the holiday at the beach, and going out to eat to a nice restaurant instead of doing the big schabang with all of our extended relatives.

To be honest, folks, my family tree has seen its fair share of storms over the last 5 or 6 years.

Holding absolutely zero feet to the fire, let me just quickly (and honestly) say time has increasingly dwindled our numbers, there are few left to gather together.

My parents are tired of 40 years of large scale Thanksgiving dinners.  I can't say that I blame them.  The four of us (Moseby has adjusted nicely and is now a fully indoctrinated addition to our family) are headed to the coast for the holiday weekend, and I couldn't be more excited.

There's been a lot to reflect over, the past few weeks.

Particularly in the past few days, I've been pondering the meaning of the word 'unity', and probably for a myriad of different reasons. The word strikes me as suddenly beautiful, as though I've never heard it before.  It rolls off my tongue as I sound it out phonetically on my way to work in the mornings.

The past year, as was the forecast, was indeed a year of solitude.  Conversely, I'm beginning to hope and pray that the theme for next year will instead be one of unity, as I feel for some strange reason that God is laying this word on my heart in a touching, impacting manner.

Perhaps that's why I'm so excited to celebrate Thanksgiving away from home this year.  There is a lonely sort of solitude in sharing someone's memories, but there is a deep unity that accompanies sharing new experiences, and that is what I'm looking forward to over the next few days.

New experiences.

Today I came home from work and I cleaned out my car, bathed the pup, watched Love Actually, packed the pup, packed myself, ironed some clothes, and ignored the paper I have due on Sunday that I haven't really started on yet. Papers are important, yes, but tonight was made for something different.  This is a special night, the night before Thanksgiving.  This is easily one of my favorite nights of the year, although emotional in many ways.

While I was increasingly busy tonight, and getting lots of intermittent lovins' from my pup, I couldn't help but think about the few things that are always on my mind on nights like this.  My grandmother, thoughts of her are always near during the holidays; I feel her moving through my family with warmth and love. I thought back to Thanksgivings past.

Last year, I spent it with a beautiful family of co-workers as we weathered the rush-time shift between the hours of 6pm Thanksgiving evening and 2pm Black Friday morning.  That was one hell of a night to be a barista at the top-grossing Starbucks in the entire state, but it is one of my most favorite holiday memories to date.

Also last year, I spent the Friday after Thanksgiving, celebrating the large meal with my family, circled around the dinner table, holding my 1-month old sleeping niece in my arms and daydreaming about the boy I loved at the time.  It's funny now, how much my niece has grown in one year, and how that love has disintegrated into nothing but happy, distant memories. It's funny how things change.

The year before that my parents and I went out to dinner and came home to decorate the house for Christmas, while watching a campy horror movie my funny, lovely aunt got my dad for his birthday.  I believe it was called "Motel Hell." I was emotional at the thought that in a few short weeks, just after New Year's, I would be starting a new adventure and moving to the beach to attend Ecola.  I had no idea what God had in store for me.

Two years before that, my entire family was together.  There were so many bodies, we needed three tables. I remember smiling until my mouth hurt. I remember hugs, and laughter, and such deep, everlasting warmth.  A sheltering, comforting unity.

A unity that has since been put aside.

A unity that only God in his miraculous grace can restore.

A unity which sometimes, in moments of nostalgic remembrance, I deeply ache for.

Sometimes things happen in life that are neither expected or well-received.  They are not desired, not intended, not understood, not accepted.

And the shame, the guilt, the anger, the frustration, the trenches of hurt and miles of regret are impossible to navigate.

But tonight, I am reminded that while the past breeds disunity, the future demands unity, a perfect unity comprised in the ultimate reign of our God and King.

The future demands unity.  Unity is what this world is predestined for.  As long as we have Christ, we are steeped in unity, and while the past may be painful or impossible to forget, we must remember that there is hope shining at the end of the tunnel, like a bright beacon, guiding us into that perfect unity with Christ. Let us look to the future, and live in the momentous blessing which is every minute of our lives.

These are the special times, lovers.  Right now.  Right in the midst of pain, entrenched in the heart of suffering, battered by the blows of age and regret, we are united in Christ.

These are the special times.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all.

Tell somebody that you love them, tomorrow.  Tell somebody that they are special to you.

