it’s been many, many years since i sat in my old bedroom in nashville and understood that it was time to leave.  i’m learning all sorts of theories in my classes to explain human behavior and i can postulate for days about why i’ve made the decisions i have up until this point but ultimately it doesn’t matter to me.  it doesn’t matter because i am here and i am alive and all of the pain of the last 6 years has led to this year, the best year.

when you’re running away from something (or someone, in my case), your focus is on the immediacy of the situation.  the immediacy of your need to keep moving lest you stand still and suddenly start to feel the ferocity of your pain in its fullness.  in those tense moments of hurried decision-making, it’s hard to know that as much as you are running from something, you are also running to something.

it took me 6 years to figure out exactly what that was.  and when i say i figured it out, i mean i crossed paths with people who changed my previous ideas about the world and my role in the world. 

if i had known then, laying on the floor of my bedroom in nashville making mental lists about what to pack and what to trash, that i would end up here, in this moment, i wouldn’t have been so distressed.  but if distress is what it takes to keep moving, i’m all for it.

it still hurts to remember driving away from that apartment, shared with so many dear friends over the years.  but i was running to something, even then, years before i would arrive here.

it seems to me that when you are going about your life it becomes impossible not to end up missing a whole lot of people all of the time.  my lifelines are thousands of miles long, stretching in every direction.  

like veins, they are throbbing.  

sometimes that throbbing is an acute pain, a reminder that i am always far away, that home is not so much a place as it is a person, my people.  in that way, i will never be home.  but what in life is static, after all?  we run from things and to things all day long and we are full of sticky surfaces, so we are always picking up strays.  

just when i think i am at my limit, i meet some glorious soul that steals my heart and a new lifeline grows in that instant.  i feel myself pulled in every direction, and i can’t be static lest i am prepared to feel that ferocious pain in its fullness.  

it’s hard to be where you are, to accept the limitations of your human skin, to let it hold you in even when you feel like expanding in every direction so as to bring all of your history inside of you, with you everywhere.  but my skin is holding me in tightly, so i can still fit through subway doors and airplane doors and car doors and my bedroom door in whatever city i currently call my own.

i can’t keep you all with me.  i can’t feel all of the pain of our thousands of goodbyes in every moment.  i can’t stand still.

and so i miss you all, as you run to and from things all day long at the other end of my lifelines, my veins.  those throbbing veins remind me that home is each of you.  

love, LRG

theanimalblog:

This koala joey was found abandoned beside a road in Brisbane, Australia last month. Named after the man who discovered him, Raymond was dehydrated and skinny, and weighed just 260g. It is believed his mother was either been hit by a car or was too ill to care for the 2-3-month-old. Initially, carers feared that Raymond wouldn’t survive because he weighed so little and wouldn’t feed properly. Julie Zyzniewski, who is looking after him, says: He had to be coaxed to feed. He was frail and his future was uncertain. Suddenly, one day he decided life wasn’t so bad and he has been absolutely powering along ever since. Picture: Jamie Hanson/Newspix / Rex Features

snack attack.

(via theanimalblog)

snack attack

snack attack.

(via thingssheloves)

snack attack

1. eating ice cream for more than one meal a day
2. showing too much cleavage and too much leg in the same outfit
3. walking around with pizza toppings crusted into your hair
4. sleeping 14 hours straight and then taking an afternoon nap

i think this a record!  i got over this horrible dude in 48 hours.  

of course, it’s probably inappropriate to celebrate considering i should have never allowed the relationship to go on for so long in the first place.  he made me unhappy, insecure and actually sucked the joy out of an otherwise delightful summer.

the fact that i am 27 years old and have yet to learn to stop dating assholes is embarrassing but at least i can admit i have a problem, right?  

i’m not suggesting that i exclusively date assholes.  in fact, i have dated some exceptional human beings who i plan to count as friends until the end.  HOWEVER, when the occasional bad seed slips through my defenses, i always seem to let things progress despite my suspicions and then also allow things to persist for way too long.

some dudes are just not worth the mess they’re gonna make of your mental state, you know?  

but it’s 48 hours later and i’m fine.  more than fine!

i was sitting at a table in a high-rise in south manhattan today, surrounded by incredibly accomplished, inspiring women and realized this:

this is the best things have ever been.  

i love living with my sister and i love the people i’ve met here and the work i’m doing and the things i’m learning and i am just plain happy.

up until 48 hours ago, that was not the case.  

now there is no one making me feel insecure and no one sitting there like a useless lump, sucking the joy out of my life.

this is the best things have ever been.  don’t date assholes.

love, LRG

if i knew how to unleash the universe that exists underneath my skin, i would.

isn’t it frustrating to be a human and live in the constant tension of withholding and revealing just enough to survive?

lately everything reminds of something else in a very distracting way.  right now i am laying in a pitch-black room.  sometimes you just need to succumb to nothing in particular.  a general surrender.  

isn’t it funny how everything reminds us of something else?

the word surrender is a suitcase stuffed to bursting.  i am about to turn 27 years old and i am still unpacking all of the suitcases i’m lugging around, exhausted and distracted.

the church taught me that the word surrender meant something ambiguous about letting a judgmental and stifling deity into your decision-making process, as if all of the constantly warring parts of ourselves aren’t causing enough confusion already.  and as far as i could tell, allowing this nebulous thing into my life meant that i would be forced to live out 10,000 contradictions every day.  and so it did.

and my life and heart and every fiber of my deepest self got ripped to shreds as this incredibly painful dichotomy took shape.  what feels so true on the most primal level: that is no longer true.  in fact, get rid of those primal bits.  or at least hide them from sight.

and so the church taught me to withhold and reveal within this dichotomous pattern.  for close to 2 decades, i led a life split into two halves.  

and i carry these loaded words around with me, unpacking them as i make space for the sheer volume of things i hid away.  i am aware that i often come off cold or distant but i’ve learned independence as a survival tactic.  if no one gets close, no one sees the leftovers of that painful dichotomy.  the uncertainty and residual self-loathing that comes from years of wringing out my own humanity like dishwater from a rag.

isn’t it frustrating to contain a universe but to have packed it all in suitcases?

i am distracted by a multitude of triggers.  and then i unpack, methodically at first, haphazardly by the end.  

i cannot fit into two halves or into suitcases or into a world in which my humanity is my greatest shame.  mostly because i am not actually ashamed of any of it.  

i believe in the power of trial and error and in letting go of the need to accumulate anything at all and in letting people decide what is best for themselves and in human dignity and in collectivity.  i do not believe in ambiguous deities or domination through victimization (which is the actual only way domination can exist) or amassing wealth or power for power’s sake or squelching the primal parts of being a human.

and so, i unpack.  and sometimes someone gets close enough to see the leftover mess and it’s good and necessary and cathartic.  surrender has its place.

love, LR

All kinds of normal things are happening in Japan.

(via inothernews)