The Metaphors Matter

"Love ends, just like everything else does," I tell my therapist, who nods.  But I still don't understand the words yet, even as I say them.  Everyone else seems to understand.  I'm still word-mapping at the white board.

I've learned that I'm not going to live forever.  That this body is going to die.  And I'm ready to age and laugh through the creaking bones and the disappearing memories.  And I'm ready to be my parents' parent, and graciously help them move toward the finality of their bodies in whatever way they need.  I understand that we are all going to change as we creep, or dash, closer to that good night.

But learning how to love within the mortality of relationships is something I'm still wrapping my mind, body, and heart around.  The grief of loving has hit way harder than this vengeful feminist would like to admit.  And I'm sure it hasn't been fun for my partners as I've talked about such uplifting themes.

Purity culture is not just the church.  I left when I was 19 (cue Tegan & Sara) and became polyamorous.  But sex without love still felt cheap, and love without commitment felt like a lie.  Love ending felt like being ripped in half.

Purity culture is not just the church.  It's also emo music.  It's American Football and Death Cab for Cutie and Brand New (aka my favorite f*cking music).  It's women twisting themselves around the psychoses of men--the best of which are only self aware enough to ask you to sympathize, but not active enough to work on themselves.

Purity culture is not just the church.  It's the fact that weddings are a party and divorces are not.  It's thinking that love is the best thing, and singleness is the worst thing.  It's hearing that one person cheated, and then asking what the other person did to "drive them away."  It's assuming that a partner is the only way to save you from "dying alone."

* * * * * *

I was 13.  A few years away from liking boys (they were still gross), and decades away from figuring out that I also liked girls.  Abstinence was...the only thing adults in the church wanted to talk about with me.

Not my creativity.  Not my struggles focusing in school.  Fuck, not even my relationship with God.

They wanted to talk about virginity and "saving" myself like I was a bottle of champagne for someone to enjoy one day far in the future.  (And honestly, I was one of the lucky ones...check out "Keep Sweet" on Netflix.)

I will never forget how every Christian woman lost. her. shit. when Amy Grant got divorced.  It's all anyone would talk about for weeks.  I couldn't listen to my favorite Amy Grant songs without hearing the following:

Oh oh faithless hearts, be far away from me...

"Yeah, she's one to talk.  She had the faithless heart."

True love is frozen in time

"Yeah, and you froze it."

The same sun / that melts the wax will harden clay

and the same rain / that drowns the rat will grow the hay

"I don't like this song."

"You see Lis, God hates divorce.  He wants us to work it out."

"But what if the husband was really bad?"

"There's always a way to work it out."

"What if the husband hurts her?"

"Sometimes he goes to counseling and gets better.  If he doesn't, and only if he doesn't, then they can get divorced.  But God still hates it."

Amy Grant wasn't abused (though to her critics, it truly wouldn't have mattered).  She merely fell in love with another man who brought her more joy and was easier to be with.  The scandal of the decade.

What did I learn at 13?  I learned that women aren't supposed to pursue their own happiness.  They're supposed to pursue monogamy, which is greater than individual happiness.  It's Divine Purpose.  Truth.  Belonging.  Not-Dying-Alone.  Family.  A structure everyone can understand.

* * * * * * 

I've been talking to my inner child a lot lately.  Because in therapy, I keep hitting these platitudes about love ending, and how I'm supposed to move on from it.

Love isn't simple enough to make any definitive statement about it, and relationships have nearly infinite variables.  But sexual energy and attachment energy are so strong and driving that we need ways to interpret what we're going through.

To quote John Green:  We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.  (Paper Towns)

Right now, love for me is like changing my clothes when I'm tired.  I have to figure out where to put my arms and legs, and I have to think extra hard about it.  Sometimes I just sit there with my shirt half on, my shoulders and back exposed.  I realize there's no way to avoid it.  I can't say, "I'm never changing my clothes again, because apparently the last pair of clothes wasn't good enough."  

