The Best of Everything/Returns To Me

 "“it’s a case of liberty, that love’s supposed to set you free" 

- Ellen Krauss, lyrics from "The One I Love" 

The Best of Everything

Love: 

saved me

set me free

made me believe in everything 

made me question everything— 

everything I’d ever believed  

some things I didn’t think I wanted

almost refused to see

but now do

because I was wrong about so many things  

so, so many things  

now I know what it really means

Love:

helped me find me

the me I already was down deep

yes, set that ‘me’ free

Love:

needs 

no complications

no pretense

no copacetic list

&

no strings

it is wild

& 

oh so

free

selfless

yet

self-governing

life-giving

liberating

&

pure liberty

& when I have it

it's like all the best of everything 

& all I've ever lost

comes back, returns to me

44-45

I used to think I was amazing. 

Tough. 

Resilient. 

Love. 

And then 2024. 

2024 came. 

And I felt all of those things dissipate into my shell of a human.
I found myself spiraling, wondering how someone, me, could be taking so many gut punches in one year.

 

2024 came in like an unwanted intruder. A storm. 

If I listed everything that happened to me that almost crushed and killed me? 

You wouldn’t believe me. 

Hell. I don't even believe all of it. 

Weird shit. Heavy shit. Heartbreaking shit.

Juxtaposed with the best move, the best love, the best friends.

Last week on my birthday one of my friends asked me what was one lesson I learned this year. I told her I didn’t know how resilient I was. And I also said that if I hadn’t gone through depression in my 30s, the last year would’ve taken me out.

I made it to the other side this year.

More than once.

This year has beat the ever living fuck out of me.

And for what? 

All I try to put out into the universe is peace, goodness, love, kindness, more love, hugs, more love, sweetness, and yes, more love. 

I didn't deserve this year.

It didn't deserve me.

New Years Eve 2023: my date told me hope is a pipe dream, then we laughed, made love, and three weeks later they were gone. And on my birthday. 

Earlier this year the other side of the most difficult move of my life, all in the midst of sadness, grief, depression, and a break up that blindsided and took the wind out of me. All of it that spring was too much. Too much. 
Summer I could barely hold my head up. My therapist reminded me that I was out of my routine and I would be fine soon enough when school started. I was. 

At the start of the school year, I remembered this story from my 30s: 

I’m 24. I awake from a dream while on a bus to another ball game at my school. I wake up and the dream was clear: you’re dying at 36. I woke up, almost 5 years to the week after losing one of my best college friends, thinking: you can do better. Live bigger. Something. Do all the things. Love harder even if I joke that I hate it. I don’t hate much of anything or anyone. Fix myself when I made mistakes. I didn’t know what I was going to do, just that I would make the most of every day even more than I already was. My journey to self awareness and betterment started early. I’ve only always wanted to be the the best at everything and the best person you’ll ever meet or be loved by. 

The next year I resigned from my first teaching position and moved to a small town in the Midwest where I would spend the next 19 years. 

I’ve only told 2 people in my life that I had that dream. And now you know about it. 

Now I’m years past that and in my 40s. My life is a narrative where only I am the author but the literally narrative of flashback tells me that dream was symbolic, metaphoric. 

And maybe a little prophetic... 

Because when I was 36 I died.

Of course not really, but I slipped into the darkest depression of my entire life to wake up in the middle of 2017 a year later fragile as a newborn. There I was finding my way back to who I was and had lost. I’d died and lost myself, truly. During that year I had wanted to end it all. I didn’t necessarily want to die, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be alive. The only true thing that I believe kept me alive was the hope my doctor gave me that I would be okay. I believed her because I knew her story. I knew she made it out alive, so I decided I would too. 

But August 2024? 

This summer was another death. A move after 19 years in a place is not for the light hearted. 

I came here tired, grieving those 19 years in a place, and very wounded. 

I still am. 

I might be for a while. I’m not bulletproof but sure wish I was. But I believe this “if the train is meant for me it won’t leave the station and pull away.” 

The train waited for me this past May and June and I hopped on, not even believing I was doing what I never thought I could do. The train waited. And like that hope I held desperately to in my mid 30s, I held tight to once again this summer. 

