Denver's Avoidant Lover

 I’m in a mid-marriage boredom with Denver. AWhat feels like a lifetime ago I moved here for the first time, and I fell in love.  I was blinded by the coolness of Denver. Everyone on their  fixie bikes, dumping out their compost bins, stopping at the local bookstore to read poetry and holding up their quippy signs at Occupy rallies in front of the capitol. I had romantic evenings with bearded boys strolling down alleyways after vegan restaurants and indie music. I had evenings at universities and conference centers where I feigned understanding of complex international affairs and liberal democracies, listening to leaders I looked up to. I thought it was the coolest thing our mayor started a craft brewery, and then went on to be governor just to give his seat to a black man. Coming from Oklahoma, it was a lot. I had that innocent insecurity of a young lover, looking up to Denver and its cool intellectuality. It was 2009 and I had so much life to live – music? Grad school? International travel? Polyamory? – But I knew one thing, I wanted to marry Denver, and I wanted to feel like I was a part of it all. This would be home someday.

At some point, I thought Denver wasn’t quite enough, or I hadn’t gotten enough adventure and fun out of my system, so I shipped off to another country after a few years, but always with a foot hold (aka bicycle) in Denver. When I moved back, the relationship went to a whole new level – I want to buy a home here, be an active citizen here, vote here, build community here, have a family here.  I’m ready to “settle”  

I did all that. Now I’m even starting a business here. Giving my talent and time and so so so much money to Denver. And, fifteen years after the first rosy glow, I’m in a mid-marriage boredom.

I am an avoidant lover, its true. I took the quiz, and a therapist confirmed, so it must be real. I have a hard time believing in love, believing that love can stay, that I can stay, and not feel trapped. Is that how I love this City? Or, is how I love this city, something I can learn from to love better in romantic relationships?

Its interesting how I’ve stayed committed to Denver all this time. It feels like keeping it on the back burner for so long – always an option but never a choice – was what has helped me stay for so long. And that’s exactly what I do to lovers. Once I made the commitment to be here, be all in, dive in, give it my all, I got … bored? I got… judgy?  Is Denvr really all its cracked up to be? Does Denver care that I’m here? Am I really making a difference or is this all just a green washed city that wants to be San Francisco with its bro-ey breweries and ski bums and techies that are making it impossible to afford to live here for anyone who doesn’t fit that mold – and does Denver really care? Am I proud to be “of Denver”? Which is exactly what I do to lovers.

Nonetheless, I’ve stayed. I AM still here, despite the urge to run or give up or judge or think I can find something more ‘perfect’.  I’m opening a business here that will be an emblem of my contribution to the city I want to live in, the kind of people I want to gather with, the kinds of values I want to put out in the world.  And I have to love Denver for what it is, even if its not exactly what I think it should be. I have to love Denver for the way its loved me and carried me through all my phases of the last fifteen years.  Denver has seen me through so many heartaches and jobs and bike accidents and restaurant closings and rallies at the capitol and boyfriends and best friends and homes and snow storms… Denver has made me who I am today in some part. And I, have made Denver. Because I am part of it all. Just like I wanted to be. Entangled in this imperfect place but trying to love it and let it love me. Exactly the way I want to love a lover. 

The Beauty and the Terror of it All

“… let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going, no feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.” 

There it was, tucked inside one of the first hand-written letters Adam sent me in the “snail mail.” A line from his favorite Rilke poem. The letter would eventually become the bottom rung in a soaring stack of hand-written letters, notes, poems and cards from Adam that sits bundled on the top shelf of my closet. 

I think of that line, when I have the wherewithal to to sip on its wisdom. 

I met Adam a few months before he wrote me that letter, poem included. I was a wee 24, hipster-fied (or trying to be) grad student biking the streets of Denver, reading the likes of Wendell Berry and Amartya Sen, working in low-lit cafés slinging whiskeys on weeknights. In other words, I was right up Adam’s alley.  

