wine bar.

i'm going to open a wine bar.

i have to say it like that. i have to say it like it's real. because otherwise i'm going to chicken out.

ladies and gentlemen, i'm opening a wine bar!

i know it's coming out of left field. my life is like “babies! yoga! exercise! green food! homemade cakes! cartoons! jokes! being obsessed with my really handsome and sarcastic boyfriend and his ever evolving facial hair!” nowhere in that equation was there any mention of wine, a possible penchant for becoming a business owner, or a suggestion that i am a risk taker of any kind (the fact that i moved cross country for a boy i barely knew is misleading. that is basically the only risk i ever took, and it was solely because, as aforementioned, nic is really, really handsome).

but it's where i am right now and it's happening.

so far it's only happening in my head, so don't get overly excited/ terrified yet, but i'm in the phase where, like in yoga, a teacher says, imagine pressing down into [some part of your body] to activate [some other part of your body]. and that imagining, that simple act of focusing your mental energy into something actually ignites something else in your physical body. i'm in activation mode.

there are so many details to share, but i will start with how i got here.

it's twofold and really quite simple.

first and most obvious, i kept wanting to go to a wine bar. normally, i pretty much exclusively want to drink beer. i know a lot about beer. i enjoy beer. i could drink beer all day. but after i did whole 30 and become a totally annoying person, who generally tries to avoid gluten (except that i occasionally/ frequently have crackers/ bread/ pizza/ cake/ beer. so... i don't avoid gluten at all. except i've convinced myself i do. but my delusions are not the issue here), sometimes i just don't want beer. beer, in all its majesty, makes me really full and bloated and gassy.

sometimes i just want a glass of wine. there's wine here obviously. one can purchase wine at many places. but it's not represented in the same way that bourbon, cocktails, and craft beer are.

i have no benevolent mission to bring an underrepresented alcohol to justice in kentucky. i'm not fighting the great fight. sometimes i really just want to sit in a wine bar and have a glass of wine. and there are a few places here, which i'm certainly not going to talk shit about, because hating on your future competitors (or anyone for that matter) is tacky and gross, but none of them are just quite what i was looking for.

so anyway, i kept finding myself saying that over and over. it would be a random warm day at 5 and i would say to nic, you know what i want? i want to go to the wine bar that doesn't exist.

and we joked about starting one. and then the joke kept happening. and now i'm writing these words. that's the obvious reason for starting a wine bar: i want it, and it doesn't exist, so i'll make it myself.

but that was just item one.

item two is more important. anyone, who has trudged through my previously-written words knows my constant tale: my struggle to love myself, to feel valuable, to manage my anxiety. it's been magnified lately, specifically the anxiety. i recognize often that i'm just moving to move. i'm organizing, cleaning, straightening, shifting, tapping, biting my nails, exercising, i'm doing 14 things at once and all of them are nothing. i can't sit still. i feel like i'm buzzing. i talk about becoming a barre instructor, a yoga instructor, about joining crossfit, going for a hike, organizing the basement, repainting the hallway, landscaping the yard. they are activities that would be awesome, if the energy behind them wasn't so desperate seeking anything other than exactly the activity. but the energy is asking for much much more. i am frenetic. and it is not okay. it doesn't feel okay.

one day nic and i take a walk and he basically says that i'm running in place. i'm distracting myself.

of course, i get mad at him. i am offended, because i feel like i'm working hard at work and at home, both physically and emotionally. and when he says that, i assume he means that everything i'm doing is pointless.

but then i realize he's right. i'm stuck. i'm stuck doing the same things i've always been doing, even though i have evolved as a person. i am doing safe. i love love love working with kids, and i intend to do so in some capacity always, but i can't see myself just teaching until i die. i can't see myself barely scraping by financially until i die. i can't see myself just working for someone else, just as they've prescribed, until i die. my school is a magical beam of light in a place i thought such beams did not exist. but it's also just so safe. and i am fulfilled by it in so many ways, but then there is still this buzzing. i don't want to not be a teacher. i just also need something else.

and so part of what's hard and weird in my journey to “love myself” is that i actually don't believe for a second that i'm not valuable or lovable. when i'm honest with myself, i think i'm funny and empathetic and loving and wild and weird, in a tolerable way. i think i'm relatable. i think i'm easy to be around, and i work hard, and people actually really like to be around me. but the stories i tell myself about myself get in the way. i default to this played out, high school story that i'm awkward and terrible. i default to doubt and people pleasing. i default to feeling powerless. my mechanisms are off. i'm wired all wrong. i don't not love myself; i just don't know how to let myself operate like i do.

and i realize i've flip flopped back and forth a trillion times. one day i'm announcing how much i love myself and the next i'm wallowing that i'm a piece of shit. i get that i seem crazy. but both are true. that's the problem.

and i think, what nic was sort of saying and what i really need to access that part of me that lets myself love myself, is to just do something that's all mine. to do something where i'm not asking anyone if it's right, because it is right for me. i feel like i need something creative and unique and personal. i clearly need to move, i clearly need to get out my energy. i just want it to be for something. i want to build something. i want my effort and sweat and ideas to evolve into something i can share. i want to do something big.

wine isn't big. honestly i don't give a shit about wine.

but taking a risk and doing something that's mine is.

so this is my risk.

i have an idea for a very simple wine bar. it will be no frills. it will be welcoming and easy. it will only be employed by similarly welcoming people (read: me). i have many, many specific ideas that i will describe in time, but for now just this. wine. and also, me being me. which includes this writing.

i am going to write about it. i am going to write about starting a business, when you have no fucking idea how to start a business. about learning about wine, when the only thing you really know is how to differentiate between colors. and i am going to make my drawings part of the business too. whether they are coasters or menus or bathroom signs or all or none of the above, they will be there. because these two things, the writing and the drawing, are important to me. they are me. and i've been looking for a way to channel them and i think this really might just be the place to start. i think that i can pour a little wine and write some words and draw some pictures and it will be really way harder than i ever could have imagined, but it will be worth it, because it will be mine.

so this is my mission statement:

my mission is to create a wine bar that's not about wine. my mission is to create a wine bar that's about community and comfort and creativity and ease and a total absence of pretension. people gather around alcohol. people like alcohol. and (in the utmost responsible way) i want to use it as the place from which i can be a part of this very accessible, awesome, evolving city. i want to fill an empty spot i found and make it a vehicle for whatever else comes up. i want to make a lot of space for the creativity i've been craving so much.