I love you, and you, and you.

Goodnight.

Xx










 

Awake, O Sleeper

"Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." -Ephesians 5:14

Well, lovers- I'm no longer dead.

I've alluded to an emotionally turbulent past few months in my recent posts, and I reaffirm that allusion here today.

I confess to you, lovers, that I have not been a shining example of that glorious, elusive Proverbs 31 woman as of late.  I have not been clothed with "dignity, and righteousness,"  nor have I been "laughing without fear of my future."

I have lived the past few months trembling, in constant fear and distress, and wallowing in a sick ball of my own debilitating self-absorption. I have lost sleep and sanity over simple matters of the heart which I am not proud to say have unmasked the depth of my weaknesses. My heart found itself in a place it was not ready to be, and I have spent quite a few sleepless nights crying my hurt out to God. 

But you see, I thought throughout all of my distress, that I was doing the right thing by leaning so heavily in the comforting arms of my Savior.  I thought that constantly complaining to God during my morning and evening commutes, throughout lulls in my work day, and every night before bed was healthy.  I thought that masking my discontent through prayers meant I was trusting in God to deliver me from my heartache.

Lovers, I was wrong.

Please don't misunderstand me.  When we go through trials, and suffer losses or unexpected hurts, we are to lean solely on Jesus Christ as our one, everlasting comforter.  This is an absolute truth.  I cannot, and will not deny this.

However, there's a fine line between grieving and wallowing.  My vulnerability in the eyes of my Lord gave way to crumbling selfishness and self-obsession, and I completely lost sight of my life, my purpose.

I forgot to focus on what brings joy in life.  I forgot to focus on the care of and attention to others.  I forgot to busy my mind with other things, good things- I forgot to strive to be a blessing to others and to be thankful for my current heart condition.

I forgot how to laugh.  I forgot to "count it all joy."

The worst part of this, is the fact that I only just realized my predicament last night.

It might seem stupid to say, but I realized it while I was sitting in my local theater by myself, watching an early evening showing of Thor 2: The Dark World.

A simple line delivered from the ridiculously attractive (Seriously, it's not fair) Tom Hiddleston  (cloaked as Loki in green with disgustingly suave greased hair... Yeah, okay, I'm not really sure I get my attraction to this character either... You learn something new about yourself everyday. I digress.)
anyway, this line was delivered during a heated argument with his brother, Thor, and it figuratively brought me before my knees as it drifted through my ears.

"Satisfaction is not in my nature."

Lovers, do you know what hasn't been in my nature over the past few months?

Satisfaction.

I have not been satisfied with the current situation in life that God has set before me.

I have been acting like a spoiled child, rolling around in their own ungrateful filth, upset that their desires have been refused, or postponed.

God, forgive my dissatisfaction.  Forgive my selfishness. You are enough.  You are enough.

The truth is, lovers, I have struggled with depressive anxiety for most of my post-adolescent life.

I go through good spells, and I go through bad spells.

Each bad spell gets progressively easier to go through, and my hope and prayer is that someday, I will no longer experience tailspins when things go awry as they tend to do every-so-often.  It's a work in progress, and it's a process that humbles me before Christ in more ways than I can count, so perhaps my anxiety is actually one of my greatest blessings.  Not sure I can let myself see it that way, yet, but who knows what the future will bring?

What I almost never seem to remember, however, through these bad spells, is that constant introspection is extremely unhealthy.

What I mean by that, is things are always at their absolute worst, when I spend most of my waking hours thinking about whatever it is I'm going through.  Financial stress, emotional stress, relational stress.  I tend to live my life constantly worrying about each of these areas, even when I am laughing, or seem happy.

I mask my stress extremely well, and thus most of those closest to me rarely know I'm on the brink of a break-down because I have auto-trained myself to be ridiculously self-sufficient and I turn people away when they try to get close.

This is horrendously wrong, and so is allowing myself to spend all of my internal thoughts on these forms of anxiety.  To be constantly introverted and constantly thinking about myself and my hurts, my losses, my sufferings, my misfortunes, my predicaments is repulsive.  It's absolutely repulsive and unfortunately it is one of my biggest tendencies and temptations in this life.

