Cabin Fever

You were Cabin Fever, sunsets in summer, and Looking For You with the Lone Bellow. 

Holy, Holy, Holy and Brandi all the way home. 

Reading up in the park and runs on your lunch. 

 

A shot in the dark.  

A shot at love.

A shot that only brought me the deepest, darkest depression of my life. 

 

You were everything wonderful and then a lie for a friend who said you would be there forever. 

I’ll never understand why you did what you did to me. 

 

Or that you blamed me in the end, but you didn't. I still have the texts on an old phone. You told me that I didn't take any responsibility for "forging ahead with my feelings" but "I guess that's what love will do to a person."As if I should feel bad for being 120% full of love. 

For everyone. 

For everything in this life. 

But before that you told me that nothing was my fault and I wasn't to blame.

And so I couldn't understand because everything contradicted everything. 

I was at fault but I wasn't. 

I loved too much but I shouldn't have.

In my unhealed-from-my-past mind, all of this screamed "I wasn't enough" and added to the narrative of why I should have taken myself out of this world that cold December. 

I had two nights I came VERY close. Both nights you didn't answer your phone.

I was desperately alone and you not answering made the cold those December evenings cut deeper into my skin. 

I didn’t want to kill myself, per se, but I didn’t want to live. 

I wanted to both blame you and be saved by you. 

But I know now I couldn't be saved by you or anyone.

Thank God I'm okay now.

I'm healed and have many many scars to show that.

I hope you are healed, too. 

Because I'd be lying if I didn't say that you, too, were in a very bad place in your mind and life when we met.

 

Read this next part slowly.

My door is still unlocked for everything you promised. 

Which was friendship forever and that alone. 

Which goes back to what I already said:

I’ll never understand why you did what you did to me. And what I mean by that is cutting me off after IMLP.

Karma. Remember her? 

If she hasn’t found you yet, she will.

Until the day you reconcile, the universe will have its way with you. 

You know what? 

I know you still miss me. 

I miss you, too.

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t I look for you in airports and parks and on runs in cities not my own. 

I look for you everywhere. 

But I know where you are. 

Still a thousand miles away. Wondering how I am. While I’m here wondering how you are. 

Wishing it wasn’t wonder. 

You’ve got my number. 

Just call. 

We have a lot to catch up on. 

Oh, and I should probably tell you that you’re in my new book. 

Might want to talk about that to make sure all I said about you is okay with you…

Just sayin’

Cocaine

You’re fucking ruining our lives. 

But I refuse to let you ruin mine. 

No amount of therapy or advice from friends takes away the fear. 

The fear where I go to bed every night and wake up every morning wondering if there will be a call that whispers you’re dead. 

Any call or text from mom I brace myself and say: what if this is it? The one? The one where I’m left alone in this world and without my only blood?

I remember when they told me it was drugs. 

Drugs are drugs. 

Right?

Until it’s Ccocaine and Molly and pot and alcohol and Rx drugs. 

But mostly cocaine. 

Then you’ll end up like fucking Whitney Houston. 

That’s all my mind can imagine. 

I’ve seen you under the influence but didn’t know what exactly was going on. 

Now I know. 

And it hurts. 

Like fucking hell. 

I can’t save you. 

If I could, I would. 

I can’t get you help. 

You have to want that on your own. 

And there isn’t a drug in the world I want in my body but I’d give anything to not feel any of this. 

It hurts. 
You’re not the one getting 4 am texts from strangers and former classmates who want me to check in on you when I'm hours, sometimes days, away.

I couldn't save you in time if time were an issue.
And no one wants to talk about this but me.
Fuck that. 

I will talk.

You’re not me and you’re not my shame. 

I will announce to the world what I have to so there is no questioning. 

There are no answers right now. 

But why do I have to live in a world where I worry about you?

Why did I wake up on a weekend day in March only to have my world shattered by your life altering choices?

A 6 foot 3 inch Black Woman

When I was younger and people asked me "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I'd reply with: "A 6 foot 3 inch black woman basketball player."

 

And my mom never told me I couldn't be one.

 

Thus began all the things I did and didn't and want to be in life--All of which were based on my mom.

I don't recall my mom or my dad ever asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. It wasn't a discussion. It mattered, but they were more set on my good grades and going to college and letting me decide. I actually didn't declare a major until the end of my sophomore year: teaching and coaching.

