all about me

sometimes it just feels a little scary, knowing that you’re speaking into the void… half hoping you are, mostly hoping you’re not.

I’ve spent all my life waiting for the perfect moment to give myself permission to just be me. To be me loudly and fully. And I’m starting to come to terms that maybe the perfect moment isn’t coming after all, and maybe that’s okay. Because maybe, it’s only going to be the perfect moment once I decide that it is.

I’ve never been one for trying. If I’m going to try, it’s because I’ve already decided or believed that I’ll succeed. But the first inkling of failure, and you’d think my trauma response was flight. So, because I don’t want to be a quitter, I usually stop while I’m ahead and forgo trying all together. Maybe that’s cheating, and maybe it’s just self preservation.

What I do know is this: it can’t count as failing if nobody knows you’re trying.

So, hi. If you’ve found me, then you now know I’ve been paying for a squarespace subscription for a couple of years… and that I only lifted the password protection feature today. Baby steps.

This is the place where I’ve decided to just be me. I hope you’ll like her, and if you don’t, I hope it won’t keep me up at night. And not to sway your opinion one way or another, but I think I’m starting to really like her. Maye you will too.

waiting for special.

I’ve always aired on the side of dramatic, obviously. The kind of dramatic that just wanted to make everything seem bigger and brighter and better. To me, the dramatics embodied femininity. And all I’ve ever wanted to be was a woman, not a girl, but a woman.

I distinctly remember waking up on the morning of my thirteenth birthday and immediately rushing to the bathroom to see if I had finally started my period for the first time. Even just thinking about it now, I can remember how excited I was. I also remember being equally as devastated when I looked down and everything was as it always had been. No bright red flag to prove that I was a woman, no vivacious curves to flaunt. Nada. I was absolutely crushed, Judy Bloom, my mom, Seventeen Magazine… they all told me “just wait till you’re a teenager.” Well, I had waited. I was a teenager, damnit! Where was the evidence?

I also distinctly remember being 14 sitting in the front seat of my mom’s car and longingly staring out the window thinking, “I can’t wait till I’m 16.” For no particular reason at all, just that 16 sounded womanly and mature. 16 sounded like the opening credits in every feel good movie and every high school cliche. 16 felt like I probably drove a pale yellow Volkswagen beetle and had my very own promposal in the auditorium. 16 was obviously definitely a woman.

Don’t beg me to start on my virginity, or sex in general. I’m sure you can guess at this point anyway. But I never wanted to be a virgin, I was itching not to be a virgin. Buuuuut being a virgin also made me special. I’d seen the movies, I knew what a sacred little gift it was to pawn it over. How much you were yearned for when you still held the gift, and how easily you were tossed around after you gave it away. So even as I was begging to gift it, there wasn’t anybody around to take it off my hands. Cue the college freshmen virgin, and the personality trait I’d obnoxiously adopted once those around me started to find out. But still, there’s no brighter flashing neon sign signaling “Woman,” than losing your virginity. 

Here’s the thing about these stories, I was always always alwaysss waiting. For the life of me I was never content. When I finally started my period at 14, nothing happened. There was no glitter raining down from the heavens, no one looked at me and said “Ah! There she is! The woman.” When I was 16, nothing happened. No super secret surprise sweet 16. No army of 16 year old boys pounding down my front door to wish me the best day and shower me in compliments revolving around my womanhood.  When I lost my virginity, surprise! Nothing happened. Just like my mom had asked, the weekend after it happened and unprompted I’d gushed out the words, “Well, was it all the rainbows and butterflies you thought it’d be?” Again, nada. 

Even though every scenario I’d strategically fantasized, down to what the weather would be like when it happened, never came true; I still always found myself shocked and confused. I never anticipated the let down, not once. Consequently, the sting of disappointment never lessened either. See what I mean when I say I’m dramatic?

This sword was absolutely double sided and that did nothing but contribute to the obscene altered reality I was convinced I lived in. From the moment my mom found out I was in her womb I was told I was special. And I know what you’re thinking, every baby is told their special. I get it, really I do. But let me tell you what the problem with my brain is, even as I write this now, I still wholeheartedly believe that I am more special than you. Call me a narcissist, I don’t know. Call me delusional, absolutely. But from the time of childhood, every person I’d ever known whispered proclamations of specialness in my ear. And I always believed them. It wasn’t even that they had to convince me, but rather that I could confirm they were right, without a doubt in my special little head. 

