Home is where you are.

I went to Eugene this weekend to visit my foster family. It's four hours north east, but it speeds by with a swiftness I never feel when I drive from, say, San Bernardino to Phoenix. I think because it's so beautiful, my mind is free to wander and daydream and write little ditties in my head and suddenly, I'm there.

There is nothing more stunning than the fog rolling in on the hills upon hills of Redwoods that encase the Smith river as you're leaving Crescent City and heading toward the state line.

I've never lived in fog before. The residents here talk about it as a general oppressor, something you move inland to avoid. That hasn't sunk in for me yet, and I sincerely hope it never does. I've always been so fascinated by the languorous roll of the moisture wrapping over the cliffs abutting the sea or the ancient, giant trees. It is so reminiscent of a woman, rolling over in bed after lovemaking. When I drive through the mist, I feel as if I'm being caressed by a finger.

When I got to Jacque and Dale's, it was as it always is. Simple hugs, deep conversations, a few errands. Soaking in each others company, because there is never enough time. I feel so profoundly loved when I'm there with them. We talked about Jacque's dad, Daddy Dick (I know, right? It's funny. But it makes me think of the whale, and really, he was a force to be reckoned with) who's generosity with his children and their friends, along with his wife, set a lovely standard and foundation for Jacque to model her life afterwards. Hence her taking me in, with 51 other foster children during her youth.

Which has therefore deeply affected my own foundation, my own life model. It's why I took guardianship of my neighbor when I was 18 years old and she became my sister. It's why I plan on being a foster parent myself. Why my friends trust me to be the godmother to their children. It seems that everyone knows I can love people who, by societal standards, do not belong to me as if they came from my own womb.

I gave Daddy Dick a rock when he was sick and fading away. I was a rock thief, you know. If I saw a smooth stone in someone's landscaped front yard, I would grab the one that caught my eye the quickest. I had a small collection of them; stashed on my windowsill, in bowls next to my bed. He called it his Erin rock. When his dementia fully sank in and he forgot his wife of 67 years and the life they built and would wander away from home, he always had it with him in his pocket. Of all the possessions he would take in his confusion, my rock was always on his bedside table and if he went somewhere, it was where his hand could find it.

They buried it with him. I cry at the profoundness of it whenever I remember.

I was just a kid on the same street as his daughter that hung out at her house all the time, and I belonged to him like his own blood. Maybe even deeper. Who could question why I am the way I am when I had people like that as my archetypes?

This is something I wrote up there. And that's the end of this blog.


There is only a heart and bones in this body

One propelling the other forward

Foot by aching foot

Fiercely and frighteningly and fatefully.

I drive along the river

Letting the power of the curve whip me forward

Mile by mile

Waning and waxing and wondering.

The water is rushing the banks

Tears rolling over my mouth the night I came running

Swollen but raging

Savage and scared and sickened.

Your arms swallowed me up

Hills of redwoods surrounding the valley

Foggy and still

Silent and steady and sure.

If there’s one thing I’m sure of

The rivers of your love fill the sea of me

Fathomless and grateful

Living and loving and loved.

I've never been so alone.

I feel like a switch has been turned on, and another turned off. I am so immensely free. It doesn’t matter that I’m poor, that I’m living on the kindness of others, that I’m dependent on their good graces for the very roof over my head. In the words of Third Eye Blind, I’ve never been so alone and I’ve never been so alive.

I am amazingly grateful every day for a myriad of big and little things that make my heart lift every time I acknowledge one of them. I realize that I smile at almost every person I see, and they smile back, usually slightly surprised. I feel prettier than I can remember in recent history, and not a single man has approached me in the weeks I’ve been in my new city. And even THAT I am thankful for.

So, here’s a list of things that make my soul go Mmm with gratitude:

1. Every morning that my defroster is turned on and works is an amazing relief; this is the first car in 8 years of owning one that I can make that claim.
2. Anywhere I go in my small city, I can smell the salt of the sea.
3. That Brandon is such a good person, and that I get to live with him and learn about him, if only for a little while.
4. My sister calls me and I can tell her incessantly how much I love her and know that she knows, and that she feels the same.
5. My papa’s voice whenever I call him, saying, “’ey, Eddin-poo.”
6. Dancing around my house to Joy Formidable in my pajamas after all the guys have left for work.
7. My wonderful co-workers, who are wise and generous and fiercely intelligent.
8. That I know how to chop and season and make enough food to feed 4 people almost instinctively thanks to the training given generously my whole life from my Aunt ZZ and most recently from my Ma Linda.
9. My lack of plan. Which, before, would make me quake in panic, but somehow I’m calm. Somehow I’m rolling with the punches. I am thriving in the limitlessness.
10. That the culmination of these small graces is helping me write again, and since I feel like my soul is always in narration mode, not writing made me feel like half a person and now I am whole.

I hope you are joyous, and thankful, and graceful.

All my love,
Erin

Thoughts on Loneliness.

The universe has been sending me a lot of signals about loneliness lately. There is a clear distinction between loneliness and aloneness, and my new life path is including a lot of aloneness and I’m thankful for it.

I’m thankful for it because I can sit alone in a room with myself and not hate or resent what I see. At the end of the day, you’re all you’ve got, and it would be a waste if you expelled energy on trying to change the past and couldn’t just accept who you are, your wants, and accepting whether you’ll pursue them or not.

Two people that I used to have relationships with are with new people. One of them is stereotypically him; he can’t be alone at all, which is why things between us had to end, and he has continued on the hunt to find someone to fill the parts of him that he hasn’t found yet. The other is someone I had very deep feelings for, and we’ve maintained communication as friends, but it’s pretense, because whenever I’m in his town he blows off hanging out with me and if we DO hang, it’s awkward and he ends up being rude in his eagerness to avoid me.

He was always lonely. He could never be alone with himself, but didn’t feel like he was worthwhile to be with anyone. So yes, I hope that now he feels worthwhile and that’s why he’s in one. My roommate is going through a divorce with his wife, a woman who can never be alone, and she has already sprung into another rebound relationship only months after leaving him. All of these people; so normal, so average, and they can’t bear to be solo.

I definitely miss intimacy, but my last few relationships have been so lacking that I don’t see the answer in another one unless I’m really confident they’re the right partner for me. The Naked and Famous say it best, in a lyric I can’t get out of my head:

The bittersweet between my teeth
trying to find the in-between
fall back in love eventually
yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Today, I woke up and made coffee and eggs for Brandon and I before he went to church and I wrote for a few hours. When he came back, we went to Pebble Beach and I was in rock hound heaven, picking up stones I want to tumble and make into jewelry. We walked the shore for a few hours, and my usually quiet friend talked a lot about how he’s been feeling, how he’s been dealing, what he hopes for. I tried to just listen, and let him know how supportive I am of him.

I walked around the city after they left for work. I found a house I would be able to buy for my own in my dreams. I feel hopes and plans budding in my chest, like Redwood roots twining down into my lungs. I breathe out wishes and optimisms and love.

I’m going to finish carving our pumpkin and make some dinner for my guys.

It's a golden life and I'm thankful for it.

First impressions.

It's my second official day as a NorCal transplant. My first day here I walked down to Pebble Beach and looked out at the rocky outcroppings just a couple hundred yards in to the sea and I felt my heart peel open. Open towards the sun sinking low by the waves, the freezing wind whipping through my hair and undoing the two-minutes I'd put into styling it, the cows mooing behind me.

The Safeway lady already knows me by name. Everyone at my Orientation was amazingly kind, in a way that says it's normal to be like that here. Like every smile isn't hiding a conniving corporate plan to undermine you and make you look ill-equipped at the earliest opportunity.

I have to relearn how to breathe. Deeply, so the last dredges of smog can be rinsed out of my lungs. The way people who live in a slice of heaven breathe when they smile at each other in the aisles and laugh when it takes two heads to find the butter because one can't do it alone.

I'm one of those people now. I need to learn the simpler way of living.

I have arrived.

I pulled in right before 12:30am on Sunday morning, with Brando there to welcome me with a hug. It was just the two of us for awhile, which I think was the best possible arrival; we talked for almost an hour and a half about life, what I’m hoping to find here, how I’m okay with absolutely any schedule the guys might hold as long as I can stay here while finances are figuring themselves out. We talked about his marriage, about his heartbreak, and I’m happy I’m here so that we can adventure together and find our respective paths to happiness.

