You do not know what it is to spend your entire life feeling your insides tear apart and stream tears of deep red blood in their exile. You do not know what it is to be 12 years old on resting your cheek on on the cold white porcelain with your knees holding you off the dirty tile floor of the neighborhood Mexican restaurant while you succumb to a pain induced expulsion of your dinner. Meanwhile, your parents wait at the table next to an empty chair and a line forms outside the women’s restroom. 

And what’s funny is my genetic disposition to want to bury myself within the muck instead of swim in the sunshine that was laid upon the table last night in equal serving and the beauty of a childhood friend and the warmth of that love being placed in second chair when it has sat quietly beside me this whole life and how interesting that I choose the reminder of worth that ties my meaning to my body, my life to my physicality instead of remembering the meat lies in between the bread.

Despite the six inches you hold over me, my rightful place is on top. I was born to be a caretaker, a mother, a woman. Or, at least, the idea has been molded so indisputably into me throughout my whole existence that it is now woven deeply enough to feel organic. I enjoy feeling protective of you, ensuring my presence as a need, intertwining desire with necessity so when the former runs dry my ownership will be upheld by the latter.

The beauty of language born from a need to communicate and words as a testament of the human need of vulnerability born solely for connection, altered by the infliction of your voice or the movement of your muscles. Each stroke differing, the same word arriving as different colors to different flavors, that how you choose to articulate can only be controlled up to the point of reception upon which it is passed through the filter of my experiences and absorbed into my skin signaling a change of ownership and think of all the words we choose not to say and how they live trapped within their birthplace with no freedom to breathe- festering within my bloodstream- it is no wonder I did not sleep when I did not speak, too many thoughts to tend to, to many wounds to close, and how beautiful to feel the lightening of a sound leaving my parted lips.

some to most of this content is true.

I can have somethings figured out and somethings not, and tomorrow I may have learned the latter and forgotten the former. I am constantly weighing the worth of all forty million things asking for my attention and assigning morality to my actions in search of feeling good enough. I am learning how tiresome, and necessary, it is to carve out space to be alone, silent, still.

I have been avoiding words like the plague, terrified of what might come out, even more terrified of how they might come out. What if my expression isn’t good enough? As if there could be morality attached to the human experience.

I can do whatever I want- be whoever I want, create whatever I want. There is no moral guide to how to spend my time. No lesson plan on what I’m supposed to do. No future we can control, no past we can change, no path marked as the solitary choice. It is a difficult cycle- breaking all the rules I have so deeply engrained into my subconcious being- do this not that, eat this not that, wear this not that, say this ignore that, be good not loud, never be too anything, make the logical choice, don’t let others down (never say no), be pretty but not vain, be motherly (caretaking) but fun, it’s not that serious, never be too bothered, it was just a joke, the word should in any context, “you’ll figure it out” as if by wondering farther into the waves I am garunteed to drown, the pity dripping from their words, as if I am not lost on purpose. There is an undeniable strength that comes with confidence despite uncertainty.

I’ll never know how to string the correct words together to showcase the cherishing of my blushed cheeks in the last warm breeze of fall or the way the first tear feels, unexpected, before you even realize you’ve begun to cry. I notice the drop bounce upwards off the ground beneath the pew before the air has even left my chest. We laugh when we cry, we cry when we laugh- is this not the most holy proof that heartbreak is joyful and joy is heartbreaking.

Drop a toe from the sky or cut a piece of brick off your house for breakfast. This is when the fun comes . The creativity, child like in its play, requests I toss my birds in the direction of the wind. My shoulders ripple in the breeze. Experiment, I remind myself.

The ceremony remains predominantly the same. The metaphorical gutting, the ingredients laid upon the sandstone, the recipe chosen, the meal made. The stitching of my soul through fabrication. It is necessary, and it is better than the internal festering I once allowed, but it is not without sacrifice. There is no choice in this life without a required retribution, so I choose the one that accepts my oblation and in turn offers a glimpse of heaven. Hell with God as a reprieve in lieu of purgatory cut with the Devil.

We are encouraged to respect and empower women with the caveat that no actual change ensues. Because the fact of the matter remains that there will be an absolute inability to devote an equitable amount of respect to women without an acknowledgement and release of privilege from men. A shift in ownership of power, a ripping out of each unwritten and nuanced way our society leans in towards men. The water as it runs down a hill. A disruption of the boys club we have all resigned to live within. 

I have these spurts of energy, of the yearning, of the pull to go where I need. It is all encompassing, it is electric, it feels so sure, and I am so sure of myself. That I am capable, that the spout will never run dry, that I can experiment without attachment and do what I love for a living, that I will learn the balance. These periods will last for varying lengths of time, hours, days, a week, but never longer.  Inevitably the weight of “logic” begins to seep through. A bolder dropped on a feather, an ant versus a rhinoceros, a lollipop ripped from directly the little girl’s mouth, and the tantrum that follows all at once.

Is it all worth it, the sharing, the connections, the vulnerability, the admittance of fear and the acceptance of the fragility of being a human, and of all the absolutely whack thoughts going on in my head and throughout my body at any given moment. Is it worth sharing all the parts of me that make me uncomfortable? That others would rather not explore within themselves. And although the former points tend to be very persuasive in arguments, I still answer, inevitably and a hundred thousand times over, yes.

And it’s a really, really sweet feeling to really want to live your life. Fully, not without fear, but with an acceptance of how it is woven into our lives. With an awareness to examine the dynamic between perceived fear and ego. And to lust solely for the soul.

When the world is dipped in gold and the loves of my life wait for me on the other side of the tarmac and I can feel the anticipation running through my mind like a child through a sprinkler and I want to wrap my arms around this warm hug of a feeling and never let it go 

I am learning to listen more clearly, to turn inwardly with more confidence, to believe, truly, that all parts are welcome, but I know that human nature entails that I sit in this space criss cross apple sauce and try to learn the edges of this version without attachment. For, I will inevitably be here in some way again at least four hundred to forty thousand times in this year alone.

No direct path to feeling the pinpricks of energy running up and down your arms and the weight in your chest heavy in its grounding saying: This is it. This is the good stuff. A feeling that will forever live in a space incapable of articulation. That threatens tears of liquid gold and makes me want to scream my favorite color all at the same time. It is not bad or good, happy or sad, it is just right.

It is as infuriating as it is interesting. I am fighting day in and day out to be able to live within the space that lies between being a silly little girl and a body you want to fuck. I am heartbroken that we are unable to use emotion as a strength due to the fact that we live within a society that shuns the intersection of power and feeling. That allows no humanity in our definition of success.

I crave intimacy in the absence of light. In the space that exists when the candle flickers out. When the ship is overtaken by the waves. When the child falls from the tree. When my mother makes French toast in the morning.

I want this life spread thickly across the surface, my fingers scooping out the meat. I want the mess smeared across my cheeks and licked out of my belly button.