on realizing i have a body.

it was many months ago. we were just finishing a walk in cherokee park, when lauren, ever my confidante and digger of souls, asked something to the effect of, what information were you given about your body as a child? the question was tangential, while still relevant to the conversation at hand, and yet it stopped me in my tracks as strange question. initially, i felt certain i was given all the same information other children received about their bodies, but, as i thought, i found my brain completely empty.

i thought and i thought and then all i could summon was, nothing.

we didn't talk about our bodies.  i don't remember talking about them at all. they were neither good nor bad. we didn't name body parts. we didn't ever go to the doctor and have check ups. we never had the talk. we didn't take sex ed. even when my period began, one early morning before zoo camp of all things, i remember that it was a sort of soundless, solitary experience. i locked myself in the bathroom, shoving tampon after tampon inside of me, still with the applicator piece in place, certain that i was doing something wrong, but totally uncertain why any of this was happening in the first place. it was not that my mother didn't offer help, but more so that i wouldn't have known how to accept it. we were not a body shy family, but we were also not a body expressive family. there wasn't a lot of language surrounding bodies. as you may be able to tell, i learn and interpret through language. it's not intuitive. i need the words. and when it came to bodies, my childhood was mostly quiet.

i think fully describing the why of that would involve huge conversations on religion and family dynamics that i am, of course, not shy about talking about, but have too much to say to dive that far into things, so suffice it to say, there just wasn't a lot of groundwork laid there. i don't blame my parents for that in any regard. as an adult, it makes sense to me, but i also operate with a totally inverted paradigm with the children i teach. we talk about our bodies regularly, always taking time to notice how our actions impact how our bodies feel, what we can do to control or change those feelings, and which feelings we enjoy most and why. we talk about our bodies' differences and similarities, what fuels them, how they work, how they grow and change.

i distinctly remember being at some awkward adolescent juncture and secretly looking at one of those "what's happening to my body?" books at the library, because, i was curious. i really didn't know. and even if i'd felt comfortable asking questions, i wouldn't have known what to ask in the first place.

as i grew older, that sort of fumbling turned into a definitive decision that i hated my body. i wrote about it endlessly. i called myself horrible things. in the absence of a literal, constructive language about my body, i developed my own language of self-hatred that permeated everything i did. it became casual. it was part of me. it was what i stuffed into the place of that gaping hole of information.

not long after that conversation with lauren, i was watching an educational video on raising self-reliant children. the speaker said, "nature hates a vacuum. it fills it with whatever filth it can find." (that shouldn't be in quotes because it's an approximate quote from the depths of my shitty memory. but that was the jist.)

that quote sums up what i believe happened to my brain in regards to my body. i read that one little book at the library. i read some small factual, age-appropriate thing about a woman's body. that was my kernel of truth that anchored me in reality. and other than that, i read magazines. i watched tv. that's where i got my information. i filled the hole with filth. i read that if i wore a satin choker or used noxema acne-fighting cleansing pads, i'd be beautiful. i looked at katie holmes on dawson's creek, parading around in her perfect matte lipstick and every item of abercrombie and fitch clothing, touting awkward, subdued, bed-sharing sexuality and figured that was the life of a "normal" teenager. i flipped through delia's and saw that all bodies were a certain shape and size that was perfectly accented by slip-on platform black sandals. (if you're a 90's baby, i know i just blew your mind by reminding you of delia's. also it apparently still exists which sort of makes my head want to explode.)

it was all nonsense. it was all garbage. my entire framework for understanding my body literally came from the media. and i know (oh i know) all children can be heavily influenced by it, but i had nothing to counterbalance it. and i was also sensitive. and i also had horrible acne. and i also was slightly overweight. i was sort of predisposed to have a hard time, and a hard time it was.

i was so horrifically uncomfortable in my body for so long. so i said i hated it.  but i only recently realized, i don't think i even knew it was there. not MY body. not beth loster's body. i didn't look at it. i just blindly hated it. all i saw is that i was not katie holmes or a delia's model, and it broke my heart. i was no one. so i convinced myself i hated that absence of a human. my body became a dumpster full of shoulds, a vessel for all the unrealistic expectations created by the media. i dragged it around, heavy with disappointment.

it sounds so terribly trite. it sounds so silly.

but i have literally carried that with my some 20 plus years. and that critical teenage voice still roars in my head. she is, in many ways, my oldest friend.

i have been doing work to quiet her. i have been doing work to figure out what this body is, how it feels, what it needs. i move regularly. i try to not move in the exact same ways, so i have to pay attention. sometimes i am still and that is the hardest. i pay attention to what goes in, how it comes out, what i feed myself physically and emotionally. i talk about it endlessly, because i feel like i'm learning it for the first time. it's like learning a new language. as a child, it's easy. but now it's slow. my body resists it. it reverts. it wants to do what's easy, what it knows. but i am working hard on creating new habits.

despite my best efforts, my relationship with my health, and thus my body, has all still been very calculated and controlled. i struggle with my tendency to allow something that otherwise ostensibly seems healthy (ie. eating well, exercising regularly, etc.) become very unhealthy in practice and attitude (ie. weighing myself obsessively, panicking about eating things i see as unhealthy). so when i became pregnant, i mentally prepared myself to kind of be thrown for a loop. there's no controlling what happens now or the rapidness with which it happens.