My mom called it my power. She’d always told me that once I believed it, really believed it, I’d be able to turn it on like a switch. Instead of it just slipping out unprompted at the most random moments. And I believed her. And maybe that’s where I was stunted. I was always expecting special. But special is only special when you least expect it and can’t see it coming. Unfortunately for me, I was always looking, always waiting for it. And maybe that’s why it never came. Not in a real way. Not in the way it looked when I was doing the looking. When you believe you’re special, there’s no way to believe anything other than that special things will happen to you. And when special things don’t, I mean seriously, talk about a shifted reality.

She just made it so easy to believe! Even easier to embody. Because I’d seen it work in action, I’d felt it happen with my own two hands and bleeding heart. Like, actually. For as isolated as I felt in the day to day of my life, I knew people were drawn to me like a magnet. I felt it the most with strangers, I’d get this feeling behind my eyes almost like they were glowing and suddenly it was like they were just in my grasp. Like there was some hazy fog stretching between us, that if I had to paint it it’d be cotton candy pink, and I could reach out and slide up against it like a whisper in the breeze or a fingernail swirling on skin. Delusional, remember?

I had to be able to graph special, to understand it’s ins and outs, to write the code and copy on it, create the sliding grading scale of what’s special and what isn’t. And what better way to start than by a timeline? So when special and romanticized milestones started to near, I was able to check it off and confirm how special I was. This is where it gets a bit tricky, the special milestones were coming and going, but they were only (mildly discouraging) milestones and nothing special. My period? I’m still a little heart broken over it. My 16th birthday? Salt in the wound. My virginity? Jesus Christ. 

Along with being dramatic and special, I’m also acutely self aware. Honestly, it’s a blessing and a curse. A blessing because, thank god I can at least understand my brain, and a curse because… I mean you read everything above. I’m a mess. A special mess. I’m still waiting for special, I have no patience to speak of and never have, but I do have an ungodly amount of perseverance. Maybe it’s stubbornness, who knows. But whatever it is, it hasn’t shattered my unwavering belief. Instead, it’s had quite the opposite effect. Because I’m also wildly convinced that this is truthfully my hero origin story. That the special is going to be so overwhelmingly big and bright. The best ever. Whatever it is, I’m undoubtedly sure of it. 

the art of never sleeping through a moment of your twenties.

Since I was little, everyone has always commented on my memory. It’s not genius level or anything that would be remotely helpful beyond spiraling in the privacy of my bedroom, but still, my memory is pretty crystal clear. Especially when it comes to what’s important, or more accurately, what felt important.

I’ve always loved the call of the mourning dove. Their five part hymn suited the childhood soundtrack of early morning coffee on the patio with my grandparents in a way that made everything seem a little like magic. Even still, whenever I hear it it feels a lot like home. Sometimes when I’m Elizabethtown mentally photographing a moment for a future memory I swear I feel like I can hear mourning doves.

The art of never sleeping through a moment of your twenties: a story about a group of girlfriends. The way that they lean on each other without having to ever say thank you. Sometimes not even realizing how much they’ve leaned because it was as natural as breathing

It was one of those nights right on the cusp of summer when it felt like the whole world was cracking open and everything was so close to coming back to life. The kind of big change that wasn’t terrifying, that didn’t make you feel homesick for something that you couldn’t quite place. It was the type of long overdue shift that you were waiting for, blinking through the days just to get to. 

You know those nights where you can just feel in the pit of your stomach that you’re making a memory, and maybe it’s just a memory of nothing really all that big? Like sitting in the backseat of your grandmother’s car with your forehead pressed up against the glass, counting traffic cones until they blur and seem like they’re sliding down a conveyer belt, and you’re thinking about how one day this moment in time won’t even be one that you remember when you think back on the timeline of your life. But for some reason it just sticks.

Now you’re in your twenties, and you can still smell the leather seats and hear NPR playing on the radio and feel the third person pause of reality where little 6 year old you was aware that this moment was happening right now, that right now doesn’t last forever, that one day this moment probably won’t even be a memory. 

Anyway, this felt a lot like that.

Like my skin was buzzing and my blood was singing and every video montage you’ve seen of time lapsed flowers blooming pebbled with morning dew cut to blades of grass shooting out of the soil and trees once again turning green. 

My best friends were all piled into the same car with the roof down. Driving on dirt roads and screaming at the top of our lungs until our throats burned while the air roared right along with us and the stars seemed to shine a little brighter directly above us. And I couldn’t help but think that this was one of those moments. A flash of knowing that a lasting imprint had been notched on my belt to mark a feeling I’d felt homesick for before it was even over.

You don’t get to just have many of those moments. They aren’t promised to you. The universe doesn’t have them woven onto your thread of experience when your path was being mapped out all those moons ago. They just happen. They’re just little gifts sprinkled through that you have to be the perfect combination of lucky and grateful to be able to reach out and grasp them and mark them as yours.

You have to be awake.

