March 7, 2012

Because some days I want that excuse to clutch you closer than we’ve ever tried before. Titanic-Fashion.

I spent the last minutes of 1999 noshing on Ritz crackers alone in my bedroom while pretending to be Rose DeWitt Bukater (the gal from Titanic who bedrocked Leo’s heart like an iceberg and yes, I know you always wondered how her last name was really spelt).

So I was in the fifth grade. And I was a J.D. Salinger type with a semi-too serious infatuation with Y2K. And I still cannot resolve why mother let me spend my money on a Y2K sailor hat or snow globe or why she even let me loose in the flour to bake a Y2K cake for my classmates. Hey friends, Happy Millennium Bug/ We are All Going to Fall Off the Earth at the Strike of Midnight/ MATH CLASS WOOOO!

But, in all seriousness, I must have thought that the world would thrash and fall apart and I’d somehow find myself standing at the foot of the Grand Staircase with Leo looking down at me from the clock, saying, “Darling, you look grand in that Y2K sailor hat. Let’s run to the front of the boat so I can wrap my hands around your waist and make you feel like you are flying.”

Something like that.

Either way, I thought the world was ending and I was perfectly content with falling to particles alone. In my bedroom. Sipping orange juice out of a champagne flute. With crumbs from the Ritz scattered in my lap.

And really, I am just wondering what it might look like if someone were to tell me that this, all of this—this whole wake up in the morning, put two feet on the ground, get through the day, be kind to people, be successful until you close your eyes at night thing—was ending today… tomorrow… next week… would I have done it right?

I promise to be the last person to come at you with a “live like you are dying” speech but the truth of it all is that we really don’t know when these toes will go. When these eyes will close. When these fingers will stop feeling new countertops and the tops of heads that give us a reason to shuffle home at night.

I’ve got a good few folks that I’d love nothing more than to get back. I’d hurl myself over mountains and through deserts and across oceans to get these people back in my orbit. To sit down beside him and say, “You know, you shouldn’t have gone away for so long. We’ve missed you so and, truthfully, the world falls apart without your laughter in it.” And I know you’ve got them too. The ones who made strudel from nada. The Ones Who Counted Stars with You for the Very First Time.

To be very honest, I think about the Titanic a great deal lately even though I’ve somehow moved past the pending wedding proposal from Jack Dawon. It’s a normal balance of love letters, friends, work, family, the occasional “what if I were an MTV Teen Mom,” training, poverty, and Titanic. Call it what you will but don’t you ever think what it must have been like?

To be the one watching your children scamper on the deck after dinner before you heard a thud. A shrill crack.

Panic. There’s panic all around you. You take their tiny hands and you move towards the throng of people hushing one another. It takes a few hours before you know it to be true: the ship will go down. There won’t be enough lifeboats for everyone.

How, oh, how do I fit the rest of my life into 2 or 3 hours? Can I love you any harder, children? Can I hold you any closer? Can I say things that will quiet your fears and make it not so painful when the ice-cold water reaches your ankles? Oh, the pain. Can I take it from you? Can I close your eyes to all of this and read you bedtime stories and promise you heaven?

Did I show you God enough for you to believe in Him? Because all the talking in the universe would not matter if I did not love you right enough for you to think there was a God who cared about your limbs and that time you fell from the old oak tree. Did I show you God?

Did I do enough? Did I do that stuff that actually mattered?

It’s a different age. An entirely different age. And now we are flushed full with 140-character cries and a status update every 5 seconds but Would It Matter? If it were all ending, would we update those who never really cared or would we find a way to reach back to the ones who deserved our every update in person? Deserved the moments that should have always stayed tucked between Intimate People instead of blasted out to a world that lives for its own reflection.

Because some days I want that excuse to throw all character limitations aside and clutch you closer than we’ve ever tried before.

Titanic-Fashion.

This Big Ol’ Boat is Sinking Fashion

& I’m Gonna See You Soon

& I Miss You Like Heck Already

& Be Good Until We Meet Again

& I’m Sorry, I Should Have Said This Sooner But You Made All of This Worth It

& Just Hold Me Now and Make Me Feel Like I Did You Right.