But as a college basketball player, one thing for sure had never changed since I was little: I still wanted to be a 6-3 black basketball player. Why? Mom and I watched basketball and Final Fours for hours on end each year. I wanted to be Pat Summitt and Chamique Holdsclaw and Cynthia Cooper and dunk like Lisa Leslie. I was 5 foot 6 and pasty white. OF COURSE I wanted to be these women! They owned the court.

 

I was super athletic and found out as a kid that sports weren't exactly my mom's thing. She's relatively tiny (5-1), liked walking, and for a while, aerobics at the Y, and she owned one of those slimming aerobic outfits that was completely skin tight and was completed with a headband and leg warmers and rivaled anything Suzanne Somers wore. 

 

Yet mom was at all of our sporting events and let me go to any basketball camp I wanted. She let me sign up to be on the all-boys YMCA teams when I was in both elementary and high school. "Beat those boys!" she would say. And then in the stands she would tell the other moms to get their sons to pass me the ball. At home, her favorite thing to yell at my dad was "GO PLAY BALL WITH YOUR DAUGHTER!" when I was out there all by myself.

 

Mom is a writer, and I wanted to be one as well. My dad wanted me to go into the military after high school. Mom thought that was an absurd idea. I had no real opinion, but in hindsight, I would have thrived in the National Guard. So I was pushed to then try to get academic and/or athletic scholarships to pay for college. Mom spent endless hours with me, editing my essays and applications. I had more than enough money for college after it was all said and done thanks to her. Mom didn't finish college, but you would never know based on her handwriting, grammar, and knack for editing my writing.

 

Mom grew up in Madison, Wisconsin in the 50s-70s, and her best friend was a black girl. "We used to walk down the hallways of our high school singing 'Ebony and Ivory,'" she recounted. How fun was that? I grew up thinking that someday I'd have black best friends too, albeit, not where I grew up. I couldn't wait to get out of my whitewashed small town and meet new friends from around the world and with different upbringings and cultures than mine.

 

Mom traveled to Mexico once on her own and knew a little Spanish. Traveling alone? So cool! Learning a language? I wanted to try it. I don't need to tell you what these inspired me to do.

Mom is a firm believer in if you don't wear a dress to church God might be sending you straight to Hell by the end of the church service. Okay, so that's an exaggeration, but what isn't is the fact that I had friends I went to church with in my teenage years who said they'd never seen my mom wear the same dress twice... I, on the other hand, could live my entire life without wearing another dress. Mom was Dillards and Macy's and Nordstrom and I was Eddie Bauer and Title Nine.

 

Mom LOVES sewing and crafting. I have a difficult time wondering how one human could sit still for so many hours in a row and would rather pay someone to fix the holes in my jeans.

 

Mom is a master cook and baker. I enjoy those, as well, but I like veering from a recipe. Mom believes you MUST follow it to a T. Where's the fun in that? I still drive her absolutely bonkers when I cook.

 

Mom likes Jesus. I do too, but I cuss a little.

 

Mom hates alcohol. I say, give me a marg and a beach, please!

 

She travels without too many plans. I want the days filled.

 

She saves everything because "You never know!!!" I think less is more and tell her both "It's not the Great Depression," and "Someday I'll toss or give away all the things in the house you never used like extra cardboard boxes and ribbon."

 

She wants to go to Switzerland and has talked about it for years. I go places almost the same year I think of them.

 

She has short hair, but thinks mine is wayyy too short. If she only knew how easy it was...

She is her own person, very much so, and so am I, which she reminds me of constantly. That, and that I am basically my Grandma Sampson reincarnated as an unmarried 40 something year old woman.

 

So of all the things I am and I am not, I became because of my mom.

Except a 6-3 black woman... 

 

but my mom still hasn't told me I can't be one.

 

 

Highland Park

I remember when nights you couldn’t sleep and thought you were losing it, you’d turn on your Spotify playlist and do what you could to drift asleep. On nights when I can't sleep, I imagine you feeling the same way I do, and I pray for you.

And when I was with you I just wanted to curl up with you and kiss all your fears and anxiety away. Let you sleep peacefully and dream all your best dreams like that first night, which was a night that felt like we’d known each other 1000 nights. I woke up with you like I’d known you my whole life. I wanted to be with you the rest of my life. You wanted the same. We talked about it. 

And then in what is now moments in my short life, you were gone. 

You’re still gone. 

I never dream about you anymore. 

I think about you every few days. 

