Recovering People Pleaser Gone Rogue

I’m sitting here. I’m thinking about some of the points in my friends book.

The courage to be disliked is a beautiful thing. The courage to stand up. The courage to call out harm by name. The courage to find the people that match your energy.

I feel that so much lately. And I sure do feel like I’m falling into the places where my energy is reciprocal, where there is no apologizing, where friends are happy to be a witness to your life-the broom and the mess. Where people don’t demand or control what they want-they allow you to show up as you are with the capacity that you currently have. There is no triangulation. No lies. No games. Just raw honest beings shedding the layers of self and societal pressure. Say that again.

I have never been a person who needs someone to do things with me. I wonder around this world and community often times alone-not because I have to but because I like to. I like to not be rushed. To linger a little longer in a conversation. To pull over to take pictures of the highway wildflowers. To come and go as I please.

Being is something that I honor in myself. And I’m finally feeling like I am giving myself the invitation to feel, to grow, to learn. And in that I’m showing up for others in ways that I’ve never had the capacity to do before my nervous system reset.

The energy you surround yourself with surely creeps into your bones. So. What are you doing? Who is around you? What do they bring into this world? What do they bring to you?

And when you answer those questions. You find your truth. The friendship spoke that balances out the wheel of belonging.

You don’t have to be a hero to have a noble purpose.

Yellow Bird

When you aren’t with me I can count the horn beeps and the door creaks.

And I let them ping pong my thoughts

And then you arrive.

And I ’ve stepped in gum

And I can’t help but show you beautiful buildings.

Because wondering with awe at things that move you comes easy to us, doesn’t it?

Our bodies greet each others shadows

down those city blocks.

They hold hands.

They talk about the way the light glistens from the street lamp.

They walk in front of bikers because Afterall love is blind.

The consumption of our being is no stranger to halting traffic

See, When you look at me taxis become yellow birds zooming by and street lights flicker like a wire is loose somewhere.

Time

Goes on.

But we don’t.

We stay here waiting

for nothing but each other’s love.

There is a quiet hum of comfortability

And even in the dark streets just before 29th

We’ve found we’re already home.

Uninvited.

When the crickets sing a lullaby

I lay in bed and think…

How does one feel
two things at once?

One way with their heart.
Another with their head.

Tell me—

how can the same body
hold a funeral
and a homecoming

How can my brain be upstairs
boarding up the windows
while my heart is downstairs
leaving the porch light on?

Because you—

you came into my life
like a hurricane.

Unannounced.
No warning sirens.
No time to bring the good chairs inside.

Just—

there you were.

And suddenly
everything I had spent years
nailing down
was airborne.

That’s the only way
love can be explained.

Uninvited.

Because nobody in their right mind
would ask for this.

Nobody says,

Please,
come find every soft part of me.

Learn the floorboards.

Learn which ones creak.

Learn where I keep the medicine
and which nights I need reminding.

Learn how I take my coffee,
how I go quiet when I’m scared,
how I pretend I’m angry
when what I really mean is

please don’t leave.

Nobody asks another person
to memorize them like that.

But you did.

You learned me.

Not the version
I drag out into daylight.

Me.

The crawlspace.

The basement.

The boxes marked
DO NOT OPEN.

The names I used to answer to.

The things I survived
but never figured out
how to bury.

You walked through all of it
like you weren’t afraid of ghosts.

And God—

I loved you for that.

Maybe I still do.

There.

I said it.

Because this poem isn’t about
pretending the fire never happened.

I can stand in the ashes
and still admit

I was warm once.

I was once a fire with just your kiss.

That’s the part nobody tells you
about losing someone.

Sometimes
there isn’t a clean villain.

Sometimes the person who broke your heart
is also the person
who once held it
like they understood
how fragile a thing
it was.

Sometimes the same hands
that taught you safety

Are the hands that break your believing

So my head says:

Remember.

Remember the flood.

Remember how high the water got.

Remember what it cost
to rebuild yourself.

My heart says:

But remember before the rain.