I’m going to go make a copy of the key today, and walk down to Pebble Beach since it’s so lovely and not yet raining and take stock on where I’ve transplanted myself.

I’m excited.

I’m ready.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in awhile; it's been a very busy time.

I got the job in Crescent City, making significantly more than I'm making now. So, without hesitation, I accepted the offer and knew that in the three weeks before my start date I would need to resign from my current position, pack up everything I couldn't live without into my tiny Mini Cooper, and start somewhere new.

That's a big concept you know. Starting somewhere new. For someone like me who was born sixty miles from where I currently live and has only lived within that 60 miles their entire life, up and moving 800 miles on a whim and some hopeful grace has a lot of apprehension associated with it.

I am surprisingly calm. Mainly because I have this loving, bright, inexorable force of support from my friends and family. No one has whined about me moving. Everyone is smiling, and glowing, and squeezing my shoulders and saying "Good LUCK." Be the one that gets out of San Bernardino. Be the one that lights the way so we can leave too.

My friend Star gave me a lovely note that did, in fact, reaffirm everything I needed to hear, which was exactly her intention. She put one of my favorite poems with it, which is Our Greatest Fear by Marianne Williamson.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

And the last part punched me in the gut as I read, tears welling from my eyes. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. My loved ones see that and push me forward so that I can be that example, and I am beyond grateful.

It is because I am loved that I am able to dream so big. It is because I am loved that I have been able to accomplish what I have in this life and hope for more. As I have said before, everything I am and everything great I try to do is nothing but one huge living testament to the people who give so much to me.

Today I'm packing. I've done so little traveling that I only have three small duffel bags, so I'm running over to Goodwill to see if they have any cheap luggage. Of all the things I'm feeling though, fear isn't one of them. Neither is anxiety, really.

I am open and loving and joyous and grateful. I have enough gas money to get there and that's all that matters.

Ready. Set. GO.

The pre-beginning.

I have my first job interview in Crescent City on the 26th.

I plan on doing a bunch of other applications that you can only do in person while I'm up there too.

This thing is going to happen, and it's going to happen soon.

It's called being proactive.

I figure it's about time I'm proactive about something in my life that has nothing to do with responsibility and everything to do with happiness.

<3

Labor Day Escape.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Not the act of dying, or the inevitable realization of death, but rather the slow grinding away of your soul that makes you wish for something to end it. And really, that’s all death is: an ending. So, I want my current life to die. Croak. Kick the bucket. Be dead meat. DIE.

Because I want this chapter to end. This painful post-college graduation that is so stereotypically depressing…mundane, mediocre, bottom-feeding job that pays nothing and drives you to drink and want to trash your life just because you loathe what you’ve done with it.

My hair is falling out. Thinning by the handful. Every morning, I wash my hair and have 20-30 strands staring back at me, tangled in my fingers and my towel and I can feel them in the fibers when I dry my skin and I feel like I’m killing myself. That the stress I willingly inflict is assuredly killing my soul, and how could my body not react to that?

My conclusion to all of this madness is: escape.

Two of my best friends, Milla and Matt, my M&M, and I went to Humbolt this last weekend. It was Labor Day, my last three-day weekend of the year, and Milla is moving to Colorado soon and Matt is soon going to join us working stiffs and it felt like the last glorious chance to adventure for awhile. I’ve never been that far north on the coast; when I drive to Oregon, I go through central California, so driving up the 101 past San Francisco was a new experience. We arrive in Arcata, the small town our friend Kelly lives in, and we’re immediately laughing and catching up and talking about all of the fun things going on that weekend. His band, Silent Giants, was playing a show at a local brewery…there was a blues fest by the bay, street carnivals, farmers market, art walk, et cetera. Too much cool stuff for such a small place.

I felt my blood pressure dropping. I felt the urge to sit under a tree and writewritewrite, anything and everything. I felt like the physical manifestation of a Walt Whitman poem, leaving the hustle bustle of the city life that I value so highly for the rural town that I need so desperately.

I’m going to move. I need to be a wild rural American for awhile. I need to feel like Whitman.

The next day, Saturday, we go to a Creperie and have the most delicious shit I’ve ever eaten (rosemary garlic mashed potato with artichoke heart crepes…be still my heart). We walked around for hours, enjoying the small city center and going to amazing little stores that had the actual owners behind the counters. We bought books and beads and banana fiber yarn and smiled small smiles at the hand-written receipts and calculator-figured sales tax, always rounded a few cents down to be an even number. Brandon had come down from Crescent City to spend time with us, and it felt like we 5 were just another happy bunch in a city seemingly full of laughing parents of so many (SO MANY!) children, dogs, hula hoopers, dreadlocked hippies, musicians, street artists. Chalk drawings are everywhere. Weeds spurt from every sidewalk crack because the soil is so fertile, no one can keep it at bay. No one seems to want to, and the absolute absence of that frantic, stressed, high strung feeling is leaving me loose and flowing, like a lava lamp.

I can’t stop hugging them. I feel like my hand is constantly reaching out to wrap around Matt’s arm and pull him close so I can bury my face into his shoulder or hugging MIlla to me and pressing my lips to her hair. I grip on to Brando and Kelly when I walk barefoot in the freezing sand at the shore the following day, sliding down the dunes and laughing so fully I feel like I’ll lose my voice from it.

We climb rocks and wander to the mouth of caves and drive through redwoods and look at an elk herd, all because it’s there and free for our eyes and souls to take. The redwoods are commonplace for most of the people in my car except for me, and the idea is starting to be planted that I belong in a place that makes me marvel at God’s greatness everyday. I need to go. To get lost. Get gone.

We lay in our beds Saturday night, Brando and Matt in one and MIlla and I in the other, and laughter starts erupting and rolling around the room in waves and I can’t imagine being with anyone else at this place at this time. It’s a living breathing heaven. A vibrant soul burst of joy. Everything that makes this world beautiful and worth working for.

I’ve realized that death is staring me in the face every day. It’s the crazy trucker, the guy who casually talks about my impending rape, the tweakers who threaten to kill me in my office…the meek way I have to dismiss them makes me feel like death and I are in a staring contest and I’m averting my eyes because I’m not really living. I’ve never averted my eyes from a challenge in my life. Something needs to change, or I’d be the one changing, and I fear that if I stayed with my job and the stress it burdens me with I would be irreparably broken.

I like that Crescent City is still equidistant from San Francisco as my current location, so I can still make weekend trips to see my loves and enjoy the city and revel in the fun of it. And I would be only 5 hours from Jacque, so I could be closer to see her in good times and bad. So thrilling. So hopeful.

For one of the first times since I’ve graduated, I feel excited and eager again.
Let the adventures begin.

Coffee Beans and Gratitude.

I saw my sisters last weekend and as I was driving home, I felt a transcendent joy settle around my shoulders like the mink mantle my aunt just granted me that was my great grandmother’s. I was grateful to realize that it hadn’t been long since I’d felt such happiness, screaming songs and dancing rambunctiously with Milla in my car only two weeks ago on my birthday.

Then I realized, shoot! I never wrote about the awesome day that was my birthday.

So, Milla and I have been trying to see as much of each other as possible in this, her summer of freedom, before she moves to Colorado. I’m stoked every time we get to hang out because we have a really intense and unique connection that throughout the course of our friendship has been maintained at a distance, which makes getting to see her often a beautiful and intense and appreciated thing. Like a chocolate covered coffee bean. Yeah. Biting into one of those and feeling that shock of flavor and deep appreciation afterwards is as good an analogy as I can think of to describe my time with her.

Anyway, back to my birthday. She came down in the morning after telling me while we were in San Diego the week before that she put aside the entire Saturday for ME, no one else, and that she we were going to do whatever I wanted. So, we shenaniganed. Had an awesome lunch at Martha Green’s, a place I’ve been wanting her to try for awhile…got baby stuff for my cousin’s baby shower later that day…went to said baby shower…then boned out to get me a new tattoo. My artist, Aaron Funk at Tattoo Revolution in Redlands, is normally booked up about three months in advance and yet found the time to fit me in so I could get “so it goes.”, one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes, on my shoulder. We drive down the freeway, and suddenly “Home” by Edward Sharpe is on the stereo and Milla turns to me, massive smile lighting up her face, and says “It’s our song!”