okay, that's not a mission statement.

which brings me to, one more time: i have no idea what i'm doing. i don't even know what a mission statement is. i feel EVERYTHING. i feel guilty and lost and terrified and excited and weird. i feel confident and then like a total moron. i cried like fifteen times today. i feel insane.

i know you have questions too. i feel pretty confident that, if you made it this far, you might think i'm an idiot or that i've lost my mind. but i also think this is why it's important for me. i will do this not because you think it's right, but because i think it's awesome. i will override my default to gain approval and just say, this is what i'm doing.

ladies and gentlemen, i'm opening a wine bar.

to beth, on her 32nd birthday.

i reread my own words from last week, my own refrain, echoing in my head:

it's okay to love yourself.

i assured myself, again and again, that it was true.

yes, it is okay to love yourself. it's necessary even. i was sure of it.

until this tricky question finally arose, once the wonder of this tragically new notion had worn off: what does that mean?

what on earth does it mean to love yourself?

a lot of cliché answers came up at first. things like: taking time for yourself, allowing space for relaxing, nourishing yourself, appreciating your own value and accomplishments. the things that kept coming up for me were all of utmost importance, but they were all things i've been doing. they were the symptom management tools, the external manifestations of a person, who ostensibly loves themselves. but that wasn't enough for me. i wanted to get at the root of it.

what is at the root of self love?

i asked myself again and again.

i read some poems. they always hold truths for me. i read some pema chödrön, looking for the same. i asked some of my friends. they had similar ideas to my own initial musings. all of these things held small kernels of it for me, but none of them really resonated.

but then, in one short email from a parent at school, it finally made sense to me.

the parent was hoping i'd be her daughter's teacher next year, because i was thinking of moving from my magical, ever-shifting puzzle of a teaching job to a regular classroom next year. after much deliberation, i decided to stay and keep on puzzling. she asked, in passing the other day, whether i'd be moving, and when i told her i wasn't, she was pretty heartbroken.

we exchanged some emails later in the day. she wrote some very kind things about why she hoped i'd be her daughter's teacher. i wrote back, as usual, too many words, some of which were the reasons i love her daughter. specific reasons. not broad generalizations. specifics.

and when she wrote back, again, i finally understood what it is at the root of all love, for yourself and for others, alike. she wrote:

You've broken my heart all over again. Having a teacher really be able to see your child is a gift.

she wanted to know her daughter was seen. that was it.

she didn't want the best dramatic play center or the best art projects or the most rapid acquisition of the ABC's. she just wanted her daughter to be seen for exactly who she was. and i saw her.

i realized this has always been true. this is how i have always consciously sought to communicate to parents that i love and care for their children. i make a point to acknowledge some small positive part of the child's day, each time the parent picks them up. so they know. i saw them. i see them.

i know what makes them laugh. i know how they act when they're tired. i know what and who pushes their buttons. i know what scares them. i know when they're ready to try new things, to be pushed. i know what motivates them, what their default is, what they're working on, where they're testing the waters. i know what they love. i know how they move, what they like to eat, how they laugh, how long they can go. i see them.

and that resonates in people. i cannot count the number of times i have said or done something simple that shows that i see them and a parent has said, thank you for loving my child.

so i got this far and it felt revelatory.

and then, in the same day, my brother's amazing girlfriend emailed me. she had made it through my long words from the other week and kindly offered some of her own thoughts on the process of learning to love oneself. she mentioned many times the idea of "understanding who you are," which felt the same as that same idea of being seen. it is simple observation of what is.

but then something else kept emerging too. she said she didn't have one simple magical thing to say. and yet she did. it was this word, again and again.

acceptance.

it's a word that gets tossed around a lot, but when i really think about it, it's fucking huge. acceptance is defined, loosely, as receiving something offered. it is taking what is given. it is not asking for something else.

so if step one is seeing, step two is accepting.

i thought about the babies some more. i thought about how i accept them.

i mean, if we're being real, they definitely make me insane plenty of the time. after so many hours of tiny people with loud voices, saying your name over and over and over and over and needing everything and crying and biting each other and wielding sticks as weapons of mass destruction some days i'm pretty over it. but i never blame them. i can get irritated, but then i remind myself, the four year old is being four.

i do not blame them for who they are. i do not ask them to be different. i ask them to treat others with kindness and respect. i ask them to push themselves. i ask them to find the edges of their comfort zone. i ask them to cultivate empathy and awareness. but i also acknowledge them right where they are and simply ask that they find a healthy way to express that space.

if that is not love, i cannot imagine what is.

it seems so easy when they're tiny.

it is so easy for me to say, i see you and i accept you. to give them the space and grace to just be. to acknowledge that they're growing and growing can be hard. it is so easy for me to love what is clearly doing the best they can with exactly what they have.

and yet i refuse to do it for myself.

i have found what, for me, is at the root of self love. it is understanding and accepting who i am. it is not fighting what is at my core. it is giving myself space to not even be sure what that is. it is not always waiting for something about me to change. it is the certainty that where i am right now is totally fine.

i've eaten like shit the past three weeks. i was stressed and working long days and endlessly emotional. i crammed myself full of all the food i could see. i gained five pounds in less than a month. i got my hair colored and it turned out yellow. too much iron in the blood. i cried about it. my house is a mess. there are beer cans on my front lawn in a vague circle that frames the baby pool that laid outside with four adult bodies crammed inside yesterday afternoon. i am vaguely hungover. i slept like shit and i am exhausted.

i also got some really wonderful affirmations from people i respect in the last few days. i got an email telling me my job from 10 years ago still owes me $300 in wages. my loving friends are throwing me a not-so-surprise surprise birthday dinner tonight. i have the best boyfriend and i am immensely loved.

it is all of these things and none of them being expressly good or bad. it is simply where i am. loving myself means looking at it all and not insisting that if things, if i, were even just slightly different then i would be better/ more valuable/ happier. loving myself is letting myself be uncomfortable with how uncomfortable that presently feels.

loving myself means treating myself like i would treat a child. with humor and ease and joy and acceptance. it is saying, beth is being beth. and letting it be.

