Thankful

Lovers,

It is Thanksgiving.  Officially.  As of...... 51 minutes ago.

I just got home from working the closing shift at Starbucks, and even though we shut down the lobby and drive-through early, we still didn't get out of there until ten after midnight.

Something about Black Friday prep and the next 72 hours being absolute madness at our store.

Anyways, I'm sure you all know what's coming, so I'm not going to waste any more words on an  explanation.

I am thankful for:

• The fact that this year has been the best year of my life to date.
• Coastal wind storms.
• Rainy afternoons spent tucked up on a couch, reading my Bible, hearing people that I love laugh.
• Ecola Bible College
• All of the amazing, unique, inspiring, funny, beautiful people I met this year and all the many ways they impacted me.
• The overwhelming moments when my Savior brought me to my knees before Him in supplication, mercy and love this year, and for the beautiful and wholesome location for those moments to take place in.
• The way the Prom smells at midnight in the middle of Summer.
• Sam's Seaside Cafe and all of the countless dollars and hours spent there, in moments of weakness, exhaustion, togetherness, happiness, laughter, comfort, peace, eating homecooked food for unbeatable prices, listening to the greatest collection of 80s superhits nonstop, and surrounded by colorful walls and twinkle lights. 
• The way the ocean changes colors.
• My second mother, Vange Alderrman, whom I met early this year.  She became the best manager I've ever had, a dear friend, and someone who took extremely wonderful care of me every day this Summer- she nourished my dreams more than anyone else ever has in my life.  She used to tell me everyday that all she wanted was to see me get there someday- to Ireland, to culinary school.  Every single day she would tell me that. I miss her.
• The beautiful and rare collection of older ladies I worked alongside at Sesame and Lilies.  Not a day goes by when I don't think of something wonderful that they taught me about life, about housekeeping, about being fabulous.
• The glorious, challenging, sometimes exhausting gift that is working outside in the elements for a natural preservation program, and the way HRAP sharpened and nurtured my mind and thirst to learn new, fantastical things about our world.
• The way my loves smile at me after I have fed them.
• The fact that my boys used to bring food over to my house just so I could cook it for them. 
• The fact that everytime I bake cookies I am reminded of my Brooklyn, and how we would bake cookies together and watch Disney Movies, and how many wonderful times we went grocery shopping together. 
• The fact that my friend Zachary Matthew Ricks is the grandfather I've never actually had. 
• Nights spent sitting on the kitchen floor, drinking tea and talking about puffins and boys with my beautiful roommates, Nikki and Lynn. 
• Fridges that you can write messages on.
• How candles light the darkness.
• The gift of being taught by my favorite people how to do exciting and crazy new things like longboarding.
• Adventure Levels
• No-Maintenance-Mondays
• Falling in love.
• The 3 mile drive to Indian Beach, and the greatest selection of music that always played while rolling into the parking lot, surrounded by many beautiful, tan surfers who drove fantastic VW Buses and for the cheap thrill that that can bring to you when you're having a crappy day.
• Remnant bible study, and how it grew me and forced me into relationship with my most favorite people, and how it made me trust them- and depend on them. God is good.
• People in my life who love me enough to stay up until very late at night playing trivia with me. I'm always going to need those people.
• The way John Mayer sounds to my heart.
• My Wesley, my farmboy, and how he loves me so.  
• Roman Candle Fights on the Fourth of July with the happiest bunch of crazy people I know. Favorite memory.
• The way your feet ache after a long day, because it means you have worked hard.
• Burns and scrapes because they mean that you are getting your battle scars.
• My one and only Becca, because she always is there to laugh with me, to listen to me, and to remind me ever-so-sweetly that love is, indeed, patient.  And it is, indeed, kind.  And that no matter how rude the customers are to me: I can't send her mini-rants via text message describing in minute, expletive detail just where those nasty customers can stick their arrogance, because it's not right. God knew what He was doing when He gave her to me.  I couldn't live my life without her.
• Forgiveness of sins and wrongdoings
• The Cross
• My mother and the way she will continue to hold me until the very, very end.
• My father, and his emotional strength after many years of sitting solidly through..... silt and smudges and ungratefulness.
• My sisters and the woman they challenge and prepare me to be.
• My nieces, Lily and Allie, their difference in  size, age and personalities. Their existence blesses me daily. 
• My nephew, Aiden, and his inescapable smile.
• My soul family- my Raelyn, my Natalie, my Benjamin and my wee baby Keller.  The way they push me.  The way they accept my every flaw willingly and humbly. 
• My Lexis, and my Zoe- without them I would be lost, for they are my compass. 
• Funny, sweet coworkers who I can laugh with and who I can dance with, in the drive through window, and who will hug me and tell me everything is going to be okay when people get especially mean and the job gets especially exhausting. 
• For my Mi Famiglia family.  For Patty, and Lisa and for my Travis. All of whom I need.
• Tips, and how they pay for gas money.
• The ability to breathe.
• Excellent health which I do not  deserve- and a lifetime full of sweet, incredible, magical, priceless memories.  