We will always have to change clothes.  We're not getting out of that, no matter how thrilling or mundane the task is.  We just...need them.

Can I, maybe, just enjoy these outfits a little more?  Whether they're electrifying and short-lived, or whether they stay in my closet for ages because they're so classic and reliable?  No two outfits are the same; nor am I when I'm in them.  Some of them I'll always remember in ethereal bliss, like the pink fleece dress with pastel hearts and ruffles in which my 6-year old self could nap, play, or rule a castle.  Some of them evolve, like the black and white striped shirt I consistently replace with different cuts and fits.  Some of them I'll keep collecting--no matter how many I have, like the chunky, boyish jewelry.

Some of them were ratchet mistakes, but taught me that I need a little more danger in my life--the olive corduroy mini skirt, the teal bubble shirt, the satin capris.

Some of them are in an astral plane.  The bohemian skirt I got in a Jamaican store in 2012 was a purchase that I felt defined my energy--creative, relaxed, focused, meditative, exuberant, grateful.  When I wear it now, it doesn't seem to fit, even though I'm still all of those things.

Some of them left before I was ready.  The red zip up hoodie left pissed-on in a ditch, in a series of unfortunate events.  I'm angry about its early departure instead of the threadbare age and the gradual oblivion it should have had.  We always want more time, even at the very end.

With each piece, I uncover a new expression of my identity that will always be with me, whether or not the physical cloth is still in my closet.  I guess the goal isn't actually having the perfect clothes.  It's what I do with my time when I'm in them.

Bisexual, Homoromantic

Yes, it's my fifth entry about my sapphic flowering, and by far not my last

When I was 19, I lost my faith in God.  I felt the final crumb of anger float off me, exposed under the crushing weight of nothing.  My last prayer was, "Wow.  You're not even up there, are you.  You're not even fucking up there."  And it became clear that for my whole life, I had been crying on my knees to no one.  

Those were xanga's sunset years, and I blogged every day about that journey.  My page name was called Glass_Web, and I had a total of 12 readers (an astounding number to me; far more than I have now).  For several months, losing my faith was the only thing I wrote about.  As the year wore on, the atomic trajectory of that grief thinned out, evolving into questions that became so familiar, they sort of lost all interest to me.  I eventually came to understand, through long meditations, some breadcrumb basics of atheism: that death is final (for our bodies, brains, and individual self), and that time is precious.

Livejournal, on the other hand, (LizzyLeprechaun, but it’s not public) was my place to process the entirety of my first truly sexual relationship, from start to finish.  My desperation, my addiction, the sensual cage I wrapped myself in, and the eventual crack of my feminist cocoon. 

And so, Yardsale Buddha has become my place to take stock of my 30s.  My hundred-entry farewell to the idea of love I’d been chasing since I hit puberty.  Even through polyamory, and discovering all the things about sex that women aren’t supposed to talk about.

Amanda Palmer wrote the most beautiful post this past Wednesday, and I highly encourage all three of you to read it, after you squander your time reading this garbage.  There was a line that pierced me, as fresh rain to lungs.  She wrote, “everything is divorce-colored…When songs are delivered to my head, they’re divorce-shaped….The TED talks about prosthetic limbs seem to be about surviving divorce. The TED talks about genetic mutations seem to be about divorce. The TED talks about the murmurations of birds seem to be about . . . divorce.”

Do we ever accurately explain how many times our human lives fall into rubble?  

Men are not the only ones subjected to pride.  I cannot express my own grief without rage–rage that I believed in the magic I felt.  Rage that he, that they all, drank until they were full, and left without remorse.  Rage at the concerted effort to keep women mentally and culturally subjugated because domination is easier than communication, and men are terrified of sharing power.

Nothing will soothe the rage, so I just enjoy the beauty of the fire.  “Take your trophy and go,” I tell his ghost, looking up at the stars.