We start singing, rocking our shoulders and leaning toward each other and loudly shouting that home is wherever I’m in love with you.

Florence and the Machine, “Dog Days are Over” comes on next, and immediately the sweet singing of the last song becomes a wild dancing ride, arms flailing and hands clapping and screaming at the top of our lungs that you’d better run for you mother, father, sisters and brothers…to leave all your loving behind because you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive. And there was a joy that I can’t fully describe. Something that hits when you have these moments with your best friends and sisters and foster mothers or are making jam with you ma, where you feel one with everything around you. Your soul expands and you know as surely as you know breath that this is what people work entire lives to feel, ache through trying relationships to know, tithe to churches to understand: you and the universe, you and love are not separate and divisible things. You’re one and the same, have always and will always be one and the same, and the only dividers that make you feel separate are the ones you put there yourself.

I don’t think I’d be able to feel such things if I were surrounded by anything less than the outstanding caliber of people that choose to love me, and damn, aren’t I lucky for it?

Gratitude. Yes, I’ll have a second helping. Thank you.

Fields.

Sometimes I want to drive into the middle of nowhere, sit in the middle of a field, and scream my brains out. Then cry my heart out. Then figure out where I'm going from there.

I wonder if the reason I feel so solitary is because my soul is almost done with this journey, and if I had a kid or a lover I'd be leaving them too early, and the damage done would make me come back again to learn my lesson.

I fake my happiness so much that I don't know when I truly feel it thrumming anymore. I never fake gratitude though. That's a perk.

I want to lie on the grass and look at the sky, all day if I wanted to. I want to go to the beach and put my feet in the ocean and remember why I'm here in the life I've chosen.

I feel a profound sense of guilt about Jim. He seems so sad about us, and I just wanted to go slow. When I saw him rushing and I had to be the one to constantly put on the brakes, a wall started to develop. Absolutes are a scary thing. I can't deal with "always" from the get-go. Unyielding devotion needs to be tempered, like steel, over time. You try to form it too quick and it'll snap in its development.

I think I'll spend the weekend lying in the grass somewhere.

Maybe it'll serve as a reminder on what the journey is about before you end up in the ground.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." –Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

My body is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love.

I am full of profound feelings and thoughts right now. I’m in my training to be a Court Appointed Special Advocate, or CASA, and am sitting on a bench next to tee-pees used for camp outs at a mansion in Redlands that is owned by a philanthropic oil entrepreneur dedicated to enriching the lives of underprivileged children.

In training this morning, a social worker who’s been on the job for 26 years, the span of my life (which, trust me, the insinuation was not lost on me) was explaining the sense of loss and mistrust the foster kids we’ll be advocating for are bound to feel, and why. How so few of them succeed in life, or continue in the same cyclical poverty and abuse they were raised in, passing the abuse to the next generation. How we, as CASAs, have the capability to be the factor that changes the course of that child’s life, by simply staying true to our word, by BEING THERE because we care to volunteer our time, not because we’re paid to be there.

As soon as we had a break, I went outside and called Jacque. I wandered up a grassy knoll to a shady spot under an orchid tree and asked her how her leg was doing, found out she went back into the hospital for an infection and deliberately didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to worry me, et cetera. Eventually, I couldn’t hold the fact that I was crying from her anymore, and she fretted. “What’s wrong baby? Why are you crying? You never cry.”

I thanked her. I told her how much I loved her, how people can only achieve as much as they are willing to risk, and I have always been so driven because I knew I always had people who have my back. Jacque, my foster mom, who was there on the nightly basis that the cops told me I had to find a place to sleep or they’d have to remove me from the home, and I knew I could always go there. My aunt, when it was time to take me out of my home for the sake of my own safety and well-being. She took care of me to the best of her abilities, handling a teenage girl, which she’d never raised firsthand, in all of my angst.

My mother was pivotal in loving me from the beginning and establishing the trust I needed to be able to trust the right people later and survive, but ultimately, it has been people who were not obligated to loving or raising me that have helped me be who I am today. Two bachelor degrees, with honors. On my way to grad school. Ambitions of becoming a published writer and a business owner and getting a doctorate.

I feel that becoming a CASA is one of the truest things I have ever done. When I took guardianship of Becca when I was 18 and she became my sister, my family didn’t know what to make of it. Who is this girl that calls herself your sister? Hm? But they grew to understand that my unorthodox upbringing freed me from the standard definition of family, and that I am blessed with the ability to love people like Becca, and Jay, and my Cataldo and Thompson and Foster families as if they’ve been with me since birth. This is one of my purest strengths, and being able to try and give the support that’s been given to me to a teenager that needs it is a calling to my innermost.

I feel a new drive. New goals developing. Becoming a foster parent isn’t an ambiguous goal that lives somewhere in my future. I will be a CASA until my life is together enough to foster a teen, but my goal is within the next five years.

I had a waiter tell me last night that I’m enigmatic. One of those perpetually unattainable women, that look lovely and engaging but always separate, unapproachable, because I am too far away. I smiled at him, laughing and asking if this was him trying to be slick and “attain” me. But he blushed and said, no, I just wanted to tell you. And I felt that a divine power had spoken afterward when I recounted it to Milla. Sometimes, driven people just need to be solo forces. I can’t imagine how a partner would enrich my life at this point. All of my relationships lately have been juvenile, wrought with miscommunication and ultimately wastes of my time and energy. I don’t have a lot of time in this life, and I have a lot I need to do, so staying focused on the goals ahead are quickly diminishing the societal standard of husband and marriage that have consumed so much of my last 2 years.

I feel pretty done with that chapter. I’m on to the new, the paying forward of what was so freely given to me my whole life, to living a life worth having, and fighting for, and being deeply satisfied with.

Needless to say, this whole week since my birthday has been a growing revelation. I feel very connected to my soul, which in turn makes me feel acutely connected to the ones I love, including God. I imagine heaven will be a swirling love-energy mass where what I feel for them is tangible and visible in the matter that makes up the universe.

My body is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love. But that’s okay. In my heart of hearts, they’re swirling with me all the time.

Endure.

There has, as always been a lot happening lately.

I know that this constant upheaval is what defines a full life, but I keep hoping, in vain I might add, that there's going to be down time. To be honest, I'm sure I do have down time, but it's so precious and short lived that it gets forgotten between the big earthquakes that abut them.

In the last two months I've gone to my cousin's wedding in Monterrey, my friend Milla's graduation in Santa Cruz two weeks later, and then on 4th of July weekend I got the scared text from Mack, my foster mom's granddaughter, that she was having emergency surgery that Friday night. The outlook was bleak, because of medical conditions she has, so I decided to drive up Saturday morning and be there for whatever happened. Luckily, it was me sitting in a hospital room next to the woman I love with the ferocity of a child for four days, being a go-fer and making her take her medicine and watching the hole on her leg slowly close.

It took 20 hours to drive home. I stopped to see Jim in Merced on the way, to hold his hand and eat a meal and sleep, like the wanderer I felt like. He is my new beau, and I'm thinking he'll be my last one. Most adults don't date someone unless they feel like the other person is worthwhile and permanent though, but things happen, so I'm invested but not fully. It's so soon after Steve...after giving my heart so fully and, well, it wasn't crushed or crumpled...it was dismissed. When I look honestly at myself, being dismissed is probably the treatment that enrages and confuses me the most, pulling on scenarios from childhood and the resounding gong that you.don't.matter.enough.

Oh, that word. Enough. To be considered satisfactory or worthwhile is why we do everything. Get educated. Get pretty. Get witty. Get creative. Sure, rare people only need their inner voice to consider them "enough", which I am lucky that I can consider myself among them most of the time, but since a relationship is between TWO people, it's key that the other person agrees.

I remember listening to this song on a drive down from San Francisco while Steve and I were dating or ending...the two seem intertwined for most of our relationship. I was crying, and started replaying it, and was screaming the words as bitterly and sincerely as I was able.



And then here's Jim, all of the things described in this song. Who adores me for all the right reasons. Who doesn't dismiss me. Who cares so much that he drove 5 hours just to be with me when I was sick, when Steve couldn't drive 20 minutes. I am a priority with Jim, a concept I never knew was so important to me until the failure of my last relationship due mainly to it. So I am hopeful and hesitant. Jim is one of the rare men who loves to be committed and recently got out of a very long relationship, so it's important that we go slow, because I don't want to feel like the emotional rebound, the rubber band effect, a dis-genuine devotion.

