Notes on navigating the world with a heart bigger than my head.

I spend a lot of the day wondering, looking back, looking forward, analyzing, overthinking, underthinking, then telling myself to stop all of that to try to live in the moment. Maybe, for once, I could let doing the dishes just be doing the dishes. Instead of soap, bubbles, plates, and a side of casually unraveling intricate parts of my life before I get to the last fork. Then there’s the other half of me that loves the way I can figure things out during the ten minutes that I’m standing at the sink. Anything can serve as a flow state. I secretly start to wish that I could be blissfully ignorant, because maybe I’d feel lighter if I knew less. All of this thinking has led me down a million paths to the same destination. I’m told over and over again that my gift and my curse is that I’m “way too nice,” at least they say there’s such a thing. Do good girls finish last, or are they just destined to take the long way around? At least I’ve always known I was made for the scenic route, head out the window, the whole nine.

tender to the bone

tender (ten·der)

showing gentleness and concern or sympathy, easy to cut or chew, requiring tact or careful handling.

I feel misunderstood. “Way too nice” they say, but I don’t agree. I’m not nice, I’m kind. I have love in my bones, sun in my veins, and a mindset made for making the most. It’s effortless and what people don’t get about me is that I have no interest in being agreeable or making people like me. A strong personality, my therapist said. I’m not hiding a rotten core, I just have so much love to give and gatekeeping that love serves me no purpose. You can all have as much as you need. My heart is always making more. A walking love factory is what I feel like. My entire life I’ve been told variations of

“I thought you were so fake when I first met you, then months later here you are just as light as you were on day one.”

I wondered why kindness is deemed fraudulent, while unfriendliness is rewarded as an honest truth? Humans are so silly. I can tell that people assume I’m using my personality to gain something but the truth is I have all I need already, I just tend to share it, free of cost. Is that the craziest thing in the world? Don’t you want some?

I honestly love the shape of the path I leave behind me. That’s kind of all that matters in life, being at peace with the spiritual footprint you’re choosing to leave behind. I rarely have regrets because I have this reoccurring vision of myself, sometime long ago, promising to move with an unimaginable amount of love, killing signs of an unbalanced ego at every turn. The memory’s hazy, but it exists, and I trust in it. My intuition is sharp, my moral compass is made of sugar, and everyone feels the need to point it out. I feel so odd, like half the crowd is loving me as the other half loathes. Projection prone. I can’t help but wonder…what’s the big deal? Everyone is something to the bone; tender is just my material. I’m told tender is rare, but in my eyes it’s abundant. I see it in everything. I’m able to detect even the smallest traces of warmth, and those fragments keep me afloat. Maybe my inner world just reflects back to me, keeping me on the softest path to wherever it is that I’m on my way to in this life.

my angel origin story

One of them at least. It’s true that I was born weird, good weird. When my mom and I moved to Florida, she worked a lot, so every day after school, my sweet neighbor Jaime would take care of me like I was her daughter, along with her own two kids. She would do flips down the front lawn and make us food every day. Jaime has a really bright aura. She’s kind, funny, silly, bubbly, and maternal. I like to think that she rubbed off on me; there’s love in everything she does and every word she chooses. She came over for a birthday party at my house last weekend. We reminisced on those evenings we spent together after school, and it warmed my heart to hear her say

“Your mother talked about you like you were the greatest kid to ever exist, and she was right. You were so unselfish; you wanted for nothing, and you were genuinely happy that way, with what you had. We wished that every kid could be like you.”

It was too kind. I felt tears forming in my eyes; she saw me for who I am and who I was so early in my life. Too many people dig and dig through me to try to find the crack in the facade, to the point where even I start looking for whatever it is they’re trying to find too. Her words were confirmation of what I already knew. That I’ve truly wanted nothing from anyone for my entire life. My senses alone have always felt like a gift— smell, taste, touch, sight, sound. I had it all, yet everyone applauded me for not wanting more. I didn’t understand that until Jaime casually gifted me her point of view that night. I remembered that my strangeness is the kind I want to keep.