2 Comments

Filed under Month of the Pick-Me-Up, Simply Living

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 2, 2012

The Month of the Pick-Me-Up

Precursor: This blog post is ten times stronger & louder when read out loud with the following power ballad playlist playing in the background.

You all have broken my heart lately. Let’s just throw that little factoid on the kitchen table.

You’ve come at me with sledge hammers and I am wincing a bit as I watch this beating blood pumper of mine get completely annihilated – cracking in a way that would make those dudes with the funky white wigs think they might need to take a few more swings at the Liberty Bell.

It is a good thing, I suppose. In as good as it can be to feel your heart stretching like puddy, crumbling like clay pieces. Like the day you broke your mama’s favorite vase and you knew, trying to place yellow with gold tile, that it would never look the same.

You’re showing up in emails. On Facebook. In messages that simply tell me how I’ve hit a nerve. I’ve traced a subject that you needed more than you cared to admit before you came over to play in the muds of HannahKaty.com.

But the sad thick of it?

It’s uncertainty. It’s emptiness. It’s insecurity. We are connecting over all these grim feelings that wear frumpy bedazzled Christmas sweaters all year long and totally abandon fashion rules to wear socks with sandals. Those are the kind of ugly emotions we’re harboring and when I get an email or a word from you, I start to think, “When do we breathe? When do we stop and marvel? When do we take the weight from our shoulders and just know it in our bones that are we doing o.k.?” That some man must have indeed seen a tunnel once and realize that yes, OH YES, there is good, good light at the end of it.

So tis’ March. Did you “march” on in? And March has always seemed (to me at least) like that month that deserves a total head to toe makeover because she has buckets of potential but she never did know the purpose behind eyebrow waxing and neutral color palettes.

It is a blah month that is not winter but not spring. Not dull but not bright. A long, winding 31 days that doesn’t have flowers or showers. Just March.

BUT… I’ve decided that this month will be different. For this blog. For More Love Letters. For all of it. This shall be dubbed the month of the Pick-Me-Up. Yes, that’s right. I will spend the entire month picking you up. And you can pick me up. And we can get on seesaws and take turns picking each other up. And we will put pieces back together. And we will learn about the mud on our shoes.

And we will wreck the Ugliness with baseball bats as she swings and sways like the rainbow piñata in the back yard.

Boom. Boom. Crack.

Candy gon’ spill out all over the place… Candy & beauty & wellness & joy.

I’m no happiness expert. All I know is that life is good. She means well. And we deserve goodness. Hot chocolate. Unwinding at the end of a long day. Kindness. Blessings. Fun Dip. Stuff like that. And if we cannot even see that, or acknowledge that, then we so desperately need  tie our ankles together and relay to realization together.

Friends, there is a reason that Katy Perry struck a nerve in all of us last year when she wrote Firework. And we all just kind of stood there and repeated the words in our head and wondered, is that me? Am I a firework too?

She knew the root of it herself, ” I really believe in people and I believe that people have a spark to be a firework. It’s just up to them, and a lot of times it’s only us that’s standing in the way of reaching our goals, fulfilling our destinies, being the best version of who we possibly can be, so that’s why I wrote it.”

I dig that. The fact that we are probably the one stepping on our own toes. Saying “No” or “You cannot” or “Don’t even try.” It is Us. Us. Us. Not that sadness or the uncertainty. US. And so, it is time to get out of our own way.

I am committed. Completely, 100% hopelessly devoted to you in a Sandy meets Danny “Born to Hand Jive” fashion. And if I have to sing power girl ballads to you all month then so be it. Cause baby, you most certainly are a firework.

Please do take this as an open and free invitation to come on over here and hijack my blog. Or be nice and ask me to borrow it. I’ll give it to you. Just draft up your perfect pick-me-up post, tweet at me, comment or email me and we’ll get it up here during the month of March.

OH and just to make it known… I have assembled your very first power ballad playlist here.

Adele- you cannot toy with us this March.

 

3 Comments

Filed under Month of the Pick-Me-Up

Tagged as , ,

February 27, 2012

Strangers Spinning & Harder Things

“This won’t be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do,” he yells to a room full of shaking knees and fast-beating hearts.

To a room full of pumpers. Sitters. Standers. Pedaling, Pedaling to cross the finish line we’ve traced out in our heads.

