Being present–artist, partner, dreamer.

 “I don’t even have time for a boyfriend,” I sigh over my steaming lavender earl grey.  “I just want someone to think about when I’m walking to my car.”

The winter hits me from a different angle every year, like a predator that studies me, and evolves with me.  A shell breaks around my crown.  A vibrating fractal that snaps as I push through it.

A year and a half into therapy, we finally get into my brain patterns.  Headspace has come up for me before, but it’s time to tackle it now.  My emotional back is sore.  I’m supposed to want to be in the present.  And I do.  I think.

My therapist is like a fairy in a cave, with a soft glow around her as she shows me around dark corners.  I unroll the parchment and draw another angle on the map.

Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness, she says.  An artist daydreams, dissociates, floats off into the clouds.

“Elisabeth?  Earth to Elisabeth, are you there?” my second grade teacher asks me while I’m thinking about boobs.

“Are you dressed yet?  We’re late, Bissy,” my parents patiently urge while I think about the saddest Disney deaths.

“Anyway, that’s why I can’t sleep with my neck exposed,” my friend concludes, merging onto I-465 as I’m sailing between Canis Major and Canis Minor.

Don’t even get me started on where my head is when I’m in love.  Eros almost had me create a baby with a narcissist.  I was lucky.  Many artists are not so lucky.

Where even is my head in this blog post?  Does it even make sense?  I can’t tell if it makes sense.

I shoot uncomfortably back into my body as I cross the street, and then I immediately leave again.  I move out of people’s trajectories too late, reading my surroundings as if they’re a dense victorian novel, sometimes spinning around several times in the same block.

I wake up, unable to tell where my depression ends and his begins.  Love was a syrup; now it’s a paste.  I push my head side to side, but can’t see anything.  I reach out to stretch, and feel my body shoot inward toward a black hole.

I walk toward a tree trunk, smell the cinnamon bark, sink my fingers into the rough soil.  I creek with the branches.

Everything is moving, not just me.

   

Sometimes I need to wrestle the spirit that keeps me alive to the ground, and tell her to wait.  Sometimes I need to squeeze my brain back into myself, or bash it against something outside myself.  I can’t always tell, because just like everyone else, my angels and demons are the same people.

The black chaos that emerges from me in the form of words is the same chaos that makes reading too difficult to be a pastime.  The neurological patterns that make listening easy and relaxing are the same patterns that make talking a mental workout.  I fall into therapy roles the same way I sink into a couch.  And I can stay there too long, and lose my mind.

“So anyway,” he says, after ten uninterrupted minutes, “I think part of my damage is that the people who have always held sway in my life have insinuated to me that I’m never enough.”

I tense.

“Hold on,” I say, and take hold of his hand.  “Can we talk about…can we play tennis soon?  I want to see the direction that a ball goes when I swing at it.  From 50 different angles.  I want to feel physics the way a dog does when he chases a rabbit.”

“Oh, um, of course my love,” he says with stars in his eyes, and I run my hand over the couch and feel the microsuede texture that’s supposed to keep my cats from scratching it, but doesn’t.

In which I procrastinate on sending out poetry

I write good shit, because that’s what I like to do.

I like it when people read my shit, I like it a lot.

But this whole be-a-commercial-success thing, I dunno.

I’m a bit like Emily Dickinson in that I struggle with the outside world.

I grew up under benevolent eyes. I was almost good enough.

My father got me two kinds of gifts for Christmas–

classical music CDs from the discount bin

and a book that would help me with a school project.

Maybe it’s why I can’t stop dreaming about college.

It’s the same dream every time.

I’m going through those 4 years, again.

Yes, I got my degree.  But I’m getting it again.

Because I didn’t absorb it the first time.

Because I dared care about other things the first time–

My pleasures, my toxic relationships,

a new magic I was trying to use as it was using me–

I wrestled with entities separate from books and ideas.

