“Sunrise and dawn, a turning point, allowing everyone hope.”

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Dear Friend,

Do you believe in miracles? 
Are miracles even something
one has a choice in? 

Each day, the peak of dawn 
rips across the horizon 
and we're awakened
by the brilliant light
of hope re-arisen. 

Bombs bloom like
fresh heartache across cities.
Yet the sunbirds sing on
in lament of the pities.

Weeds grow
in unlikely places
determined to find light
in each of our
cracked spaces. 

Human kindness, a famine.
We're all starving here. 
No turning back, we're
feasting on fear.

Music gives voice
to that one simple question.
Each song a reminder
yes, miracles exist, but
we must pay attention.

with gratitude,

-June

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Our journey started when I was not yet 6 years old, sitting at a booth table opposite your parents, our dad and D, where they explained to me the imminent arrival of you.

They called you Bun, like a bun in the oven, but to me, a sweet little bunny waiting to join us. I was smitten, all in on my imminent sisterhood. That day they let me choose your name from two options, and let me tell you now, you’re welcome.

I was driving with my mom when Dad called to tell me of your entrance into the world; that little bun was now little P, and she was here to stay. So that very afternoon, we went and bought you a stuffed bunny, BunBun, as she’s still known to this day (though now she’s worn and weathered).

You were a dream. Soft and pink. Squirming and fragile. You’d only stop crying when I held you, and though I was so young myself, you were mine. You were the first glimmer of hope I’d tasted that maybe, hopefully, I would no longer be alone.

I knew what you’d been born into. What I’d already been living. I vowed to protect you; your innocence was a vital force, and I was its humble guard.

As you grew, you gave me purpose in the house that still haunts my nightmares. I brought you toys and built elaborate forts to house our imaginative spirits — to protect them in an impenetrable bubble where D and her unending wrath could not find us. I brushed your hair and read you to sleep. I’d check on you in the night across our Jack & Jill bathroom; I’d go in and comfort you when you cried (despite D’s insistence that children should cry it out). We’d spend your timeouts together in your room because, as far as I could tell, you’d never actually done anything wrong.

We ran play stores and houses and restaurants; you watched me defeat LEGO Star Wars on the Wii we begged Dad to buy us, much to D’s dismay. I picked you up when you fell and skinned your knees. I taught you how to catch fireflies and sled down the enormous hill behind our house, noting exactly when it was time to bail from the sled before crashing into the brambles below.

I had your back, even when things got hard, and awareness and fear started to eclipse your childlike wonder and happy-go-lucky spirit.

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When I got sick, they stopped letting me talk to you, but I knew you were aware. I knew you saw what was happening to me, that you missed me, and that you still needed me. But D kept us apart, even when seated at the same dinner table night after night. At one point, I warned them that the darkness would find you, too, if they didn’t change their ways. But you were still giggling and silly and hiding your fear, and they wanted to believe that what happened to me was my fault, not theirs.

I bought you Rupi Kaur’s first book of poems and told you that you could always talk to me, no matter what anyone said. That you were never alone. But I wasn’t there enough. Shuffled from hospital to hospital during that crucial turning point into your own adolescence. I’m sorry. I thought about you all of the time. I didn’t realize when it was too late. When you were hurting yourself, and D made it about her, and I was in college, and Dad was lying to me about you. Then I moved to California, and though I came to visit you often and spent as many days as I could by your side during that time, it wasn’t enough.

Our grandma told us both how Dad didn’t want you and how the day D told him she was pregnant, he ran to get a vasectomy. Probably something you never needed to know. And she called me when I moved to California to tell me how a fight between you and D ended with D locking herself in a closet with a knife and a death wish, blaming it all on your so-called insolence.

I came home for the holidays and found you drinking from bottles I had left behind from my college days. I saw your scars, and I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, so I warned D and Dad — compassion, get her help, love her properly, please. Please.

But instead they locked you up and threw away the key. Dad called me the following Thanksgiving and told me they were thinking of committing you; he was panicked. You’d run from the house after a fight with D. I started looking at flights immediately. But then you called me later and told me the real story… how D had lost it once and for all and told you to self-harm somewhere less obvious, like she did, because your scars were unsightly. How she searched your room for needles and then screamed in your face to go fuck yourself. And how even then, Dad was too cowardly to stop it, how he told me a false story just to protect her, as he had always done, even with me. I cried for days. For you, for me, for this life we never asked for.

R and I sent you a cellphone hidden in a book we carved pages out of and mailed it to my former home (because back then, D was screening all of your mail, and I was no longer talking to her or Dad—and wouldn’t for several years, D never again).

You needed access to the outside world when they tried to snuff you out and control the narrative, and this was the best we could do for you. We talked every single day on that phone. You told me about sneaking a boy in and losing your virginity. How he didn’t treat you right, but you felt you deserved it anyway. I listened, always, in fear but without judgment. I did a lot of the same things in my dark days. We understood each other better than anyone else ever could. We usually still do.

Dad and D left for a spring break trip without you, so I came to see you finally. And we found the letters together. The prophetic and nauseating proof of their affair, the demented prose of delusion that rankled my existence but ultimately led to yours. I didn’t let you read them. Even then, I had hope that there was hope for you with them. It wasn’t my place. Where D was never my mother, she was always yours. We always understood that your hurt and mine weren’t the same, and we respected what our traumas wrought, however different.

After that, I started flying you to California for Thanksgivings, and most of the time you would just sleep and sleep and sleep. The depression that couldn’t ever rest at home could finally exhale, if only for a few short days. I worried every day. I was ready at a moment’s notice to come get you and bring you home with me for good. When you dropped out of college, I was terrified at the thought of you back under D’s roof in the state you were in. But you have always been stronger than anyone has given you credit for.

You found a job that saved you, and friends to support you. Eventually, I moved back East, and together R & I moved you out of that house for good. Filling your first apartment with Hello-Kitty and crystals and all of the beautiful signs that this was a place just for you. A safe place, at last.

It’s been a long road, and you’re only 22. But my darling, through all of the tribulations of this life, you have always sparkled. There have been horrible days, bad boys, problematic friendships, a dependency or two, a chronic illness, and more trauma than anyone should have to consider normal. But there has always been you. I have an unending admiration for your youness, your utter P-ness (as we call it). The care that you have every right to not offer to the world and the broken people within it. How you still care for Dad despite all that he’s done. How you hold wayward strangers like they are your kin, with compassion and love because you too know what it is to be hurt by the unfairness of life and the cruel hand of others. How you took in a stray cat, Samantha, from your apartment and sent me endless photos of her for a year. How you love still with your whole heart because you’ve never been able to do it any other way.