“And if this is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do– well then, good for you. But I can promise that there is going to be plenty harder in life.”

We’re revving. Breathing heavy. Wanting to scream. Sweating. High on adrenaline. Junkies.

“Much harder than this moment.”

Pushing. Pouring. Thighs collapsing. One pedal swing away from bursting free. Whatever free means to each of us. Strangers spinning. Spinning strangers.

“So take it and give it everything.”

It’s that moment. That moment of pure, real, truth: I want to quit this. I want to quit this so bad. I don’t want to pedal.  I don’t want to move. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

And suddenly you are remembering those Harder Things in life. The Hardest Things We’ve Ever Had To Do. And you cannot help shift your hazels from seat to seat–wondering, wondering, “What did it look like for you?”

When that Hardest Thing came… did you crawl? Did you cry? Did you curl into a ball?

Did you stumble? Did you shake? And tell me, did you ache?

You don’t know a single person in that spin class. You’ve never laughed together. Nor shared a drink. And maybe because it is always about the going.

Moving. Hurling into the gym. Throwing down a water bottle as a place holder. Changing. Quickly. Wiping the lipstick off your face. Pulling your hair into a bun. Quickly, quickly. Before saddling onto the bike and spinning. Faster. Faster. Going somewhere but you don’t know where. Away. Away. Where no one can ask you, “Have you had the exit strategy planned all along?”

Panting. Panting. As he tells you to get up & up & down then up. It burns. Your legs tremble as if they are the forefathers of Overload.

And yet your mind keeps racing back to chocolate cake.

And the Hardest Things that we’ve crawled out from all around the room.

Raspberry filling.

Maybe there is more in common with the Spinning Strangers than you think.

The way your mother ordered it from the big glass holder of desserts. She knew your heart was broken. She knew it was one of the Harder Days. The Harder Nights. The Harder Things.

You keep thinking back to the Hardest Things. Pedal, pedal. The Hardest Things You’ve Had to Do. Sprint, sprint. The Car Doors You’ve Had to Slam. Up. Down. Up. Down. The Last Words You’ve Had to Speak.

And you mean to say, to tell me, that others have felt it too? Others strapped tight into pedals with neon spandex peeking out from beneath track shorts. They’ve had their Harder Things too?

And all this… well, all of this time you thought you’d made a mistake. To break the heart. To shut the door. To fall apart. Those mistakes sat in piles like the old subscriptions of Vogue that flopped over one another on the floor by the bed.

“Twas’ you, twas’ you,” the Hardest Thing tried to convince you. “Twas’ all your fault for the broken heart.”

When really… really… perhaps the biggest mistake was thinking you were alone when all of it crumbled. When the Hardest Thing Came to Stay Beneath your Chunky Sweater. Came to Try To Tell You, “Sister, You Aint Strong Enough.” And a HA HA HA. The Hardest Thing trying to spit laugh in your face.

Maybe that was the mistake. The Aloneness You Thought Existed. That was the mistake.

It was never the breaking of the heart, the shutting of the door, nor the falling apart, so much as it was the foolish small thinking you carried when you thought you were Alone in all of it.

Darling, there were mothers. Sisters. Friends. Girls waiting with car keys in hands to rush you to a coffee shop. Ready to wash away your pain with sweet laughter and Michael Buble.

And didn’t they pull you back together? Didn’t you learn it would all be ok?

Harder things, yes, I’ll assure you right now that there’s bound to be Harder Things than this. Bigger Climbs. More Miley Cyrus jargon about mountains and uphill battles.

But don’t forget to look around. When you’ve got that Quitting Feeling all up in your chest. Look all around you. Be it strangers spinning or best friends with car keys already outstretched, you are not so alone as you think you are.

In the speeding, the going, the getting, the moving, the pulsing, the paining like the window panes of car doors you once clutched all your courage just to shut, there.. are.. others.. who have been there before.

Others… who refuse to let you do it alone. Others… who will stand by the finish lines you’ve marked in your head. Others… who are ready to say straight into the faces of the Hardest Things, “Do your worst. But I’m not leaving her side.”

6 Comments

Filed under The Tough Stuff

Tagged as , , ,

February 22, 2012

She would play a part in history. A part in the History of Love.

