I am so full of rain and it is only about to be November. Which is to say only the beginning of the long dark rain. 

I will not dry out for 4 more months at least. Maybe 5 or 6. And it is already hard to live in this body. 

But I love this body. Even as I feel the next decade begin to hang in places where I did not have anything hanging before, I love it. Even though it is prone to illness and laziness, I love it. It is good to love yourself, a gift. 

In the same way that the bed is never more comfortable than the 5 minutes before your alarm, so I comfort my body through this rain. Shh. We will have to get up and face the rain soon, but we will fit an eternity of rest into each of the seconds right before. Summer is over. Autumn has turned from warm gold to wet silver. Shh. Any second now we will have to get up.

On Being Told to Take Things Less Personally So That I Can Be Less Emotional

1. Haha, no.

2. Why?

3. Really, why? 

4. Please explain how this interpersonal interaction is not personal. I am here, personally. 

5. I remember when I took absolutely nothing personally. I felt nothing. I was apathetic and disconnected. I was only technically alive.

6. I don't know how. 

7. Specifically, I don't know how to feel less when I worked so hard to feel anything at all. 

8. I feel like this is more about your comfort than about my health.

Pain comes full circle. Through the generations again and again. I see my reflection when I look to the elder and the younger. We have been here before and we will be here again.

But healing also comes full circle.

I won't say that the healing makes the pain worth it, but it makes it bearable. To know that our inheritance is more than suffering. 

To rejoice that the curse can be broken is different than giving thanks for the curse itself. It means our portion is larger than any single day or year. It means that we cannot be reduced to just our tears. Even on the days when we feel like we are made of nothing but tears and shattered glass. We may have inherited our family's curses, but we will also inherit or invent healing.

I have been writing you for three weeks now. This is a sort of personal record for knowing what I want to say but not knowing how to say it despite years of thinking about it. The words come all at once, jumbled, confused, and anxious. They are more raw cry than sentence., more gut instinct than communication. I feel taken back to time when I was powerless.

Three weeks and I don't feel any closer to communicating with you than before. I have to keep stopping to forgive myself. Which is ironic because everyone thinks I need to forgive you, but I have been training to forgive you by shouldering more responsibility up onto these shoulders for decades. Long after I should have stopped, I kept trying. And sometimes I hate myself for that. For volunteering for this damage. But I have never hated you for letting me. So I rise and forgive myself again.

I used to think forgiveness broke like a tsunami wave, obliterating the pain and resentment. 

I used to feel guilty for only being able to muster the smallest of ebbing waves. 

but these gentle waves are enough. 

Day after day. 

I forgive you.

I forgive me. 

I forgive us.

Nothing is obliterated. Nothing is swept clean. There is no drama or fanfare. Just the persistent tide and hope lapping at your feet. This the way even the hardest stone is worn away.

If the opposite of love is actually indifference, what is the opposite of hate? Maybe it's also indifference. I like that. I like thinking that indifference is preferable to hate instead of thinking of indifference as "worse than hate" compared to love. But maybe the equation is actually like this: love is the opposite of selfish-ness and hate is the opposite of enabling your bullshit. I love you like I love the stranger on the street which is to say impersonally and by discipline.

You couldn't possibly realize how dangerous you were. When I tried to love you, I began to mistrust myself. Deep and dark were the lacerations you left. When I tried to hate you, I could no longer move forward paralyzed as I was with the immensity of you and your influence. It's only this numb indifference that I find myself unlearning all the unhelpful things you taught me. You exist. Like the stranger on the street except you're the stranger in the home I grew up in.