Still have yet to find someone that defines love as you have to me.
I denied the memories of you.
I can’t compare I tell myself.
You were rare.
One can’t expect someone like that to come around more than once in a lifetime.
its funny that memory can bring us into the past so vividly.
i remember nothing as cleary as i remember you.
Falling into your arms without hesitation,
so completely, unapologetically yours.
The sight of you now overwelmes me.
A mixture of love and fear swells where there used to be nothing but trust.
If I reach for you and you reach back,
will I be ready?
I have loved you endlessly,
Our lives once intricately intertwined have wandered so far from touching.
Maybe you’ll come with me.
Maybe you will be by my side.
But that’s how it will have to be.
You adjusting to my life-
and I don’t know that you’d want that.
Love, as you showed me, is devotion and kindness.
Love is tender warmth and steady understanding.
Love is sacrafice and committment.
I was always lacking what you so fervently gave.
You won’t see me again unless I’m willing to return it.
A love that I’m still painfully tangled in.
A love with reprocutions that scare me deeply.
I am not sure that exists anymore, in any other place than my memory.

I am now living in Los Angeles.
Years have passed since this body resided here.
It used to be a breathing part of my known world.
Yet now everywhere seems like home.
Just as much as here.
A visitor, a sleeper, a worker, a snacker.

Sentimental streets now just remind me what used to be familiar.
I get lost in the jungle of highways.
But again, I am home.
Just like home finds me in the rainy bicycle paths of Denmark.
Or the lonely walks in the Himalayas.

Needing less and less, but absorbing more and more.
I remember who I am through the storm of Christmas.
Consumers march through the stores, greedily filling their carts.
I join and forget about money.
I have come so far. But I am still in the same body.
A body who was fed and clothed in this city.
A city of fast cars and dying spenders.
Who treat themselves to the pleasures that only the material first world offers.

I absorb this world so differently now.
I’m thinking of who I am and
my mind rolls back to memories and thoughts,
it’s like I am in all the places I was all at once.
I am alone with my mind again and we say,
We have so much. We need less.
Yet I click yes on the check out and get excited when the packages arrive.
Yet I was born in this world of consumer binges,
And the thrill sinks into my skin.

Should I even fight the desires that tug at my wallet?
What is frugality, if it’s only replaced with fragility.
To be so unable to loosen a grip around the number in my bank account.
I must learn to balance enjoyment with consideration.

I wonder who this body will turn to be,
Dreaming of a world where I belong no where and to no one.
Including the capitalist net.
I continue on filling my cart, like a good Christmas daughter/sister/friend/cousin/etc.
But this year, I enjoy it.
I am happy because I have the choice to be a part of it all.

I decorate the Christmas tree with my grandma.
I wonder if it is a choice for her, or if we ever really make choices in our lives.
She does it every year.
What would happen if she stopped?
Some philosophers would argue, No one has choices.
I was baffled when I first heard this. How could that be?
They argue, nothing we do is out of free will.
But I beg to differ.
I buy the gifts.

But I place letters in the boxes.
I know the value of this moment. It’s my chance to say I love them,
while I’m still close enough to do so.

Free inside the space of my room
I am at home again
Red tones underlie the wooden floorboards
Am I making a home again?
Here I stand on familiar ground.
I wonder what I am searching for.

A room away,
a lover lies.

The bliss of reunion has faded briefly.
I am sad again.
Plagued by the gentle gnawing at my heart.
A mind of my own is hardly my friend.

Awake again before dawn.
Foggy windows hold signs of my warmth.
I wonder who I am,
now that I’m so sure that I am alive.

1. Meditate

2. Excersize

3. Write

4. Study

My father’s always considered himself an artist. That’s a funny statement to say because I wonder if any other people experienced the identity crisis of an aspiring artist. We are searching for careers that mean something, and how wonderful to pusue “the one thing I knew I was good at” drawing. My father had business cards that said his name with word Artist below it. So what does it mean to be an artist?

The paintings of my fathers that filled the house would gawk at you as you walked by. Subtle deformities and eerie extra eyes made me want to look away.

I enjoy writing. Why? Because it’s a form of creative expression. It is my art. But what is art to me? It is raw and emotion-envoking. My work should display my insecurities, my darkest thoughts, and my most internal battles.

Subconcious roadblocks are just fueled by perfectionism. It’s much more daunting to approach if the nature of the task is to be perfect. I allow you in, dear internet.

that feeling that starts in your heart
and makes your toes tingle
Maybe I’m in love,
But maybe this time it isn’t a boy.
What if we all dedicated ourselves to the world,
The way a wife dedicates herself to a husband.

A doll in the wind
A small body I control
Joy is radiating out of it
As I float through this temporary world.

This feeling,
love may be just the closest word.
But may be love just means
Truth.

It’s nothing and everything at the same time.
Nothing in the way that right now I’m just sitting in the middle seat in the back of a car going through traffic.
Everything in the way that I am everything and everywhere!

Being small is fun.
Having a body is so fun.
I am so free!

Free to play,
free to live,
free to think,
to write,
to act.

My thoughts keep coming in my mind.
I feel like I’ve never been more sure of who’s they are.
But without a doubt now I know.
I am here!

It’s the kind of feeling where you could shout,
“I love …”
You. Her. Him. It. That. All of it.
Maybe instead of loving a lover,
I can dedicate myself to loving this.
Loving nothing and everything at the same time.

