I don't even know where to begin with this one - nothing could have prepared me for you.

Nothing.

I KNOW mental health issues are real, but if stigmas are the rain-clouds baby you are a hurricane.

No, more like a tornado, I finally understand why you can only get a few minutes warning to take cover.

No one can predict the sudden build of pressure. It's palpable. Raises every hair on my back it is animal fear, all wide eyes, lizard brain and heartbeats.

You lash out with the coordination of a drunk at the bottom of a bottle, sparing no one in the crossfires

But as fast as it begins, it is over, and I am left shaking teary-eyed in the rubble and ruin wondering if that natural disaster was actually real.

I look around and I can't figure out if I'm Dorothy or the witch beneath the house. And can a twister even hold remorse?

I close my eyes and click my heels three times, wishing I was anywhere but here.

I've always thought about making a photo series of only people's hands
And sometimes I think of my own hands at different stages of my life

In childhood - filthy, bitten fingernails

That time when I was 15 and I decided I was done biting my fingernails so I painted my nails black every day for 3 weeks - only to immediately start biting them again.

The pick pick picking of the skin near my thumbs. Every partner I've ever had desperately grabbing my wrists, begging me to stop.

The actual hundreds of times my fingers had part time employment dunking in bags of molly.

Nervous hands slipping baggies and money in palms on the dance floor.

My sweaty palms when I get too high, fingers fumbling to get the **** baggie opened.

That time I sliced my thumb open when trying to learn to shave because I was too embarrassed to ask for help. I was 13.

My finger I re-sprained over and over again for 6 months doing yoga.

My fake knuckle tattoo phase - oh to be 2006 again.

My hand holding yours.

The first and only time someone bought me a ring, and I put it on my finger and felt nothing.

But I left it there.

Guess I'm ****** up/

Callouses across the top of my palm from 4 years of yanking on swan-boat pullies all summer long.

Sometimes I look at old pictures and I look at my hands and I swear to god I clenched my fists for 3 years after my father died.

I look at my hands and I think of the all the things we choose to hold on to.

And I'm always reminding myself to make sure I let go.

This twinging, this tingling, this sharp pinching
tugging from my right eye-socket to my shoulder
muscles, tendons, strings of sinew tensing, shortening, sticking
it's like a mosquito buzzing in my ear - an endless high pitched ringing
enough to send the tension spreading across my forehead, teeth clenching
I feel it, the anxiety, vibrating inside of every square inch from finger tips to my right ear.
Wrapping around to the back of my shoulder, pointed blade, locked in angry throbbing webs.
She called it the stress spot, and I can feel you pushing my buttons.

I have to teach at 6am tomorrow and it's 9:50pm today. My hands are throbbing from birth defects and surgeries and I'm not sure why I seem to think that the exact motion of typing which is my top agitator will somehow be cathartic.


They say don't fight the splint.  My OT says

Don't
FIGHT
the Splint.

Splinting is not enough, you must rest. You must accept the shape and stillness to have any hope in healing. Every fight - the muscle spasms, the tendons tear, the inflammation swells. And it will never stop hurting.

And of course I think of you.

You asked me to write you a note in cursive when you were drunk. I'm not sure if you were serious, but I'm going to anyway because cursive is a dying and beautiful art, and I'm interested in what I'm going to say. I don't know if I'll actually give this to you because I don't know what direction it will take me. But I'll humor both you and myself and give it a try...

Even just starting this makes me worried that this is something you don't want from me. The flood of emotions and thoughts drowning my brain are overwhelming and disorienting. It leaves me speechless, breathless, unable to grasp the worlds I need to paint you the picture I want you to see. Meeting you was green, dark green, like sunlight dancing on moss.  You were this endless, exciting, inviting stretch of forest that I wanted to explore. The more corners of you I discovered in those first few weeks had me wanting to grow my own roots there. But as I tried to plant my seeds I realized growing in you was like throwing seeds into the ocean - roots cannot form in something that refuses to nurture, cannot see or feel tiny, delicate tendrils in the coming tide.  And it was just like that that I found myself hopelessly drowning in you, until finally I was forced to pull out my sopping, heavy, rotting roots, desperately coughing and sputtering for air. And although I limped away, tail tucked between my legs with an aching heart I realize now that waves do not make personal attacks on daydreaming, lovesick girls because they are not listening for love songs over the roar of the tide, they are not feeling for tiny seeds, they are being the ocean, you were being exactly you and I am not the moon.

But once a heart knows fear, it changes, and me a once wild creature looking for mysterious forest paths to call my name, I want to cover my ears, cover my heart and run the other way. I wonder if I can move my frozen feet, as I contemplate when bravery becomes carelessness. Each night I can't help but dream about you, and as I feel myself ripping at the seams in this inner game of tug-o-war I realize the only reason I feel these pushes  and pulls is because there is a part of you I can't seem to let go of, I am still clinging to that slippery, soft, green, green moss in the woods of your heart.

And for this I have yet no conclusion, no explanation, no promises, no expectations.

Breaking down armor, bulldozing down walls accidentally,
Of course it’s only right it happened at 3am in my car, rain down pouring, unsuspecting.
The most vulnerable and raw glimpse of who you really are,
A taste of your core; crying, crumbling, chest ripped wide open for me to see
Your fiercely pounding heart; your blue-green eyes somehow more vibrant
Against red, puffy skin; dark eyelashes clumping haphazardly, clinging against
The storm raging inside of your soul, echoed by thunder on the highway; the quivering of your voice, your trembling hands, you surrender,
displaying emotion so deep, more powerful than any song
I’ve ever heard; a moment that took my breath away
Like nothing has before.

Groping for a lifeboat
In this turbulent tear-filled sea
I snatched the brown Aspirin bottle
Five hundred bitter
Small white pearl-sized wishes
Slide down my throat one by one

1. I wish I could forget you
19. I wish I wasn’t fat
37. I wish honeybees weren’t going extinct
113.  I wish my mom would accept that I am not her
174. I wish I never tried it
175. I wish I had some more
212. I wish I planted sunflowers last spring
227. I wish track marks weren’t so hard to hide
251. I wish my throat wasn’t so dry
288. I wish I told you the truth
289. I wish you didn’t believe me
301. I wish I had a cigarette
333. I wish I could stop crying
342. I wish my cat didn’t run away when I was 8
396. I wish I went to your funeral.
403. I wish I didn’t bite my nails
417. I wish this concrete floor was warmer
447. I wish it wasn’t my birthday
448. I wish anyone had called
498. I wish I were dead
499. I wish I were dead
500. I WISH I WERE ******* DEAD