Resolutions & Predictions

This is something I do annually with my best friend. (The list from last year can be found here.) My best friend and I grab some pizza and talk through the previous year. We talk about what we've accomplished, if it met what we hoped and expected, what the big things, whether they were good or bad or something that happened. We list out our resolutions and predictions for the coming year. It's therapeutic. It's a reminder. It's something of a guideline. It's how we can see potential in the next year. And well, it's tradition.

Here is mine for 2019.

PREDICTIONS

1. You'll get more tattoos.
2. You'll recommit to yoga and movement.
3. You'll see more of the world. 
4. You'll learn what it means to take better care of your body.
5. You'll find a job worth staying at for a while.
6. You'll laugh more and worry less.
7. You'll find art again.
8. You'll stay single. You'll fall in love with yourself.
9. Your health will deteriorate. It'll be OK though.

RESOLUTIONS

1. Stop living in fear. Stop living in this mindset of lack, of absence. Start living with the mindset of plenty, of abundance and bounty.
2. Live for yourself for once. Your existence shouldn't be an apology. Your life wasn't meant for chasing others. Please internalize your value. Let it glow.
3. Figure out your relationship to your lupus. Whether that is through writing or art or therapy. Please stop hating yourself.
4. Move towards a waste-free lifestyle - as much as you can.
5. Come home to art.
6. Travel. Open your eyes again. Open your heart to the world.
7. Reassess your relationship to alcohol and weed. Learn what it means to live with yourself without apologizing, without so much fear and anger.
8. Save $15,000. Have a total savings of $30,000 by the end of the year.
9. Pay back the kindness you've been given. Save a bit of money each month to do something nice for the people in your life; an experience to share. 

GOALS

A new edition this year. Goals are different from resolutions because whereas resolutions are overall life habits and thought patterns that can be changed, I think of goals as tangible things, events and decisions I can and will apply to my real life. 

1. Try the complete Whole30.
2. Make it through two 30-day challenges.
3. Make reading before bed a thing.
4. Produce at least one piece of art a month.
5. Find a community or a circle or event outside of what you know now. Meet new people.
6. Get your license.
7. Plan two big trips and some small trips.

Hello, I'm 25

Leading up to my birthday, I felt a lot of emotions - mostly negative. A lot has happened in the past year and I'll be the first to admit that most of it was more than I can handle. So, it meant a lot to me when my friends showed up and celebrated me with me.

Film photos coming, but here are some phone photos.

Pictured above: Bennett, Terrence, Harlie, Jennifer, Mishi, Isabella and myself. 

And of course, a few missing but deserving acknowledgement goes to Katy, Tamar and Chloe.

My Body

I want to write about my body. Tonight, I'm at a storytelling event. It is so intimate, so personal, so painful and so healing. It is sold out. We are standing in a dark room of mostly strangers listening to brave souls talk, tremble through some of the most painful moments and experiences in their lives. I don't cry but one thing that was said stays with me. She talks about her body as this other entity. Something that existed outside of her. Her body now invites her back. Says that she loves her, tells her to come home, to come inside. And so, I wonder if I did not cry at the event standing in the crowd, I wonder if I will cry now as I am writing this.

I hate my body.

That is the truth.

My body is resilient and strong. It endures for more than I think it can. Despite all its broken pieces, it continues to endure. To wake up each day and move with somewhat grace through the day's motions. This body is soft and smooth. It is delicate, beautifully so. It stands so proudly despite its smallness. My legs are so powerful with all the steps I take with my worn soles and the shoes I've worn away. My body is an object of male appreciation - all the things they say they want to do to this body, how they wish to fold me and shape me, all the holes they want to fill, all the things they want to snarl to my face. My body is small, appropriate and in line with what this society wants all girl bodies to be. Small and in need of protection. This body carries me through each day, from point A o B, no matter how tired I am. No matter how much I don't want to exist on any given day. This body is powerful and enduring and even, beautiful.

I hate this body.

I don't know if there was ever a moment in my life, in nearly 25 years that I loved this body of mine. A moment where I didn't resent this body's limitations, its malfunctions, its delicacies from the organs that fail to work and look as they should, to the bad blood that courses through my veins, to the fingers and hands I now see as damaged, to the legs that remind me of old people - why do my legs have age spots resembling an 80-year old woman? How can this body be me? The way my skin on my face is raised and inflamed, the way my eyes are oo small, my nose too flat, my voice too low, my body not thin enough. There is so much to hate, so much to insult and pick apart. How can someone be so imperfect? How can speech be so mean?

I am not stupid. I know how society teaches us, particularly young girls, to speak so cruelly about our bodies. How many industries and the number of jobs that must rely on the cruel way we speak about our bodies. How many jobs it is to find new and interesting ways to say mean things about our bodies, this body. I am aware that this is a social construct. I am aware these lies are invented. These lies have never been my truth, nor will they ever become my truth. I am aware of the benefits and the sheer necessity to be naked. To face my nakedness and my vulnerability. I know. I hate my body anyways.

It is entirely isolating. Some days, I want to shout - scream from the hills - "I HAVE LUPUS." I have this life-altering illness that shapes every decision in my life. I can't move abroad because if I do, I don't know what I will do about health coverage and my frequent doctor' appointments. I can't go deeper in a pose or I can't run faster because that means I won't have enough energy for the rest of the day. I don't know how to tell potential partners about my lupus because I'm not sure they would want to deal with it. After all, I wouldn't want to deal with it. I'm so scared about getting sick. How do you explain the physical pain of a common cold to normal people? People who have often never experienced great physical pain so early in their lives. If I shout my truth at them, how can they possibly understand? And yet, I want to shout. I want sympathy. I want a second chance. I want to be treated delicately. Granted too much undeserving kindness. I want it all. I do not have it all. I do not shout I have lupus. I have kept it inside for so long despite the resh living on the outside, on my skin always. Despite the questions, the looks, the bullying.

I need to be more open about my body; with my body. I need to be more vulnerable. I need to trust my body. For fuck's sake, I need to learn to love my body. I need to learn to accept all its struggles, my struggles. Acknowledge that some of these struggles will stay with me all my life. They may never disappear and likely, they will worsen. I need to love her anyways. I don't really know how. I spent so long hating her.

I'm hoping to learn. I'm hoping to improve. I'm hoping to love.

May 30th, 2017

August 28, 2016

September 28, 2015