early on, my therapist asked me how i envisioned my pregnancy. i immediately knew that i wanted to wonder at it. at the body's power, its intuition, its ease. it just grows the damn baby. we go to the doctor to monitor or have some semblance of control, but the body really does it all itself. i said to myself, maybe this is the time i can let go of how i look and focus on how i feel. i figured i could keep that in mind and let go of the concern about my body.

i was wrong.

i think i also envisioned looking like the pregnant woman in my mind's eye. i'm sure she's the adult version of a delia's model. (clearly i really liked delia's since i can't let it go.) which is to say, she's a model. she's the ideal.

and up until recently, i have just felt... fat. i gained 11 pounds in the first sixteen weeks. "recommended" is 5. my pants stopped fitting pretty much immediately, but maternity wear was unflattering too. i felt like sausage. inflated. stuffed full into this tight skin and puckered up in all the wrong places. it didn't help that i was beyond exhausted and perpetually nauseous. that roaring voice came back full force. she was telling me i was doing something wrong, that i was ugly, i was going to gain too much weight and hurt the baby, that my body would never be the same, that nic wouldn't be attracted to me anymore, that people would judge me, that i was doing it wrong. she was rattling around in my head with her tin cans banging negative thoughts into my skull.

finally,

i had to tell her to shut the fuck up.

i made lauren take away my scale.

and then i asked myself, am i healthy?

is this body healthy? am i moving and sleeping enough and nourishing myself and creating balance and exercising and taking time to be still?

and the answer was yes.

that was it. that was all it took. i had to ask my real, authentic self if i was doing everything i knew how to be healthy for my baby and the answer was yes.

it seems like women are worthy of congratulation when they are small during pregnancy. like showing late or having a small, perfectly round belly means you are the healthiest. you are superior. i am so so tired of that as the paradigm. there is no should in pregnancy. there is no way i should look or should feel. because the only person that has ever been pregnant with this baby in my body is me, right now. and i look how i look. i am doing the work and i will let go of the rest.

this is not a beauty competition.

my biggest issue with the entire world of social media, consumerism, exercise, and diet (which i say in its literal terms, meaning the kinds of food one habitually eats, and not restricting oneself to eating certain foods to lose weight) is that nearly every iota of it focuses on how you look and NOT how you feel. but looking good, or the thinnest as society has taught us to believe, isn't always the healthiest for everyone. plenty of skinny people have fatty organs or exhausted nervous systems or terrible sleep. 

we're taught to want a prescription. an easy answer. something someone else hands down to us and it makes us better. it makes us look how we want. we want a single solution. we want to try it on and make it work or give up entirely. we want someone else to tell us how to be fixed. but there's no right answer. i vehemently believe that whole 30 is not the answer and yoga is not the  answer and crossfit is not the answer and neither is veganism or the blood type diet or excessive cardio or meditation or anything else. because our bodies are all incredibly different. and yes, certain things are proven to have certain effects on one's physical body. but there is a whole elixir of other components that go into it, that are hard to track or quantify. so your body will react differently than my body. and, on a day to day level, the real assessment of how i'm doing is not how i look, but how i feel.

how do i feel?

and the truth is, i feel damn good. i wake up happy. i move easily. i have energy. i recover quickly. i see joy in small things. my body feels alive. it doesn't mean i don't want to pull my hair out when the kids are bouncing off the walls and chicken-pecking me to death with whiny questions. but it does mean it doesn't ruin my day. i can unpack it. i can laugh at how absurd it is to swim around a room of fumbling 3 year olds every day. i can rest when i'm tired. i can bounce back.

i know people will say things. today, for the first time, someone commented on my size. she asked when i was due and then made a small gasp and said, "oh, i thought you were much farther along."

which, to the perpetual roarer, meant, you're too big.

i withered for a moment and then i puffed back up. i bounced back.

the critic, the roarer, told me to feel bad about it, but the girl who's done the work knew it was okay. i could let it go. that, to me, is health. encountering life's bumps but still being able to go.

this is my body that i've only recently begun to know. but i've learned enough to know i am doing everything in the way that feels best, most genuine, and safest for my baby. and that is all i can. and my body's expression of that is whatever it will be. i'm not angry at her. i'm not angry at whatever future people make weird comments about my body. i do not exist in other people's perception of me.

i don't think i've solved the mystery of this body, of my relationship to it. i don't think i've figured out society or how to be a part of this particular world without absorbing all of its strange and stressful standards. i don't think i'll ever stop working. but i have figured out i'm here. this body's here.

i paused for a moment as i wrote that.

this body is here.

this body is mine, it's here, and i will love it, because it carries me. and now it is doing the amazing work of creating and carrying a human.

as i settle into it, wherever, however it is at any given moment, i stop thinking as much and start feeling a little more. there's nothing to think about, nothing to figure out. my body is just doing it. it's about feeling now. unfolding, growing, expanding, breathing, embracing, evolving, marveling.

i am marveling at my body that has been around almost 33 years, but which i really feel like i've just now met. i am marveling at our meeting. i am growing a human. i feel good.

nic and i were facetiming the other night, as we many many times over the past 7 weeks of absence. he keeps telling me how pretty i am, not shocked (because i'd give him too much shit for that), but in awe. like i was different somehow. he says, you're so beautiful. and i say, because nic has always admired a pregnant woman, it's because i'm pregnant. and then he responds by saying the thing that will, forever and always, make me feel most beautiful, because it digs inside me, because it's mine, because it cannot be compared or evaluated or taken away, because it's the deepest compliment, because it's ultimately about how i feel, not how i look, because it's about effortlessly radiating that feeling outward,

