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.

n.i.c.

it's the first time i really felt sad.

i've missed things. i've missed people. oh i've missed people. i've missed mexican food and to-go boxes made of compostable material instead of styrofoam. i've missed walking instead of driving. i've missed people that not only eat, but know what kale and arugula and quinoa are. i've missed reusable water bottles. i've missed my school and all its wonderful, honest, involved parents. i've missed a mean temperature of 67. i've missed my mom and dad being a drivable distance away. i've missed making actual money, feeling valued for what i'm working so hard to do. i've missed knowing where i am, being able to summon a girlfriend for a beer in a matter of moments, visible water from any perspective, people filling the cherished scarcity of outdoor space, infinite hugs per day, and simple familiarity.

there are many, many things to miss within this move, having made such a big change.

there are also many, many new and incredible things i relish about being here on a daily basis. some of which i've enumerated, and others i quietly cherish.

mostly, i love nic. i keep sitting down to write about that and i feel silly almost somehow. i feel overwhelmed by it. i feel obnoxious saying it. i want to say, i stand at the end of the bed or the counter at 8:09 am every morning and still feel mushy and transparent and totally encompassed as i kiss his stupid face that spent the last 30 minutes singing some obnoxious song on repeat at full volume, while making me breakfast. that we bother each other like we're either eight years old or eighteen years married. that sometimes i pick fights, because i'm crabby or sad about something else or scared about loving someone real and all the way for maybe the first time and that makes me totally, utterly panicked. that we're both kind of, totally lost, but i still would never, ever choose anyone else to be lost with. that sometimes i come home after a terrible day at school and cry and cry and make nic feel like it's his problem, because i've decided the problem is definitely totally him, since he's the only thing i actually love here, and instead of chastising me, he says, let's get out of the house you silly girl, and that's all i ever needed. 

that i love the way we communicate, even when we're upset with each other. i love his big hairy face and the slightly less big clean face that hides underneath. i love his always perfect body temperature, his endless ideas, his music choices, his rants on anything from racism to theology, his coffee, his insistence on taking the perfect picture. i love the silly dance he does to make me laugh. i love his buns. i love that he makes me breakfast and dinner every day. that after he does it, every cupboard is open and the floors and counters are covered in debris, but whatever concoction he made out of the almost decomposed scraps i stock the refrigerator with was so worth it. that he does something funny until it's so annoying that it becomes funny again. that he can admit when he's wrong. that he kindly tolerates that it takes me twenty times longer to much less gracefully admit when i was wrong. that i'm wrong a lot and he still loves me. that he loves me.

it feels good to be loved and seen for who i actually am.

i mean, i also have plenty of complaints. i complain all the time. i bitch and moan about things like we've been married a hundred years and i am the queen of female perfection, deserving of all things just as i want them, exactly when i want them.

i make cartoons like this, illustrating the apparent misery and discontent that is my life:

i'm a handful and i know it. 

i'm really lucky to have found a person i can see myself being myself with-- in whatever future incarnations that self might entail-- for a very, very long time. i can see myself loving and complaining about nic for several lifetimes and i'm thankful for that.

you know what? i started writing to write about how sad i was. because i was feeling pretty sad. i miss something, not that ever even really was, but something i'm looking for. i'm missing some future thing that involves elements of my past, but is definitely not my past. that's all very vague. i was feeling vague. sad. 

i'm just missing direction and satisfaction and fulfillment and drive in so many facets of my life.

but not with nic.

i started writing to moan about those things and then i ended writing about what i loved and appreciated and now i don't feel sad anymore. what a surprising turn of events that gratitude allays our discontent.

i was going to try to loop back around and fulfill the opening of these words with subsequent words about how sad i felt, but now it would be inauthentic so i won't. i thought about editing them out entirely and just leaving those words about nic, but then it would lose what's so great about this teeny moment of my life.

it's an analogy for my current life experience. it's hard. and i complain about it. and i'm sure i'm miserable in certain ways. i'm sure that if you asked what i needed, i would look down at the floor in the other direction and pathetically mumble, everything.

but then i look at what i've actually got, instead of longing for those that i want. and what i've got is pretty damn good. nicholas b kaniasty, you're pretty damn good. and i love you. you have a stupid face and a big, warm heart and you make me totally crazy and i love you. and you know it. i look at you and smile at 8:09 every morning and you know it.

you say, "you've got it bad."

and i do.

this is what i've got and it's good.

i've got it bad and it's good.

"of course you like that one. it's so generic." -nic.

meridian.

i first met patrick upon visit number one to louisville. visit number one was, of course, also visit number only, keeping in line with the alacrity with which my entire relationship with nic has unfolded.

this will sound silly, but i moved as much for patrick as i did for nic.

let me back up.

i moved, because i was immediately and emphatically in love and wanted to indulge that love. follow it, explore it, magnify it, ground it, give it space to be real and mundane and everyday. i moved, because nic lived here and i lived there and the distance between here and there was far too much. i moved, because i wanted him and was not content to have anything except for exactly what i wanted.

yes, of course all that was true. it still is.

those reasons were the impetus, the romantic version, the beautiful and daring story.

but then there was also what was underneath. the need to move that had long since been in place. the routines i'd created that satisfied what i thought i needed, what people expected. the stress i felt day to day. the franticness with which i was living. the feeling that my body was slowly, but certainly retaliating, becoming achy, sore, strained, decayed.