to beth on her 32nd birthday, today you have reached the peak. you are at the top, because you are as high as you could go today. you are doing the best you can.

and that is enough.

it's okay to love yourself.

i can't write anymore.

i can't write anymore.

seven times last year, i committed words to the page. SEVEN. once every 52 days, on average.

i used to write basically every day.

now, i get too overwhelmed by all that i want to say, by the length of the path i know it will take to get there and i stop before i even get part of the way through.

i can't read your posts, people say. the words are too thick. there's too much. we live in a world of flickers, of imperceptible flashes of information. images and colors, second long gifs looping back on repeat, blurbs, moments, fractions of moments. that's all people want. we want what can be made instantaneously, consumed in a moment, and disposed of without perceptible residue. we want ephemeral and intangible. immediate and impermanent. we want bite-size and we want it all to taste and feel amazing.

i am guilty of it too. i can't even think my whole thoughts. i get lost in the wizening pathways of my brain. i don't even care to finish my own thinking. i begin and then i get lost immediately. i divert myself to social media. i hit refresh repeatedly. nothing comes of it. it doesn't feel good. i just keep clicking and clicking. i am trying to tap away my anxiety, put my finger over the sadness and smother it with a series of insistent, tiny clacks. if i push this one more time, perhaps i will finally suffocate it all.

it doesn't work. the stories are all still there, piling up, unfinished. filled with too many words, but still never enough to tell a whole story.

the stories i begin are about my upcoming birthday, the final arrival of my self-asserted peak. the stories are about good food and exercise and the way i've made good food and exercise as unhealthy as the absence of those exact things. the stories are about nic's absence and my floundering. they're about my anxiety to do anything and my inability to let myself do nothing. they're about the endlessness with which i clean, organize, wipe down, straighten, check my phone, clench my teeth, adopt any way to manifest my anxiety that perpetuates its existence instead of challenging it. they're about how i hide, how i create reasons to say no, how i just want to be alone. they're about getting in the car, repeatedly, and the immediacy with which i cry. and how, one day, my tears match up with the rhythm of the rain and, for a moment, it feels magical enough for whatever weird, creeping sadness that's within me to at least feel seen.

they're about sadness. they're about me.

they are always, always about me.

i am aware, fleetingly, that this is maybe part of the problem. or the whole problem.

the problem is not any thing to be fixed. the problem is my attitude.

in general terms, i feel that nic helped pull me out of a terribly unhealthy place. he challenged me to be better and i rose to that challenge, slowly, but steadily. two years later, i am a person quite unlike the person i was when i moved here.

i started to write the list of how i am better, different. but i stopped. it doesn't matter. you get it. or you don't. or you don't care and you haven't even read this far, but either way it doesn't matter. it's not about the list, it's about the existence of that flip. i've inverted. i've turned myself inside out and begun to scrape out the filth that's built up inside me.

but now nic is gone a great majority of the time. he's flying airplanes out of st. louis, and i must be clear that all my misery is not his fault and i know that. he is absurdly happy and i want nothing else for him or our relationship other than exactly that. in fact, i believe it's essential to the long term well-being of our relationship. because i am understanding my current tumult to be something akin to this experience:

at my yoga studio, a good chunk of the classes have assistants. the assistant walks around from student to student and helps adjust or deepen their poses. they are wordless, walking up behind you to even out and stabilize your hips, lengthen out the sides of your torso, and then tilt their hands ever so slightly to eke your body into just a slightly deeper twist. they don't yank you. they don't push you beyond your ability. they just meet you right where you are and edit it slightly to take you just a little bit deeper, to help you align yourself just a little bit more intentionally. it is magical to feel yourself move beyond the place that felt like farthest you could go with just the smallest bit of assistance.

but a funny thing happens, often. you lean into them. you get used to the hand there. and as they gently release you, you begin to flounder. almost always at this juncture, i fall.

there is no shame in falling in yoga. it's evidence that you are pushing your limits.

but in this instance, i also recognize it as the distance between that new place the assistant showed me and the place i'm used to resting. i can get to the new place, but i only let myself get there with help. and once the help leaves, i tumble.

i believe i am now in the tumble. i don't have nic to help regulate me on the daily. i am, once again, alone with my thoughts and my neuroses and, without nic, everything is magnified. it's all just so much harder on my own.

i feel powerless. i feel weak and ugly. i feel like i have no agency, that i'm at the mercy of the many endless variables at school, that i'll never be able to support myself financially, that i'll never be in a respected position, that i'm awkward and homely, that i'm crunchy and achy.

this is the constant loop in my head. negativity and bullshit. i am fully aware that we find whatever we're looking for. i've headed out on this ugly trajectory and now all i can do is find things that affirm it.

i think the sadness comes from my unwillingness to do it on my own. i want it to be easy. i want the same, immediate satisfaction that we all want from memes and twitter and junk food and tinder/ bumble/ whateverthefuck that gives us some instantaneous ignition. some quick, saturated reminder that we are indeed alive and that alive is full of feeling and meaning.

i'm not sad. i'm just deferring to the only thing i ever knew on my own. i'm reverting to the original pose.

i'm not sad.

i believe people are inherently good. i believe we are trying our best, which sometimes, often, does not look like a lot, but it is. i believe all ugliness just comes from fear. i believe fear can be mended with love. i believe i am protected by the universe. i believe things will work out. i believe, always, i will be okay. i believe i am deeply loved. i believe in caring for myself and others.

i believe i am a little stuck. i believe i will get unstuck.

nic left for st. louis earlier today. he was home for about 60 hours and half of that i was at work. he'll be gone for eight days.

i've been putting him through it. i've been falling apart. i walked in the door from work on friday and cried in his arms. i smeared mascara on his new shirt. i sobbed and when he asked why, i couldn't answer. i feel too much and i feel nothing.

in writing this, i have small moments of clarity. instead of feeling ruled by the ideas, for a moment, i feel in control of my brain. i am making it slow down enough to commit words to paper. in that perspective, i realize how much i am putting my partner through.

i text him,

i apologize, deeply, for being a shit head, and thank you for the fact that you never throw it in my face.