Do I still enjoy having sex with men?

*takes drag*

You know what, I do.  They do it well, and I’ll not deprive myself of pleasure just because they are romantically unreliable.  There is a rush of hunger in the eyes of a man that is unmatched by a woman–whose wisdom, intelligence, and collective grief tamper our flame.  How can you get excited when you already know what’s going to happen?

(Yeah, I know I’m hard-negging men right now.  It’s a step up from all-out hatred.  Hurt people hurt people, my therapist says.  And if I have to live in a world where Jordan Peterson and Christopher Hitchens exist/ed, you can handle some negging)

Desire is different from romance, and that’s not a part of straight-man culture.  Which fucks up a lot of long-term, heterosexual relationships.  Desire blinds me to everything except what I crave.  Romance enhances my experience of everything.  Desire is shutting myself down and doe-eyeing the one thing I want.  Romance is a collaborative dance–seeing that my woman is cleaning, and helping her clean.  Noticing each of our waves, and dancing with each other.  

We need both.

It’s okay to break up.  It’s okay to long for someone who isn’t longing for you.  It’s okay to masturbate to things that will never happen.  It’s okay to not be over your ex.  It’s okay to be over your ex.  It’s okay to get divorced.  It’s okay to be bored.  It’s okay to be broken.  It’s okay to not be aroused by someone you deeply love.  It’s okay to have feelings for your friend with benefits.

We don’t get to determine what we feel based on how convenient it is for our lives.  It’s fine–evolution happens to also be making shit up as it goes.

No Matter How Far I Run, Jordan Peterson is Still Recording Himself Saying Things

So I’ve been obsessed with Cody Johnston’s “Some More News” for a minute. I’m an avid consumer of humor-news by people with "John" somewhere in their name, and Cody’s blend of sharp-shooting, feral despair has this feminist goblin screaming.

I can never resist a calculated take-down of one of my favorite nemeses, Jimbleberry Peterson. And about 40 minutes in, Jim-Jam’s (completely original) theory of hierarchy comes into discussion, with the absolute wackiest and biologically unrelated example: When lobsters win fights, they puff up and get bigger. Losing lobsters shrink and get smaller. When you inject serotonin in a lobster, it puffs up. Therefore. Hierarchies are an important and necessary part of life. But Jimmers isn’t a neo-nazi. (Yes, I am purposefully using secondary sources because my hexes run deep, and Jimmy isn’t getting a click of attention from me.)




Anyway, it’s the same incel-redpill-alpha-male poison that lonely men consistently fall prey to, believing that their problems have nothing to do with 1) the difficulties of modern dating 2) the increasing isolation of society 3) poor listening skills 4) the difficulties of sharing and adapting in relationships 5) not employing relationship strategies that have been researched and peer-reviewed.




Nope. It’s that I don’t go to the gym enough and don’t double-down in my decisions. I need to be less flexible. That’s what women like. The problem isn’t what happened in my last relationship. It’s that I don’t have enough hot women around me that I control.




As I’ve said, and am sticking to despite the challenges of the non-monogamous community, I (am genuinely attempting to) distance myself from straight men. In the past 4 months, I’ve laid down hard boundaries with male friends about what I will and won’t talk about with them anymore (which is super freeing, and I would highly recommend this to many women).




So here I am, in a peaceful, yet pretty lonely, world of my own creation. I am finally free to think about whatever I want. And here I am, still thinking about men. Does anyone else struggle passing their own Bechdel test? I feel a tinge of guilt when I notice myself thinking too deeply about a man I used to see or am currently seeing. Thinking about them in a way I know they’re not thinking about me, because we’ve each been trained to fulfill these roles. Thinking about them in ways that have held me back, kept me in terrible relationships, or compromised my peace or joy. Thinking about how I was lied to, and how desperately I wanted to believe the lie, and how hard it is to rip off the bandaid and beat your head against reality.




