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