This Is Virginia In The Summer

You have to close your mouth when biking at night.

This is Virginia in the summer.

The air is thick and hung with winged creatures.

The moon winks at me from the water filled ditch, newly filled after the afternoon’s down pour.

The low-hanging magnolias unfold their skirts towards the grass beds, entangled in a flirtation with the sweet scented leaves.

I cut some Queen Anne’s Lace with my pocket knife and revel in its silhouette against the dusk.

Petal pushing, pedal pushing.

This routine is one of the few I perform without fail.

A small days end respite from the unrelenting speed of time.

My bike basket fills with little pink slips of paper.
They hold a promise of something more if I choose to exchange them at the post office down the road.

(I never do take them with me, somewhat absentmindedly but more so as an act of defiance of the one mean post master in town…)

I hoist my bike up onto my shoulder and ascend the porch stairs 
1-2-3-4-5-6
and into the house.

I run upstairs to my computer, where I can record my thoughts faster than any other medium.

My feet are so hot I start to pull off my boots (because I wear boots year round…) but I’m afraid I’ll lose the words so I stop half way.

Typing feverishly with one boot on and one boot off.

“Are you awake?”
He asks.

“Yes but I can’t talk right now.
I don’t want to lose the words I just found.”

Goodbye 2016

so i know this isn’t a right-on-time New Year salutation, but as 2017 came to us on a Sunday, and i try to limit my screen time especially on Sunday’s, i wasn’t feeling up to writing this then.
plus i needed a little bit of time for sinking-in and mulling-over of some of the following.
this might get long, but such is the way of my heart, so bare with me.

i have felt more me this year than i ever have before.

a friend and i have this joke “you're more you than you've ever been” which comes about when we feel content, we’ve had revelations into our innermost workings, or breakthroughs in regards to external issues.

and that might sound trivial to you in a cliche millennial-generation-find-yourself sort of way, but honestly it’s how i feel. 

it’s the summation of what this year has been, and what i think will continue for me into 2017.
being more me now than i've ever been.

i think the following has a huge part in the making up of that whole...

—my recognition of who my people are. who i can trust consistently in times of trouble, in times of joy, in times of in-between. who i can trust with the deeper and bigger pieces of my heart. having these people close and vocally stating to them, and myself, their value in my life did something to me this year in the way of my contentment and grounding that i’m not sure i’ve ever fully achieved or recognized in past years. having persons, a "tribe" if you will, is so essential to a healthy wellbeing.
i am so forward-and-backward-and-all-the-way-around grateful for mine.

—my acceptance of who i am. quite a vague statement for a very in depth realization, but i am going to leave it at that.

—my stepping out of a box i-and-others had built up around myself. in regards to my abilities, expectations, assumptions, limitations... all of which, imagined or not, smothered the person i was made to be. i'm still learning to shed the darkness of this box, but i'm seeing so much more light now than i ever have before.

—my learning to practice mindfulness. recognizing how and when i was fixating too much on the past or the future and not being present---> the most important place of the three to be.

—my intention and continuation of having a 'slow living' lifestyle. in so many new ways. which keep evolving and changing, but as a whole have made up so much of my mindset in regards to so many important pieces of my life this past year. which has only changed me for the better.

in addition to those key revelations and learnings, my vision for the year list (or goals/resolutions list if you will) was the shortest i think it’s ever been. 
i kept reaching to add more, tack on extra and additional, but it felt so forced that i kept erasing and deleting and cutting back again.
simplifying has been a theme of my year as well and it seems even subconsciously i've taken ahold of it in more ways than i originally had realized.
to give you some perspective, New Year’s lists of the past have had categories.
i’m talking headers with subtext, comments and sub-goals. which is all well and good but when it comes down to it, most intentions and desires can usually be summed up in a few words, if not one word.

and so, after looking at my humble little list, i realized the theme for my year (as mentioned on instagram the other night) is....

to create  s p a c e

to stop doing things out of obligation
to let go of things that weigh me down
to cease doing things that make unhappy

you would think that something of that sort would be glaringly obvious and not so hard to halt the doing of, and yet we get so caught up in routine and should do’s and the comparison game and obligation and, more often than not, downright fear that before we know it we’ve woven this tangled web that we aren’t sure how to get out of. 
it’s especially hard when those things have become habit. 
it’s maybe even harder when those things are related to money, as money is a necessity in this world we live in because, well, we have to eat... at the minimum.

