Holly

My sister’s best friend killed herself yesterday. She jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. All I can think about is the fragility of life and how it is like tissue paper, can crumple at any time at just the lightest touch. I feel pain for my family, deep pain for the planet, and pain for myself and I wonder how I hold it all sometimes. I know I’m becoming a stronger, wiser, more resilient person because of all of this.

It’s so hard to witness my sister in pain. She is strong but I think she is strong in the ways that our society teaches one to be strong, which is not soft. She doesn’t experience emotion in the ways that I do, which is very fully, so to experience her breaking down and really letting life — and death — in, is very powerful. I am proud of her and love her so deeply.


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Living a Dream 1.

“Mom, do you promise our family is strong enough to get through anything?” I ask her, a look of fear and desperation painted across my face.
“Alix, what is going on?” My mom says, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the kitchen so our words don’t wake my dad.
“I smoked a little bit of pot this weekend, Mom. Just the tiniest bit, but it was a dab, which is the wax on the cannabis plant so it’s more concentrated,” I explain, probably unnecessarily.
“Alix, you have to give your brain a chance to heal. You can’t be doing that. Every time you do, you set yourself back again.” My mom says.

I know it’s true.


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“Listen, honey. Don’t knock the valleys. Everybody wants to be on the mountain tops but up there the air is so thin and all there is to do is stand still and try not to fall. But in the valley, that’s where the river runs. That’s where the power is.” - genius cashier from podcast with Glennon Doyle


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Location:YES ...

The trouble with wanting to write your story after going for a long spurt without writing is that you just went for a long spurt without writing. How to get back into this process in the most seamless and efficient way leaves me at a loss. I guess just continuing to write short blog posts like this one (always with potential to grow them into longer ones) and little notes to myself is how I need to go along right now. This feels good.


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Location:On Writing

So a big part of why I haven’t been writing recently is because — I’ll just come out and say it — I’m really fucking lazy. But I have one wild and precious life [this time around, if you believe in that] so what am I going to do with it? I’m going to write my goddamn heart out because I’m my own soulmate and my words will allow me to touch her. And that’s what I need — true, outrageous, full-on love for myself.


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Location:This

Love

Love is a strange thing. I am finding that my capacity to feel and express love ebbs and flows much like the weather. It's heartbreaking sometimes when I consider the breadth of love that I feel for a person and that sometimes it's less than more. Am I falling out of love or deeper into it? Half the time I don't even know. I don't totally know what I'm trying to say but I needed a place to put this and haven't been long hand-writing in my journaling lately so this is the next best thing. - more later -


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Addiction

I relapsed on Monday. Memorial Day. A day I remember used to be filled with pizza at the pool because school was out and we were free to dip into that timeless summer haze. I now have 5 days sober (again). Fuck, this feels hard. Why do I have this disease? My sponsor, Nicole, tells me that alcohol and drugs are just a symptom of the illness. That addiction is a disease like any other. This makes sense to me and I hate it. I'm meeting cool, strong, amazingly enduring people in the program, met a guy I really like, feel supported, connected. Yet I still grabbed that bottle of whiskey and returned to a state of powerlessness that overran my entire being and reduced me to tears and a vomit stained shirt. Powerlessness. It's a thing. Here I am, sober today though, smoking too many cigarettes and sitting with my shit. All of it. And I'm writing again. It's a start.


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