One of those weeknights, Adam sat down at said café to write in a notebook over said whiskey and I somehow worked up the courage to lock with his dreamy eyes. What ensued was, well, pretty magical - doodling on napkins of the sailboats we would scurry away on together, sauntering down the middle of urban moonlit streets, buzzing to complex melodies from Radiohead on the record player, and musing endlessly of literature, community, meaning and farming - “the dirty life” as he called it.

It was dream, and he was magical, and I was swooning.

Over the next decade of friendship and love, I would come to find that Adam was no stranger to magic and dreaminess and swooning, and even his own poetry. He wrote me one about that first night we met and titled it “the pantry” where we had our first kiss. Swoon.

Hopelessly romantic, steadfastly meaningful, patient and undeniably tender - timeless qualities Adam modeled for all of us. He felt often like a refuge of softness and presence in a world that can be so cruel and constant. 

We welcome it, if we can.

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My memories of Adam’s magic abound.

I remember the sweet smell of tussling around in a bed of mountain flowers with my favorite bearded lover one summer, or more. 

I remember the way the sun made the metal fence light up like fireworks at the biker bar in the mountains outside Florissant, as Adam and I embarked on the, “How do you feel about me?” conversation. I remember the tears as I drove out of those mountains, falling to the rhythms of our favorite Colorado folk band’s latest album he burned for me (hand-label sticker and all).  He spent the last 3 days encouraging me to write and nurturing passions I couldn’t even name, yet my answer was still “I don’t know.” 

I remember the way his grin made me blush, even over the pixalated Skype squares, so many early morning sessions from Central America to Colorado. And damn those dreamy eyes.  I remember the walk outside his cabin at dusk to watch the sun go to sleep over the ridge. I had a lot to say about changing the world; he had a lot to say about silence, and walking. 

I remember the calm and cool held as my heart skipped a beat when he pulled out a letter I wrote to him about my grandmother five years prior. He read to me, pausing only to catch my eyes for dramatic effect - Look! This is your life!’ I swear he knew how to celebrate it more than I even did.

I remember the gleam in his eye the first time I saw Adam get high, his head and heart buzzing, surreptitiously, as if they’d finally found respite from all the feelings. That was the first night we had sex. 

I remember how familiar he felt adventuring through hills and mountainsides around the world. One night, in August 2018, we sauntered through one of them in Boulder to watch the sunset, returning to the news my friend had finally met the end to his fight with cancer. I cried in Adam’s arms that night, and that would be the last time.

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But I remember too, Adam’s madness. 

He experienced the world deeply, and we all reaped the benefits of that. But we paid the consequences too of what was sown. 

I can’t sweetly grin at the buzz I get reading “the pantry” without also remembering the pain of watching his rollercoaster of emotions for the next several months, several years. After that first night, Adam and I scurried into an unfamiliar (to me) romance, and he showed me sides of himself, rather quickly, that I wouldn’t quite know how to name until later in my life - depression, addiction, love. 

I remember being smothered with gifts and letters and attention maybe only the gods among us know how to receive.  He wanted all of me and I’m not sure I could even define the parts of me willing to be given. My journal entry 2 months into the endeavor read, “I am scared of you.”

I remember Adam crying in my second story apartment the first time we broke up. The leaves tussling in a spring storm outside my window personified the vibration of anguish, anxiety and loneliness he tried to tell me. I don’t think he knew how to say it yet, but each time he fell in love - which was often - all that meaning got bottled up in one person. All the expectation and hope and fear for the world… maybe loving that person enough would concoct the right elixir to loosen the grip pain had on his mind.

I remember sitting in my backyard watching the sun set over a crumbling fence line telling us we’d both somehow become mortgage-paying adults. He shivered as he told me his capacity for love scared him, his sensitivity frightened him, his capital D Depression was something we should talk about. The way he navigated shame about codependency and addiction. 

Adam never did anything lightly. If he called, he called 10 times. If he wrote a letter, it made you want to quit your job become a monk and read Neruda for the rest of your life. If he planned a day trip, he drowned every last detail in significance. If he made love, like really made love - the I swell when you swell, I hurt when you hurt kind of love - it made you cry. He felt all these quotidian emotions we know too well - hurt, loneliness, regret, worry, elation, connection, magic, madness. But he felt them all in swales, in cycled cyclones, daily.  