I was thirteen when a darkness found me. I met a boy, and we fell into something similar to love. A sinister future awaited me, together for four years, rotten for two and a half. The shortest version I could give you is that it was a classic. It all happened slowly, stealthily, strategically, romantically. He made me delete all social media, got rid of all of my friends one by one, he gave me a dress code, he had me come home with him every day, and he started making me come to his job so he could keep an eye on me, long hours of nothingness. I was a doll. He synced our phones so that every app I downloaded would automatically download on his, and every text I sent he would see. He got one of the school counselors to make his schedule almost the exact same as mine. All while seamlessly being the most loved, funny, and social boy at school. Everyone loved him, even me. He loved me too, but in a death grip kind of way.

One day, he started hitting, then (…), and then (…), after he’d say, “Why are you crying? What happened?" I was confused and little. Stockholm syndrome, battered woman syndrome, I was a girl with a 6-foot 160-pound problem. I learned color theory to hide my bruises. Yellow and orange cover purple; red and purple cover green. That was my first experience with makeup. I always cried myself to sleep when it felt like there were no signs of God, I watched my angels take four years off. I prayed every night to the point where I swore I could hear them laughing at me up there. I was in hell and learned quickly that prayers are not heard six feet under. I died over and over again until I learned what it takes to earn your wings, one feather at a time. I used them to fly away, and these days I pluck my feathers to gift them for free. Three more grow back in their place. It’s okay. I’m a seasoned professional, at your service!

I’ve never been quite the same. When my therapist asked me how I’ve been able to live with it all up until this point, she noted that her clients in their 40s in similar positions couldn’t even get themselves to leave the house. I told her that when I close my eyes, I can see a ball of light in the middle of my body. If you look closely, I have that little girl in me. She’s in the fetal position under my favorite willow tree, perpetually crying in a peaceful meadow. It’s always a sunny day there, with perfect clouds and tall soft grass. All day, every day, she weeps for the way I’ve been changed. I’ve spent my whole life attempting to heal her, but she still cries, gently accepting that she is the keeper of my trauma. I understand. She carries the pain and lets it out in a continuous stream of tears. The tears water the grass and the tree; they both grow taller as she gets smaller. She’ll always exist as my life grows vastly around her. It’s my ecosystem, and it’s just the way things go for me. I wanted to keep my outward light, and thanks to her, I can. She transmutes the darkness into wisdom, good luck, and tenderness. I share her gifts with anyone I can, as I’ve seen too much, but now I deeply know how and why kindness is the only way. A niche understanding.

when sweet tastes sour

Now that I’m twenty-four, I can zoom out and see all of the ways that I've spiraled upwards. It simultaneously feels like that era happened a million years ago and just yesterday. I’m so far from it but so close. It feels like there’s a boulder sitting on the pause button of my life, and I’ve spent years trying to push it back onto play with all of my might. I think I’m getting somewhere even if I’m the only one who sees it. I remember things when a certain smell wafts in the air or when I flinch when a person comes up to hug me too fast or when I see the burn marks on my arms. As I spend years mending my heart and mind, the body keeps the score. This is part of the reason why simply living and interacting with people hurts me. I’m naturally sensitive and scared, but that’s sort of a secret. On the outside I’m confident, silly, smart, brave, and endlessly loving. I’m not a fighter anymore; I spent my childhood doing that. My kindness feels like a trauma response that’s been beaten into my core by hand. It’s always been who I am, but it’s also who I was forced to be to survive. It’s who I promised to be, so I’d never reflect my abuser(s). I remember repeating to myself, “Do not become bitter, do not become him, do not lose your spark, please.” I didn’t. When you experience trauma, there’s a kind of bubble that forms around you when you’re healing, a utopia where your new self can grow; there’s a hermiting period. The catch is that no one warns you about what happens when you step back into the real world. No matter how sweet you are, everyone’s taste buds are different.