My wages just got garnished at work. I'll be filing paperwork on Tuesday at the court when I'm there for Jury Duty, so hopefully I can get some relief. Working 50-60 hours a week for $6 an hour is one of the most devastating things that could happen right now...the timing is almost cosmic.

If I felt there was a design to the random chaotics spiraling around my life, I'd say that it's because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. God wouldn't put me through it if it didn't know I could survive. All of this emotional pain and anguish is just weakness leaving the body.

They all sound so empty though.

One word is screaming loud and clear. It's what my grandmother did, my foster mother, all the people who dealt with loss greater than mine and were more graceful than I.

Endure.

Perpetual shift.

I am happiest when I write, and I find it disturbing deep down that the world makes it the bottom of my priority list. I allow that to happen. My will is weakest when it comes to enforcing my own happiness. I wonder if that's the norm with everyone?

I talked to Cat last week about heartbreak. She had one of the most devastated heartbreaks I've ever seen someone survive without slitting something and I never understood anywhere near the depth of it. I know now why a beautiful, vibrant young person would swear off anything remotely romantic for over a year.

I empathized but never fully grasped it until now. I hope my recoup time is less than that.

We have to move soon. A home nearby, I'm sure, and we should be hearing soon if it's the house my mom really wants. I'm pretty apathetic about it all. I hate moving, I hate having an empty bed, I hate packing up my precious things and hoping I'll find them again. My grandfather's World War II dog tags. His photo album from Germany and the girl he loved before my grandmother. Her butterfly pin. Trying to make sure I don't misplace them is part of all the stress that makes moving so intolerable.

I want my own house so badly. The bad plumbing, cracking walls, shitty floors of them all. I want to come home and sweat and work and make a house my home.

With a magnolia tree in the yard.

I feel like the only way to reach transcendence, even if it's temporary, is through working aggressively at making my happiness a top priority. Even if it's alone. Solace in solitude.

The scars of your love leave me breathless.

As in all things in this life, shit is tenuous. Short lived. Connections are quick grips at a rope that will keep us tied to something stable. Biggest lesson is that the something stable is always (or at least, SHOULD be) ourselves, and those lifelines back serve as reminders of who we are. Who we want to be. Who we feel is hidden beneath the six feet of dirt that daily life is trying to shovel onto us.

I offered Aaron an apology..I was told, repeatedly, that my standards for fortitude are unrealistic and I agreed when I had cooled down. He, however, lacked the grace to respond, and by extending that final apology and getting nothing back gave me a wonderful sense of closure towards him.

I am not, however, in the same boat in my feelings for Steve. I know that we broke up for all the right reasons, that at this point in our lives we're not at the same level or pace to be happy with each other, but I distinctly miss the beginning and not the end. When we would meet up and walk around Victoria Gardens and hold hands, smiling and laughing and sharing a shake at Johnny Rockets. I miss being his moonpie.

I feel like I did (and, to be honest, am still continually doing) anything to ignore the pain of that ending. I lunged headfirst into a renewed friendship with Aaron, I drove to Monterey/Santa Cruz/SF (and am going again this weekend), I'm doing massive orders for my side business and buying a new car and thinking about a new house and planning grad school options, etc. All to ignore that my heart is scarred.

I don't think I could ever give it as freely again as I did to Steve. It was so easy, so natural, to hand it to him, and him not loving me, him not making me a priority, and yet me loving him anyway is what makes me feel like my pumper went through a blender.

I had a customer call me today and ask me out on a date. Apparently he'd really liked me and was hoping to get to know me better. I never even considered it. Never thought, "oh, he could be a nice guy, maybe I should grab lunch some weekend." Nope. Nada. I bluffed it off and said I was dating someone and that, while I was flattered, no, please don't continue to call me at work because I would consider that a level of dishonest I don't want to be a part of.

I don't want to date anyone. I'm far from looking. Steve and I will probably never talk again and thinking about what a failure the relationship I had so much glowing hope invested in makes me never want to touch another.

Despite my puppy love heartbreaks, I've never recoiled like this from the prospect of future ones. The vastness of it makes me breathless. I wonder if souls can have scars where hope once lived.

Goin' to the chapel and we're gonna get married...

I'm sitting in a Santa Cruz hospital with my Milla and her dad, my papa san. He's reading the contents of his jello cup because after he offered her some, she said she doesn't eat it because it has pig hooves in it and after we read the ingredients realized that it's vegan.

How very Santa Cruz. And aren't I happy to be here?

My cousin Tamara just got married to her now-husband Aaron yesterday. It was lovely. They tied the knot at an estate at Monterey between two trees, a field with horses splayed out behind them. There was artwork everywhere; maps with the word "hope" torn and spread over the DJ booth. Donut cake and lace wedding dress, mad-hatter tea party meets Victorian grace. It was probably the most beautiful and low-key nuptials I've ever been to, and it was nice because if I never get married, I saw elements of what I've always wanted in this one and I was able to experience it and know what it would have been like.

They danced down the aisle to my favorite song, Dog Days are Over, by Florence and the Machine, for heaven's sake. That's my life soundtrack on a daily basis.

Milla's dad had to have emergency gall bladder surgery; he was admitted on Thursday morning and I was happy that the wedding was this weekend anyway because if it hadn't been I would've been coming up here to support papa san and my Milla anyway. He's doing so much better now that the traitorous organ has since been removed.

It's been a tumultous week. My writing mentor, Aaron Race, passed away after a long battle with lymphoma, and he was the person who ultimately honed the inclinations I had as a young person into the passions I feel today. What is the purpose of living if you don't do it passionately? Before him I was just an occasional writer, but after him I was someone devoted to the word and to being the one writing it.

Aaron and I had another falling out, like the one that so efficiently tore us asunder a few years ago. Basically, my theory is that we got too close to fast, and Mr. No-Attachments-All-Partying Aaron got scared and ran away. It's stereotypically male, and stereotypically him, so I'm not really surprised. He backed out of coming on this trip with me last minute, saying that he didn't feel like spending a weekend that far out of his comfort zone, with garnered a response from me of, "San Fran..6 hours...is out of your comfort zone?!" Because that's pretty pathetic and I couldn't believe an adult would actually say that. This of course comes after a weekend spent partying with his friend and a Wednesday spent all day at Disneyland, during which time I'm sure a party this weekend came up and he thought, oh, I'd rather go to that then a wedding I have to ride in the car too, I can just cancel on Erin.

Which was the problem. I don't like people to back out on their word. I don't care if it's going to the movies or going up north. If I tell you I'm going with you, I am, even if it's uncomfortable. Was it easy to be at a wedding that was practically what I had hoped for myself 2 weeks after I broke up with the man I had hoped to marry? No. Could I have gotten out of it with no fingers pointed in blame at me? Of course I could have. Did I? No. Because I gave my word I'd be there. I'm not especially close to my cousin Tamara, but I believe deeply that your character is based on your convictions and your strength of bond, and I do not break those lightly. Aaron simply proved for the second time that his word is baseless and he only holds true to it when it's convenient for him. Granted, in his defense that's the societal standard, but I try to love and invest in people that are exceptional and above the norm. I love people who are true, and now Aaron is not on that list, all the sadder for him.

Milla went with me to the wedding. Before we went though, I was wearing my pretty coral dress and there was a old Chevy truck in a field on the road to her house, and we decided to have an impromptu photo shoot. I feel like MillaFoto had it's first client. We had so much fun, and she shot over 200 photos in less than an hour. I'm going to be posting them on Facebook soon. For the first time in my life, I want to be photographed because I feel that I am never going to be prettier than I am now, and as much as I love looking at photos of my mom and grandmother and family when they were young, I expect my children and grandchildren will want the same. So, for posterity's sake, I'm gong to be documented when it's possible.

Having her with me at the wedding was wonderful. The Universe knew what it was doing when it pulled Aaron out of these plans and let me enjoy it fully with her. She melded with my family like she'd always been there and when my cousin Danny and Ron made me laugh so hard I had to crouch down so that the swaying of my laughter wouldn't topple me in my heels, she was laughing too. I am joyous and thankful.

Tonight we're going to wander downtown Santa Cruz, and tomorrow I'm going to spend the day with Carl and Queenie and enjoy the baby Carnivale that's going on around their streets. We'll walk and laugh and hug and I will be continually reminded about why I have the standards of association that I do: I don't want to muddy the perfectly clear waters I've been able to collect around myself.

