On kites

and the willingness to soar

Suddenly it seems, I have so much to say

alive and here on the first Sunday of May

didn’t think I’d make it to here, to now,

couldn’t be prouder I didn’t let myself down.

First let me say, hello May. I have known for some time now that you might bring renewal for all, not just for myself. And I will say I welcome it. I led myself through a month that lent itself to rain and dreariness and damage. Heartbreak and sadness and release. And I tried to write, I really did but nothing wanted out. But you know what they say about April showers and… all that.

For the last six weeks, I have been in a very consistent state of physical pain. To combat that, I decided to take myself off my medicine, and today is my first unmedicated day in very close to 2 years. After being “diagnosed” with bipolar in 2021, I was put on medicine that made me want to die, taken off it, switched to mood stabilizers, and took those until I was “diagnosed” with ADHD in February, which meant medicine that…I can’t say helped me. If anything, it threw my life into chaos. But now I am past all that, and as I reframe my ideas of diagnoses, my body is healing and relearning what it feels like to be on its own. Remembering what it’s like to be me. I am celebrating this milestone.

I didn’t write much in April, but then somewhere down the line I started writing a song.

So I wrote a song.

And I know last time I wrote and said I had a song but that was like, a chord progression that lasted 20 seconds.

This is a song with lyrics that have made adults cry, and it’s about 3 minutes long, but it’s just a demo and I don’t even know what that means. I recorded it on my phone.

I have other songs that I’m writing (or wrote) and those all go together, I guess. But I can’t say out loud that I’m writing a collection or album, because I wouldn’t say I know what I’m doing. I used to have someone close to me who knew a lot about making beautiful music who I’d ask all these questions to but now I’m on my own and I am learning about that being okay.

Instead, I write the questions down and make a list. I’m figuring it out.

I am reading books and online articles about the circle of fifths, and I bought a cheap guitar on Reddit. I’m saving to buy myself a keyboard, and my friend will give me drum lessons. I reach to community now, and that is good. I have community now, and that is good.

As time moves, my hair grows, and I am reminded every day that it is getting so long. It is the longest it has been in years. In the interim I have always liked to chop it, refusing to let myself get attached to hair in my face or clips or weight. More and more lately though, I’ve been considering this experience as a way to mark the passage of time. To prove I’m alive. In the last two years I have gone through so many transformations and transitions*, which I can see proof of as my hair inches closer to my collarbones. It is worth it to recognize the trials of our lives.

Somewhere in the last month I had to convince myself to stop making checklists of the best ways to take care of myself. I had to quit shaming myself for everything I did, and especially for lying on the couch watching Narcos for hours. I had to remind myself again and again that nothing out of my control should occupy the majority of my mind-space for days. Instead of checking boxes to prove I know how to care for myself, I started to exist, to practice trusting myself, and to attend to myself in the process. That’s all I needed to do. Time helps the rest.

I said,

Hey, you’ve been on your own for years you know and

Nothing anybody says about you or to you means you can’t function

And this week the question I asked myself was: What kind of attention feels the best when I am giving it to myself?

So I woke up every morning to yoga and exercise, caring gently for a neck injury that took me out of climbing,

and I ended every evening with guitar.

So much external noise, taking many forms, has stifled my ability to tune deeply into my body and my interconnectedness. I feel these connections returning, and that is good. Moving feels beautiful, and when I am not in pain, I am noticing how much stronger I look and feel.

Speaking of moving, I have been walking so much, 3 miles the other day after a particularly high-emotion day. Yesterday, as I was walking down the street in the morning, blazing blue sky all around me, on my way to meet my new best friend for donuts and a sit in the park, I looked up at the buildings, instead of down at the streets and their cars, or the sidewalks and their people, searching for a face.

In my head popped some variation of this is my city, look how beautiful and the unspoken, implied piece of that was I don’t have any type of anticipatory thought to flee its arms.

And amongst it all, while I’m writing music and feeling a bit like an imposter about that, while I’m moving my body and walking the streets of the city, while I am blissed out about impending bluer, clearer skies, dreaming of climbing real rocks and camping,

I am plagued by a low rumbling,

a deep seated,

ever-present feeling.

A floater in the eye, an itch that evades fingernails.

I haven’t really experienced this before but from what I have read, and from what I have been told, I feel what is natural to feel when someone loses the person they love before they were ready to say goodbye.

The good part about that is I am figuring out how to make space for all these feelings and desires at once. I am bigger and wider and stronger and more capable than I think I am. And so too, are you.

May May offer you all the renewal and joy you seek. May you breathe into her deeply and return to your body, grounding into her lushness.

With love,

A

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She is thriving, with another leaf bud sprouting as we speak.