Even when the empathy twists your heart such that we’re crying together on the phone late at night, you’ll never turn your back on it. How in all of the unkind things that have ever been said to you, you never have an unkind thing to say back. How your room is a chaos of vines and knicknacks and soft blankets and ideally an animal of some kind, and it’s unmistakably yours — even when dishes pile on every surface, and you can’t see the floor because depression has a vice grip and no one ever showed you how to care for yourself. It’s as tender as you have always been. All that you have endured has never hardened you. I look up often in admiration at your enduring light and never fail to learn something crucial about my own survival.

Many years ago, you came into this world and saved my life. You’ve saved it again and again since. My beacon of hope when all is bleak. My one consistent reminder that in this life I am never alone. It’s all I can do every day, from now until forever, to repay this miracle to you.

Thank you for being my sister, my unconditional partner, a reminder that there is always something to live for, that my personality is not a flaw, that my hurt is not in vain, that my joy is not to be compromised, and that my mistakes do not make me unlovable.

I see you coming into your own. I see your insistence on taking this life at your pace. I see you grappling with all that has been and all that you cannot predict. I see your gentleness, your tenacity, and your fierce love. I benefit from it all. You teach me new lessons every day. Whether we go weeks without talking or text daily, it’s always you, and it’s always me.

My soulmate, though we couldn’t be more different. My guardian angel. My sister. My P.

I love you without condition and without restraint. Always have and always will.

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your sister,

-June

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Content warning: suicidal ideation.

Why does it always seem like everything falls apart in a vacuum? I’ve been watching a lot of Project Runway for some reason recently, and I can’t get their tagline out of my head: “In fashion, one day you’re in, and the next you’re out.”

Well, how freaking true not only for fashion but seemingly so it goes in the seasons of life. How one minute all is well and stable. You know who you are, what you have, and what you want. Things are going to plan, and you’re reaping the rewards of your hard-earned efforts.

Then something in the atmosphere changes- a shift you can’t quite place- and it’s all just lying before you in a broken heap. And the only one you can find to blame is yourself.

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Content warning: mentions of eating disorders and suicidal ideation.

I was 14 when I first got the idea to run away. Deeply entrenched in my eating disorder, I felt — at the time — that my only two options were either to die or to get the hell out of here.

So I’d lie in bed at night contemplating how to withdraw the $193 from my debit card without arousing the iron-clad parental scrutiny I was already under. I thought hard about planning my exit…. I’d do it at night using the emergency fire ladder under my bed, knowing all too well that while every door triggered the alarm, a few windows would not. It would be a small leap to the ground, but if I used the window towards the opposite side of the house from my parents’ bedroom, my landing might not wake them up.

I had quietly been mapping which of the floorboards in the old 1920s house creaked upon compression and which didn’t. I knew which stairs to my former attic bedroom would give me away and which would hold me gingerly, maybe silently praying for my success. There were 4 windows on either side of the attic; I knew which one opened the easiest and also sat right above some bushes that might cushion my fall.

There were two blocks from our house to the bus station. Not exactly my prime option as an emaciated child living in a rather violent and unfriendly city. But what did I know of consequences, really?

I wondered if there was anything I could say in a goodbye letter that might stop my mom from calling in the national guard the moment she woke to find my bed empty. Could I play on her sympathies? Could I tell her outright it was this or death? Or should I say nothing and leave behind my wiped cell phone and any other technological link she’d use to find me? A plea for her to let me go.

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I knew it wouldn’t help. My methodical convictions would be fruitless in the end. The farthest I’d ever get, even in my fantasy, was maybe 200-300 miles from my house before some uniform or another threw me in the squad car and took me back home.

Which isn’t to say very much considering had I seen my wanderlust a bit further, maybe I’d make it to California after all… but what then?

I certainly wouldn’t be eating. I’d have exhausted my measly savings. I suppose I’d be relegated to live amongst the legions of homeless who find themselves in sunny San Diego. And me, a white, scrawny, inexperienced, bitter, 14-year-old girl. I probably still would’ve ended up dead.

But at least this option had hope. My alternative options weren’t pretty. The other kind of escape I thought might save me from myself when all roads of my runaway inevitably brought me home was finite and ugly.

I didn’t like my options. I don’t think I wanted to go out by such pitiful means, but I also wasn’t looking to further traumatize my loved ones. So night after night I sat paralyzed in bed, hating myself for every passing moment of inaction — the inaction that was saving my life.

Unsurprisingly, I must have emanated distress beyond my usual for the time, because there we all were, seated in our weekly family therapy session a few weeks into my diligent mental planning. Wedged between my parents, mute and counting as high as I could in my head to pass the time, when a rough knock on the door broke through my concentrated dissociation. Two men dressed in the all-too-familiar green scrubs of the hospital that had claimed the greater part of my year so far — and for which I had been freed only 2 months prior — entered the room. Their eyes fixed on me, not needing a photo or indicator of any kind to recognize the lifeless, grey-tinged skin, protruding bones, and dead eyes that denoted my obvious need for saving.

I bolted from the room. But it was all too late.

They found me curled up behind a water fountain on the 8th floor. It took them two hours, but it could’ve taken them 10 for all the gumption I’d found to flee further.

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Now I’m 28. Tanned skin, pink hair roughly cut by yours truly into a chin-length bob. I’m married, a homeowner, and carry a respectable job title… but still there exists that insatiable need to run.

I did run too, graduating college gratefully debt-free. I didn’t hesitate at my chance to make it to California, this time a sanctioned departure by all parties. I moved around restlessly while I was there, boyfriend and dogs in tow. And I’d like to think I tried to make it work… but wherever I’ve gone, there I am. Forever forcing my square right-angled sharpness into perpetually rounded and too shallow holes.

Today I woke up picturing a shitty little apartment somewhere that only I could make cute, in a city or a town only I could fall in love with. I wondered if I would leave a note, but I’m still just as much at a loss for the words to explain myself.

This time no militant unit would hunt me down. I have money, though it still feels as insignificant as my $200 did 14 years ago. I have a car and could likely keep my phone for navigation and music. I could buy gas, and odds are I would try to feed myself along the way.

But I still have no destination. Nowhere I can see myself going where I might actually be free. For all that I can see the me that makes it, I know too well she doesn’t exist.

I’m not convinced, having seen what I’ve seen in these last 14 years, that the grass really is any greener on any side.

So I’m left only with the therapeutic tools that band-aid my gaping heart. What did that 14-year-old me need then that I could possibly give her now in the hopes that she might quiet down? What manner of self-acceptance and feeling my feelings might stifle her back into responsible silence?