And Jesus Christ,

I do.

I remember everything.

The stupid things.

The sacred things.

The ordinary things
that didn’t know
they were becoming memories.

Your hand on my chin.

The way you said my name.

The way you always made sure I ate.

The weight of your body
next to mine.

The way being loved by you
made the world feel, briefly,

less sharp.

That’s the cruelty of memory.

It doesn’t have the decency
to only preserve the wreckage.

It keeps the wildflowers too.

So how does one feel
two things at once?

Like Appalachia does.

Like a mountain
split open for coal
still growing rhododendron
from its wounds.

Like a river
that can carry a child fishing
in June

and somebody’s whole damn house
in September.

Like loving the rain
and fearing what it can become.

That’s me.

Half warning siren.

Half porch light.

My head
stacking sandbags against the door.

My heart
standing barefoot on the other side

listening for your car, your voice, your song.

And maybe that’s what I hate most.

Not that I loved you.

Not even that some part of me
still does.

It’s that love does not disappear
just because you’ve gathered enough evidence
to convict it.

The heart does not give a damn
about closing arguments.

It does not understand
boundaries,

timelines,

or why sometimes
the kindest thing two people can do

is stop reaching for each other.

My head knows
some doors are supposed to stay closed.

My heart still jumps
when it hears footsteps.

My head says,

We survived this.

My heart whispers,

But what if they came back different?

And somewhere between those two voices

is me.

Trying to understand
that missing you
is not an invitation.

Loving you
is not an invitation.

Remembering the good
is not an invitation.

Because maybe healing is learning

you can love something
and still refuse
to let it destroy you.

Maybe healing
isn’t burning the house down
just because someone moved out.

Maybe you leave the photographs.

Maybe you keep the scars.

Maybe you admit:

Yes.

There was love here.

Big love.

Stupid love.

Kitchen-floor-at-midnight love.

Sunset love.

No sleep love.

Know-every-version-of-me love.

The kind of love
I will probably carry
like these mountains carry old mines—

sealed,

dark,

still there.

No marker on the map.

But no longer
where I make my home.

Because you came
uninvited.

And I loved you
without asking permission.

Maybe part of me
always will.

But listen—

just because my heart
still leaves the porch light on

doesn’t mean

I’m opening

the fucking door.

Boomerang

I am the only person I get to keep.

Me with this crooked smile.

Me with this scarred eyebrow.

Me who most definitely is not late but not early either.

Me who can write a twenty page paper in two hours

But forget how to pronounce deter.

Me with my stubborn quiet

Me with this passionate shaky voice.

Me with the grocery cart who will

Most definitely hit your Achilles because

There’s a new cereal flavor that caught my attention.

I’m sorry baby.

But All marshmallows get me everytime.

Me with this fruit roll up heart.

Me who doesn’t stop to give

Unless their is boomerang goodness

Me with this kind invite.

Me with this hard line.

Me with these stubby toes.

Me who can’t change a pdf into a word document.

Me

I am the only person I get to keep.

I am the only.

Everyone else is just a memory.

Nobody owns.

Nobody keeps.

Just Me.

The Grove

You won’t see me grow old.

I said under my breathe.

There’s a part of the trail in Muir Woods where everything goes quiet.

It’s called Cathedral Grove

There is no reception there.

The air is crisp

The redwoods capture the sounds.

You can hear your own breathe

The swish of your jacket against your jeans

The clinking of your water bottle clipped to your bag.

The sun streaks through the trees like an

Accordion of Joy.

In that moment I remember what it feels like to be immortal.

What it feels like to live.

The bark is so thick.

These trees fire resilient

We like them are ancient evergreens.

If only for today.

If only for this moment.

Our roots. Shallow.

But our reach—-hundreds of feet high.

I wonder if the quiet makes you feel alive too.

The humming.

The aching.

The being.

The standing

The quiet.

I wonder.

Don’t kill the spider.

There’s a lesson in softness.

Of letting things be if they are not bothering you.

