nakedjen

Love hard when there is love to be had.

My own brain is on overdrive in many odd and unusual ways these days. Love can do that to a person, I suppose. Or so I've been told by the powerful and all-knowing Dr. Google.

The Love Competition from Brent Hoff on Vimeo.

I mentioned the other day, via Twitter, that I felt like the Scarecrow who was asking the Almighty Oz for a brain. It really isn't much different than that these days. I have good days and then really bad days where I refuse to emerge from beneath the covers and Stella stays close and the broken record of "loser" plays over and over and over and over while I scream into my pillows. I wish I could report that it was all sunshine and roses and perfectly calm and lovely, but the swirling mish mash that substitutes currently for a brain underneath the golden curly locks atop my head is nothing if not a massive category 5 hurricane most days and the evacuation routes are all blocked with broken down cars filled with desperate people who forgot to buy gasoline and are quite certain they are all going to die underneath the bridge they call home.

The beautiful part of all of this is that I'm madly in love. Or is that the practical joke? No, it's the beautiful part, I really did just say the beautiful part and I have to, no I am absolutely insisting on believing it is the beautiful part. The kind of love that causes you to trip over your own two feet and face plant in the snow because you forget that the ground is down and the sky is up, but that just leaves you in a fit of unstoppable giggles. This is the kind of love that causes you to grab your glue and your glitter and craft a genuine valentine card despite all protestations that you do not celebrate those holidays marked on the calendar to honor dead saints and force the death of healthy flowers and consumption of chocolate just to prove that you love someone. 

This is the kind of love that hurts when you're not your best, when you're afraid to get out of bed, when your own voice is incapable of finding the words that you want, you need, to explain to this professor, this man who has chosen you, that you're broken and full of crazy mixed up hysteria that might not be exactly the naked love he was hoping to find. 

My professor is full of the kind of love that keeps saying yes and is curious enough to keep asking all the right questions when it would be far easier for him to just close the door tightly, lock it with both locks, and walk quietly away. 

I have extraordinarily hysterically bad brain chemistry.  We both know this.  He's not walking away or closing any doors or locking any locks.  He keeps showing up and he keeps loving me. He knows that if he walks in tomorrow and my hair is electric pink and there's a manifesto written on the walls and I've made forty-seven kinds of vegan chocolate cupcakes to try for dinner, well, it's chocolate cupcakes for dinner and we might have to paint the walls. The surprising and unimaginable and most lovely thing for me is that instead of living my life in the terror of the usual reaction of anger and rage that usually erupts like hot volcanic lava, I realize that my professor will embrace my quirky eccentric manifestations and love me through them.  Love.me.through.them. 

This is where the healing begins and the hurt starts to end.

I know nothing is forever.  That lesson I've learned in spades.  I also know you can't love hard enough.  You can only love what is and that's really all I've got.

 

 

It takes a long time to grow young.

Every birthday is a privilege.  Mine is especially so because a little festival called Sundance happens to coincide with it each year and offers the perfect celebration of my journey on this planet for yet another trip around the beautiful burning sun. I never can remember how old I really am and I suppose that right there is a testament to a life lived well and out loud and in a furiously happy way. 

Here's to all of you who keep all of my candles burning so very brightly.  Your love is pure magic. Blessings to you.  Each and every single one. 

 

Collateral Damage

It is still so very early.  Not the hours, of course.  Not really in the number of days.  My heart was all in, deeply, just moments it seemed after he admitted that he knew and remembered who I really was and I didn't have to wear my clothes or play charades or worry about what Google might actually reveal.

"I'm doing my best to keep this particular relationship off the front pages of the New York Times," I said to him through the closed bathroom door on Tuesday evening.  From the other side, muffled, I heard him say, "And I appreciate that, you know."  

There are things we say, but there are things we do not say.  There are very smooth edges, but there are very rough edges.  The rough edges, the ones not so smooth, the ones that feel like the familiar old scabs from forgotten relationships, or old lovers, left there as badges of honor or glory or, well, maybe not either of honor or glory but to warn against the path that you already took and do not want to venture down again.

Still, I can't help picking at them.  Rubbing against them. Peeling away at them and pushing my professor this way, just a little bit, to see how he might react.  Can he take me this way?  Can he handle me that way?  Can I be just this honest with him?  If he comes home to find me in the dark under the covers in a fetal position with the dogs curled around my head having not moved for three days is that still going to be okay?

It is inexplicable, my obsession with the wounded spots that I feel need to be tested.  Especially since my professor didn't cause the damage.  He's innocent in all of this and his only crime is having agreed to love me. 

What's even more dangerous is this doesn't feel at all like a game, but like a journey my own heart, my soul, must take in order to truly trust him completely. 