"no, it's not that. you look... happy."

on saying no to no.

i cannot tell you how relieved i am to finally be out of the pregnancy closet.

if it's not glaringly obvious (it is), i am not a private person. i am an open, bleeding heart. i process outwardly. i feel empowered by sharing, by finding similarities in my own experiences with others', and by simply and constantly being vulnerable to the whole wide world around me.

i've known i was pregnant for almost ten weeks now, and they were unbearable, not only because of how my body felt, but more so, because of how my brain felt.

i was not excited when i found out i was pregnant. we had been trying for all of two months. when it didn't happen within the first 45 seconds, i convinced myself it would never happen (the fatalist girl full of teenage drama still rages on in my brain sometimes...). i think i was mostly protecting myself from disappointment. after a lifetime of trying to not get pregnant (clearly not really a lifetime. definitely less than half my current lifetime), it's strange to suddenly TRY. despite being a very responsible sexually active person, and thus having no reason to have previously been pregnant, it still seemed like it probably just wasn't a real possibility. i seem to have cultivated this ugly idea that i am somehow a terribly unhealthy person and am only kept from imminent death or permanent disease by my frequent exercise, reasonably healthy diet, and commitment to an excess of water and sleep. when, in fact, i think the only unhealthy thing about me is my belief that something must be wrong with me.

so in my mind, that girl could clearly not get pregnant.

regardless, i kept bucketfuls of pregnancy tests around, because that's just what neurotic people do. pee on sticks and then pee on more sticks, obsessively checking google to see if whatever rogue feeling passing through my body could be a very early pregnancy symptom. (note: it is. whatever feeling you feel has, at some point, been attached to a pregnant person and thus exists on google. it doesn't mean you're pregnant)

anyway, all two months into it, i'd given up. i'd resolved it might take forever or not happen at all. the day my period was supposed to start, i felt particularly horrible. my boobs felt weird and sensitive. my back hurt. it kind of burned when i peed. my period hadn't in fact started, which wasn't strange at all, but i just felt... weird. in between episodes of something or something on a lazy netflix evening with nic, i had the passing impulse to pee on a stick. i did. and it said i was pregnant.

i had expected to feel thrilled. i had expected to cry with joy. i'd expected to look like any movie scene in which a person discovered they'd willingly become pregnant. instead i felt total dread.

i walked into the room, shaking, and showed nic, and he, in his joking/ not joking nic way, said, "what have we done?"

and that was that. i was pregnant.

and thus ensued the most agonizing two months of my life.

i have literally never been so tired in my entire life. each day at school, i felt like i had consumed an entire bottle of nyquil and then was let loose in a building full of shrill, small children. i felt impossibly short-tempered and totally out of my body. then i became nauseous. every smell was magnified five thousand percent. i went into kroger one day and the wafting smell of fish from their sushi bar nearly keeled me over. i ate a slightly strange piece of chicken at a friend's house one night and gagged in my mouth. my previous world of protein and vegetables disgusted me. i wanted to swim in bowl of cinnamon puffins and then fall asleep on the uneaten ones. gratefully, i never actually threw up. but i hated everything.

now that i don't feel like death, i can clearly see how awful i felt. i was miserable. and to add to the miserable was my constant expectation that i NOT be miserable in any way. i beat myself up for having a hard time. despite the fact that every woman ever says the first trimester is rough, i couldn't let myself just want piles of dry bread and to go to bed at 6:30. i felt like i was setting my baby up for failure by creating a womb full of gluten and anxiety.

i wanted to talk it out. i wanted space to relate, to share with women i trust, to write about it, to get sensible love and input, but there is this looming taboo surrounding announcing your pregnancy too early. i shared with some close friends, of course, but even just the idea surrounding it. the secrecy. the secrecy, in fear of some great collapse of the magic happening in my uterus, that wrecked my brain.

that was the first of the no's.

don't tell people you're pregnant until the second trimester.

and then i let them infect me. in my sleepy haze of misery, i searched the internet, the books, the blogs for every validation i thought i needed.

Google: is it okay to only want to eat cereal and sleep forever during the first trimester? [enter]

google would assure me that it was okay to hate my life for many weeks, but there were always warnings in tow. and eventually i let them bury me.

don't eat deli meat.

don't drink the unpasteurized orange juice.

don't sleep on your back. don't pick up the kids. don't exercise too hard. don't not exercise. don't eat sugar. don't get a massage. don't touch the cat litter. don't take too hot of a bath. don't gain too much weight. don't gain too little weight. don't do hot yoga.

don't don't don't don't dont.

i really needed some community and i went to a prenatal class at a local studio. i left pretty depressed. they, too, told me not to twist this way or that, not to put too much pressure on my uterus, not to lie on my back.

it's not that the warnings were so bad. they were well-intentioned. but the language killed me. all the nos.

i felt like the whole world was screaming at me: DON'T KILL THE BABY!!!

i had this sudden revelation one day: pregnancy is negative. pregnancy is scary. pregnancy is a BIG FAT NO. as a pregnant woman, you're fragile, and everything around you is a threat.

