One Shoe Untied

I write late at night

[oneshoeuntied]

Hey, look at me in the eyes, please? I know it's hard for you, but I need you to see that I'm telling the truth. You are worth loving. As I love you now, others have, will, and do love you. The sun loves you beneath its sky. Your cat loves curling up at your feet. Your tousled morning hair. Your soft stomach. Your crinkled eyes. We love it all. As you are now and as you will be. We love it because it's you. Whatever 'you' you choose to be. okay?

[oneshoeuntied]

WISHING YOU WELL I hope your smile stays ever-fixed on someone you truly love. I hope you learn to stay when your mind screams at you to run. I hope you can breathe again, all panic in the pit of your stomach unwound and unraveled. - and I hope every cherry-red sedan with faded headlights makes you pause. and I hope every gingerbread house lodges aching and regret into your gut. and I hope every time she wear silver hoop earrings you see me sitting in your passenger seat. - I wish you well and I hope I'll haunt you.

[oneshoeuntied]

Lucid

Lucid Where I visit a world beyond my own

I often find myself in a world just parallel to our own.  The people inhabiting the world know, and so do I, that it’s a hazy representation, a mirror image of the place I call reality. It feels the same, but fuzzier and lighter; everything has less weight, slightly less sharp and solid. It leaves no mark and no feeling beside bubbles spouting from my fingertips. 

The people there know I’m different, just as I know they are different from me. They know I am more real and I know they are more hazy. I, however, don't think that they aren’t real, but I know they do not belong in our world and I do not belong in theirs.

It’s mundane. Most people talk about their dreams as if they’re feverishly shivering under their covers, dreaming that they’re a tree who faded into a bird flying through their old school before their teacher dress-coded them for wearing feathers instead of a skirt. When they wake up, they mark it off as nothing more than an odd dream. And for them that's all it will ever be.

If I dreamt like that I’d agree. I never enter my dreams as anything but myself. I know who I am and the fact this is not my waking world. The people there know me too, in a way. They can tell this isn’t my world and I know they wouldn’t quite belong in mine. They don’t mind my presence. Usually, they sit and talk with me figuring out why I am there. Solid usually slips through the haze, and for some reason I float long enough to listen..

I think about the lady I met in the waiting room; I hope to see her again soon. She has light gray, nearly white hair. The bones of her jaw jut out prominently, with filled out softer cheeks and soft crinkles around her eyes from years of smiling and humoring her husband who sits beside her. Her hands are soft and leathery as they tend to be when worn with age. She always wears her faux pearl necklace, or perhaps it's real to her, in more ways than one.

We both sit in the waiting room. The tiles glow with afternoon sun fanning out from the windows and bright afternoon sky. My back is to the wall, and she sits to my left with a small round table between us, littered with magazines about the newest weight loss treatment. A tanned, thin model stares up at me from the cover of the magazine, as bright bold letters surrounding her claim I too can lose 15 pounds within 2 months. I suppose the lady might have caught me staring at the magazine. She glanced at me peculiarly before asking what a girl like me was doing here. Whether she meant in the waiting room or in the dream I still do not know. Either way, I found myself confiding in her that I worry  I’ll not be made right again and that I’m set to remain a hollowed out version of the person I could have been. She nodded solemnly and pondered a moment. We sat there a moment, the silence comforting and still. She mused, “You know, a lot of people would give anything to be your age again. That life passes by you so quickly. You’ll blink and it’ll be gone right before your own eyes. Then you’ll be like me, all old.” I paused, turning her words over in my head slowly. I concluded that a hollowed out life is better than one wasted on wishing for a different life. Hollowness can be filled; wishing it weren’t hollow keeps it empty.

