My Own Bohemia

Friday I woke up to a snowy world and an empty bed. Realizing that while the world had become a snow globe you have been out making it a safer place. Salting the roads and paving the way for all those coffee craving 9-5ers. Clearing their parking lots and their neighborhoods while they’re still dreaming about the lives they could’ve had in their plaid pajamas under their Pottery Barn sheets. You’re freezing in your neon sweatshirt and by the time they smack their chapped, dry palms onto their screaming alarm clocks you will have worked a full day and be heading home to me.

But you didn’t just come home and collapse into the feather couch by the fire.

Or retire to your messy bedroom to catch up on the sleep all that gorgeous snow stole from you.

You came in the door, sparkling with snowflakes

with your tired, pretty brown eyes

holding a bouquet of coral roses and smiling at me.

And as I held you in my arms and breathed you in I could have started crying because those tiny acts of romance are all it takes to sweep me off my feet.

To reassure me that there is a reason Taylor Swift and Carol King write all those love songs.

Because feeling this good is worth singing about.

Black lace tights and high heeled boots. Long strands of pearls and bright red lipstick that gets stuck on your teethe and makes your eyes look even bluer under the clear winter sky. We set off in my cluttered Nissan in search of abandoned buildings and wide open fields. What we found was much better- an unplanned adventured on a bitter cold Tuesday afternoon. Best friends united by a camera and 11 years of memories. Some good, some bad, all beautiful and flowing within us. Creating an energy and an unspoken bond that it so hard to find among the millions of well meaning strangers in this world. You and I, I can always depend on that.

We drove for hours, making random turns and sudden stops. Rushing through the crunchy, muddy snow in knee high boots to pose behind a dilapedated white house by a cemetery. Trying to look mysterious and poised while our noses were running and our toes were numb. We split a protein bar and errupted in laughter as we drove past the church that declared “We Love God Forshizzle.”

We tresspassed and enjoyed the journey even more than the destination. Because after all, isn’t that what life’s all about?

It’s the start of a new year and everyone is promising to change.

Swearing this year they’ll lose those ten pounds. quit their smoking habit. turn their life around.

THIS year, they will become the person they were meant to be.

And this time next year, they will be looking back. Wondering what the hell happened. Wondering where they went wrong. Wondering how those 365 days seemed to slip through their fingers like strands of silk. So quickly and beautifully that they never even knew that they once held change in their grasp with an iron tight fist fueled by determination and the fallout of past mistakes.

This year, I will not swear to change.

I will swear to live.

I will swear to embrace this new year and its 365 days ahead with a bold passion that gets lost in the hum drum of everyday life. I will swear to never stop looking at all that I have and being amazed. I will swear to do everything in my power to cross off those 100 things on my list of things to do before I die- because any one of these 365 days could be our last. And what a shame to leave this wonderful world without feeling mountains beneath my feet or twirling in circles on the hills of Ireland. Laughing without restraint and learning to play the piano. Loving as fully and fiercely as I can, and letting go of the past.

So when I found you at midnight in that crowded living room, sorrounded by pretty lights and sweaty faces and the smell of spilled champagne, I took your scruffy face in my hands and kissed you with my eyes wide open. Because I didn’t want to miss a second of this new year with you.

Woke up from a dream last night, my new pink long johns covered in sweat. My sea salt smelling blonde waves sticking to the side of my face. My fingers were clawing deep into the feather couch, and for a few wicked seconds I lingered in the world that exists between your nightmares and your reality.

the dream did cartwheels in my mind all morning. As I did crunches on a bouncy blue ball and walked sleepily through the cold aisles of a Lowes greenhouse. As I absentmindedly shoveled red and green Hersheys kisses into my Mac lipsticked mouth, and browsed like a zombie through blog after blog on the computer.