Equanimity, harmony, balance. Timeless qualities, in their own right. 

We welcome them, if we can. Adam could, but only for so long.

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Adam and I reignited a lover’s reunion his last summer. In hopeless romantic fashion we giggled our way through a date while harvesting peaches and making jam. Swoon. Later, snuggling after our foray into the bedroom, he stared straight at the ceiling when he told me about his first attempt at suicide. And then about his obsession with his last partner. And then about all the ways his brain just couldn’t accept the colossal confusion of love and wanting it all to have meaning. 

And don’t we all want meaning? So what do we do when it’s just a (un)luck of the draw, or the “wrong timing”, or “just hasn’t happened yet.” Or worse, what if the only meaning to cling to is the beauty that we mean relatively quite little in the  grand scheme of this brilliant spinning universe?  

When I asked my therapist about how to care for (or if I even could) a partner who had attempted suicide, she scoffed. “Not a deal breaker,” she said. “Listen, so many more men than you think have been through this. Not a big deal, just part of the game.” Her bedside manner was… lacking to say the least. 

While I’m all about de-stigmatizing and normalizing mental health struggles we all face, I cannot swallow the thought that any of this was “a game” for Adam. That summer, I realized just how long he had been suffering.

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And of course all these memories leave me wondering, what if.

What if I would have missed my flight that day at the biker bar.  What if I would have said yes when he wanted to come to Guatemala. What if we continued to read each other poetry. What if I would have known better, when he said I was afraid of letting someone love me, and what if he was right?  What if I would have sent him a letter, a hand-written letter, when he went back to rehab.

What if he wouldn’t have taken the last pill, or the last seven? What if he was found sooner. What if the ambulance arrived and revived him, then and there, on some country road I’ll never know.

What if we welcomed tenderness and thoughtful connection in this world, and accepted them equally along with their inescapable cousins intensity and… insanity?  

Adam was my roudiest most unruly and most romantic love. And, Adam is one of my harshest memories, my most intensely difficult relationships. Navigating depression, and feeling, and sensitivity, and poetry, and pain, and forgiveness, and a sense of ‘missing’ and ‘longing’ and ‘coming home’ all at once. 

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At a lake not far from me lay Adam’s ashes. Here lies his magic and his madness. His beauty and his terror.

He pours his way into my life, often. His insistent presence fogging up my window, whispering Hello love. Don’t forget the magic! Write letters. Talk about complexities. Walk the river paths. Hug someone, for too long. Dream about sailboats and farms. Feel it all. And love them all.  

I admire a man out the window sipping black coffee in his Carhart, people watching free of distractions, and I feel Adam’s still charm. I write letters to give to a future adopted daughter in a little notebook Adam gave me, and I feel Adam’s patient blessing. I tussle through the waves of my own mental health struggles and finding family, trying very hard to let someone love me fully, and believe it, and I feel Adam’s encouraging smile. 

Adam helped me to know the value of being easy on my own mind - my empathetic, over-thinking, heavy-feeling mind. In a way, Adam helps me forgive myself for my own beauty and my own terror. 

In no small part because of Adam, I’m forging on in a life where I try to let everything happen to me. I live with a fierce conviction of the beauty of this life - everywhere, all around us, if we can be silent enough, if we can find the time to write about it, if we can take that extra cup of coffee, and probably a cupcake too. And, with more than a slight nod to Adam, I will not cower in the face of terror in this life, holding space for the madness that comes when we try to navigate the confusion, anxiety and loneliness that overwhelming beauty can bring. 

It is ironically sobering, the cocktail of sweet and sour we all want to sip on to smooth out the in-betweens of this world.  To calm our nerves when life tells us to quantify and pack up our experiences.  My memories of Adam are boundless, spilling over the sides of the box I tried to put him in on my top shelf. Some of them framed in a picture on my wall, some of them flush through a smile on a quiet mountain hike, some of them cry out in a stupor of dreamy drunkeness. It is all of these things.  Adam was all of these things, and life is too. 