finally, one day, i said, fuck it.

i am not a no girl. i don't live in the no.

i recognize that there are real, scientific things that impact the well being of the child growing inside of me. but i also recognize that i am an intuitive being, who has spent the better part of the last 3 years, figuring out how my body feels, what it needs, and how to best nourish it emotionally and physically. it doesn't mean i'm perfect, but it does mean that i should ask myself first, before i ask google or the lady behind the counter at kroger or anyone else.

i started to do my quiet yoga at home. i gave up thinking i'd have the energy to get back to the studio. i gave up thinking i needed my physical practice and exercise to be one version of some previously successful so super healthy thing to be okay. i moved slowly. i breathed. i went inside.

i acknowledged that i know what i need. i know sweet potatoes make me feel like superwoman and apples make my stomach feel like it's going to explode. i know i feel best when i get at least 8 hours of sleep. i know a warm bath relaxes me and i never stay in quite that long anyway.  i know i have to move intentionally a little every single day or i felt like a piece of cardboard. i know caffeine makes me jittery. i know gluten doesn't really bother me, but dairy does. i know when i've had too much. i know when i've had too little. i know how to breathe so i calm down. i know how to make space for myself. i know that the more i worry about doing it right, the less right i am doing it, because i let the worry take over.

i know that i am in charge of the small creature, growing inside my body (i can't get over it). i know that i'm intuitive and powerful and positive.

i know that i'm okay. i know that we're okay.

then one day, i heard the heartbeat. i cried immediately. i felt full of joy.

finally it was our baby. it was my baby with my nic. it was no one else's baby. we get to decide and make the rules and know what's best. it was no longer negative.

it's not that i don't want input. i feel so lucky to be a part of this world of women now. brave, beautiful women, who carried children in their wombs, whose bodies instinctually nurtured and then expelled small humans, whose hearts continue on carrying them emotionally, buoying them up with their care until the little ones are ready to slowly, incrementally do it on their own. there is infinite wisdom in that. in each woman's story, in her experience, in her body.

but that's what i want to know. i want to know what she felt. what moved her, what worked for her, what helped her, what empowered her, what was hard for her, what her guts felt like, what she craved, what she loved, what transformed her.

i don't want a rote list of things to terrify me.

i want to be a yes.

it is not a refusal to believe that there are things that can harm us. it is a conscious choice to look at life as full of possibility, even where there are constraints.

i am growing a human.

i wasn't trained in it. most of us weren't. but my body knows.

my body knows what i need. and if i listen to it, my brain will know it too. it is literally one of the most astounding things that i am just coming to understand.

now i am thrilled to be pregnant. i rub my tiny puffy belly like it's buddha's. i move with ease through my slow yoga. i wonder at all that's quietly, constantly, organically unfolding right inside of me.

it feels like actual magic, when, in fact, i think it might be my first real moment of acknowledging how much wisdom i've had all along. i was just finally, endlessly no'ed into recognizing it.

on being a baby mama.

(panicky, anxious) moments before i first met nic in person, my dear friend said to me, "what if you're about to meet the father of your children?" which may just be the sort of dramatic thing girls say to each other when they want to say, "you really like this guy," but it also resonated with me at that moment. this guy felt different. he felt real and honest and raw. he felt like a really good reason to outsource my dating pool to kentucky.

three years later, it turns out she was right: he was just as rad as i anticipated, and he is going to be the father of my children.

i'm having a baby with my best friend. i'm kind of terrified and really thrilled.

we might not totally know what we're doing, but man is this kid going to be loved. baby kaniasty/ loster is due for a grand reveal sometime late september. and, as nic said, we think it's pretty f****ng cool.

on pearl, and saying goodbye.

i never thought i'd be a person, who cared about cars. and, in fact, i'm not. they are all the same to me. i couldn't tell a corolla from a camry or a lexus from lamborghini (seriously).

but over the course of the last 16 years, i did fall in love with one particular car.

her name is pearl. pearl was a 2001 toyota tacoma my dad came home with one random weekday during my junior year of high school. my dad, ever the bmw advocate and owner, had brought home this little toy of a car with hand crank windows, a tape deck, and a hysterically oversimplified dashboard. she went and she stopped, and that was about it.

at some point during my san francisco times, pearl became mine. my dad, ever the advocate and owner, also, of relentless generosity, gifted me pearl. 

and boy did we have times together. we went to work, to the mountains, to santa barbara again and again, to the beach. we went on dates, we went on emotional roller coasters and those of the san francisco hills.  we went on road trips and camping trips. we went everywhere. on those rare warm san francisco nights, i'd sit in pearl's bed and eat popsicles. once, i woke up and she had a giant stuffed blue dog just sitting in her bed.

everyone loved pearl. not just because she would move that abandoned san francisco street couch or haul a bunch of groceries, not just because she played amy grant and tlc tapes straight from the 90s, not just because she was a ride for most people who didn't have their own cars, but because she was just everything. she was bare bones, trusty, scrappy, slow and steady. she went and she went. she deteriorated in looks over the years-- paint scraped off, dents multiplied like acne scars on a teenager, her speakers all but gave up. but her engine was strong and that was all that mattered.

i began to feel that pearl was reflection of me. she was kind of mess, not overly impressive in skill, but she was solid. she was reliable. she was a quiet beast. she was everything, despite herself. something about her just made people love her.

in 2014, we made the big trip across the country from california to kentucky. no one thought pearl would make it. sometimes we only went 30 miles an hour up those hills, but she kept on plugging along. she was the little engine that could, carrying my thrilled and terrified body across mountains, across states, across chasms of fear, to a new life. 