I rarely share stories as true and raw as this one but I’ve found that when you empty out your own pockets full of heartbreak and lay them before the world you often open up the door of healing for someone else, a door hidden in the vines and thickets for far too long.

When Depression first arrived, wearing quiet but bone-crushing shoes, I couldn’t call it by name.

It was just “sadness.” It was just “I’ll feel better next week.” It was just “I cannot get out of bed this morning.” It was anything but Depression—a diagnosis that hissed and hummed in my throat as I struggled to find the words to tell my friends that I was falling apart. That I couldn’t find a place in this world. That I felt sorry… Sorry for the sidewalks that took my footsteps. Sorry for the people that took my handshakes. Sorry for taking up space when I really should have been smaller. Skinnier. Quieter. Invisible.

It had gotten to a point where dressing was harder, where I ached while wearing clothing and wanted nothing more than to disappear when I walked out the front door. I didn’t want conversation— I didn’t want you to ask what set me apart or what lit my heart on fire. I didn’t know. I felt nothing. Nothing but hot tears on my cheeks. Helpless.

I remember crawling from my bed one morning, already knowing by the heaviness on my chest that it was going to be a Hard Day. Are you seriously going to unravel before you even get ready for the day, I asked myself. Are you really this pathetic?

I couldn’t stand. Couldn’t do anything but let my knees kiss the carpet and put my forehead down on the floor. Maybe to cry. Maybe to pray. I glanced to the right of me, noticing an object wedged underneath my dresser.

A pair of pink sunglasses. Little Girl Sunglasses. Barbie decaled. I instantly remembered Audrey—a four-year-old girl with a love for Nutella and Disney Princesses—and how she had sneakily placed these Little Glasses into my suitcase before my move to New York City. They were perfect and prim and a reminder to look at the world through Pink Shades every once in a while, if not always.

In just one summer, Audrey had shifted my view of the world. She had helped me to relearn the entire thing from a three feet tall perspective. We danced. We loved. We made wishes on hot tub bubbles. We painted our nails. We didn’t fear. We ate peanut butter on counter tops. We felt beautiful. We played in the waves.

Audrey—too young to even spell her name correctly—taught me Fierce Love for the first time, a love that literally wells up inside of you and overflows with all the things you want for Someone Else. I wanted the world to be kind to her. I wanted things to stay magical. I wanted her to believe in every dream she placed her finger upon. I wanted her to trust in maps and compasses, in the beating of her own heart, in the goodness of fairy tales and the love stories of life.

Clutching the little girl sunglasses, I began to weep. Collapsing onto the floor, curled up and shaking.

Remember how special I think you are, I had whispered to Audrey during nap time. Remember that you are limitless, I always wanted her to know. That you shouldn’t be fearless but don’t let those fears dictate your choices. That you may never remember a girl whose hair magically turned from curly to straight from one day to the next but remember her love. Her Morphing Love.

This is all your Little Bones need. A Love that morphs into Ambition. Imagination. Creativity. To Grow Them Strong.

A Love that will leave you seizing days and dreams with both hands long after I have stopped holding them.

I felt for a moment like a child coming out of the swimming pool, teeth chattering, being wrapped tight into the plush towel that mama used to pull and tuck around shoulders. Letting the warmth pour in.  All the things I had wanted so fiercely for the holder of these Little Girl Sunglasses, it was all the things I had forgotten to want for myself as the Depression took me in by the shoulders and shook me, shook me, shook me.

I had forgotten me. A girl who deserved fierce love. A girl who deserved quiet moments. Days of rest. Clarity. The truth that it is fine to not have it altogether. The finest laces of life. Good stories. Happy endings. A girl who deserved to stand in the world, unafraid to use her megaphone. Unafraid to make noise. Unafraid to be the foolish one with the will to change the lives around her and know that she would play a part in history. A part in the history of love.

Until that morning, it had been Get Stronger. And Stop Crying. And Be Better. And Eat Less. And Try Harder. And Do, Do, Do.