It's a very terrifying proposition.

 

the missing

i've been up since 4:20 a.m.  my professor flew to north carolina today.  there was no reason to be up at 4:20 a.m. exactly, but stella decided that was a great time to get up and i've been waking up at some time in the 4:00 a.m. hour for days and days and days and so this morning, it was 4:20 when stella and i rolled out of bed and walked downstairs and blinked our eyes open against the grey slanted light to discover that yes, in fact, those were snowflakes falling from the sky. 

i sat on the hearth in the dark and thought about a long life list of things.  it goes like that in those very early morning hours.  i wonder in my brain, almost loudly, about all sorts of things.  i resist the urge to turn on the computer and warm myself by its blue flame while i search for property in far off places like maui and mexico and the maldives.  a place other than here.  a place to disappear.

my professor stirred at 5:20.  a full hour later.  and we were all bundled and out of the house about ten minutes later.  they're quick.  my professor and his son.  his son was turned on like a bright shiny light and running at full-speed.  "do you like my skinny jeans from old navy, nakedjen?" "yes, you look quite handsome!"  "do you like my new hat?" "yes, it's awesome!" "it's a little big, but my head will grow!" "i'm going to miss you so much, nakedjen!"  "really, you will?"  "oh, yes, of course! i'm going to even miss the cats. and my mom, of course.  but it is hard to miss the cats and I'm going to even miss the cats!"

last night, as we were all lazing about on the sofa, piled on top of one another, arms and legs askew, the six year old told his father quite seriously that i'm a bit difficult.  i need such special care, you know?  special food. special sleeping arrangements. special dogs and special radio stations.  i have to shop at whole foods every single day or they will cease to exist! i can't eat hamburgers because then FAIRIES WILL DIE! 

you can always depend upon the six year old boys to give you a dose of your own reality just when you need it.  they'll happily put you right back in your special place in this world.

in the cold snowy dark i dropped them both at the airport this morning.  the six year old hugged me fiercely.  his father, my professor, hugged me even tighter and whispered that he already ached with the missing of me. 

i'll see them for the new year.  i also ache with the missing of both of them.  already.

Impractical Love

I stood barefoot, aware that the tiles beneath my feet were not nearly as cold as I expected them to be on a night in December in Utah.  Last year, in the year without a furnace, my feet were never bare, or rarely bare, bare only because it was necessary to be bare in the short hop from shower back to half wet sliding into woolly warm socks. Here I was, standing barefoot, no woolly socks, aware of the splinter in my heel that throbs still, but is a constant reminder of how much he loves me.

Bare feet on cold tile floors and a splinter deep in my heel.  Impractical reminders of love, for certain.

I swam deep into his blue eyes and shared that November (or is it December? or is it just Utah?) is very difficult for me and I become less than a glittery spectre of the better pieces of myself.  I do not like the me of these dark and cold months.  The gratitude does not come so easily.  The gifts I love and long to share feel like they're buried beneath a snowbank, frozen, waiting for the sun to return. 

Is it any wonder, really, that we smack this season of our darkest days full of proffered presents and sugar laden feasts and manufactured good cheer?

I'm not particularly fond of the manufactured good cheer, but I am a big fan of the returning light.  Give me the sun. With a side of organic arugula.  Pretty, please.

I am the first to admit, right here, out loud, that I am cold and snappish, and my own boughs break easily during these cold dark days.  So forgive me for not tossing glitter bombs in your direction.  I've got them, as I know you've got them in all the colors of the rainbow, and perhaps the best remedy for all this dark and Grinchy green glum and gloom might just be an epic glitter bomb party. 

"My life is truly that much better because of you.  Thank you for being here.  Right here.  And for reading and loving me when you do."

I'm adjusting my tutu.  And my attitude.  And waiting for the sun. 

And saying grace for the splinter in my heel and all of you. 

 

 

Marching Off the Edge of My Map

1.  "We feel that medication is not effective for the treatment of your specific condition."

I really could not believe the words that I had just heard, so I asked the woman at Humana to please repeat what she had just said.

"We're declining to pay for that specific prescription because we do not feel it is effective for treatment."

"Can I just ask, please, when you became the doctors and got to decide what might or might not be effective for treatment of my very specific medical conditions?"

The woman at Humana didn't even pause and continued, "We're partners in your excellent medical care, Jennifer.  Your prescribing doctor will need to call us to discuss and authorize that medication for you."

"The same medication that I have been taking to help control my seizures for the last ten years?  That exact same medication?  The one you have decided with my excellent medical care in mind is not effective for treatment of my medical condition?"

