Colour My Words.

String Theory.

"Fear isn't so large anymore. Which means faith doesn't feel like a leap, so much as the soft earth beneath my feet--grounding and fertile and boundless.

Because good things do happen. Because there is a grace to the chaos of the universe. Because string theory is a thing. Because I am human--flawed and imperfect and made of flesh--which is to say soft and mutable. Because we've got one crack at a this--so far as I know--and I'll be damned if I don't swing for the fences. Because there is no such thing as perfection.  And very often the things we fear most are not only bearable, but transformative. "- Meg Fee

This is probably the best thing I've read in quite a long time. 

#letsgetreal.

"Today I wanted to jump back on a plane and make it back to Iowa…" so begins my journal entry dated June 30, 2015.

"MOVING DAY OF HELL. First, we woke up at our motel and as we're about to leave we discover we have a flat tire. So we had to call AAA for roadside assistance that cost $85. Second, when we're going ahead with our move-in shit (I'm so thorough in my journal entries) we discovered that we actually had to pay $1890 to move in, as opposed to the $745 that I anticipated. I wanted to cry. That's not counting the $300 from the repair on the hole in the exhaust we gotta fix on the car. Third, we call the utilities company so we could set the gas and electric and the soonest they can do is NEXT WEEK. By then I was numb. My mom and I spent the rest of the day moving the stuff from the storage to the apartment. By the time I hit the bed I was so gone." -- July 1, 2015.

"…mom and I have been heating water to shower with a bucket at night. It's actually kind of funny." -- July 2, 2015.

I guess after a situation is already bad you might as well start laughing...

I wonder if the last time we talked I told you about these things. About the fact that I have no money, that my credit card bill is pretty damn high on all the expenses I incurred when I moved to New York, that I work a job that pays minimum wage, that I have purchased absolutely no groceries in the past two weeks, or that I go to sleep at night feeling horrible about my recent eating habits, my lack of security, and the fact that I can't even afford a new mattress that won't obnoxiously creak at night. 

The amount of times friends and family have asked me in glazed wonder about my new life in New York I've probably said "Great! Still adjusting," because who wants to hear about all this other garbage? I mean...like apart from my mother? So let me tell you something for the next time you look at my Snapchat story and wonder about my charmed life: I have no money. That's the biggest worry. Most nights I come home to cereal. I avoid conversations with my mom about that because they stress me out. I wake up late in the weekends and the day gets away from me. I hate lack of productivity. I feel pressured. I miss so many people. I feel so transient, so ephemeral. I don't have half my shit figured out. Sometimes I reject invitations because well…I don't feel the push to make new friends just yet and my electricity bill will be greeting me real soon. 

But let me tell you, not everything is half as bad. All those smiles you see and all that joy is real. All the hustle is also real. My  exasperation with homework is real, as well as my sitting in front of Adobe Photoshop hours on end with my palms on my face. It's all real and crude. But real nonetheless.

I don't worry. It's one moment to the next. 

But be clear on this: what I decide to post on social media is the final product.It is almost always beautiful. The picture I shot, the poem I wrote, my published article on Elite Daily…what you get to see is the thing that will get all the praise, all the comments, and all the likes. I don't get to tell you about that time I almost pulled my hair out, or when my software crashed and I had to start all over again, or when I spent a whole day working on something that was later deemed garbage. I don't get around to tell about in equal amount about my failures. 

Some days I worry more. There are some days in particular when I search the web in a frenzy for internships and hate every single opportunity everyone else has already gotten; when I question my abilities as a creative. Because I do. I questions my abilities day in and day out. All the fucking time. But I've decided I do what I do for the love. I don't raise a finger because I think I'm good, but because I want to be. So below all the pretty flowing dresses I like to wear, my carefully curated Instagram feed, and my penchant for making fun of myself, half the time I really don't know what I'm doing. And it's aggravating but it passes.

There isn't a single wrong thing about wanting to focus on the positive aspects of life. Absolutely nothing. If anything that fixation pushes us to want to be better, to set higher standards, to aim to be like that one thing deserving of our praise. This is also the worst kind of roadblock. We easily tend to forget we're also entitled to a little breakdown from time to time. Because we don't tend to share our failures with as much impetus we often forget that that is also a huge part of this life.

Just think about that. The next time you feel inclined to assume yourself of lesser value, or the next time you think everyone else is leading a better life than you, think about that stinky impostor syndrome. We're all doing what we can. It's a cliche, but it is because it's so true--Everyone is fighting a different battle. If we all embraced that as well as we embrace comparisons, we'd be a million times kinder to one another; life a million times sweeter. So by all things that are heavenly, stop comparing yourself to your ex's new girlfriend, or feeling white envy over your friend's recent trip to Istanbul, or thinking that you're the only one at rock-bottom. In real technical terms, there's rock-bottom, 50 feet of crap, and then there's us. And everyone feels that way at some point. (Thanks, Rachel).

Do you remember when we were little and our moms asked us to clean our rooms and we'd just stow all our shit under the bed, moldy pizzas, crusty socks, and all? And then she'd be about to inspect and we'd break into a cold sweat? That's how I picture this whole deal of opening up and being real about the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. If our mom's our audience, what are we doing with all our junk? What is everyone else? It may be unperceivable, but it's there.

It does not matter what others are doing. 

You Are Dying.

 You are dying because you are so alive          

I clump your damp earth 
by fistfuls          I exalt your guts and lowlands

         your territories overrun with horses 
I fill up your hollows

-Brownyn Valentine, "Dear Body"

On Happily Ever After.