Holy shitballs, I am so lucky.

I love you.

enraptured.

It's been a big week. It's the week following my break-up with Steve, but as Melanie was loudly pointing out last night, it's not as if we were close and hot/heavy to the end. We had been fading for awhile, so I need to get the hell over it and get some...according to her. I am naturally more hesitant.

If I just bounced from someone who I was so hopeful for to someone else I'm just with for a night, what would that say about me? Would my Grandma see me and be proud of the stupid shenanigans I was doing?

It's funny. I've never thought about a "GOD" that would pass judgement on me. When I have entertained the thought of this great judger, I laughed at it. I would give him the finger if he was so unbiased and unable to see the motives for my actions in my soul of souls, and was actually so petty as to have an opinion...that was how I realized people just put their own personalities on Gods. But I have always cared about what my Grandma would say. When I was laying in bed in my first terrible relationship and I was being screamed at and tears were running down my face, I looked at the ceiling and thought about her, and what she would say to the daughter of her daughter not learning from anyone who came before, and what in the hell was I doing?

I kicked him out the next day. My grandmother's opinion guides me more than any dude hypothesized about in a book could. Her love is my religion.

Anyway, I bought a Mini Cooper Clubman this week. It's pretty funny, because I got denied on Tuesday and approved on Wednesday and according to Aaron, that's a very Pokey thing to do. I wonder sometimes how that must appear to people...that I am so driven, so single-minded in my goals, when I'm really not. My real friends know that. The ones I go to when I'm lost and scared and forget that there's a direction at all, crying into their shirts and feeling that there is no reason to hope anymore.

But the Universe, God, my Grandma...whoever it is, tends to show me differently. And I am thankful that whenever my sadness and fear gush from my heart in tears, and it feels rung out and empty, it's always quick to refill with good things.

My cousin's wedding is next weekend. Aaron is going with me, which tells me it's going to be a whole new amazing. Just being with Aaron makes me happy, content, full and sated. I could spend whole days just laying next to him and I would feel it was far from wasted.

Yesterday, when the "rapture" was supposed to be happening, we were lying in his bed, and he had just finished rubbing my bad shoulder. His fingers lifted to my face, my eyes closed and content, and he stroked my eyebrow, brushed my eyelashes against my cheek. I smiled, and when my eyes opened he was smiling back at me.

I pity those people who think heaven is anywhere else but here.

late night musings.

Tonight, in its record-breaking coldness, I wonder that if God wanted us to spend our lives with someone else, we would have all been born Siamese twins.

I am alone.

I need to make every moment count, even if it hurts.

If life were seasons, and they were simply called the Wet and the Dry like in Australia, I think this would be called the Sad.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

You are the moon that breaks the night.

Closure comes quickly.

Steve and I ended our relationship Friday. Coincidentally, it was my last day at the office I've been at for my insofar Enterprise career. A day for endings.

It surprised me with how immediate and powerfully I cried. One big wash of tears, like Noah's Great Flood, pouring out of my heart and wetting my cheeks and covering my blouse in salty drops. The separation has been there for so long that I thought the eventual ending wouldn't be so devastating, but even the assumptions made by ourselves about ourselves can still make us look like naive actors on a great stage, suddenly unknown to the person we thought we were.

Sorrow was swift, and passed almost as quickly as it came. A tornado of mourning, and then a great lifting. I think there are a few reasons for this. One, Steve and I have come close to ending it a few times now, so I know that as soon as the first time happened my heart began to prepare for the worst. Also, he believes with conviction that a new job would make everything better, and holding on to that longer than I already have would make me a level of pitiful I'd rather not ever be. I said simply, "A new job will not make you love me back," and that was it. That was all the honesty of our relationship poured like steaming Turkish coffee into a glass and shot back in one gulp, pungent and true and inescapable.

It was initially such a hard conclusion to come to because Steve is wonderful. As a person, he is phenomenal, and having to end a relationship over circumstances and how one deals with those circumstances is usually something reserved for more established commitments. He didn't treat me poorly, or cheat on me, et cetera. He was simply not there, and I'm not inclined to the dynamics of a long distance relationship when we live 20 miles apart. I was so lonely. I just wanted to have my hand held, you know? Is there something so terribly dependent or wrong with that? And yes, I know the answer is no.

Enter Aaron. My friend from years ago, my other half, the person who my soul connected with on such a level that we were inseparable for over a year. Who, a month or so ago, shortly after I cried to God that I needed a relief from this confusion and turmoil, is suddenly hanging out with me. Long, filled-to-the-brim days with nothing but smiles and hugs that lift me up and swing me around and make me laugh like a joyous child I don't remember knowing.

Always respectful of my relationship, we didn't fall into our old habits of hyper-affection. On Friday though, he refused to let me be alone. I'm coming to get you, he says. You're not driving, you're not worrying, and we're doing anything you want to do. I need to be with you when you're sad. It hurts me when you are.

And that is what love is. That's what I have been missing for too long from my life. We go to dinner and the Shakespeare festival in Redlands, which was notably terrible. I didn't get a snide comment, or a complaint, or any type of negativity. Just an arm around my shoulder and a hand holding mine and smiles into the curls of my hair.

Yesterday Milla and Aaron and I went to Faire and had a long wonderful day. Full of friends and innuendos and kissing and laughs and hugs and everything that reminds you: this life is one of a kind and worth living as if the children of the future are looking to your demeanor as a lesson of what happiness is. Exhausted, we come home and lay in bed, deciding to watch a movie instead of go to dinner. There is the head on my shoulder and steady breathing and warm arm around my waist that tells me loud and clear I am worth touching, worth intimacy in all of its forms, and if someone can't give that to me, it is their issue and not mine.

My last blog, Unrequited, came from a dark night in which I couldn't seem to get my back warm and in my half-sleep, I reached behind me to pull my warmth to me and no one was there. Last night he was, and I slept closer to God than I have in longer than I care to think about.

I feel strongly that Aaron is a gift being given back to me. That our lives couldn't support our connection those years ago, but now we can. I'm reminded that I didn't seek out a relationship then, because I had everything I could want in terms of emotional support from him, and going back to that place of beloved contentment is not something I'm going to chalk up to coincidence.

My heart is screaming gratitude in a more visceral and primal language than I could ever voice.

Unrequited.

I really hate that I'm that girl now. You know the one. After a long day's work and when there are plenty of other stresses weighing on me, I can only think that I love someone who doesn't love me back. That I want to reach out in the night to seek comfort from someone I care so deeply about and have them feel the same, and be unable to.

I am trying to be understanding. To be someone who is worth loving. And not because I just AM. That seems to be a common undercurrent, at least with my many friends with their multiple relationships (and sometimes marriages) under their belts...that they expected their partner to love and accept them 100% for who they naturally are, no effort exuded, and that the mutual apathy is what tore them apart.

All of the ones I know of working..my italian parents, my papa bear and ma, my foster parents, are all relationships of sacrifice. Ones that weren't forged in easy times or places, but had to be worked at from the get.

And no, I'm not saying that if you're in one of those blissfully rare relationships that are easy from the word go means that you're not going to last. You're just rare. And probably in for a lot of craziness in the long haul that runs a higher risk of tearing you apart because you haven't had to sacrifice for each other until then.

So I wonder, always, if I'm making the right decision. If staying with someone who doesn't love me back is what I should be doing. I'm not obsessed with missing my opportunity with "someone better" or any of those cliches we comfort our dumped girlfriends with. I just don't know if I'm setting myself up for a fall that I won't want to recover from. How long can I stay in something like this without my self-worth fading like a firework after it's reached it's peak?

It's Steve's self worth that is keeping a wall between us, and it's mine that's on the line.

I'm scared and unsure, a combination of things I rarely ever feel for more than a few moments.

Writing it all out makes me feel better. Keep calm and carry on, right?

North star.

I saw my doctor today and I'm cleared to go back to work tomorrow. I'm so happy and relieved; when I went out for surgery I was about to test to be promoted, and to do that I need to get back and into the swing of things.

I'm feeling very conflicted. I'm thrilled about the love I have for my friends and family and how it's reciprocated, the growth opportunities at work, the financial progress I'm making, possibly getting into grad school and buying my first house in about a year, all that good stuff.