This pattern has caused me to be on various medications (albeit few prescription medications, mostly all-natural supplements in a variety of colors, size and lengthily-worded ingredients) over the past several years.  This in and of itself is something else I tend to struggle with, as I dislike feeling reliant on pills.  I feel weak as though I can't handle my own life, which in hindsight, isn't actually bad, thus being on pills for a relatively harmless life tends to make me feel like the worst sort of failure.

During the last bout I had with this depressive anxiety, I went to see my naturopathic doctor and she prescribed another series of supplements and vitamins.  I took them for a few weeks until the world felt less dark, and my stomach bloat went away, and then I shoved them far back in my bathroom drawer, trying to forget my dependence on them and to guide myself into the ways of being strong and self-sufficient instead.

Well, you know what lovers?  I can be real stupid sometimes.

Sure enough, a few months went by without the natural aids and as soon as the going got tough, my world went very dark and consequently I found myself in another tailspin, as I realized again last night while watching Thor 2. 

This dep-anx bout has been going on (amazingly, it's escaped my knowledge until now) for the past several months. I have been completely absorbed in unimportant matters; real matters, which have caused real pain within my body, and heart, I grant that, but unimportant all the same.

The cycle always looks the same: I start to sleep restlessly, soon I begin waking up for hours in the middle of the night.  I crave foods high in carb content and cut out natural proteins almost entirely (for the record, I almost never notice that I'm doing this). I become exhausted 24/7 and therefore have extremely low energy levels. I cease all forms of activity.  I start to put on weight and my face begins to break out. I get nauseating headaches from a starving, yet always full, stomach and I tend to find 3 good reasons to cry daily.

I am a walking nightmare to be around, and the oddity of it all is I rarely notice it's happening to me, until I have one of those epiphanies (such as the one I had last night) and then things slowly start to fall back into their proper places.

I started taking my supplements again about five days ago.  Already, the dark, suppressive cloud I've been living in seems to have lightened considerably. At some point, I've got to realize that my body needs these supplements.  There's nothing I can do about it, and there's nothing wrong with it, either.  Acceptance.  Acceptance.  Acceptance.

I'm sleeping through the night, and sleeping well.

I confess my sins of pride and overwhelming selfishness to God before you all as witnesses, and I deeply apologize to anyone who has been caught in the crossfire of my vicious cycle lately, particularly my family.  I am sorry I am not easy to live with.

Christ is shining on me today, lovers- just like He's shining on all of you, as well.

Don't loose touch with yourself, the way I have the past few months.

It's just not worth it.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

(Also, go see the new Thor movie.  It's eye-opening. ;) )

It's A Monday.

Happy Monday evening to you, lovers.

For some of us, this Monday evening looks like blaring Billy Talent and Sum 41 while cleaning the bathroom after enjoying a bowl-full of homemade risotto (thanks, dad) and  some red wine.

The Italians know how to relieve stress, no?

The following phrases have, admittedly, been uttered tonight by yours truly due to such Italian stress relievers.

"I'mma eat all these damn cookies."  (Spoken to no-one in particular.)

"I deserve this, man." (.... Also spoken to no-one in particular.)

And my personal favorite ".... Stoppppp, you're being rude." (Spoken to my computer's automatic update task manager).

What can I say?

Risotto, Coppola and circus animal cookies make me feel pretty talkative.

As I'm sitting here, waiting for the bathroom cleaners to get nice and sudsy on all my bathroom surfaces, I decided to take a few moments to focus on thankfulness.

'Tis the season after all, right?

1. I am thankful, tonight, for the healthy sounds of punk rock streaming out of my laptop speakers. (Some things never change.)

2. I am thankful for the cool bathroom floor on which I am currently laying as I wait for the cleaners to perform their chemical magic. (I promise, this is merely because I am lazy. It has nothing to do with the wine. What kind of person do you think I am? It's a Monday, for crying out loud.)

3. Strange to say, I'm thankful for bathrooms which need cleaning.

4. I'm thankful for Italy.

5. I'm thankful for gym shorts and My Chemical Romance t-shirts and best friend group texts.

6. I'm thankful, tonight, that I'm single. (Take note of that, because I may never say that again.)

Life is always good, even when it seems really hard.

Wouldn't you agree, lovers?

I love you all.

Goodnight.