It hadn’t been Depression, or This is Beyond My Control, but rather a boulder on my back that I couldn’t stop apologizing for. I am sorry I don’t feel like talking today. Don’t feel like walking. Don’t feel like moving. Don’t feel like waking up. Impossible feelings that can only be met with Love, a Love that waters the weak and rusty limbs of the Tired and Trying in Tin Man fashion. Only met with a hushed whisper like the ones that come after nightmares, “Shh… it is OK. It is OK, my sweet one.”

I didn’t get better on that day. I cannot type out the miracle that didn’t happen. Getting out of Depression was a slow and steady process. It took many days of Change, snapping and shifting in my bones, to make me whole again. But I stopped apologizing. I started acknowledging that I deserved just as much as anyone else. Happiness. Joy. Moments tucked into sepia-stained photographs. Laughter that comes from the belly. I deserved that kind of Love and it was fierce and it was pulsing and I was craving and unwilling to let the prospect of it go.

Fierce Love. It is not a passive arrival. It is not a fearful contender cowering in the corner. Fierce love is a tidal wave of awkward and imperfect but incomparable passion for goodness. For ourselves. For others. For the world. But it starts in our own souls, bubbling up like a river. Eventually pouring outward onto others.

It’s sprawling.

It’s sun on the face after a cold winter.

It’s unfailing.

Unconditional. Unwavering. Constant.

It is saying, “I deserve this,” and finding the strength to hold out your hands.

This post is also featured on my second site, The World Needs More Love Letters, and is the launching post for the Stratejoy Fierce Love Course.

17 Comments

Filed under Disconnect, Loneliness

Tagged as ,

February 16, 2012

“Welcome to your Chisel Day… Little One, Welcome…”

Yesterday was a Chisel Day.

Absolutely a Chisel Day.

You’ve had them too. I am so sure of it. You just may not have known to call it that.

A Chisel Day? Oh, you’ll know it by the kind of Tired you are when you crawl into the last hours of the night.

Releasing & Gripping.

A lot of releasing. A lot of gripping tighter, knuckles turning white as the last names of princesses who take to little men and poison apples.

Releasing & Gripping.

One of the two, sometimes both, is bound to happen on a Chisel Day.

…

Chisel Days.

They begin on those mornings when you wake with the sun and spend the entire time that there is still coffee in your cup convincing yourself that your God has Shirley Temple hands. Small Hands. Delicate Hands. Hands Far Too Tiny to Clasp Big Problems. Illness. Drama. Hurt that doesn’t wash away with the blouse stains.

But you tell me, if we’ve got a God with Shirley Temple hands then how will we ever let Him carry us? Our issues? Our baggage? The Suitcases of Lord, Lord, I Just Cannot Let This Go and the Hat Boxes brimming with the Past & the Future. All the baggage that keeps us from the Here & Now & Right Now & Yes, Yes, Right Now.

“Imma walk out this door and hold it all in,” you’ll think on a Chisel Day. Meetings in one hand. Conversations in another. Tough Stuff balancing on the tips of your shoes. Things you really need to say today—no matter what—resting on your knee caps as you buckle your seatbelt.

And God? He’ll just smile from his wicker arm chair in the clouds and say, “Welcome to your Chisel Day… Little One, Welcome…”

…

I’m an unreliable source though. I’ve got no proof of His Shirley Temple hands. In fact, I hear stories about how we are just fractions of a fraction of his fingernail. And that he is a God with a good reputation. They call him a Creator, not for a macaroni necklace He made during snack time but for an eternity’s worth of being elbow deep in the glitters and gold of the craft bin. Daffodils. & Puddles. & Crooked Smiles. & Callouses on the Tips of Men’s Fingers. & Wrinkles in the Faces of Women with Epic Love Stories.

And all this scenery? Well, it’s for us. All this laugher? Yup, you bet. All this goodness? Don’t you doubt it.

But on a Chisel Day you won’t see none of that. You’ll just stay fixed on a running to-do list, a Mind that is balancing Anxiety on her hip and bouncing it like a baby.

On a Chisel Day, there is something there. Something Bigger than the dishes that need to be done and the conversations that need to be had. There is something standing there—big and frumpy and about as cute as Big Foot birthing the elephant in the room—and you won’t be able to stand it much longer.

Release it, He’ll whisper in a voice that sounds like silver. Let it go, He’ll coax in a voice that first breathed into the lullabies of the field mice.

