rose and sunday,

the journal

Sunday, April 30th, 2023

For years, I have carried a journal. It is my safe place to exist in my authentic mess.

Moments I now share here.

Read with care and with tenderness and as always, with a cup of tea. Milk and no sugar.

February 24, 2023

My morning hot chocolate habit from Italy is dying hard. I told myself I wanted this year to be about joy and so far I think I’ve listened. I’ve embraced pleasure more abundantly or maybe it just feels more abundant because I’ve shrugged off any shame or doubt with it. Pleasure, true pleasure is to be felt in the moment. I sit next to a man who is doing a crossword, both of us putting pen to paper and taking the time to sit and enjoy.

I saved a journal prompt that asked, “what does love feel like to you?” I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and also my whole life. Love has meant everything, maybe because I craved it for so long. When I visited my Nana in November and we sat in an embrace, I felt love. Her long and delicate yet accomplished fingers stroking the hair from my face. Her pink, wrinkled lips pausing every so often to place a soft kiss on my forehead. I will always remember how that felt. An infinite moment. I think that’s what love can do.

Love used to be something that was earned and then clung to precariously. Up and down, in and out. I repeated this pattern for years to come, quite unknowingly. I denied depth and vulnerability to those close to me, yearning for intimacy while also so deeply fearful of it. That unavailability, that up and down was something I was used to. But recently that hasn’t felt so good. I can feel the distraction, the desperation. It feels hot and urgent and probably because it is- a high you know will pass soon. You want to feel it all while you can.

Recently I feel more calm in myself, so I notice these disruptions, these disturbances to the peace. Maybe first, I had to learn everything love was not.

“All this nonsense about love making you feel high, that’s not real. It should hold you like the earth.” -Coco Mellors

March 22nd, 2023

Lighter today. Still sad, there was still loss, still an end. Even things that “ended” months ago need our attention sometimes to truly let go.

Keep being myself always, with more compassion. I crave lightness. A few more days of winter- to hunker down and light candles and rest. In spring, I will bloom. One day at a time with all the tenderness to be able to say “I have no idea what I’m doing”.

April 5th, 2023

It is raining outside and my jeans are soaked through. Still, it was kind of fun to get caught in the downpour. I am grateful and ready for spring. Plus, my hot tea is steeping at the table. I am just waiting for milk. And then my eggs.

April 13th, 2023

It is sunny and will be 30 degrees today, in April. Everything feels out of balance, running too hot, struggling for equilibrium. A time of big emotions- loneliness, anger, disappointment, shame. Old wounds and big dreams for the future. I am burning up with it.

April 26th, 2023

In my dating experience (or perhaps entire life experience), I think one of the hardest things for people (including me) to learn is how to let the other exist in their fullest expression. Put simply, to allow another person to be themselves. To me that is what unconditional love is. I always struggled with that phrase- of course the act of loving has conditions- it demands communication, requires effort, asks for consistency. But I think it’s more that unconditional love places no conditions on someone’s soul. It allows the other to simply exist in all of their beautifully flawed nature. It shows the other that they can be safe to be unmeasured and messy. Authentic and raw. They will be accepted just as they are. They will even be loved.

I think this is hard for people, as it has been for me, because it is uncomfortable. There is inherent discomfort in giving someone the space to be themselves, knowing that within that space, you will get hurt. You will disagree. You will both make mistakes. It requires that you give up control and instead, observe. Listen. See. It requires you to let go of any preconceived notions you may have created about this person, about who they should be, about the kind of role they should fill. The kind of criteria they should meet. It dims the self and illuminates the other and what can feel more uncomfortable than shifting the focus off oneself, off the stories we so desperately cling to.

But it is necessary. I think of how many children felt shaped by their parents when they only wished to be seen. I think of all the times a lover smiled and sent praise up to my home on top of the pedestal I did not ask to be placed upon. To be so high up is to be lonely. We all exist down here.

And sometimes the pedestal suited me just fine. I placed others there too, to be admired, to be gazed upon. Not realizing the gaze is confinement. It sees only perfection. Its freedom-loving enemy, wholeness.

I am not sure if it takes more courage to see or to be seen, but both require a level of bravery that will only be rewarded in the absence of conditions. And the reward is your humanity. The well of compassion runs deep, its water the life force of the human heart. If you have loved another as they truly are, you know how energizing it is, how strong it makes you feel. How boundless. If you have been loved by another as you truly are, you know how safe it feels, how many possibilities open up to you, how deeply you want to explore yourself further.

I loved him in this way. Listening to his every story, I stayed curious. I bathed his past hardships in milk and sipped cups of tea while he travelled the world, seeking whatever it is he was seeking and running from whatever it is he was running from. I watched him expand in front of me, growing far beyond my first impression. I cherished each new part and he thanked me for the safety that he was not able to give me in return. He urged me to open up and did not like the answers, instead measuring my responses by how well they fit into the box he built to put me in. A box built around a person that would not make him uncomfortable. A box to hold a person within his narrative, who did not threaten with their audacity to make mistakes, to hold different views, to set boundaries. To manipulate and control give the illusion of power, while remaining the ultimate forms of weakness.

So I sit here in my softness after I woke up far too early and turned on the yellow lamp in the blue kitchen light of the morning. I turned on the kettle and made a cup of tea and remembered that he is gone, that he left when he decided that I did not fit the criteria of a person who would remain in his life. As if humans are so tidy. As if we exist to fit in, instead of grow, evolve, expand our souls into every moment of our short time here. He did not want me to grow and so he did not feed me love.

But I am hungry for love and for life and so I feed myself. My soul is already safe here humming in the kitchen, in this home of warmth and unconditional love, it need not seek outside. And my vulnerability is not the killer of true intimacy, but the creator.

I am expansive. The kindest people in my life celebrate that. The most hurt people in my life are uncomfortable with that. So I move towards the safety of those kind people and hope that anyone who hurts inside is able to heal enough to embrace the discomfort that comes with the fullness of life, of each other. I am so much better, so much stronger having loved him. Next time, I will be strong enough to welcome it in return.

“Yes, there is a place…where someone loves you both before…and after they learn what you are.” -Neil Hilborn