Here's what I know...
Here’s what I know: I know when I die, I want to know I lived. And I mean really lived. I do not want to be scared anymore. I do not want to hide or hold back. I am about to enter my 40th year and while I still recognize these hands as my own, I want to use them.
My gosh how many plane napkins, bar napkins, journals, computers, scraps of paper have I filled up with words, with dreams, with wishes? How many men have I watched in love with other women, in love with me, me in love with them and then...nothing? How many scripts? How many unwritten, unmade, unseen? How many songs unsung?
And I don’t regret one minute of my life, not one god blessed minute to date. I do not regret falling in love with Marin or Jake or Rick or Bryan or Matt or Mark. No, how could I? If I had to have one of course, it would be not telling them. It would be assuming they knew how I felt.
god i loved marin. and jake. they made me so happy. when i made them laugh, when they smiled proudly at me, no one made me laugh like them. no one.
My first love letter was written to me on a barf bag from an airplane, and magazine pages. God, we were in love, I was in love. My heart exploded every time I saw his handwriting on any surface. Exploded. I don’t want to hurt like that again. I’ve never wanted to hurt like that again and so god of course I have stayed in wait.
If I never find out if he likes me, then I never have to find out if he doesn’t. But that’s not how this works and that’s how I have gotten to almost 40 with only one major and very failed romance. That is if I believed in failure and thank god I still believe in romance.
But I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t pretend anymore that the love I felt for those two, the proverbial loves of my life...it’s not them, it was never them, not them or any of the other men i've ever loved. it’s me. It’s in me. It is me. And I don’t have to wait to find out if someone likes me. And I don’t have to be scared if someone won’t. I have to like me.
All of me, radically and at all costs. Wholly and completely and unconditionally. And the thing is when I drop the act and let myself out to play, I fucking adore myself. I’m fun and I’m beautiful too, like inside and out. And the more I can let myself know that, and the more that I can reassure myself that this doesn’t change based on outer circumstances, the more I will believe it. The more I will live it. The less I will hide, the more I will write and sing and produce and speak and live and love.
And my god I love. Ask anyone. I love. So as this new moon envelops me in this tin tube in the sky, and as I enter the last month of my 30’s I vow to remember who I really am as often as I need to. I vow not only to love myself in theory but to know myself as love in practice.
I vow to let myself cry when I need to. I vow to let myself scream when I need to. I vow to let it be ok when I get sad, scared and lonely, because I will. I vow to let it be ok if I want kids and wonder why I don’t have them yet. I vow to let it be ok to want a partner and wonder why I haven’t met him yet, or wonder if I have. I vow to let it be ok if I drink too many margarita’s every now and again and to let it be ok when I get mad at myself for it. I vow to let it me ok when I mistakenly feel like I am not doing enough, or being enough.
I vow to let myself know in any way I need to, that This love I know myself as exists, as me, independent of all those things.
My marital status, sexual desire, thigh size, or pay-check have nothing to do with it. Nor does my lack of offspring, or sold scripts, or un-produced movies or unsung songs. in fact it's just the opposite. in fact those are the things that make me me. those are the things that make me love, that make me fun, that make me beautiful and unique and alive.
and, I also vow to sing. Now that I know and finally recognize myself as who I truly am and have always been, I vow to sing And write. i vow to let accepting and allowing the amazing things in my life to be as important as accepting and allowing the not so amazing things. I will celebrate it all, I will celebrate this life moving forward. This whole life.
I will celebrate the people I love and their amazingness, right next to mine. And I will do my best to release all attachment to outcome and live fully in the love that I have known myself to be. God I feel it right now coursing through me just thinking about Marin’s letters despite the fact that they were written so many, many years ago. How wonderful it is to know that that is who I am. And that is who he is, wherever he is. And that is who we all are and that we all deserve to know ourselves as that.
Thank you. Thank you American Airlines and thank you sappy English rom-com. Thank you sweet flight attendant for this pen. Thank you Marin and Jake. and thank you me. What will these next months be like with these promises in my veins, this new deeper commitment? What will it be like when I choose to really live? To really be alive knowing myself as love?
Will I speak up to the men I am experiencing myself as love with now? Will my novel flow out of me? Will weight fall off? Will a man end up in my bed? A child in my future? Oops- expectations, or maybe just desire...it’s the attachment I need to look out for, but that’s ok, I am after all still in my 30’s.
In my 40’s I will let all that go and live free. Oh fuck it, I let it go now. And know it will show up again, and so, I will let it go again and again and again. I will let it go as often as I need to and return to knowing myself as love. And I will walk every step committed to this life, this expression, this moment.
And with this commitment to knowing myself as love, I say, thy will be done god (universe, mother, spirit, what have you) thy will be done.
(Use me, god (universe, mother, spirit, what have you), in the name of love, use me, I dare you.)