The lady is a good story teller.  She told me how her husband beside her, who at that moment appeared to be studying a comically large newspaper through the small wire glasses perched on the tip of his nose, once knocked over a new china vase sitting on the countertop right into her food that had been simmering on the stovetop. They were picking out ceramic shards from her food for what felt like hours. She confessed that “I still don't understand why we didn’t just scrape it off and throw it in the bin.” She paused, her eyes shifted, glancing past the window, as she seemed to relive the moment she and her husband sat around the pan, separating ceramic from sauce. She then turned adoringly to her husband and said aloud “He’s a good man, I love him dearly.” She didn’t have to say it. I could see from her eyes, shining and glimmering just looking in his direction that she loved him. Even to me, a stranger in her world, I could see years of love and stories, fond glances, and frustrations set aside as their love and care for each other meant more than their arguments. He kept on reading. I somehow knew watching them that she was too hazy for him and he wasn’t a ghost enough to see her. Eventually she sighed and turned to me. She took my hands, into hers. Soft, and gentle, but with prominent veins stretching across the top. I glanced at her confused as I took in her eyes and her face. They were kind, and well worn. I stared at her smile lines, etched in after years as she told me, “You have the interesting ability to convey real things.” I pondered for a moment. What she left unsaid was that she didn’t have that ability. She could no longer, and would never convey real things the way I could. I nodded and said “I know, I’m very lucky. I’ll write it down so I don't forget.” With that she seemed content and let go and turned to face the TV monitor across the room. And I slipped away. 

It's jarring, coming back. My chest feels heavy; this world is a lot more solid. Even the air feels more weighty. Over there it is so much brighter and airy. I thought to myself for a moment remembering what I was here for instead of the other world I grew so fond of. I rolled over and reached for my phone as I tiredly typed out into what she told me. “You have the interesting ability to convey real things.” That's important isn’t it? We all have that ability and we don’t notice. Our world is malleable, shaped by our own actions. We often believe the inverse is true that our abilities are bound to our circumstances. We don’t have to be hollow; We can fill our life and pursue goodness in the face of tribulation. A ghost has no say. We shape our circumstances as they shape us. We convey reality. We forge meaning. What a shame it would be to choose inaction, wishing for better days just out of reach, and become a living ghost. 

[oneshoeuntied]

An Ode to Late Night Conversations

Late, hollow nights filled with gaping silence always bring a comforting weight to them, as if whatever you’re about to share will stay in the emptiness of the night. That whatever is talked about or mentioned will fade away with the darkness and once again become fuzzy and unreal with the morning. The night drips a honey sweet wine, leaving all of those under her skies with a tipsy confidence, a softened buzz of unguarded thoughts and loose lips threatening to spill out secrets usually buried far beneath the chest. It brings a drunken stupor and confidence to ignore the way your heart still tightens and flutters as you bear part of your soul to the person beside you. With it comes the soft realisation that the words said cannot be returned, but under the nights influence, for just a moment longer you can cling to the notion that with the morning maybe the other person will have forgotten and that this too will all fade away 

The other person’s soul is exposed too. If it were something more physical and tangible it would no doubt illuminate the otherwise empty space. However, as of now, the night still covers them softly. What they do not say stumbles out through their actions. The soul is uninterrupted in how it shares its mind.  People are etched into the way they purse their lips, how they fidget with their hands, how they tap their pencil, how they bounce their leg, how their eyes furrow, how they grit their teeth, how hot indignation burns in their chest, or how their throat constricts as panic bubbles and sits lodged uncomfortably amidst their throat. If they do not say it, it is written on them plainly.

Nothing is hidden in the night. The drunken fever only further looses the tongue and reveals its mind. But the night lies. It screams comfort, while it itself is dangerous. In making you think you’re hidden, you reveal more than you’d care to. Both souls are exposed. In the night we’re both drunk, fuzzy and unaware of how we ourselves are spilling out our secrets yet at the same time equally sober to recognize and latch on to every word, pause, and shift from the person beside us. 

I am convinced no two people are ever closer to sharing their soul than during that empty, intimate conversation that only awakens once the world has gone to sleep. 

And somehow, when morning does come, the memory of that night itself becomes fuzzy. Leaving only the warmth and comfort from the person, but an instilled guard about what was said. Even if the heart longs to talk further, the daylight scares such thoughts away. So we’ll slip past each other silently the following day, hardly casting a glance in their direction. We aren’t drunk enough yet. So we’ll wait, my soul and I, for another late night. 

[oneshoeuntied]

What I have to give is small, but I will give it gladly

I do not have much to give, 

Whatever I do have is small, 

Almost insignificant when said aloud, 

Time, 

Company,

Effort, 

All intangible, unquantifiable substances ---

They aren’t something that can be paraded around, 

They cannot be displayed, 

They can not be shown off, 

They cannot fill a space, 

Or a trophy case,

Or sit on the corner of your desk, 

For others to point out and comment on,

As a declaration of my care toward you ---

Beyond these things, I have even less, 

The only coins to my name, 

Sit carelessly discarded in my car’s cup holder

My clothes,

All belong to someone before me, 

My name, 

was a dear friend of my mother’s

---

I do not have much to give. 

