Yesterday, amidst a busy day, one of my students popped into my office and asked if she could hang out while I worked. She told me that my presence calms her, and I returned the sentiment. She slumped onto the couch, and I stood at my desk, typing a meeting agenda from the notes in my head. ‘I found a quote that made me think of you,’ she said. I braced, glancing up.

‘Yeah?’ I said.

When you’re deeply sensitive, love is ecstasy. Music is godlike. Heartache is a wide, somatic wound. Visual natural beauty is jewel-drenched, wild bliss. Tension and conflict are muscle-tightening and toxic, straight down to the cells.

Continue reading “mistakes worth making.” →

I met the morning slowly, pulling my second pillow up and stacking it so as to prop my neck up. An episode and a half of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Season 3. The first fall of Carmen Carrera, a major hit to ‘the Heathers.’ Gradually, the laziness grew stifling. Get up, I urged myself. With reluctance, I listened.

I waited a bit too long to run, only 45 minutes or so away from lunch plans, but I put my headphones in anyway. I jogged around campus, the sun overhead, the breeze gracious. Backwards cap, blue dri-fit shirt. Why didn’t you meet that guy who hit you up this morning, I wondered. Maybe you’re just going to be alone for a while.

Continue reading “where i am.” →

There are three questions I’ve gotten, often, since getting a tattoo. Here are my answers:

Continue reading “tattoo in three answers.” →

Sometimes the story we tell the world isn’t half as endearing as the one that lives inside us.

I read this quote today in Scary Close, a book lent by a friend. I’m only three chapters in, so I’ll resist expanding much on its content for now, but I’ll say that it is already opening doors and windows within me.

After reading this quote, I felt worried I share only the highlights of my life. Only the moments of strength, bits of wisdom and clarity, and that I resist lifting up my pain. Perhaps my best stories are locked away, kept carefully hidden so that I might be worthy of love.

So here’s something honest. Here’s something I wrote on a hard morning, through a wall of tears, as I tried to make sense of the mess.

Continue reading “something honest.” →

This summer, in New York City, I read a bit prolifically. I read The Gilded Razor, Sarah Silverman’s autobiography, and the ending pages of Love May Fail. As I sat on the train, reading these, I noticed a common novel in people’s hands: Ready Player One. One morning, following breakfast with my friend Phil, we traveled to McNally Jackson. There, I picked up my own copy.

Continue reading “book club: ‘ready player one’.” →

the year of the breaking, first apart and then through. the year of words can’t restore everything, the limits of linguistics. the year of a thousand settings, but only now just venturing out of my head. of miles and miles of running, of hustling, for someone who walked away. the year of forgiveness, of letting go of heavy things to make room in my fingertips for the breeze. the year of learning things the hard way, that a person’s selfishness cannot be loved away, that my own brokenness was never anyone else’s to heal. the year of finding my strength in my shattered pieces, in my willingness to sit with my pain and study it and feel alive with it. the year of new horizons, of the courage to try again. the year of being brave, of working courage into a verb, of couraging. the year of discovery, this magic, was it here all along? the year of love, when it matters most, when it’s not easy, to everyone I have loved or will love. the year of searching for starlight.

After a fire, it is human nature to sit, to drape a blanket around our shoulders and stare out and ponder, to consider the days and weeks and months leading in. How did I get here, we ask ourselves, our faces charred by black smoke, our organs recoiling from the flames remembered. We inhale; we exhale. We are never more present in our bodies than when we are healing.

Continue reading “after a fire.” →

It’s in my nature, I suppose, to pause at the milestones and try to make meaning of the journey freshly fading. So it was with 25, and so it shall be with 26. Born on the 26th, I awaited 26, my golden year, for a long time. Who would I be? How would I live?

As I welcome 27, I think I can shed some light onto these questions.

Continue reading “26: the golden year.” →

I read my first Matthew Quick novel – The Good Luck of Right Now – during a summer 2015 week in New York City. Suggested by a Buzzfeed article, the story captured me quickly with its compelling narrative (each chapter is a letter to Richard Gere) and interesting, deeply human characters. When my brother read Love May Fail, he quickly directed me to read it as well. Bringing it with me to New York City this summer, I finished it in an Astoria coffee shop, my eyes stained with tears.

Continue reading “book club: ‘love may fail’.” →

No lengthy preamble this time. Instead, let’s cut to it: Here are a few scattered thoughts on projecting light in the world.

• Thoughts and prayers. With unrest and division giving rise to violence and tragedy, the ‘thoughts and prayers’ we post to our social media have come under criticism as a stand-in to legitimate action. Today, in a discussion on the events of the past week, we wrote our thoughts. Reading mine, I thought, maybe my ‘thoughts and prayers’ are ideas like ‘love is stronger than hatred’ and ‘we can change the world.’ Maybe we need to speak less and do more.
• What I can do. After a week of heavy pondering, I took a note from my own guidebook and searched for my magic amidst my ‘greatest hits.’ That is, I looked back on the moments I felt most certain I had done something positive. My best work – my magic – always emerges in helping people see more in themselves and in giving people a safe space to grow through their discomfort. Maybe I can help heal some of the hatred in people’s hearts.
• Tending a broken heart. The risk of loving is finding that you aren’t loved in return. There is tremendous power, however, in discovering that your broken heart hasn’t broken you.
• Love. I want love to be at the center of my actions, perhaps because it is through love that I find my strength. Perhaps because only love can carry us – any of us – out of the dark.
• Stubbornness. How to be a light in the stubborn darkness: Let light be more stubborn than any onslaught of shadows. Burn brighter, even, when you are tempted to flicker out.