“Let everything happen to you, the beauty and the terror. No feeling is final, just keep going.”    

On Meditating

I remember the first time I meditated. It was before I even knew what the word pandemic meant, I think. And certainly before I had any personal meaning associated with the words quarantine or loneliness. I was a young eager ambitious curious young woman on a journey around the world (literally, I bought a Round the World Ticket as they were coined back then), and ready to test my limits in any way I could.   

I was a solid 10 months and something like 16 countries deep at this point. My boyfriend at the time was with me, Michael, but we had already decided to split once we got back state-side. Our other best friend had just flown over to join us for a month on the travels. Easton liked to meditate. He was already into meditation against all the odds brought on by a Christian conservative Oklahoman, football-fearing, gun-toting rough and tumble upbringing had afforded us all. 

I remember watching Easton meditate one morning. The three of us were sharing a hostel room, with three single cots in it.   Easton sat on his own cot, cross legged in his bright orange pants, mala beads around his neck, eyes softly closed, silent. I remember tip toeing onto my cot, pretending not to stare. Then I realized he couldn’t tell if I was staring. Or could he? I stood there, watching him as he sat in silence, wondering how some day I could become good enough to do something like that. 

The next day we found a meditation center in Bangkok where we could get a semi-affordable afternoon class. Michael was annoyed, at best. Easton was encouraging, maybe too much. I was ready to feign a coolness somewhere in between eager and expert. 

It was vipasana meditation, and I remember this meaning something about the “right now” moment. It was also a walking meditation that went extremely slow. One step would take something like 3 minutes. We took the time to feel the way our ankles turned, the way the cold of the floor felt on the heel, then the palm, then the toe of my foot. Noticing the way my knee bent, the magical wonder that is my pelvis and hip joints keeping me upright. Realizing it wasn’t always this easy for the homo sapiens. 

There were certainly times when my eyes creeped open, ego at the ready to see how distracted Michael was, or how many other foreigners had trickled in, or how the teacher with the dangly dress and flashy bangles was floating across the room, or any other way I could find to fill my desperate anxious mind. It was too distracting - and maybe too terrifying - to stay in the moment, how is that possible?  

A few days later we took a little backpacking trip into the mountains outside of Chang Mai, and I decided the ample hiking was as good of time as any to test out these new super cool meditation tricks I’d surely mastered after my one class. I walked, mostly in silence, in the back, a little faster than the Bangkok excursion, but trying to slip back into that “right now” feeling. Now I’m walking, Now I’m breathing, Now I’m smelling (myself, among other things). Now I see this, and that, and so many things. 

All that “right now” observation was pretty sweet. And it lasted a whole.… 3 seconds. 

At the time, my 22 year old brain was particularly enthralled in the melodrama of my college boyfriend and my attempt at an “open relationship” - what did it mean? Was I “cool” enough to do it? Was he right that I was just a Giant ball of insecurity? Would I ever feel safe and calm in a relationship? What did I need to do to get it right? How can I be better, stronger, smarter, wittier, more interesting, more easy-going, more feminine, but not too feminine, but very very alternatively french-like hip and progressive enough to handle an open relationship and not care too much? 

I was fascinated by how much stuff was in my brain. And I wasn’t even chipping the tip of the iceberg. A whole rock solid frozen chunk of other anxious bullshit was looming underneath. And even a whole lot of not anxious stuff either - a to do list mostly consisting of needing to find an internet cafe to Skype my Mom, a wondering if I needed to pee and how that would play out in the hills of Thailand, some wandering thoughts about that beautiful meditation teacher with the flowy skirt and flashy bangles. 

 

Every time I became conscious to the slur of thoughts and how far I’d gotten off the path of the “right now” I’d say shit! And come right back to it. And then inevitably end up right back in the giant swirling spiral of an incredible amount of brain power. 

It was both inconceivable and impressive. 