And then I see shit like Jiggle Biggle. And I realize, I’m not the only one who’s struggling with this balance. Let’s look deeper than the Bechdel test, which isn’t about how women actually are, but about how men think about women. I’ve never seen a man pass the Bechdel test, meaning (if I may flip the script here), talking about a woman without making evident, however subtle, how much he wants to have sex with her. And I don’t just mean in film.




In college (a shitty time for all of us), one of my best male friends told me that no guy is friends with a girl without “holding out some hope” that he’ll get to hook up with her.




My college ex claimed not only that every male looks at a woman and immediately contemplates whether or not he’d have sex with her (fair enough, I do this too), but that any man who doesn’t do this (including my then-cis hetero boyfriend who is now my cis hetero husband) isn’t straight. And therefore, you can’t expect to not be objectified by any man you want a relationship with. Which is super convenient for men who objectify women and don’t want to put in the work to evolve.




Ever since these conversations, I can’t help but shiver a little when I hear clips from mainstream shows (How I Met Your Mother, Friends, Big Bang Theory, That 70s Show) debating whether or not “men and women can be friends.” Interestingly enough, the women always say yes, and the men always say no.




And yet, men don’t see themselves as the problem, but as part of an unalterable universal truth–which means they don’t have to change. That’s why the alpha-male philosophy is so popular and lucrative, despite the fact that it literally repels women.




Hey, want something fun? Here’s Jiggly Puff explaining that lipstick sends men into an uncontrollable thirst-frenzy.

* * * * * * *

So. Maybe healthy, intentional, flourishing headspace is hard for everyone. As a writer, it’s a priority for me, even if I fall into my own “natural” but entirely alterable neurological patterns. I certainly invest a lot in my own therapy. You’ll never hear me say “it doesn’t work,” because it isn’t supposed to be doing the work–I am.

Healing from the Patriarchy

I recognize that suggesting that one can "heal" from a ubiquitous cultural milieu is some big clit energy.  But that just means that half the population won't be able to find it anyway.

I don't know where I am in this journey...whether I've just begun, or whether I've been doing it since I was seven years old.  Every four years I reach a growth spurt where all of the tightening skin around me splits, and I swear I don't know some fundamental truth, like what love is or what I want from relationships.

But I know what I don't want.  And healing from the Patriarchy, for me, means first and foremost distancing myself from it.

Easier said than done.  Like most bi-ENMs, I was raised hetero-mono.  Not just by my loving parents, but by the world I grew up in.  I was "wired"--a word many men use to explain their behavior while also excusing themselves from working on it--for the heterosexual monogamous relationship.

As soon as my hormones began rumbling, I was taught to cross my legs and apologize.  I was taught that sex would be the greatest feeling if-and-only-if I rejected my present desires and waited for an attractive man to show up and promise me his loyalty.  I wasn't supposed to test-drive, because sex was the greatest feeling, period.  I was supposed to "give myself" to him if he promised he would always be there and never divorce me.

And so for centuries, men have worked on that initial impression, and women have worked on selecting a partner and then "maintaining" his consistent loyalty.  If he loves me, he'll stay.  If he doesn't love me, he'll leave.  So dive into his world first, but don't overwhelm him with your own thoughts.  

Cultural conditioning is a weird thing.  We all buy into it even if we don't want to.  God knows men don't like this pressure either, but we still find ourselves stepping into these dislikeable roles.  Even in polyamory, where we're supposed to break free from them and make our own rules.

"This man is going to be the last man I fall in love with," I say every time I fall in love with a man, because it always takes so much out of me.  What hurts the most about the end of every heterosexual relationship is that I always get to the point where I actually trust it.  And as the signs of distancing begin, I started to gently, but clearly, suggest that we do some repair work.