I word-vomited banal generalities for all my papers,

got a lot of C-’s. But showed up enough 

to stretch zombified fingers across the border of B-.

And that means, in my comfortable shame, 

that I wasted my education.

But midway through every dream I look at the calendar

and realize I need to be at work.

That I don’t need validation as long as I have money,

which I am now earning on my own.

And I wake up in a world far less stimulating.

No Old Testament Literature, no French,

no Psychology 305.

Just a freezing dark room, a harsh lamp, 

a podcast about a world I can’t change,

and a pair of legs that will start working soon enough.

Lessons from my 37th year of living, my 22nd year of romantic involvement, and my 16th year of polyamory

 I come up for air from my favorite spot on his neck.  We’ve been holding each other for hours.  We lightly press our foreheads together and feel the vibrations of each other’s minds in the quiet serenity of our vulnerability.

“I have a gift for you.  It was in my pocket.”  He hands over a small ziplock bag with a ring.  It’s my birthstone, but not the type I’ve usually received as a gift.  It’s a black iridescent opal, surrounded by tiny gems.  It looks like the cosmos, like the life inside of a black hole.  It’s magical and dark, just like me.

I’m speechless, near tears.  I’ve gotten romantic gifts from boyfriends before, and I can recall the various women I’ve been in those moments.  There’s always an orgasmic rush of validation, the importance you have, tangible evidence of the space you occupy in his mind.  It’s not a lie–he loves you.  He thought of you when you weren’t there, and planned on a way to make you smile the next time he sees you.

I had associated passion with dread since my first serious poly breakup in 2019 (ending a ten year relationship in which I’d got a matching, permanent body-mod as a metaphor for our commitment).  Even more so when my second serious partner of three years (with whom I had much smoother and more gracious communication) had to leave because of a traumatic event that had nothing to do with me…making me question everything about love.

“Will he pass the test?” my wounds ask.  “Will he make you feel safe, and then one day decide that you’re not worth the effort?  Will he love you until something difficult happens in his life, and then be unable to proceed?  Was it really love that you had before?  Or did you become blind?  Does real love last?”

These are all vain attempts of emotional calibration, because they’re my wounds trying to figure out someone else, rather than my own strength solidifying a foundation that will enable me to participate in a relationship.  It’s what scores of hours in therapy has been helping me to understand, and it speaks to centuries of patriarchal, religious, and cultural conditioning.

We did love each other, it did end, and it will keep happening.  We all will keep loving and evolving, loving and moving, with each other and by ourselves.  I will learn a lot along the way about triggers and desires and needs.  About habits and cycles.  About headspace and holding space.  How to say no without worry.  How to let my partner own their feelings and time while I own mine.  How to engulf myself in the present and be grateful.

I look at this beautiful, ardent man next to me.  Not more or less perfect than any of my exes.  Just here, this version of him with this version of me, sharing this time which is now more valuable than it’s ever been.  We geek out about a tribe in the Amazon whose numbering system is rooted in the fibonacci sequence rather than base ten.  We give our nuanced opinions about Taylor Swift.  We crack up over easter eggs in The Simpsons and Family Guy.  We recite our favorite lines from our own poetry.

Our trust tightens like a cable knot, because I still don’t expect anything from him except his genuine self.  I love the ring; I’ll tear up every time I see it.  But I’ll still be just as grateful that he decides to send one more text or schedule one more Friday.

Relationship longevity is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t proof of our individual worth.  No amount of passion, paranoia, or loyalty will prevent us from being shrapnel in the bombs that life decides to throw, should we become unfortunate enough.  All we can do is continue to rebuild.

Facing My Triggers, pt 1: Headspace

The following post is dedicated to Kendrick Lamar.  Thank you for writing Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.  

A mantra has been visiting me lately, like a bird who’s been watching me from afar, but has finally landed on my window.  The key to serenity is facing your triggers.