nic never throws it in my face. i have had full on, raging tantrums and the next day, the next moment even, he always assures me that i shouldn't sweat it. he heard me and he understands. i'm his girl.

tonight is no different.

you're silly, he writes.
it's all good.

and then,

that's love.

i cry again. (sheesh). this time, not because i'm so namelessly sad. but because i think this is all i'm looking for, at all, everywhere, in every way. because this time i recognize it.

i am looking for love.

i believe all ugliness just comes from fear. i believe fear can be mended with love.

i just wrote those words. i wasn't setting myself up for anything. they were just part of what's swimming around in my head.

i have felt really, really, really ugly in every way lately. my spirit feels ugly. my heart feels ugly. my face feels ugly. i am deeply terrified that i will not be loved. the person that held me up has gone away and now i'm floundering, wondering if i'll still be loved.

nic loves me. i don't doubt it. i don't rationally doubt it. i often emotionally doubt it, just because i'm prone to insecurity and drama.

but that's not where this fear is coming from.

this fear is coming from the place, in which i've grown so much, in which i've done most of the things i challenged myself to do years ago, and i don't love myself any more than when i started. not even an iota.

i expected external changes to fix what was always an internal problem. i have controlled many of the symptoms but not cured the illness. i keep thinking that if i just organize my home enough or eat clean enough or get fit enough or make enough money or gain enough respect that THEN i will finally feel good, but it's none of those things. it's nothing. it's just me. it's inside me.

shit.

i am days from 32. i am days from the peak i always promised myself, even in jest. i literally just realized this all. it took me over 1700 words to get here, but i'm glad i did it.

i have controlled the symptoms, but i haven't cured the illness.
i have long since been afflicted by some silly belief that i'm useless and ugly.
it's a fear that i'm useless and ugly.
i believe fear can be mended with love.

to beth, on her 32nd birthday, you are worthy of your own love.

it's all good.
you don't have to be perfect. you don't have to not make mistakes. you don't have to make everyone happy. you don't have to always say yes. you don't have to fix everything. you don't have to apologize. you don't have to do anything. you don't have to do any one more thing than you've already done.

it's okay to have some sugar. it's okay to skip a day of exercise. it's okay to leave the mess. it's okay not to know. it's okay to be scared. it's okay to wonder. it's okay to feel wrong. it's okay to love yourself.

it's okay to love yourself.

it's okay to love yourself.

no one else can do it for you. it is your turn to hold yourself up.

stop repenting, stop apologizing, stop justifying, stop asking for more, stop trying to control.

it's okay to love yourself.

for don.

this year my dad won't say, write me something, when i ask him what he wants for christmas.

because this year i won't ask my dad what he wants for christmas.

after so many december 25ths of sitting amongst piles of crumpled up paper and ribbons, surrounded by gifts and the people i love, and feeling some uncomfortable combination of gratitude and guilt, i finally said, enough.

both as in, i'm done.

and, more importantly, the people i love are enough.

i don't need presents. yes, there are things that i want. yes, there are even things that i need. yes, i have practiced, intently and awkwardly, for many years, the art of grace in receiving. yes, i appreciate so much about gift exchanges and sentiment.

but at the end of the day, i just don't want it anymore.

thirty-one christmases later, i feel too far from the genuine joy of choosing a special thing for a special person out of any sort of real desire to do so. instead, for many years, i found myself, asking myself if i had "enough" for each member of my family.

enough?

what on earth does that mean? enough what?

did i spend enough money to communicate to someone i love that they are loved? did i strike the right balance between cost and sentiment? are there enough concrete things beneath the tree to fill their hands so they don't feel empty? what am i trying to fill? who am i trying to please? what is enough?

maybe not everyone has this absurd internal monologue, maybe gift-giving and receiving are pure and simple and joyful for them.

i applaud them! i really do.


but those neurotic person questions i repeatedly asked myself, in combination with my general feeling that we live in society far too focused on consumption, led me to that enough.

after several conversations, the family agreed to skip gifts (some more readily than others). this involved a lot of clarifications and conversations on what exactly that meant.

in the end, i don't mind what happens. my brain just needed a reset. i needed a new attitude. i needed space to not be surrounded by things. i needed less.

it keeps running through my head. that word. less.

one of my sweet girlfriends relayed the meaningful instruction of her yoga teacher, who would have them enter into a pose, and then say, now give it 30% less.

my instinctual response is: WHAT?!

i am not about less. i am about intense and all and hyperbole and excess and poles and extremes and everything very much most to the absolute max. less just doesn't really make sense to me. the idea of putting less into your yoga pose is both confounding and totally perfect. it says, stop trying so hard. stop straining. stop even worrying if you're straining. find that balance of effort and ease. you're already trying, so now, give it less.

less.

this has been a year of less.

insert, subtitle: 2015, the year of less.

i wish i could just say, it was a year of less worry and less stress. i have a tendency, as many of us do, to wade through worry and stress. to bury myself in it. but it wasn't that kind of less. it wasn't abstract and intangible.

this year of less was concrete and measurable. i put less junk in my body. i accumulated less things by consciously limiting spending. i made less plans. i wasted less. i drank less. i fought less, yelled less, consumed less, cried less, needed less.

after that many lesses, the word loses meaning. and i understand that. that it's meaningless really. that less and more are only a standard of comparison between one thing and the other. that it's relative. that less junk also means more healthy food, and ultimately is only a matter of perspective.

but for me, that perspective of less is important. because i am a girl of constant piling on. of constant yeses and accumulation and effort and energy. and this year, the idea of less became very important, because it has to do with all that i am and have and can being absolutely enough already.

i have enough. i am enough. this is enough.

and so, i will not ask for any more. i will not make a list of things i want. i will not make a list of things i need.

this is not a guilt trip. it is not my assertion of superiority over the need for things. it's my acknowledgement that i deeply feel that need at times and no longer want to indulge it, because it sometimes actually scares me, and i know that, really, it hints at bigger issues that cannot be solved in lists and things. i do not want to feed it. i want to experience being content with less.

when i think about the holidays, when i think about gifts and the things that were meaningful, i think about my sister, kate. every year, we reminisce about the year we bought each other the same small doll as a christmas present. surely our parents just bought two of them and gave one to each of us to gift to the other, but the memory lies not in the doll. i don't remember what she looked like. i don't remember cherishing her greatly.