3 years later, 2 and a partial winters later, after pearl got her kentucky footing, her first exposure to inclement weather and midwest/ southern living, on january 5th of this year, we set out for school during the first real snow of the year. 

i was talking to my mom on the phone at the time, commenting on how the snow looked like tiny rivers, snaking and winding across the highway. it hadn't quite settled yet, but it also wasn't ready to dissipate. i was going slow and steady, and then, in a millisecond, i lost traction. i spun into a semi truck to my left, and then circled across three lanes of traffic to the railing against a hill on the other side of the highway.

at first i was in shock.

then i cried hysterically for a moment.

and then i went into a deep, eerie stillness.

i was fine.

i was fine and not fine. 

i have some minor injuries. i am stiff and slow and anxious. my left shoulder isn't quite right, and my head feels heavy on my neck. but this is not about that. this is about pearl and my feeling that, somehow, weirdly, truly, she has been my guardian angel since i met her.

the accident was incredible in two ways:

1.  in hitting something as huge as a semi, i did not injure anyone else.

2. while crossing three lanes of traffic during rush hour, no one else hit me as i spun across the highway.

and that, i believe, is a miracle. it is divine protection. it is the grace of pearl or fate or god or buddha or whatever you believe in.

i was in my cocoon. i was safe. those manual windows and silly dashboard and tape deck were my armor.

pearl is totaled. 

after all the adrenaline wore off, after the stiffness settled in, i cried and cried, hysterical, reckless, heaving tears. i cried because it was scary in so many ways, because i am profoundly grateful to be okay, and so much, so much because i am saying goodbye to my girl.

i never thought i'd be a person, who cared about cars. and in fact, i'm not. but one little car, named pearl, worked her way into my heart, carried me through so much, and, ultimately, saved my life.

she has been my own traveling, metal giving tree.

and now she is gone.

i will miss her more than i can ever express.

thank you pearl, for saving me and

for the journey of a lifetime together. 

on being a shit head.

this is pretty much what my relationship with nic is like 90% of the time.

i'm a shit head and he forgives me.

i feel a lot like the kids i see every day, who hold it together really well. they're agreeable, play hard. they hug and love and compromise all day. and then the moment their parents arrive, they transform into whiney, horrific monsters, who are satisfied by nothing. their parents came too late or too early to pick them up, they held their artwork the wrong way, they didn't want them to say hello before the child pretended to hide under a pile of old beanbags. nothing is right.

i think it's just a lot of keeping their shit together for so long that by the time the person they love the most arrives, they just come totally undone.

and that's what i do to nic. pretty much every day he's home.

i spend all day holding it together and by the time i get home, i fall apart.

so basically i'm 3.

and nic is used to it by now.

on therapy.

today i went back to therapy.

 about 10 years have passed since i've been, maybe nine of which i spent saying i should go back, and today, finally, per the urging/ insistence of my very best friend in the whole wide world, i just did it.

this was immediately preceded by 1. falling apart crying on thanksgiving because i was playing a board game with friends and i just felt so incredibly dumb for not knowing something that i felt like i should know that i could not stop crying and 2. sobbing at the gas station as nic said the above words to me, in response to me living in some world where i am still a lost, acne-ridden, severely depressed 15 year old.

i'm not trying to paint a picture that i'm a basket case. in some still, small world, i can see myself as the confident, dynamic person i so often present myself as being. but then there is this soft spot at my core that i protect so fiercely. sometimes i protect it by letting other people see it, which makes me feel in control, and sometimes i protect it by happy-ing my way through it, but, obviously, as evidenced by all the tears, something will eventually pierce it and i fall apart.

i'm not going to walk you through my experience of therapy (or... i might. i make no promises), but what i really wanted to say is, i'm here. and just the act of taking care of myself makes me feel better.

i've been hiding. physically, in some ways, and emotionally, in many. i haven't drawn any cartoons, because it felt too vulnerable and i've been in a shell. i open up in ways that feel comfortable and familiar to me. i open up in ways i can control. but i haven't felt far enough from tears to be honest about my relationship and the thoughts in my head and the subsequent vulnerability i feel knowing that some people find it too much or too transparent or too self-indulgent or whatever else.

but today, post my hour and a half in a cocoon of safe space, i feel good about just being myself. whether that girl has stringy bangs and an excess of yoga pics or a 15 year old pizza face. because i'm both, really. and that's okay.

today, it's okay.

i am trying not to think too much about what that means for tomorrow. trying to let go of my expectation of myself and just be.

i went back to therapy. it's okay to ask for help.

i needed help.

and i'm getting it.

on peace.

last week i went to an informational meeting at the kentucky refugee ministries. they provide assistance in settling refugees from all over the world. i'm facilitating an enrichment for 3rd-5th graders this year that focuses on service projects within our immediate community and the idea of partnering with krm came up early on.

the meeting included a lot of shocking statistics and information about how to help. most interesting to me were the personal stories from two refugees working with the program, who came to speak. one was a woman from cuba, who spoke to the ostensible freedom of her country's inhabitants that only thinly veiled an oppressive dictatorship. another was a young man from somalia. he fled to kenya ten years ago and spent that time working as a teacher and writer in a refugee camp. he'd been waiting to gain admittance to america for ten years. this was the dream.

he spoke english quickly with a beautiful british accent. he was more articulate than most native english speakers i know with the occasional strangely placed word or phrase that belied his non-nativeness. he wants to be a journalist. i hung on his every word.

the woman leading the meeting asked, and how has your experience been here so far?

he's been in louisville one month. one month since achieving the long awaited dream.