But yesterday I wasn’t soft.

I slipped on a hoodie that smelt

like the way you do your laundry.

A dash of this. And that.  One of these. 6 sprays.

Even the laundry had to be controlled.

A plan.

A pattern.

Always knowing what step comes next.

If anything is fucking predictable it’s probably a fucking washing machine.

But it didn’t matter to you.

you’d tell a fish in a tank it was swimming the wrong way.

Because anger looked a lot alike control.

You had to be the ring around the Rosie.

Circling the prey.

The washing machine.

Me.

Her.

Money.

Power.

Ownership.

The washing machine.

You hated the way it spit back at you.

I wonder if doing the laundry gave you some sense of control of the chaos.

Because you know it’s exact steps.

And you still don’t let it go.

You obsess over the way it spins.

The way it it doesn’t need you once you get it started.

How the chore is exhausting you.

How piles of clothes have turned into peaks of their own mountains.

The laundry.

It’s like some sick obsession.

And it calls for you when it’s done.

I bet you like that.

Start. Rinse. Repeat.

Shake the Frost from these bones.

There is a shared note waiting for apologies.

A note that says I should have.

A note that never comes.

A mystery door.

A path never known.

A past wiped away.

Who were you when I wasn’t looking?

How many nightstands do your words adorn?

Another promise becomes just a memory.

Why haven’t I met an old friend…

Why are there no saved photographs pinned to your wall.

Why didn’t we stop to visit your family next door.

Why does nothing make sense with you?

Why are you un-googable.

Is Google-able even a word?

You’d make me believe it is.

There are No ex lovers still friends.

You arrived with nothing.

I gave you a life worth

Believing in.

A love worth feeling

If only you could control your fire.

But you became who you always become.

The chameleon latching onto

anyone that will lift you up.

Needing. Controlling. Needing. Someone.

To Drive you.

Accompany you.

Not leave you.

Sit beside you.

Save you a seat.

Do as you say.

Because loneliness is a place you run from

Too afraid to sit with the edge of your shadow.

To afraid to cross off another casualty

Of all the wars within yourself you still haven’t won.

You tally all the lies on the score card.

As if they are trophies of the lives you’ve destroyed.

You may have gotten my participation ribbon

But I got out before the race ended.

Because running is what I’ve always done best.

You promised you were my safety,

but you were just the fire escape I climbed down when your fire took the only thing I had left.

Their is no safety in another.

And finally this mind is nialistic and I recognize you were just the test.

You’ll never make a believer of me.

And when they look for the remains the origin of where the fire started.

It was in my chest.

Humming-Bird.

Learning the walls of my own skull.

The slow unraveling of fight or flight.

The way the peace sits on my chest.

Light as a feather.

Her in the collapse

I gave myself permission to be nothing.

Permission to….

To stand still.

To respond and not react.

To be who I was before the bough broke.

And with that nothing I became something.

Such a beautiful something.

I can see the blue in my eyes again.

I find myself humming….

Find myself.

Again.

Humming.

Again.

Lunchbox

I used to think intimacy
was someone seeing you naked.

Now I think
it’s someone reminding you
that you left your lunchbox on the counter

Love,
it turns out,
is deeply unglamorous.

It is,
“Did you take your medicine?”

It is,
“Lean forward.
Let me dry you off

It is someone
learning your body
like it is both a map
and a weather report.

You knew
where rain collected.

Between my toes.

Behind my smile.

Inside the small pockets
where grief likes to convince the heart
it has been abandoned.

You taught me
that survival
is a ritual.

That healing
doesn’t arrive wearing wings.

Sometimes it arrives
holding a towel.

And it whispers come here

Let me keep you warm

Sometimes
it sounds like your name
spoken from another room,

“Did you remember?”

And somehow
you always remembered
what I asked you to remember.

The stories I only told once.

The songs that made me cry
for reasons I couldn’t explain.

The names
I never wanted spoken again.

You collected
the scattered pieces of me
like they were seashells
instead of evidence.