Not everyone has a sweet tooth. When I re-entered reality, I realized that I’m a mirror, and it’s really hard to be one. I’m someone who’s really myself, me to the core. I march to the beat of my own drum, and as the world goes one way, I go the other. The world thinks one way, and I think the other. I don’t mean to; it’s just my fate. My girl math tells me that since my life has been different, I’m different, and I should see it as a gift. Although so many times I’ve caught myself wishing to be a bird of a feather so I could just blend in and get by. I’ve learned that for me, being a mirror is sweet and sour. On the sweet side, when a person interacts with me, they can see parts of themselves reflected back at them. Falling in love with themselves through me. Finding a sense of home through me. Feeling seen. If it’s not that I’ve watched them adore my peculiarity, intrigued and entertained by the rarity. Those people have helped me learn to love myself too, and for that, I’m eternally grateful. On the sour side, a person can interact with me and feel triggered by the way I easily express and warmly accept the parts of myself that most people are not comfortable showing. Openness, vulnerability, a shameless divine feminine. Giving them a sense of discomfort, there are some things that people would rather not face. I never set out to force that on anyone; it hurts me that my ability to live out loud can make people upset. It’s like they want me to cover up, so they don’t have to see what they’ve been hiding from. A polarizing energy I’ve been told.

People are too busy looking at their reflection in my eyes to actually see me as a person; I become more like a vessel, an entity. It hurts to be looked through and not at; I find myself banging on the glass. Hello! I’m right here! Can you see me? I’ve watched myself be a person’s obsession that turns into resentment or a resentment that turns into a fondness. Over and over again. It’s so unfair, like I’m too complicated to fathom. Why can I see people for who they are without having to know their lore, but I have to almost feel invisible, a victim of the never-ending biases of the human mind? I take my shoes off hoping for someone to take a walk in them; instead, they collect dust. I have a small circle of close friends who have hearts big enough to understand the nuance of a person. I’m not just a bubbly social media personality; it took violence to get here and hard work to turn out kinder and more functional than projected. I’m more than a reflection; I’m a woman. Breathing, yearning, searching, sobbing, swimming in solitude. I’ve lived with this for a long time, so I’m able to allow myself to be misunderstood. It still hurts, and I still hide in long periods of solitude because of it. It took me even longer to learn that the only validation that matters is the kind that comes from your own soul. To understand and care for yourself is to be truly rich.

leading with my heart

“You do not have to be good.”

I remind myself of that all the time, but then I remember how much of my life is led by my heart. I do have to be good because I know what it’s like to be on the other end of someone’s unchecked badness. Innocent bystanders do not deserve to fall victim to our heat of the moment emotions that feel like the end of the world for all of 24 hours. I’m not perfect, not even a little bit. In fact, I’m probably the most flawed girl in the whole entire world, but could you blame me? My wires were crossed so long ago, and detangling them is tricky but not impossible. Living the way I do is so dangerous; domestic violence taught me to endure. I catch myself taking on more pain and suffering than I should because I’m scared of people I love having to feel the way I felt. I don’t want to control anyone or make them feel sad. But I’ve recently connected the dots and once again learned the hard way that I empathize my way into getting very hurt by people. If a person has a chance to use you, they will. It sounds so naive, but I’ve never been able to fathom that. How could one live with leaving that kind of trail behind?

I'm so grounded by my imperfections though, tethered to the earth by my silly choices. Deprogramming myself to make more choices out of love for myself than I do out of fear of others. I’m only human, and I am only a product of my experiences. I agreed to come here for this once upon a time; it’s my great big lesson. There has to be a way to be good without getting way too hurt, so I’m reframing what it means to be a good girl. Having boundaries is good; standing up for myself is good; doing the right thing even when it feels wrong is good. Sometimes people will be upset with me for respecting myself, and that’s okay. It’s good even. I’ve lost so much, but every choice I make that is grounded in love, whether it be for myself or the greater good, brings me closer to what I’ve been craving for all this time. Inner peace, uncrossed wires, sanity. This one was hard to write, but my heart has been heavy, sinking to my stomach lately. In times like these, my shoulders feel too small to carry it all on my own, but each word I write feels like a tiny piece is being held by something bigger than me. I think I feel lighter already.

sending love to wherever you are.

& thank you so much for reading.

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