A Case of Her

Oh, I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
I remember that time you told me, you said
"Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine, 'cause
Part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time
-A Case of You/Joni Mitchell

I grieve over so many missed opportunities of companionship with women free of labels throughout my life as a result of a childhood steeped in religious patriarchy. Mormonism is constructed around the reverential worship of man. He is said to have been bestowed with special spiritual power. The 'priesthood' is the eternal power and authority of god. A blank check, essentially, for men to do whatever they want in the name of god. One can easily imagine the heady authoritarianism that ensues in homes and churches.

When you hold the power you must do what it takes to keep the power, as we're all seeing play out in American politics. When you've convinced millions that god is literally whispering righteous, ubiquitous truths in your ear, you're going to wield his 'revelations' in the service of continued dominance. Thus, Mormon man is the indisputable head of his family, empowered by the almighty himself. What about women? Well, they can teach each other and children, although that requires supervision and guidance by male priesthood-holding leaders.

Latter-day Saints, as they prefer to be called these days, also revile homosexual behavior. Setting aside the pervasive dominance of men in nearly every aspect of society for a moment, it is nothing short of infuriating that heterosexual is the default assumption from birth and people must "come out" as queer. If the default is hetero we all need to work that much harder to climb up and away from that presumption. Most people, especially men, don't or can't do the work because presumption hardens to unquestioned fact at a very early age, especially in a culture that celebrates toxic, hetero behavior as strength and equates gay with weakness. What do we call men judged as weak? Say it with me everyone: PUSSIES. Or bitches. Or girls.

Only now discovering the range of my sexuality at 43, I am testament to the long arm of the patriarchal, heteronormative law. Why can't we begin at a base level of no sexuality and let people explore their sexual character until they die? Sexuality is infinite shades of gray and as fluid as water even though mainstream society apparently needs it carved in stone, commandment-style: on a scale of hetero to homo I'm such-and-such number for time and all eternity! The more hetero the number the bigger the societal embrace. Incidentally, I include asexuality on the spectrum. Often I feel my most sexual alone with my body. A raw, pure, non-performative sexuality that desires no one, belongs only to me.

*****

I used to wonder who I'd be if I'd had a sister. A softer, kinder, less defensive woman maybe? But I did have sisters. There was plucky Ramona Quimby, the inquisitive Harriet Welsch of spy fame, Laura Ingalls, Ann Shirley and her more stoic counterpart, Emily Byrd Starr, L.M. Montogermy's lesser known literary daughter. There was Margaret Simon of Are You There God notoriety, Claudia Kishi - my favorite babysitter - the annoyingly perfect Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, Pollyanna, Scout Finch, Anne Frank, Jo March and many more.

These literary sisters, all available whenever I wanted an unconditional friend. Female perspectives and lives open to me whenever I needed to disappear, which was not infrequent. Safe places and spaces offering feminine companionship all because women created them. Women conceiving women for the edification of all women. Wise, creative souls planting roots deep underground where they can't be spotted and yanked from the soft soil by the rough, violent hands of men. Like centuries-old trees quietly growing and whispering wisdoms on the breeze, we're all spreading our roots in search of one another. Clawing and stretching through ancient dirt and bones, reaching across the miles and years to entwine limbs and hold each other. We are here. Always have been. Dig deeper, sweet girl. We are waiting.

Find your sisters, literary or otherwise and don't ever let them go.

"I am a composite of all the women I have loved. I am built and reconstituted from my memories of them: words and embraces exchanged, the smell of their hair and the soap smoothed into their skin. This sounds romantic, I know, and it is: my most intimate female relationships have always, at least in my perception, been romances of their own, untethered from my erotic life - until they weren't." - Rachel Vorona Cote, Too Much

A biological sister wasn't in the cards for me. Now, I think my desperate desire for feminine companionship in my childhood was less about a sister and more about a general, consuming need for women of which I was unaware. In much the way I wonder who I would be if a sister existed, I speculate about the life I would have led, the woman I'd be, if my sexuality hadn't been jammed through the heteronormative social machine, as happens to most, if not all, of us. It's not that I question my currently arrived at state of bisexuality (pansexuality, to be more precise) just that I believe that instead of a tendency toward being attracted to men, as I have been thus far, my default attraction to men may actually be a result of my Mormon upbringing in conjunction with the heteronormative machine. I may actually, naturally, tilt in the opposite direction: toward women.