All of a sudden, the books that he's bragged about reading in the beginning--about relationship longevity, John Gottman, Esther Perel--none of that matters anymore.  He is worn out from life, and I am a detail that can't be maintained instead of a person who's also invested a lot of her time into the relationship.  Repair work is harder than starting over for him, which is why so many poly men try to date younger than their age (for more on this, see my previous post).

"It's so funny," one of my male partners once said, "that nothing bad ever happened to you."

****

I can tell how much I need to heal, because all I want to do right now is start fires with men.  The more violent, the more satisfying.  I get into as many arguments on reddit as possible, and literally delight scrolling through painful vulnerabilities on /r/askmen.  If I can respond to a man with an invalidation that a man once used on me, I basically cum.  Your mort is my petite mort.

"Hurt people hurt people," my therapist tells me, and I imagine my cackling face flickering in the light of the flames.

It's just...it's time for me to stop talking to men altogether.  Except when giving them my drink order.  Occasionally they make good points (about things completely unrelated to women), like some of the social variables that are playing into the current economic state, or the funniest parts of the latest Ben Shapiro piece (god knows I'd never have the stamina to do that).  Alas, I'm positive Cody Johnston is taken.

But for the first time, I'm in a loving relationship with a beautiful woman.  We're going through gay NRE, which makes hetero NRE look like store-bought cookies from the UK.  We've never once diminished ourselves for the other.  We live for the other's laughter, her goofiness, her jokes, her art, her expression.  We hold each other (or create space) during relapses of trauma.  

What I love the most about this relationship is that I can't see the end of it.  As a hypervigilant, horny, strung-out demisexual, I'm always looking for ways a relationship could go wrong, and I basically refuse to enter a relationship that I can already see the end of.  

But there's no script for this.  We just care about each other.  And have really good sex.  I don't fixate on her or what I'm afraid I'm not getting from her or what every comment or response "means."  She doesn't distance herself or hide her feelings from me.  We both ask for what we need.  We both give what we're capable of giving.

I think my gay relationship is teaching me what healthy relationships are.  I know that sounds cringey, like gay relationships are perfect or magic or token or that I'm using one to make my heteronormative life better.  That's not what I'm trying to say--I'll fuck up there too, I'll hurt-and-be-hurt, and my girlfriend is not responsible for teaching me.  But she is here next to me while I'm learning some hard lessons.

Healing means re-wiring your brain.  Which feels very fucking weird.  Not all guided re-wiring has had benevolent intentions.  (Cue LGBT community looking down in their iced coffee and raising their eyebrows.)  It's why trust in your personal therapist is so crucial.  Because the most electric sparks we feel are the ones that are familiar, not the ones that are healthy.  Attraction isn't 100% reliable when you're trying to heal.

I have talked to many straight men about the cultural environment they feel stuck in--loneliness, wishing they could catch a break, if only they could find partners who didn't want to talk about feelings all the time--and am baffled at how many of them refuse to try seeking out male partners, who are clearly more suited for their sexual and emotional needs.

Because it's not what they're attracted to.

And that's why I'm taking a sabbatical from men--not just as partners, but as friends-who-talk-about-sex.  Of course you're not attracted to what you've been raised to fear, numb-nuts.  You have to take a dive into the unknown.  What are you afraid of?  That you won't like it?  That you will?  Jesus, take a goddamn risk.  

Anyway, they'll figure it out or they won't, it's not my business anymore.  I just want to sit under a willow tree and drink sparkling rose and play tarot cards with other queer witches.

I can't wait to not-watch every straight romance movie that comes out even more than I didn't watch them before, and to watch them diminish like Blockbuster Videos.  Queer or GTFO, sluts.

The State of Polyamorous Men in Indiana

Happy Late Festivus bitches.  I have some things to say to polyamorous men everywhere.

Okay, just the ones in Indiana.  I don’t know if it’s better in other places, and I pray to the gods and goddesses of heterosexuality that it is.  Hmm.  Who are the gods and goddesses of heterosexuality?  I’m inclined to say Cupid & Psyche, Adam & Eve, and Zeus & Hera as the initial grab bag–oh, okay I see the problem.

