September 28, 2015

Dear Laura,

I have never looked more beautiful than I do today, Monday. I said this to myself last Friday too. There is a softness to me, a gentleness that appears to invite you into my feelings. My hair looks fabulous. No matter what I do. My bangs are falling perfectly. This typically happens for me one half day of every year. I'm still tan from summer weather and I appear to glow. I'm beautiful. Today anyway. The most interesting part of this observation is that on the inside, I have never felt more like a rancid, drippy, maggot-ridden cesspool of shit. And that’s me being kind to myself. I am shedding. I am cleansing. I am ridding myself of all the self-stifling false beliefs, self-limiting false vows, vast oceans of unexpressed emotions and all sorts of other toxic sludge and crap I have accumulated over the past 44 years of living exactly as other people wanted. Being a die-hard codependent, I was willingly compliant and highly successful at being anything but me.  

Then I started to stir shit up. Seemingly almost at random I found a unique-to-me thought floating around in my PTO kowtowing brain. This thought was a persistent little bugger, threatening my very (co)existence as dutiful wife, superhero mother and overly participatory community member. What was this thought? Actually, I don’t remember the exact thought. Sorry. What I do remember is that this seemingly innocuous and cute little thought led the charge of a whole lot of seemingly innocuous and cute little thoughts I had stashed away in the dark recesses of my psyche, hoping they would just wither and die from neglect and malnutrition. But these critters are resilient mofos. It was as if they were all connected somehow and once one got out of the deep hole it had been buried in, all the rest of the little fuckers wanted out. I couldn’t do anything to stop them. You see, they were me. ME. They were and are my true soul self, the substance behind what I came here to be as a human on Earth. And let me tell you what I have figured out so far. I stood in the wrong fucking line when they were handing out lives, because I got a real raw-ass deal going for me in this lifetime. I will know WAY better next time around.

Today was the shittiest day in awhile. I mean, other than yesterday. Tomorrow is not looking so hot from here either. I wouldn’t trade it. I wouldn’t go back to my living-a-shitty-lie-of-an-inauthentic-life-but-keeping-the-tribe-happy-and-at-bay existence for all the tea in China. And I think that’s a lot of tea that I could sell which would really help a girl out right now. I am staying right here in my shitty, but deliciously authentic and genuine life and exploring consciousness in every single thing I do from picking my nose and eating it to meditating at the Peace Pagoda. Every heartbreak, every set back, every knife through my side is just a beautiful opportunity to be alive and be AMY. Jesus, I’m fucked.