But am I then no better than the green-clad men who came to take me away and who force-fed me back into reticent compliance?

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What is the point of having all of the things I was ever told to want, only for the weight of them to be more than I ever learned to carry?

The inaction carries that much more shame now — both in the wanting to go and the not.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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On the first day, I made an agreement. Bartering unwittingly with a singular possession, my innocent soul. 

Years ago, a memorial pool. Infinite and deep and I suspended, belying care behind its suffocating caress. 

Years from now, a fear. Time's tumultuous weather drowning my frangible heart.

The last day bestows a formidable gift. An amicable farewell turn in the light of the dazzling sun as all that I am and all that I never was. 

Everyday a crumbling deity wears frailer still by my own insatiable search for meaning, both of us divine in our symbiotic imperfection and sorrow.

And today is but a prayer. 
For me, for you, for all. 

-June

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This year has been a reaping of all that I have sown in my efforts to grow.

2 years ago, I decided it was long past time to confront the anxiety that had so long muddled my perception and my capacity to live & love. It didn’t exist in a vacuum; I knew the theory and the unprocessed incidents that had so tangled inside of me.

Of course, at the time of setting this resolution, it came with external actions and conditions that I was certain could force me into nervous system alignment.

Waking up at 7AM every day to walk on my treadmill or outside for an hour.

Stop drinking and eating processed foods.

Take my vitamins.

Meditate every night.

Sunshine, journaling, water, and all of those things that the wellness system is certainly right about being good for you, but that have no capacity on their own to really heal a person.

Well, I failed constantly. My body likes to sleep; I share a food system with another human who had no such resolutions about eliminating toxins from the fridge and pantry. My vitamins made me sick, meditation felt forced, the treadmill was unendingly boring…

And my anxiety grew. Why can’t I do such simple things? Why must I be doomed to fail and fail and fail?

It took a long time for the light to find me, however it did, that of course my body and mind did not need one more bit of forced perfectionism. Because how could piling on further to the root of my anxiety spiral cause anything other than total and utter burnout?

None of those things helped me. At all. I still don’t do them, though I have found pockets of balance that allow them. But I think my openness and willingness to not hate myself one second longer showed me that I could walk my path blind. Not knowing where it went or what I would meet along the way. One step in front of another. And it fundamentally changed me.

It severed friendships.

It moved me across the country.

It unearthed long overdue boundaries.

It changed my job (including a period of unemployment I would never have been able to tolerate previously).

It showed me new interests.

It revealed new opportunities.

It altered relationships.

It brought me back to life.

And it was expensive. Not altogether financially… but I paid the price of my awakening. In years of backlogged pain that I am still unearthing. In doubt, so much doubt. In resistance from those who liked me small.

But I gained so much in return. I found myself for the first time in 28 years. It came on fast and heavy; I opened myself to the universe of things, and they found me. Generally, I am a cynic, but I’ve started to wonder if that worked against me for longer than it needed to. If all of the angst to control, the only peace I have ever felt has been in the last 6 months of learning to let the fuck go.

Resigning to the unpredictability of life has set my nervous system on fire and yet allowed it to find solace at the same time. I find myself grasping at how to explain it to others, but likely more so for myself. How wholly the earth has shifted before my eyes and how I have no tools with which to make sense of any of it. Life looks different. I am different. I feel, and that alone is a significant difference.

The consequences are not insignificant. I built a life on insecurity and falsehoods that felt safer than the unknowable truth. I built relationships with people who reflected back to me the love I understood myself to deserve, that wasn’t really love at all. But the thing is, I still want these people and this picture. I just wish it was not so predicated on my lack of identity. Because now she’s here and there’s no going back and I didn’t create space for her and the growing pains hurt and we’re squished into boxes we no longer need and no one recognizes us but we’re no longer explaining ourselves to anyone.

I don’t want to fight. I want empathy to heal us all. Because though these people may not understand the powerful truth of unconditional love or believe they deserve it, I find that I do love them this way. Unfair as it may feel to me, I do, and I have compassion for their worries and their flaws and the human plight we all are living collectively: suffering.

But if we could just suffer together, holding one another, it would be so much better. The world would be kinder. I can’t imagine what purpose we’d need war for, or why any one person would need a billion dollars. We’d understand that we have so much to give and receive from this life. That our purpose is to do exactly this, to give and give and give and be blessed in return by the giving of others.

It’s all so convoluted now. The people I love most hate themselves and are, at the same time, some of the kindest and most empathetic souls you’ll meet. What is that? I hurt for their hurt. If they could see what I see, they would know that they are enough even when all they can do is just be in their pain. I wish for them the self-compassion to not figure it out right now. But to take a step down the blind path too, and we can walk it together, hand in hand.

But instead, I feel…

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Recommended Listening:

I cried to this song all the while writing this piece.

I never knew you to be deceptive. I wonder if I ever knew you at all. Sure, there is closeness, but always in a sort of pre-fab sense. Like walking into a model home and gazing around at all that lifeless perfection. The indescribable sadness of a home that has never truly been inhabited.

You look closer, and the mattress is made of cardboard and the art is as nameless as the smiling nobodies posed familially in a frame by the doorway. It’s all sold as the ideal, the model for what a home should be, what your home could be.

Our house was the model house. Maybe you’d know by where the dog chewed the sofa, or by the red juice spilled on the beige carpet that someone must have lived here, but you were careful to never leave a trace at who.

White walls, non-descript furnishings, colorless and bleak. As if you had bought the line that a home can be defined by 4 walls and a roof alone. As if you didn’t care about the inside as long as the outside was sufficiently cloaked in nebulous facade.

And so it was. Our insides were a negligible afterthought to the portrayal, the pose.

I got good at posing.

Every day we’d hug, you’d tell me you loved me, and you’d send me off with the reminder to be good, be sweet, be smart, and make good choices.

But when I was too smart, or I made bad choices — as measured by your golden and infallible scale.

What then?

I asked you once, why?

Why, in the midst of tumult and lies you couldn’t yet (or ever) confront — my father’s convoluted infidelity, your mother’s utter unappeasability — was a child the answer?

Born amongst the fire. Bounced on my father’s knee while he wrote a mistress of his martyrdom. (oh yes, I have receipts)

You told me I saved you.

But there was no worship behind the words.

Desperation, a plea, a child doomed to play proof of a love you could never lose. A totem as venerable as my capacity to make rain only for you.

Children can’t save their parents.

How often you’d remind me of my precocious place on that dutiful pedestal unto which I was so formidably thrust from the start.

Be good. A jaded, broken moral compass.

