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.

to beth, on her 31st birthday

somewhere in the course of the last decade, i made a sort of arbitrary promise/ prophesy that at 32, i would be at my peak. which is not to say that anything after would be a decline, but rather, that i would reach total excellence and simply coast along, blissfully immersed in my own awesomeness.

i said it mostly in jest, much like i often talk about how i say silly life actions define me as, finally, a woman. yet still the idea has stuck with me. my own humorous promise echoes in my head: 32 will mean something. it will be some birthday of reckoning.

inexplicably, i am now only one year away from this promised peak. it used to seem so far away.

tomorrow i am 31. tomorrow i am one year away from the peak.

i tell nic and he says, without hesitation, that i'll be pregnant at 32. that that's what peaking will look like for me. not the successful career and a fit body and the hopefully less lopsided face, but being swollen with baby. i can so easily see myself, padding around in the heat with a baby in my belly, ready to finally care for and love my own little creature instead of always someone else's. i can see it. i like it.

i can also guarantee that when i developed my peak prophesy at 22 or 23,  i definitely did not imagine a pregnancy peak.

this is what i am slow in coming to.

to beth, on her 31st birthday,

life is not what you expected.

there's no way i could have imagined this. 

let me be clear: i'm not pregnant, nor am i planning on/ working towards/ trying to coerce nic or myself into any sort of future pregnancy (for now). all i am saying is, really, truly, life is not what i expected.

and i am so gloriously, wondrously thrilled by that realization. i am so grateful for the picture of a pregnant birthday as a beautiful one. that something so filled with responsibility and weight could seem like the best possible thing. 

i'm grateful that playing cards and a shared beer is as satisfying to me as my previous wild nights out. i'm grateful that saturday can look like painting the shutters for the third time and pulling humidity-loving wild mushrooms out of the mulch. i'm grateful for cold homemade onion rings on a too small table with sisters on the front lawn. i'm grateful for after dinner walks through the neighborhood and good coffee as our indulgence. i'm grateful for a boy, who sleepily pulls me back into bed for second snugs in the morning, even when touching skin is almost too hot to bear. i'm grateful that a newly fixed fan and a bright planter box of flowers are the best gifts. 

i'm grateful for things that aren't working, for this new place that's making me assert who i am, what i want, and what i believe. i'm grateful for people that make me work. i'm grateful when i fall in yoga, when my body's sore, when i don't have enough time to get things done, when i have to wait a little longer than i wanted. i'm grateful that i get frustrated regularly and have to find ways to change my perspective, because no one is going to fix things for me. i'm grateful for things that are messy and hard.

because it is all teaching me to just be where i am and love what is.

i believe that peaking might look like being happy with exactly where i am on may 30, 2016. precisely wherever, however beth loster is at that particular moment. that the peak looks much less like physical, environmental, or emotional perfection, but rather the confidence that imperfection is just as acceptable. that where i am is right, because it's where i am.

i am eking towards it now. i'm doing the work.

it feels good to work.

i get tired. i slip in and out of my direction, my confidence, my grace.

but i'm moving in the right direction.

i am moving in the direction of what might appear to be mundane, but what feels much more like strength, stability, surety. 

it is the antithesis of the on the road mentality. i am not mad. i am not mad to live, mad to breathe. i am finally descending from the madness and finding the rhythm. i am abandoning the chaos that has defined me for so many years and slowing down.

i am slowing down.

i am slowing down.

i'm peaking.

i am letting myself find a peak by stabilizing my base, by starting at my roots, by giving myself a place from which to grow. i am beginning to feel, for the first time, like my feet are on the ground. what a wonderful gift to myself.

happy birthday to me.

"most people have no idea how good their body is designed to feel."

nic and i are coming to the end of a month without refined sugar or alcohol.

i also made a promise to myself to eat (for the most part (my tiny realistic caveat for myself)) things that occur in nature. i didn't want to omit fruit or oil or nut butter or other things i deem delicious and necessary for life, but i simply wanted to eat things that exist in the actual world. preferably single ingredient things, but at the very least food with ingredients i recognized as food items. no maladextrose number 259.