My friends tell me “you’ve done an Ironman, you can do anything.”  I tell them that Ironman was only 14 hours and change. Real life is hard. 

I live each day like this is it. I’m nonstop and love everything and everyone even if I never say anything or joke I hate everything. I’ve beat depression several in my 44 years thanks to my amazing therapist and hormone dr. It’s always a battle I hate, but all this? All these and LOVE, yes I love more than anyone you’ll ever know, are my true superpowers, not finishing any race I’ve ever competed in. 

My new school and Arkansas and my best friends there? Wow—thank you for letting me “come to you and drop my bags… And you'll help me unpack them”. 

Through the thousands of tears I’ve shed this year, especially this summer, I believe “there’s nothing to be scared of” even though I’ll wake up tomorrow with the anxiety that is interchangeable with the feeling of excitement.  

The holy books say we walk THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death, but don’t stay there. The only way out is through. I tattooed it on my right wrist to see it daily. 

I full heartedly believe I made it through once again and that this is the beginning of the second half of my life. 

In October I arrived on the other side of everything I ever dreamed of obtaining in my career.

It didn't turn out at all as I expected it to. In fact, the end was anticlimactic and without an audience or anyone to care but me and my best friends. But I did the impossible and made it possible: I achieved everything.
Most people can’t say that. 

What is it like to go after everything you ever wanted, unabashedly, and win it all?

I've done everything in my life I've dreamed of doing but one thing. 

Yeah, sure, I have a bucket list 77 things long. 

But that doesn't mean I have to or need to do any of those on it.

Yeah, I know, I want to get married and that's all that's left that I really really want in this life. 

But I've had THE best love of my life, even if it is no longer mine. 

What is it like on the other side?

I'm not sure.

I'm here.

It seems calm. Still. Scary. Serene. Anxious. 

And still beyond my wildest dreams and imaginings.

Do I need more goals?

Do I need to keep being the same?

I don't know.

I am still me, though.
I am still tough AF.

I am still LOVE.

 

As I pen these words and my tears are overflowing my eyes with gratitude.

One single, solitary tear hits the floor of my new house. 

My oldest dog is chewing her toys on my bed.

My youngest is sleeping at my feet.

I love my house, my city, my friends, my new life. 

Oh, I do. 

Andrea Gibson wrote, "Imagine, when a human dies, the soul misses the body, actually grieves the loss of its hands and all they could hold."

That is the best description of what I feel right now. Recently, my African friend said. "Amy. What kind of human being are you? I just can't imagine how wonderful you can be."

I know I still am. 

My soul is living unabashedly like I always do. Loving. Adventurous. Kind.... yet also grieving what I have lived this past year. And thank god it’s over.

And? It is missing only the one thing, at least for right now, that I cannot hold.

Two friends this year, separately, told me that it's as if I have lived 5 lives because of all I have already done in this life.

I agree. 

I suppose, if I'm lucky, I have many many more left in me on the other side.

But I'll be happy with just a simple, single, solitary, one full of love and peace. 
Cheers to 45. 

Vibration

My Reiki healer tells me all the time, direct quote: “your vibration is higher than any person that I you have ever dated. You need to work on you so when you do date these insecure people they don’t attach to you and you are no longer their food.  You are a higher vibration and they feed off of you because they are curious.” (I asked her to clarify this recently and she noted: these ppl are awesome, you don't pick poorly. They just need some work and then they'll match you).

What they're curious of, I’m not sure. I’m pretty awesome but that is only what I believe… and perception isn’t always reality. 

And for the record, I have NEVER thought anyone I dated was below me or a bottom feeder except maybe one who led me on for 3 weeks after one date. The rest?? I've loved them all for a plethora of reasons. And my healer also knows this. :) 

They all say the same thing.

Well, forms of it. 

They tell me they’re fucked up. And some are.

They tell me they don’t want this and get back online in 3.5 weeks or days. What exactly were you looking for again???

They say they want to play the field. Okay cool. Put that on your dating profile. Please.

They say it’s not you it’s me. 

They tell me how wonderful I am, that I’m the sweetest person they’ve ever dated, I’m the best person I know, that I’m more than enough (all direct quotes as well) and I believe them… but I don’t.