I am an extremely blessed person.

There is so much more to be thankful for.  

Let us all rejoice and with gladness in our hearts give thanks for this day, which the Lord has made, for each and every one of us.

Blessings to all of you on this holiday.

I pray you stay safe and warm and happy and that you are loved by your earthly family as much as you are loved by your Heavenly family.

XoXo lovers,

-Hannah

All You Need Is Less

November, November.

I always say my favorite month is October, and then November sets in and I'm hard-pressed to find a more unrivalled beauty.

I was rereading the notebook I kept over the Summer last night, and it's strange, because it all feels so recent- like I've only left just yesterday- but the dates on the entries are from so many months ago.

I've been home for over 2 months now.

And as much as I would have hated to admit it when I first got here, I've started to settle in again.

Starbucks is going very, very well.  The people I'm working with there are unique and opposite and funny and I feel a wealth of inspiration to write about because of their quirks.

My boss calls me Lisa Loeb and I've already gained respect for my sharp tongue and quick sarcasm.

I started working again at Mi Famiglia, which has been more than enriching.

Going back there, to those faces that I love, and those people who brighten my life, felt more like coming home than coming home did, in some strange way.

Especially when one of them whom I hold very dear to me smiled when he saw me and said, "Oh, aren't you a sight for sore eyes." and then pulled me in for a great hug.

I'm always going to feel like I belong there- and in the middle of a strange upheaval and overwhelming change of scenery and feeling a strong sense of loss, I have something that is never, ever going to change. Mi Famiglia is family.  When I'm there, I need less from the rest of my life, because I feel like what I need is in front of me.  The people, the food, the atmosphere.  It's what I want out of life.

So I've been working a lot, lately- and I've been taking one day at a time.

Right now, my sister and her kids are in town for a month, and so I've been spending a lot of time with my family- which is good.

I've been thinking about dying my hair blonde- and trading in my hipster glasses for contacts and leather skinny jeans.

I just want to change a little bit.

Attraversiamo.

I'm ready to cross over.

Lovers, I miss you.

I hope all is well.

"No matter where you are, I can still hear you when you drown."

Sometimes when we meet people, we know within the first moments that someday they are going to break our hearts.

When you find yourself in this moment, the choice is yours to make of it what you will.

I've been writing a lot of really great pieces this month, and I owe pretty much all of it to these weekly writing sessions with Nat and Rae.

I've written pieces about sisterly betrayal, humorous post-death "second-world problems", books that changed my life, a woman who worshiped her own self-hatred, a man caught in the middle of practicing a cult sacrifice, a woman who is uncontrollably drawn to desiring a man whom she initially finds overwhelmingly repulsive, and poems built from uncomfortable and awkward phrase exercises.

I find myself building ludicrous and inescapable plot elements.

I want to write monologues about a doctor convicted of homicidal malpractice.

About how it really feels to be stuck in the frightening crime syndicate that is the Russian Mafia, as a hopeless  and helpless mobwife.

I want to write a drama scene about a man with early onset multiple personality disorder- where one actor portrays the man, and the other portrays his alter- and they must play two different sides of the same brain.

I want to write about Heathcliff and Catherine.  I want to be able to capture how I feel when I hear words quoted from Peter Pan.  I want to write step by step directions on how to make me fall in love with you the way I've fallen in love with Holden Caulfield.

I want to explain what it means to me to listen to Drown-Smashing Pumpkins on repeat.

Mostly I just want you to read the words I have written.  That's all I really want.

I want to know what you think.  What my writing brings out in your mind, in your soul.

Oh, but I am afraid.

The distance is long and the years are longer, still.

I want to give up, and run on to the next one, flighty whippoorwill, without looking back, but I am not allowed.  I am uninvited there.

Here is where I must stay.  Here is where I'm told things are waiting for me.

The back and forth is beginning to grow tiresome- but the writing, oh, the writing.  I have never been this liberated by my words.

Creatively, I have blossomed.  I have felt the depth of inspiration this month, and to tell the honest
truth about it, I think I like who I'm becoming as a writer.  Finally.

