Your Smile Could Melt Glass

He said, “you are so gentle and kind.”

And you, you my friend are high as a kite and married.

But hey.

Thanks, I do appreciate the compliment and I wished him a good night and I left Java Beach and came home and wrote a really big letter to my program director.

Because, you see, I had my heart a bit broken today and I am sure there are some of you that are going to roll your eyes, but fuck you and go read another blog.

I was at work today and granted, I was cranky, the reason I was there was to let in the housekeeper and she was an hour late.

Dudes.

I had to make some phone calls.

I got right with God.

And by the time she showed up I was happy and serene and getting myself settled in to do some homework, write that paper I have due for Madame Mildred Dubitzky.

Except it felt tremulous and awkward and my mind was too full from all the material we covered over the weekend.

So.

Some review reading and the process of knowing that often I sit down and don’t know what I am going to write and then I write the paper.

While in the midst of this I was poking around the academics page on my school site and then I saw it.

The dates for the fall semester.

Wait.

What?

Fuck.

NO!

No.

No.

Fuck me.

The first weekend of classes is Labor Day Weekend.

September, 4-6th.

What the fuck.

I’m at Burning Man.

I stared incredulous at the screen, Labor Day weekend, why would they do that?  The school didn’t last year and I made my plans last year knowing that.

I made the assumption, I know, I know, that it was going to be the same kind of schedule.

And yeah.

It was going to be tough and it was going to be wonky and I might lose some sleep, but I was going to go, I got a job, I got a ticket, I got a purpose.

And it’s my tenth year.

And though I don’t want to dwell on it because I will start crying again.

It’s the 10th year anniversary of Shadrach’s death and he was the reason I went in the first place.

I took his ashes, not all of them, but enough, a whisper, a soft remonstrance of a kiss on my forehead, prayers for happiness in the ether, the never ending spiral out of love that I know he swims in, that his joy and smile and love are still with me.

And.

Oh.

Fuck.

Ten years is a long time and a lot has happened and I have grown and it still hurts and I still miss him and I always, always, have a moment, just for him, just for me out in the deep playa and I will really miss it.

I was too upset to keep working on my paper.

I called my person.

I was told to contact the school.

I scoffed, I said I was going to accept it.

(Roll over)

I also said I was going to pray and just focus on today and doing the things I needed to do.

I called another one of my people and sobbed.

He told me to take a good, brisk walk, like big, and move.

I did that.

I told the housekeeper I was going out to run errands and I just strode like a woman on fire through the Mission.

I walked into a nail salon and got my nails done.

Black.

My mood was a little dark.

I took myself out to lunch afterwards and didn’t get on the phone, but I knew I was going to have to tell the family I had contracted to work for.

It was only going to be the right thing to do.

My heart hurt and I was still too tender to do that.

I got back to the house and made a cup of tea and the housekeeper was almost done.

She wrapped up, I took care of securing the house and I hopped on my scooter and headed to the Sunset.

First the Inner then, the Outer.

Pit stop at Dr. Kurtzbay to pick up my new progressives–re-lensed my green frames–and found a pair of sunglass frames I liked to get a prescription set.

Then from the 7th and Irving to 46th and Judah.

I dropped off my laptop and hopped back on the scooter.

I felt at a loss with what to do with myself.

I did some grocery shopping at SafeWay.

Then came home, put groceries away, looked at my homework and shelved it.

I just couldn’t do it.

I read for a while, non-school material, more of The Widow of One Year, by the fabulous John Irving.

Then I sat and meditated for awhile in the back yard, getting some sun on my face.

And after that.

Ha.

I took a nap.

I was so zapped.

I thought I slept a half hour.

I slept an hour and a half!

I made some dinner, and frankly, well, I couldn’t cook.

I knew I had to call the family I was supposed to work for.

I did.

Barely able to do it without breaking my voice.

Then I went and did the deal and I was of service and did my commitment and helped out a new lady and went to fellowship and after I shared with a woman who graduated from CIIS this past December.

“Oh CIIS empties out at Burning Man, you should see if they can change that, really contact someone,” she said while I listened.

A friend of mine in the cohort mentioned the same thing.

But aren’t I asking for the entire cohort to kowtow to my schedule?

Then I thought.

Fuck it.

Just take the action.

So.

I did.

Hey D_____-

I don’t believe we have ever met, but I am in the ICPW 2015 cohort, happy to be heading into my last month of my first year.  A little overwhelmed too!  But, over all super excited and grateful to be on the path.