[image 1: trip one of 87129 to the grocery store this month, 

plus a visual of my life savings, before ingestion]

several people, who knew i was embarking on such a sadly daunting (for me) adventure, have repeatedly asked me throughout the month a. if i am still on the wagon and then, subsequent to my yes answer, b. if i feel nonstop incredibly amazing.

i definitely wish i felt nonstop incredibly amazing. that i could aver that removing those two very toxic elements from my life had dramatically altered both my body and well-being. and, while i'm positive they have from a health standpoint, i don't feel or look so amazingly different.

now that i've said that, i realize it's basically not true. i have, for the first time since i can remember (it has surely been more than ten years) slept through a handful of nights, without waking up to pee, readjust my pillows, blow my nose, fish around for ear plugs, sleep eat or do any of the other weird, neurotic things i've been known to do at night. i do feel like i have more energy. i have seen changes in my body. i feel stronger. and i find a strange amount of comfort and power in saying no to things that i would have previously succumbed to.

please reference: me, eating three donuts one morning immediately upon arrival at school after eating breakfast at home.

so yes, i do feel different. but i don't feel like some pinnacle of vibrancy and health.

but the good news is, i'm trying and that, in itself, feels best. i am trying to take care of myself instead of asserting how impossible it is to take care of myself. 

i am struggling to not obsess over the number on the scale, because if i'm running every day, not eating too much and eating healthy foods, going to the gym or workout classes regularly, and generally winning at life then WHY AM I NOT A MODEL?

yes. i'm working on letting that go.

i'm working on taking care of myself for the sake of taking care of myself and living a happy, healthy life. i've been waking up early to meditate, drinking tea, stretching, slowing down, eating with deliberateness and awareness and doing all the crunchy, hippie things that once upon a time made me nauseous to even hear.

which leads me to the second item i've been asked, which is if i plan on drinking and eating sugar once the month is over.

i am certainly not planning on staying up til 12 am, february 1st, so i can guzzle bourbon and crush some cake. i will likely drink a beer on superbowl sunday and, more likely than not, it will not make me feel amazing. or maybe it will and i will wonder why i ever for a moment stopped ingesting the pure bliss that is craft beer. 

i will always love beer. i will always love sugar.

because they taste amazing.

i will definitely eat a donut again and i will definitely drink a beer again.

but what i'm ever so sloooowly approaching is the realization that things that are momentarily gratifying are not always worth it. which i, of course, knew, but am just now beginning to grasp in reality rather than just in theory.

i won't be able to abstain for a month, achieve a perfect body and mind (which i am soooooooooooooooooooooo far from anyway), and then revert to old ways.

the last two days, i went to a training for school. we were learning about a program that uses physical exercises to activate children's vestibular sense. aka the inner ear. this woman started out as a reading specialist and realized children were struggling, because their eyes and ears were not working to process information in a way that even made it possible to read. their eyes weren't focusing; their auditory input was all wrong; they couldn't even begin to process information efficiently enough to make sense of anything on a page.

she basically said we're not making our kids work hard enough. we cart them around and strap them into 8000% security items that don't allow their bodies to move an inch and then plop them in front of tvs and ipads. they're doing plenty of looking around, but their bodies aren't connecting what they see with motor skills and everything's ending up a disorganized, sloppy mess. 

so she's created a series of physical exercises to challenge their bodies, stimulate and build strength in the inner ear, and in turn unleash an amazing ability to process information that leads to better academic, social, and behavioral performance.

this is all semi-extraneous information, which i'm mostly sharing because it was interesting. but i'm thinking about it, because many people in the training asked, how long do they have to do it until they're better? 

as in, when can they stop?

as in, how long do we have to exercise until we're fixed?

which was ludicrous to me. because i realize it's not sustainable to have a kid doing a jelly roll on the floor, then cross lateral knee touches, then a bean bag toss, then a balance beam every day of their life so they can continue to excel at reading, but the idea, the action of keeping your body in motion to maintain physical and mental health-- that doesn't have an expiration. you can't do it and then you're fixed.

you have to work and work and work and work and work and work and work and then you die. 

you never get to stop working.

you have to constantly take care of yourself.

this is what's amazing to me. this is what i think i am just finally arriving at, at age 30, end of january, almost six months into living in kentucky.

i have to take care of myself. i am the ONLY person that is going to take care of me.

people can love the shit out of me. they can support me and hug me and encourage me and stand beside me and write me beautiful letters and tell me beautiful things and give me everything i ever wanted, but at the end of the day, it's my mouth chewing up the food, and my legs choosing to sit down or keep climbing.

i cannot lament, complain, rationalize, excuse, or love my way into health or out of the responsibility for it.

i can sneak snacks when no one's looking and it doesn't make me healthy. i can tag myself at 24 hour fitness seven days a week and it doesn't make me healthy. i can begrudge people, who get what i think i deserved, envy people, who look how i'd like to look, condemn people, who live in ways that i deem improper, complain about all the things that are keeping me from living the kind of life i might even begin to find satisfying, but it will fix absolutely fucking nothing.