So this is what it feels like--
to be free.

Forever free
from playing the mortar
to my crooked husband's
crooked little pestle.

Enough.

For my mother.
For my daughter.
And for all the daughters
I might have had.

The cycle ends here. - Mutta

Women thrill me. They are mysterious, complicated, strong, a well of intriguing, fiery emotion very often strategically concealed from the general populous. Frequently, the men I am closest to in my life frustrate and exhaust me. My father, brothers, exes, friends' husbands, colleagues: in every relationship there is a kind of disconnect much like when the audio doesn't quite match the video on TV. The programming can be incredible, but it's always slightly out of sync, leading to a generally frustrating experience. There is a lack of understanding or validation at least and automatic gaslighting at most, no matter how I contort my personality to accomodate a connection. I am always the aware and accommodating one, massaging conversations, making sure the status quo is maintained and inclines, however subtly, in the direction of their approval and pleasure. In the case of my marriage, always monitoring and manipulating, if needed, ordinary life circumstances to guard against his expected agitation or anger. Covering the grenade with my body to mitigate shrapnel. It felt inherent to wifehood, my responsibility. It was exhausting. And remains exhausting in divorce.

I have certainly loved specific men in my life but I've never experienced a love that ached deeply and quietly in my bones until I met Cory. He is a kind, soft-spoken, gentle soul who shies away from confrontation and argument, the very opposite of me or the woman I present to the world, anyway. I am realizing my boisterous, defensive exterior is an unconsciously crafted armor that belies an insecure, distrustul interior. Mostly, the only people to see through my facade have been women. And Cory. Interestingly, if one were throwing around gender stereotypes and labels, Cory falls in a self-effacing category typically judged feminine.

In our four years together, I don't recall Cory ever raising his voice to me. Ever. A stark contrast to a nearly decade-long marriage fraught with shouting and acute meanness then six years of divorce wherein my alleged negative qualities from the married years have been weaponized and wielded at every turn no matter how hard I have worked to change and prove my goodness, my worthiness as a mother, as a human. A well-worn page from the toxic male playbook, that. Listen to her confess her darkest secrets and fears, maybe even validate her, then pocket those disclosures for later when you'll callously use them against her without even a cursory comprehension of the extensive damage being inflicted, the trust being obliterated, the open heart contracting. Or worse, maybe the destruction they inflict is calculated. Deliberate debilitation.

What I'm endeavoring to say is I very well could've ended up lesbian or, at the very least, explored it much sooner than my forties, an age when society prefers I start keeping my sexuality to myself. And not just because I am attracted to both genders but because, with the exception of Cory, men in general do not feel safe to me and, I now realize, they never have. I do not trust them not to gaslight me or otherwise damage me and fuck with my head whether unwittingly or otherwise. Yes, I know 'not all men' and yes I realize many, many good ones are out there but I'm 43 years-old and can count on the fingers of one hand the men I know that I would fully trust with my heart in a romantic or platonic relationship.

*****

My first crush was probably Milla Jovovitch, who appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine when she was just a couple years older than me. I didn't just want to be her, I wanted to be with her. Snuggling under covers, whispering hot, breathy secrets into each others ears. My naive Mormon mind incapable of imagining a kiss because that would be a sin, but oh, it wanted to. It really, really wanted to fantasize about kissing the beautiful Milla.

I once showed my best friend the cover of Seventeen magazine and attempted to casually ask if she ever thought about the girls on the pages or maybe even wondered what it would be like to kiss one of them. Her expression, tantamount to smelling spoiled milk, was such that I was certain my secret attraction to magazine girls was an unfortunate aberration and kept it to myself. I hadn't allowed any flutterings for girls outside the pages of Seventeen to occur and it stayed that way throughout high school.