I do miss you a lot. 

We were fast friends. 

The best of friends. 

And then you were gone. 

And it almost killed me. 

Literally. 

I never told you that. 

But I always believed you knew. 

But then again, maybe you didn’t. 

I always wondered why you did nothing if that was the truth. 

So maybe you didn’t. 

It’s not that you would’ve saved me. 

I had to learn to save myself. 

I found out I couldn’t do it alone. 

That didn’t take away from the fact that everything you did to me absolutely destroyed me. 

Or maybe it was all my fault. 

What did I do wrong?

You told me nothing. 

And then there was hope. 

Glimpses of it. 

But still hope. 

We met again years later. 

I thought this was it.  

You’d be back.  

And you killed every ounce of hope left in my soul in an email.  

Why? Who does that? 

This year I felt the coldness cut even deeper. 

I to the park

I asked you to come. 

I knew you’d come. 

 

And you didn’t. 

 

All the signs pointed to yes. 

Hope. 

I knew you’d be there.

But you weren’t. 

The wind blew right through me like you did years ago. 
But the thing is, the wind left that blistering summer evening.

The wind... It always leaves. 

But it comes back.  

Yes. It always comes back. 

Please come back.

Blue Eyes & A Heart of Gold

they all say:

those eyes

blue eyes
I bet you can see them in the dark
gorgeous
wow, just wow
stunning

I bet they could make me do anything

they lure them in
they're not a siren's song
they're right where they belong

but they're just one small part of a whole

blue eyes are just blue eyes unless there is a heart of gold behind them

then
they're a window to a soul

41-42-There's Too Much World To See

What if I told you the truth?

Would you believe me? 

Of course you would.

That this year I considered anti-wrinkle creams and what to do about a few stray gray hairs.

That I looked at myself in the mirror a few times this year and wondered who I was staring at.

But that I'm proud of myself. My life. Who I've become. Who I will be. What I want.

That the way you do one thing is the way you do everything and the way I do everything is passionately, with love, balls to the wall, I'm all in. 

All in.

And if you don't like that about me, you're not for me.

That I hate losing and love winning, but hate losing more... but in the right context I really don't care because all I ever do is win. Okay, so that's a joke, but I seriously think I can always win. 

That the Boston Marathon cured me from ever competing again. 

That you know that is a complete 1200% lie. I think.

That more than winning and losing, more than adventures and travel, more than anything, if you want to know the most important thing is when I'm present. There. With you. 

My gift is my time, but your gift is your presence. And I'm grateful, and I'm in heaven.

That I want everyone and everything I've ever lost to come back to me.

That everything can be an adventure, especially a grocery store in a foreign country.

That traveling alone is both release and catharsis.

That I never let the grass grow under my feet. There's too much world to see.

That I wish people could accept me for who I am. And since they can't, I only let a few fully in.

That no religion seems to get me, and I want to be nothing and Protestant and Catholic and... well, except the Pope says stupid things about not having kids but having pets and the church isn't for LGBTQ, but sort of, but also not really.

That not everything is black and white.

That love is underrated and most don't know how to do it right because they don't care enough to learn about how to get it right. But should.

That life is a fight but doesn't have to be.

That when COVID-aggedon hits and you think life was up and up and then it seems to have crashed but it didn't, it was merely contextualized with its brevity that I already knew a lot about, but apparently not enough about.

That when COVID hits your body and your supposed healthy body doesn't know how to fight and maybe it wasn't as healthy as you thought, you wonder if you're really a fighter or you just told yourself that your whole life. Or maybe COVID is straight from Hell.

If you want to know me, understand me, get me--five things:

1. The way I do one thing is the way I do everything. Passionately.

2. Love. It's everything.

3. Today? I didn't wake up to be mediocre.

4. I believe everything is rigged in my favor and everything I'll ever want can be mine if I go after it.

5. Eternal optimist.

6. Math is hard.

So 41 brought me my greatest life achievements (running the Boston Marathon, receiving a Fulbright, hiking the Bob in one day) juxtaposed with immense sadness and loss, new horizons, and me still waking up on 42 crying because I always cry on my birthday, cutting my own hair because I do a pretty good job, and questioning how many days or years I may still have because it's almost Russian roulette on how you'll go out these days. 

Yet I'm here. Believing that this year will be even better than the last.

Because when you believe in magic and the magic of your own life and can imagine what dreams may come, it's passionately everything.