one christmas and one set (surely of many) of matching dolls that we had. 
also beach bodies for DAYS.


what i do remember, either in actual memory or just in sharing a moment, every holiday season, reminiscing about the memory of the memory, is going to our favorite pizza parlor and talking about the dolls. it was, in fact, not a pizza parlor at all. it was an old school italian restaurant in a very tiny strip mall, across the street from what was then longs drugstore, less than half a mile away from our house. it had pleather booths and red and white checkered table cloths and walls covered in wood paneling. it was the only place we ever went out to dinner, ever so rarely, as my mom spent our youth both working and then seemingly so effortlessly making homemade meals from scratch every night.

on rare occasions, we'd go to petrini's. kate and i would share a cheese pizza and root beer, and thus, to us, it was a pizza parlor. and on some particular trip, on some particular year, we crawled under the table during dinner and whispered to each other our mutual secret: we had each gotten the other that very unmemorable, yet so very special little doll for christmas. we cherished our sameness and our secrecy. we cherished our moment under the table. we cherished our sisterhood.

and now, every year, at some juncture, we reminisce about it. every year, it is joyful and special and woven more deeply into the fabric of our story. we build upon our sisterhood and reflect upon how much it has grown and changed since the time we could easily fold our bodies into the shapes of secrets under pizza parlor tables.

that's what i want. that's what i want for christmas. i want that moment. i want to crawl under the table.

i know you can't create that. you can't force it. i know when you try to force meaningful moments they end up as inorganic and uncomfortable as the christmas presents had become for me. but i do know that, if any of those moments are going to happen, they will start with togetherness. they won't start in things. they won't be found in piles of snowman wrapping paper or satin bows. they won't be found as i scramble around, asking myself if it's enough.

because it's enough already. we have more than enough.

i repeat it to myself, a mantra. in time, it stops feeling like i'm trying to convince myself and more like a warrior cry. i am proud, satisfied, triumphant, as i speak the words to myself:

i have enough. i have more than enough.

be here with me.

i sort of came out looking like a ghost in this picture. and that’s okay. because it’s somewhat representative of the conversation that preceded it.

here’s the backstory: i’ve been making those vague social media posts lately about trying and struggling and change that make everyone crazy to read. because you really want either just KNOW what the fuck is going on or have the person keep the entirety of the information to themselves. because a tease amount of information is annoying and too obviously searching for attention. but the thing is I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. all i know is i have spontaneously cried at people's dinner tables and been unable to sleep well due to back/ shoulder/ stomach/ jaw pain and dragged my tired, miserable body half-heartedly through the days and secret eaten an entire box of sour patch kids in a bathroom during work and picked fights over corn. you know, things sane and happy people definitely don't do on a daily basis.

my mom and other loving people will run through the gamut of questions you ask a person, who seems to sort of be losing their mind: are you sleeping okay? are you eating well? have you been exercising? are you getting enough water? are you taking time for yourself? all of which i can answer with vehement YES, YES, YES. (okay, minus the sour patch kids in the bathroom. but for the most part...)

this is the part that's making my brain crazy. i'm doing it "right." for the first time in my life, i am not sitting in a dark room writing angsty poetry and crafting posters made of broken glass and magazine cut out of girls with their eyes whited-out (oh high school). i am not binge eating and binge working and binge drinking myself into oblivion (OH college). i am not going going going out and in and around so strenuously happy and energetic and alive and strong and everywhere that i was utterly exhausted and depleted (oh oh oh my lovely and taxing san francisco). 

for once i have a schedule and routines that give me some space to breathe. i eat relatively well, and even when i don't, my deviances are most often homemade ice cream or treats that i can at least control what's going into them. i barely eat anything processed and limit dairy. i go to yoga 1 to 47 times per week, hike around on the weekend, take walks after dinner, and occasionally force myself into the oppressive heat for a run. i go to bed basically as soon as it's dark outside and wake up when it's light. i drink water all day long. when i drink alcohol, it's usually to share a beer, maybe two, with nic.  i don't spend very much money, because i don't make very much money and i don't want to be in debt. i snuggle nic at night and in the morning. we make out. we laugh. i take time to write words and draw cartoons and pass my eyes over the words in books and watch a movie and bake treats for people i love and take baths and play cards and write letters and dig my hands in the garden. i just quit my job, because, a year later, i finally accepted i need a school that resonates more with my beliefs. i found a new job at a place that encompasses so many of the things that are important to me, both fundamentally and in regards to early childhood education. i am doing all the things that would indicate my life should be quite happy and content and functional.

so when i'm screaming about a piece of corn and then immediately crying thereafter, and i'm clearly not okay and i tell the people i love, they ask. they ask if i'm doing it. they ask if i'm doing the list of things a person should do to be a normal person and the answer is yes and i feel a voice screaming in my head, I'M DOING IT ALL SO WHY AM I NOT HAPPY?

i feel sure that i am losing my mind. i am checking off the boxes so why am i not happy? why am i not happy why am i not happy why am i not happy? it's pricking at my brain over and over. i can't relax. i should be happy. shouldn't i be happy? i should definitely be happy.

it feels worse to try and "fail" than it does to not be trying at all and chalk it up to life giving me back the same mess i put into it. thus i have been acting like a crazy person. the corn and the sour patch kids and the tears. and most of all the body. my body feels like it's falling apart.

i go to patrick sporadically and in desperation. patrick, my lower back hurts so badly i can't sleep. patrick, the pain in the middle of my shoulder blade that radiates to my shoulder that once led to my neck being immobile for a month is back. patrick, i'm clenching my teeth so badly in the night that it feels like i can't open my mouth. patrick, my body won't digest food and my stomach always hurts and my period blood is weird and brown and snotty. (sorry. i'm gross. but you don't mind, do you? as j fey said, "you bring out the gross in me." hopefully i bring out the gross in you too. hi j fey.)

i went to patrick's house last night, in one of these fits of deciding i needed to fix the perpetually recurring (and multiplying) physical issues that i have. and he finally broke it down. he said things i surely knew before, but i finally heard them.