In college, when I received my first computer courtesy of an older, initially-married boyfriend, I discovered lesbian porn. I had yet to masturbate but my fuzzy notion of sex between women tightened my chest and launched flares into other parts of my body. My inaugural case of being shamed for my internet history involved that boyfriend discovering my predilection for lesbian porn and declaring me disgusting for watching it. He was 42, I was 19. The resulting sexual humiliation was familiar and all-encompassing so I tossed the back massager I had just discovered could make me come in about 7 seconds into the dumpster near my condo. He later confiscated the first vibrator I ultimately ventured to a sex shop to purchase to replace the back massager. I kept it stashed in my underwear drawer until he swiped it and replaced it with one of the rich guy shoehorns he used to crowbar bougie tasseled loafers onto his feet. The shiny, metal shoehorn somewhat resembled the vibrator so I think it was meant to be a joke? It was an abysmal violation.

I maintain a cursory friendship with this man. He would probably still do anything for me were I to ask it and yet, as I type this, I feel delayed rage at his actions. At the time it seemed standard, appropriate even, for a man to sneak into my apartment and steal my vibrator, to be shamed for watching lesbian porn. I understand now he felt threatened by my ability to make myself come without him, by my interest in women, something he could never be no matter the size of his bank account. So he shamed me, made me feel defective, wrong. Tale as old as time.

This post wasn't even meant to be about him. The memory tumbled out as I attempted to recall my first awareness of lesbian sex. What did this experience do to me? Hard to say. Sexual shame is my milieu. Weaved throughout my life in microscopic and massive ways. A birthright. My mother's bequest and her mother's before her. A lineal birthright instigated and spurred by men and the women who blindly or shamefully or fearfully obey.

*****

I am bisexual. Pansexual, really. The physical parts don't matter so much as the person. The parts secondary to the personality. But pansexual is a relatively new term. It was bisexuality I struggled to reckon with in my life. Bisexuality and the myths that surround it confused the issue for me. Perhaps if I was only attracted to women I might have understood my sexuality more clearly. As it was, I felt like the homo part of me was a mistake, the outlier feeling in a consciousness immersed in the glory of the rightness and perfection of Adam and Eve, the original hetero humans. I don't even remember the term bisexual being used in my teens, although it likely was. The whole thing was terribly confusing.

At times, I briefly considered that I was actually gay and this burgeoning awareness of women was the transitional period as my brain dipped a toe in what I perceived as the terrifying waters of gayness. It felt like I was drowning in sin. I later contemplated the notion that my intense chest aches for the companionship of women were a result of being the only girl among three fiercely male brothers. Other times, I speculated that my confused feelings for girls were part of a natural coming-of-age phase. Female rite-of-passage curiosity. Regardless, I pushed it all down and tried not to think too much about it. Until now. I am finally able to view same-sex attraction without the insidious filter of OTHER that permeates so much of humanity's perception of gay. I just see humans and love.

During my early twenties I had two drunken encounters with women that didn't amount to much other than I noted I was highly attracted to both but had no idea what to do when they seemed willing to explore that with me. Lesbian sex was ill-defined, murky and based mostly on those snatches of lesbian porn I'd watched that were clearly created for men, not religiously ruined young women terrified of exploring their gayness. The repugnant word rugmuncher, often used by my brothers in my youth, haunted me, debilitated me with shame.

At 27 I married a strictly hetero man who conflated monogomy with romance and loyalty. This left no room for exploration of my sexuality outside of what I was already intensely familiar with: heterosexual, monogamous, dysfunctional marriage. In fact, my sexuality while married came to a full stop. There was no understanding or openness, no safe space to share my innermost needs or desires and the few times I did I was roundly ignored.

Early in my marriage, after confessing a lack of sexual desire to a Mormon friend, she earnestly explained to me that "you've just got to have sex with your husband, even when you don't feel like it. He needs it." It's our job as wives, she said. Take one for the team, I guess. Fulfilling his needs is our obligation. I'll never forget it.

My lack of desire for sex was strictly my fault, an accusation, a denunciatory finger pointed squarely at me. My reflexive retreat into myself in the face of sex as requirement was perceived as deliberate, something I was doing to him. And so sex quickly became about obligation; specifically, mine. The quantity of sex within my marriage felt intrinsically tied to my husband's evaluation of his own masculinity and self-worth which is a lot to bear when you're still working out what gets you off, thus the quality suffered. Ultimately I gave up trying to understand my sexuality in the infrequent service of his. I blame both of us.

