You're just so pretty in your pain.

A regular at my bar the bar told me that the other night.

We have been acquaintances for a number of months now, but being the person that I am, I never told her my story.  She asked the other night, and I’d had enough alcohol in my blood to be okay with that.  What the hell does it matter at this point?  It doesn’t even feel like my story to tell anymore.  It feels like I’m retelling someone else’s biography.

So I told her.  

About moving here and about homesickness and about the weight of seemingly impossible ambitions and about depression and about rejection and about replacement and about half-assed suicide attempts (do I really want to die or do I just want a means to make everything stop and go away for a while?) and about guilt and about disconnect and about isolation and about trying to build a foundation out of sawdust.

And I told her about my bar the bar and how it’s the only organic thing that I have of my very own in this godforsaken city, and the organic connections that I made through my bar the bar, and the jobs that I have as a result of cultivating those organic connections over the course of damn near a year now.

She didn't know that I worked five jobs now.  She just knew of two.

And I told her the same thing that I said the last time that I saw him almost five months ago: this city is like quicksand.  I recognize it.  I recognize this tug.  And all I can do now is try not to make waves, try not to struggle against it.  I just have to float through this.  I just have to make it across to the other side without being pulled under.

So she recited that quote that I hadn’t read since high school:

“Only dead fish swim with the stream.”

She urged me to see my accomplishments as the accomplishments that they are:

that I persevered through the dark and found my way on my own 

that I re-established myself in a new city on my own two feet without any kind of an in-person support circle

that I worked a new industry job as a part-time cashier and have since been promoted to general manager in the timeframe of less than one year

that I also have four separate jobs in the industry I wanted to work in

that I created a foundation out of sawdust, and now it is compressed and sturdy and can rival the integrity of any one of these old brick buildings

She told me that I am not in quicksand anymore; I’m in the river, and the current can take me wherever I want to go.  I just have to swim.  Not float.  

And maybe that’s it.

Maybe I’m swimming.  Not exuberantly, but steadily.  I’m still trying not to make waves.  The quicksand is not a distant threat by any means, and still feels like a very real danger.  And I am a creature of habit, after all.

But I’m not a dead fish.

Not yet.

She doesn’t know herself well enough to know that she’ll place too much faith in you. She won’t realize that despite all the  butterflies and the warmth and the smiles that she accessorizes to contrast all the darkness in the rest of her attire that you are not her savior and certainly not her hero.

Don’t let a depressed girl fall in love with you.

She will remember every word you tell her and every promise you ever make to her and when you take back those words or break those promises (because  let’s face it, she’s not the girl you first thought and you’re not cut out to handle her, but it’s okay, you’re not the first to leave, and you won’t be the last) you will also break her and those pieces will be too small and too fragile to fix.

Don’t let a depressed girl fall in love with you.

She will love you twice over, with all the love she holds for you and all the love that she can never seem to hold for herself. She will love you with a love so deep that you feel as  though you are drowning, because all she knows is depth and incessant treading just enough to keep her head above the surface, but she forgets that not everyone is used to this paddling and not everyone is a good swimmer, and not everyone is used to drowning, and certainly not everyone deserves to be drowned by her love.

Don’t let a depressed girl fall in love with you.

You will bring out the summer in her, and the spring, and the light and the warmth and the laughter that coats her lips like sweet honey when you kiss her and her skin will feel sun-ripened and perfect in your hands, but you’ll learn that her flesh bruises too easily and that summer will fade into autumn and a chill will linger in her songs and you will forget the feel of her waist around the edges of her hips and her cheeks will burn your fingers with frost and her eyes will glow, not with sunlight but with the light of  an unforgiving moon.

Don’t let a depressed girl fall in love with you.

Lololol.

This is for the gentle goddesses with watery, empathic hearts, who ooze with oodles of compassion, eager to soothe another’s suffering.

This is for the luscious ladies with restless spirits who can’t stay in one place for long, because our souls are winged, always longing for adventure.

Yes, this is just for us:

The free-spirited females with fiercely sensitive hearts.

We are a balmy breeze, casually caressing arms lovingly, suddenly here, suddenly there, then suddenly gone.

We are a thousand grains of precious pink sand, slowly slipping through soft fingertips, one by one.

We can never be contained because we aren’t meant to be.

We are born to ride the wild winds of passion, surf the turbulent oceans of despair, and relentlessly explore the great vastness of this crazy world—until our bodies collapse in ecstatic exhaustion.

We understand deeply that life is a heartbreakingly beautiful series of goodbyes, hellos, triumphs and disappointments and we feel most alive in the midst of transformation, courageously shedding our old skin to be birthed again, raw and new.

We are are well-versed in letting go, able to boldly exhale and swiftly set fire to the past, painstakingly gathering the ashen wisdom to build a more abundant future.

We are phoenixes, falcons, eagles and butterflies.

We are light and airy, yet never lacking depth.

We are carefree and sparkly, but our effervescence actually emanates from caring so deeply, from feeling the world’s pain, happiness, love, sadness and struggle wildly pulsate within our chests, day in and day out.

We are spongy emotional barometers, picking up on another’s mood immediately, sensing anxiety, anger, grief, frustration and jealousy. Feeling it so damn intensely that we sometimes suffocate.

We crave alone time, solo adventures, secret places and quiet spaces because the world can seem so scary and overwhelming that we wonder if it could, in fact, swallow us entirely in one single gulp.

We love wholly, compassionately and completely—but never possessively.

We have to fly away sometimes, darting out in the velvety black of night because we know that by setting ourselves free, we can set others free too.

We deeply respect our femininity, listening closely to the whispering wisdom of our intuition, the mystical murmurs of our ancestors and the primal pulse of nature.

We feel most alive outside, wings fully spanned, feeling the firm ground beneath our feet, welcoming the fiercest winds to whirl through our wispy hair.

We are fierce warriors, forces to be reckoned with—precisely because we are so sensitive.

My gentle and free-spirited sisters, I hear your feathery roar.

Let us spread our wings and soar.

Let us fly long and fast and hard.

Let us fly unapologetically.

Into the incredible lives we are meant to live.

Let us vow now.

To never turn our backs on the wise contents.

Of our fabulously free-spirited.

And fantastically sensitive souls.

And yet you unfollowed me. You actually unfollowed me.

You're really giving me a lot of reasons to hold faith in your words, aren't you, you damned hypocrite?