But then I'm hit with this massive confusion and sadness when I think about my relationship with Steve. I haven't seen him in three weeks, and he doesn't want to see me. Last night, some light was shone on why: apparently, when I was upset that he was whiny for no reason when we went to LA for a day makes him assume I'm always going to think he's a bitchy baby if he's not in a great mood when we hang out. Which isn't true. We always see each other after work and are pretty bleh with each other, and that's kinda what bonded us; we could bitch to each other and find humor in the technique, laugh about it and move on. I was just upset that ONE TIME because he was bitchy for no reason he was willing to share, and if you're just in a crappy mood, yes, I think you should try and put it aside when you're with your significant other in a big day they planned. Am I so wrong? And now that one mistake, that one piece of honesty and miscommunication is what is costing me seeing or hugging my boyfriend.

Is it supposed to be this hard? Am I too invested in something that is one-sided?

I hate being confused. I don't have regrets about anything so far because I love him, and when I love someone I stay as devoted as I can without losing myself.

My sister asked me what's kind of man wouldn't love me. Ma asked the same thing when I told her. All I can do is shrug. I'm following my gut, which tells me that Steve would not want to continue being in a relationship with me after I told him how I feel if he didn't think he might reciprocate someday. He's not so cruel that he would string me along if he seriously thought he wouldn't.

I've made so many innocuous decisions with him that have backfired, though, that I don't know what's the right path to go on. I've never felt so off-kilter, so clueless as the right route to take.

My north star has moved, and I have yet to find it.

Devotion.

I am so full of thanks, so grateful for the love in my life and the blessings I am bestowed with.

Today was Easter. All hail the zombie Jew. But I love this holiday because, like most holidays, I get to see all my families in one hectic, vibrant, stressful day.

It started with meeting up with my aunt and heading to Riverside for brunch with my cousin and his wife and in-laws. They're a really wonderful family, so it was a great visit and I got to bond over the dry chardonnay humor I have with my Aunt ZZ and cousin Dan.

When we got back to her house, my uncle Al was there. It's silly to say I have "favorite" uncles, but man, when my Uncle Mike and Uncle Al are in the same room, I'm happier than a pig in shit. They are so amazing alone, so having them together is like this copulation of wonderful. If I would put one word to them, Mike is an artist and Al is a philosopher. I always try to go by the house to see Al when he visits from Vegas because talking to him is akin to my own soul popping out of my sternum and taking over another body that I can marvel at. He's so intelligent and on the same wavelength as myself that I am tempted when my faith leaves me to hop in a car and drive out to the desert and seek his wisdom.

Second was the Cataldos. We had Easter at grandma Frances's house and all of us "kids" (the youngest being what, 15 or 16? haha) were psyched because we knew that there was going to be an egg hunt later. I love seeing Uncle Frank...he pats my shoulders and tells me I'm the sweetest girl and how I'm his favorite. Grandma Frances asking me how my shoulder feels and when I say much better, her kissing my hand in happiness and me leaning down to kiss hers back for caring so much. Bawdy stories with my adopted cousins at the table, all of us tentacles to this octopus of giving and love that is the body of our family sitting warm and safe inside. My brother Jay likes to say that I killed our cousin Jami's sheltered-life-bubble the first time we really sat down and had a conversation...I was working at the porn shop at the time and the look on her face was completely astounded. I laugh just thinking about it.

The egg hunt is on. My brother and I run around the side of the house in the opposite direction of everyone else, and before we hit the gate Jay and I are sliding and laughing and I body check him so I can get through first. He naturally Italian-ized it later, saying I almost threw him down the hill, yadda yadda. I just love being able to talk to my Italians on the holidays. I called Aunt Jo, well, Aunt Jo, and she smiled big and golden, saying "I love it when you call me that. It makes me feel so loved." How can one person like me be so lucky to be surrounded by so many wonderful people? I leaned against my Ma outside, my head on her shoulder and her rubbing my back and laughing at Ian chasing around his sister Tara and I felt that if this was all I achieved with my life it would be enough.

My final stop of the night was my Thompsons. I got to squeeze my Unkie, kiss my smiling papa bear on the cheek, wink at Kathleen when her husband gets into the traditional argument with Tia about political/corporate/unfair America. I had to leave sooner than I wanted because I was exhausted and the long day had set my shoulder to aching, but not before I got to disappear into the hum of a lifetime of inside jokes between a table of people who had years shared, not DNA. Of all of my families, it's interesting that the Thompsons have the most members that are openly adopted; Uncle's oldest friend, an old teacher of Kathleen's, and of course, me.

Everyone asked after Steve. If we were still together, if we were happy, why he wasn't with me. All I could do was shrug, to say he was with his own family today. How do you sum up the awkward side-stepping mess we're mired in? I love someone who doesn't yet love me back and I've decided to put my frustrations on the back-burner and am trying to remain patient while he gets what he needs on his own before coming back to me? That I feel like even when it's so full like today, my heart still hurts a bit for the absence of him? Three weeks since I've seen him. But I'll wait as long as I can.

I'm trying to live the devotion that has been given to me.

huh.

It's so funny. I'm quick to accept whatever Steve needs from me: time, space, understanding. I dig. Actually, coming to that conclusion has lifted this obese sadness from me and I feel light again. Because I've thrown my heart like a star at him and frankly, that can be kinda blinding, and stars are crazy mysterious things anyway, and you have to learn a lot about them before you can name them.

I think another big reason is that he doesn't critisize me for not understanding me. He's wonderful.

And the exact opposite of my father, who hardly gets me or tries to, and that lack of instant knowledge or me just saying, "it's okay, you don't have to understand your adult daughter ever in her life," makes me love and resent him all at the same time.

In conclusion, today's arguments and screaming in my household has made me very happy that I am dating someone (or, well, maybe not...I've given my heart to someone..yes, that's better) who is the best of my parents and none of their weird issues, just his one rightful ones.

See Frued? You suck. Neener neener. (Don't roll over in your grave, you'll get stuck at a 180).

In-between.

Life is looking up because I have amazing friends who remind me to pull my sorry ass up by the bootstraps, even though they feel frayed and close to breaking. I went to a show in LA last night with two of my music-genius friends and just the ride to and from in the car, playing poignant music and talking about depression, both of which they're familiar with, and relationships and coming through everything scathed but still beautiful made my heart pump a little and feel less broken. Steve and I are in this in-between place. I don't know what we are, and the not-knowing is what is the worst. I'm learning a lot of my weaknesses in this relationship...I have to know where I stand with someone I care about. Definitely. And it's okay that he doesn't feel the same. I genuinely don't expect him to yet. But I need to know if I can turn to him, because he's the first person my heart turns to, and if my arms can't follow I need to know definitively.

I've listened to Florence and the Machine and Modest Mouse all morning. This song, about six times.



It's called Cosmic Love. The lyrics are these:

A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes
I screamed aloud, as it tore through them, and now it's left me blind

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat
I tried to find the sound
But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

I took the stars from our eyes, and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

And my own cathartic poetry is this:

I once met a man who saw in me a young heart full of ungiven love.
He sat and leaned his molasses cheek on a well-creased hand, faded at the edges,
Telling me about his wife whom he loved while she wasted away in his arms
Forgetting his name, their love, a life together started too late for children.
A tear ran down my cheek and he smiled and patted my young, soft, supple hand.
Don’t cry, dear one.
You’ll find the one you’ll love for, because loving is living.
You can’t have one without the other.
When I knew I loved you, I remembered my molasses man
Sighing with scared relief.
If I lost this love, I felt I’d lose the will to live.
When it was denied to me, I was sure my heart would stop beating,
Breaking wide open
Dumping sadness and desperation into my lungs, drowning my organs.
Here we are.
Love denied.
Not dead, not even close.
When I knew I loved you, I remembered my molasses man
Sighing with scared relief,
You won’t be my only love, my only joy.
Here we are.
Love denied.
Not dead, not even close.

I feel better. Thanks for being here for me, friends.

If love were shelves.

Things have been really rough lately. I've been laying in bed since Thursday and haven't been able to muster energy to care that I'm depressed.

I got a diagnosis last week that I'm not willing to share on here that is definitely contributing to my sadness. I feel overwhelmed, despondent. Like the hope I am constantly trying to scrounge up like loose change has been blown to the wind again.