After we divorced, he went on national television to charmingly discuss his failure to listen to me and other problems in our sex life, issues he never addressed directly with me during our marriage or afterward. A performative, male Mea culpa that in no way validated or acknowledged the very real anguish I experienced during our marriage. A decade of personal pain reduced to two minutes of pleasant morning show banter. That spurious progressive performance a speck in the rearview mirror, I suspect he would now place blame for any failure in our marriage squarely at my feet, as is his habit.

My relationship with Cory has been nothing short of a revelation. I have worked hard to be able to say that. Cory knows all my shit: my triggers, my weaknesses. Divorce and the unavoidable estrangement from someone you tried so hard to cultivate forever with will cause you to reevaluate everything you thought you knew about love and not in a bad way. In a realistic way, free from the bonds of social construct.

For many reasons beyond the three children who currently rule my existence and my skepticism about men and relationships, it took two years for me to even refer to Cory as my boyfriend. I had to make sure it was right. That we were on the same page. That he wouldn't turn on me, use my secrets against me, stifle my uncharted sexuality or kindle sexual obligation wherein my body does not feel like my own but a tool for male placation.

At the outset we discussed an open relationship stemming largely from my unexplored interest in women but also based in a mutual firm belief in the flaws inherent in monogamy: specifically that it tends to strangle and stagnate personalities and causes people to enact ownership over each other. We prefer a more open way of being, a willingness to choose to be with a person each day and year that passes as opposed to declaring 'until death do us part' out of the gate when we all know people change dramatically and unexpectedly over a lifetime and nothing is certain but the death part. Monogamous marriage or promising a lifetime love at the dawn of a partnering may feel romantic to some, but to me feels like willful ignorance at best and a hopeful lie at worst. I enjoy not knowing who and what is around the corner. I feel empowered knowing I don't require a significant other for my well-being, happiness or wholeness but that I am open to the mystery and excitement of whoever and whatever comes along. I want to forge new paths created from mutual respect and trust within every new relationship. Not blindly adhere to outdated relationship constructs handed down from a patriarchy that has enacted ownership of women for centuries.

Then she entered my world and cracked me wide open. She is an astoundingly brilliant, achingly beautiful, incredibly sexy woman that I have long admired. She has exploded my perspective in exquisitely gratifying ways. I didn't know what I was desperately missing until she showed up. My mind is an aperture widening to take in the panorama of possibility. THIS was here all along. Women are sharing this with each other and I wasn't in a place to fathom it. Until her. There is an unfamiliar seesaw of capability within our dynamic. Equity. She sees me, I see her: an unflinching, all-encompassing knowing. Like coming home but to a feeling instead of a place.

'I see you' the delicate necklace she sent me displays as it constantly brushes against my collar bones. Unconditional validation. Recognition and safety mingled with desire, passion lust and want but never need. A woman, a mother specifically but not necessarily, understands the heavy burden of need. Need is not romantic, it is obligation. She instinctively understands this.

We are free falling but there is no ground. Riding the wave until it crests and returns to the ocean. It is the mutual acknowledgement of the possibly ephemeral nature of the thing, the lack of forever proclamations, that make it so desirable and liberating.

Go figure. It is from the softness of women that everything is born.

The system is not broken, we are

'I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.' - Audre Lord

This is it. It is time to pick a side. In 40 days you're going to cast what is likely the most consequential vote of your lifetime. 2016 was ostensibly an accident. No one saw it coming. Most white people, I mean. 2020 will be deliberate. You have witnessed the past four years. You either approve of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and hatred or you stand against it. You will be asked about your vote in the decades to come. Your grandchildren will ask what you did. Who you voted for. Your answer will matter to them. You will be held to account. If not now, then. You won't be able to claim ignorance. You won't be able to say 'I didn't know!' The world is telling you. LISTEN.

I hear and read a lot of rhetoric about how the 'system is broken' or 'the system is failing.'

Know this. The system is working exactly the way it was intended when it was conceived by white, male enslavers and the women who supported them and then perpetrated - whether deliberately or ignorantly - by whites in power over the next several hundred years. It is we white people who are still broken centuries later. It is we who are failing. Failing ourselves, failing our children, failing Black people, failing humanity when we continue to blindly endorse a judicial system conceived in a country founded upon the genocide of natives and the untold numbers of enslaved and murdered Black people. But don't just think of it in terms of numbers. Think about the actual people. The families. The individuals. The terror and confusion when death - in the form of violent, white men who spoke a strange language - came calling.