Why? Because of this:
Why doesn’t anyone stay? 

Sometimes I know I dodged a bullet with some. The last one, especially. The last one took all the good about me and twisted into their narcissist web. Dead set on ruining me, isolating me, belittling me daily next to compliments that I believed. The weren't a bullet, but a grenade. A deadly, deadly grenade. 

But not everyone is a bullet set to kill.  

I wonder if any of them will come back to me— fly in a holding pattern to land whenever and wherever that is. I have one I’d give the world to come back to me and probably never will. Or will they? I think maybe it could happen. Could. 

One did come back once but for a moment. 

So I write. 

I write pages and pages of poetry, hoping my favorite will come back to me, but also because I have so so many beautiful words that I can't keep inside me. 

They must live out here in the universe for someone, hopefully her, to read.

So here they are.

Would you read every thing I’ve ever written? 
If so, are "they" or you the ONE?

I always thought “the one” would be the one who read every single writing of mine like it meant everything, traced my tattoos in the candlelight with their finger, 

and then stayed. 

Or who wouldn’t be afraid of the fact that I have my wedding ideas stored away and words I want to say when I propose (yeah, I have that written somewhat) and a ring in my bathroom hiding for the right moment. Not just ANY ring. The one.

I am mostly everything you're looking for and more even though I'm not perfect. I have flaws I work on all the time.

But you check all the boxes of someone I want for forever.

Who does all this, says all this? 

What’s wrong with me?

Nothing.

Nothing but fucking love.

Love is what is wrong with me.

But they, like everyone before, if I could throw them through a window of an open car door that’s cruising down the freeway I would. Maybe not quite that level of awful, but anything startling and shocking enough to wake them the fuck up. 

Oh, not to wake up to me. 

I chose myself years ago. 

I’m whole all by myself. 

But not to wake up to me, oh no.

So they could see if they would only accept the love they think they deserved, they’d choose themselves, too. 

Then, I hope, me.

But they’d also see healthy love for what it actually is and not an irrational fear or something that longs too, to relax in the arms of someone who would never leave, that longs so see love for what it should be not love as chaos and trauma. Someone who will NEVER be their ex who did all of those things. Ask any of my people who have known me my entire life. They’ll tell you, too, that I’m the best. The sweetest. That I’m as loyal as the day is long. link 

There are all sorts of addictions in the world. 

Mine is love and all of its friends. 

I used to think that if love was poison I would drink it anyways. So I did. It nearly killed me. At least three times. It still might. 

Maybe I still would drink it. 

Maybe I am now. 

Maybe I always will. 

But I’d choose YOU, poison or not. 

Why? 

So I can give someone the love they never knew they’d find? 

Maybe. 

Because I desperately want my person? 

Maybe. 

But also no.

Mostly because maybe, just maybe if I showed someone what they could have and who they were they would change everything about how they see themselves. 

But I don’t think that has ever happened. People are old and weird and stubborn and set in their ways. 

Yet, I’d choose you poison or not. 

Why? 

Because you’re so so worth it. 

Of White Clouds and Tesseracts

I woke up every single hour last night.

Every. Fucking. Hour. 

Hoping for victory.

Hoping for hope. 

Instead, I woke up sweating and to a gut punch, a dull ache, and this dread that permeated down to and then into my bones.

I let the hot, hot water pour over me in the shower, washing none of my feelings down the drain.

Ate mac and cheese for breakfast because I heard someone once told me it was one of the best comfort foods. But of course, it wasn't my mom's. 

So there was little comfort.

Got in my car, pushed play on my PinkPonyClub playlist (with a hint of T. Swift and Gracie Abrams on it), and drove slowly through the fog, 15 miles to work. 

Even Chappell and friends couldn't drown out this heaviness, this grief, this numbness. 

Along the way I imagined meeting a friend at the stop sign, getting out, and hugging and crying with her. 

The fog and sun played hide and seek all along the way to work and I wondered if they were mirroring our country—playing the roles of both friends and enemies.

And then I saw it: A poof. 

A small cloud dancing, then disappearing, across the highway in front of me.