"You will need to have your doctor call us.  Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

It's no secret that for a lot of my life I haven't even had medical insurance.  I happen to have it right now, but I'm not even certain how it is helpful when the people who are in charge of actually providing it get to make decisions about what is and is not appropriate in terms of medication for my specific condition. 

How is this good medicine? 

I do understand that there are profit margins to be considered, but the health and well-being of our fellow human beings should always come first.  I do not believe that allowing a computer generated data program to decide that one drug is more effective for treatment than another drug just because it costs twenty five cents less per pill is the best possible treatment for anyone. 

I have paid for my drugs out of pocket for a very long time.  Last week, I paid for my drugs out of pocket, again, simply because I couldn't wait for the insurance company to have a conversation with my doctor about what might be the best course of treatment for someone in my condition. So I'm paying insurance premiums for drug coverage that I really do not even receive. 

God Bless America.

 

2.  "I'll pray for you."

J is sitting across from me in the very crowded waiting room at our public mental health facilities.  I'm there because life turned upside down, as it sometimes does.  A trip here to find an angel in torn jeans and an ancient Ramones t-shirt and paint splattered shoes who can help make sense of the cacophony of voices screaming in my head just feels like a better option than another manifesto written in sharpie on the walls.  At least this time around.

"What are you here for?," J asks me.

"My head is full of all kinds of noise. I need help."

"Oh, are you schizophrenic, too? I am. But they're really good here. They'll help you. Do you do drugs, too, to shut everyone up?"

"No. Not anymore."

"Oh, that's so lucky. I try to not do them, but it's so hard."

"Are you here to get off drugs?"

"I'm here to stay off. I've been sober for five days. But it's so hard.  I was on Meth and I don't want to do Methadone.  But they're really good here.  They're going to help you so much."

"How were you paying for all those drugs?"

"Prostitution. I am always terrified I was going to get chopped up by a chain saw.  Getting in cars with strange men.  I'm usually so high, though, I don't even know what I'm doing.."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry for me. My mother did it, too. I've been out there since I was 16.  Do you read the bible?"

"I have read it.  I don't have a lot of faith in organized religion."

"You need to find religion, Jennifer.  It's the only thing that's going to save you.  Well, it will help you save yourself."

I hear my name called.  Intake. To sort demons from angels. To hear my own voice the loudest.  To love me.  Again.

"I'll pray for you."

 

3.  He slammed his fist on the counter and erupted.  In that instant, in that single moment of his anxious frustration, everything changed.

I had to leave.

In the leaving, in the walking out, in the moments of deciding that it was safer for my heart to not be there with him than to be there with him, I was so hurt and confused and small and broken that I lost all parts of my voice and could only barely whisper.

"I don't know."

I really did not.

Know.

We walk, in each relationship that we choose, on a fine edge between all that has come before and everything that we're choosing and hoping will be. We're not alchemists, exactly, of our hearts, though the wishes for just that can be bigger than either of us dancing the dance. 

My edge has thorny branches that reach out and stab at the most unfortunate moments. His edge is unchartered territory for me and the guazy veil that hides it makes the navigation to leap from my edge to his, the alignment of our selves against each other, sometimes more difficult than I wish it would be.  We have our old maps that we're trying to use and they're failing us.

Wishing and twisting and trying to find North, though, doesn't make either of our edges any softer or the navigation any easier. 

These moments of breaking happen, the cracks appear in the surface, the veil slips and allows a better view of things that truly terrify us.

The very bad endings of old fairy tales should never be allowed to write the beginnings of your new romance.

I love my professor in ways I did not even know I was capable of loving. 

This is all brand new and un-chartered territory.

That is what I know.

 

 

Melancholia

Love.

I've got a lot of it, especially lately.  I'm so very grateful that in spite of myself love keeps finding me.  In all the best and most beautiful ways.

I'm also suffering and it seems ridiculous to write about that here, but it is the current state of affairs and I feel that if I don't write about it I'll only be further consumed by it.

I've got some massive debts, both real and psychic, that are currently haunting me.  The debts belong to me, of course, not to any of you, and I don't expect anyone else to take care of them.  However, I need to just be honest and share that right this minute I am having my own small series of panic attacks and seizures and, yes, I also know that I am completely responsible for this particular and awful state of affairs, as well.

My biggest fear my entire life has been that I will be the bag lady living under the bridge with my dogs.  I've had this fear as long as I can remember.  I have no idea why, honestly, but it is very real and very deep-seated.  Palpable.  I find myself checking out various shopping carts and their worthiness for holding my belongings. 

I know, it's a full dish of crazy with a side of lunacy.

I'm just not sure if I have the spoon, or the stomach, to actually eat it.

love is a souvenir

I took my professor to all my favorite places in California last week.  The dogs went with us.  In the car.  Oh my!