The system first took root in stolen land, dirt sodden with rivers of blood unceasingly spilling from brown and black skin and grew like a weed, spreading throughout all facets of society, choking life from those with skin considered other. A deadly system that encourages white and extinguishes Black. A system that glorifies white and demonizes Black. A system that sanctions lynchings. A system that allows for the extrajudicial killing of Black people for any reason, for no reason. A system that forced 44 white men of 45 presidents upon us. A system that has produced no women presidents. Do you think these outcomes are accidental? An oversight? No. This is the system working. A system that celebrated its inauguration by accomplishing genocide. Extermination at worst, forced assimilation at best. How dare we express outrage at Hilter when he was simply taking a page out of the colonizer handbook?

This is not just a crime against Native Americans and Black people, this is an egregious crime against humanity and we all suffer for it. Do not look away. Do not busy yourself with things you think matter because nothing else matters when people do nothing as other people are brutally murdered at the hands of the law without recourse over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who watch them without doing anything.” - Albert Einstein

I implore you, at the very least, educate yourself on the full scope of Native American and anti-Black violence in United States history and the laws created to protect police officers and white people. It is your duty as a human being. In 1892, journalist Ida B. Wells, who ferociously fought to end lynching, wrote that “the strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public sentiment demands and sustains such action.”

Let me repeat: 1 8 9 2. Yet, here we are. The line from there to here is direct. Understand there is no difference between the officers who brutally murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till and those who murdered George Floyd six weeks after police fatally shot Breonna Taylor and 10 weeks after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, who was chased down by a white father and son in a pickup truck as he jogged in his neighborhood.

From long before Emmett Till to Breonna Taylor and beyond, Black people have been subjected to unspeakable acts of violence very often leading to horrific deaths at the hands of the law or citizens protected by the law. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, from 1877 to 1950, more than 4,400 black men, women, and children were lynched by white mobs. Black people were shot, skinned, burned alive, bludgeoned, and hanged from trees. Lynchings were often conducted on the lawns of courthouses, a precursor to the vigilante attacks and abusive police tactics used to murder Breonna Taylor as she tried to sleep in her own bed at night. How do we all sleep in our own beds at night?

Our humanity begs our attention. Our dignity demands our outrage.

Pop the bubble that has insulated you from the savage reality Black people live with. GET ANGRY. DEMAND DIFFERENT.

Burning shit down and starting over is the only answer. And if your first reaction to that is But peace! We need to do this peacefully! I humbly implore you to closely evaluate a privilege that allows for that response. Investigate your inherent comfort with the status quo. A comfort that allows for a passive response.

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters." - Naomi Shulman

If white Americans were forced to live under the same dehumanizing, unrelenting threat to their personhood and very lives that Black people must navigate from birth until death this would all be going down differently. Even the oft-invoked Martin Luther King ultimately realized the validity of violence. Near the end of his life he undertood the futility of telling Black people to protest peacefully because that could not succeed in a game where they're the only ones expected to play by the rules.

“Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.” - Martin Luther King Jr, 1967

King's wife and daughter have repeatedly said white people have perverted his message of nonviolence, especially when dragged out in response to any uprising from the marginalized. Understand that at this point, seeing what we've all seen, knowing what we all know, when you advocate for peace in response to a protest from or on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed you're really demanding silence. And even that isn't good enough for white folks. Colin Kaepernick silently takes a knee and is reviled. Don't you see? No Black protest will ever be peaceful enough for whites in power. Peace rhetoric is what white people use to silence Black people they believe are making too much noise.

The house is on fire. The firefighters ain't coming. WE ARE THE FIREFIGHTERS. White supremecy isn't just hurting Black people, it's rotting white people from the inside out.

Until those in power (white men) or those in proximity to power (white women) choose a different way, the only response is revolution. And I will be there. Because my dignity demands it. Because as the great Audre Lord said, 'I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.'

**There are lists of non-fiction books filled with facts everywhere, but if your humanity needs a jumpstart, below are six beautifully written fiction books published in the last few years that I have read that illuminated parts of the Black experience for me in profound ways. Also, anything by Toni Morrison, obviously. Fuck that overrated personification of toxic masculinity Hemingway and make Morrison required reading in high school.