after spending almost an entire month unable to sleep or move my neck, losing the ability to rotate my right shoulder, and lamenting my ever-clenched jaw and subsequently lopsided face, it was very evident that as much as i loved san francisco and wanted to hold onto all of the joy and love i had there, that ultimately it-- i, rather-- was becoming insurmountably unhealthy. that i needed to uproot the routine and find something more sustainable.

skip to visit one and nic taking me to meet patrick. patrick is an acupuncturist and one of nic's best friends. i had heard plenty of almost mystical stories about him prior to meeting him.

i was skeptical.

not about patrick as a person, but about the idea that he was even one small part as intuitive and capable of healing as nic depicted. i am more than willing to indulge romantic ideas-- ideas of the universe working intentionally for us, ideas of synchronicity, celebrations of joy and love and redemption and the resilience and ultimate goodness of human beings. these are all things i genuinely believe in, absorb, try to emulate.

and yet, despite the liberalness of my beliefs, i'm doubtful. doubtful about people that laud the amazing healing power of acupuncture, of herbs. people, who ask about my sign or my birth hour. people, who want to feel my pulse and ask about my poop. it's not that i haven't partaken in it, because i certainly have. i've been to the acupuncturist plenty of times. it's just that i'm not completely sold.

i believe, wholeheartedly, in the healing power of the belief of healing power. that efficacy goes hand in hand with expectation. the placebo effect, if you will. clearly there's a term for it, so i haven't unearthed something revelatory here.

it's taking me forever to get to the point.

the point is that, patrick undid all of that.

i walked into meridian acupuncture and said my requisite cheerful hi, nice to meet you! upon being introduced to patrick, and he replied, "cut out dairy."

no hello. no participation in social niceties.

i didn't quite understand him, excuse me? and so he repeated, "cut out dairy."

being a girl, who basically only wants to ingest various forms of carbohydrates and cheese, i was reluctant to actually hear these words and probed him for more information. he asked me a series of questions about my health and bodily functions that rapidly clarified that he, without any prior contact or conversation with me, knew exactly what my body needed and had been doing. it was vaguely uncomfortable, but also somewhat relieving to be seen in such a way.

we talked briefly and i asked, anything else? to which he, terrifyingly accurately replied, "yes. don't hide behind the laugh."

this, of course, made release an uncomfortable hide-behind-the-laugh laugh. because, simply, this person knew more about me in three minutes than most people know in three years. people think i'm joyful and blissfully happy, and i am. i really really am. but underneath that, there's anxiety and discomfort and a lot of cheese that apparently making me really unhealthy.

he said i had a long way to go to be healthy, but i wanted lots of pretty babies and i could get there if i wanted it for myself and for them.

i went back to san francisco and talked about nic and how i loved him.

and then i'd talk about patrick and how he'd seen inside me.

when i decided to move, i said, patrick will fix me.

fast forward to now. i've lived here, inexplicably, over three months. on saturday, i finally, finally went in to see patrick. it's easy to wait. it's easy to wait when things are only minorly uncomfortable. we acclimate. we come to view them as normal. we corrode, slowly, gradually accepting, integrating each small pain or limitation into our daily life until we barely notice anymore. we come to allow discomfort as the standard.

we wait until we're so far gone, until something climactic and terrible happens, to attend to ourselves. we wait to fix what's totally broken instead of working regularly to maintain.

i refuse to do it anymore. i refuse to be unhealthy. i refuse to wait to be so broken that i have no other choice than rectify things.

so i went to patrick. i walked into meridian and it was more beautiful than i remembered. it was serene. quiet and warm. the walls lined with glass jars, filled with unfamiliar things. it smelled like earth.

patrick and i sat down on either side of a bed and he said, "complain to me."

and so i did.

my neck.
my shoulder.
my lower back.
my stomach.
my jaw.
my head.
my stupid, anxiety-ridden, worried, busy head.

he listened and asked questions. and then he told me. he told me things it felt like i'd always known. i didn't know them, but once he said them, they seemed so evident, so irrefutably true, that it seemed certain they'd always been in my head.

they were many and i, despite all my words, am incapable of capturing all that is the wisdom patrick gently and casually revealed to me, but the salient parts were this.

i am an earth person, and the earth person is governed by the stomach and the spleen. my actual stomach is incredibly uncomfortable and dysfunctional. my emotional stomach is as well. he said, "this is literally a problem of digestion." as in, both the way in which and the kind of food i am ingesting, and also the way in which and the kind of emotions i am ingesting. the way i'm processing things is off. and my body is retaliating. it's manifesting as worry and stress and an unhealthy body.

i need to reset.

he assured me he can help me reset. redirect energy. encourage movement and absorption. but that i'm also responsible. for what i'm putting in. i'm supposed to eat warm, cooked food. no dairy. he was understanding that this all would take time. it takes time to change habits, to edit. but i feel absolutely certain that he's right and my intention to have a long and healthy life makes me want to make those changes.

he poked me with needles.

he said, "these are going to be terrible."

they were terrible.

i've had acupuncture before and this was more terrible. it felt like every punctured part of my body was radiating heat and pulsing with pain. tiny, rhythmic waves of pain, radiating out in ripples from the source. but also that kind of pain you can tell is necessary. that kneading of knots. that massaging of clots. a loosening. breaking up what has become congested.

i throbbed.

and then it was over. patrick unpinned me, hugged me, and sent me away.

he said it will take time, but it will be worth it and i will be so much better. and i believe him.

i feel better even just knowing i believe him. it feels good to believe. to allow myself the space to reset. to have people to help me.

i'm in louisville now. i am three months into louisville. and it will all take time. but it will be worth it and i will be so much better.

life is so much better.