I’m Not Real Good

With the politics.

I am not real good with the news.

I don’t.

I can’t.

I find myself so overly sensitive and I already am such a raw little nerve, super sensitive to the air and the sky, the wind, the sun, the emotions, the love, the aches, the pains, the joys, the being alive.

All of it.

I stayed off the media today.

I just couldn’t.

It just hurt.

So I took good care of would I could do and that is love.

I showed up for another today and sat and shared and read some stuff and listened.

Then I confirmed meeting a friend in the Castro for coffee and dinner and then another and another and another.

I knew where I needed to be.

Not to express my sadness.

But.

To express my joy.

To be there to support those who have supported me.

Who asked nothing from me except to live happily and joyfully and freely.

To dance and sing and romp and be scathingly fabulous and alive.

I went to sing the song of life and be there to hug and hold hands and be alive with my family.

Some family is your family because of blood.

Some family is family because they rescued me from what I carry in my blood, the shame and rage and hate and ugliness and diseased life that I came from, they rescued me from.

I have had so many stalwart men and women in my life, have a community that extends beyond the boundaries of terror and the scaffoldings of fear.

People who show up and keep loving despite it all.

In spite of it all.

These are my people.

And I am theirs.

I owe them my life, and so much more.

I did what I do best today.

I hugged a lot of people, I kissed a lot of cheeks, I held hands and was just there.

I can’t express the love that I got to be witness to.

And to know that no matter what happens in my life there is always a place to go and a solution to be had for what ever troubles my heart.

For this I am grateful.

Extraordinarily grateful.

I witnessed so much love today and so much life and willingness to keep trudging, to keep doing the deal, to show up for one another.

I am so lucky to know these people.

I am so lucky to be amongst them.

When I can be destroyed by sorrow, terrorized by helplessness, overwhelmed with pain and the grief that I see, the anger, the fear, and then to see the stalwart hearts that muddle through, that keep moving forward despite it all.

How can I not insist on enjoying my life.

Sometimes it feels like a duty, almost an onerous chore.

Then I realized.

How lucky I am to be able bodied.

To be alive.

To have another day to express my love for you.

Love.

Do you know how much I love you?

I hope you do, fiercely, I love you.

Indomitably with great voraciousness.

The smallest interactions, the touch of hands on my arm, my leg, around my shoulders, when I stand here with you, in the sunlight of the spirit and raise my face up to yours to see the tears and also the smiles and the life.

The life.

The resilience.

In the face of horrors and the incomprehensible harm that is done, I can find solace in this kindness that I am so blessed to be a part of.

I was given the gift of life beyond what I should have been.

If life were fair I would be dead.

The fact that I am not is astounding to me.

It is gift that I did not know what to do with when I first received it.

So simply reduced to being thankful.

To be steadfast in gratitude.

To say please and thank you and yes, yes, yes to life, to the gifts that you poured upon my head when it was bowed down in shame.

I am not hear to be rendered helpless in sadness.

No.

I have to go forward, into that bright sun, the brisk wind, to live on the edges of love pushing further in and further outward, the ripples of starlight, the hemispheres of love vertigo in the chambers of my heart, I offer this then to you.

To live.

To create.

To change.

To act.

To not sit with my head buried or my heart obscured.

It might be more painful.

But it is oh so alive.

And that is the duty that has been discharged to me, to live, fully, in love with this reality, no matter how tender it treads upon my soul, I find solace in the knowledge that I have a primary purpose, an understanding that has been passed down, from the experience of one to another, the love of comprehension and the knowledge that this is the only thing I have to do well in life.

The only thing.

The rest falls to the wayside, in the chuff and dander of windblown newspapers peppered with horror and the crestfallen faces of those numbed out to the joy that is present if they could only look up.

I have seen death.

I have born horror in the tissues of my body.

I have been seared with the fire of shame and stilled my own life to swelter in the heat of lusts that were not mine.

I walk through and I refuse to not live this life.

As fully.

As honestly.

Brave and loving as I can.

It may not mean much.

This one small voice.

This one shy heart.

But it is all I have to offer.

And I know that it is no small thing.

To give my heart.

It is no small thing to love.

To be loved.

To reflect it back to the men and women who showered me with it.

It may be the best thing I do.

Love.

I sit here.

In my little chair, at my small kitchen table/desk and send my intentions to you all.

The world of love ends not.

It is here.

It is there.

It is everywhere.

Love.

I swear.

It is there.

Love.

Always.

Just.

There.

 

Tags: breath, cherished, doing the deal, faith, family, friends, god, gratitude, horror, humanity, intentions, love, pause, pollitics, postaday, primary purpose, recovery, San Francisco, self-care, terror, writing