That being said I was heartbroken to see that the first weekend of the ICPW 2016 fall semester is Labor Day weekend.  I work at Burning Man and was planning my travel there around school, and my assumption, my wrong, I know, that the dates would be similar for the first weekend of the second year–that is after Burning Man.

I know it’s an odd request, but it is a spiritual experience for me, part of my practice, my ten year anniversary of going as well as my best friends ten year anniversary of his death–I took his ashes to Temple my first year, and I have gone back every year since, holding many positions of service in the community.

I am sure that I am not the only student at CIIS that attends Burning Man and I am aware that there is a least one other in my cohort who was planning on going and has purchased tickets.

If there is any leeway, flexibility or other options for that weekend I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.  I am bereft.  I do understand if there is no recourse, I will forfeit my going to the event for my schooling, I have already notified my employers to look for another–however my position is extremely challenging to fill.  If, again, there is anything I can do, please let me know.

If not, I hope that for the future that the department may consider those of us who go to the event for their spiritual practice.  I have been sober 11 years and am also of service in the recovery community there.  In fact, if it hadn’t been for an experience at Burning Man two burns ago, I wouldn’t even be at CIIS–feel free to see my application essay, it’s all spelled out there.

Thank you again for your service as Program Coordinator, your efforts are noticed, if not always acknowledge directly.

Sincerely yours,

Carmen Martines

I have no idea what comes next.

But I tried.

I made an effort.

And for that I am grateful.

Fingers crossed.

I’m Done!

I finished all the reading for my next weekend of classes.

One weekend ahead of time.

I am absurdly pleased.

I just closed my Ethics and Family Law textbook and shelved it along with everything else that I read this weekend.

I do have a proposal that I did not get to, but whatever.

I have all week to do it and it’s a proposal, not a formal paper.

I have had some time to think about what I want to accomplish with it and I do believe I am going to do the meditative coloring.

I also thought about doing a guided meditation, I haven’t done a lot of sitting meditation, enough to know I can comfortably sit for fifteen minutes without bother.

I remember the first time I sat for three minutes.

I thought I was going to crawl out of my skin.

I thought I might leap out of my chair or rip my own hair out.

I was that uncomfortable sitting still in my body, in my own space, with my own thoughts to occupy me.

I thought my brain might actually eat me alive.

I have come a long way baby.

I can sit for up to an hour and have done so on a few occasions.

I have had years where I did a sitting meditation, in addition to my writing meditation, but I have to be upfront about that, it wasn’t more than a ten minute sit, often times just five minutes and I did it because the person I was working with insisted I do it as a requirement to work with her.

I wasn’t opposed.

I am not now.

But.

I think the coloring is a nice way to go about it.

I tried some last night to get the hang of it and it was nice.

I actually got some freedom from the rapidity of my brain and it was nice to get lost in between the lines and let go and play with color and just enjoy doing something that didn’t require me to think.

I plan on being up front with my professor and outlining what I currently do.

I thought, briefly about with holding some aspects of my spiritual practice so that I could “implement” it back in and go from there.

Some might call this efficient.

However, it felt a little like cheating for me and I couldn’t quite square the principle of honesty behind that action.

I prefer to be honest with my professor, to even go so far as to say that I have had resentments and needed to work them out, that, already, is spiritual progress for me.

I recognized that it was with myself that lay the problem, not with my professor, he’s not doing it wrong, he’s just not doing it the way I think, or better, thought, it should be done.

Anyway.

That’s all I have to do.

Write and send a one page proposal, outlining what I am going to do to deepen my spiritual practice.

Due by this Friday.

I’ll probably ruminate on it a little bit more then type something up before work tomorrow.

Just to have it out of the way.

I don’t have to start the actual practice of it until February 12th.

Which is also when my first paper is due.

I plan on working on that next weekend.  I will probably review the readings for the class, it was dense, really dense and not well written.  If the author used “implicit” one more time in a chapter to give gravitas to what he was writing I was going to look him up and suggest some creative writing workshops for him to expand his vocabulary.

It really is a pleasant feeling, though, to have all the reading done.

I also got to see my girl friend from my cohort.

She rode her bicycle out and I was grateful to get to show her my home space and we went for coffee and toast at Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club and then down for a walk on the beach.

It was deliriously windy out and the beach was fairly deserted.

It was like being sandblasted.

We did not stay long, but she got a taste of the glory of the beach and vowed to come back soon, although by a better bicycle route than the one Google Maps gave her.

Oof.