"it's calm here," he says. "there's no fighting. people have problems but they know how to solve them. but it's not what i thought. before i did whatever i had to do, i ate things that were not even food just so i could... push life. here i'm bored. everyone is so busy, rushing. i am lonely."

those words landed in my gut like a bag of sand. 

this man waited ten years, his whole life, for what he thought was the dream. for freedom, for peace. and when he arrived, all it was was rushing and isolation and loneliness. 

i felt sick with guilt. i am a part of that rushing. that chronic busy-ness. that never enough time. 

i am the peace he waited to find that only really looks like peace, but is ultimately filled with this aching restlessness, this need to stuff all of time with so much. 

he says something about missing kenya. that his classes had over 150 students and it was chaos and everything was hard but he was part of a community that was working together.

i won't make the offensive suggestion that i wish i didn't have what i do. but it was an alarm to step back. way, way back. 

so what can i do? what can i do that is not just reiterating the problem while continuing to contribute to it? i'm not going to rewrite the system but i have to do something.

i've committed myself, for the time being, to some enormous amount of busy. I can't change the hours, so how can I change the energy?

this is my question to myself. 

it's all energetic. i know that. i know i can do a lot and still not be frazzled, not constantly rushing to the next thing. but i've been searching for that my whole life and still i don't know how. so what? what do i do now?

i sort of thought, in writing about it, that i'd get there. i'd figure it out. i could say some words about how to slow myself down into the moments i'm living, about how to be less busy, even though i'm really super busy.

but i don't know.

i feel like i suck. i feel like i'm trying to do so much that i can't do a single thing well. i feel like i'm skating by. that i'm half-hearted at taking care of my body and heart, of the kids and my coworkers and friends, of my classroom and home. that i've literally never had anything to escape or flee, no reason to feel like it's not enough, and yet i'm acting like the refugee myself, the one in constant flight. i feel like i'm trying and trying and all i am is busy. i'm just another blur that makes someone, who wants to dig into their surroundings, feel lonely and lost.

i don't have an answer right now.

but i know it has to change.

i have committed to a lot, but i can't let it be the thing that ostracizes people who are looking for love, when all i was trying to do in the first place is make people feel loved.

motherfucking catch 22.

help me. that's my conclusion. help me, please.

i do not want to live my life in constant preparation for life, for the next thing, missing the entirety of it as i go. i cannot. but i don't know how to stop.

help.

on romance.

these are the kinds of ridiculous things nic says to me that actually make me a little melty.

it resonates with me so much more than something saccharine or effusive. nic loves me in a way that feels grounding and stable. it feels everyday, in the most comforting way.

i will take being the last crazy girl on his dance card any day.

me and this guy, forever.

on compromise.

today we were graced with a magical dose of fall. it's chilly and blustery and the light is slanted and just a bit golden. so I decided nic and I and our best friends should go on cozy date to Huber's orchard tomorrow for cider and hay rides and pumpkins/ apple picking. 

nic apparently had other plans with a friend, but conceded that we could do whatever I want.

this was our conversation/ dating me in a nutshell.  

nic is sweet to me and I am a thinly-veiled asshole.  

also I got bangs, and nic rarely wears clothes.  

on slowing down.

i have been going and going. furiously. almost obsessively.  

the details aren't important except to say, i'm trying to get more done than i feel i have time to do. i recognize that a large part of that is perception. 

last night i sat down and had stale corn chips and a tiny glass of old ass red wine for dinner, while i churned out progress reports for school. i feel an impassable chasm between my brain and my body, from my life as i feel it's meant to be and how i'm living. it's not terrible, but i feel this lingering sadness, like i am missing my own life.

this morning i was texting my mama, as i do each morning, just to share tiny life moments and a serving of love for the day. and she said,  

"elizabeth allison, you have 10 minutes to stop and buy a decent salad or an apple and some nuts. if you were uncovering bodies from the rubble, you would keep going, but you know, sweet girl, when you have to push and when it's really okay to not try to do it all."

i am not uncovering bodies.  

my work is deeply important, but it doesn't have to be perfect. it doesn't have to all be done at once. it doesn't have to mean i lose my soul.

i have ten minutes. i will take it to love and nourish myself.

thank you, sweet mama, for the reminder. 

on problem solving.

i posted this drawing a year ago today and still think I'm terribly funny, because it's so true.  

there is just something about being in a relationship that sometimes makes me act like a petulant child, incapable of even the most fundamental acts of adulthood.

luckily, nic sticks around and that, i believe, is either masochism or abiding love.  

on dancing like a weirdo.

i woke up at 5:10 without an alarm this morning and immediately launched into my morning routine: meditation, peppermint tea with collagen, 2 hard boiled eggs and veggies, answering emails.

amidst the emails, i pushed play on a suggested radio station on spotify. jackson 5 came on.