I grew up with 2 rules: be an exemplary Christian, and get good grades.  Neither of those are bad things. But for a while, there wasn't a lot of room for much else. I got used to hammering myself, and others, into that identity. I judged everyone who didn't fit what I was told to achieve. My brother and I created a moral intellectual elitism that didn't keep anybody warm, but at least explained the darkness we both felt.

So like a good little artist I created my own triggers.  Among them:  1) having my intelligence belittled or judged, and 2) being perceived as heartless, cruel, or ignorant.

So here I am spinning through time with open doors and windows, desperate for approval, just as lonely in my 20s as I was when I was 11.

And then the therapist shows me "the work."

1) Cut out the people feeding into my negative self-beliefs. The ingredients for the perfect storm are much faster drawn together than the ingredients for a self-directed life. I never wrapped my arms around happiness and didn't know how...what to feel for, or look for, or move towards. Get rid of the people holding my arms in place.

2) Get in the ring and tackle those negative self-beliefs. 

I am intelligent, even if judgmental left-brained people make me feel like I’m not.  As it turns out, judgmental left-brained people actually don’t understand a lot of artistic metaphors, and use judgment as a defense mechanism to protect their own self-perception.  But that’s not what this post is about, and I’ve given those types enough of my headspace.

I am kind, even if I draw strong boundaries.  Fixing people is not my job.  Fixing me is my job.  Fixing others is others’ job.  I am kind even if I say no when other people want yes.  Other people have to learn to deal with disappointment, just as I have.

Cool cool sounds good.

But then the trigger comes.

It finds me in the same crevice it was created.  A tone.  A glint of the eye.  A tight vibration of impatience.  A sympathetic laugh.

Most of the time, my process is internal.  I don’t tend to lash out unless I am overstimulated and my nervous system is reaching out for a lifeboat.  My go-to suffering is rumination. 

Sweet, dark rumination. I create a prison for myself so I don’t bother anyone. The rush of familiar pain vibrates up my vagus nerve.

I debate down a spiral staircase, thinking it's about logic.  I wash my hair, and turn my brain as hot as my flat iron while I have real arguments with people who aren’t there and probably haven’t given me a second thought since.

I never. win. these. arguments.  Even though I create them in my head. We’re just having more verbose, deep-cutting versions of the same argument we had before.

Someone knocks on the door of my brain.

“You deserve more headspace than this,” she says.

“Yes, I agree,” I say, somewhat embarrassed, as if my boss just caught me goofing off on the job, as if my dad just opened my bedroom door at 12 PM on a Saturday to pull me out of bed.

************

I look down at the piles around my elbows and find another mantra. Like a tupperware–boring, but reliable, and every time it’s used it changes a little: Habits only change through repetition and discipline.  Failing is part of the process.  Failure only fails through the fail of the fail.

I'm actually supposed to fail a thousand times in order to do one single thing correctly.

So it’s three days later, and I’m washing my hair again.  And I’m ruminating again.  And the work comes in a little earlier this time, because she’s macheted herself a pathway in.

“Hey. You deserve more headspace than this.”

“What should I think about?”

“Whatever you want?”

“I want to not think about my ex.”

“That was always allowed.”

“How about I think about writing.  God I don’t write enough.”

“You could lower your standards, which would make you write more.”

*Seethes angrily at a reasonable suggestion* “Yeah, I could do that.”

“Just try it.”

“Okay.”

“...”

“This song slaps.”

“Hell yeah it does.”

“You know what, I have a complicated relationship with alternative rock.”

“Say more.”

Holy shit I’m thinking about something cool and interesting.  And enjoying it.  And not thinking about other people.  Is this what passing the Bechdel test feels like?

The Challenges of the Abundance Mindset

I’ve had a couple brainsplosions during my fall break.  My life partner and I found an acceptable camping facility for both of us (it’s not his favorite thing to do, so it’s a team effort to find one).  Except it wasn’t just “agreeable,” as a Victorian elite might say.  It was transcendent, as a bisexual 18th century poet might say.