Any other city it probably makes sense, but in San Francisco, negotiating the hillier parts of the city, there really is a way to get from here to there and it does not involve riding the coastline.

When she told me her route I got sympathetic leg pain just thinking about it.

I have done some similar things when I was newly on my bicycle and found out the hard way how to navigate around the hillier districts.

The SFBC (San Francisco Bicycle Coalition) map is probably the best one to use for navigation, as it shows grades of streets on hills.

One block over can really make a huge difference.

Going up Polk to the Marina is a lot easier than going up Van Ness.

And probably much safer too.

I digress.

We had a great time.

No homework was really accomplished, although we did go over a couple of things on the syllabus for the next weekend and talked about the school, the program, and of course, our other classmates.

But mostly.

About ourselves.

It was sweet and I feel a strong connection and bond to her.

Partially because she really does see me and also sees me in a way, that although I don’t find flattering and sometimes I get upset with myself, I do have a vast amount of acceptance about, that being that I am in desperate need to control my environment.

“It’s a safety thing for you,” she said in her sweet, lilting, French accent, “I totally get it, and I see how often you do it, with everything in your environment.”

I have had lovers mess up the pillows on my bed to make me squirm or a friend purposely mess up a section of literature I have just set out on a table.

I have seen it, consciously, more and more as I accept myself more and more and learn, not always gracefully, to let go of the reigns and have new experiences.

I really do want them and I recognize, I must recognize, how brave I am.

I didn’t fold up, I didn’t collapse, I kept trying.

Sometimes doing things that I didn’t know better, stratagems that I learned growing up, self-defense mechanisms that worked really well at the time and then stopped, even though I continued to employ them.

I see things with a lot more clarity.

The writing daily has helped, the praying, the spiritual practices I employ.

My recovery.

Oh, all the wonderful things I get to do in the act of getting back to that place where I am allowed to be vulnerable, soft, sweet, and not in control.

Tender.

I opened the door.

I let in my friend.

I experienced intimacy.

And I got my reading done for school.

Winning.

She Keeps Us Civilized

The mom said to her guests as they thanked me at the end of my shift this evening.

Well.

I try.

Sometimes though, the five year old is just going to stand on his head and fart on his friend and giggle wildly.

Fortunately the parents were outside in the back yard enjoying daiquiris.

I was inside with four boys: 5 3/4; 51/2; 4; and 3 1/2.

I add the halves and the quarters.

They are very fierce about their age and the hierarchy of who sits where in accordance to what age.

They were lined up left to right, oldest to youngest, along with two stuffed huskies, one stuffed cat, and one very, very loved teddy bear.

Four cups of milk in sippy cups and four graham crackers.

And.

Pengu.

Man.

There is nothing funnier to this age group than Pengu.

Nothing.

There is just something about the claymation little penguin that tickles the funny bone.

I find it endearing and cute and about the only video I can stand watching with the boys.

It’s a special night when the boys get videos, when I’m there we don’t watch videos.

I have been told by the boys that they do watch a lot of videos 0n the weekend.

I know they do and that’s not my business.

I am in no position to criticize or judge any one and their parental style.

I have in the past and it did not serve me well.

Glass houses and stones and what all.

The boys had a play date and I made pizzas.

I had to laugh at one point.

I don’t eat sugar or flour and here I am rolling out pizza dough–spinach and mushroom, pepperoni, plain cheese, and cheese and mushroom–and navigating around open containers of sugar and booze.

Not my normal.

Even at work.

But no matter.

I did my deal and took care of the boys and was grateful for my own lovely little abstinent meal and my extra time to get done laundry and pick up all the different sets of train tracks that had gotten pulled out to entertain the boys.

Three separate sets.

I pondered my psychology reading and was happy to use some theory on the boys.

I mean.

Come on.

I’m in the heart of family.

And I’m going to be a therapist.

Gold mine.

It’s like doing field work all the time.

I mean I got an A+ in Psychodynamics using a scene at the dentist office where one of the boys had a temper tantrum and I was able to apply Freud and Melanie Klein theory to what was happening.

I am a very lucky girl.

I am also a very lucky girl to have done some work today before work.

That’s the funny thing about work.

I work before it and I work after it.

Sometimes the work I do outside of work is more work.

But I digress.

I did some reading.

I checked over a couple of my syllabi.

Specifically I read the entire seven pages for Applied Spirituality.

,

I was resentful, wildly so, the first time I read it.

Hey, don’t you know who I am?

Don’t you know what I do?

I am special.

I already apply spirituality to my life.

Don’t tell me what to do.

Which.