To make it worse, things with my boyfriend aren't going wonderfully. We went to Los Angeles last weekend to explore museums and stuff, and we left late because he didn't want to wake up early, so we weren't able to go to all of Exposition Park, just the Science Center. And for some odd reason, he was whining most of the day. As in, childish whining. When I called him on it, he didn't try to dismiss it, either. Just said, yes, I'm in a whining mood. When I haven't seen you for a week? When I'm funding this entire day? When I put my wants on hold and let you sleep in and the only museums on the chopping block were the ones I wanted to see? You can't put your whining urge on the backburner?

It ended on a good note, but it's something that I couldn't shake. There's an unwillingness to compromise or change for both of us that I'm deeply sad to think will be the end of our relationship.

And this weekend, I really needed him. I'll be honest, writing that is hard, because I'm not the type of person that needs anyone easily. And he went to LA with his friends to spend the weekend and go to a Bad Religion concert and Angels game. When I said that I needed him, because I say these things after two days of crying and insomnia and a deep desperation that I've never felt before, he said what could he do? He had plans.

And I wish he had canceled them. Even though it's douchey because he had these plans with a friend and was looking forward to going, I wish that I meant enough that he would have done something. Anything minor.

Basically, something very clear is appearing. We've had the same issues since the beginning...in no way have I ever felt like a priority to my boyfriend. And unfortunately, it's starting to wear me down to a nub. Because I love him and only like to imagine a future that he's involved in. I thought I could wait until he'd be more receptive to hearing me say it. I have to stop it from spilling out of my mouth every time I kiss him goodbye and I figured, maybe at 4 months? Or 6? Some timeline that he wouldn't think was too fast and run away screaming.

But I'm really scared that Steve and I aren't even on anything resembling the same level. I plan him into my long-term and he can't even plan me into his week. I would put aside anything, ANYTHING, if I thought he needed me and he won't even cancel a hotel night stay to a city 50 miles away. If love were shelves, he'd be on the second and I'd be on the third. Nothing perpendicular, always parallel, never meeting.

And that scares me because I don't think I can beat this horse of "priority" talk any more. We've discussed it too many times to count and nothing has shifted, nothing has changed, and I really cannot be in a relationship that doesn't give me the basics of what I need. I don't ask for much. I'm not high maintenance. I need a dinner, once in awhile. Or a damn card that's written on a folded piece of paper, for all I care. Or, heaven forbid, a $5 bouquet. What's so wrong with those things? To want him for once to hold my hand or kiss me first. And yes, I've told him these things.

And nothing.

What can I draw from that except that he doesn't care enough to make an effort?

And while I want him, sincerely, and I can't imagine wanting anyone else, I know that I'm worth the effort.

Bitterness.

I'm so rarely bitter about anything, so I really need to purge this out and get over it.

Even though, really, it has to do with my father, and bitterness about daddy's has been known to haunt even the best of us for the length of our lives.

The house that we rent is owned by a sweet little old lady who's decided she wants to sell it, and obviously we're the easiest and most acceptable possible buyers. When this arises, my dad tells me, of course your mom can get financed and get the house. I, on the other hand, am logical, and point out that my mother now only makes around $600 a month and that the bulk of our household income on paper comes from me, so even if there was a lender that could overlook our credit, I'd have to be on the mortgage for the financing to fly.

He commences to tell me how I'm dumb. Don't know what I'm talking about. And really, where did I learn about home financing anyway? Geez, the audacity of daughters. THINKING AT ALL.

And what happens this morning? He pulls me into the kitchen and tells me we need to sit down and talk about buying the house and says, no, I'm not kidding, that this is something any good daughter would do to help secure a house for her mother and I need to go with my mother to the realtor today to start the paperwork because I'll need to be on the mortgage.

I look at him, waiting for an apology. An, of course you were right, I wasn't thinking clearly when I said you were an idiot for needing to be on the paperwork three days ago. And do I get it? No. Of course not. My father has never apologized for a thing in his life because he firmly believes that he has never been wrong.

Oh, to live 80 years on this world believing with every molecule that what you say has the righteous ring of right. This realization was the straw that broke my camel's back of patience in regards to my father.

I've been looking at places to move out to since this fight on Monday because I am so. sick. of. him. He is constantly biting, sarcastic, demeaning, and dismissive, and never in my life did I think I would hold such a bitterness in my heart for him. When I only saw him once a month, sure, we would barely speak, but it was civil and decent. And then, my mother could tell me the sweet things that my father thought of me and I could believe her because I had nothing to disprove it. No longer.

He belittles my employment, my side business of bottlecap jewelry, and pretty much anything he can easily observe. And I ask my mother today, with angry tears wetting my chest, where the fuck does he get off? What, pray tell, has he ever done in his life that was so fucking remarkable?

And mind you, I've done more for my mother and now for him than his other children have ever done for their mother or him. That is a fact. I pay every bill in this house, their cell phones, my mother's car insurance...I have fiscally taken care of her since I was 16 years old, for chrissakes, to the persistant voice of my father telling me to always stay strong and take care of her. I don't think he ever once uttered that to her, though. Stay strong, and take care of our daughter. What does that say about who he thinks is more precious, more sacred? More worthy of care?

One could argue in favor of him: he puts this burden on you because he knows you're strong enough to carry it. That was my hope, too. Of course I would like to think that my dad considers me a good, strong daughter. But no. In all actuality, he doesn't.

I have a fierce and consuming anger that burns for hot moments and leaves a sulfuric ash of bitterness behind, and I don't know how to put it out except to leave them to their new life together and show him, pettily, what I contribute when he no longer has it when I'm gone.

Since when am I so petty?

I don't like this Erin.

Mouse Ears.

The last few days have been pretty impressive. Allow me to explain why.

Yesterday, I went to Disneyland with my friend Milla. She's down from school for spring break and loves to go but I'm always working or broke so I've never been able to experience it with her. Even though I couldn't do a lot of the super awesome rides because of my shoulder still recovering, I didn't want to miss out of this experience with her. We were like children. We both got our first pair of Mickey ears with our names on them, churros, sandwiches deep fried in the same way southern lovin' comes deep fried. We couldn't stop saying what a great day it was, how happy we were. Now, you need to understand; I'm often in a perpetual state of missing Milla. She's a mildly introverted genius that has been immersed in school for the last two years, so while I'm one of the lucky few that gets to see her when I show up on her doorstep with a bag and a smile, we don't get US time very often. Just the two of us. Openly talking about love and hope and when those things begin to fail we discuss the Divine.

She is one of my soul mates in this life, my Milla is. I tell her often how much I love her and lean over to kiss her cheek more than is necessary, trying to convey the depth of my appreciation that she is in my life. She's a wanderer, and I've known since meeting her that we would never have a traditional friendship, that she would be gone more than she'd be here, and that I'd love her fiercely when around. Like she needs to know. Like she needs to remember when she's out there in the great bigness that as long as she wants it, she'll never be alone.

Today we had lunch and hung out in her grandparents cake shop with her smiling aunt and fabulous uncle. As I've done most of my life, I immediately ingratiated myself with them. I can spot psuedo families a mile away. Even earlier that day I got a rare glimpse of her dad (he's a night-shift nurse), and when I walked in I shouted "PAPA-SAN!" and he smiled back, "DAUGHTER-SAN!" and gave me a big hug. We talked about empathy and people's confidence in you for awhile, and it was one of those mildly transcendent moments I'll look fondly at when I remember people I enjoy being similar to.

I felt like I was able to run away from my life for two days. Just the bad parts; the stress about my slow shoulder recovery, this big event for my small business on Sunday, the big scary new feelings I have for my boyfriend. At the end of the day, I'm just a girl with a jerry/jew curl wearing a mouse hat, arms linked with one of my dearhearts as we walk away from Fantastmic.

Everything else can suck it. :)

riding in cars with boys.

I don't know what spurned it on this morning, but I thought of some of my most vibrant, sweet, intense memories.

Not surprisingly, most of them were in cars. I feel like I've spent so much definitive time in autos...long road trips where you inadvertently bare your heart to your copilot, heading to a place your soul is calling you to, or just short trips on back roads where your headlights are the only ones aiding the moon and stars and you're just expanding with love.

In high school, it was with Sparky in his Camaro. Or was it a Mustang? I don't remember. I know it was fire engine red, with bench seats, and one summer night for no reason at all we drove around the hills of Riverside, lights piercing the darkness, Green Day crooning to us.