And my mind went down the the rabbit hole in my ADD mind to Magellanic Clouds/the White Clouds — the first poet wrote:

السحب البيضاء

 -- two irregular, spiral dwarf galaxies only visible in the southern hemisphere. 

Visible to the unaided eye, I stared at them forever a week ago on a ship in the fjords of Chile and Argentina then read about them finding out that they were first documented by Persian sailors in the first nautical poem ever known to be penned. And then that they seem to have traveled close to our galaxy. Galaxies travel? Maybe I’d read that incorrectly…. But they looked as described: like white clouds. In a dark night sky, you’d think they were right above your head a few hundred feet. An optical illusion of sorts. 

Everything in the sky we see is in our own galaxy except for a few celestial beings.  Two of these are these galaxies.

This was the first time in my life someone had told me that I could see other galaxies with my naked eyes.

I can see something outside of my little corner of the universe?

Mind. Blown.

This morning? I wanted that poof of a cloud that danced in the Bella Vista fog to be like the tesseract in A Wrinkle in Time. 

Like the gravity laws and love that were defied in Interstellar. 

A moment and ability and place to escape. 

Would I find what I need in that uncharted territory? 

Those barely explored galaxies?

Would I slip into one of their black holes?

Would I find a parallel universe?

One where everyone loves and is kind and works together for the good of all?

One where no one felt what half of our country is feeling right now?

One where we are free to be who we were born to be?

Or would I find as much vitriol as I have found here?

I should hope not.

So for a moment, my mind escaped and believed Mac and cheese would comfort me and that the White Clouds were in fact that—clouds so close, like the hope I had this week, that I could almost touch. 

For a moment I, well, my imagination, explored the part of the Cosmos that I think, perhaps, we all dream of, but seem to care little about fixing on our own planet: a place overflowing with love, gentleness, kindness, peace.

Yes, for a moment, I chased down the thought that Heaven is a place on earth, but maybe not our earth.

I suppose that is also what is wrong with a lot of this world right now: people not taking the time to explore and adventure and learn and be open to possibilities and places they never could have imagined.

Robert Frost believed that “Earth's the right place for love, I don't know where it's likely to go better.”

But I wonder if he ever had the chance to stargaze upon White Clouds...

After all, Alice in Wonderland taught us that “we all want a magical solution to our problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic.”

I'm not sure on this day I believe in anything, but I do believe Anne Frank when she wrote, “Despite everything, I believe people are truly good at heart.”

I believe in my ability to imagine other worlds both here and there.

I believe in galaxies I can and cannot fathom.

And I believe in love.

——————-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author’s Notes below: 

  الأعبار or السحب البيضاء

(the white clouds or the cows as noted by the poets). 

 http://judy-volker.com/StarLore/Myths/MagellanicClouds.html 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_Clouds 

The system, which is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is composed of a hot, blue star with 25 times the Sun's mass and a black hole, which is at least nine times the mass of the Sun

written Nov 2024

Karma, Part II

When you feel like you can't try anymore
feel like it's in vain
When at the hands of the heartless, rude,
or the bane

Remember in the universe
there's the ying and the yang
the reap and the sow
and that mic drop *bang*

karma takes all prisoner

Yes, that bitch sees all

Don’t worry about those who hurt you

Because soon enough, they’ll fall 

Karma I

You're not defeated,

or down for the count.

Don't need anyone to save you,

let you tap out.

There are those in the world,

too cold to the bone.

Those who will teach you,

you're better off alone.

So let karma take hold,

let it seal their fate.

Keep your head held high,

be kind, don't hate.

What you gave was good,

Who you are is gold.

Karma has your back, girl,

and will punish them tenfold.