The dream where I was walking out of a little white house, with you by my side. And as I looked up I realized that the sky was a beautiful array of colors. Lilac and turquioise and coral. Burgendy and hot pink and fire engine red. Indigo and sunflower gold. All weaved masterfully into a feast that fed the eyes and the heart all at once. And I remember looking down, and the feel of hot, black pavement beneath my feet. And the puddle where I first saw the horror reflected. I had been fumbling for my camera, when I saw the tornados in the murky water.

Not one, not two, but seven.

Seven whirling, twirling, dark black funnels of evil and rage that raced towards us with a fury brought on by years of resentment and hate. A human anger emerging in the winds and the smell of the air. And the effect was terrifying.

I tried to reach for your hand, but you were gone. You had fallen and there was nothing I could do but run. Back into the lovely white house. Down the steps and into a basement that suddenly looked painfully familiar. The basement where I grew up. And I knew exactly where to go. The old craft room, with the chalk board where we used to play school and the unfinished color by number paintings. With the black and white tiles and the endless supply of glitter. Yes, there, I would be safe.

And I was. But when the winds had stopped, and the world was silent- I was alone.

And that is a fear that chilled me to the core.

I forgot about the dream for a while. I made tiny pies with my freshly shaved boyfriend and my curly haired mama. I ate chicken dumplings and lost at Rumicube 3 times and sang my goofy, fun loving brother happy birthday. I watched him blow out the candles and turn sixteen- when only yesterday we were playing polar bears in the living room. Crawling around on our hands and knees, hiding under forts and scavenging for food in the cold, snowy Arctic. No matter how big you get, you will always be my little polar bear <3

But when I got home, and closed my eyes, I remembered tornados. I remembered the lonely world. And the beautiful sky. And it is here in my writing that I find peace in this dream- here that I realize that the tornados of our life will swirl through and bring chaos and destruction when we least expect it. Leave us alone, with broken houses and missing roofs. Homeless. But we can’t spend our lives looking back into puddles and remembering the beautiful sunsets we saw before our world was turned upside down.

We have to have faith that we will see another one.

It didnt feel like christmas

without falling asleep next to you. 

snuggled in our matching pajamas. 

hogging the covers and listening to English accents until we fall into a deep, innocent slumber. 

Your soft, white fingers finding their way to my hand, 

wrapping your arms around my waist like you did when you were so small, 

and you thought i could do anything. 

maybe i thought i could, too. 

it wasn’t that it was 53 degrees

it wasn’t the dead, yellow grass and sickly looking trees

the painful lack of a white winter on that fateful morning when i awoke

no, it wasn’t the Ohio weather that didn’t make it feel like christmas. 

it was that I woke up next to my beautiful brown eyed boy, instead of you. 

and yes, I love him. But in my heart somewhere it hurt. 

because your eyes are blue. like mine. and without realizing it I had become so accustomed to waking up to your sleepy face on December 25. Your messy blonde hair. The mirrored excitement on your face as we rushed to the tree. 

Oh, we may not believe in a bearded man and a flying sleigh but I believed in the joy of that morning. In the smell of warm coffee. In the laughter only sisters can induce. 

I still believe in those things. 

But this year, you didnt look at me the same. You loved those golden eighties shoes, and I hugged you because I missed that closeness, but the air around us was thicker. The warm December day grew colder, and as the ghosts of our christmas’ past dance around in my head I ache for where our roads have led. 

But I hope for where they will someday lead. 

Back to eachother. Back to white Christmas mornings. 

The road back to eachother, will someday lead us both forward. 

Forgiveness.
‘to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt’
It seems so simple.
Grant free pardon.
Forgive an offense, or debt.
But this one word, is one that can haunt the smiling eyes of great pretenders everywhere.
This one word can be so simple to say,
yet so inexplicably hard to truely feel.

I am struggling with forgiveness.
I am struggling to grant free pardon.

I am struggling. I am struggling. I am fucking struggling.