When I took some time to reflect.

Was a rather unspiritual stance to take.

After doing some inventory on it and discussing it with another person at length I realized that I was, once again, being inflexible about my schedule.

I have a certain way of doing things and a certain time and don’t bother me while I am.

And.

Don’t even try to get me to do anything else.

It’s a matter of life and death.

Motherfucker.

Ah.

Yeah.

So, you can see, not so spiritual at that.

I recognize the fear behind the thoughts, I’ve been doing it this way for years, and I’m doing just fine, and I’m going to hold onto this way of doing things and you can pry my practice from my cold, dead, but still fucking spiritual, hands.

I laugh at myself.

I had a small epiphany–the poetry epiphany–and decided to not change up my practice so much, as deepen it.

I’ll grab some new spiritual readers, I will change out my daily readers, I’m still going to use conference approved literature, there is a really good reason I stick close to the original message of recovery.

It works.

But there’s more than one daily reader, so I will try another.

And I went for it this morning.

I wrote a full sonnet after writing my regular morning pages and doing my gratitude list.

I’m using a notebook that I bought at the museum store at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

I’m calling the series.

“Love Letters To God.”

I debated posting the first sonnet here, but I am not sure how I am going to incorporate them yet for the class, and since that is the reason, the impetus to do the writing, I’m going to wait until after my professor gets back to me regarding my proposal.

That may not be for at least a week.

I got word today that my professor was under the impression that classes started this upcoming weekend, he has not officially posted the syllabus and sent out an apologetic e-mail this afternoon giving some suggestions and saying basically, just wait for a week and I’ll be ready for you.

I find this extraordinarily unprofessional considering this is a graduate school program and I am paying graduate school tuition out the fucking ass.

But this is not the first time that something wonky has occurred–readers not ready, etc.

And frankly, I don’t bear a grudge.

It’s just humanity happening in front of my eyes.

I can get fussy about it or I can be grateful for an extra week reprieve from the start of another round of grad school work.

It will all work out.

And.

I have no complaints.

I mean.

I wrote a delicious sonnet.

It made me happy to write.

Happier to read.

The next thing to explore is to see if I can link a sound byte to my blog or if I should do some sort of podcast on Youtube.

Which I know nothing about, but I do feel quite compelled to have some voice recordings out there.

It feels like the next thing to do in this evolution of being an artist.

Yup.

Me the artist.

How lovely that is to claim.

I am a poet.

I am a writer.

I am an artist.

Hell yeah.

Bring on the spirituality.

Bitches.

Your account has been deleted

And goodnight.

No.

Obviously I am not deleting my blog.

I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I did that.

Although I am beginning to think that I may supplement my blog.

I know.

In what fucking time?

But.

It’s been suggested a few times, by quite disparate people, that perhaps I want to start a podcast.

I apparently have the voice for it.

That could be fun and I do like to listen to myself talk…

Anyway.

I digress.

The account I deleted was my OkCupid account.

I realized after last nights blog and a little pity party after the fact, which quickly turned to anger, then a gentle, soft reminder, hey, kid, be nice to you, you’re doing the best you can.

The fact is that I know what I want and I can’t have it.

Yet.

And.

Further.

That being on this online dating site was not fulfilling me, it does me no justice, it does me no truth, it does me no love, it’s a flat representation of me.

I decided somewhere mid day to stop trying to date.

That was the realization.

That was it.

I know what I want.

I know where my heart lies.

So stop betraying my heart and stop trying to date on line.

It never worked.

Has never worked and yet I have had that damn account for years, I have disabled it twice and deleted once.

Now, officially deleted again.

I had a moment of realization that trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results was just as debilitating as beating myself up for wanting to have some different kind of romantic experience.

The fact is.

I know love.

And I don’t have to be searching for it.

I have love.

I can look inside.

I can feel it flush on my face, the sound of drums rolling through my blood.

The fire of carnations, the salt rose and topaz.

I almost didn’t delete it though.

As if hanging onto it would prove something, change something, make it different, make how I feel different.

I disabled it.

Then I re-read the last e-mail I got from a perspective suitor, which was probably one of the cutest requests for a date that I have actually gotten from the site, and I balked.

Come on, Martines.

This is fantasy.

Because it really is, it’s just another way to check out, to not be present, to not focus on what is going on with me, to deflect from the feelings I am having and get lost in the clicking through profiles.

Just another rat in the maze.

I will pass.

I went back and deleted the account.

A few minutes before a friend texted me to see if I was around.

Ha.

Yes.