Lost River Hostel is a retreat that combines art, nature, and community to help people ground themselves and rediscover their purpose.  And it doesn’t shirk any of those pillars.  We slept in tree-nests and showered in the middle of the woods.  We danced around a fire.  We played music and painted.  There was as much staff as there were campers.  Each night I had soul-bearing conversations about art, spirituality, mental health, relationships, and purpose.  I shared my poetry and blog.  I got a few numbers.

I came back with my head in the clouds, ready to write twice as much, give hugs to strangers in the grocery store, the whole 8-fold path.  All I know is, I’ve needed this, and I’m going there again.  But it probably won’t feel as brick-face heroin as it did this first time.  It will have different staff, and I’ll have different connections, and I won’t be surprised at how wonderful it will be.  I’ll be expecting it, which will probably diminish it.

And then I realized something.  When I feel a new magic that hits a long-desired need, the excitement and adventure and mystery and lust fill my whole mind and body.  It’s what I did with two specific exes who had the longest lifespan in my head after the relationship ended.  I feel the rush, I pursue it with passion, romanticism, and anxious-attachment, and I usually get diminishing returns.

My therapist has talked to me about the difference between abundance mindset and scarcity mindset.  As most new ideas, it gathers lots of moisture in the air before it rains.  But I’m starting to understand how much my anxious-attachment is connected to a scarcity mindset.

One of the hardest things to believe about the abundance mindset is that it’s an accurate way of looking at the world.  It feels a bit like believing in God, if that is true for you (I remember the feeling when it was true for me), in that it requires faith outside of how you feel.  The world feels dark, lonely, and scarce most of the time.  How am I supposed to believe that it isn’t?  That it’s just the way I’m looking at it, regardless of how many angles I bend into for a different perspective?

For one thing, the isolation of our society challenges everyone to make meaningful connections.  Work may be social, but it certainly isn’t socially-meaningful, since it is bound by the necessities of goods, services, and general commerce.  Home and family give us purpose, safety, and intimacy, but it’s the same people everyday.  We need those relationships for our health, but it certainly doesn’t foster a feeling of social or emotional abundance.  I love my home, but sometimes I feel like a prisoner in it.  And I don’t even have kids.

Secondly, it takes work to build a network of friends in your thirties.  We have responsibilities and fatigue.  Our energy is so precious now.  Our weekends and weeknights are precious.  Everything is precious.  How do we foster a feeling of abundance when we’re running on empty?  How do we foster a feeling of abundance when, in order to spend an entire set of living hours with an adult outside our homes, both parties need to…

-fit each other’s schedule

-live close enough to be worth the drive

-make the other feel both safe and stimulated

-share at least some values

-be fun without really trying

-ideally enjoy at least one other type of activity besides passively watching TV

The amount of frontloading it takes to get a friendship off the ground in your thirties can only be fruitful if both people want it.  If just one of the above characteristics has a wrench thrown at it by any of life’s multitudes of variables, a friendship can be halted.  Many people ask me how I’m able to handle multiple romantic relationships, but honestly the harder thing for me to achieve is semi-consistent social time.

With the difficulty of building a social network, it’s so much easier for our minds to settle into simpler, one-dimensional explanations for our lack of dopamine.  I’m unlovable.  I’m boring.  People are boring.  I’m better than others.  Anarchy/Nihilism.  Drugs it is.

It’s easier to believe those things, than to do the hard thing, which is the following:

-Self-soothe until next time, when I text these people farther in advance to get on their calendars.

-Self-soothe until next time, when I use a different app for social connections that is more geared toward what I’m looking for.

-Self-soothe until next time, when I try a different person on the app.

-Self-soothe until next time, when I make a two-hour round trip to see an out-of-town friend.

-Self-soothe by texting an old friend I love, but not by mindlessly scrolling through something that will make me feel depleted.