Thirteen years (ish) later, here I am a 35 year old woman living alone in a pandemic, a little heart broken by a string of missed shots on the relationship court, in therapy and meditating like there’s no tomorrow.  Yesterday was Valentine’s day, and my favorite Jeff Warren put on a great episode about love and caring - mostly for ourselves - on his aptly named Do Nothing Project. Man, I love that guy. 

Meditating tonight, for 25 minutes, Is a whole different ball game.

My mind still wanders - there’s a lot to think about these days. I didn’t do a good job with work today, I wasn’t focusing very well. Who can focus when we’re 12 months into this hell hole of a pandemic-political-economic destruction of everything. Ahhh, return to the now, comforting myself, loving myself. 

I kind of want to read my book after this, the Overstory, about trees. I love trees. That’s what I need to do, just focus on trees and my garden and planting things and ecosystems and building community. Ahhhh but right now I am here, comforting myself after a few rough days on the anxiety train. 

I wonder how cold it is outside, a homeless guy literally froze to death outside my window last night. I’m so grateful for my home. But man, its a big home, and I’m in it all by myself. 

Mostly, this is where my brain ends up. I watch it whirl up around some shame of being alone, again. Somehow, I’ve developed a very well-trodden path leading right to the doorstep of You’re Alone You’ll Always Be Alone What Happened to You? 

But now, I am better at meditating. I’ve built some muscles in my brain since that first go so many years ago. I’m better at seeing these thoughts pop up - the todos, the shouldas, the whys - and each one is like a little soft cloud, like one of those thought bubbles in the cartoons. I see it rise, I see it fill up with some common thoughts I’ve thought before, and then I press my magic little wand and it softly poofs away. They’re here, they come, they’re present. But they’re not me. They’re passing clouds in my blue sky of cosciousness.  I can maintain that concentration on the consciousness, the “right now” of this moment a little more clearly. 

And what do I find there in that blue sky? Nothing. I guess that’s what Jeff Warren was hoping for. I find stillness. I find a rest for my brain. I find myself soothing and nurturing a very scared, hurried mind that is always thinking and finally finds a moment of  - oh, ::sigh:: That feels nice. 

It kinda feels like my brain just finished its second margarita.

Sometimes, some tricky stuff happens in my brain with this silence. Like visions of wide open plains and prairies, and something very sunny peaking through the grasses.  Or sometimes I  sense I’m floating upward, there’s a half moon of light up there. Or sometimes, I literally feel like I’m holding my hand, petting myself like I would Bufa, saying ahhhhhh. You’re okay

Weird, huh? 

But also cool, very cool.  Cooler than a French hipster in an open relationship. And tougher. I wonder if I’m the one cross legged in serene silence that I always wanted to be (minus the orange pants or the mala beads).  

My anxious thoughts are not solved, that’s for sure. I still feel pain about being alone, especially during this isolating pandemic. And I still feel scared about when and how that will ever change. But my heart’s not beating out of my chest anymore, my body isn’t in fight-or-flight mode, that little voice inside my head I like to call Ronda isn’t quite as harsh as she was an hour ago. 

Ahhh. That feels nice. I'm going to go read that book about trees now.

On Family

 

Its fall. Things are changing. And aren’t they always. The cold that doesn’t’ set in early enough in the night, but wakes me in the morning with a crispness my body craves. The starlings have started to land in flocks on my front lawn, fifty at a time, taking off in a synchronized emergence that leaves me jealous. My body gets tired sooner, but so sooner does it light up in the morning light with inspiration. 

 I’ve been thinking about family a lot this year. The one I grew up with, that I call my parents and sister and brother now, the one that keeps my stomach in knots yearning for some level of emotional intimacy we never learned to whip up. Also thinking about the one I’ve built, with the ones I truly love, the ones that hold me when I’m crying, laugh with me til I’m crying again, stumble through life with me and help me to refine my edges and move towards where I want to be while remembering right where I am. Then, of course, thinking of the family I might call my own child someday. I dream of her, running around the house. I dream of myself being able to hold space for her, to build a pattern in her that knows love is safe. And maybe dreaming she can help me learn the same. 