And the funny thing is, when I flip through my mental book of moments, shuffling them like a mismatched deck of cards that’s felt the fingers of all the hands who matter to you thumbing through them, they all have the very same thing in common. Every single one of those moments features those very same girls.

It’s lucky, really. Lucky in the kind of way that makes you want to hold it close to your chest, tucked into the lining of your jacket like a coat full of contraband. Like the lottery ticket you win and don’t tell anyone about. Lucky in the way that makes you fiercely loyal, unquestioningly protective, irrationally jealous of all the time spent with their boyfriends (just me?), and undoubtedly grateful.

I hate the title best friend. I always have. It’s just never felt like enough to describe the life preserving relationships I have. My best friends were all of the things that are made up of people you love; my roommates, my friends, my confidants, my sisters, my soulmates, my safety nets, my ground zero, my to the moon and further and back, my youtube tutorial, my eye contact from across the room wordless telepathy, my long drives with the speakers blaring, my silent bed sharing phone scrolling, my highest highs, my drunkest drunks, my gut wrenching sobs, my belly aching laughs, my everything and then some more. All of that stuffed into five humans whose souls mine will forever be linked to beyond the days of old and grey. They’re the something I never had and always wanted.

The ones I’ll always call to tell them to go outside and look at the moon

I have so much more to say on this, and on this night. So much so that I could ramble on and on, to far past the stage of finger cramping. So we’ll call this open ended for now. I’ll come back here and say more when I find the words.

making friends with change & time.

Last January was arguably the first time I felt like I was completely underwater in the least poetic way possible. 2022 came to a close and I was holding onto that thread like it was a life raft. Everything bad and hard had piled up in the final months of the year, and the belief that I got to leave it all behind and start fresh with the new year and forget about all of the ways the universe had steered me off course was the only thing keeping me from losing it entirely. It felt like the new year’s resolution of all resolution’s. Be done. Get over it. It’s gone. Start new. But like all things swept under the rug, the thing that grew inside of me festered and came back with teeth and claws and bad skin.

In retrospect, I could have probably seen this coming. In truth, I probably did. But when things are bad, like rock bottom bad, it becomes addicting. The truth is, it is so much harder to succumb to the rotting hibernation than it is to pick yourself up and keep moving forward. Allowing things to be hard is hard. It is the sore on your lip that you can’t help but gnaw on over and over again, never allowing the skin to stitch itself back together. And when things are bad and hard, the best punishment for letting yourself get here is making it even harder. To start believing that you deserve the rot. To vehemently avoid moving forward. Because moving forward means forgetting, and forgetting means it’s over, and it ending means that things change. 

What no one tells you is that the beast of change is much scarier than the thing with teeth and claws and bad skin tearing you up from the inside out. Change is new, its definition is to be unfamiliar. And when the universe won’t stop throwing you curveballs, the essence of change is the most terrifying. 

So as January dragged on with its bitter breath and dead lawns, so did I. The rug was running out of space to stuff things under. I felt frozen from the inside out. Frozen in the constant replay of what had happened and how and why and what I should have and could have done differently and wishing that I had. Frozen in the spot on the couch with the days flipping past like an empty rolodex going nowhere. Frozen in the anger and the blame and the grief. Frozen in the knowledge that my light had really gone out this time, frozen in knowing that there was nothing at the end of the tunnel. And who wants to trudge through the dark to just find more dark? Why not just lay down and curl up and wait and wish. Wish that I never started down this tunnel. Wish that I stayed at its mouth instead. Wish that the gates will eventually open up and find me curled up here and waiting. The thing about waiting and wishing is that at some point you run out of wishes. And the waiting just turns into nothing. The waiting turns into then and now and what’s happened already and what hasn’t. The waiting turns into forever. And you’re still in the same spot. Frozen. Just like January. 

Pretending is my favorite pastime. The more I think about it, maybe suffering really is. Because suffering means that the other shoe has already dropped. Suffering means that it’s already bad. That it’d be really hard to get any worse. Suffering means that it can only get better. That the war is raging on and on and on but that it’s going to end. It has to. And then what is left when all has been burned and drowned and lost? The fire has to go out, the water has to drain, it has to be found. This is where that good old fashioned pretending comes in handy. When you pretend that all of the shoes have already dropped, when you pretend that what is bad can’t get worse, when you pretend that what is hard must become easy, you have already failed. Pretending is not moving. Pretending is waiting. Waiting in that tunnel. Pretending is wishing. And wishing isn’t real. 