Be sweet. A princess you’d call me. Can’t you feel the pea?

Be smart. Does a smart ass count?

Make good choices. Never knowing what this meant on any given day, now scared to make any choices at all.

You were the first to call me out on my frenzied perfectionism, as if it existed in a vacuum, or belied you, a good mother.

Children can’t save their parents.

How often you’d remind me, i love you, and all the time, like the dog and her bone, you were conditioning the love right out of me.

A new day, a new line I’d walk obliviously across. Until I was starved on indifference. Bones protruding with the effort. You let me waste away before your eyes rather than see me as I am. You pawned me off to die at the hands of someone who let me, rather than face responsibility. You’d prefer me demoted to the ranks of the inconsequential many; was it a satisfying penance for my lapse in divinity?

I’m sorry. I know I let you down.

My love, pure and unfettered, landed threateningly in its too-raw demand for your commensurate unconditional devotion. You quietly replaced it with a forgery, and I believed your foreboding decree: earn love, worth bestowed, from the will of your maker.

Children can’t save their parents.

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Together we stand. Hand in hand.

Never looking grief in the eye lest he shall see us falter.

Auspiciously pretending, mother & daughter.

Daughter & mother.

The eternal pedestal on which I sit carries your hope, your horror, your need, your shame, and your guilt. I’ve woven each into a crown befitting of your ever-conditional love.

A true princess, at last.

Dance at my feet and sing of my strength, but be careful to never look up.

For I am but a hollow trophy of your triumph.

Like Humpty Dumpty. I teeter. I totter. Doomed to this purgatory of lies and of love, forever weighing the devastation of a fall against the yearning to come irreparably apart.

Will you love me still?

If I choose what it means to be good…

Unburden on me your woes and wiles, and I shall thank you all the while. 

Reveal your fears cloaked as they be, and graciously balance them atop of me.  

Caress me with promise, and affix a taut line. I promise I’ll carry you ‘til the end of time. 

Tell me you love me, 
and for you, I'll agree.
But the lie is all I'll ever see.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Oh, won’t you please…

Swallow me whole.

Scrub me raw.

& Spit me out anew.

And floating softly against the acrylic and fiberglass floor of my tub, I met my reckoning. It flooded me like a tsunami, a swift and otherworldly force raging, burning, then scalding my every cell. Until I emerged a skeleton, a lowly rock affixed to the bottom, faceless, nameless, and surreal.

It was a long time coming; this total undoing of the self. My form, a shell, plucked from its place by the sea in covet by one too many eager collectors. They could not let my beauty lie and admire it in awe as the moment it was and should have forever stayed.

Each beginning, a relishment, a burst of ego, a prize.

Each ending, a dusty shelf, a vacant stare, an unapologetic discard.

My beauty unchanging, but to the eye of my beholder – my thief & my appraiser.

For what then, is beauty, that goes forever unseen?

My bones clacked as I slid across the wet tile, propelled towards the door, the handle, its teasing glare in the light. My frictionless hands fumbling for release. And I stepped out, more naked than ever before, and bore my frail self to R, my then-fiancé (now husband).

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I have never known love unbound by time and space and condition.

I know this now, and maybe I did then, too, subconsciously recognize its absence as a source of my undoing. But even as recently as a year ago, I believed I’d found it so many years before in my barely post-adolescent (and first/only) relationship.

We were flawed kids then. Trauma-ridden in ways we still, to this day, do not fully understand about ourselves or each other.

From the start, we were fraught by insecurity and a reluctance to trust that plagued our war-torn hearts. We were the first and only loves that either of us had known, and they fed our hopes and our souls so potently we were overwhelmed. The happiest we had ever felt, and surely still a living and breathing manifestation of what we both could only assume would someday leave us.

It was an agony that they say is the compromise you make to be loved, and I believed it. One day we were there, talking endlessly until 5 in the morning, and the next there was strain and silence and the unmistakable undercurrent of fear.

We were not yet 1 month into dating when I started to google how do you know when you’re in love and was left unsatisfied by the answers available to me on this blog or that clickbait site. What did I know of love? What claim did I have to it? So soon, and yet, so sure.

But the day I worked up the courage a month later to tell R how I felt, that I thought I was falling in love with him, he stiffened at my side. Panic surged, thickening the air between our bodies as we lay on my childhood bed staring at the ceiling, in contemplation... or maybe in unacknowledgable terror.

He didn’t answer, and somewhere deep within, a familiar sadness set in, mingled unceremoniously with resignation and certainty of my unlovability. A good kisser, sure. But a lover for whom to bear your soul to, as I had so longed for, never. I drove him home in silence; seated beside me yet miles away somewhere deep beneath his sun-flecked brunette curls and pale blue eyes, somewhere I had never been to. Somewhere that maybe to this day, I still have never known.

He mumbled a slurred iloveyoutoo as he ran from my car. And I didn’t hear from him again for two weeks.

At 18 years old, we forgive such behavior. Sense is rankled by hormones and a solid lack of perspective. We were fine for a few weeks before a new challenge rocked our relationship, and we were plunged into the plight of long-distance lovers. In this, we lasted about 1 tumultuous month before R bowed out in a vague and unapologetic call that tore my heart in two. And there it sat, in a pile of empty bottles and unwashed laundry in the corner of my dorm room floor.

I dusted it off right before the holiday break of my freshman year, determined to forge it together again. I couldn’t let a 4-month relationship ruin my life after all. But then I found myself, again standing there in his kitchen like that very first day, his startled face and unsuspecting smile at the sight of me. And we were back the very next day.

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There is a push and a pull in love. Especially young love. Each person coming into their own awkwardly and uncertainly following extended time in the ever murky waters of adolescence. I thought I understood this: a sacrifice of long distance, a sacrifice of dating my former best friend's older brother, a sacrifice to make to be loved. There had always been conditions; I was good at spotting them and my ego thrived on meeting them. But with R, I have never understood the conditions; try as I might, his love has always taunted me like a moving target.

One day I am perfect, his soulmate, simple and as I am. The next, I am trying to tear us apart. And truth be told, I’ve fallen on this sword of his a thousand times in 10 years, stepping on land mines I never suspected awaited my stumbling feet.

Sometimes there is pity when I fall. And sometimes, a snide remark or an I told you so. And I, ever the perfect eldest daughter, born amongst the landmines, was determined to prove I could learn again to dance among them.

And so I did. And so we evolved.

I moved us many times. Convinced that this place or that would heal us. I went to therapy, did the work, pointed fingers at my parents, took over responsibility in our home for finances and purpose. I worked 3 jobs, I found us friends, I contorted, I shrunk.