 Mom and Dad came to visit last week. After a couple difficult (for all) conversations with me begging for softness and closeness amidst my impending choice to be a single mother, and with my father calling me a ‘snotty little bitch.’ Honestly, it felt good to hear him say it. Masochistic? Or just relieving that finally something was said instead of another layer on the old pile of passive aggressive violence and silent anger in the family. My dad and I will never talk about that again, like all the things we’ve never addressed. My mom, on the other hand, was great. I see her trying, trying to meet her sensitive daughter with the best she’s got. She asked questions, she spent time with me, she said some kind things about my friends. She may never be the mom who could ever hold me hand, or stroke my hair or my face, or look at my sweetly and tell me that I can do it, that I can be a mother, that she is proud of me, that she is here for me. And I’m grieving that, perhaps in a way that’s really going to shift the pain for me for once. 

 Perhaps some of the forgiveness and grace I’m feeling for my mom comes from seeing her brother. 

That’s why she came to Colorado. Her brother, Tim, is dying. Her words not mine. They haven’t spoken in 10 years, since Grandma’s funeral, and they didn’t speak for a good 10 years before that. Her other brother, Mike, no one knows where he is. Apparently he’s got six kids somewhere around Colorado, all my cousins running around this state, but I couldn’t even tell you one of their names. Her sister, Glenna, who has always been good to me when I see her once every 3-4 years, she won’t speak to either of the brothers. Apparently the last time Glenna saw Tim he tried to strangle her, a story my mom just shared with me this trip. 

I watched my body tighten, the tears build in the corners of my eyes, the heart stop itself from showing vulnerability in front of my mom. I watched myself just keep driving, trying to listen to her passively share the violence of her family, and mine. My uncle tried to strangle my aunt after my grandmother died, in the same small, smoky living room in Greeley, Colorado where my dad tried to strangle my brother years ago. We’ve never spoken of that one again either. 

 This, my friends, is America. Northeastern Colorado, rural, staring out the window at a farm that will never feed people, watching the dust billow up on the abandoned old cars on the side of the dirt road. Walking up the old ratty stairs of a house left for dead long ago, crushing the pages of old Buddhism texts beneath my feet as I make my way into my past, into my family’s heirlooms of memories. Breathing in the aroma of cigarettes, speed, rotting fast food bags, pain and tears cried into the carpet, fights that turned violent, things thrown, relationships broken, boys never turning into men – or maybe molding men too fast, too soon. In the background I spot a hole in the wall and I wonder what the story is. But in front of the hole is a box of Pallisade peaches. Owen – my cousin - wants to can some later. Dissolved in all the roughness that’s making me cringe, there is an instinct of sweetness, a common love for, well, good local fruit. Tim is dying, that seems to be true. Owen and Kelton, my other cousins running around Colorado that I don’t know of but can at least say their names, are showing a love I’ve never been able to experience with my parents. I watched Owen’s hands, hurt from heroine addiction and strong from scraping by an existence putting up siding on his dad’s old house, move across Tim’s back rubbing back and forth trying to help him cough out the cancer that will never leave again. I watched Kelton’s eyes, the sensitive searching ones yearning to be seen, tear up as he gives us the update on Tim’s prognosis and what life’s next steps are in life after he dies. He doesn’t know. 

 I am my mother’s daughter. I have her heart, her rebellion. Something made my mom leave this old house, leave this old town, search for something more. Something made my mom believe in goodness, in social work, in helping people. Probably the same people like her family. Something made my mother put herself through a semester of college even though it angered her father. Something made her believe she could figure out how to be a mother, not only of one, but of three. And something made her keep trying to love even though everything she’s known of love, including my father, and her son at times, is scary, hard, distant, violent, substance abusive, harsh, and ultimately leading to not speaking. 

 I am my mother’s daughter, and maybe I can do what she has done.

On Loving unconditionally, me.

 

Thats what I wanted. To love you unconditionally. Yes, I wanted that in return, and I still do. 