I don’t need to womansplain how lonely heterosexual polyamorous men are, but I do know how lonely they are, because they tell me all the time.

Continuing to state the obvious, a sapphic awakening is happening in the midwest.  Maybe it’s nothing new, I just got here (to the midwest and my mid thirties).   But I’ve been in the poly community since college.  And I can say for a fact that adult bisexuals across the state are switching out their eels for clams.  Even in Muncie.  Even the ones with a Live, Laugh, Love tattoo on their lower back.

I know this will be a tough read for straight men, who are about as sensitive as the shower knob of my low-income apartment at 6AM.  But times are getting dire.  Over 90% of my poly male friends in their 30s and 40s are looking for women in their mid 20s because they can’t keep up with the rising standards of disappointed women.  If heterosexual, polyamorous relationships are going to survive, straight men are going to have to evolve.

My demisexual, “relaxed-straight” husband agrees.  “Men are physically attractive,” he once told me.  “The only reason I’m not into them is because I need an emotional attachment to be interested in sex, and that’s not something most men can offer.”

So.  From a jaded bisexual who has done her time and seen some shit, and from a teacher with a heart for people in need, here are four steps that you as a strong, independent, cis-het-poly man can take to begin to look like a viable option to women your own age.

1. It’s time to read another polyamory book.  

Or…any relationship book.  If it has words and it’s about feelings, it’s for you.  Some of you never read your first one, and it shows.  I’m looking at you, “smartest person I’ve ever met.”  There is a plethora of digestible research about eroticism, kink, cohabitation, mental health, communication, and longevity.  That shit matters in polyamory, because–and I cannot stress this enough–polyamory is about relationships.

2. Become a feminist.  

Oh my god what?  Your penis won’t fall off, I promise.  You don’t have to pierce your septum or button your shirt all the way up.  You don’t even have to agree with every point a woman makes.  You just have to understand that a woman’s time and headspace are as valuable as your own.  Which means you need to…

-Participate in the planning process.  Schedule your scheduling.  This is polyamory, sweetiekins.  You can’t do it without planning.

-Remember things about her.

-Respond when she contacts you.  It doesn't have to be “right this minute,” but that's a window of a few days, tops. Being busy does not account for a week or more of radio silence.  Would you want her to ignore your text for 4 days?  We have shit to do too, and it would be nice to know where you fall in that shit.

-Respect her feelings.  If she apologies for having them, she’s testing you.

-Show pride in her accomplishments and intrigue in her hobbies.  You know, like she does for you.

If you don’t want to be treated like a vending machine, don’t treat your partner like one.  And before you argue that point (“...but I’d love a casual relationship that’s only based in sex!”), think about what happens when your time and headspace are not consistently taken into account (“I guess she’s not interested/too busy for me”).

Time and headspace are a part of sex, because they involve your physical, mental, and emotional presence.  The way you attach during sex is part of a neural network whose foundations begin from your caregivers at the beginning of life, and continue through your friendships and emotional connections growing up.  There is an abundance of research on attachment theory and how it manifests in our sexual lives.  The phrase “only sex” makes me wonder if you understand what sex actually is.

3. Go back to therapy.  

You’re not “done” simply because the panic attacks have stopped and you’re going to work regularly.  There are layers of insecurity beneath those episodes you’ve had, and it’s time to find your solid ground.  Women are human, and we’ll occasionally (accidentally) step on your triggers.  We need you to employ the strategies that a professional has taught you so you can communicate your boundaries to us with grace.  Which is, again, something that women have been doing for years and need you to meet us on.

