Everything is beautiful on Planet Earth. Even what we don’t yet know how to look at. Even what we don’t want to see.

Sometimes love is letting go. Sometimes love is standing on the edge of a cliff. Here I am, standing on that edge. Suspended. Below is what I do not know. Where I stand is all the truth that is pushing me forward. I feel love so completely as I look over the ledge of losing it. The end bringing with it the intense rush of everything that led up to it. Whoosh! Your love flashes before your eyes.

I used to clean my bathroom with a toothbrush every Sunday. And every night before bed I’d do 300 crunches. I thought anything less than an A was a death knell announcing the end of the world. And I used to think my body was a torture chamber.

It’s not the dark’s fault we’re afraid. The dark is just as uncertain as we are. It is waiting just as we wait. To see what the light has to reveal. For form to take shape. For even just a sliver to illuminate the mystery. The faintest clue of where to go from here. Can we wait?

I celebrated last New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles by drinking a whoops-a-daisy dose of champagne, weirding out a stranger, and waking up with a hangover that lasted three days. It was not at all how I had intended to show 2018 what I was all about.

This is hard to write. I imagine that might make this hard to read as well. A big part of me doesn’t feel like I can publish these words and is terrified at the thought. But it’s that very part of me that is also whispering, keep going. I want to give voice to what hides…

I have a desire monster. She is enormous and I am five feet, six and three quarter inches. I generally say I am “five-seven,” because that is one body measurement I have found advantageous to round up. Sometimes I forget I am not a 350-pound line backer.

I fell in love for the first time in the summer of 1995. I was 15. Love washed over me like a tidal wave spelling out the word Y E S. In all caps. The world opened up. The sky got bluer. Ridiculously blue. Flowers became more fragrant. Intoxicating. I was intoxicated…

How many times can a heart break and still retain its shape? Its basic ability to work. To pump blood. To love.

I loved you. This pain tells me I still do. And even still I am learning to accept that love isn’t enough to keep us alive. Water and air. Patience and space. I am loving you by leaving you alone. I am loving you by surrendering my hope. I am loving you by letting you go. All I have ever wanted was to feel safe enough to stay.