Somedays it’s just too much.

Trying to live in a space I’ve never seen

I don’t understand it here and it scares me

The space is void and I shake

There are no sharp edges

But there is no one here I recognize either

Nothing is the same, yet it is

Nothing tugs here, and that makes my search feel incomplete

Where are the answers?

I need some answers!!

If I melt into this space...

What happens?

I spent my years in service of others

Looking for my lack

My lacking in what I am…for you

I’ve never been alone

And yet sank into the loneliness

My body doesn’t fit anymore

My spirt wants to soar

My ego is throwing out the trash

So much is happening…

But I’m still in the place

Waiting for something new?

Strangling myself in sameness

Trying to be appropriate

Trying to be like you

But I have never been like you

I can’t pretend anymore

I need to leap!

And I have no idea what that means

I need to go and seek

I need to write and meet kindness

I need to put my feet in the water

And I want to dance…wildly and freely

I will to be graceful in my gestures

And loving in my spirit

I’d like to take a ride with my new friend

Her name is integrity

And she’s got my back.

What do I do now?

Three deep breaths...

and release...

I am struggling to believe that you have always just been human, because to everyone else you were a superhero.

My time machine is stuck in your comic strip. Waiting for my hero to arrive.

So, forgive me if this is raw,

but pounded meat becomes tender,

and isn’t tender the sweetest delicacy of all

The path is unclear,

but at least it’s new

There’s a lovely breeze filled with the sweetest tweets of a bird whose name I will never know

And while that first bird left a lasting impression,

the path is lined with them, each bringing another unheard melody to drink up

The air is new here

Breathtakingly fresh

Without discomfort

Every step is recognized as momentum

Often displayed in dance

My arms don’t search for the rhythm

They create their own

The music bends to the energy I create

Swaying lends itself to twirling

The cause and effect is tangible

As the sun bounces off my skin

Allowing my bigness to glow

She is fire and light

She is order and chaos

She is tranquil and curious

She is a flower

Her stem is strong

Her middle productive

Her face soft and beautiful

Every step, brings us closer

Every twirl breaks the cocoon

Every tear washes it away

My younger little ran so fast she tripped on life

My older wiser walks at a thoughtful pace

Erasing itself from the comic page

My time machine has landed

Ready for its retirement

As a beautiful bird feeder.

I hate when stories begin with the end. The absurdity that I am even at the end of my life at thirty-three is nothing but a cosmic joke that has played out not unlike the rest of my life. I've always said I am not afraid to die; that of course was before the doctors told me my prognosis and I became the elephant in the room. 

I imagine that the day will come all too soon, that I will have to say my goodbyes and not unlike the stories I have read, rekindle relationships with distant and more likely forgotten friends. I imagine that the anger I have held all these years for my father will turn to forgiveness, and the mistakes I have made in my life will somehow make sense.

I imagine that I will appreciate the calendar not as a place to write down future events but a stamp of recognition that another day is gone. I imagine that I will sit with my daughters and be brave while they cry tears that do not fully have meaning yet. I imagine that while in the pain of the end, I will be grateful for the loved ones around me that are not too scared to see me die. I imagine that when I close my eyes for the last time, I will have the peace that I have earned.

It’s funny how we live our lives with the full recognition that someday our parents will die, and often we experience the death of a grandparent as a rite of passage. We acknowledge that this is the proper order of things, and so be it. Death is spoken about in terms of the inevitable but not the logical. Each time we experience a death in our lives, whether it be a family member, friend or even a pet, the experience is not truly ours. We grieve the loss and mourn the upcoming awareness of holidays not attended and birthdays not celebrated, but in truth we grieve for ourselves. We grieve for our memories and the lack of future ones. Now being on the other side, I have come to fully understand that death is not about the dying but about the ones that are left behind. I am just a player in the makeup of your experiences from death on. 

This of course pissed me off at first. I am the one dying and the reality is that it really isn’t even about me, it is only happening to me. Think about it, you come over to my house to profess your love for me, your anger at this disease, the unjustness of this plight. You bring a casserole and well wishes from your family. You then proceed to lose your composure and cry uncontrollably on my couch. I then spend the next twenty minutes getting you tissues, assuring you that it will be okay, and serving you the casserole you so graciously presented me. The unfortunate truth is that death is very little about the dying and more about the continuation for the living. I have heard “what am I going to do without you”, “how will I go on” and my favorite “I just had to come see, I would never forgive myself if you died and I hadn’t said goodbye.” Believe me I understand that my death is not going to sustain mourning beyond a certain period, apart from my mother and children, so as the day’s sashay by, I take in the broken winged and wounded allowing whatever emotion you need to express.

I have become enamored with how it will end, the conversations that will take place, the confessions released, the passion for life that has never been. I have come to love my fatal disease; it is the first time that I have felt alive, awake, and real. The need to satisfy the most basic yearnings has left and yet been replaced with the knowledge that my life will no longer be about the struggle against all that I have fought so hard to keep at bay. All that I have needed is already here. The beauty of dying is that the answers come much quicker, as time is shorter. I no longer have the need to know everything. Soon, the answers will be free. When they do come, I hope I can pass along the message. I am not sure how this exactly works, but I imagine that I will have beautiful wings and fly gentler and more graceful than I could ever dream. My wings will be white with flecks of silver that shimmer against the sun, they will be so bright that when I rest on your shoulders, your skin will warm and you will feel safe. I know that you grieve for me, but soon I will be free. 