But somehow loving you became more important. It comes more naturally, more peacefully than trying to love myself. To see you for your whole self, for this man you’ve yet to become but that you are becoming, always. To watch your curls unfurl on your head, cut back, and rebirth. To watch your desire pull the curtain back on your confidence. To watch your hands find a steadiness around my hips, in the soils of Colorado, pecking away awkwardly at a computer, soulfully sprinkling salt over the Turkey stock at thanksgiving dinner. To give you an appreciative audience to the unraveling of your mystery. 

Thats what I wanted, to love you unconditionally. And I still do. 

I try to love myself, perhaps more, unconditionally. I unravel the mysteries of my shadows, I’m digging too many layers deep looking for a richer humus of myself. I’m turning over the layers looking for the beauty in how my selves have decomposed into themselves to bring me here. I'm trying to believe that that is sweeter - or will be - than the fiery sweetness of knowing you might love me.

the Big Feelers

 Someone told me the other day, "You and me... we’re a lot."  

I am a lot. I've had more than my fair share of heavy feelings. Maybe that’s why I tend to love men who have felt a lot too. Like, finally I'm not alone. 

Austin always felt a lot. Thinking back 20 years when my love-struck eyes gazed back at him in his beat up old car I found so charming, holding my breath at 4AM after a cram session at the library, believing with all my heart that our love was about to burst on the scene. I felt a lot that night. And so did Austin... unfortunately not for me, but for another woman getting married (oh Oklahoma college days!). He wanted advice from me, his "special friend", on whether and how to make a romantic stop-the-wedding Rom Con scene. 

My heart has always wanted to believe in these scenes. Thanks Hollywood. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I filled my brain with Dawson’s Creek, girl-next-door, innocently simple yet extremely dramatic and never fulfilled love. It's what I grew up on, and what I never had, and what made me believe maybe there was always something wrong with me.  I’ve tried living out the image of this perfectly imperfect girl, independent and stubborn yet you just can’t not love her, she's the man everyone wants! Ever seeking the adorning male gaze, especially from the Big Feelers like me.

But I’m not that woman. No one is.

I've watched Austin and I both fight the battle for balance of being a Big Feeler and a Reasonable  Badass in this world. (Why are they at odds with each other?) Austin, my college girl crush, my Hot Boy in a Towel, wandering off to New Zealand to be a sheep farmer, reading The Razor’s Edge with me with notes in the margins, clicking his heels mid-air in front of my downtown apartment pre-hipster Denver, smoking his first joint under an adult living room tent, flying me to Vegas for a renewal on the belief in adventure, stretching his arms out for love.

In many ways, I’ve been stretching my arms right back at him, and to everyone. Believing in all the fragility and vulnerability and beauty of Love.

In 2020, I watched Austin and his Big Feeler love take a turn. 

After another (yes, another) heartbreaking breakup, a text from Austin came as a refreshing breath of Mountain Air, an invitation to take up space in his Crested Butte home for the weekend and literally and figuratively put my feet up and say fuck it all. I pictured myself next to the fire, sipping cheap red wine, finishing my book “the Subtle art of not giving a fuck” from my Ex nonetheless, and renewing my lease on adventure while living out the Razors Edge of life. I opened the door that night to a different picture. Not prepared at all for what life was about to throw at me. 

 Austin’s brother Clay was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Disorder back in college. Back when Austin and I were both struggling to find our own truth in the midst of the Bible Belters, and back when Mental Health was a dirty word among Evangelicals and progressives of Oklahoma country life. Back before my friend Easton was  diagnosed with Bipolar too. Back before Adam would commit suicide after years of severe depression. Back before I knew how to name my own Anxiety. 

For Austin, it's always been his brother's "thing". Of course, Austin and his family have “to deal” with it because of his brother. I’ve only heard of how Austin has to pay for, clean up, cover up, struggle with the reality of his brother’s mental illness. I never really thought or felt the need to dig deeper into how it may affect Austin beyond that. 