In Every Universe

In every lifetime
In every universe
Oh I will search for you
And I will find you first

Yet here we are in this life
No guarantee of more
So I wish on every falling star
Run through every open door

Looking for you
Longing for you
Missing every.... single thing about you 

All we had, all we were
I want it back
Want it back want it it back
Oh where are you?
My heart aches for you
I want you back
Want you back want you back

There’s bad karma
And bad timing too
What if we had both
But we could just start anew

It is that simple
Though I know you think it’s not
Don’t overthink it
Don’t overthink every thought
—-

We fit together perfectly
Just a lock and key
And through my veins your words
Were just like poetry

It's not your crazy life that scares me

the crazy life and everything not crazy is what makes you you

It's just the universe

right now

has taken me from you

SO COME BACK

Just know that

In every lifetime
In every universe
Oh I will search for you
And I will find you first

Yet here we are in this life
No guarantee of more
So I wish on every falling star
I'll run through every open door

Until you're mine forever

Why

https://www.emlovz.com/love-temperature/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202103/warming-each-other 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-lies-and-conflict/201705/you-are-hot-the-strange-link-between-body-heat-and-love?amp 

https://open.spotify.com/track/1rPNTghfJfuxVJu4WbGbXS?si=-7Q4mssxRaOatcn1ClcZAg&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A26eenNYvduZw14fqLrgBWa

Lock and Key

Lock and key.

You and me.

Bodies perfectly fitted.

Deeply smitten.

Magical, special, and rare.

Attune to that, we are.

With no timeline,

Someday you'll be mine.

And I will be yours.

Can't wait till that occurs.

 

When we finally arrive,

imagine how good it will to be fully alive.

Yes, in that moment alone,

it will be like coming home

with my lock, your key

And just 

you

and 

me.

Parallel Universe

I began writing this several years ago--my guess is 6 years ago but the words and ideas just didn't take flight until the past few years. The inspiration of several books, TED Talks, podcasts, movies, and talks with friends inspired the space/time ideas in this writing, especially the book "A Wrinkle In Time" and the movie "Interstellar."
I've always been immensely fascinated by time, space, the universe, anything not related to earth. I got this love for the cosmos from my father. This poem takes some of those concepts of time and space and I intertwined them with things on our planet. Working on making this a song. This isn’t about anyone. It’s a song about what if space and time could defy. Or maybe love. 
Love defies a lot of things. 

I finished this in 2023. I think...

Oh if I could send a message out in the universe

To remind you that I loved you first

Send it it on a light beam through space

In hopes that it would reach you one day

And you could hear what I had to say

All that I’m too scared to say

Just dance with me tonight

So the stars can realign 

Love and logic always defy 

Everything we had planned ahead of time 

Oh and if I could let you see

when this black hole bends back on itself

I’ll be there waiting

At whatever is on the other side

Just dance with me tonight

So the stars can realign 

Love and logic always defy 

Everything we had planned ahead of time 

 

Oh maybe in some parallel universe

Our story didn’t end, it was all reversed

And there we are

As we always should’ve been

I with you and you with me

As only all the stars and galaxies can see

What time can’t see

Sunlight, moonlight, starlight

Dance with me

Under all these, every day and night

Just dance with me tonight

So the stars can realign 

Love and logic always defy 

Everything we had planned ahead of time 

But know this: 

 

Across and in every universe,

I’ll always look for you. 

I will always find you first. 

Already Home

I’ve, we’ve, barely begun, but it’s enough to pen these words. 

She (you) showed up the way things aren’t supposed to, well, according to our imaginations and expectations literally a little late but right on time, unexpectedly, and in the middle of a stint of melancholy and slight depression, but not enough to think I wasn’t okay enough to try this or that this wasn’t for me. 

I suppose I’ll try again, and again one more time. 

I swiped thinking I'd found a friend. That's what she wanted after all. Right?

So I started a conversation, which I rarely do.

But now?

I only wish I’d met her sooner. 

She showed up after the longest, darkest winter of my life. After tears, anxiety, and feeling like I could end everything because I’d already done everything in the life I cared to do but one thing. 

The one thing that keeps eluding me as if to say, this… this is not for you: Find someone amazing. 

Oh, but it is. Where are you, love? 

She showed up in the springtime like the eastern redbud that is juxtaposed against the bare trees and fallen leaves. Juxtaposed against the green, uneven grasses of March that are mixed with the dead that will soon be alive. 

And she makes me come alive. 