my personal need to be "healthy" is not about checking off a laundry list of things a human being does to sustain a living body. my body is alive and not littered with totally disgusting things, like many americans' are. my health is reliant upon my working on letting go of the shit. letting go of worrying if things happen exactly how i wanted or expected. letting go of planning on when or how things will happen at all. letting go of obsessive attention and control. accepting ease. learning to flow.

it sounds like such hippie shit. i always resented hippie shit growing up and now i'm constantly accused of being one. i've adopted that lifestyle, but i'm doing it without any ease or grace. i'm doing it like a robot. patrick said i probably do chaturanga like optimus prime. like i'm doing this beautiful, grounding movement that helps you build strength and reset and flow, but i'm doing it like a machine. 

where is my grace? 

where is my grace?

i have no grace. i am stumbling and shrieking and loud. i am so worried about being graceful and fluid that i allow myself no opportunity to actually be it. 

i'm so concerned with the outcome of life that i am not living at all. 

i am doing so much living that i'm not living at all.

and it's making me miserable.

so i cried at patrick's dinner table. and then i, so wrongly, decided i was going to make good decisions and be easy and casual. i decided i would fix the problem with more of the problem. and then the next day, which is today, which is now, nic and i went out for a beer and a snack after work. and whatever and whatever happened and i end up mad and storming off again. because i am trying SO HARD TO BE CASUAL THAT I'M NOT CASUAL AT ALL. that i get frustrated when i fail.

we get home and i'm mad about everything. nothing nic is doing is right. he's doing everything wrong and it's his fault. we talk it out until i get to the point that it finally comes out of my mouth that i worry that nothing that i am doing is right. that i feel like i'm trying so fucking hard to make it right and figure out what i need to make life not terrible and i can't find it and it's making me crazy.

and then nic says "your asking what you need IS the problem. just be here. be here with me."

and then i cry. i cry like a child. i throw my torso onto the bed with my legs dangling on the ground and heave crying. because it's the truest thing anyone's said to me. and it felt good to hear those words. they felt like relief. it was the sentence i needed. 

i am looking too hard for it. i am looking too hard for the answers, when the answer is: stop looking.

stop looking for answers. stop looking for health. stop looking for happiness. stop looking for what's right. stop looking for the next thing. stop looking. stop looking. stop looking. i need to let my eyes glaze over. i need to stop focusing so hard on the star that i can't see it anymore. i need to look outside it. i need to let my eyes soften. i need to FUCKING RELAX. i need to not even tell myself to relax. i need to not worry if i'm relaxed or happy or okay or right and just be exactly what i am.

i need to be where i am.

patrick told me to make a plan for health. he wouldn't tell me what it should look like. he said there's no wrong plan.

this is my plan: when i'm on the bed, be on the bed. when in the classroom, be in the classroom. when i'm sad, be sad. when i'm crabby, be crabby. when i'm funny, be funny. when i'm ready to leave, leave. when i'm cold, feel the cold. when i'm eating dinner, eat dinner. when i'm writing, write. when i'm sleeping, sleep. when i can't sleep, let myself not sleep. when i'm in the car, be in the car. when i'm anxious, be anxious. when i'm disappointed with myself, be disappointed with myself. when i'm feeling good, feel good.

that's my health plan.

it's not a plan to acquiesce. or relent. or not move forward or grow or change. it's a plan to stop asking for something other than what is, to stop skipping steps, to stop fighting so hard against my experience that my body is literally screaming with pain because of how hard it's trying to satisfy all my needs at once. 

it's a plan to be here. it's a plan to be where i am. 

start where you are beth. be where you are. that is all and everything and more than i ever needed.

untitled.

sometimes, in a fit of vanity or boredom (or desperate avoidance of the studying at hand), i find myself reading past things i have written. i fall down the rabbit hole of memory and get lost in it. it is both overwhelming and lovely.

lovely, mainly, because i feel what i felt then, even if i haven't thought about it in years. i feel it entirely and suddenly, like a smell that summons the most distinct of memories. and also because i cherish myself a little as i do it. for many years, people have complimented my writing. it is maybe the one kindness i do not dismiss with such alacrity as others.

i am good at writing. i can say that to myself. 

because it doesn't really mean anything. i don't accept the compliment, because i believe it to be so true, but just because it doesn't feel like a great accomplishment. it feels like being honest, like being true, even if that true is sometimes rambling or nonsensical or filled with made-up words. i don't feel good or bad. i feel, simply, that i can usually say exactly what is in my head. that there is something about the pace and visual and physical experience of translating ideas to the written word that is easy for me. it is my speed, my setting. i don't expect that other people want it or like it or appreciate it. i simply do it when and how i need to and it feels, like a good workout, like a great relief, a rending.

and the miracle of looking at it again is that i agree with myself. i see a beth that makes sense in reflection. it is the one time i don't feel awkward or disjointed or in need of editing (even when the words clearly, definitely need editing). it feels like i've said and done and been exactly what i meant and wanted and was. and i like that.

tonight i was looking for some small thing i'd written for a job application. i was sifting through my very poorly-named personal files on my computer, clicking at random. and i came across something i wrote some two years ago, just when things were really starting to change. i was frantic, as i always was, and i'd convinced teresa to get out of san francisco with me for the weekend. we did. and we met this woman. and i wrote these words, as a missed connection on craigslist. not because i ever thought i'd find her, but because i just needed them to be out in the world.

i'm sure i've shared them before. i want to share them now.

i know i say there's no vanity in the accepting of the compliment. but of course there is. i would not be splashing my words and pictures all over the internet if i didn't want someone to see them and care. i do. i want you to see them and care.

i am vain. i am vain as the next person, only mine comes out in hyperbolic self-deprecation or celebration. i am constantly swinging.

but it's also my life mission to be so open and honest and unassuming that i might invite just one person to do the same. because i actually, truly believe that being open and honest and unassuming is the only way to make life good. i believe, yes, oh so vainly, that the way i live my life is the best way to live life! and that is both ridiculous and presumably very healthy. i want everyone to say how they are feeling, so that they understand how they are feeling, so we stop taking it out on each other and instead start creating solutions and understanding each other and relating to each other and loving each other. i am beyond idealistic.

i have qualms. i share too many thoughts and drawings and ideas on the internet. i worry about the 600 some odd friends i have on social media, of which i'm surely offending some large portion. i think about editing for content. and then i don't care. this is who i am. not in a fuck you kind of way, but simply a very unedited, compulsively share-y kind of way.