And R lived on. Sometimes adoring me and showering me with love and gifts and praise, and other times aggressive and reclusive. Every whim of defiance became mine to carry, mine to fix, and often even somehow, me to blame.

I never questioned all of the ways he made me wrong. My anxious mind raced on for solutions, for a fix, for proof that not all was lost.

We all seek subconsciously to repeat the patterns that plagued our youth. For the feelings they arise in us are familiar, deserved even. And R and I are that for each other on a silver platter lined with rose petals. For every way my caregivers picked at me and provoked me, his ignored and resented him. For every way my childhood demanded perfection as a means of avoiding someone else’s anger, his demanded silence and conformity.

And the funny thing is, we didn’t even know one another on those first dates. We had no way of seeing these things behind the shy smiles and tentative touches. Yet what a match we have made in feeding and fueling, in pushing and pulling, on the broken pieces of each other.

There is a term for this, of course, that I am armed with now. Something we both grew up as victims of and now have fallen comfortably into, even asked for. Like welcoming an old friend into the home you diligently arranged just for them. Their approval and acceptance, though they have not known you all this time.

We live by the melody of our own destruction, and sing in harmony its every verse. A lullaby of reassurance… to tell each other in a language we’ll always understand:

I’m still here.

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R and I love each other, and it’s not an excuse. I am far too self-aware these days for that. There has always been a profound love, quieter than the apologies and the grand gestures befitting of our bad habits. There is a fundamental, if broken, goodness we share. I’d like to think that is what we recognized in one another in those early days and in many, many days since. I have known the intent to harm and control; I have seen it work its insidious and inescapable magic on the psyche. Our love is not that. But our trauma understands only that. And so it’s hard to trust the other kind of love, when the only indicator of its continued presence comes one second, one hour, and one day at a time. We never do know what tomorrow will hold.

So it’s in that space that we live, the chaotic unknown between love and loss. Between hope and fear. Between intent and action. Between faith and proof.

And all of our moving, for a time, gave meaning to that space; if I could just keep us perpetually between coming and going, I never had to recognize that we long ago settled in a broken home.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Thus, after my final attempt to bring us back to a place we’ve never actually been – a ring on my finger and a hole in my heart – I took a bath.

And my shadow rose from the water. Its form, a hollow cavity, carved into again and again by those who did not know how to love. And even by I, who was never taught to be loved.

I stood before my husband-to-be with nothing left.

I wept at his feet and asked him to see me as I was.

Do you love me still?

And he answered,

yes.

But now I wonder

if he knew then what I know now…

It’s been a year. Since the bath.

I see now that it gave me what I wished it to; it scrubbed me raw.

Shedding off the layers of pretense, the mold cast for someone else’s eyes, the plea, and even the weed-strewn wall around my fragile heart.

It spit me out so new that I recoiled from the light and cried for the arms of my mother and longed to be fed and held while I looked around for the very first time at all this life has to offer me.

The growing was fast and furious and wild and freeing.

And now there is joy. So much joy.

And there is also pain. So much pain.

And I can hold both in the same hand, and gaze upon them with clear eyes, and love them each with such tenderness that it now seems absurd to wait for another person to love me as only I can love myself.

As for R and I.

Maybe I will never know an unconditional love.

Never receive an I love you without that pesky asterisk affixed to the sentiment.

Maybe such a thing doesn’t exist. Because all things good in life demand equal parts of sacrifice and suffering.

Maybe balance is the best we can hope for?

Maybe grace, time, and boundaries can save us?

Maybe pain, grief, and fear will part us?

The only certainty is that there is no certainty.

Only choices and their irrevocable and unforseeable consequences.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Can the truth really set us free? 
Is freedom really definable? 
Or is it forever relative? 
Bound to our sufferings? 
What is freedom without you? 
What is freedom within you? 


The water rises higher now. 
Suffocation closing in.
Oh darling, can’t you see?
The way out is before us.
Can’t you see the light beyond? 
 

I long for the sunshine and dry air.
This putrid place is not a home.
We can go now, together. 
Please move, please.


I don’t want to go alone.
I promise not to leave. 
I promise to love you there,
as I’ve always loved you here. 


Our limbs grow numb. 
Paralysis soothing the ache. 
Tears lost amongst the climbing tide. 


The only fight left is that of our fingers
and their stubborn refusal
to let go. 

-June

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By design or by consequence, we were born into a life of desperately wanting what we can never guarantee for ourselves. Always at the mercy of our connections, of fate, luck, and circumstance. Always insecure in what we have, never able to manufacture or collect enough proof to convince our survivalist nervous systems that we are and will be okay.

And why? Because the aim of the nervous system to keep us alive at all costs is fundamentally futile. Death is inevitable. We are born with the instinct to survive, but none of the tools with which to remain so. We eventually learn the knowledge that we must die, but never how to make peace with this fact.

No amount of money can save us from death.

No quantity of friends or family kneeling around your deathbed stops you from dying alone.

No achievements or accolades guarantee that you’ve earned a life beyond, let alone better than, the one you are currently living.

Yet survival is so innate within us that we can rather convincingly lie to ourselves that if we do this or perfect that, then maybe we will be the one exception to death’s rule. And what could be a more meaningful use of our time than doing all that we can to avoid the uncomfortable certainty of death?

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We’re sold all manner of remedies to negate the fundamental disalignment of our body and the nature of life. A religion, a doctrine, a lifestyle, an exercise regimen, a skincare product, etc. All things that generally begin with the idea that there is a problem within us, and we agree because we feel the problem there. We feel that roiling between life and death, and we are anxious to relieve it. Then, once you’re sufficiently nodding along in accord with said person or product’s description of how the problem is manifesting within us, we start throwing money at it.

Money has no value to us morally; it only maintains its value as long as there are things we feel compelled to spend it all on. Beyond shelter, food, basic clothing, and healthcare, we don’t technically need that much more that money can buy us.

That’s why the ad industry churns billions of dollars every year, constantly presenting us with new manifestations of our fundamental “problem” and new remedies that are guaranteed to ease our suffering.

There is no money for healthcare providers to make in teaching us how to live healthily. There are only the incentives they receive from pharmaceutical companies that profit on our reliance on medications to combat poor lifestyle choices (and not always, of course, I take and believe in medication).

There is no profit for processed food manufacturers to make from your shopping exclusively at your local market, so they keep their costs low enough that we often have no choice.

There is no profit for religious entities in truly healing you, only in speaking promises of one day finding peace as a reward for a life structured just so, and a donation to the cause never hurts either.

If self-help books or gurus really made you whole, they too would be rather poor, and we all would be rather complete within ourselves.

