Among the Roses

Today, I went for a very long walk. I left out of the white picket fence and stopped into Hannah for a coffee (okay, it was mostly just milk…) and was greeted by the friendly baristas. I walked along The Alameda. I walked by the place where I got my Harold and Maude tattoo. I walked by the churches I’ve never been to. I crunched through the early Autumn leaves. I listened to kids playing, babies laughing, moms on cell phones at the park. I photographed a picture of a girl releasing bees from a small house. I crossed the street. I sat among the roses, and thought of you.

I thought about the book in your hands now. I thought about the pictures, how when they came in the mail, I ran my fingers along the white edges smiling in remembrance and in hope. I thought about coffee brown cartoon eyes in all the pictures. I thought about Christmas. I thought about you not talking to me, thought about what you could be thinking about.

If I know you at all, you are not thinking about me too much yet. You are working. Listening to the Hipster International playlist and petting your dog’s smiling head. You are getting things out of the way. You are in your time. You are thinking about how good it is to have things going on, getting things accomplished. You are doing fine.

And in my way, so am I.

This is the thing: I am not looking to “feel better.” I am looking to feel. My whole life I have seen people trying to fix other people and trying to repair their sadness and I have watched tv seminars late at night about people helping other people “get over” heartbreaks and failures, etc, etc. I have heard people go on and on about self-help books and workshops and I have had a psychiatrist who didn’t even listen to my story tell me that I had something distinctly wrong with me. I have had people closest to me find their rescue in those things, and in alcohol, and in hitting rock bottom, and in entering programs. But I am not those people.

I believe in my heart of hearts that those programs and books and teachers guide people in the right direction. I think some of the most valuable stuff of this earth is the human capacity for compassion and helpfulness. I think it is really beautiful to stand somewhere and say I am broken, help me get better.

But that’s not where I’m coming from.

It’s funny how when you tell people about a distinct sadness or broken thing of your life, they begin to give you advice, list off books, tell you not to “fall apart,” tell you how strong you are— and as much as those people are trying, I am not sure any of those people are listening. Or at least I’m not sure that they know me. I’m not looking for a solution. I am looking just to say — this is where I am. This is my heart. It’s okay. It’s just cracking. It’s just life. It’s just feelings. It’s not a problem. I am not looking to “get over it” or get better. I am not looking for a solution or a book to read. I am looking to sit with myself and process my emotions and understand that the person I am is a person I love and respect enough to let follow her own path, whatever that means. I’m not yet concerned with getting better or listening to other people talk because none of those people have actually listened to me. As much as I appreciate the people in my life who just want to help Kate be Kate, I have to know that only Kate knows what Kate needs.

Heartbreak is not a disease or something I am looking to get over. I am not even sure if things have ended yet. I am only sure that in this moment, I am very sad. And I don’t know what’s going on. And that’s okay.

Now, I am sitting in my bed and thinking of a time where you fell asleep on the couch behind me as we were watching Ghostbusters. I remember thinking when you were snoring just how nice it is to be together and alone at the same time, with the same person, in the very same room. I am not ready to let go of you.

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The Children of the Free Birds

he didn’t know what he was doing either

I grew up without many rules. My parents aren’t super disciplinarian as a duo and are both the kind of people who would rather tell you to march to the beat of your own drum than try to explain to you what the right thing to do would be. I didn’t always see this growing up, but now I realize how important that was in allowing my sisters and I to develop our own sense of morals. Instead of being told that what we did or saw was good or bad, we were encouraged by a lack of direction to create our own structures and opinions. If you know any of us, you probably know we’re all weirdly well-behaved and hate getting into any kind of trouble or breaking rules. This doesn’t mean we go along with what we’re told to do or that we never do anything ‘wrong,’ but just that our independently created moral structure invites us to dismiss things we feel would create more negativity in our lives — like heavy drinking or doing drugs or breaking the law or committing acts of violence (normal kid stuff). I don’t feel like there are any inherently bad things in the world or like people who break laws and rules are necessarily criminals, and I’m well aware of my own sin and shortcomings each day. But all my life I have been aware of my feelings around my actions, and acted according to a wholesome truth. My parents always did what they had to do for the well-being of their children. They also made the world limitless by not imposing rules and laws or threats. For this, I’m forever grateful… and a little bit confused.

Growing up in Georgia, most of the families I knew growing up were church-going and often this dictated a lot of their lives (I don’t mean that in a negative way). Most of my friends did a lot of activities and played sports or were in a bunch of clubs and things, but that’s what I remember most distinctly— the church going. I latched on dramatically to other people’s families, desperate to see what the fuss was about, always wanting to know what was going on, why they were doing that, why my family wasn’t. All of my friends had so many rules, knew bad and good, right and wrong— always according to some bigger authority like a pastor or a coach or their parents. I went along with them and was really drawn to this larger authority. Although I liked it, I know that kind of strong figure can stress out so many people and keep them from finding their own personal truth, since they are constantly seeking to meet the approval of somebody else’s— or, in so many more cases, dramatically go the other direction. But… anyway…

“We walk in obedience to whatever it is that we are chasing.”