Rearranging the patterns of life

I was just wondering if you would like to be
The last color on Earth ever to be discovered?
Together we are all over this thing
A threat to the horizon
A mutual recognition
I don't know why it took so long to categorize
And I don't want to put you in a box
- Okay Kaya

I have always been a clenched fist. My entire life. Until now.

An unraveling.

I stood in my shower holding what once was loofah. Tiny bubbles, soapy water like lace sluicing delicately down summer-tanned thighs into the fresh razor cut on my knee. Clumsy, mind elsewhere. Thinking about Her while shaving my pussy. Blooming bloodwater. Beautiful like art. A bloody, sexualized Rorschach dripping down the curve of my calf. Loofah unraveled in my hands, trailing into the bloodwater. A long purple ribbon. Unclenched, finally.

A sigh. An exhalation. A heaving. Release.

I always tried to live within the parameters set forth by...by...by WHOM? That is question one. By a patriarchal all-knowing Santa Clausian god forever threatening to withhold heavenly gifts from naughty children? By man en masse? By a Mormon culture hellbent on hellfire? A family descended from the libidinous loins of Joseph Smith himself? I tried so hard for so long and felt outsider. Always. Girl on the fringe. The not good enough girl. The bad girl. The unMormon.

Mom I like women/Why are you telling me this when you know I hate it?

Then you hate me, who I am. Hate the sin not the sinner, they say, but the sin is yours. Not mine. Your construct. I reject your words and definitions and glory in being the girl on the fringe because within the edges I am discovering the center of the universe/there is no center.

We’ve been brought up in a cultural context in which the universe is presided over by someone serious. A society that pretends to revere democracy simultaneously prostrates itself before the almighty king in adoration and worship. In God We Trust/Fuck the intimidating idea of him wielded like a weapon to batter young hearts and minds into submission with fear and guilt and if it's your first instinct to cluck tongue at the notion of a middle finger shaken gleefully at an alleged almighty you best turn your focus inward, tongueclucker, because you are caught in the trap.

Why so serious? Dance with the universe! Do not fear it. Or an alleged Him. Or all of the hims.

I always thought I had to harden myself to love in order to survive it. To suppress the vulnerable parts of me in order to compete with men at a game they created.

I was wrong.

It is from the softness of woman that everything is born.

To walk without touching the ground

"I could not make her mine anymore than she could make me hers. The best I could do was to show her how much I wanted it. To press my mouth against her pulse, and open." - Melissa Febos/Abandon Me.

Life in high definition. Technicolor. A heightened awareness of the evanescent connection to everything and everyone. Especially her. Heart pounding between my thighs.

strongsexyvulnerable. I want to protect her/she doesn't need protecting. She makes me feel empowered. Feel weak. Fever. Chills. Submission. Dominance.

Equality.

Hurt me. Save me. Leave me. Ignore me. Come back to me. Love me. Hate me. Whatever she wants. Whatever she needs in the moment. It's all part of it. Trust isn't about grabbing tightly to things or people. It's about letting go. Submission to the flow. It's the only way to find any semblance of relief. In love and life.

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” – Alan Watts.

And then the waterfall. Let yourself fall. Lean into the fall, even. When it's love and then especially when shit goes bad. It's in the surrender to disaster where you find grace.

Be like water.

She too, intuitively knows the only rule is to break all the rules. Smash them to pieces. Getting to know her is like savoring the opening of a beautifully wrapped gift from the person who knows you best. Carefully, lovingly, meticulously digging up the tape with your fingernail, peeling it back from the paper. Gently, now. Don't tear it. Don't fuck it up. You can't really fuck it up but don't fuck it up. Tugging a creased corner here, a folded bit there. Slowly, now. Pay attention.

Pausing. Breathing. Awareness. Contemplating the gift. Head tilted in awe.

The ding of her text zings my heart like the tempo change at 2:20 on this song. Staring at her latest message in delighted bewilderment. Focusing so hard on that tiny screen she must feel my eyeballs probing her soul from thousands of miles away.