If you’ve ever heard the expression, “you can’t help someone who does not want to be helped,” — and, especially if you’ve lived this and found it true — you know that healing comes only from within. So then, what of this truth can’t be applied to any external source that promises to sustain our suffering? Why do we trust them? Why are we sold on their empty promises?

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i’m sorry. i’m sorry that i am sorry. am i sorry? are you? 
in the garden of sorrow grows miracles. delicate things. 
resilient things. 

i planted my apology. and prayed before the mound of disturbed earth. 
i watered it with tears and sang it to sleep, myself too. 
and in my dreams there we were. 
unarmed hearts in a glass house.

i read to the sunflowers, 
their heads bowing nearer to listen close. 
you lay still, eyes closed in surrender
washed clean by the warm rays 
of long neglected truths.

in this impossible place 
you even strain your ears
yearning and eager to hear the melody
of my undiluted heart.

touch could never roam me
as passionately as your eyes
when they open at last to see
my glory and my devastation 

my broken heart, 
patched in grief
and one too many 
i'm sorrys 

-June

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please stop 
tearing me in two 
the love of your life 
yet your punching bag, too? 


imperfect and indecent 
rapturous and consuming 
why must you cower
at the sight of my blooming


a life spent shivering
alone and afraid
that I would never know
the warm light of day


a pale imitation
for love and affection 
left me wandering bravely
in the opposing direction


we’re tangled together 
us fateful two 
what’s left for us, but
that I love you


my seams are splitting
the blood pouring out
can this dance only end
in famine and drought?

-June

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A delicate herb 
wilts & withers. 
Desiccated, it cries
for a tear never fallen.

An aching lung, 
gasps & gapes.
Hypoxic, it heaves
for a breath never woken.

A fresh babe, 
babbles & bawls
ravenous, it flails 
for a love never chosen.

Dear thing, 
yearning & yen. 
Obstinant, you wait 
for all never taken.

Have you then forgotten?
Some hungers demand
to be fed. 

-June

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And for those truly counting here - L had introduced everyone to his cousin, M.

Hangouts were becoming increasingly secular, as fitting 12 people into a bar or restaurant was nearly impossible in downtown San Diego. E and L had the largest space, which was the only truly feasible accommodation for us all, so most weekends were spent drinking on their patio while the boys played darts or got into other shenanigans they felt inclined to keep their partners out of.

R and I were bored. To put it mildly. Months spent indoors with baby Juniper trying and testing us, the inclusion of so many new faces we had no chance to really meet properly. I mostly sent R off when invitations came around, knowing they meant more to him than they did to me. I was already starting to crumble: puppyhood, bad job, disingenuous faces on repeat in my life… I was slowly collapsing in on myself, without yet realizing just how far inward I was headed. So R got to be free, and I got to quietly resent him for it.

R has always loved murder mysteries. Books, movies, plays, games, etc. The intrigue, the puzzle, the life-or-death of it all. He eats that shit up. We had discussed it in smaller factions of the group- his idea to throw a murder mystery party for us all. And with Juniper finally free to roam safely in the outside world, we were ready to be sprung and make our grand reentrance back into the evolved cohort of our so-called friends.

The easy road and the high road had never met within this posse, so I fruitlessly tempered expectations and curbed R’s enthusiastic spending as he poured himself into getting everything just so.

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The theme was the 1920s; characters were assigned two weeks in advance; complicated backstories were received and rehearsed; outfits were planned and practiced. I puppeteered and campaigned in the background all the while so as to instill in everyone just how much of R was going into this event. R had a vision, and nothing short of that would do.

We arrived 2 hours early at E and L’s place, kicking them out for the afternoon to maintain some mystique, as we made generous use of their square footage.

We hung lights, replaced picture frames, prepped snacks and period-accurate cocktails, hid secrets, and practiced each actor's entrance to ensure proper greetings befitting of the complicated tale.

I didn’t know the story; I just knew I was Ms. Vixen — the wannabe lover of J’s character, whom I had never actually met. I was a thief and a flirt, an obvious suspect to some and a distraction for others. An entirely out-of-body role for someone who hasn’t played pretend since she was 5 years old, but for R, I found it somewhere within to lean in. I certainly wouldn’t be the reason the night failed.

Nerves were high; I didn’t know if anyone had read their backstories or was even coming to play at all. I’d never seen it from anyone, and as the minutes ticked down to our guests' arrival, I shook with anticipation of what we were about to receive.

To everyone’s credit, though certainly not my own. The group showed up and showed out.

C arrived in a fur coat, bright red lipstick, and pearls befitting of her character’s riches.

S, a doctor, had a suit and tie covered by a white coat and stethoscope

J, the object of my interest for the night, arrived in a full suit.

E, who was the head of a mob family, came in suspenders and a bolo hat.

L, a professor, had on a cap, a tweed jacket, and a pipe. He even donned his best attempt at an English accent for the first hour.

T, an actress, had the dress, a feather in her hair, and was bedecked in silver jewels.

M - L’s cousin whom I had also never met - cast as the alcoholic writer trope, arrived with no shoes, no shirt, and never put down his flask.

R, the detective, a fully participating character and sometimes the host — complete with suspenders, badge, and orange water gun.

Also featured: a pilot, a rich widower, a director, and E & L’s pup Cinnamon.

And I was floored. Head over heels for R, who was beaming at them all and adopting a curious old-time accent of his own at their arrival. Introductions were made in character; everyone was snubbing who they were supposed to be and mingling wanly with their assigned familiars. A few giggles escaped here and there as we all eased into the discomfort of adopting new personalities for the evening,

The story unfolded; only R knew the outcome. He’d occasionally pull people aside for instructions or subtly pass notes inviting them to meet him in various rooms of the house to receive instruction.

And in between we drank, we ate, we cast suspicions and doubts. We asked questions to learn more about who might already know who for nefarious reasons.

The doctor owed the mobster money and was dealing pills to the professor.

The businessman is married to the wealthy lady in fur, but having an affair with me while meanwhile his wife has an affair with the doctor.

The actress had been seeing the doctor for an “illness”.

The mobster hated me, the doctor wanted me, I wanted the businessman’s money.

And the drunk was secretly writing an exposé about us all.

As the night unfolded, we realized the depths of deception and lies at play. Then slyly, I received a note to walk into the bedroom and scream.

The businessman was lying face down on the ground. Dead.

Per instruction, I let out a bloodcurdling scream that I think actually rattled a few people who dropped their caricatures and ran over. Laughing in relief when they saw my yell was just part of the plot.

We carried him (literally) into the living room and inspected him for clues. Finding a note in his pocket threatening him in typographical, incognito-style writing.