And then my favorite brown haired bride sent me a message today. The one who is confident enough to chop off all that long, dark hair and let her green eyes shine. The one who works miracles with scissors and loves her tiny dancer husband with a passion that until recently has been foreign to me.
She sent me a message about forgiveness.
And now I see that by holding in this anger, by clinging to this pain, by constantly filling my journal with the grievances that you have so carelessly cast upon me without a blink of an eye
I am now the one who needs to be forgiven.
I am the one who has built a fortress of resentment and pain so high that not even the most penitent of sinners could climb its grey, steeley walls.
Nor break it down with heartfelt apologies.
No, now it is my turn to be sorry. For I am the one who has driven a wedge with my wicked thoughts and my victimizing tears. I am the one who has become so angry
so broken
so fueled by a fire that you unintentionally started
that I’m burning myself and those careless enough to love me.

I am burning, burning, burning.
And the flames of this fury will swallow me whole unless I extenguish them with that word.
That one, little word.
Forgiveness.
Forgiveness will turn the deathly reds, oranges, yellows of my world to a cool, calm blue. I’ll stop sweating so much when I hear stories about you and your new life. I’ll quench my burning throat from all the tears I have cried with a tall, cool glass of serenity. Of inner peace.
And this may be pretty to write and unfathomably hard to act upon,
but you can bet your ass I will try.

I will try, try, try.

13 hours total in the backseat of a pale gold car. Pointlessly reapplying minty lip gloss and closing my eyes while I got lost in a book on tape read by some faceless woman with a husky voice. Cramped knees and heavy eyes. Empty Vitamin waters littering the space around my bare feet. The winding, rainy southern roads seemed endless.
The world became a rest stop, and the faces at each one began to blur together into one collective traveler.
Weary, dirty, restless. We are all in such a hurry to get to our destinations, we forget how powerful it can be to open our eyes and look out the window while the world passes us by.
Finally in Georgia and oh, it felt so good to stretch my legs.
To lie in a stiff hotel room bed and listen to the manufactured sounds of bullfrogs and falling rain from an Ipad as I drifted into sleep. The next day brought a windy ferry ride with faces I haven’t seen in so, so long. They are older but they are still the same, with the same easy beauty and effortless smiles. The same hint of a southern accent. The same goofy grace. And now I can finally admit to myself that on that long car ride I worried that I wouldn’t fit. That I would fall short, that I would be forgotten family. But after one day with them I remember how it feels to feel home, even when you are miles from it. The value of their love is worth a million more car rides.
We walk on the old Southern island and listen in awe while our messy haired tour guide tells us stories about The Carnegies and Staffords. About colored wives with unmarked graves, about wild horses who are now slowly starving. We walked through old mansions and under lazy trees covered in Witches Spit. We tiptoed past mean eyed alligators and hunted for sharks teethe where no one else would know to look. We dissapeared in a web of history and romantic questions that may never be answered.
And now I’m home, and the family I never knew how much I missed is miles away again. But these pictures and memories will be enough until we meet in the middle <3

The days of fall are flying by quickly now. The leaves are more full of color and life than ever, sometimes it’s hard to forget that they are really dead on the ground. Their sad reality disguised by their beauty and their vibrance and the way they make our quiet suburban streets look while the kids pile off the school bus and crunch them beneath their neon sneakers and knee high rain boots. Some days I feel like a fall leaf. Dressed up in bright colors and hippie sweaters and crazy anecdotes about the wacky incidents that make up my life. Smothered in smiles and goofy voices but on the inside there are days when I feel void of that vivid spirit. When I feel painfully empty.

What is it that makes us into zombies? Eating, breathing, speaking, smiling. But dead. Unfulfilled. Lacking. I don’t want to be a zombie. I refuse to settle for the dead life so many become accustom to. I want a life that sparkles. I want a life that glitters like the dew on the grass after a summer thunderstorm. One with no regrets, one where my heart was used, abused, sewed back together and beat with a glowing vengeance for anyone and everyone who was brave enough to love it. I want a life of forgiveness. That sweet, delicious word that brings best friends together and mends even the most dilapadated of bridges. I want art, music, poetry hidden in every nook and cranny of my world. I want to live, live, live.