Revised Resolutions

Happy New Year!

It's 2012, according to my plans I should already be at the gym, have cancelled my Facebook account and started an art project a week. Thus far, I have thrown up, eaten a box of Popsicles and set a kitchen mitt on fire trying to make tea. I'm not sure what the regulations to resolutions are and if it's too late to change horses mid-stream after midnight, but given the circumstances I am revising. Step one of the revised plan is eliminating stress and finding contentment. I have an inclination toward being a dissatisfied and fickle girl. One part of me wants to build a home and paint my walls and feed friends and family at my table surrounded with all of my flea market paraphernalia, a warm fire with the dog curled up in front and all... that's today. Yesterday I wanted to be in a car, windows down screaming some ungodly road anthem in some back road Canadian town. I am petrified of commitment and am especially petrified of normalcy. I fidget while watching TV, berate myself for talking about my dog too much, loathe the redundancy of my job of 5 years and panic when I buy home furnishings anywhere but the Goodwill or a yardsale. Yes, I am pretentious with no good reason and fearful of anything that places me in a box. I do not want to be contained, I want to be bigger and better than I am (well not physically bigger) and yet I have taken literally zero of the steps to be those things. I am the resolution. I resolve to trust my instinct, never put my happiness on a to do list (oops) and absolutely never compromise what I truly want.... so I guess I should figure that out.

What I really want is peace. Peace has somehow been the goal since I was a little girl. My mother took me to a Sufist guru once and he named me "Selema" (meaning peace). In Sufist belief, your given name is an aspect that you possess innately. It may take your entire life to attain that actual state of being, making it your destiny. I have yet to do anything but bring chaos to the world, especially my own but peace is always the destination. My whole life, I have stressed about perfection as if it were attainable. I used to take a writing assignment at school and turn it into an 8 page research project, I would reorganize my mothers cabinets and sort things into neat little categories. I made incessant lists including every detail of my day, every goal in present and future tense. I lived by lists, order, structure and a perpetual state of panic. I'm not sure exactly when I lost that order but I do know why. No one can live so tightly wound without finally collapsing.  I was so consistently looking ahead that I was always destroying my present situation. I have now found the other extreme: always running, late, chaotic, but ever in panic. I may come off as restrained and fairly normal in the day-to-day but as most of my former boyfriends can vouch, I have a time-sensitive, self-destruct button. At some point I decided structure would kill me and I decided to live by the seat of my pants. I am a woman of extremes. I get bored easily. People, places, things- as soon as I attach, I begin systematically deconstructing my happiness. In fact, I have been combating this fight or flight impulse for the last 2 months. I have reached the year marker in my relationship and it seems to again be my breaking point. Things mellowing out? Time to fuck shit up. I believe I have found a guy who tolerates my insanity. He combats my chaos with such reason and restraint. He allows me no escape, least of all from myself. Some of the first words he said to me when we started dating were, "you need a rock." He was right... I need something consistent and unconditional. That is absolutely him. He is the voice of reason in my sometimes very unreasonable mind. When I try to run, he holds me, makes me face myself and realize it is never as terrible as it seems.  I finally have what I need, stability. Someone who has been wiling to wait from the very beginning, through every mistake, panic attack and impulse to fly. The most monumental is that I found someone I am willing to be still for. As much as he is the counterpart to my nonsense, I am a whirlwind to remind him that things are always changing, growing, breathing, living. I may not follow through with my former resolutions but I will follow through with us. I will allow myself to have peace. Screw weight loss and Facebook and whatever other ridiculous empty promises I make every year on December 31st.  I am creating my peace and happiness today.

Amber Joy

I miss my sister, Amber Joy. She is my best friend and kindred spirit and I lost her along my way to finding myself. So here I am- as me, as a woman, as what is supposed to be who I am and I am somehow incomplete without her. I can't describe me, without her in my life. I have learned to love myself and be proud and confident without her but that indescribable sparkle I have sometimes, is the two of us. It's truly being understood by another person in a way a man or a parent never can.

We used to fight hellishly as kids (and still do) so Mom would separate us and make us play in different rooms only to find us playing happily side by side moments later. We used to apologize to each other with trails of notes leading to the other's room until one of us would discover a somber-faced sister at the end, looking guilty and lonely and hoping for silent forgiveness. Most fights would just end in "I love you" and nothing more would be said. The fights changed over the years- from toys to clothes to too many layers of hurt and abandonment to silently bounce back- but we still sneak into the same room to be together. 

We used to build fairy houses in the woods out of stumps and rotted out trees, using everything from acorn cap dishes to feather tufted, bark beds. Our imaginations were our escape, our refuge from a world that often seemed too grown up. We would wander off into the woods for the day and pretend we were Louis and Clark, every new hilltop was further from home and every plant was one that hadn't been named. We were explorers, adventurers, always indians and never cowboys. We were wild children and the world told us to be tame. We were supposed to be gypsies. Instead we are removed from one another and removed from our purpose. We were inseparable and always defended one another against the outside. I forgot how to protect her, I became selfish and forgot that she needed me as much as I needed her. I forgot who we were when it was just us and when we were best friends. I want to wear petticoats and bonnets and pick wild raspberries and swim in our private waterfall again. There have been so many tears since then and I wish the memory of those sun drenched summers, getting lost in our own time, would dry them out. That our memories could parch the wells within us and bleach out our damaged hearts, making us children again. We had it all. A wild world with only the limitation of our innocence. Innocence lost. Children eventually learn to fear and resent and hate and the wild flowers die. Amber please remind me how to find wild flowers again. I need you for that.

i carry your heart with me
i carry it in my heart

i am never without it
anywhere i go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling

i fear no fate
for you are my fate, my sweet
i want no world
for beautiful you are my world, my true

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
here is the root of the root
and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart
i carry it in my heart

xoxox April Lynn