I was always very independently religious though. I like God, a lot, and I always liked reading the Bible (along with a lot of other religious texts. I’m really interested in Sufi Islam and Judaism as well, but don’t feel like that negates my Christian preferences.) and I always liked praying. In high school, I went to a church with my best friend Kristyn. The above quotation is etched in the back of my Bible. There was a youth pastor named Mike Deal who said that during a sermon once and to this day it is one of the most important messages I can impress upon another person in the sense that we follow whatever it is we really want: if we see our life shaping up to be something we aren’t proud of, chances are we have lost focus on what it is that we are truly desirous of, or we have stopped caring.

(It’s all related, promise.)

The point is, I’m not sure if I have a clue what it is that I’m chasing.

I feel in my heart that I know who I am. I know every day when I wake up what I want to do that day and most of the time if there is something I’d like to do, I do it, regardless of work or chores or whatever. A lot of times those things are things I want to do at work, small things I’d like to achieve, people I would like to say hi to, ways I would like to help people. I know who I am, what I believe, what I like, what I can’t see myself being. Recently, though, I have felt a sense of hopelessness. Something inside of me feels deeply unfulfilled. I know part of it is the weight of being, the weight a lot of people feel after college, kind of wandering and figuring stuff out. It’s not that I’m not doing what I want- It’s that I don’t know if I know what I’m doing at all anymore. Every day is starting to be confusing and overwhelming, harder than the day before. It is like being alone in the middle of a field and I am tiny in the middle of lots of wheat or some other tall beige plant and I am crying but not screaming, just feeling really unsure and kind of sad and worried.

Now, back to the discipline thing.

I know that part of me feeling directionless and helpless is not having that “thing,” the thing other people have like wanting to be married or wanting to be a doctor or basically wanting to do whatever they decided was either the right thing or the best thing or the thing that their parents would want them to do, or that thing that becomes the thing you do because people tell you it is the thing you are. I don’t think I have that. I don’t think there is just one thing I am supposed to be or one job I am supposed to have. I feel it is my very energy that is my gift to the world— not necessarily my skills or abilities or intellect. But my question is what do I do with that? I guess I am writing this in case other people know what I mean, in case I’m not the only one, in case somebody else needed to hear that somebody else just doesn’t know. But not having a discipline handed to me by an authority figure or the world’s want for me or the expectation of everyone who has ever known me means that when I do figure out what my impact will be, when I am able to navigate myself to know it, it will be amazing because it will be mine. It will be genuine because I will have figured it out for myself. It will be authentic because nobody else told me to do it. It will be worth waiting for. It will be worth the anxiety, the tears, the student loans, the loneliness. It will be worth every moment when I saw other people having it figured out and knowing that my peers were moving into a direction that wasn’t really meant for me.

I open my heart to the rhythm of the universe and hope I find what I am looking for. I don’t know yet what that is, but when I find it, I will be grateful that my family let me do it my way. I will be grateful I did it my way. I will know it is the right thing when it is my thing. I won’t stop trying until I find it. I will continue being obedient to the fabrics of whatever I am creating, obedient to the thing within directing me to whatever I am chasing.

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The Way – A Hope for Hopefulness

“And yesterday I saw you kissing tiny flowers, 
But all that lives is born to die. 
And so I say to you that nothing really matters, 
And all you do is stand and cry.”

I’m shouting your name on a street corner. It’s not midnight yet, but I go to bed early these days. This is like somebody else’s midnight, I guess. This is like somebody else’s middle of the day, or middle of their shift at a job they actually like (so much time to think— in the quiet, as the rest of the world, or the world you know, sleeps, sleeps alone, sleeps alone next to the partners they love that are genuinely incapable of loving them, cold and broken from trying to mend somebody else’s cold and brokenness, you know what I mean?), or just another moment in time, moving, already gone, like all things, like how glad I am for things to go. You don’t hear me though. They never hear you. You’re just out there, all over yourself with apologies you will never be able to articulate outside of your mind no matter how many times you practice (I swear, if I could just start over. Can we just start over? Without you, my brokenness resonates like a bell tower and makes all the happy people cry. I can start over. Can we start over?), and by the “you,” of course, I mean “I.” And you’re out in the world somewhere smelling like musky vanilla and young love and I’m wondering how to find you, how to unbury you from the weight of language, from the piles of nothing done wrong. It’s nobody’s fault when things don’t work out. [it is what it is] — if you can believe that is another story.