His wife started to wail over him, which appalled the doctor. Until she herself collapsed from suspected poisoning.

I was accused of being the perpetrator, having found the businessman dead and, of course, wanting his wife out of the way. And to be fair, I wasn’t really sure whether I had done it, but I maintained my innocence to the very end.

The end being my own mysterious death, and in my pocket? Evidence incriminating the pilot, who had been rather shady and unattached throughout the evening.

Now, this is a buyable game on Kickstarter, which I’ve certainly spoiled quite a bit of. And with that, I’ll leave you guessing as to who the murderer actually was!

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Of all the gatherings held, this is unequivocally the highlight. It certainly gave us hope and felt like a bonding force amongst us where guards were dropped, and everyone trusted the process to bring us together.

Yes, we drank. Yes, we ended the evening somewhat uncomfortably returning to reality. Yes, R had plenty to say about how it all went. But regardless, we maintain that this is the pinnacle — as it was all downhill from here.

More to come…

Friendship Key:

• June - me

• R - my husband (then boyfriend)

Together 7 years (at this point): socially awkward, a little co-dependent, generally great communication, hadn’t made new friends since the start of college.

Couple #1, E & L

• E - first girl I met on Bumble BFF: basic & cheugy, very surface level, obsessed with T-Swift & The Bachelor

• L - E’s boyfriend: a little dark, drinks too much, withholding, big unhealed trauma energy, gamer

Together 2 Years: E made the rules. L probably didn’t like her. Group kingpins, and they liked it that way. Big spenders,

Couple #2, T & D:

• T - girl E met on Bumble BFF: quiet, shy, cat lover, probably closeted gay

• D - T’s boyfriend: always high, long hair, deadbeat

Together 5 years: Foodies, travelers, kind of boring. BIG malicious gossips. Big spenders.

Couple #3, C & S:

• C - E’s semi-friend from college: friendly, impersonal, cat lover

• S - C’s boyfriend: chatty in a foot-in-mouth kind of way, short and overcompensating for it, obnoxious, unclear if he’s all that into C.

Together, 1 year maybe: travelers, goofy, frugal.

Fringe Friends:

• P - E’s second cousin

• W - P’s gf

• M - L’s cousin from LA

anyway, here it is…

-June

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I didn’t recognize it at first, having never been here myself.
Realization let me in.  
A tentative first step meets wonder, 
Where am I?
Who belongs here? 

Familiarity burns my nostrils with each inhale, yet 
Certainty grips me tighter still.
I must not know this place. 

A blink to clear the haze begets a quiet question, 
Could I belong here? 

Something deep echoes the query, but Certainty 
says no. 


A glance reveals all of my favorite things. 
Golden light flows in, seeming to brighten with my notice. 
Plants breathe, exhaling the sweetness of life, 
welcoming me with their kiss.

Color dances playfully across walls, floors, and furniture. 
Dogs jump at my feet, an ambush of smiles and fluff, as
soft music from a distant corner gently wipes away thought and worry. 

The sunflowers turn to greet me.


It’s everything, and yet, what’s missing?
I look back and see Fear on the doorstep
beckoning me back. 
It doesn’t belong here. 

Certainty reminds me that
neither do I.


There is only Love here, and she envelops me tenderly.
As unsure as I am if we’re ready.
Home, she whispers. 
Certainty snickers.
We don’t have a home. 

But— A protest and a wish tangling on my tongue. 
But, 
But. 

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The music sweeps past me, then. 
It tugs my gaze forward toward a small girl,
I hadn’t noticed, sitting in the corner of this delicate place. 

Entirely to herself, she sings.
Aligning stuffed companions before her, until
they are arranged, just so. 

As I see them, I hear them, too. 
Little voices gently harmonizing.

Curiosity wakes with sudden interest. 
Though the creatures before her are worn and frail, 
loose buttons for eyes. Areas of worn-away fur. 
Limbs fragile, details faded.

As alive as her or me.

The pull of her magic carries me closer.
She does not turn to see who approaches. 
She and her stuffed ensemble,
sing on.  


Love stills as if to hear for herself, 
the something deep within hums along, too.
Bewildered, I wait, and Certainty falters. 
Its allegiance shifts, as
my lips twitch half-formed words. 

Long ago, I forgot the song. But I never, 
forgot the words.


She isn’t alone; I’m here now. 
And as I join her now,
in sitting and in song,
she rests her small head on my shoulder. 
The animals move closer in greeting. 
Old friend, how we’ve missed you.

And I, you.

The plants, the dogs, the walls, the light, the air, the love 
hear our chorus reach its peak. 
Loneliness leaches from each rising note. 
We even let Fear in then. Taking its hand, 
recognizing its oneness, 
with us and all things. 


The song closes. The girl looks up at me, finally. 
She’s beaming, and I see.
How her love willed these animals into being.
If only to lend her company while she waited, 
for me.

I’m sorry I forgot you. 
Her soft kiss lands on my tear-stained cheek, 
anyway.

This must be the place,
our place. 

-June

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The weight that lands, uninvited
on too small shoulders. 
We consider it a rite, our gift to the
innocent. So that they might absorb
the relative and the ruthless
that long preceded their arrival. 

Big feelings roil deep in little bodies. 
How good we are at feeling them, then. 
The tears flow swiftly and small chests heave, as 
if to cleave the weight entirely. 
A momentary reprieve from all that we 
do not yet know how to hold. 

Long since desensitized 
to this burden of living, we
respond only in shushes or shoos.
Until one day, we start responding
not at all. As our parents before us.

We don’t know where the feelings go —
over time calcifying within. 
And instead of releasing that 
which was never ours to carry. 

Resistance builds, and still we blame
the other — 
as if such blame could lighten the load.
An illusion of control, and
the closest thing to safety
we’ll ever get. 

-June

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Can you become we, 
without us being me? 

I'm not just your she. 
Oh don't you see?

You love in extreme.
Whereas I live between.

I churn the sea
with this one fragile plea.

Take mercy on me
I must set myself free.


Before I bleed harmony
Until we're stained misery.


I will not cease to be, 
begging you to be we.

-June

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Come find me where the light stops —
and shadows grow fuzzy, 
as if afraid to bleed.

Come find me where the buds push upward —
soft earth giving way to merciful sun. 
Petals, exhaling.

Come find me where soul and body meet —
one breath, holier
than prayer.

Come find me where my name rolls — 
feral on your tongue, echoing on
before it’s gone.

Come find me where ache and ecstasy tangle — 
until they share
a single skin.