my life is a choice. i am the only one, who makes the choices. and i have got to choose for it to be good.

i have got to wake up early to sit and think about what i'm grateful for for fifteen minutes. i've got to pause for a cup of tea for a minute instead of rushing to look at my phone. i've got to pack a lunch the night before, so i don't cram cheez-its and diet coke in my mouth when i'm crumbling from hunger at school. i've got to spend money on real food. i've got to run or walk outside on my lunch instead of sitting in the break room, griping about what's wrong. i've got to go to the gym, when i just want to put on sweatpants and watch tv. i've got to keep pushing. i've got to say thank you for what i am and have and can become. i've got to try and try and try and work and work and work and then i'll die and it will have been the best life.

i am the only person, who can take care of me. that is true for my body and my heart and my soul's health.

i think i actually just realized that today, which is why i'm writing all these words.

i am entirely responsible for myself.

I AM ENTIRELY RESPONSIBLE FOR MYSELF.

it took me thirty and a half years to realize it.

shit.

here goes nothing.

write me something.

every year for Christmas, my dad asks me for the same thing. 

write me something, he says.

this year, despite always knowing what the answer will be, i asked, and he responded, write about moving to kentucky.

i'm flattered, always, that he asks. that his favorite gift could simply be just the words from my head. but there's also a selfish twinge of wishing he'd ask for something easier. that instead of the time and energy of words, he'd ask for a book. or tongs for the grill. or a pine candle. something i can order off amazon, the lazy voice in my head requests.

but that's not what christmas is. it's not an exchange of internet orders in vaguely comparable amounts. when i can, i like to buy things local, thoughtful, so overly relevant and perfect that sometimes it nearly becomes impossible. so i hush that lazy voice and thank my dad for wanting the things that take time and effort and love.

this year has taken effort and love. louisville has taken effort and love. i mean that in the best way. i needed it. i needed to try. needed to do something other than drifting along in the amalgamation of things that had developed into a good, but ultimately unsatisfying life over the last 12 years in the bay area. i needed deliberateness. i needed to chose. and i did it.

i'm not sure how to describe it, if it's even really possible to write about the move as a whole. i've still barely realized it's true. now, almost six months later, i have moments where i say to myself, i live in kentucky. and i laugh.

and i laugh and i laugh. 

it's both strange and wonderful how quickly you can choose a new life. it's new. it's also very the same.

let me first clear this up. louisville is wonderful. louisville is a big, busy, colorful, changing, dynamic city. i do not live on a farm. all people know seem to know about kentucky (myself included really, before i came here) is the derby and fried chicken and bourbon. i said i was moving and most people just said, fried chicken?

not even a complete question. they'd just look at me blankly and utter those two words, as if offering something vaguely contextual might start the conversation they couldn't even think how to begin. that was their only understanding of kentucky as a state. why would someone move there?

i can't say much for kentucky as a whole, because i honestly haven't seen it, but louisville is awesome. it is many of the things i love about san francisco, but in the process of becoming. it's music and carefully crafted food and beer and coffee. it has tons of museums, sweet little shops filled with handmade treasures, and the best chocolate chip cookie i've ever eaten. it has people with ideas; parking lots turned into a weekend event space with food trucks and outdoor movies, free weekly concerts at the waterfront during summer, festival after festival, the best antique shops and flea markets, magbooth and its free photo strips. it has beautiful old buildings aside sprawling, opulent homes. it has quaint little shotgun houses and an abundance of porch swings. it is filled with greenery and color and life. 

it also has extended strips of unused buildings. dilapidated areas that are creepy and unkempt. it's waiting though. not declining, but rather it's slowly becoming. instead of acupuncture clinics on every corner, there are a few. instead of locally roasted coffee every step, they're few and far between. the profusion of fast food is unmatched by the food scene's curated, sustainable counterpart. it is, truthfully, more of what i typically reject than more of what i love. there's a lot of fast food and styrofoam and waste. but it's changing. and i value that. it's not saturated yet.  if you want to start a store or a restaurant or a practice, you can. there's space and resources to become.

louisville and i are a lot alike in that way then. we're both unfolding. we're taking the space to develop into something wonderful. we're not yet done.

there's also this boy i love. 

it's wonderful. it's hard.

i love the shit out of him. we are taking our time, learning how to be together in the day-to-day. to sort out the bills and the chores. the routines. the expectations.

we sometimes have this very sobering and seemingly unromantic conversation, where we say to each other, i love you, but i could live without you.