my body practically pushed me out of the chair. i had to dance. huge, committed, unattractive, happy, full-body, all-my-energy dancing. i did not give a shit. i didn't look for myself in the mirror. i didn't check the time or think about the other things i had to do. 

i danced until i was done. i was sweaty.

for a tiny moment, i got what nic always says to me, it's not that serious.

it's not that serious.

at any moment, amidst the drudgery i sometimes make for myself, there is an invitation just waiting to sweat, to shake it out, to get weird, to let it all go, to dance. push play. get up. dance.

on working out the problems.

tonight i went climbing for the first time ever.

jessica and i have been talking about it for months. i casually find an excuse not to go every time. all day i was praying she would cancel. i am deeply tired, not because i have to be, but because there is just enough in my life to justify it, so i am giving in and being a pathetic, ungrateful, disparaging sack of shit.

that was my excuse today. i'm tired and i don't want to climb anymore.

but she didn't cancel, so finally, begrudgingly, i went.

for the inexperienced (ie me 3 hours ago), rock climbing in an indoor gym looks like a variety of colors and shapes of footholds arranged in patterns along walls. they are rated according to difficulty. i am a solid zero. (this is not self-deprecation, but rather an accurate assessment of my actual ability.)

yep. it starts at zero.

and the best part is that the routes are called problems.

i won't make all the obvious analogies that went whizzing through my head, because it's too easy. they are problems that take determination, strength, and a significant amount of ease, which i lack. they sometimes require you to literally step back and look at the big picture. they sometimes require falling. they most definitely require letting go. 

okay, i'll stop.

i'm not going to write anything magic. i'm realizing more and more that the magic lies in simply having shown up, in being willing. i didn't have a life revelation. i didn't pull myself entirely out of the pit. i didn't discover some sort of superhuman strength, as i barely conquered much more than a one, on the rating of difficulty.

but i showed up. and i talked to my friend and afterwards i drank a cocktail and ate a salad and just ate the fucking roll that came with it, because it is top 2 most delicious pieces of bread in louisville. 

and i tried.

and that is the whole story.

i was afraid of doing something new, but i tried anyway.

my hands are roughed up and my nails are shredded and i'm pretty sure i've permanently lost use of my shoulders, but i did it.

if that is the paradigm, then i can do mf'in anything in the world. i can do anything. just watch me.

on the empty feeling.

i distinctly remember being 8 years old and persistently experiencing something i only knew how to describe as "the empty feeling." it was a deep pit inside of me that felt like my heart was being stretched out low into my belly by something heavy. i had this terrible fear that my parents would leave and never come back. or that the fires that were always in the mountains would descend into the city and burn up everyone but me. it was morbid, fearful.

the pit was always about loss. not of something happening to me, but to those around me.

as an adult, i can clearly identify that feeling as anxiety. this deep, blanket fear that things will not be okay.

it's manageable, as a 32 year old woman. but it's still there. the empty feeling. lingering.

it came up today. it's here now. and i feel silly.

i feel silly because in the last 24 hours, all i've done is have fun with nic. last night we drank wine and ate tacos and watched old sitcoms. today we woke up early to play with the cat, make breakfast, and do yoga in the living room. we rented a tandem bike and rode through the parklands, laughing at how miserably unfit our legs are. we came home and had the most delicious cantaloupe and blt salad for lunch. we snugged.

so when i felt that pit of despair low in my stomach, i recognize that 8 year old girl and the immense terror she felt at the idea of losing what she most loved.

which is always people.

so when debew asks, what is it?  all i know is, it's nothing. it's nothing real.

it's love and the fear of losing it. it's my immature desire to wrap my fingers around the neck of whatever's good and hold on so tightly i'm more likely to kill it myself than ever lose it. it's lack of ease. it's deeply ingrained fear. it is the inability to let go.

i feel like if i announce it, it won't have so much power.

so here it is: sometimes i feel empty. sometimes i am deeply afraid of how big and far and consumingly i love. sometimes the more i love, the less secure i feel.

sometimes, now, it is time to confront all the old paradigms. it is not just something to live with.

nic asks what i'm writing about. i tell him, the empty feeling. he knows about it already. he says:

"i think you're more level-headed than most people are. and ready to take on most situations. your ability to overcome whatever it is you're afraid of is why whatever you're afraid is never going to manifest in your life."

this man. i'm afraid of losing a man, who would rent me a two-person bicycle and choose the best cantaloupe and assert that i am unconquerable. i love him and, even though i purport to be very good, very well-versed in loving, it terrifies me profoundly. to have my heart so hurled open.

i guess, of problems to have, it is not so bad. the loving and being loved so much that it's scary.

he rationalizes with me some more and i say, it's not logical.