 When I opened the door, Austin’s eyes told me something was off. His normally warm and welcoming heart was cold, red-blooded, stressed, distracted. He couldn’t even muster the focus to show me to my room. My ego immediately made it about me - was he mad I was late? Was he upset and needed to talk? I need to pee, but I should listen to Austin, I should make him some food. Instead, he left me for the Steam Room, and I made my way to the kitchen where I met Clay, Austin’s brother, who I would spend the next 24 hours in the worst fight or flight of my life. Austin’s bipolar manic episode started off with a slight, moderate pacing and heavy breathing - something you could call stress. He travels back and forth between New York, and Crested Butte and London so much you might expect he just needs to chill out. Austin also has quite a bit of money - I mean, he’s pacing in a 4000 square foot home in the most expensive mountain towns in Colorado, taking breaks in his personal steam room. He runs with the CEOs of Exxon mobile and private agents of Christopher Dawkins. So when he starts telling paranoid conspiracy theories of people following him and listening to his plans to start a new political party based on love (Make Integrity Great Again), it's somewhat plausible to think he’s right. 

I thought he might just needs to lay down for a minute; I laid my feet over his; we put on his favorite comedy shows, gave him water. His mild stress and pacing turned to fierce paranoia. Kris, should I drink water? Clay, what was that noise outside? Do you think the fire is real? Do you think they’re listening to us through your phone? The pizza I tried to get him to eat was poisoned, the water glass we gave him was contaminated with bleach, the vape pen was stealing his DNA and uploading his consciousness into the internet. I’ve never seen anyone like this. Even on molly, X, acid you name it - I’ve never seen someone so convinced. 

 His paranoia eventually merged into a super ego, a superman complex, a delusion of grandeur. He threw a bag over the stairwell, breaking a bunch of glass in the throw. The outcome invigorated him, seeing the destruction his body could cause, and he flipped over a coffee table. He began “breathing the breath of Yahweh, and eventually threw a 50 pound weight over the stairwell and cracked the floor below. That’s when I grabbed my dog and locked myself in the room on the basement floor - bad call. 

Had I known the trajectory of the night, or had I had any semblance of idea what was going on with a bipolar paranoid manic, I would have grabbed my keys and left. But this is Austin - my hot boy in a towel, my Philosophies of LIfe college philosiphizer, my partner in crime in the belief that all that matters in the end is Love. How could I leave him? And how could I leave Clay? Clay eventually made into my room and we locked Austin - who was now masturbating, peeing, screaming, exercising the Antichrist out of the house, vacumming, - out. Austin tried to break the door down. While he wasn’t successful in getting in, he did manage to break the door. Here I am again, behind a closed door being banged on. I feel small, and emotional, and questioning of myself over reacting. And most of all I feel alone. I made it through the night without a single tear. Austin made it through the night too, somehow. At 5AM he decided, “THE GAME IS UP.” He just kept saying it was over, he knew everything now, and he was “out.” Leaving behind his phone and a winter coat, he left in a car with only boxers on in the middle of Colorado mountain winter. Sparing the details of that horrible day, I can end with … he survived. Physically, he survived. Mentally, I’m not sure if he’ll ever be the same. And neither wil I. I too am human, I could easily be you.

Go Love Part 3

 If you were a carpenter, I would know your hands. 

If you were a healer, Id know the magic of your lands. 

If you were a father, I would have known your child.

If you would have stayed a stranger, I never would have known how I could smile.

All the things you could have been to me, 

I’ll never know what you could have been to me. 

If you were the dreamer, I would have known your mind

If you were the teacher, I would have known your kind

If you were the lover, I would have known your touch

If you would have stayed a stranger, I never would have known the magic this much. 

All the things you could have been to me

I never would have known what you could have been to me. 

You are not a father now, you set yourself free

you are not my carpenter now, though I still find you in the trees. 

Your are not my dreamer nor my lover nor my stranger now, 

still you’ve found a way to remain my teacher somehow. 

All the things you could have been to me, 

I’ll never know what you could have been to me. 

But now I know  what you are still and will forever be to me. 

You’re still my love, even after you set yourself free.