Come find me where the wild things are —
for here at last, I belong. 
I, too, am a
wild thing.

-June

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I forgot, or maybe, I never learned
what it was; 
To feel the sun lick my skin, 
warmth and light in its wake. 

To hear the teaming instruments of life
carried along the wind.
And pausing fleetingly, to
pick up my melody along its way. 

To taste the bitterness of underripe fruit
or the frivolity of spice. Flavor painting my tongue,
with stories of love.

Have you ever stopped to marvel at the season’s edge? 
Where infinite heat bows before the breeze and
everything in nature responds in kind. 
Bearing witness to miracles, and delighting
in their mysteries.

The animals learn for survival. But do you think,
as I hope, for beauty too? 
I stopped today to remember all that
you never taught me: How to survive is also
how to live. 

-June

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I never aspired to be a performer, but I’ve been acting for as long as I can remember. My first memories are those that required a calculated song and dance; how I knew the steps or notes, I’m really not sure.

Babies are not the ignorant balls of snot we credit them with being, you know. Nor are toddlers just babbling 2-foot-tall idiots who lack awareness either of self or of you.

I’m not a parent, so I don’t know what it’s like to be solely responsible for the upbringing of such impressionable and maleable balls of clay. But as a potter, I can tell you how it feels to mold and shape and sometimes inadvertently damage or scar a piece because you took your eye off the prize for one faint second.

Children are constantly performing for their parents; it’s how they learn the mores of the world thrust upon them. They know a cry can elicit nourishment, a diaper change, a soothing hug — parental attention at its most basal. They know a smile or giggle warrants the same response in return, but frustrating whines yield frowns and disdain.

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As they grow, these boundaries are constantly tested for the audience of two imperfect humans and then eventually for the broader social circle of grandparents, teachers, and fellow new-to-lifers. As a stage actor or mime, the end goal is always to gauge the audience's reaction so as to scale up or tone down the next move in accordance with their engagement.

But what is a young actor to do if the audience is unengaged, constantly distracted, and dismissive? Or what then if there is an audience of 1 who is perpetually unsatisfied, more an unappeasable director than an audience, really. And day after day, you find yourself trying out for a role you never wanted in the first place.

Thrust into an unpolished play with a new script to memorize every day. Perfection is the ultimate measure of value in this role, but the definition of perfection is vacillating as wildly as the plot.

As we learn to perform on stage, we are also learning to be amongst the audience. What our caregivers mirror to us is what we come to mirror to others as we grow older.

If we were met with upturned noses and the painful but constant judgment of never being enough, so too will nothing and no one be enough for us.

If we are met with curiosity and love, then so too do we have these as tools to offer our peers later in life.

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Before the rise of social media, the audience was smaller, and the standard for performing was relative — born primarily out of the community in which you were raised and the standards and rules that governed it. For better and for worse, truly, because if you were queer in a religiously conservative community, you had no concept of your own rightness or the queer community that awaited you out there. No, you were shamed and isolated, and you quite possibly believed them when they told you how wrong and damned you were.

On the flipside of the coin, in a homogeneous society, there is less breadth of comparison and fewer options. You and all the girls in your class were raised with roughly the same socioeconomic status, with the same decree to marry well and breed abundantly. The means by which you could fit in, whether you wanted to in your heart of not, were simply less variable and you didn’t know better.

Now we have a window, albeit a warped one, into the world beyond our native borders. It is not a pretty one. If anything, it is one that made the demands of our life’s performance infinitely more rigorous and capricious. Suddenly, the audience has expanded beyond your neighborhood's geographical borders to encompass the eyes of the world. The critics are crueler, the competition is everyone, and the stakes are higher. One false move and you face every actor's pinnacle of failure, irrelevancy.

You have access to every option for your life, every possible outcome, a contradictory zeitgeist of living right and maintaining relevance.

Today, the worthy actors wear this and say that.

Tomorrow we will care about this and shun that.

If you actually enjoyed last month’s this, the joke is on you for missing the satire of it all.

And around and around it goes. Each swipe on the screen fuels the fire that burns away the ties between us.

Even being among the audience is a part of the performance, and we’ve all been trained to respond on cue.

And what is tireless performance distracting us from?

There is a quiet subsection of the ultra-wealthy who pay for the very anonymity and irrelevancy that those of us stuck on the hamster wheel are running so fervently from. Sure, they own that hamster wheel and the energy it generates, but they could do that all the same, like the Elon Musks of the world, with their faces branded on all that they conquer.

So what does this quiet minority know that we do not?

My takeaway? There is power in finding your own incognito mode, and wealth has nothing to do with it.

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I recently went to my 10-year high school reunion and ran into a girl I was once good friends with. She was one of the few people from high school, or really that I knew personally at all, whom I still followed on social media before deleting my apps for good. She was living a life I admired from across the glass, artistic and whimsical. The kind of life that puts the Pinterest art girlies to shame. Thrifting outfits we think are cute but know we couldn’t pull off ourselves. Sharing Polaroid-style photography of birthday parties and half-finished paintings. A cute little blond bob and a curated arm of tattoos.

I went up to her at the reunion and told her I followed her, and I thought her life looked really cool.

Her response, “Oh, that is all fake.”

Of course it is. She’s performing, as we all are. She’s just found the way of performing that she is best at. She seemed sad and embarrassed to tell me it was fake. Like she blurted out a secret she’d been holding onto for too long, desperate for relief from the lie.

I told her that even if it felt fake, part of her was still living it, and that made it real enough for me.

Who are you when no one is watching? You’ve likely seen the question before and felt that internal churning of cognitive dissonance awaken inside of you at the thought of having to answer it.

Speaking for myself, I am larger than life and smaller than it. I am not interested in contorting and squeezing into the narrow space that millions of others are competing for. I am too big and far, far too much for this. And at the same time, I am not special or important, I won’t leave a legacy or a thought behind. I am too small and insignificant to warrant this level of scrutiny.

I live a quiet, small life where I am free to be big within. Big fish, small pond. I’d choose this every time because here I can show up differently and imperfectly every day, and the only audience is those who are awed by my talent to do so.

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You cannot win at life. There is no pinnacle of success or measure of accolades that can fill what you didn’t get in your childhood. You are not measurable. You are of this universe, ever expanding gloriously into the unknown. You must fill yourself with the abundance of life teeming around you, become so full with it that you must grow in order to accommodate all that you learn and become.

Do not fear growth because you do not see where it fits into an acceptable society; fear a society that has limitless space but tries to shrink you anyway.

No one is actually looking at you. They are glued to a mirror that only shows them all they think they can never be.

Choose to put the mirror down.

For you, and only you.

-June

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