and so the last quarter 2016, because i was starting to have somewhat of a quarter life crisis, involved me figuring out what those things were.
what i needed to change.
and, once i did, being brave and proactive about starting to let them go. 
again, i know that's quite vague, but more will probably come out about this as the year progresses and i figure things out.
however right now i'm not able to talk about it because i'm still somewhat in the midst of the figuring-out.
and if there is something i've learned time and time again (because for some reason i need to repeat mistakes excessively MULTIPLE times before i actually learn...) about a phase of this sort,  is that when i share something too soon, it can often change the once positive outcome into a negative one.
i've learned to share and be open once my healing and wellbeing isn't dependant on others reactions to what i've shared.
once i've moved past it.
once i've figured things out.
once i'm solid again, no longer shakable.

because when you share things too soon, even with the most well intending of parties, especially people who don't know you deep down all the way (see first point in list above), unwanted, unwarranted, confusing, misleading advice and opinion is often given in the midst of your journey. and if you invite too much of it, focus too much on it, and start listening to the outside voices more than that of your inner voice, you can step off the path and your journey becomes longer and harder.

so. 
all of that to say. 
i'm headed in a new direction.
i don't fully know what that looks like yet. it might not look that different to some of you. it might look radically different to the rest of you. but that's not really what matters because it's my journey and i'm the one who's a-walkin it.

so here's to all of our journeys this year.
i'm not going to hope that your paths are smooth and straight- for it's the wrong turns and bumps in the road that often make us into better versions of ourselves and we end up being the most grateful for- but i do hope that when you do encounter those unexpected and hard times, you have good people around you to help you through them.
and if you don't: go out and find them.

p.s. you're amazing if you read that whole entire thing.

p.p.s. i was contemplating summing up my year in a list.
a “year in review” if you will, as is my ritual. 
however, as i am one who’s always fighting against being defined by the things i do and people’s perception of that and being summed up in a list of accomplishments (or lack there of) i decided to refrain. and, also, because the value and whole and looking back on a year and all of it's trials and triumphs cannot be adequately expressed in a bulletpointed list.
 

Intimacy Lost

it’s a thing we downplay.
linking our souls to another’s.
for that is what you’re doing when you willingly join the intimate dance of a relationship.
when you choose to be vulnerable, a consistent kind of vulnerable, with another person.
because it’s a kind of shared intimacy that you only experience with one person at a time. 
sometimes even one person in a lifetime— should you be so lucky.
it’s an experience that often escapes words.

to show yourself, all of yourself, to another person in such a way, i don’t know that there’s a braver thing you can attempt as a human being. 
i’ve only truly, fully, done it once.
and it was something i took years to recover from once that intimacy was broken.
it isn’t a rare thing, most of us have been to this kind of depth with another soul. it isn’t always romantic either. for there are many ties that bind, and not all are made up of one kind of love.
and yet, we scoff and scorn the overwrought heartbreak of those of us who’ve gone there and have to come back.
we encourage the pushing-under-the-rug of the emotions and the reckless-quick-remedies of the sloppy mending of denied broken hearts.
we roll our eyes at the repetition of admonished pain, and tearful late night calls of confusion of the once-again laments of “if-how-why-when’s”

it’s not encouraged, this kind of process of grieving.
“get over it”
we say.
“there are more important things to focus your energy on”
“they don’t deserve your tears”
“it happened, but it’s in the past, let it go”
“there’s someone better out there for you”

but a healing is in order to properly let something go.

to let something go fully, you have to know where all of the pieces are.
otherwise you’ll continue to find them, scattered about, probing you back into the pain of a low-light reel of experiences past.
no, you have to gather all of the pieces, examine them, understand them to the best of your ability, and those you cannot, you come to terms with. 
and then, once they are all in your arms, once you have grieved a thing once whole, you release the pieces then, and only then. 
for prematurely doing so isn’t a full healing.
drowning the pieces with tears and whiskey doesn’t help (though for a night or two in the interim it might…)
throwing the pieces off of cliffs and into seas doesn’t help
trampling the pieces under your rage and fury doesn’t help.
running away from the pieces doesn’t help either- though that is the one most often tried.
it’s in the gathering, the cherishing, the knowing, of each sacred piece, of each experience, each memory, each circumstance in which you were brave. 

you were raw

you were open

you were honest

you were daring

you were loving

you were you

and celebrating that. 
celebrating the fact that you were a strong enough being to do that, to be that, to trust like that but that now, your strength is needed in a different way, it’s needed to let go.

that is the remedy for intimacy lost.