it sounds terrible and i think many people wouldn't understand, but it's comforting somehow. it's my favorite way to have a relationship.

we're not desperate. we chose each other. we still choose each other. regularly. it's the opposite of what i was lamenting in san francisco. the routines that i had outgrown. the things that were, simply because they were before and continued to be.

nic is a constant decision. i choose him. i choose him daily. i choose him moment by moment. i look at him and think, i didn't have to do this, but i wanted to.

for once, i chose something i wanted, instead of something i felt obligated to do.

i wanted nic and i got him.

and now he's sitting here, beside me on the couch. he's reading for school and his feet are pressed up against a hot water bottle and then swaddled in a blanket. sometimes, without looking at me, he reaches for my hand and holds it for a minute. sometimes, instead of hand, i put some chopped up apple with cinnamon into his palm from the bowl at the end of the couch. i'm wearing socks and slippers and cozy pants and my clothes from the day and am sneaking heat from his hot water bottle. it's 8 o'clock. 

our life is quiet. we spend most weekends taking walks, fixing up the house, making food, binge watching netflix, playing cards, talking.

there's very little miraculous or noteworthy. i continually wait to write words down. i wait for something substantial to happen and it doesn't. i begin to write and they are the same words about how this is quieter life and i'm relishing that.

sometimes i get sad. i cry more than i should. sometimes when i get sad, i think it means i shouldn't have left san francisco. that i made a mistake somehow.

i have to consider these things. i think, if i didn't, it would mean that something was actually wrong. i think, i'm sad so i shouldn't have left.

i'm sad, i made a mistake.

but i didn't make a mistake. i'm just sad. i got sad in san francisco too. i just hadn't recently made some huge change that i could easily blame my sadness on. i got sad in san francisco, and i get sad here, and i'll get sad anywhere else i may move in life.

i feel like we spend a lot of our lives looking for the reasons we are miserable. we say, i won't be miserable when this one thing stops/ starts happening. we wait for our job to change, our situation to change, our weight to change, our hair, our partner, our backdrop, our car, our wardrobe, our financial situation to change. we are trying to wait out our misery.

but it's just our hearts and our minds. they're the ones that need to change.

so i'm working on it.

moving to louisville has given me the space to work on it and i needed that. i chose it. i knew editing my weight/ hair/ partner/ backdrop/ car/ wardrobe in san francisco was not going to create the change i knew i needed. i knew my heart and my mind needed help. i knew i could not do it there.

so now i'm here. i'm making better choices. i'm slowing down.

i moved and it seems like there should be a story to tell, but really it's just everyday life in a different background.

i moved to louisville for a change and what i got was the same girl that left six months ago. a girl in process. a girl becoming.

one of my visits home before i moved, i had a hard time. i wanted my parents to say they were happy for me, that they were glad i was going, that it was a good and right choice, that they'd visit, that they still loved me. i am the first baby to move so far away and i needed affirmation. i didn't know if it was right, even though i felt so sure i had to do it.

of course they said they loved me, of course they hugged me hard and cried a little and said they'd see me soon. but not the rest. i felt like they refused to give me the support i needed. in retrospect, i guess they probably didn't feel those things. maybe they weren't happy or sure or glad. so i cried some. a lot, actually.

and then i went anyway.

i've written so so many words. i'm spinning through a galaxy of feelings and experiences and ideas and hopes and reflections. i have not at all gotten to anything substantial.

there's a lot and there's nothing.

my dad wanted me to write about moving. clearly the above explosion of words is a much less concise way of saying: i can't. it's too much. i can't do it. i can't write about it, because i don't yet understand it. i am too close to understand it yet.

but i do know this. this what i want to say, dad. thank you for making me a girl that went anyway. thank you for making me a girl, who was brave enough to go when i was scared. who knew i'd be loved, even if you didn't love what was happening. or if you were scared too. a girl with an underlying sense of security. thank you for helping me become a girl with a good enough heart and mind to know when that heart and mind needed some serious nourishing.

thank you for keeping me moving. not my body place to place. not my job. not my wardrobe. thank you for keeping my heart moving. for keeping it fresh and healthy. thank you for making me feel always loved enough to be brave. thank you for always encouraging me to follow my heart, open my heart, and give from my heart. thank you for teaching me to be the best kind of person. 

i feel, for the first time, a little proud of the girl i am and the way i'm living my life. that's a gift you gave me. 

the gift of the possibility of a girl, who one day found her way to loving and caring for herself. what big girl dreams i am just finally beginning to realize. 

thank you so much.

some words in exchange is not too much to ask at all.