broken brain, bad, brain anxious brain. this is not me making something bigger than it is, this is a therapeutic tool to identify anxiety and anxious thoughts that are not facts.

that old familiar panic that i didn't write the memo, or turn in the assignment, or research the topic -- law school nightmares, over something that i in fact DID do and wrote a perfect, beautiful client letter like i would but to my parents instead. what is the point of giving advice if no one takes it. hire a fucking lawyer, already. i've been saying it for five years.

you're so beautiful, everyone said. to me, to my mom about me.
is she as nice as you, the doctor asked her. oh, she's nice.

processing that five hours later. my mother told someone i am nicer than she is. this is probably the best compliment i could ever receive? and also, am i really? probably, i am, and my mother is so nice (and so not pollyanna, either. do not mess.)

you have four dates, she tells me, matter of factly. everyone wants to know if you're single and that they want to get you back here. robert X the III. he owns a lake house and is in a Position of Power as an Attorney.

I just laugh. But, I'm not, Mom.
Robert X the III she says.

What the fuck. She just spent a week at my apartment who I share with my boyfriend, partner of three + years. What the everliving fuck.

Broken brain?! she says incredulously. Mom, it's a thing. To distinguish between your anxiety and yourself. Between a thought that is not true and a fact. I did write the memo, I did send you a perfect email, I did. I did. But my brain is still running circles that maybe I didn't, so I should feel shame and guilt and panic. This is a broken circuit, a circuit that doesn't calm me down, but makes me want to take something strong.

i think of the french phrase, of marcel duchamp, nude descending the staircase, l'esprit de l'escalier, as i organize things in the closet like i did as a child, everything folded, folded, folded. i fold myself into an origami bird and perch, writing and typing and researching. i am anne lamott again, taking it bird by bird, sixteen at ghost ranch, in the desert. but anne tells me not to be a perfectionists, to put my juicy thighs into all the warm pools i fucking want, and i will, and i won't be stopped, i love the water and pools and diving in, under neath, slyvia plath and the bell jar, under the water in the bath, thinking. the calmest i can remember being, before that drug like feeling from a clonazepam.

an area of refuge. and one of mine is here. processing. a container to hold thoughts, writings, musings, poetry, lies, intentions, a narrator with god knows what.

is that it, i think? i'm beautiful, but so what.
he deals with my broken brain, my anxiety.

this winter, spring, i was Very Depressed. i didn't know if i would stay with my boyfriend, i was Unhappy about a lot of things, and I'm not stupid so I go to therapy and doctors and all that. It's like old hat by now, I see some signs and I ask for such and such and then I start feeling better, feeling like myself again. I am so lucky and grateful for this survival mechanism, how actually easy it is, like slipping on the best cashmere sweater after you've been cold, and wet, and shivering. like a warm towel. but therapy is a nightmare sometimes, crying in the middle of the day and then trying to go back to work. we've worked on that, wrapping up a session, actually putting beginning and ends to the container, so it's just not mid-thing.

i have to push at therapy, to move beyond just what happened this week, that week, at work, with friends, with travel plans, with my love. with my feelings. i have to push for more, for the root causes, for what to do. i miss CBT. it is too much right now to find something different, so i push and my therapist allows me to push, to say what i hate.

all of this rage. where do you put it. where do you channel it. right now, i am organizing playlists, and creating memories via song, listening to old favorites and making sleep lists, my area of refuge -- relaxing into song. i don't have my lavender here. my routines, before bed.

how do i want to structure my life. morning meditation? walks?
i am grappling with all of this. my feet are in the fucking river, i am standing up to live before i'm finally back here to write, and the man from the pond waves to me from the beyond. remember that old time, collecting beans, writing about life in a sailboat when i was fourteen, reading the classics and taking photographs and developing them. before selfies were a thing. before our lives are supposed to be documented on snapchat to prove we were there. it's just the same as it always was- that need to carve initials into trees. to be seen.

they are not satisfied with the local girls anymore. you have four dates, everyone couldn't stop saying how beautiful you are.
because, you know, they want someone educated, someone well traveled, someone smart and interesting.

and the spirit of the staircase, i can only think, and beautiful, of course, because that is the first thing, the gateway, the entrance. not surplus to requirements. the requirement. (this is rage. this is hate. to men? to the patriarchy? to all the reinforcements?)

so i exercise, i walk in the glorious silence, not thinking about any of this, just present. so present. the sounds of the birds, the wind through the trees, the deserted and winding road. alone. i am so happy alone. and then i run into the dogs, and we walk, and a friend and we talk about new things, this recovery, and old things, because we are old friends, in symbiosis.

i miss all of this rambling i used to do. i stopped journalling, for a while, just busy living it all. it's important for me to process, and it's important for me to not do it here. for someone who has an actual online diary at diaryland.com, i am a super private person. and yet how many ex boyfriends still read this? people i consider exes, people i no longer consider.

we preferred something else. they preferred something else then, and it's not to be taken personally. that's a lesson that could've used repeating.

basically, there are some amazing fucking things that come with thirty.

i prefer something else, now. i don't need to be your cup of tea, because i'm so many lovies cups of coffee, whiskey, wine, water. if you don't like me, namaste, all the best, get out of my way, get out of my life.

i know i am loved, blessed by love. yesterday, talking and laughing so hard with e.

a note on that:

*

I just love this quote and wanted to share. (I also heard that this book is amazing and also devastating so it's definitely on my read-it-later list.)

Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.
— A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

And the freedom to be dismal, and truthful about pain, also gives us, for example, the freedom to also be unabashedly happy and unreserved, and laugh until one cries (hi my name is K), perhaps, or turn red and curl into a small ball (hi your name is E), and also to feel totally comfortable hanging out with them in closets, or their menageries, or on a beach or lobster wharf or road trip to wherever.

Always so good and fun and heartwarming to get to e-hang out with you. I love that even though we both have work and relationships and Stuff and Things, we make time for each other and pick up where we left off and can grow in the mean time and it is All Good. Not everyone is like this and I appreciate us. we are cool. (also, 30! how did this happen! you have a roof!)

extra special drop ins from Le Cat (who did not give a siiiiingle fuck that you were moving around in your chair, hi-larious) and a VIP bonus drop in from D.

Just love you tons.

*

so it's a street, two ways, this business of loving, of living, and i'm turned to face the sun. i'm facing that direction, sun shining.

summer is coming, and i can't wait for shorts and maine and the ocean and lobster wharfs.

but here, in the mountains, the river runs cool and the moss is green and soft under my feet. walking the path, turning a stone in my hand.

i am grateful, and recovering, and together, and alone, and this, right here, feeling and tapping into this moment here, well, it pretty much always helps.

it's 2:30, and more than ten years ago he said to me, you don't want to be a vampire. it's true. to sleep, perchance to dream, to wake up to another morning, the birds tapping on my window, a full night of sleep. a new day, a new slate. it's never to late to start again. but i've got thousands of days behind me, pushing this one forward.

also, i want to watch billions. drink my chocolate shake. delete emails from my hammock. walk for miles with the dogs. plant flowers. connect and disconnect, be present. this one precious life, mary oliver and her geese. let's remember to get a little wild.


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