And free to be present since I’m not trolling for some imaginary internet ego fulfillment.

Rather.

A good talk.

A connection.

Human relationships.

Right here.

Right now.

In the moment.

Just for today.

“Oh, you take it easy, you let the day unfold, I think you are going to be really happy today, you’re going to have something happens that is going to really surprise you, I guarantee it.”

Man.

She was right.

And it was good.

My heart feels in a place of resting that I don’t believe has been available for me for awhile.

I am not unhappy that it took what it has taken to get here, it’s been work unlike any I have ever known.

And the results?

Holy shit.

A deepening of understanding.

A threshold of love I don’t know that I have ever experienced.

A transparency of my self.

So good.

I feel blown open.

Like sugar crystals in a cave of dark velvet splashed with light and lit up.

Incandescent.

Alive.

I also gave myself the thumbs up to be a poet.

I mean.

Ha.

I have been a poet all my life, I was a poet before I had the words to express, but I can recall the images from my child hood, the smells, the press of my senses and that outlet that was always there for me, more true than history, poetry.

Which in its best, done well, is always about this moment.

This one.

Right here.

I have a class in school that I have to come up with a proposal that will help me expand my spiritual experience.

It’s called “Applied Spirituality” and I have had a bit of a resentment about it.

Damn it.

I am a spiritual person.

I don’t want to expand my experience.

I sound like a petulant child.

When it was pointed out I still stomped my feet a little, but I thought, ok, how can I be flexible, what could I change, can I actually add something more to my already rather busy and packed schedule?

My first response was fuck you and fuck no.

But when I react that strongly to something I know that is where the work is.

Then again, there it was, that idea presented to me, again last night, Sunday night and Sunday during the day at school, that I should be doing some vocal work.

“You should have a podcast!”

As I mentioned, I have no idea what that means.

I mean.

I really don’t.

Some exploration there would be needed to figure it out.

But how hard could it be?

The thought that came to me, the first thought, it morphed as I was talking to my friend, it bloomed, it expanded, and got bigger, but the first thoughts was.

Well.

Hmmm.

Maybe start a podcast and do spiritual readings.

Then I had another thought, a quiet thought, a soft voice that was shy at first, but then excited and lit up and exuberant.

Wait!

It should be my own work.

And.

Yes!

I will read poems on my podcast.

And.

Yes!

Here it is.

I will write a sonnet a day.

That will be my spiritual practice.

And if you don’t believe that writing is a spiritual practice, you bring yourself over to my house and I will show you my stacks and stacks and boxes and bins of notebooks that I have written through in my writing practice.

Poetry will be my practice.

Despite feeling overwhelmed at times by the amount of work I was doing in my first semester, I made the time to write the sonnet sequence for my friend I met a Burning Man.

And I can feel it.

I can feel that this is the right thing.

Write a sonnet in the morning, or free verse, or maybe find another lyrical form that resonates, like, hey on Saturdays I’ll write a sestina instead, then in the evening, edit and post it to my cohort and record it as a podcast.

I believe that poetry also needs to be read out loud.

The voice and the inflection, the words of the poet.

That is my proposal.

I am super excited.

And so grateful for this experience.

For this love, love.

This life, this joy, these threads of words and lines of poesie that sing inside my heart, this voice that is not mine.

You know, it is not.

It is God’s.

That I believe more fervently than I can express.

When the words come, even these, they are not mine.

I am a conduit.

I am a channel.

And that.

That.

Oh, that.

Is a mighty.

Mighty.

Fine thing.

Sit Still

And pause.

Sit still, smell the grass, watch the boys gambol about on the fresh sod that was laid over the hillocks of Dolores Park.

The park had a grand re-opening today and it was one of the many stops on my day today.

A very busy day.

A very busy day on two hours of sleep.

I was up until 5:30 a.m. this morning.

That was not expected, but the talking.

There is so much to talk about.

Funny how with one person I have to stretch, to hunt and seek, and search for commonality or even a common language at times.

Then.

Other times, this time, last night, oodles and oodles and oodles of conversation, spools and spirals and tangents and at one point it was said, “wait, you still haven’t told me about the IRS fraud that you almost fell into.”

Side bar.

I saw another post, on Facebook, from a gal here in San Francisco who had the same experience yesterday, but she figured out the scam really fast.

Not I.

Of course, I figured it out when it was appropriate and I was grateful, ever so grateful to not having emptied my bank account, and for also realizing how I am affected by odd things at time and that yes, I can be naive and that ultimately, I am alright with this.