I'm not too ashamed to admit that I've always been a crier. Like the ugly-snotty-heaving-sobbing kind of crier who used to lock herself in her room and just wail about stuff when necessary. Throughout the years I've found there is no better cure to a troubled heart than a good cry. I don't even try to put up a front about it. I just roll with the punch. Or swim in the flood, however way you'd want to look at it.

Yet despite all my private theatrics, I also found myself to be surprisingly rebounding, a notion I came to understand as a 12-year -old girl sulking in her room because mom didn't let me go to one of my best friend's pool party. I swear I spent the entire day holed up in my room, not really caring anymore but still wanting to make my point. I'd never even truly missed out on anything, I didn't know what it was to truly lose out. 

During my senior year of high school I finally got a taste of what losing really felt like. I came back from school one day in December to find that my beautiful dog of eight years, my best friend, had gone missing. I remember spending the entire day riding my car around the neighborhood yelling her name only to come back empty-handed, and to remain empty-handed for all the years to come. I spent a solid three days afterwards alternating between blowing my nose and choking back tears. After that I was done, the dull ache a reminder of what I had lost, but the days ahead a possibility, a reminder that there was more. More to live, more to love. 

And let me tell you about that time I was truly ripped apart after reading the third book of the Divergent series. Sounds ridiculous, I know. Except that something you might not know about me is that when I read I'm not present in planet Earth anymore; I'm floating in the parallel universe where these stories might just be true. I'm a character myself waiting to unfold; rooting, seeking, hoping. And you might think it's funny, but I spent three days crying over this book. Like stupid depressed. The kind of depressed that didn't see a point in engaging in the regular activities of everyday life because I was just too hungover this damn book. Brushing my hair? Why, if the whole world is doomed anyway? / You mean, like, going out for a run? What for, if Tris didn't even get to friggin' LIVE!? And so two things got revealed to me this time. One: Apparently my rebound time is three days. That's all the time I need to process things and hold a little funeral for my emotions. Two: I just need a damn happy ending.

And one might argue, what is a happy ending anyway? What does it entail to wrap up a story where the characters are fulfilled, where justice is made, where you return to real life feeling hopeful rather than despondent? Whether it be because good won at last, or because love really did move mountains? But what if it didn't? What if  story resembled something closer to our life? Something sometimes cruel, sometimes crass, something real? 

I've spent some much time being afraid of a story confirming reality; of a book telling me that yes, people die, and that yes sometimes the girl doesn't get the guy, that families can be broken, that you need to do a lot of breaking before mending. And that no, you can't always have cake for breakfast. Sometimes in order to atone you can't get your heart's desire, because that's not what life's about anyway. It's not about what our selfish hearts want all the time. A life with integrity is also a life with sacrifices. It is one of the hardest things to stomach, and yet, one of the most liberating things I have yet come to understand. And I realized that my young self was never, and will never, be OK with the fact that we can't be impossibly happy. That every single thing we've dreamed up might just not come to be. My adult self looks at her and slowly shakes her head, thinking "How selfish". Sometimes happily ever after doesn't pertain to you exactly, sometimes it means a search for someone else's happiness besides our own. 

As I sat last week in my room finishing a book I had been devouring for the last two days, I knew I was going to be somewhat heart-broken before I got to the ending. Half-way through the book I thought "This is the kind of story that I will need reprieve from, I can just feel it coming". And yet I pummeled through, because I'm masochistic like that, and because I wanted to be freed. I wanted to play Josh Garrel's Beyond The Blue right after and hear him remind me:

"...to do the right thing even when it burns
And to live in the light through treacherous turns
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns
To keep on course from the bow to the stearn
And throw overboard every selfish concern
That tries to work for what can’t be earned
Sometimes the only way to return is to go,
Where the winds will take you

And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond,the blue…"

 I can't help but to think that there's something incredibly liberating about emotions. It's like opening a faucet in the dead of winter and letting it run to hot water; incredibly excruciating at first, then all-througout comforting. And I sat there staring at a wall for the following 20 minutes, I felt my treacherous emotions do a one-eighty. I felt brave all over again. Because we're so human, we're so insignificant, our feelings so ephemeral, and yet, so enduring. Those emotions have the power to ignite change, to move mountains- to push us to love deeper, to climb farther. And we lose, and lose all the way, but we also win so much. At least, I need to believe so. After lying in the dump, the only way is up. And I need to believe that there's all this light we cannot see, that there's an order and a significance to how things come to be. 

"But what does it matter if I can't be with you" I wail. "I can't live without you."

"But you have," he smiles, though it is a sad smile. "You have and you will."

I nod bravely because it's true.

Life always keeps moving, even if it has to drag you along kicking and screaming.

- The Opportunist, Tarryn Fisher

 

Risks.

"…and risks are good, too. It's like skiing--the more control you give up, the more you have."- Meg Fee. 

"To think you can love God without being changed by Him, is to think you can jump into the ocean and not get wet. To really love Him, you must understand that your life is going to be wrecked by Him, and built again into something beautiful, something lasting. " - T.B. LaBerge

"Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation." - Elizabeth Gilbert

 “I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.” - David Levithan

"... I say we must say (or ask) the things that scare us most--the very thing that may drive the person away. Because if that’s all it takes for them to go, well, hell, let them. - Meg Fee

"It’s been a year of small heartbreaks and overwhelming loneliness--and I can’t help but think it feels like a Van Gogh painting in motion. All dark colors and blurred lines and movement." - Meg Fee