You wanted to know
the monsters.

Not to slay them.

Just to learn
their names.

To know
which ones only came out
when the room got quiet.

Which ones wore my mother’s voice.

Which ones borrowed my own.

You held me
like unopened mail.

Not because you were afraid
of what was inside—

because you believed
every envelope deserved
to be opened slowly.

Like every page
had earned
its own breath.

You loved me
with the kind of passion
that never confused urgency
for devotion.

The kind that understood
there is nothing more erotic
than being remembered.

Not the shape of my body.

The shape of my fears.

The exact sentence
that could pull me back
from disappearing into myself.

I have kissed people
who could memorize
every inch of my skin

and still forget
where I was hurting.

But you—

you knew
my healing
had hiding places.

You searched for them anyway.

You dried
the places
that stayed damp with yesterday.

You reminded me
that medicine
is not weakness.

That asking for help
isn’t surrender.

That even a body
trying its hardest
to fall apart
can be convinced
to stay.

Maybe that’s what love is.

Not butterflies.

Not fireworks.

Not the movies.

Maybe love
is simply finding
the one person
who learns
all the ordinary ways
you keep yourself alive—

and loves you enough

to carry those instructions

inside their own heart

as if one day

they might have to remind you

who you are

when you’ve forgotten

how to remember yourself.

Coming Home

in , ,

The other day I was laying in bed. As the sweat dripped off my water bottle I watched a moth fly towards my night stand light. A text came through to my phone. “What are you doing?”

I replied “nothing” and “I don’t think I have ever felt this way before”. The ding came again “it’s nice isn’t it”?

Nice is not nearly large enough of a descriptor to explain the relief your body feels when you move from your nervous system being in a trauma fight or flight state for 44 years. The rest felt like an awakening. Yes, like an exorcism where I have just been plopped down into earth and this was my day 1. No Ufo. No cornfield. No caveman mentality. Just me, myself, and my thoughts. A space foreign to my processing. I suddenly looked at the moon differently, pet my dogs softer, counted how many times a lightning bug flashes per minute, and I stayed still. For so many years of my life I have bounced to the next thing (bachelors, masters, doctorate…house, house, cabin, rescue….new bathroom, new kitchen, new car, new people, trips and ideas)….and that bouncing never allowed me to stay still, to feel, to be, or to be known—-by myself or others. That bouncing also caused me to allow an admission to things I did not really want to do, people I did not really want to give my time to, and a life I was obligated to show up for because of guilt. But gulit—-overstayed its welcome. And here I am resting——doing the things——trusting the process——giving my energy to the people and life that does not ask me to apologize, to explain, to be anything other than who I am and that is enough.

Recently I was with a friend….and she said “I love that you take your shoes off wherever you are”. And she is right, I take my shoes off because I want to feel the ground below me. While other cultures see the act of taking your shoes off as an act of respect as you are about to enter holy ground, I see it as an act of joy….of letting my feet curl into the world that has enveloped me with every experience that I have needed to be standing where I am today. It grounds me as much as water grounds my peace, and the sun grounds my depression

In this time of my life I am finally realizing who I am. My phone dings again….”you are ultimately the first home you come back to”. And is that not the truth? I am here, coming home to myself…breathing on my own…making my own decisions…trusting my intuition…sitting with it and leaning into it.

Speaking of sitting. This week I drop by a friends shop and she says “when is the last time you felt your intuition” and I respond….”I don’t think ever until this week”. I tell her about how I struggle with decision making in the moment. That in the moment my brain says what I need to do….but then time passes and I am back to rationalizing or avoiding. My friend says make your decision in that first “moment”, the moment you feel it and write it down…stay committed to it. And so I am learning to commit to my intuition, to my feelings, and it feels light and right and real. And it feels like a home where I wanna decorate the mantle, fix the squeeky door, and always leave the lights on.

Oh, and it’s 11. 11 times the lightning bug flashed before me during that minute. I bet the lightning bug did not know I was counting…and that is the best part….to just exist as you are.