4. Find the pattern.

Think about everything your previous, serious, compatible girlfriends have said to you when you started emotionally distancing yourself, which is about 3 months before those poor women finally cut ties.  Find the pattern.  I promise, it’s there, and it’s in the shape of a wound that you deserve to mend.  Pretend your pattern is a pokemon, and that you have to hack it in order to capture it.  It will take time, attention, and grace.  You deserve these things.

If all this humaning is too hard, remember that sex work exists.  Not everybody is cut out for polyamory, and there are lots of people who should not do it.  If you are unable to participate in more than one real relationship, but you still find yourself itching for more different sex (which there is no shame in, we’re only human), vending machine sex costs about $300, depending on who you hire and what they offer.  Paying for sex work will not emasculate you in the same way that paying for a doctor will not apostasize your physical health.  It’s a service, like therapy or car maintenance or dermatology.  Your identity is defined by you alone–not a collection of incels who don’t know what a clitoris is.  Treat sex workers with the same respect and veneration you treat your car guy.

And…for the love of Jesus Christ’s holy sacrificial blood, never tell anyone that you truly believe you’re the smartest person you’ve ever met.  I really can’t go into this further.  I just…you have to trust me on this one.

 

Enter the Coven

 A seal had broken in me.  A wearing away of intoxicating fantasies about love, worthiness, and power.  Screams echoed around my topography like growth rings in a tree.

When it breaks, the loose people who are barely hanging on fall away.  I am buoyant, freezing, and directionless, itching for people I haven’t met yet.  And the guiding flame I pay $115 a week to ask me why before I sob I don’t know tells me of the ancient stories of wild women.

My childhood best friend (snarky, nerdy, and frontal-lobe focused) was the first person to ever call me a witch.  He did it out of respect for a power that few people in his circle had–to create art that can affect a person’s emotions.  He wasn’t wrong–the baggage that comes with the term was also true throughout my life.  I was a pastor’s daughter.  Everything that made me a witch–voice, power, sexual freedom, creation, kinship with nature, respect for the divine–had to fall under the confines of God’s comfort level.

Even when I became an atheist, the scientific community where many of my friends thrived was too narrow-minded for me.  What they couldn’t measure wasn’t real, and wasn’t worth believing.  Even as the mysteries of human behavior continued to accumulate reliable data (psychology, sociology, physiology, etc), it was execrated as “soft,” or pseudoscience.

But now I am thirty-six going on fifty.  I am not interested in wasting headspace on people who deplete me, and my witch identity has nothing to do with them.  It has to do solely, exclusively, purely, with my power.

Enter the coven.  There is one thing every witch has in common.  She will not, she refuses, to hold back.  She wears what she wants.  She says what she wants.  She fucks who she wants.  Which is often no one at all.  

I walk into a circle of women whose power radiates from them and dances like a fire.  I am holding beer, and it spills as I excitedly gesticulate.  We cackle.  We scream.  We tell our stories and cast quick, shallow healing spells on each other, because we know the real healing happens alone.

I realize I have known these women my entire life, that I have been these women all my life.  We were in girl scouts, choir, and SAT prep.  We wore lace up boots to church.  We had Nightmare Before Christmas pajama pants.  We dressed up as characters from British fantasies for Halloween.

But I ignored them in my younger years, because we were all so quiet in public.  Instead, I was chasing people I thought were funny, but were actually just cruel.  I thought they were intelligent, but they were just articulately judgmental.  

Even after this realization, leaving them and learning to avoid these characteristics, I still chased after some form of acceptance that diminished me.  The love-bomber who all of a sudden becomes too busy.  The entrancing scientist who is conveniently vague when it comes to feelings.  The brilliant artist who is interested in a mirror, but not a whole woman who creates her own art.  The one who slips further out of reach the more you talk about “emotional load” or “repair attempts.”  The one who always describes you as “cool” or “will always be there.”  The one who says “You’re more attractive now than when I met you.”  (Neg me harder, crypto daddy.)  The one who is reading this right now and thinks, “None of those are me,” and is ready to mansplain what a feminist witch awakening is in the comments.