my ideas and excuses are winding off in a million different avenues. what i want to say is that i read some words i wrote and they moved me! i loved my words! because they made sense.

i like myself. i liked my words for their sheer existence and also for how they made me feel about where i am now. because my sister and her husband and sweet, exuberant babies just left and i was sitting on the bed, feeling lost and sorry for myself. because i felt untethered, distant, and very quietly out of control. because my heart was racing and i didn't want to sit or stand, or eat or starve, or study or space out, or exercise or sleep, or talk or be silent. because i couldn't find the walls for one small moment and it terrified me.

and then nic said, stop acting like a douche, you're beth motherfucking loster.

he was right. and it helped me find my feet.

i started to work. i started to study. and 50 study questions and some file-sifting later, i'm sitting here writing eight thousand words to introduce eight thousand words i wrote two years ago that i am standing in awe of, because of how far i've come since them and also how close i am to that exact person and moment that once was. they are words that make me feel like not only do i know where the ground is, but that i have roots. that i'm smart and strong and i know where my body and mind is in relation to the rest of the world.

that's what i wanted to say. sometimes it takes sixteen thousand words for me to get there, but i usually do. what i wanted to say is: i know where i am.

and i am very very lucky that when i convince myself i don't, i have someone, who will simply instruct me to stop being a douche and that's all i need to snap back into place.

chloe calls you my nic. she says, i wanna see your nic.

(the picture i sent to kate/ chloe after their departure to let her know her air hug had made me feel less sad in their absence. FANCY/ i need to brush my hair.)

i wanna see you too, but even when you're gone, even when you're 4,750 miles away, you know just where i am in the world and can help me find it too.

thank you, my nic.

without further adieu:

 the words that brought me here

or

lessons i learned in anticipation of one day loving someone, who would help me find my feet

or

(as it was poorly named on my computer)
jackie

my dear jackie,

i met you this weekend in sebastopol. it was the beginning of late; strings of white lights went on, the music got louder, and people clustered, underdressed, in circles around the happy umbrellas of heat lamp warmth. we saw a strip of space by the outdoor fire and asked if we might sit near you. you said, please join us.

you were, i imagine, in your mid to late 50's-- the most lovely version of 50's i could possibly envision. a simple black dress with a loose summer scarf. your hair, this billowy, entanglement of white, like a spider had spun, haphazardly, his proudest web about your head. your face, soft and clearly older, but looking pleased about it. like life and time had settled into your skin and you said, i welcome you.

we talked with you and your friend, alice, for the better part of an hour. maybe two. it was not a night that operated in units of time, but, rather, of conversations. we talked about our respective hometowns, about flea markets and vintage shops, about restaurants and local artists, about teaching and graphic design.

and then we talked about love.

four single women, ranging in age from 29 to lovely 50's, talked about love, how much people want it, seek it, seem to live for it, and how terribly, painfully awkward it can be to date.

you had been married. twice. two times, you thought you had found the right love, the good love, the total love-- the one that makes you promise always to another person-- and two times, it had proved not to be not as right or good or total as you'd anticipated.

when you are older, it seems the strangeness of blind dates comes in the unexpected arrival of a cane alongside the man or fifteen years to the picture presented. when you are younger, it's the unwilling guest of flip flops on a date or a total lack of politeness or class. despite age though, it's all the same. it's about hopes and expectations and the disappointment of finding what you had hoped for, simply is not. it's about letting yourself be vulnerable, when you had decided vulnerability was a terrible, terrifying thing. it's about letting things be wrong and not taking it personally when they do, and also recognizing when they are right and not sabotaging them out of fear in turn.

you were so confident, so calm. you were so much of what i aspire to be. i was in awe.

i had come, because i had to leave. because i love this city. i love it fiercely and sometimes unwillingly, because of its sheen of pretension and its growing unaffordability for the very people, who have long since made it so colorful and desirable. but it is, despite it all, vibrant, interesting, supportive, lively, and endlessly enchanting. and i love it. i love san francisco. it is my home.

but sometimes you have to leave home. sometimes my body rejects it violently and totally. i woke up friday morning and said to myself, i have to leave. sometimes i just want to be somewhere else. do the same things, but in a different space. i want to drink my coffee in a different cafe. i want to drag my feet across different sidewalks. i want to see different street names and smile at different strangers and peer into different stores.

i don't have the flight impulse often, but when i do, it's severe and relentless. i spent friday day itching, crawling, prickling with discomfort. with that feeling of sudden realization that your clothes have weight on your body and the only thing that will satisfy you, fix you, is to be completely naked. my body was yelling, be free be free be free!

my body often insists on being dissonant about whatever life is requiring of me at any given moment.

so i asked teresa if she'd like to get away and she, ever adventurous and willing to explore, emphatically said, yes.

so we drove and we didn't know where we were going, but we went and we found you.

i am glad we did.

i ask myself where that came from-- the sudden desperate need for distance from my home. the itch that crawled inside of me and expelled me from my safely swaddled nest.

and i think, interestingly, that the idea of divorce is exactly it. i get embedded. i get entrenched. for as erratic and lively as my life is, it is all variations on the same theme. it is all baby love and best friend snugs and dinners out and dance parties and casual self-deprecation. it is all that is incredibly special to me, but at some point even the special becomes routine. i forget to love it, to cherish it, and i need a break to remember where i exist within the torrent of it all.

i need to, in fact, divorce myself just a little from all that is familiar to remember where my boundaries are. what i want. what is me and what's just me in the context of this space.

i am purportedly looking for love, but maybe what i needed was just a divorce.

we talked to so many people that weekend. we talked to everyone everywhere. we learned about people's lives.

how billy's stepfather made him help install ceilings without pay for six years because he was an asshole as a kid.

how alice wants to pursue theater and is moving to ashland next week.

how her brother, davey, always gets too drunk but only smiles out at people from beneath his chin length beard and hugs strangers.

how bartender kimberly is "old and hot" and has been serving drinks to twenty-one year old billy since he was fifteen.

how micah went to a scotch and cigar party the night before and is sweating through his unexpected shift at the restaurant.