And while you’re waiting in the dark, wishing in that spot on the couch, you’re still really just frozen. Frozen in time that keeps on moving. Time does not care that you’re angry and have fingers to point or what should have happened. Time does not care at all. It is the train that does not stop moving that you can not get off. It doesn’t matter if you stand still, if you strap yourself to the tracks, if you keep barreling back to the carts you were already in. The train is moving forward. To stand still is the silliest solution. 

What I wish I had told myself in January is that your life is not a vessel for punishment. You can’t actively degrade your timeline of life and expect that you can unpause from that point when you’re ready or just tired of not being ready. Time has already moved on, life has already moved on, everyone around you has already moved on. Moved on so far that there isn’t space left to pity you. There isn’t time left to feel sorry for you. The world is on that train with you and it’s moving. Moving to all of the carts ahead of you. They can’t see you back there anymore. And you can’t see them when your back is to them still trying to rectify the past. But that is a wish. And wishing is not real. And now it is December.

The truth about the girl I was last January, is that I was her in March too. And I am still her in December. But the thing about the girl I am right now, is that I’m not so mad at the girl I was in January anymore. I don’t blame her so much. Life is hard and so is time. And it’s okay to take a break sometimes. But it’s not okay to stop. And maybe I’m still on the same cart I was last January but maybe this time I’m not facing the same direction. Maybe this time I’m looking at what’s ahead of me. Maybe I’m still standing still but maybe I’m just tying my shoes and getting ready to move forward. And maybe I’m just pretending. But what I know about the girl in January is that she’s going to be okay. What I know is that all the while she was frozen and wishing and waiting is that she was still taking tiny steps forward. A whole year came and went and maybe so much of it was wasted by being angry and stuck, but I’m not mad at the year. Not mad at it the way I was in 2022. Not mad at myself. And maybe that small win is actually a really big one. 

Change is a comin’ whether I like it or not. Whether I’m afraid of the beast that it is or if I’m ready to give it a hug and kiss on the cheek. Change is already here. And she really wasn’t all that scary. She was the little things that I didn’t even notice. Like washing the sheets and dusting the ceiling fan. She didn’t have as many teeth or claws. Sometimes she did, but not always. Change wasn’t gnawing at the sore on your lip. Change was letting the skin stitch back together. Change is refreshing. Change says that what was familiar really wasn’t all that great anyway. Change means that next year the rug won’t have as much jammed under it. Change is friends with time. To embrace one is to embrace the other. 

To the girl I was in January, I’m the girl from December. If you let change and time do the heavy lifting, you won’t be so mad at 2023. If you take the pressure off of 2023 being so much easier than 2022 you won’t find yourself so frozen. If you forgive 2022 for steering you off course, 2023 will start to put you back on track. If you forgive yourself for not standing in the way of life you’ll start to remember to stay out its way. Life knows what it’s doing, whether or not it makes sense to you. Life knows what Gram knew, that if it were fair we’d all be rich and beautiful. To the girl I was in January, I’m the girl from December and I’m holding hands with change and time now and they aren’t so bad. 

a love letter to my mom.

To be loved by my mother is the greatest gift this universe could give you.

To be loved by her is to be cared for, to be trusted, to be valued, to be questioned (most usually repeatedly).

To be loved by my mother is to feel protected and safe. To feel smart and magical.

If the universe ever gifts you the love of my mother, hold tight. Squeeze onto it until your fingers threaten to snap. This is something that you must not ever lose.

Because to be loved by mother is to come home to your favorite glass filled with wine ready for you to take a sip. To be loved by mother is to have the blankets lathered in dryer sheets so that they smell like home. To be loved by mother is to have all of her.

My mother does not often give up all of herself to just anybody. 

To be loved by mother is to feel such victory when you impress her, to want to constantly try and do so. To be loved by mother is to feel so lucky to lay your head in her lap. 

My mother does not ever lie.

To be loved by mother is to feel believed and belief. To be loved by mother is to say goodnight an extra time just to get a second kiss on the cheek.

To be loved by mother is a dangerous game. The fear of ever losing it almost outweighs the need to ever have it. Almost.

To be loved by mother is to be opened up to the world her childlike eyes stare at in wonder. To be loved by mother is to make wishes and pick up stones on the shoreline. 

My mother feels everything.

To be loved by mother is to feel heard and seen. To be loved by mother is to be offered a favorite snack when she knows it’s been a tough day. 

My mother is the most special gift this universe has ever crafted.

To be loved by my mother is to be selfish and never want to share her, to be jealous when she has to be. To be loved by my mother is to see the beauty in the dirt.

I often ask myself if my mother ever gets to truly feel what she inflicts on others. If she ever feels so safe and protected and valued as she does to those who she loves.

To be loved by mother is to learn how to love.

Because my mother loves me, I have worked so hard to return the admiration she so readily gives.

I am so grateful for this beautiful gift.