Later, I think of Aaron, about riding in his super loud Jeep, holding his hand and smiling so wide my cheeks hurt into the half-abandoned orange groves of aged Redlands. Best friends, other halves, until everything shifted and morphed, as friendships do.

My brother in his orange Camaro, cruising around Route 66, having to jump out of the backseat halfway around on our third trip so I could make it to a concert on time. His shining, beautiful, laughing face. Oh I love him. The same way I love my sister, in my deepest heart of hearts, where loving them is almost like a universal test to see how huge it can be. I'm a better person because of how much I love them.

I could make lists for days. Riding in (street)cars with Carl and Queenie in San Francisco, any car at hand with Adam in Phoenix, a cramped Yaris across Portland with a guy from college who I literally never talked to again after that trip. With Steve, my sweet wonderful boyfriend, sitting in a parking lot and holding his hand and him delaying going home even though he works early because he doesn't want to stop our touch earlier than needed.

So much love. I'm so blessed.

Great news.

I'm sitting here recovering from surgery and I'm really happy I can type because even though I'm drugged, my brain is on hyper drive and I want to write write write. I'm bummed because the inspiration for the last part of my children's book just isn't there right now, and it's because I'm in such a weird mental state of pain and stuff, but I know I'll get it done as soon as I get a bit past this.

Let me share with you a tidbit of the ridiculous amazingness that has been going on the last few weeks.

I had surgery, which is a great thing. They remedied the problem...apparently I had a bone spur that my rotator cuff had been caught on and that should solve the pain. The procedure was on Valentine's Day, which was my first one with a Valentine period and, most importantly, my first one with Steve. He came by after surgery to lay in bed and talk to me and let me know that I was cared about. He loved the gift I gave him and gave me a super sweet one in return (a stuffed T-Rex named Flower that he's had for a few years <3). Every time I see her I think of how much he cares about to me to give me something so meaningful and sweet and simple, and it makes my heart happy.

On the heels of the great news of my cousin Tamara's proposal and wedding announcement, my cousin Naomi told me the night before my surgery that she is PREGNANT! YES, preggers. I'm so thrilled; there were concerns that she might not be able to have kids because she had to undergo radiation when she was only 19 for pancreatic cancer, and her husband had medical issues relating to Accutane, so we didn't know. But they conceived right off the bat, and holy shit, so much amazing news in my one oh-so-spectacular family.

Now I just need to recover and I'll be on the same level. I have great friends, great family, great partner. I'm so happy. Life is on the up and up, my loves.

This is silly...

But I just deleted all of my dating site profiles and it feels amazing.

Win.

Outcomes.

I’m reading “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown and it’s affirming a vast amount of what I’ve always believed as truth. That our souls, the part in us that makes us love as deeply as we do and hope and dream and gaze at the stars and wonder is a sliver of the universal consciousness that we know as God. That people who love richly and are kind and patient tend to have sweeter lives than those who stay mired in anger and angst. I don’t find in coincidence that when my life goes hectic and crazy and I stay positive and hopeful that things work out in my favor; that the hope for my wellbeing that’s given so freely by the people I care about helps bring about wonderful outcomes.

My most recent wonderful outcome is definitely Steve. I feel like I’m perpetually smiling, perpetually glowing, because I have this tremendously great partner to share my thoughts and emotions and days with and he understands it. And likes to hear it. And remembers. I’ve told him more small silly things about myself in moments of comfortable amicability than almost anyone else and not only does he like to hear it, he remembers it and smiles at me later and whispers something about how much he loves my brown eyes or the way I grin.

I feel like all of my rough spots and determined positivity has ripened me like a good wine for someone who could appreciate it, and that’s him. And I feel like my life as a whole and all of the lessons I’ve lived and the spans I’ve grown in the recent years has made me capable to enjoy and cherish him for who he is and what we can be together.

I am glowing and joyous and effervescent. I am thankful. I’m one with my soul and with you and with everything above and below and feel at peace.

Holiday Wrap Up..pardon the pun.

I haven’t blogged in a few weeks, and of course it was the busiest weeks of the year. Christmas was a blur of busyness; trying to get gifts at the last minute, wrapping them, getting the last of my homemade gifts done and well-presented, yadda yadda yadda. On Christmas Eve, I saw my family in Rialto at the house where so many of my memories are. It’s the last year we’ll have Christmas there, and that bittersweetness was acute as I looked at things with an eye keen to remembering. There is a large planter full of tall, proud, vivid birds of paradise, and they have been there for as long as I can remember. Whenever I see them in tropical gardens or the like I can’t help but think of my aunt and uncle, who have such loud plants in front of their humble home on a small street in Rialto, where everything else is so plain and whitewashed. They have seemingly always been fearless of being different, and as I grew older and settled into accepting myself in my own skin, their shrugging off of societal norms became a quiet undercurrent of assurance for me. If they can do it, why can’t I? And in that beautiful uniqueness they carry around them and throughout their home, I find a steadiness. They have always supported me, and always will, and they’re crazy, and it’s all beautiful and it’s all okay.

Afterwards, my mother and I rushed off to take BJ to midnight mass at a Catholic Church in San Bernardino, which is always a funny case study. The clothes people wear to church is sadly hilarious. From fully formal silk dresses that reached the floor with beaded boleros to women in skin tight outfits with sparkly hooker booties on. The tight sparkly skank was a Eucharistic minister even! And then there was a child screaming just to scream for almost the entire mass, and people running around with 4 young children and flip flops on (it was in the 30s and raining). Such extremes. What happened to wearing decent, clean, plain clothes to worship your god in? I’m not even Catholic and I know to dress with respectability. Anyway.

Sunday morning, I woke up to both of my parents for the first time. The newness of it wasn’t lost on me, and to have my dad making breakfast and being his witty self warmed a part of my heart that is still a child and had always wanted her papa on Christmas morning. After we opened presents, I went to Kathleen’s for another breakfast with her and her familia, which was always a joy. Kathleen made me a beautiful scarf that feels like a cloud of green swirly heaven. Afterwards, I went to the Cataldos and was able to hug my family and see everyone (and I mean everyone) before I left to go home and pack for Phoenix. Heather picked me up shortly afterwards and we drove to the valley of the sun to surprise the Wnuks. Wonderful. It was a huge surprise and no one had any suspicion we would do something so ballsy. I spent the rest of the weekend with them and we came home Sunday night.

The next weekend was, of course, New Years. I love the overt beginning of something so new and fresh, the glory of having new calendars opening up and a new number at the end of my dates and a new 365 days of opportunity. Interestingly enough, I started talking to someone a few days before New Years online, and he sounded pretty awesome, so we decided that we’d try to hang out on New Year’s Eve and ring in midnight together. That didn’t pan out, so I happily kissed Kathleen, one of my best friends, when that countdown was called out and it seems that was good luck, because everything since then has been wonderful. I’ll break it down for ya.

The next morning, I get a text from Steven, the guy I met a few days earlier. How about breakfast, he says? YES. So we go to a small breakfast place called Zeke’s, then head over to the speedway to watch my brother drag race, and then head over to Pizza King to split a large pie with my brother and his girlfriend, then went to the house to watch Despicable Me, then went to watch True Grit. There we parted ways, after about a 14 hour first date. To say I’m twitterpated by this point is an understatement. Steve is the wonderful, sweet, funny guy who’s smart and so far, everything I’ve ever let myself want in a partner. I feel this rush of excitement when I think about him, anticipation for the next time I’ll be able to hold his hand or look at his different colored eyes. It’s remarkable to me how firmly and solidly I felt for him so immediately; while he was cutting slices of his Belgium waffle for me over breakfast, stopping me because I didn’t have enough strawberries on my bite, I felt the connections that were tying me down to failed relationships be severed away. Meeting someone who was so worthy of my affection and feeling that he wholly reciprocates makes me want to give my complete heart to him, and I’m already there.

Two days later, I sold my Eclipse and was released from the weight of it holding me down, have hung out with Steve again and have had my feelings only become firmer. My new year is starting out phenomenal, and I feel like I have my mojo back. I’m falling in love with my own life, with my own ability to put my feet into the shallow end of the ocean of love, with the ability to hope consistently and seek out perpetual grace.

I hope your year is shaping up to be just as beautiful.