how christopher plays guitar, hand-paints signs, does not wear underwear, wears an ohm necklace, and, at 53 and self-proclaimed "beautiful," solicits unwilling out-of-towners for threesomes.

how donovan has been going through family issues that require him to frequently fly to new jersey.

how he is dealing with his sadness by trying, softly, sadly, desperately, to enchant the ladies to his left.

how those ladies are us.

i was in awe of all that everyone shared, of how lovely it was to take it in and not have to consider it all in relation to me, as i am so wont to do, to take everything intensely personally, but this time i just got to see it. witness it. hold it.

it was a curious, cherished, liberating little vignette.

i came home and ran into rita. she lives upstairs. 75 years old. we see each other infrequently, but leave little notes in communication and sometimes the homemade treat or garden flower. she is something of a grandmother to me-- always noticing when i'm sick or gone for an extended time, never inflicting judgement, but always a bit of concern.

she lets me know when she'll be gone for a day so i don't worry and can bring the paper in. she quietly raises the rent a small, allotted amount every year and has me sign papers. at my door she leaves apples, when they are ready on the tree, and then quickly thereafter her little, spongy apple cakes swaddled in christmas cocktail napkins. she never forgets my birthday and writes notes to thank me for being a good tenant. she is nurturing and thoughtful, but pragmatic. sharp. organized.

i inquired after her husband, who recently broke his arm.

and she said, i actually wanted to talk to you. he is no longer living here.

he was her second husband. two times, she thought she had found the right love, the good love, the total love-- the one that makes you promise always to another person-- and two times, it had proved not to be not as right or good or total as she'd anticipated.

my heart swelled, standing there barefoot outside, next to a woman, who moments before had sweetly exclaimed, "where are your shoes? what would your mother say?" (to which, i replied, my mother would be barefoot too. it must be hereditary), this woman, who to me has always been so staunch, so reliable, impermeable in some ways, trying to tell me calmly that her life had changed in a big way, but it clearly shook her.

and it shook me to watch sadness in someone, who is, in so many ways, integral to my feeling of home in this city, who owns the walls that surround me, but more so, creates that feeling with apple cakes and handwritten notes. i hadn't really noticed it, until it quaked. and then those words came out of me, more or less. my feelings of admiration and gratitude for such a home.

she wept a little and ushered herself inside.

and i stood on the sidewalk, looking out at this glorious city, with its tendrils of streets and excess of color and fleece coatings of fog, feeling wonderfully tiny and unimportant and i said, holy shit, life is big.

i actually muttered those words to myself.

it came upon me, all at once. the breadth of things. the magnificent, extensive arc that is the human experience. how greatly we can ache, how far we are willing to hope, how very much we want to love, how terrifying it is to do that. we can, we may, we likely will get hurt.

no. we will get hurt.

every person i talked to this weekend had been hurt. everyone's heart had, at some point, however distantly or recently, suffered injury and feared continuing because of the offense. everyone wanted more, and bravely, continued on.

and so, jackie, i have been long in getting at what i was trying to say, but am just realizing myself what it is. this is not about love. or rather, this is not about boyfriends or marriage or first dates. it is also not about divorce or heartbreak or loneliness.

it is about the talking. it is about the sharing, the openness, the willingness to be vulnerable with all people. it is about sitting on a bench with a stranger beside a fireplace and talking about your lives, because they are yours and thus they are important. it's about hearing people around us. it's about asking questions. it's about listening to the answers.

and my vehement belief that if people are kind and careful with each other that everything will be better.

because our hearts are going to break. our hearts will break a hundred times, our hearts will break a thousand times, our hearts will break and break until our bodies feel like they're going to break around them. but i genuinely believe that if we just keep talking, we'll be fine.

keep saying yes when people ask if they can sit. keep asking how people are and pause for an actual response. keep laughing about how stupidly life can unfold. keep laughing. keep admitting mistakes. keep being proud of your successes. keep caring. keep remembering that each person has a story. keep remembering that life can be truly, totally terrible, but if we share it with each other, it gets better. keep loving everyone around you. keep loving and loving and loving.

and i think we will be just fine. we will be just fine.

it was so very amazing to meet you. i just wanted to say that again. it was amazing to meet you and you reminded my heart to continue and continue and for that i am grateful,

beth

sam and the firefly

i used to read my beloved babies at mission kids a little story about a sneaky firefly. they wondered at what they were-- the fireflies-- and i did too. in 30 years of life as a california girl, i'd never seen one.

when it came time to move, we talked a lot about why i was leaving and i used the fireflies as a way to explain my need to go see the world, to expand what i knew i could know into what i actually knew, to have experiences, to delve further into the wondrous world that surrounded me.

it became a small mantra: teacher beth is leaving to find the fireflies.

it's been almost ten months. tonight, i was walking amy out of the house. it seems ridiculously late for it to be getting dark, but it's just crossing over. it's night now.

 and i saw a little light skirt across the corner of my line of vision.

i thought it must be a flicker, a sun spot in my eye.

but then it happened again. and again. and again and again. all within a matter of seconds, and i realized: they're fireflies. 

i found the fireflies.

i screamed. i leapt down the stairs. i danced in the grass. a bunny jumped through the yard too, celebrating my juvenile discovery. amy laughed at something that has been so simple, so ever present in her life, so not worth dancing over, how it was so incredible to me.

she caught one in her hand and showed me how it flickered. i screamed some more.

there's something so satisfying about this, such a feeling of completeness. i know it's cheesy. i don't care that it's cheesy. 

i found what i came for. i knew it was happening. every day i knew it was happening. every day i feel calmer, happier, more jubilant, more at peace. every day i feel more like the exuberant beth people once recognized, but without the dark undercurrent that i've claimed so long. 

oh i get sad. i get low and angry and frustrated and worked up. but it's not my timbre anymore. it's not how i talk to and about my life.

guys, I FOUND THE FIREFLIES.

i sat on the porch and watched a while. i watched them turn on and off.  i watched the tiny lights that are so much. i listened to the cars, felt the nighttime warmth that is kentucky spring, laid my head back, laughed like a crazy person, reveled in bugs that have light up buns. i found them.

i'm in the right place. i'm still figuring things out. hopefully, i always will be. but i found the fireflies.

i left to find fireflies, and one night, unexpectedly, they arrived.

and for now, i could not be happier.