I don't feel confused, or guilty, or ashamed of my writing anymore.  I don't feel conflicted about it the way I used to.  I don't tell myself that my words try too hard, or that my words are a mindless imitation and shadow of the styles used by the great writers I have studied.  I feel  that they are real, and that they are my own.

Honestly, I don't question why tragedy moves me so heavily anymore.

I've always been  drawn to sad and dark things and for the first time in my life I'm not questioning why.

It's like this past month, through the words that I have crafted together, I've realized that tragedy, and the way I view it, is a gift.   A gift uniquely and passionately crafted for me, to me.

I found this quote the other day:

"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.  It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift."

I thought about myself.  I thought about how I write.  I thought about what I dream of writing about.

And then the clouds parted a little bit, and something shifted within me.

And not to mention, I realized exactly why it is that I should never be allowed to write children's books.

Sarcasm aside.

In those moments where you know your heart is about to be broken by this perfect stranger, you have the same choice that you have when you are confronted with the realization that what you are about to write has the potential to break you or break someone else.

The possibility is humbling enough.

The choice is yours.

You can go, or you can stay.

You can do, or you can do not.

There is no try. There is no escape clause.

No matter what happens, I promise myself to write it down.

Whether it is for the purposes of being read by others, or only by myself, does not matter.  What matters is that those words, the ones floating like souls in the river Styx outside the realm of my conscious thought, are picked up by me- and that I breathe life into them once again.

This is what I have been given, this is who I am.

Slide.

Tonight was my weekly writing sesh with Nat and Rae.

We sit at Starbucks and we flail our hands wildly for hours, we talk and motion and laugh and dream and we practice writing with the arduous and exciting exercises found in the book The 3AM Epiphany.

Tonight, during one particularly involving exercise, which I'm not going to explain for my own reasons,  this came out.

 Not sure from where, not sure how, but I know that it's perfect to me and for me.

Moments like these, as a writer, mean the world to me.

And in a weak moment of pride, I will admit it's probably my favorite thing I've written.  Ever.

Lots to think about tonight.  Probably won't sleep a wink.







"Slide"

A glum chiasm-

All hail common lies-

Humming.  Slumming.

Sags his skin- sad his soul.

Hugs like a god.

Holds like a child.

Slug back gin.

Lack all sense.

Come, big dog.

Come, black cub.

Lay your head on me.

Sing, soul.

Sing, nickels.

Sing, dimes.

Sail on.

I'll come soon.

Dreams

I had a dream last night that my dad wanted to buy Rod Stewart's new Christmas album so badly, he went to stand in line waiting for its' midnight release.

My dad doesn't even like Rod Stewart.

I logged onto Facebook a few minutes ago to find out that there is now available a sneaky leak of one of the songs on the album.

Listening to it now.

Sometimes my dreams interact too closely with my everyday life.

Last night I also dreamed I got lost in a sudden snowstorm, on foot.  Last night I fell asleep reading Wuthering Heights.

Today I'm dreaming, too.

Not of Rod Stewart, though.  Instead, dreaming of memories, and favorite people, refurbished, restored barns at the end of quiet country lanes, snowflakes, rainfalls, pitfalls, and the liquidy, sticky, dreamy sequences brought on by the combination of homemade pancakes and Avett Brothers songs.

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered Am I.

Also, suddenly extremely tempted to cut my hair in this fashion, though I know that's a terrible, terrible idea.

Mostly I think I need to write.  Really write.  I need to walk and to write and to lock myself in that dangerous world of raw inspiration, and not come out for a very, very long time.  It is late October, and the familiar insomniac insanity is starting to settle in.

Po. Em.

I love the way we push and pull.

Did you hear me?

I love the way we push and pull.

We've pushed and pulled and poked and prodded and at the end of the day, the world owes us no favors.

And so we part.

And we disperse.

And suddenly we have fledged.

You go your way, and I invariably go mine.

There is no planet of regret on my shoulders- nothing I wish I could take back, no sight I wish I could forsake.

I carry nothing in my being but for the promise which has been given to me.

A promise to just keep treading the water.

And so, I promised back, I will.

This is how the world has been built, and this is how our people ignite.  How we burn.

I love the way we push and pull.

Did you hear me?

My Boys

Over the course of my life, I have been a collector of many things.

Hat pins, decorator spoons, buttons, converse shoes, concert tickets, picture albums, quote magnets.

And then around the time I turned fifteen, I started collecting them.  My most priceless.

My boys.