She is sweetness, kindness, and a squirreling mind. She tells me she is nothing to look at but that she is nice. She loves her children more than ANYthing on this planet, her best friend, her family, and cleaning... and her mind is a beautiful labyrinth of intelligence that I’m head over heels for. She is calm like the sunset yet her mind rages with 52736 thoughts and open tabs simultaneously where somewhere in there, sometimes we get lost, but not the kind where either one of us are missing. The lost where you’re on an adventure and will find new trails, paths, friends, foxes, birds, and maybe something you love so much you want to return to it again and again and again.  

She is calm and says she cleans old people's teeth for a living but I’m 1000% sure she works for the government and they have her hired to solve world peace and exude joy.

Her touch is fire and makes me melt into puddles as if no one has ever touched me like that before. She says I instigate everything and I don’t, but maybe a little bit... She puts her nose to mine and looks in my eyes and I smile and sometimes fall asleep talking about the deepest subjects. Who does that? And she does this thing with her tongue when we kiss that’s both kindling and an ignition to this bonfire intimacy we have. I tell her it takes two to tango and she doesn’t stop me from taking off her clothes. 

You want me to stop? 
No. And why do you still have yours on? 
Because you left them on? 
She never says no. Neither do I.
And I am here for it. 

Her smile lights up the darkest corners of my being, as if light forgot it had the ability to shine on them. Corners I shut off and closed to the bitter and untrusting world of 9 years of swiping left and right on people who were never meant for me”--and thank God. 

She makes me believe love really is real and not some sick farce that people say they know what is but really don’t and can’t accept what they deserve yeah, she makes me believe that there are still good ones out there even if she took years to find. 

She makes me believe I really am more than enough. One of my best friends screamed at me through her laryngitis the week before we met about how there is nothing wrong with me and how when the right one comes along it will be so easy and nothing else in my past will matter. Nothing will matter. And I believe that right now: that she is THE one and that nothing matters but this moment and gift we have of finding each other. 

She and this IS easy, and it scares the shit out of both of us. But some therapists told us that’s what happens when you find something that isn’t chaos.

 It still doesn’t stop my mind from thinking this will all blow up in my face and end like all the relationships before, but good god how  I want this one to last not because I want something to last forever, but simply because this is so so so good. 
Amazingly good. 
Perfectly imperfect yet wonderful. 
Who knew stability and serenity 
would scream to be chaotic 
instead of also accepting who they were meant to be?

She isn’t perfect, but she is close… and perfectly wonderful. Brown eyes and smiley, grateful and kind.  “Watching her do it is like watching paint dry. There’s nothing to see. Everything is just more colorful after.” Yet watching her is also like watching a storm come in on the horizon and realizing it wasn’t a storm, it was a calm summer rain that you can hear tapping on the roof and smell through the screen door. A summer rain that is warm and inviting, and makes you want to fall asleep to her and wake up enveloped in her arms where we fit together like a complex lock and key. 

She wants to pace herself and so do I. I don’t want to rush something so amazing, yet I also do. And why? I don’t know. We have nothing but time. So I just want to be in the moment and think nothing but also everything about the future. So maybe this is like watching paint dry. No. It’s like a plant in her plant room. You plant the seeds, you water it with trust and vulnerability and honesty and kindness and fun and everything good. And you tend to it with all the instructions but also go a little rogue from the rule book. Because sometimes the rule is that there are no rules. She’s worth every second of the end result of this cultivation. Worth it all and more. 

And just like her turtle plant is her favorite, she is mine. 

She isn’t my world, but she’s in it and makes every day so much richer than before I met her. 
She isn’t my everything, but everything she does and says and is, is everything. 
She isn’t in love with me and I am not with her, but we are also already so so so much in love the kind where you know love is there and she IS love and you’re well on your way to the most incredible love you’ll ever know. The kind you can feel in your sinews and marrow as if it’s not written in the stars but in your DNA. The kind where you can’t say it yet, and don’t want to rush those words  because you’re not there yet, but you want to sooner than later so you can be on the other side– the side where you never have to, get to, stop saying it. 

Yeah, the kind of love that when you finally arrive you’ll look in the rear view mirror and realize you’re asking wait? 
Did we never leave or did we already arrive? Because the car is still parked in the driveway and you were already home.
You were there the entire time.
And though we have barely begun with her? 

I’m already home.