I introduced him to a whole host of my people and they hugged him and he hugged them and they quizzed him and he answered all the questions with a smile and the lovely kindness that I am learning really is just who he really happens to be.

I subjected the poor professor to a long and winding and never ending drive down the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur and we were both cursing my decision after about an hour, but there were still more hours to go and surprisingly we still managed to laugh and kiss each other and find our way to the end of the road still very much in love.

I took my professor on a long and winding road trip through the very deepest and darkest parts of my heart.

He loves me even more.

I can't imagine my life without him.

I believe that is all we need to know. 

The Weight of It All

I lived last winter without a furnace.  Without heat. 

I slept with gloves and a fleece hat on, bundled with both dogs on the bed, under I don't even know how many down comforters in an effort not to freeze. 

I love my little house in Salt Lake City, but what I didn't bother to do before actually agreeing to live in it was to determine that it actually had heat.  I know it seems a tad improbable that a house in Salt Lake City, a city where winter hangs on and parties like an 80's glam rocker until well past the spandex and hair spray are out of style, would not actually have proper heating, but my little house did not. 

That is why my cat literally slept on top of the electric radiator I had running 24/7 in one room and why both dogs were curled like a yin yang around the bottom.  We all lived in one room last year curled around one another, our breath sometimes freezing right in front of our faces, and I know it was a sign of my own insanity that I insisted it just was not that bad. 

It was that bad.

Yesterday, I was informed that I was getting a proper furnace for my little house. The location for the furnace would be a closet that had, until this very moment, been used to hide the detritus of a much of my past.  Skeletons of all sorts.  Things better forgotten-- bones and trinkets and smudged half-burned dreams. 

Piles of ticket stubs to Grateful Dead concerts.

A copy of one of my plays. 

Journals and more journals.  Even more, after those.

Photos of me with a bunch a dirty hippies.

More photos and scribbled cards and notes and set lists from a long life on tour.

All the emails from my earliest days with DearSweetDave.

I should have known better.  I really should have.  We know where this is going, don't we?  Yes, of course we do.

I sat down on the floor and I read all those emails.  Every.last.one.

Our hearts made such promises, uttered such incredible vows, spilled such secrets in those first early days of our new love.  Every moment stretched for an eternity and it felt all so brand new, all so very special, so incredibly delicious and ripe with possibility.  I truly believed, in those very early days, everything we said to one another. We really did say all the right things.

We also crashed and burned in a rather spectacular fire.

The love I've found this time can't go hide in a closet because I've got no closets left.

Love is so complex.  It is so very easy to say all the right things.  Words are simple.  They roll off our tongues, right out of our mouths and into the hearts of another without so much as a pause for a yellow light.  It's the showing up, the living of love, the actual wrapping of your own heart tendrils with his without pulling too tightly, without tugging too hard, with a gentle caress that is the most difficult. 

It's that love that I'm showing up for this time around.

The weight of him, all of him, on top of me, inside of me, my heart changing shape simply because of the entangled and messy and beautiful and crazy love that keeps me wide awake with wonder even when I'm fast asleep, that's the love for which I've gone all in.

 

 

 

Jump

I quit my job, a job where I never felt like I really belonged, on the final Friday of July.  I did not give notice, I did not even whisper to anyone that I might not be back the following week, I just walked out and never went back. I had no idea what would be next, of course.  I never actually do have plans for what might be next.  I only knew, absolutely, positively, that I could not do that specific job for another day.  No matter what.

There's always such real possibility in the quitting.  Especially when there's nothing waiting for you on the other side. 

I spent the entire month of August going very deep inside of me.  Detoxing, really.  I think August allowed me the opportunity to finally release the last bits of the detritus of sadness that was still holding tiny shards and fragments of my heart that was keeping me from being completely whole.

I embraced a 100% raw vegan diet and did yoga every single day for the entire month.  I returned to acupuncture treatments.  I just really took good care of me.  Grounded myself.  Found my laugh and my smile, again.  I went quiet and listened to the beats of my own heart and sorted out what it is that I really wanted and, far more importantly, what it was that I really needed.

For the first time in what felt like forever I made myself the priority.  No one else.  Just me.  I really loved me with all the intention and with all the abandon that I have always loved everyone else.

In August, my whole life turned upside down, turned inside out, and then all of me, every square inch, became completely brand new. 

It feels as if so many of us are all spinning on carousels with runaway ponies and that gold ring we're all trying to grab is nothing but fool's gold.  I know, I know it really well, that it is sometimes so much easier to just hang on and to keep spinning around and around than to contemplate steering your own pony off into the waiting abyss.

What I want and need to tell you is that you're far more awesome than you even know.

You have all the gifts and everything you need.  You do. 

Jump.