Red Hat.

I wanted the things I hated, the things you

wanted for me — homebound, homeschool,

homeshelter. no college, no dreams, no hopes,

no friends. your fear was my inspiration, my

manipulation. i loved you so much when i was

a baby. i thought you were so wise, so beautiful,

my best of friends. you loved me so much i

started to falter, as time went on. oh, you loved me so much

to buy my presents every week at the

grocery store, stained with your blood-guilt

for waiting just a few more minutes to hug

me, to play with me, to be a mother. you

loved me so much to give me a sister, the

weight of us both made you completely check

out. you loved me so much to keep me always

safe, never a drivers license, or a friend who

might make me leave the house. you loved

me enough to provide income by screaming

like a raving witch all day at bratty children

in your illegal daycare; I was too confused then

to think about that. you loved

me enough to create an imaginary world for us

that was just our own, where everything was a grave

danger or a rude insult — everything except

for you. you were as holy as God. you loved

me enough to keep from me things like

the fact that this is your second marriage.

loved me enough to never embarrass me with

the sex talk or to bring up relationships and give

me advice on how to form a healthy one. loved

me enough to stay with a man so i would

have no experience of the guilt from that

wretched sin divorce, have a father who was never home, gambled,

and hated you for keeping the house disastrous,

hated you for not teaching us, washing us,

living us; but you think he’s just stressed out

from working (idiot) and tip toe around him,

don’t set off the storm that visits the house

twice a year. loved me enough that you couldn’t

bare to think about me being unhappy, so you walked out

of the room in a rage whenever i brought up

my frustrations, boredom, hopelessness

being a teenage with no friends who

never left the house; you said don’t worry about

it - don’t think about it - it will get better someday.

loved me enough to not stress me out with too

much school work like they do with kids these

days; the school year would start and you’d let

us wait one more week to begin until May.

and so eventually i shut down, gave in, convinced

myself that all i wanted out of life was to live

in a house, read my books, knit my scarves, make

up an imaginary world around a man, no thought

to how much that might damage him, and

have four or five babies and keep them home too.

it would make me happy, i wasn’t like all those

other foolish people who needed the sinful world

to occupy their frantic minds. this was what god said

was right for women, anyway.

what else did i know? what else could i do?

and i became mysteriously sick, my body shutting

down, my memories shutting down. because

i didn’t feel sadness　 in my emotions, my body

took up the weight until I was crushed beyond

moving. but now i remember - i remember again,

and this time, i won’t let you win. i’ve changed,

i’ve seen the glimpsed the world outside the prison

of your guilt, fear, bigotry, insecurity. i’ve got a new

intention: find the hurts so i can let them go, heal

them, stop giving them energy. maybe even forgive

you. it’s time you stopped ruining my life. i didn’t

have a choice then, but now i’m letting you with

this holding. it’s funny though, because you worry

i don’t like you “much anymore.” and have no idea

why i would be struggling with that.

(Source: considerthishippie, via runrabbitrunrabbitrun)

(Source: lovequotesrus)

I know things about the future before they happen, sometimes. I’ve dreamed of things I had no way of knowing about and then they came true.

Sometimes I think I know some things more.

Half of my fate.

And what can I do but make the best of this day? And pray with all my being, screaming to fill the universe, for the ways to open up, before the best things are the lost things.

I used to always feel like I was trying to impress people with my wit, my charm, my-whatever. But I’ve felt that falling away a lot lately and getting down to something much more honest. I take a quiet pride, like a sweet, inner smile towards this action, at the highest level of my being. Proud for stepping out in courage with that honesty; seeing the beauty.

But in the middle I see myself as only able to hold out something crumbling, deteriorating. My gesture to say, “this is who I am right now, my honesty with my brokenness is the only song I have to offer.”

And in the lower regions of my being lies the guilt and fears. Guilty for not being all together. Guilty for asking for help and for presence. Guilty that my process is hurtful to others. Fear that if people see who I really am they won’t love me, won’t want me, will disown me.

This is to be human.

My body is changing. It is waking up from a long sleep — a sleep of near-death. And it hurts. Big time. Seriously. Every fiber, every nerve, ever muscle feels cramped, twinging, on fire. The blood that brings life also brings a cleaning out of toxins, and that release of death is painful.

That’s a powerful thought.

As I start moving parts of my body again, emotions come pouring out of my tissues. As I meditate and become more aware of the tension and get more of it released, emotions seem to spring up out of nowhere. I’m crying over things that happened one, two, a dozen years ago. Things that don’t have anything to do with where I’m at now. Things I only told myself, intellectually, I was sad about — or cried hysterically over — and never simply felt.

