here is a fact, here is a metaphor.

I haven't written lately and I don't know if that's because I have nothing to say, too much to say, or I've forgotten. Maybe I'm losing it, I think. Maybe I can't write anymore. I'm trying to feel okay about feeling everything and not knowing how to describe or explain just what that looks like. I went for a run this morning and the path was deserted except for me and two rabbits and a squirrel. The air smelled murky and like mulch and forgotten things. Already the leaves are turning. Already the trees are changing. Already we are letting go.

I speak in metaphor because it's easier than nailing down the facts. Metaphor is fluid, changeable, easily misunderstood. A way to say what you intend without explanation. Facts are unchangeable, often misinterpreted but they are not soluble things. Here is a fact: I am alive. Here is a metaphor: I don't know what that means.

My homeopath put me on a strict regime of eating habits, including 3 cups of steamed greens a day, protein each meal, something called potato peel broth I'm supposed to make from the skins of six potatoes and a carrot, and over a hundred dollars worth of supplements. That's the give, here's the take: I've had no sugar, no wheat, no dairy, no coffee, no nuts, since last week Wednesday. I feel much better. This is a fact, however inconvenient it may be. The first four days the drugs, namely sugar and caffeine, worked their way out of my system. I took a nap everyday until Saturday, something I only do if I'm exhausted. In this case, I couldn't keep my eyes open. I'm awake now.

What we feed on feeds us, in true nature. Good begets good, bad begets bad. Yesterday I craved kale until I ate a whole bunch, sautéed slowly with coconut oil and lemon, salt and pepper. Sometimes I eat it with ginger. That was the turning point, I think. I've lost weight in five days, unintentionally and what at first felt unexplainably. The quality, the content, what it does for not just our souls but our bodies, matters. This reminds me in all areas of my life to feed myself well.
Here is another fact: food is a drug. Here is another metaphor: I'm coming off my own highs. Do you see what I mean about the difference between fact and metaphor? One is explainable, understandable, the other is reaching. After my parents separated, I vacillated between feeling everything until I feared I would choke, or feeling nothing until I feared I would drown. My solution was to eat, to watch movies, to go online and talk to people and not feel so alone. I gained weight and a knowledge of pop trivia, but the sadness did not go away.

On my run, I thought, she is a woman whom sadness made rest, but she is not empty. Maybe I'll write on that, maybe there's a story there, maybe it's just for me. I saved the words, repeating them over and over until I could write that down. Maybe sadness comes to sit with all of us. Maybe the only way to move forward is to not begrudge her, not ignore her, not scold her, but treat her with gentleness and compassion.

This week is the first week in about a month I haven't had nightmares. I woke up yesterday and realized my dreams did not scare me. There was no mist hanging around my head like a dark shroud I could not take off. I felt relieved enough to fall asleep again. Maybe this is from eating better, or from scraping off stress (an effective method, though not the safest), or from simply moving towards peace. All I know is I'm not afraid to sleep anymore. I'm not afraid of food anymore. I'm not afraid of my body, of the way it curves and aches and needs.

What does not sustain, propel towards growth, fill, cut it out, trim the fat, sweep out the old. Sugar feeds me, but does not sustain me. Flattery feeds me, but does not sustain me. Hatred and shame of myself neither feeds or sustains but instead grows like a weed. Cut it out, trim off the fat. Maybe that's where the nightmares went, alongside with the self-loathing and shame, they packed their bags and left permanently.

Another fact: I am a writer. Another metaphor: I wish I could tell you where my heart goes when my chest shakes.

the times are changing.

This is a strange age.

Of death, of dying, oneself, and relationships, and yes, even lives. What mournful morning is not tinged with grief. Rhetorical questions aside, I wonder, where was all this when we were young? I know it was there. I was lucky and escaped most brushes with death. My great grandma Dumpling, named after the meals she made with her steady Czech hands, died a few weeks short of 102. I remember thinking she was almost there, she had almost made it. At that age though, death is not a foe but a friend. I know she was tired. I know she was forgetting. I know she wanted to run again. I never asked her, but I feel like she was We cried. No matter what age, it's unsettling seeing adults, your grandparents, your parents, weep. Snotty noses and reddened faces and swollen eyes are unfamiliar on family members, almost a shock, a reminder we are all little children underneath our age and groaning bones. I sat listening to words family and friends said, a room of people who will never be the same and will never sit under the same walls again, and wished I had a memory to add. I might have said something about the red glass candleholder she let us touch. I was like that, eager to please, but confused at my own turmoil. I cried and didn't recognize the face in the casket. Casket is a cold word that sounds like a door opening and closing with a bang, an east wind blowing a screen door shut. I still have her red candle.

With all coins, there is good alongside the bad, though sometimes an ending is not altogether horrific, just sad. Moving to Seattle is not terrifying, but bittersweet. I am ready to run again. Maybe I will fall in love, this is my thought process. I'm trying to shape it into, maybe I will fall in love with a place, with a project, with a community, with a passion, and not put so much emphasis on relationships. Being surrounded doesn't make this simpler, although I am happier. My friends are married, or falling in love, and there are babies. Babies I've held, babies in tummies, babies just a thought. We are babies. Every generation says as they beget the next. When will we say, we were babies? That's the true test. But back to babies. I don't understand how my friends, are the ones with these children. They don't remind me of any parent I know. Do we grow up into being parents? Do we stay young and stay old simultaneously?

I went to a dinner party at a sweet couple's home while in Seattle. First time meeting them after years of knowing them online, which makes the first happenstance nerve wracking. Will they like me, will we get along? They couldn't have been lovelier. She was pregnant, still a few months until birth. They named their baby Evelyn Wilde, if you want to know. That's a weighty name for a precious soul and with her parents, she will carry it well. He is a gentle giant with a voice to match, she a woman who looks like she'll be a mother her children will sing songs about. They served us gluten free pizza, a spinach and feta one, and a sausage and tomato one. Both were delicious. We talked about film cameras and the industry, their family and their vision for their lives, and silly things. Icebreaker things that became funnier the more we talked, until we were laughing. Soon we'll have wine at these dinners. I sat there in my chair and gave Lillian a look, she smiled and I felt as if she understood.

Later, when we walked back to the dorm, I said, I was sitting there thinking, we're the ones having people over for dinner, not our parents, and we're the ones talking about babies and relationships, we're the ones who are engaged and married and having babies, and we're the ones doing -- this! She smiled again. I kept running over the thought in my mind like a small splinter in your thumb. Not unpleasant, but unfamiliar. How long until this feeling will be a memory, too?