There seems to be a need to blame God for this, there seems to be the desire to get angry with an entity that we thank for the abundance. The juxtaposition of this brings strong men to their knees, so I imagine that this push pull feeling of anger and gratefulness only adds to the already confusing issue of settling the feelings of helplessness. Truly the anger is that there is nothing that can be done, I am going to die and what just God would have this tragedy at his feet? The idea that I am being punished for the deeds or maybe the lack of them seems all too punishing, is it a karmic thing? Did I poison someone in a past life, am I paying for the sins that I don’t even remember? I am told that this line of thinking will not help me in aiding me to heal my body, that the energy is lost in the negative and that I need to focus on bright white light, healing light. So, the confusion is that while I believe that the body can heal itself, what if this is my penitents, what if this is my Hail Mary?

I imagine that someday all the black will turn to pink, that the darkness that I have lived in will be bright and full of flowers. This is what I hope for every night, after I have put my girls to bed and braved the day’s pain of cancer burning my bones. I dream of tomorrow, putting braids in golden hair, making grilled cheese sandwiches and having one more truly remarkable day. 

I'm sad

What are you sad about?

I'm sad that I don't get my fairy tale

Your said because you don't get this fairy tale

What if this wasn't the right one?

What if I just wanted it so much that I made him into a real boy

But couldn't cut the strings

And that was torture 

For us both

So let it be 

as it should 

Let it glow and grow

It still is based in love

No matter the ending 

Or beginning 

Ok what else?

I'm mad

About?

I'm mad that he didn't choose me

I'm mad that I gave him a choice....

Aw fuck….

I'm mad because somewhere I learned you stay in the name of love. I learn that my value as a human is contingent on your reciprocation. I need to dissect this because it's feel gross

I don't know why she stayed but I learned it's what you do

I stayed because what else is there to do

I stayed because torture feels redemptive 

I stayed because I don't know where to go next 

I stayed because it fit without trying on

I stayed because it takes away choice 

I stayed because uncomfortable is my comfort 

I stayed because you are right

I stayed because I'm too emotional

I stayed because I'm needy

I stayed because I'm scared 

I stayed because I'm paying a price 

I stayed because it's there

I stayed because of hope....

What the is hope? Seriously. 

I’m owning my story

I need to tell my story

You are not my story

You are a chapter 

You will be edited 

You will be important 

Because you are

But you are not my story 

Waking up is strange

My eyes see things differently 

From an outsider view 

A peak in the freshness

A wave to the past

The stories felt so real 

We smiled in promises

But moving on doesn't go back

We were who we needed in that snapshot 

We both needed love

And we gave it

With grace and smugness

But moving on doesn't go back 

My legs feel as heavy as my heart

Both shake with defiance 

Am I angry my fortune was wrong

That cookie I ate to seal the deal

I look for signs 

I look for the we

A bottle of wine

A song we shared 

Bubbles are made to pop

But we jolt every time

The surprise of unraveling

Is no surprise at all? 

Because moving on doesn't go back

If I move on do you go away?

I'm afraid of confirmation 

I'm not ready to affirm

What I already know

I’m wrapped in pictures

I can’t un-see

Layered in film undeveloped

Pictures not taken

Full of stories

Made of dreams momentum is stealing

Answers come in the smoke

The train has arrived

My ticket punched

The conductor smiles

He knows my destination

I am not the first to hold this seat

There’s a jolt of momentum

My stomach

My heart

We’re moving

On……

I write because if I don’t, I forget the truth. The pageantry of tales my mind can conjure would be alarming to the unskilled, yet I am adept. Survival has been my maze and my muse. I navigate my way beautifully through thorny rose bushes, never stopping to mend my wounds until a soft landing becomes available. Then, and only then, do I cauterize the flesh wounds, leaving the deepest and oldest to remind me that I have been here before. Reminding me that hind sight is for the wise who choose to look in the mirror and see what stares back. And as the scars fade and some callus over, my deepest mended blemishes will tell my stories.

I cloak the newly fresh scars, along with the old sentimental favorites, overachiever and shame. Two emotions that I wear like jammies, warm and safe in place I know. After years of dressing in these fibers, they have woven themselves through my epidermis, and attached themselves to my DNA, ready at a moment’s notice to be flagged that it’s shames turn to tell the overachiever “time to cut bait before everyone…hurry….run!”

Our pretty eyes don’t like to see scars. Mine not coming in black and blue gives them less value. Leaving me desperate to prove my scars are tangible, that my pain is not invisible even if the proof is. Writing gives my scars color and texture, writing can make my scars look however I paint them. Bedazzling loss and longing in the glittery bubble of a new romance, and calling it passion. White-washing the stained ego when the story I have told turns dark and grey. Making sense of it all seems futile in the troughs of a mental temper tantrum.

And so I write

Writing allows me to run around in my craziest outfit and dance to the color of flowers. The privilege of feeling the mutability of music’s ever changing four chords penetrating my heart. At times the reverence of a lyrical declaration to love, can push my heart to its most painful point. Writing allows me to find the freedom to not be of fully present while my fingers mystically dance around finding the precise words I have never expressed, even to myself.

I have never been able to lie on paper. It is the only place I tell the absolute truth, which is why my papers are mostly bare. The other part is I have no idea what I will say once I start. Not in the writer’s block way, I mean in the “writer gone mad” kind of way. Writing for me, once I am “there” is what some would call an out of body experience. When I am being who the words need me to be, present and open, I just close my eyes and the words pour out.

If I am to be honest, I am no longer comfortable in my skin not writing. My life has been a treasure trove of research to draw from. I am ready to share my scars and see them as beauty marks.