…

Yesterday was a Chisel Day.

Absolutely a Chisel Day.

I crawled into bed at 7pm and answered Him.

I can’t. I can’t, God.

Because if I really can, and I do, and I let Him in… He’ll grow closer with chisel in hand. And chip, chip, chip away the things that I don’t need. The things He never wanted for me. The things I hide behind, like curtains in the bathroom when your sister is sniffing you out for a game of Hide & Seek.

I wept. Cried. Felt it falling on my chest. Curled. Curled fingers. Curled torso. Curled toes. Curled inward to listen to the slow heartbeat of the Inventor of Heartbeats.

Fine, I whisper back in a voice that aches to be silver. Do it, I surrender with a voice that cries out to be a lullaby to the broken of this world.

Surrender. Surrender. And let Him chisel my heart into fire. Let Him chisel my life into gold.

But use me? I ask through the tears. Please, will you use me?

Whoosh, like the wind. And the peace rolls in.

Chip, chip, chip…

Gone with this old way.

Done with that.

Chip, chip, chip…

Never again will you find your worth in this.

Together, we can stop that.

Chip, chip, chip…

And then that voice of silver.

“Little One, I love you. Bigger than your Little Mind can know. And that is why I can never leave you this way. Holding onto hurt and brokenness and the past. Little One, my Little One, all will be well. But you have to let me take it from here.”

3 Comments

Filed under God, Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,

February 9, 2012

Things That Change.

“Clothes,” I say.

“Plans,” he rattles back.

“Sheets.”

“Lady Gaga’s hairdos.”

“And you know that how?” I laugh.

“MTV… They showed a documentary on her. It was actually good.”

“Surreee…. Ok. The weather.”

“Your father… when he is trying to figure out where he wants to get his coffee in the morning.”

“How did you know that one?”

“I pay attention. I remember more than you think.”

I push off what he’s getting at. We’re not touching it today. I’m not the kind of girl who can sit beside a boy who remembers her favorite color and the way her hands shake when she’s trying to button her coat. I’d rather he turn and say semi-politely, I’m sorry, what did you say again?  That was the last one. The Boy Who Forgot Birthdays & Flowers & all the things a girl will claim she doesn’t want nor need until the day he forgets. Those kinds of boys are easier to walk away from.

“Directions.”

“That’s deep,” he pauses. “Real deep.”

“I meant north and south kind of things… Keep going.”

 

We go back and forth, ricocheting off one another with only the roaring of the washer and patches of unclaimed air between us.

 

“Fine. Batteries.”

“College majors.”

“Shoes.”

“Shoes fall under clothes. I win.”

“Not true,” he rebuts. “Changing your shoes is completely different than changing your clothes. Next…”

“Profile pictures.”

“Good one,” he says, pulling me in with a smile that took us to this battle from the beginning. This playful banter that would keep us going for days, as long as we never approached Us. And how often we fit into the category at hand: Things that Change.

 

We were changing.

Even in that very moment.

Dancing around the growing bonfire lit with the Woods of the Things We Didn’t Want to Talk About, shrouding the conversations with trivialities that wouldn’t hold. Term Papers. Things on the To-Do List. All the things you never force into the Talk of Two when there is still so much to say about the Eyes of One Another and How They Swear They’d Been Searching for Years.

 

“Seasons,” I double back into the game.

“Kind of like the weather but I’ll give it to you,” he softens.  ”Your coffee order. Will it be a skim latte today or will you go for pumpkin?“

“Life,” I cut him off.

The room goes quiet. Just the washer. Just the air. Just the curtains hushing the window panes. Just the end tables clamping shut the mouths of the wood floors. Just the clock. Ticking.. Ticking..

“You win,” he whispers, sliding his hand over mine. He doesn’t turn his head- he knows he’ll find the tears burning on my cheeks. Knowing I’d be gone tomorrow, with a suitcase in my hand. My life in its tender suede belly, zipped full.

“I should have said that one first,” I swallow.

He squeezes, harder than I hope for. “There would have never been a game then.”

14 Comments

Filed under Girl meets Boy

February 2, 2012

Three Cups of Honesty: I’d argue it’s better than tea.