That’s when you’re supposed to leave.  But that’s exactly when my cancer came out.  Because acceptance from them felt like a lightning rush.  Because every representation of love told me to look for the surge of being noticed, of showing up and receiving eye contact, and I crumpled myself into antimatter to taste that rich, delicious drop.

We don’t see stories about the magic of communication and follow-through.  We don’t know how to receive someone who wants our disagreement, our difficulty, our loud opinions, our inconvenience.

Enter the coven.

Uncrumpling myself, I brush myself clean of the unworthiness festering in the wrinkles.  I realize there has been a societal effort to keep me crumpled since before Salem.  The first story of a woman in Western Christian texts is about the evilness of her choosing knowledge and power.  And her evilness of tempting (otherwise known as offering a pitch to) her male partner, who clearly can’t make this decision on his own.

I step into the power of women around me, and I feel my own expand outward and deepen inward.  I feel the divinity of women–even the ones I disagree with or have different vibrations from.

I am looking forward to all the exciting landmarks in this shift.  I’m done with stories about heterosexual romance.  They couldn’t be less interesting to me.  Give me Kaley Cuoco’s Harley Quinn.  Give me NK Jemisin.  Give me Mya Spalter.  Give me side-splitting 40-something lesbians at the back of the bar who answer to no one and smoke when they want to.  

It’s time to live deliciously.

Self-Care for the Empath Writer: The Letter that You Never Send.

Writing isn’t just for an audience or publication.  It isn’t just so you can wear a tweed jacket with thick glasses and “prove something” to the critical voice in your head–which by the way, never came from you, but is a combination of the least supportive (and most expensive) writing instructor you’ve ever had and the family members who keep asking how much you’re making on that skill.

Writing isn’t about any of that.  For one, becoming a “skilled” writer (whatever the fuck that means) is generally a financial waste, which is why you keep being bothered by your family members about it.  Secondly, that unsupportive writing instructor actually has no investment in your growth and spiritual development as a writer.

The question you need to answer is what brought you to the page in the first place?  What agony needs to be given shape?  What clogged scream needs to storm the barricades?

Writing is, primarily, a private act.  It is between your brain stem and your frontal lobe.  You cannot go backwards, logic to feeling, which means you cannot start with criticism.  You must always start from within and go outwards.  From the writer you were before you showed your writing to anyone.

Criticism does not belong at our centers.  Nor does anyone else.  Which is what brings me to the title of this piece–the letter that you never send.

As an empath, I consciously screen every word I speak through the ears of my audience.  Whatever I get across needs to 1) avoid their triggers, 2) validate them, and 3) empower them.  I endeavor far more messages that will be read by another, than will only be read by me, and exist solely for my learning.

The “Letter That You Never Send” is a letter that you pretend they will understand; not one they actually will.  When a 6-year relationship ended 3 years ago, I began letter after letter after letter, but kept stopping myself because I knew he wouldn’t get it.  I was allowing the outer world to influence the inner world.  Each time I stopped myself was with the same stifled disappointment I felt in our conversations–stonewalling myself and editing myself, because I knew I was speaking to an earless void.  In my stem, I didn’t know who I was writing that letter for.

It’s about you, honeybun.  Writing is always about you.  You have to start from the inside out.  That’s the whole goddamn process.  Those who criticize this writer or that writer for being “self-indulgent” have a funny idea of what writing is truly about.

The word “aubade” comes to mind here (allow me to flex my tweed jacket and thick glasses for a moment).  It is a 17th century poem (SNORE) written about the separation of love at dawn–originally, to a sleeping woman (perhaps she fell asleep during a lecture about 17th century poetry).  

What I’m saying is, we’ve always been doing this.  If the poem is written to a sleeping woman, who is this song really for?

Wherever the energy between you and your loved one diverged, garden the space with your words.  Not for them, but because you deserve flowers in the empty space.