I grew up in a raging household of women.  It was glorious, and  dramatic, and louder than you would think. There were tears, so many tears, and so many batches of baked goods, and so many hours of long, whispered conversations about everything and nothing.

There was screaming.  And squealing.  And shouting. And fighting.  Over the bathroom.  Over the TV remote.  Over who's turn it was to do the dishes. Over who was the hottest boy at church.

It was perfect.

But when I got to my first year of outside school, in sixth grade, I was set free in an open world of male.

I was shy at first, nervous.  I of course, had practically grown up at my friend's house, with her brothers, but I wasn't shy around them because I'd known them as far back as I could remember.

These boys were new.  And loud.  And hopeless, as boys are wont to be in 6th grade.

I tried to ignore them.  It worked, from an outsider's perspective, I was always around my girlfriends giggling and whispering and performing as a class A professional at being a 6th grade girl. But what nobody knew was that secretly, fearfully, in the very deepest part of me, I loved the boys.  I loved them all.  I loved them because they made me laugh, and they were brazenly opposite to me. They were messy and deliberate and curious and funny and I was completely at a loss for how much they fascinated me.

I pondered this over the next few years.

Until I hit fifteen, and the shyness wore off.  I made new friends.  I engaged them in conversation.  I put myself out there.  I laughed at their stupid jokes.  And suddenly, they were mine.

They started adding up and I realized I had almost as many guy friends as I did girl friends.  Secretly I prided myself on this.

There is nothing that girls love more in this world than to be close with boys.  I don't mean that in a romantic sense, either.  Some of these boys I have fallen for.  Hopelessly and tragically.  Most of  them have become a deeper part of me than I realize, and we've made it through our friendships for years without either of us falling for the other. It is possible.  I've proven that.

I started to realize that not only did they fascinate me, but I felt like I understood them more than I could ever have understood my girlfriends.

You see, around the tender age of fifteen, girls turn into monsters.

I could never understand why.  So I hung out with the boys because life made more sense around them.  We laughed and called each other names and laughed some more and whenever I was upset, they just accepted it.  They never tried to change how I felt.

This is a priceless treasure that God has gifted the male race with.  I have seen this trait along the winding trail of boys  that have tumbled in and out of my life as I've grown up.

I've never once heard any of my boys say to me, "Don't be that way.  Don't feel like that."

It is a blessing to not be made guilty for your emotions.  Let this be a lesson.

Ever since fifteen, I have befriended and tended to and collected and kept and treasured the most beautiful, heartbreakingly precious group of boys whom I am intensely proud to call mine.  They make me feel full of worth, and they make me feel validated, and when I cook for them, they worship the ground I walk on.

They lift me up and they spur me forward.  They dare me to greatness.  They inspire me to courage.

They drive me to try new things, and they deliver me time and again to my Lord and Savior.

They have nurtured me.  They have held me. They have taken such beautiful care of me.

And I am so grateful for each one of them, because they are all so indescribably different.  And the relationship I have with each one is unique.  I communicate with one on a dramatically different level than I communicate with another.  And that's probably my favorite part.  I have things I need to say to all of them: "I miss you, I miss your hugs, I hope life is treating you well, etc."  and I can say all of those things in ten completely different ways, special to each individual person.

God has blessed me through these friends, these brothers, these boys.

And I am excited to grow my collection, everywhere I go with my life.  Because with everyday that passes, and in every new place I find myself in, I meet more and more incredible individuals worthy of possessing.

I'm a possessive person when it comes to relationships.

Protective is something I've never been able to pull off- I tend to think people can and will find ways to handle themselves and handle their lives and they don't need me trying to protect them.

However, I am intensely possessive with relationships.  If I love you, and you mean a lot to me, you are mine.  You belong to me.  If you love me, and I mean a lot to you, then I am yours.  I belong to you. This is how I feel about everyone in my life. Family, girl friends, guy friends, etc.

All of my girls, and each one of my boys, are mine because they have proven themselves worthy to me to own.  They have proven themselves worthy to me to give a piece of myself away to that I won't give to just anybody.  Possession is deeply personal.  And I'm happy to have a new, large collection of people in my life that I can be personal with.

A lot of that is new because it happened this summer.

So this post is for my boys, whom I am missing intensely this week.

I miss your hugs, and your spontaneity, and your music tastes and your adventuring, your wisdom, your insights and the way you all make me laugh, and laugh hard.

Thanks for loving me the way Christ loves me.

And thanks for letting me call you mine.

"Love you to pieces, distraction, etc."


-Hannah