I feel like there are a lot of things I’m learning traveling that you wouldn’t expect like… diplomacy skills! How to approach, communicate, and respect people past the barriers of my own language or culture. I’m learning about wildlife, history, and just life in general.
You know if I was Bernie Sanders, and I had already been the core of a movement so opposite of the man now in power, then I would feel a responsibility to continue to be that icon. It’s important to choose your battles wisely because once you invest energy, you have intertwined yourself with the conflict. For example, a lot of people post dushey things on facebook and I just ignore them or unfriend them. It’s non-confrontational and I just forget I ever met them. But sometimes I also like to be a troll. This one guy, named Alex, from Humboldt but I had no recollection of knowing, posted on facebook how this bum laid on his front porch and basically how disgusting it was. I commented, “people are people” and he went into a paragraph long rant attacking me using language like fucking- this fucking- that. Now I’m involved. Because its my responsibility to defend myself (luckily it was such a stupid argument it was just funny and not difficult to do). But then another girl wrote a really well articulated paragraph about the homeless problem in the area and started getting baraded by low-frequency asshats in the comments. That made me mad. 
I am faced with a dilemma now. Because that genuinely upsets me that they would talk to her in such a demeaning way, and she did not defend herself. I would rather defend her at this point than myself… but maybe I’m crossing a line with energy investment. Now that I made one comment, I feel tied to the people in the thread. As if I have a responsibility to respond, to defend her. This is why choosing battles is so important! It’s not the first battle… but how the battle manifests in your mind and consciousness.
I find myself looking out the window, in beautiful India, driving by landscapes I will only get the chance to see once, and I’m thinking about this? What a waste of my energy. 
One time when I was in elementary school, a kid was getting bullied and I went right up between him and the bullies and was ready to fight them to stop. But guess who got mad at me? The boy who was being beat up! Geez dude, I’m trying to stand up for you! But maybe he felt that I was inflaming the situation more, and making it worse for him in the long run. 
When I was in high school, there was a guy in my class that was making inappropriately aggressive comments through our club facebook page, and I publicly told him to stop. He proceeded to post threats to me on facebook, saying “You’ll get what’s coming to you white rat.” But even somehow everyone at my school supported him and ostracized me during that time. I think I responded poorly because I didn’t respond at all. Things that weren’t true were being said and spread and I just stayed silent. I felt deeply confused at how humans could be so stupid and such sheep to blindly follow what was clearly wrong just because it was what everyone else was doing. 
That wasn’t the right approach either though. My thought process was, I’m almost done with high school, thank god I’ll never have to see these people again. I’m moving on to bigger things in my life. But in retrospect, silence is not the answer. I allowed him to dictate the logic of the situation, and never stood up for myself.
I inevitably intertwined myself in the energy of the conflict, the second I picked it as a battle. You can’t drop only one fleet of troops into a battle without backup. You have to stand on your own two feet and if you’re going to fight- fight!
In India, today I visited a castle with huge walls surrounding it in a 36 km perimeter! These beautiful structure were made for living a beautiful life, but they also have a clear history of war. They defended themselves through engineering and bravery. But the defense was necessary. Wars were fought, walls were breached, and kingdoms were won. 
Even Ghandi knew that silence wasn’t synonymous with peace. He was a warrior, a non-violent one, but a warrior none the less. The silent person is not going to be the one to shake or move things.
Maybe in a small way, I need to overcome the associations with the warrior woman. She is the feminist. She is the agitator. She is bossy. She is a bitch. Society tells us that good girls and quiet and submissive. Two things that don’t lead to making a difference.
I’m still in the process of allowing my voice. That means finding when and when not to give my energy to something. To be strategic in which battles I fight. To be logical and of course, vocal. To be aware and have foresight. To stay calm and to let others decide when they need me to fight on their behalf… To trust people to be okay and to manage. To make my words meaningful.

What will I choose to put my energy towards in my future? 

I am curious as to why I am so attached. Here I am, with one small backpack, lost and wandering and I have the vanity to regret chopping off my hair.

When I was 13 and in a fit of depression I cut all my long brown hair off to an ugly bob. But I didn’t stop there. Bleach and heavy make up hid my phenotype. It took me years and years to realize that my natural beauty is far better than trying to be someone who I am not. I was filled with regret and felt not beautiful.

Years passed and eventually my hair grew back, and I cut off the fraying orange that was left from the bleach. I was humbled by the beauty my hair seemed to carry, and how I felt without it. Sometimes when people tell me I’m beautiful, I find myself thinking, “you only think that because of my hair.”

This isn’t a happy or empowering post. This attachment isn’t something I’m proud of. But sometimes writing can be therepuetic, and I’m interested in understanding in myself this panic I am feeling from cutting my hair. What the hell, Raleigh! It’s just hair.

Beauty is not who you are. If you allow yourself to be nothing more than a body, then you will fade with your age. It is inevitable for wrinkles to line the years of laughter on your skin. It is inevitable that your hair will fall out. It is inevitable that beauty will fade.

Please do not be so silly as to create dispair from wanting something that is gone. You already cut your hair, and this emotion of mourning is just proof that you need to let go.

I wish I didn’t feel this way. I wish it felt like I was a warrior preparing for battle. That beauty was a sacrifice for traveling, for color, for life. That I am a woman not bound by the heavy burden of narcisism. But unfortunately, I find myself looking in the mirror and being angry at myself.

Why did you do that!

But I don’t think it’s just cutting my hair that’s the feeling. I think it has to do with it representing self destruction. How easy sissors are to find… how much can be destroyed with them.

But this thought of panic is destructive too. I am a soul, not a body! Sissors cannot diminish my value! Hair does not define me!

I allow myself to be free.