In the car, listening to the mix she sent, chest tightening, bubbling like carbonation, body vibrating, gazing at the sky and clouds in fresh wonder because who knew this was out there? So different than with men. And I have a good man. But this? So sweet and so soft and powerful and sexy and achingly beautiful. Overflowing with firsthand knowing. Implicit understanding and recognition. Not curating an image of yourself to present, a peeling back of layers to reveal what lies beneath. Free from the imposition of construct. I'm turned on because she's turned on. It doesn't matter why. Or who. Or how many.

Appreciating the gift. Grateful. You weren't expecting anything and out of the blue a blood red beating heart is throbbing in your hands/between your thighs.

Tear open a creased corner with shaky fingers, you can't help it. Peel back a layer. And another, revel in the slow discovery.

Pausing. Breathing. Awareness. Orchestral music set to slow-motion video.

Be here now. With me. Breathe with me. Your lips on my pulse. Lean into the fall and eventually maybe even the fizzle. The fall and the fizzle are just two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other.

Years of gaslighting and screaming into towels in the bathroom while the shower ran and sublimation and keeping it together for everybody else. We made it out, girl. And then we made it in. That's the real bravery.

To walk without touching the ground. How does my head look to my eyes? How does love feel to my heart? To feel the feelings is a redundant expression because we are the feelings.

It's Five 'o' Clock in the Morning and I Feel Fine

A feisty, assholish rooster crows me awake before 5am every morning, weekends included. His name is Elijah but was Eliza first, before we realized she was a he. When she who was actually he was a palm-sized fluffball scrabbling around a cardboard box atop my lap.

If it sounds annoying to be crowed awake by a rooster it is, surprisingly, not. It should be, seems like, but he's a natural alarm that my brain hits snooze on until my iphone alarm offers competition at 5:30. Elijah eases me into the day first by crowing and ultimately by forcing me into the black, rubber muck boots I wear to clomp outside and tend to the animals.

First, I open the chicken coop nestled against the east side of our house to protect it from weather that roars in from the west. Elijah is just feet from our heads when he crows his good mornings, although, knowing Elijah it's probably more like WAKE-THE-FUCK-UP-ASSHOLE than a cheerful good morning. The headboard of our bed is positioned against the same wall that backs their coop on the other side. We don't mind. Faint scritch-scratch cluck-clucks as they settle in for the night are quite comforting and, as mentioned, the early morning crowing has also been absorbed into our sleeping routine.

Incidentally, roosters crow all day long, not only in the morning. You just notice it more in the morning when everything else is silent. Pay attention next time you find yourself in the company of a rooster and you're sure to witness a crowing sesh or three.

A reason to jump out of bed before dawn on those dark, cold winter mornings when summer feels like a faded black and white photograph from decades ago has been inspiring, not annoying. The animals are waiting for me. They need me. When I round the corner of the house whisper-singing my good mornings - Good morning ladies and gentlemen, good moooorning. How's everybody doing this morning? - they bustle to life. The chickens - Mary Lou, Millie, Doris and Mabel - scrabble around, contributing gentle cackles and clucks, Otis the pot-bellied pig grunts and snortles his way out of the little wooden structure he's meticulously decorated with straw, shakes the excess off his body and trots excitedly to the gate to wait for me to dish up his food and water. The ducks - Ribsy, Wiley and Sunny - are always pleased to see me. They honk and chatter hello as they waddle into their yard, vibrating joyously in anticipation of their morning influx of hose water.

You really haven't lived until you've seen ducks enjoy fresh water. Think spring breakers swilling alcohol from bodily crevices. Or, on the opposite end of the analogy spectrum; an exhuberant kindergartener bobbing for apples at a top-notch Halloween party for the elementary set. Ducks really like water is what I'm saying and their enjoyment is very, very apparent.

Amid the gentle animal chatter I breathe deeply, inhaling the brisk winter air then watch my breath leave my body in spectral puffs. I look up at stars so brilliant it makes my chest ache. Shadowy pines swaying in the soft breeze form a protective circle around me as they stretch into the inky sky, reaching for the universe. I feel very alive and connected to things previously unseen and unfelt.

Despiértate, Monica.

I am awake. Aware. Aware of my soul; the part of me that's neither thought or feeling. Just being. Aware of being. Thankful of being. Grateful for the moments. Experiencing now. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Right now. It's all we've ever got.