This morning while in my favorite coffee shop ever, I found myself in near tears over a song that does not distinctly remind me of something heavy of my own life, but of my partner’s. This song reminds him of another person, and I take it personally, even though I know that is ridiculous. That’s the nature of me though— sensitive, concerned, heavily invested 100% of all the times. The song is playing these notes and it’s this beautiful, live, acousticy version of a song I used to go crazy over, a song everyone who knows the words to loves to sing along with, a song that is soft and good and hopeful most of all. Knowing that kind of hope rested within him at any time is far away from me, something I’ve never personally come into contact with, only in his past through things I’ve read that he’s written, codes and evidence and incriminations of a former romantic left dribbled all over the internet in different ways, slaughtered by his own self and concerns and the promise that destiny makes us all that “this too shall pass.” I say this and hope not to sound critical. Something I love of the internet is the depth in which I saw so many of my peers releasing themselves, maybe hiding behind code names on AIM or livejournal, but still honesty filled lines like swearing on a Bible and it was like a version of us all behind a screen— and I think this is a gift of my generation. I’ve never been great at being this person, the one writing, in front of other people because I write impulsively, working these moments and hot flashes and the pain of experience purging out of me sometimes in a crude way. I don’t know. I just realize that all this access to the depths of people can also harm you, show you sides of people you maybe could love but maybe aren’t ready for yet. What is there left for you to know of me? My secrets all drenching every blog site available and my radiance pouring from my fingers onto something less imaginative, accessible to your judgments and interpretations and misunderstandings. Hot in the moment and just the way I like it. I guess at the end of the day I am crying in a coffee shop on a hot summer day because of something I’ve made up and because of a lack of feeling in my life today— and today alone. Let’s keep that in mind.

And since I’m being honest here, that hope that hopes inside of my lover (even long since gone and all that) gives me hope that maybe hope can formulate inside him once again. It was hope that saved me, and hope that kills me every draining day of my life. The question is how do I know if I am the one to hold onto a blessing or let it go? Maybe that’s not the question it sounds like, but it’s the one I’m asking.

It wasn’t that song playing, but it’s that song that fits where I’m at from the one you left. In case you are wondering, I am the one crying.

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Joni Mitchell and the Art of Saving Sad Girls

My home’s mailbox is mostly always full, usually overflowing with coupon packets and credit card bills to people who’ve long since moved out, packages from important techie companies for my photographer roommate, new movies for Paul to watch, etc. My own receiving of mail has dwindled dramatically since I became a terrible penpal in the last 1-2 years. So, my obsession with checking the mail  has faded. But today there was a huge brown package poking out of the mailbox and it was for me — a book I’d preordered off Amazon months and months ago. Finally, for me.

gathered light – the poetry of joni mitchell’s songs

If you know me in real life, you probably know that Joni Mitchell is the greatest love of my life. This book is her songs in plain print and interpreted through different poets and writers, acquaintances of Joni’s, etc. I, of course, ordered this book long before I knew what it was actually about or what was written in it, who would write in it— none of that mattered. But tonight, as I’m scanning the pages with tired eyes, I see an essay from my very most all-time favorite female poet-poet, Kim Addonizio. I am captured. I am alive. I am remembering. Everything is back with me, even these things I have forgotten, the ways I have changed. It’s not a bad thing. That’s just where she takes me, being in this book talking about my Joni.

“That is: tell the truth about life.”

Directly referencing the tattoo scripted on my Libra ex-boyfriend’s chest in this essay, I am taken back to this wild little girl I remember myself being. I was flushing raspberry sherbet down the toilet in my college dorm building, singing “Paperweight” in a starlit hammock on a hot Georgia night, scrawling poetry in notebooks on the small hills of the quad. Those lines, only joy and Joni now, memory and happiness and nothing but nice things to say in regards to a nice person. I am crossing the country again with my Cancer ex-boyfriend “traveling, traveling, traveling. Lookin’ for something, what can it be?” — remembering the roads and how all of her sweet songs were singing through my blood hot like a good joke, hot like the way it feels when you know there’s a good thing that of course will be gone in good time, making meaning of the small things and finding ourselves in one another. Moving here to be with you and an inch closer to Kim Addonizio herself, just to be in her energy, just to see that she was a real person, to see if I was. I’m with my Gemini lover posted up against tree limbs in the safest city in America and that summer everything was the smell of donuts and the unimaginable. There was always love— and Joni Mitchell. Her record of my life, her albums the soundtrack to the woman I would become, her songs some of the first I remember loving, feeling myself to, knowing what it meant to be this person, in this skin, this little girl, a writer.  I know this is all a cloud, but the connections I am reading feel like fresh air and I feel like the past two weeks of my full on emotional/professional/mental breakdown are clearing up and this seemed like a sign, even if I know I bought the book, I just can’t believe things mean nothing. Things move too fast to mean nothing. You know?

Always a compulsion for me, writing was never a joy. But I remember listening to Joni Mitchell made me understand what writing could mean, how it could translate into empathy, how it could help make somebody else brave. Put your whole entire self into a song and somebody else will sing it, wish they wrote it, quote the lyrics in love notes or to their closest friends. Not quite sure if I have found those “gorgeous wings” just yet, I am still trying, I am still learning to fly, I am still writing. Just in case.

the last time that i saw richard

“For me, Joan Baez was Joan Baez. Bob Dylan was Dylan, but Joni Mitchell was always Joni. When I was seventeen, she was the angel in my ear. ‘You’re in my blood like holy wine…. I am on a lonely road and I am traveling.’ She knew me before I knew myself; it was that personal. And it still is.”

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