And what I do have is small.

And maybe my love cannot be paraded,

And Maybe it cannot be shown off, 

---

But when I sit beside you on late nights, 

When you cry into my arms, 

When I scribble notes on the corners of your pages, 

When I see your discarded water bottle, and pick it up, knowing you left it behind,

---

When I learn the way you laugh, eyes crinkling at the corner, 

When I learn the way you smile, an unamused kind of smirk, 

When I learn, the path of tears, and past hurts

That travel with you still, 

---

When we sit in silence, when nothing can be said

When suddenly Zesta Crackers mean something, 

Or the Greenway becomes more than a running trail,

When that song becomes reminiscent of you,

When pale yellow is suddenly everywhere,

---

I hope you see I care

---

It’s not much to give, 

But I’ve nothing else to offer

[oneshoeuntied]

How to Love the Grieving

Razor: Don’t Try To Fix The Problem

While seemingly counterintuitive at first, you might be wondering, “What on earth do you mean ‘don’t try and fix the problem’?” Specifically I am talking about loving others well in their grief. We hardly know how to respond to our own grief, let alone someone else’s, so when presented with their grievances, we all too often make things worse by trying to “fix the problem.” I think by nature, we look for solutions to how to fix things. We want to see them happy again as soon as possible. So it's all too easy to tell them to look for the silver linings in things, offer solutions, or even tell them you understand how they feel. Although this is said with the intent of potentially solving the problem and relieving some stress, it doesn’t actually remove the pain and the suffering they have gone through. In fact, if anything, these comments only dismiss it. We don’t understand what they’ve been through, because their experience will never be our own. No silver lining will make the pain go away, and if there were a solution, they would have done it. So now, on top of the first loss, we add an additional grief of feeling unseen and misunderstood. So, while we often have the best of intentions, trying to provide an answer and a solution to the problem, in doing so, we inadvertently only add to their grief by making them feel unheard and misrepresented, and by extension of that misunderstanding, even more alone. 

Ultimately, the best thing is probably the hardest thing for us to do. Sit with someone and not try to fix their suffering. When there is nothing you can do, the only comfort you can provide is sitting with them and showing that they are not alone. That you understand the situation they are going through is awful, and that you are there to listen and support in any way you can. The goal of comfort isn’t to fix the problem; it's to say that you understand they’re hurting.  For our lives, this might look like bringing them their favorite snack, helping them shower, brushing their hair because they haven’t in three days, or picking up their room because they have no energy to. All of these things don’t fix the cause of their grief, because typically, nothing will. But rather it shows we support them and that we care. So even though it might seem counterintuitive at first, don’t try to fix the problem. Instead, do everything to support the person.

[oneshoeuntied]

"Will you love me for who I am, not who I was?"

Ever-Shifting, Continual Blossoming - Chance Peña

[oneshoeuntied]

"You know, one of the strongest things you can do is admit when you are weak."

[oneshoeuntied]

I'm forgetting her. Her face is blurred in my memory, and she's slowly slipping away. I can tell you that she walked. I can tell you her eyes were a crisp ocean blue. I can tell you she had teeth and a mouth- but how did they smile? was it crooked? Did they gap, or were they coffee-stained from late nights studying, pouring over papers beneath a tinted lampshade? Did her lips press together thinly when unamused or was it her brows that furrowed in frustration? I'm sorry, my love, for if you only live on in my memory, I think I've sentenced you to death once again.

[oneshoeuntied]

"Behind the door of every contented, happy man there ought to be someone standing with a little hammer and continually reminding him with a knock that there are unhappy people, that however happy he may be, life will come to him- illness, poverty, losses, and then no one will see or hear him, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer. - "Gooseberries," Anton Chekhov

[oneshoeuntied]

Obviously the happy man is at ease only because the unhappy ones bear their burdens in silence, and if there were not this silence this happiness would be impossible. It is a general hypnosis. - "Gooseberries," Anton Chekhov