"i know," he says, ending his rational argument to lean over from behind my chair and kiss me.

there's so much to terribly much to lose.

and it's the greatest gift.

on pizza.

since i'm still basically 12, i spent my friday night babysitting.

also because i'm 12 i have a pimple that's bigger than my eye on my cheek, as depicted in this photo. which one's the eye and which is the pimple is still unclear both in cartoon form and real life.

for dinner, there was pizza.

and, to cut to the chase, i ate it.

here is my sign. my woeful admission. my scarlet A of pizza-eating.

it's only shameful, because while i was eating said pizza, a paleo magazine rested silently in my hipster reclaimed vintage material book bag. literally. i'm a bad meme waiting to happen.

about eight weeks ago, i committed to actually eating mostly paleo, with my big, specific no being consumption of grains. and dairy, too, for the most part, or at least in the reckless creamy-latte/ bucket-of-ice-cream/ pile-of-melted-cheese way. basically because those things just make me feel awful.

tonight i could have planned better but i didn't, so i ate the damn pizza.

it feels like there's a ton of bricks in my stomach, but i don't actually hate myself.

and that's really weird and uncomfortable for me. even more so than feeling certain that i've derailed my entire life and have failed as a human being and should give up any hope of a future.

i am really, really, really extreme. like, all the time. i feel all the things and i say all the things and i write all the words and i emote all over everyone. all of my moments are saturated and intense and terribly fraught with meaning.

and then tonight, as a declared paleo (i'm choosing to use that as a noun, like one would say they're a vegan, but if vegans ate a lot of meat), i ate a piece of pizza (papa john's, no less) and i didn't implode.

i don't know if i'm so tired that i just haven't mustered up the energy to freak out yet or if i'm actually, slowly learning not to be a psycho during all of the minutes, but i feel really good even though i feel bad.

like, i feel like there's a pizza-shaped barbell in my gut, but i also feel like i might not be totally crazy. and that might have been worth it.

to be real, i know i'm not crazy. but growing up and balance is hard for me. because my tendency is to hover at the extreme ends of the pendulum, ever poised to wildly hurl myself back to the other side, never allowing myself space in between. and it seems i may be starting to take small pauses in that in between area.

it feels really weird.

and i guess it tastes like pizza.

on finding a cat under the couch.

yesterday i continued to be a horrible person. maybe even more so than monday.

i texted nic about my misery during the day and he said, "there will be chocolate." 

i told everyone i saw. my boyfriend gets it. i'm having a bad day(ssssss) and he mentioned chocolate. he really gets it.

i got home, and he'd made dinner again! this time i didn't hate him for making me delicious food. we sat on the porch and ate spinach salad and burger patties with caramelized onions. i drank a glass of wine the size of my head. there was chocolate.

i went in the house and out from underneath the couch popped... a cat.

there was chocolate.

and a cat.

i didn't scream. but i was really fucking surprised.

i won't lie and say nic didn't talk about getting a cat. but in the last few weeks, nic has also talked about moving to columbus and/ or china, taking a job in indianapolis and/ or detroit, going to chicago on his day off, buying a new car, adopting a baby, and learning to build boats. i take it all with a grain of salt. i said, "sure, get a cat."

and he did.

also, in fear of seeming like more of an awful person than i'm already trying to convince you i am, i am not an animal person. i love to watch them, but i don't want to snuggle them, touch them, talk to them, or ingratiate myself to them. i'm sort of terrified of pets, especially after growing up with three cats, all of whom had impossibly unlikable and terrifying qualities.

but here was ohna.

her name is swedish for anna. 

she's a siamese cat. blue-eyed and slim with tiny white mittens and incredibly soft grey ombre fur. she's skittish still. she's quiet. she had two stillborn babies just last week and evidently was quite depressed afterwards. the people at the humane society said she kept looking around for her babies. she didn't want to let them go. she kept trying to nurse them.

nic said he just couldn't leave her.

i didn't love her right away and i don't love her still. she doesn't love me either. but we're curious about each other. and i have this weird, magical feeling that maybe ohna will be the one to teach me to love without needing to smother. that you can coexist without constantly having to interact. that love can look a lot like just knowing without having to always show.

or maybe she's just a cat.

but it's a new adventure. and i welcome it. i welcome feelings i don't understand and fear and slight discomfort and eagerness and joy and the promise of a decade to come together.

sometimes nic is so weird. he surprises me. i don't know what he's thinking or how he thinks it sometimes and, while it can make me crazy, i ultimately relish it. i am pragmatic and organized and overly logical and nic, at any given moment, might move to china or adopt a stray feline.

i am so grateful for this strange life of wonder, in which, unbeknownst to me, there just might be a cat under the couch.

on sometimes being a total asshole.

i wanted to start out super positive, but, as promised, i'm being real and i feel anything but positive today. i'm borderline hateful and of course there's no one better to take that out on than those we love dearly.

i arrived home from school, not yet quite aware of how truly crabby i was. until i immediately saw that nic hadn't done the few things i'd asked him to do around the house during the day.

HOW DARE HE? my inner sanctimonious asshole roared.

that was pretty much it. the beginning of the end. i blustered into the house and immediately began passive aggressively doing the things i was sure should have been done on my time table and at my command.

to make matters worse, he had made paleo hot chicken and sweet potato fries. and it was delicious.

then he asked me to go for a walk.

(these things both felt truly offensive to me. i really wanted to hang onto my mood.)

i was sullen the whole time.

i recognized my horrific crankiness not as his fault in any way, but i couldn't help but feel annoyed at every thing he did and said. i needed someone to blame and wasn't ready to take responsibility for how i got there, all by my lonesome.

at the end of our walk and my three mile marinating in personal grief, nic looked at me and said these words.

i don't mind that you're crabby.

it didn't make my crankies stop, because i'm too much of an asshole for that today. but it did make me pause, and beneath the many layers of clouds i'm wearing over my usually sunny heart today, say to myself, thank you debew for teaching me about unconditional love.

may all us assholes be so terribly lucky.