coming alive

My piece for The Nib for Carrie. The quote is from her advice column, to another person with bipolar disorder.

Perhaps we should love ourselves so fiercely that when others see us they know exactly how it should be done.

When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

If you have been brutally broken, but still have the courage to be gentle to others then you deserve a love deeper than the ocean itself.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly NOW. Love mercy NOW. Walk humbly NOW. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.

Some days you’re going to feel so unbeautiful. Some days the one you need most is not going to want to touch you, hold you, see you, be around you when you ache, when you need them to choose you without having to ask them to. Sometimes your being a force of nature will go against you. Sometimes putting others before you is going to go against you. And you will hurt darling, how you will hurt. On those days remember how high you have climbed just to feel the sun on your face. How brave you are. Remember sitting on the ledge of that building looking at how far down the ground was and having the confidence in yourself not to fall. Remember staring into the eyes of those who have hurt you and taking away their power by never allowing them to hurt you anymore. Remember clawing your way out of every abyss that you fell into. Now channel that girl, that lioness again. You can conquer anything.

She decides God is no good, but he must exist, / he must exist so she can hold him accountable.

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.

the center of every poem is this: i have loved you. i have had to deal with that.