I’ve thought about breaking up with you lately. You. The Blog. The Whole Thing. 

I’ve been known to squirm away from confrontation and I know (all too well) how to break a heart just by walking away. Never giving an explanation. Never keeping in mind that the other person–no matter what– always deserve one. 

So I am being honest with you and saying that I’ve struggled a lot with this space lately.

I’ve cringed a bit over the blog schedule I once laid out for myself like fresh new tops and skirts unfolded and paired on the bed the night before the first day of middle school.

Lately, I take one glance at the white space before me, think that I cannot fill it to justice, and shirk away to do some other task.

I love this blog more than anything. I’d gladly sit anyone down who is fumbling with a domain name or the question of actually starting a blog, just to say Do It. I’d grab them by the shoulders, regardless if they were a pair of shoulders I’d known for years or not, and tell them that if they have something to say, something to write, then now is the time. Don’t wait. Just start.

In two years, this little crook of the internet has opened up 1,001 doors for me. Not just in the outside world but in my very own heart. She (because I do believe my blog is a lady) has let me use her corners & her angles, her texts & her headers, to grapple with feelings and spill endless concoctions of confusion all over her pure white space. I’ll be forever grateful for that.

I realize it sounds like I am going through with this break up. Like I’ve taken this little blog of mine out to dinner, told her to dress up beforehand, and then dropped something down on her like, “We cannot do this anymore. It’s not you, it’s me.”

But it stings to know that this blog can so easily force me into perfectionism, lead me to believe that I need similes with silk straight hair & metaphors with well-groomed moustaches to come out here and perform for you. And really, I have no desire to be a performer. All I want to do is be a Liver. A Lover. A Planter. A Sower.

I’ve always promised myself that I would not use this blog to talk about me or my life but people, there is excitement brewing all over the place and I want so badly to share it with you. Over cups of tea. Over long runs. Over this space if it is the only place we can find one another.

I’m bursting at the seams to tell you that I am humbled to my knees & core each day by how powerful God has proven He can be when you’ve got a dream and a vision and you give it willingly to Him.

I am practically squirming to share here that I am sleeping in my running sneakers almost every night to catapult from my slumber at 4:45am to get to the gym. A treadmill and some barbells wait for me. I want to talk endlessly about my training for a Tough Mudder, how determined I am to run and finish this deathly obstacle course in May. How I am learning to test my endurance but I am dedicating my every step to a boy who taught me the meaning behind enduring as he so valiantly fought a cancer that couldn’t beat him.

I want to come here every single day, even if I don’t have an alliteration to tango with, and ask you the very same thing that I wrote in the last blog post: This life requires that we be bold. Fierce. And, if you see none of that in your own life, what are you doing wrong? Where are you not taking a risk? Where are you walking when you should be leaping?

I just came out a serious three weeks of “Run Down, I’m Tired, Wah-Wah-Wah, I Want To Complain All Day” mayhem.

I emerged. I stared in front of the mirror. And I asked myself, “Who the heck are you? You are not this girl.”

You are a grateful girl. A blessed girl. A girl who needs to hold her chin higher. A girl who has the world at her fingertips but will watch it get sucked away if she cannot stop focusing on the negativity. The Must Do’s and the Should Do’s. 

I came out of all of that when I decided that I would be as bold as life needed me to be, fiercer than I thought I could be.

Yesterday, my boss at work told me I should write a blog post on my latest decision: to wear red lipstick just because it is completely and utterly fabulous. & Bold. So Bold. (I’ve been literally having the greatest shindig of my life wearing this Very Cherry lipstick).

I told her I don’t write about myself. I keep “Me,” the girl with red lipstick, out the blog.  And then it all hit me…

Maybe it is time to share some stories. Maybe it is time to give you a glimpse of what is really going on in the life of a girl who is wearing bright red lipstick, hurling herself into mud pits on a daily basis, learning to nurse a heart that aches and breaks for all the humanity around her while fueling a love letter movement that is healing broken spots and breaking boundaries with every new day.

Maybe it is time to introduce you to her. That girl. Maybe she’s not perfect but she’s bold & she’s trying. And finally…. finally…. She’s got a deep joy webbing within her soul. 

 

19 Comments

Filed under Happiness