Enduring the lows can feel like spiritual push-ups.  And that’s where I find Buddhist writings to be inspirational–that serenity in the dark is possible through flexibility, adjusted expectations, and protecting the core.

But I’ll be damned if it isn’t hard to believe that the world is abundant, whether it’s true or not.

Dear World,

I love you. Thank you for birthing me. Thank you for spending time with me. Thank you for giving me gifts that I can explore and play with and connect to the past, present, and future with. Thank you for being the hands that will take me when me time is done.

Thoughts while listening to the new Paramore album This is Why

Andrew, what band is this?

No it’s not.

This is not vengeful straight-girl punk rock.  This is not what you hear on the radio before Maroon 5. 

This is complicated, rich, textured, jazzy, funky, and relevant as fuck.

This is a concept album telling the story of our lives.  The Great-American-Novel, except it’s the Great-American-Album.

A few hours ago, I was sipping ice water after an indulgent taco dinner with brand new friends.  We were doing a polite amount of political commiseration…which has been happening a lot since 2016, whatever happened then.  The increasing violence in Israel hit my new friend hard.

“What gives you hope?” she asked in the kind of bold honesty that made us instant friends.

I’m not a parent, and teaching is not the reason I wake up in the morning (though it is the reason I wake up at 6:15…hissss).  There’s one reason I don’t run my car over a cliff every day, and that’s the act of creation.  Feeling my leaves bloom in places where I was told not to, where others laugh due to an inability to see the layers and shades.  Seeing other leaves bloom.  Contributing to the ever-expanding mosaic that oblivion stretches to hold.

“Music is so good now,” I said.  “Funk isn’t just funk.  It’s jazz.  It’s pain.  It’s a goddamn ecosystem of sound.”  I was never even into funk.  But then Tame Impala happened, and I started paying attention to the texture and movement of funk.

And then Knower broke my brain the way any woman who talks to Ben Gibbard breaks him (dripping into his heart through a pinhole).

And then DOMi & JD BECK took me on a waterslide through ethereal modulations so seamlessly, I closed my eyes and believed in gardens again.

It isn’t just funk either.  When I think of Sleep Token’s Take Me Back to Eden, Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter, BoyGenius’s The Record, DOMi & JD Beck’s Not Tight, Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want to Turn into You, Knower’s Knower Forever, and the face-brick juggernaut that is Paramore’s This is Why, I’m reminded of how adversity tends to evoke the greatest music of all time.

Russian symphonies from the WWII era are the best symphonies.  Shostakovich’s Leningrad is unmatched.  Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances.  

And then there’s Mozart, composer of over 800 musical pieces, while Austria was going through The Seven Year’s War, The Third Silesian War, War of Bavarian Succession, and the reign of “Enlightened Despotism.”

Do you know any symphonies from contexts of prosperity and stability?  No, you don’t.  Because there’s no reason to write them.

One actual thing I agree with boomers on is America’s golden years of music.  It is scientific fact that American music from the 60s and 70s is peak.  My Gen Z students know Jimmy Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane.  They don’t know Hansen, and they never will.

So when I think about the fact that so much global power lies in the hands of lazy assholes who haven’t evolved beyond “shit, fuck, and murder,” I plug into sound.  I feel the deep wounds of the earth and its children sing to me, and I feel a collective pulse.

Yeah, we’re not gonna make it as a species, I think that’s pretty clear.  But the end isn’t here yet.  There are still many waves ahead.  If the economy and human rights violations ever calm down again (it’d be nice to stop killing the planet too, but one can only dream), I hope we experience a musical cool-down reminiscent of the 80s.  There was a brash audacity to that synth.  There was an ease with the euphoric frivolity of “Billy Jean” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”

Obviously, the 80s weren’t “chill” either, if you talk to any gay person who lived through the period.  But that’s the decade I entered the world.  And I’d love to leave it during a similar wave of music, going into that good night with neon veins and big hair.