I’ve been reconnecting (or just connecting in general) with my grief. I was sitting in a parking lot a couple weeks ago waiting for my mom and I saw an old lady getting out of her car slowly and carefully, like old ladies do. It made me think of my grandma, and right there in the parking lot I started sobbing. Even though it’s been a year and a half. It was slightly strange. :P But I know I’ve been putting it off. I can home and cried a lot more. And ever since then I’ve felt more pain in my body and “The Cloud” coming down into my brain, taking up me, which is how I think of depression. But this time I’ve tried to just be and go with it. And I’ve been finding all this amazing, and of course, painful stuff inside of myself.

I hear God crying, “Love!” I hear God breathing healing. The other night he was over my shoulder and asked, “but where did YOU go.” And Jesus keeps saying, “I’ll heal your pain but you have to open to me, allow me in, allow the pain to come up and then I’ll meet it and put my balm into your wounds.”

I’ve been having a lot of insight to myself lately. I’ve always intuitively felt that most of my physical pain and issues are related to emotional things. I see that even more now.

As the grief has been coming up, I just feel myself hurting physically more and more. And then I tell myself since I hurt so bad there’s no way I can deal with the emotional stuff. I think it’s just a crutch, a distraction.

And in my grief, there was a hole — a namelessness. I discovered this a day or two ago. Tonight, it hit me what it is. And God, it hurts. It’s feeling motherless. No mommy to run to to hold me, comfort me, be with me when I feel scared or tired. And I don’t want to go into details right now, but there you go. It just explains so much of what I am, what I’ve been, and how I’ve acted.

And so now I’m pretty crazy scared. This all hurts so much. I know, I know, I know things are going to get better. I know this is the path. But I just feel I don’t know how to handle all of this. I keep waiting for the pain to get better before I deal with emotions, but I don’t think it’s going to work that way. I think the emotions are creating the pain. But this is daunting, exhausting. My body feels so strange. My emotions feel so strange.

I just need to keep my eyes on the light. God has never failed me, he won’t fail me now. He has already demonstrated his power, his blessing, his relentless healing in some other areas of my life. Now I feel him saying, “are you gonna keep trusting me? are you gonna take me at my word? are you gonna let me take you into this and out into a better place? are you going to believe me? are you going to let me love you?”

I want to answer, “yes — yeses beyond yes, Father!”

But I’m so scared, God. I’m so scared.

And I’m terrified now, at night, like I am, to wake up and face it all again tomorrow.

If and of this even makes sense… X-P

I was in a huge waiting room, more like an airport, at a hospital; dimly lit by a few cold florescent light-bulbs around the nurses’ station. There were many people around me, some strangers, some people I knew contained in a stranger’s body.

I found myself back in a dimly lit exam room in a hospital gown. Cold florescent lights were behind me and the room in front of me was gray and shadowy. Two nurses were hovering behind me, hastily bringing out stethoscopes and commanding me to with urgency to breathe. I kept breathing and felt absolutely normal.

“You’re only getting air in one lung.”

I kept breathing, as they worked behind me, trying to feel it, my lopsided breath, but I couldn’t. I could feel nothing wrong, air flowing through my nose, down my throat, and into my chest. I couldn’t see their faces — they were always just above my line of vision.

And outside, though I don’t know if I saw the sky, it was thickly overcast, deep gray.

[Dreams Last Night]　

This is my cousin, Ethan. He died Sunday night after a drunk driver slammed into the minivan he was riding in. He was three years old. Some of you may have seen the story on the news that night and following morning about a crash that shut down highway 24. That was my family. My heart is breaking for them and my prayers are with them. I just wanted to take a moment to say PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE DRUNK OR BUZZED. It’s not cool, it’s not funny, it’s not “no big deal.” Really consider your actions when you make the choice to go out and party and drink. Sunday night this little boy was down in the morgue of the hospital all alone and not with his mommy because someone decided to drive drunk. His family will never be the same because someone decided to drive drunk. This is real. It hurts. It’s terrible. (Taken with instagram)

Herbal tea jackpot! #tea #herbal #redclover #hawthornberries #kukichatwig #fennelseed #organic #alvita #eden (Taken with instagram)

I wish I was more like him / instead I’m shaking in the sun

He came in a wave / his wings were full of song

I’d love to see us there / outside ourselves someday

(Source: Spotify)

dont-steal-georges-food:

Paul and Mary by Linda, Campbeltown, Scotland, 1970

(via rowantrees)

Lately I’ve wished everything was an acoustic cover.

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro