breathing

desert stuff 🤠

Hi! If you’re reading here, you maybe read my tiny letters. I’m moving them over to substack now. The short story is that I’ve been writing them since 2014 for free (with kind donations from a group of folks throughout!) and so charging a monthly subscription fee of $10 feels pretty OK now.

The longer story is that I’m leaving an awful situation, a harmful relationship. I’m trying to make up his half of the rent so that I can stay in a comfortable living situation for a few more months until I can get my nervous system and world something closer to back together. I’m frayed. I’m fried. I’m hurting real bad. 

So: $10 a month (or $100/year, or $250 to be a “founding subscriber” [read: a living angel]) would really help me right now.

A few (maybe many?) years ago someone in there 30s wrote to me about being “too old” to start over or fix things and I, still in 20s, wrote to them about the absolute ability to start over any time and my goodness did younger me know so much more and so much better... But. If you’re at some point of starting over, at whatever age you are, please know that every version of me and every version of you, except the one being mean or sad in your brain right now, knows you can do this.

I love you.

residency day 6

I borrowed one of the cars and ran some errands and then went down to Rodeo Beach and sat and looked at the waves and thought about whether I’ve ever loved anyone and came to the conclusion of two names. I felt pretty bad about it. Came back to the houses, sat down in the library and opened notebooks from quarantine and looked right at how bad February and March of 2021 were and how one entire page just said I want to kill myself, over and over, and then ten more pages talked about still wanting to do it but not doing it, and I felt better. Because I’m not anywhere near as down now as then. I’m actually probably just a pretty normal amount of down given the last year and also the world. But I’m not in the deepest, darkest parts anymore, which were terrible—I’d almost forgotten how terrible—so there’s that.

I miss writing like this. 

When it’s warm. The windows are open. I know who I am again. I see the birds and the owl and the sand and the gravel and the rocks and the way that I am falling apart if falling apart means that you’ve decided you can no longer go any further as yourself in front of anyone else. The sun sets and I am trying to understand nothing, for once.

I got so deeply tired of pretending to be someone I am not that I set things on fire and now they’re burning and all I will do is watch them burn until they go out and I can start all over again. I’m not even interested in poking around the ashes.

For all ages and genders. (Somehow, my love for Laura Dern grows!)

Been seeing things in blue lately

self-portrait is home :)

Deep and profound moment earlier of realizing that I am 1) still deeply hurt by something that happened well over a year ago 2) not sure how to let it go 3) have been trying very very very hard literally every day to let it go 4) wondering if I will always be deeply hurt by this 5) know time is 95% of it but time has passed and I’m still just...so hurt 6) I did not realize in my 20s that everything would not forever bounce off of me 7) what if I am now just a bitter and hurt person forever? 8) if someone else said that to me, I would assure them they’re not 9) I wish I had a me in my life and I don’t 10) I am tired of being the person everyone goes to at rock bottom because they know I’ll be kind and accepting and know what to say 11) I don’t think I have that person for myself 12) I don’t know if I created that 13) I am so sad in ways that I keep saying “You are too old for this shit” to myself about 14) there is no age minimum or maximum on hurt and THAT is life 15) LIFE! 16) I would like one blissful day of not being in my brain 17) surely the person who hurt me must have some understanding of how much they hurt me 18) they don’t 19) I know they don’t 20) Possibly things get more painful with age

Perspective: 21) unfair unfair unfair 22) I am deeply loved 23) a lot of that love just lives far away

Trying to write something/anything once a day. This is how I got myself back together last time. Write write write. Whatever whatever.

I thought about the paper route my brothers had growing up today. Sometimes I’d go around with them to collect peoples’ payments for the week. We learned the whole neighborhood— who had a clean house, who didn’t, who had pets, who had mean pets, who always had payment ready because they knew we were coming, who wouldn’t pay for weeks at a time, who smoked, who was lonely. We’d get these short glimpses into their lives when they opened the door. It was such a trip as a kid. Walking from one house to the next and having a whole different experience. I loved it. We knew the whole neighborhood.

It made me happy to think about it.

I’m sometimes amazed by how much the world has changed in the last 25 years, but I guess that’s what aging is. Evolving. Accepting. Feeling around for how things used to feel. Trying to make sense of when it was better and when it was worse and, at least for me, usually concluding that it all seems to have happened incredibly slowly and, now, incredibly fast. I don’t take time for granted anymore. That’s also aging.

My favorite house on the paper route was a small yellow ranch. The woman who lived there was older and had painted a tree on the entire front of the house. She’d somehow also arranged tree branches to come out from the paneling. She was sweet and the house was always very clean and smelled good and she asked us little questions about our little lives.

I think sometimes I forget to remember nice things now. I don’t want that to be a part of aging. I’m working on it.

I feel like I have regressed 15 years in the last two years and I am working on it, BUT. But! It has also slowly been occurring to me that this is me finally really having time and space (probably too much of both, but that’s for another time) to face years of difficult experiences and emotions.

I’m not special—it’s all or at least most of us right now, I think. Some people are in it, some people are through it, and literally no one I know is doing well who is trying to ignore or blow past it. For as much as I’m slightly to completely mortified by what’s been coming up and out for me personally, I’m also trying to be wildly kind and understanding with myself. It’s a lot. Almost constantly lately. The whole world has changed, my old “coping” mechanisms stopped working, and I truly don’t have it in me to keep going, or support others going, the ways we’ve been taught to. Can’t do it. Won’t support it. We deserve a kinder, calmer, slower everything.

I took an Advil PM and I’m pretty WOOF overall, but if you’re also feeling like you’re living with old demons and trying to make peace or past with them, I’m with you and sending a hug. Only way through is through.

Ok so I have come to realize that some people never left Tumblr and it is very comforting <3

How is anyone focusing enough to do anything? I can’t focus anymore to save my life.