me, an effervescent being - bigger than ever, reaching upward and outward like a tree, roots lengthening, inward, deeper into the earth.

as if nothing had changed and everything had changed. my friend told me the other day they see me like art embodied, i see you like that too. i see you in textures and colors, in light and shadow, in the softness in your body and the steel in your gaze. sometimes it switches. sometimes i can’t see you at all, but i feel you. i feel your warmth and your love and your bigness - your expansive nature, your loudness and noise, your “i’m taking up space because i can,” - “no! because you deserve to.”

the vision of health isn’t a vision at all but how my body feels when my eyes are closed.

it’s been a back-and-forth for a long time now - thinking i needed to look a certain way to represent an idea that’s so convoluted anyway and knowing very well that health looks different on everyone but why did i feel like i was the one exception?

maybe it’s when that photographer said she “thought i was smaller” when i couldn’t fit the sizes she pulled. or maybe it’s when i filmed myself running for an open casting submission and i saw all this shit jiggling around, more than it used to. or maybe it’s that my clothes fit me differently now, and shouldn’t they? they’re years old yet i still cling to them tighter than the way they cling to my body.

but maybe if my body was smaller i wouldn’t smile so big. and maybe if my body was different i wouldn’t have summited that mountain. and maybe if my body was smaller then i would shrink myself down so small it would validate hateful peoples’ feelings about me.

so it’s become a new practice, be big, feel good, and when i close my eyes and i ask my body to do me a favor and it says “yes” or it says “maybe” and i think that that’s healthy.

it certainly hasn’t been easy, let alone close to feeling nearly feasible. you might be thinking “oh here she goes again with her cryptic journaling outpouring of Beija-isms, what does it mean, what’s the point?” but fill in the blanks for yourself and maybe it’ll pop your head up out of your daydream and help you know yourself better.

i’ve felt tired, but not like this before. i’ve felt spread thin, but not so close to evaporation. i’ve felt uneasiness, but not this much questioning where i stand with everything and anything and am i actually stood on both feet at all?

i’ve been ignoring cracks and crevices in my armor, allowing far too much else to flow in and fill in the kinks and calling it “healing.” i’ve been lending a hand a foot a leg a shoulder an ear until i come home and curl up in bed and there’s not much left of me to even hold myself.

i waltzed through a dark forest, filled with trees, sharp and scraggly, caught every piece of me on their branches and grew tattered. i was lost in that dark forest for so long i forgot there was anything else. call it willpower, stubborn conviction, or just being absolutely fed up with the bullshit, i stumbled my way out of it.

the question lingers, do we set the forest aflame?

do we walk forth, tending to our wounds, no glances backward, hoping the forest takes no further victims?

who do we live for, who do we let in, who do we keep at arm’s length, who do we let go?

just some thoughts and ramblings and questions for ya.

i’ve felt choked for awhile now, regrettably, but aren’t all learning lessons worthwhile? i’ve held it all in my throat, choked back my own voice and swallowed my words and feelings almost effortlessly in the end.

it’s all coming back now, not without pain nor discomfort. it’s guttural and raw, the sounds and intensity of it all. coming to the surface and my body fights back by attempting to choke it all back down but here it is in the weepiest hours of the day, when the Sun’s at its peak and when i’m alone with the sky and when i’m listening to how my own breathing sounds.

so here we are, masticating and regurgitating everything that should have come to surface awhile ago. is it yet too late? i don’t think so. it certainly tastes rotten, but it’s a flavor i’d rather let leave my body to make room for something more sweet.

it’s late and i’ve been having trouble sleeping. i try to walk through this world open & delighted. i aim to listen, to lead with compassion, to be open & vulnerable & trust. i think this world & the people within it are dazzling. i try to forgive those that have wronged me & myself for when i’ve wronged others. on the surface it’s very easy for me to share the shining sparkling things. things that have brought me joy & in turn i hold hope that they might bring you some too. i share a lot on here & at the same time i keep a lot to myself. i think it matters that i’m honest now in sharing that this tumultuous life is strenuous & at times it’s defeating. even so, it has always been dazzling and i guess what i’m trying to say is that even when you are dazzled to let the temporary blindness fade and then find your sight again. love you love this world love everything in it.

sometimes i wish we’d never met, but regret is a language i’ve exiled from my tongue. yet there it is, uttering soft whispers in my ear, willing my tongue to curl and my teeth to grind. wishing is something i know and love, it’s been soft and dainty and blowing dandy lion puffs has always been one of those perfect succinct analogs that children discovered; close your eyes and let the wind float the seed far and wide and they shall surely grow. but you see, that’s the difference. growth is a telescope and a compass and a full tank of gas. wishing at the past might as well be wailing into the wind. it is looking back and aimlessly following footsteps through sand, trying to sweep the old ones away, while marking new ones as you tread.

i once wrote an ode to letting go and swearing that that second glance would be my last, but i couldn’t hold my word and no matter how much i sweep i can feel the grains of sand beneath my feet.

I felt compelled to write this sometime between committing to sleep and dawn and I think that we’ve talked about this moment when the words “arrive” and maybe we’re just the mediums, but even if I never give this to you it was meant to be written down.

I’ve never been good at words of affirmation. They don’t come to me so readily the way touch & presence & care & nurture come. But in you I see something curious & intriguing & buried & sheltered underneath behind your big tall walls is vivacity and a very bright light. I think you know that and I think you diminish it. I think you snuff it out by dispersing it with a far and wide reach. I think you admonish yourself for being too bright because others have stolen that from you before and you don’t want that to happen again.

So I’m trying - I guess - to write down in words that you do have this unctuous, savory, crunchy, warm luminosity and only in small moments do you let it rip out of you and it’s huge and it’s more than charming, it’s breathtaking like the first time seeing something truthfully beautiful, like that tree in golden hour light or that person when the light hits them just right.

It’s late and for many different reasons I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I’ve been willing the words to come, but they haven’t until now.

I can hear my next door neighbor playing something sad and lonely on an electric guitar. It’s horribly mellow and slide-y and soothing and once in awhile it sounds like he’s taking a long pause, maybe he’s thinking, maybe he’s drinking.

He never has the blinds down, I have no idea what the inside of his house looks like. When we’ve spoken he’s been kind and chipper and sweet. I think he’ll stay in his house until every house in the neighborhood gets bought and until every inch of visible skyline around him is shrouded by condominiums and I think he’ll die alone.

We are all obstinate. We set our sights on some goal and hold it in our hearts until we reach it and sometimes we never will and sometimes those goals and our own stubbornness will crush us.

You showed me your vulnerability, you made yourself uncomfortable in being comfortable with me. You sang me a song and said “I’m no good at lying,” and I think that’s funny now.

You will remain in your house alone with the blinds still shut and before anyone can even begin to open them, it will be demolished and there will be no skyline left in sight.