i read this and sobbed--the kind of good, big, open tears that unfurl the chest.

in

so if you read only one thing today, let it be this--please, God, let it be this:

{i'm posting it in full here, but please, take note: THESE WORDS ARE NOT MINE. the original can be found here}.

Dear Sugar,
I read your column religiously. I’m 22. From what I can tell by your writing, you’re in your early 40s. My question is short and sweet: what would you tell your 20-something self if you could talk to her now?
Love, Seeking Wisdom
Dear Seeking Wisdom,
Stop worrying about whether you’re fat. You’re not fat. Or rather, you’re sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.
In the middle of the night in the middle of your twenties when your best woman friend crawls naked into your bed, straddles you, and says, You should run away from me before I devour you, believe her.
You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.
When that really sweet but fucked up gay couple invites you over to their cool apartment to do ecstasy with them, say no.
There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
One evening you will be rolling around on the wooden floor of your apartment with a man who will tell you he doesn’t have a condom. You will smile in this spunky way that you think is hot and tell him to fuck you anyway. This will be a mistake for which you alone will pay.
Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.
You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.
Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.
One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.
Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.
When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.
Say thank you.
Yours, Sugar

you don't have a career. you have a life. acceptance is a small, quiet room.  what you resolve will need to be resolved again. 

the kiss in doorway--that's where i began to really lose it. from there it was all downhill. or up, maybe. this piece will be bookmarked in my tab bar till the end of time.

this new need. a home.

in ,

last night i stood with my fingers poised on the doorknob listening for the footsteps to recede into the room furthest from my own.

i hadn't even realized he was home.

the roommate.

just as i'd been about to open my door, i heard the shuffle of his feet and so paused, hand in the air, breath in throat, waiting

we've entered into a dance, both of us, without ever speaking of it or agreeing to it, with no words at all, we've found a way of living in which we shuffle step, one around the other. never occupying the same space, interpreting the music of closing doors, running water, the sweet hum of the kettle.

i'm not proud of this, this way of living. this absence of hello's or how are you's. this passing as strangers on the street. and we are, we're strangers, tied together only by the loose bond of mutual acquaintances and similar schooling. he had seemed the best choice to fill the third and largest room.

and he was. he is. he's fine.

it's not really about him, you know?

this three-room apartment, this once castle-in-the-sky, this once playground-of-open-space, endless flooring, and hudson views, it's--well, it's not enough now.

priorities have changed. values have shifted.

i want my own space. i'll take a closet, if i have to, but i want it to be mine and mine alone. i want to build a home. i want to recognize all the smells, know the hair on the bathroom floor. i want to be sure of who to blame for the over-stuffed and over-ripe garbage (yes, me). i want to be sure the nicks and scratches littering my favorite bowls were the product of my careless fingers--and until the possibility that they were caused by the man i love, by our growing children, well, until that possibility is more than just  hope or passing thought, let me live alone.

i want to know that the next time i share a space with someone the impetus will be love.

this new need is so immediate, so strong. startling, really, in just how physical it is.

i was talking about it at work when another girl said, oh, you're moving, do you need a roommate? in her defense, she had caught the tail-end of the discussion.


no, i replied, taking a deep breath and smiling slowly. i want to live alone. 


alone, why would you want that? 


i gave her a little laugh, oh you know...


the oh, you know was my kind way of saying if you even have to ask, it's not worth explaining. 

perhaps it's age, perhaps it is shifting wants and needs from this thing called life, perhaps it's just part of my makeup. perhaps it's part of my fierce need for independence, product of my believe that space is charged and sacred.

who knows for sure.

all i know for now is, let me live alone. let there be a new adventure, a new experience. for the first time in all my years of new york city living, let me lay claim to a space, let me build a home.

week two of this new year: january 8-14

in


















i've been waking up with no sense of what day it is or where i am or if i even know my name. this is how i know i am busy. so i am trying--really, i am--to focus in on the little things. the chance meeting of feet against cobblestone. the warmth of a really good latte. a book so well-loved and so oft-read the pages are falling out. beautiful plates. the sighting of a vespa. animal crackers and their ability to transport me some twenty-two years. and the joy that comes from days well-filled with work and laughter, new friends and cute men, and the dreams we share over the breaking of bread.

the need to say.

in

i got home tonight positively alight with the need to put pen to paper.

to expel the clawing, clamoring words.

it's been so long since i've felt the immediacy of that push--the inner-gnawing folding the stomach in on itself.

but the need to write, the words, they were nothing if not fragmented. cutting shards.

and where to begin?

i am not so patient. and i am not so strong. and i can't wait. i want to. but i can't. because it's fair to no one. i have to let this one go. cast it up to the fates and move on. trust that if it's meant to be, it will. was it just one lie that was told? or many? were there things misremembered and confused or were they just not remembered at all? i worry it's all too far gone. worry i'll never be good enough or pretty enough, that'll we'll never meet as equals. and i know this penchant i have for speaking honestly, for saying everything, can alarm and undo, but it's as much who i am as the dark moles littering my skin. it cannot be rubbed off or snuffed out--i've tried.

really, i'm not so strong--a common mistake. and the turmoil and disease of contradictory thoughts, well, i struggle with that, am wounded by that. perhaps i could choose the bits i want to believe--listen to the gut. but i am human, and woman, at that. and the thoughts, the warring words, they're just not enough. i'm not asking for more. that would be unfair. but know this: i am as terrified and fallible and deeply insecure as anyone else.

and so i offer it up. all of it. i throw my hands up, casting it to the wind, trusting the dust will settle as it must.