some self-indulgent emoting, with an emphasis on being loved and how to love in return

In the middle of last week, my friend left me a voicemail, and by the end of it I was crying in the middle of the kitchen. Sometimes the love of people is too much -- I know I don't deserve it and I don't know what to do with it. I've scarcely picked up my phone since. I'm afraid of electrocution.

A few weeks ago, a friend's mom came up to me in church. She smiled straight into my eyes and said, "How are you?" She ruffled the back of my hair softly. I haven't been able to get the incident out of my head.

Lately, someone I love very much has been causing me pain. And I'm trying to figure out how to react to it. My first instinct is to curl up into a tiny ball with my armor on the outside, like the roly-polys I played with as a kid. My first instinct is to get cold and hard, and act like it doesn't hurt at all.

Being loved by other people makes me acutely uncomfortable. But the opposite hurts in a different way. I'm doing my best not to steel myself against either kind of pain. I want to be soft. I want to love as deeply as I can.

(If you have any advice, let me know.)

a remedy

1. Stop refreshing facebook. Log out. Turn off your phone. You will not feel better for its silence.

2. Come to terms with the fact that sometimes you will miss people more than they miss you. Remind yourself that this is not weakness.

3. Acknowledge your loneliness. Refuse to feel empty.

4. Remember that time passes. Think of happier things. You are worth loving, and people are eager to love you. Let them show you.

5. Love them back. Soft hearts may dent, but granite hearts will shatter. Forgive, again and again, and do not let yourself flinch away from the antiseptic sting.

6. Pray. You don't have to hold the world together. You don't have to hold yourself together. Find rest, and know that regardless of loneliness, of hurt, of unrequited caring, you are infinitely treasured.

(I went away. I saw the two people I've written about more than any others, and it was good. Now I've returned, and these are the words I need to be reminded of. How has your week been?

Love.)

curious happiness

"Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine."

- from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

8.5.13

a biscuit dream

Come over and make biscuits with me. Knead them, let them rise. Brush my arm with your floury fingers. (I don't want to go out, but I don't want to be alone.) Let the yeast grow. Listen to the music. We can talk about new bands, and our favorite funny movies, and places we still want to go. Let the timer surprise us into laughter. Dough in the oven, and everything smells like heaven. I sit on the counter with my feet swinging. We wait. Biscuits on the counter, steaming, I get out the butter, the honey, the jam. You hold the refrigerator door open for me. Knives. Napkins. Crack them open, watch them steam. Watch the butter slip liquid and golden into the tiny biscuit-hollows.

Friends and biscuits. That's all I want today.