It means I am living a fuller life experience.

I am not jaded is what I am saying.

End side bar.

Sort of.

I re-read my blog from last night while I was sitting on the bench under the tree across from work this morning.

I was jazzed, the sky had broke out from behind the clouds and as I descended across Dolores at 17th the sun shone down on me and continued to pour light all over the Mission while the day unwound in its way, at its pace, despite my giddy girl ways.

Giddy does not last.

In case you were wondering.

Now I am calm.

Serene.

And just doing my thing.

I had many thoughts though when I first re-read what I had written.

Oh dear.

I revealed way too much.

I put it all the fuck out there.

Then I thought, nothing, “absolutely nothing happens in God’s universe for no reason.”

I can’t control myself, yes I can try, but sometimes the feels they just pour out and no one should be held to account when high on happy and pheromones.

Note to self, nice to see me being ok with this, there would have been a time, and not so long ago at that, when I would have been chagrined to have written what I wrote.

Oh girl, don’t put it all out there.

Save some for you.

But that’s me, putting it all out there, being a little larger than life, being me, and I know that I can confuse my own habits of self-denial, self-sabbotage, and self-doubt in a nice little package in this blog, when I am over exuberant and out there and well, over the top.

I have stopped disliking that about myself.

In fact, I sort of find it endearing now.

“You are in fact, hard to miss,” the woman at the park said to me, then asked for the time as I pushed one of the boys in the swing.

She was responding to my friend approaching me in the children’s sand area at Mission Pool and Playground and how he said, “I forget that, when I was looking at all the people here, you’re not hard to miss.”

My hair was very, very, very pink that day.

The pink is fast fading and I am feeling the desire to pull a hair geographic as I sit with my feelings and let them sort themselves and settle into their places.

In case you were wondering, there’s nothing wrong, I am just openly processing some stuff about me, this blog is all about me, there is no special secret there, oh there’s plenty that doesn’t go here, and part of the getting up as early as I did was to stick to my routine and do my morning writing.

I really needed to do my morning writing.

It’s my get right with God time.

So too, my morning routine and I knew that even if I had been tempted to get in another hour of sleep that I would do better in my day if I got up when I normally do, and do the things that are a part of my routine.

It did ground me.

I was a bit intoxicated this morning with feeling and lack of sleep and probably some adrenalin and all the things that surge through the body when experiencing intense emotional connection with someone.

I sat still through it, wrote it out, then zoomed and zipped to work with a silly, happy grin on my face.

It lasted most of the day, once in a while I would feel myself drifting from the present, the gift of the moment, the gift of being in the sun with the boys, their arms draped over me, the voices clamoring for more rolling down the hill at Dolores Park or another strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, peach, from the Farmer’s Market at Bartlet and 22nd.

I would return to the moment, as I just did, right here, right now, sipping hot tea and reminding myself that it is here, in this pocket of self-care and self-examination that I live, that this ultimately, this is my experience and I get to show up for this man and whatever happens, moving forward, that I have again, learned some incredible things about myself.

How very important conversation is to me.

How much I can connect with a person when I am present and allow myself to be seen and how much I can smile and laugh and let loose when I am with someone who I like.

I reminded me quite a bit of all that was lacking in my last relationship and how hard it was to talk, even from the very beginning and how the entire relationship, in my opinion, with my experience, became a battle ground of silent scorn and inability of connecting and communicating.

Having had the communication and the vulnerability of last night, and knowing now that I crave it, I saw in very stark contrast to what I had before missed in my last relationship.

I cannot even express all the gratitude I have for the harrowing two months of self-silencing I went through.

I learned so much.

It hit me while I was riding my bicycle up Lincoln to work. And I thank God out loud as I rode for the experience as it helped bring me to where I am now.

Being able to see that is an enormous gift and even with sleepy perceptions and that just slightly off slant perspective that a day run mostly on adrenalin can give you, I am utterly aware of the difference.

And I want the former, vulnerability, honesty, open communication, deep knowledge of self, and authenticity of person, rather than the later dissolving of my person into a silent blank slate to paint a fantasy on.

I am larger than life.

I am over the top.

But I am a real person.

And being as deeply seen as I have allowed myself to be over the last week has been such a refreshing thing for me.

Just like, I am sure, a deep and full, restful nights sleep will be for me as well.

And knowing that I am going to LA next weekend.

Meep.

Oh.

Did I forget to mention that?

Oops.

Not making any attempt to wipe the smile off my rather sleepy, but very happy face.

And with that.

I am out.

Night all.