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A Very Turbulent Coming of Age

I’m flying over farmville as we speak. Topeka, Kansas, to be exact. I’m going to Los Angelos to visit a friend I haven’t seen in years. He called me one month ago and asked me to come. I’m trying to say yes when I’m invited on an adventure. So here I am. Catch flights, not feelings, or whatever the hell my generation says on the internet to justify running away from emotional intimacy. But wherever you go, there you are. And here I am. 

So much of my life got swept out from under my feet in the last three years. At least in the first year, everyone else got swept up too. In the last year and half, I’ve watched friends move on with their lives. They got engaged, they got laid off, they moved to new places, and got back to the childhood hobbies that made them happy before they were worried about the judgement they’d feel from from everyone around them. They realized the judgment they perceived from others was entirely their own. 

I’m trying to be excited for my life but more and more these days, it feels like I’m living in melancholic and yet somehow heartwarming scenes in coming of age indie movies. You know what I’m talking about. Those scenes where the seemingly dysfunctional family is driving through the plains of some bumblefuck town. They’ve just experienced a tragedy. The soundtrack doesn’t match what’s going on in the scene. And yet somehow, you can’t help but feel like whatever traumatic yet character-building arc this family just went through, they’ll somehow be okay. That’s usually where the movie ends. 

There’s move to those movies, I’ll tell you that much. I know it, because I’m living it. My family was that family. We buried our dad to the sweet escape by Gwen Stefani one month ago. That’s what he wanted, which was ridiculous and heartwarming and gut wrenching and funny and incredibly difficult. I wanted to look around for a camera after I shoveled a scoop of dirt into his grave. I wanted someone to yell “cut”. Where was the director hiding and when would they come out and tell me that my performance was Oscar- worthy? I wanted the scene to end. But it wasn’t a story, or at least, it wasn’t someone else’s. It was mine. And it was nowhere near over. And no one ever includes that extra part in the coming of age movie. The part where you find out if the family really will be okay. Not in Little Miss Sunshine, or Lady Bird, or Juno. 

I’m not okay and my character arc is longer than 124 minutes, sorry to say. I wish I could go back to my 20 year old self and tell her to lower her expectations; that her 20s wouldn’t be wild and fun and worry free like we’re told it’s supposed to be. I would tell her not to ice her dad out for three months for his top choice of presidential nominee; that that person wouldn’t win the nomination anyway (not even close), and that he’d be dead before that president’s first term was even over. I would tell her to start therapy even sooner than 23. I’d tell her to take a gap year at 22, spend her savings on a van conversion and live out her little mountain dream while she still has her parents health insurance. Before her Dad was diagnosed. Before she was in a relationship that broke her heart, even if she broke it herself. I’d tell her to stop running from intimacy. That her sense of humor is sometimes just her humor, but it’s often times a wall she puts against vulnerability. It’s a protective tendency she’ll develop that won’t protect her from much, other than depth, warmth and connection. I’d tell her that her 20s would be volatile, and scary, and uncomfortable, and devastating. She’d get emotional motion sickness. She’d cry more than she thought possible. I’d tell her both of her siblings would have been in close proximity to shootings before they were 30; to fight harder against gun violence. I’d tell her Roe v. Wade would get overturned, that she could get arrested for having an abortion. Or worse, she could die because she was denied one. I’d tell her that she wouldn’t be stuck in corporate America forever, but that actually, working a corporate job really wouldn’t mean shit in terms of her value in the world. She can make money. She can be comfortable. She doesn’t have to be a martyr for a cause. She can exist in platitudes. She can have layers. I’d tell her to stop being such a judgy bitch to herself and to others when no one could listen to the thoughts inside her head. No one gives a fuck what you think your neighbors waistline. She’s only hurting yourself by thinking that way. I’d tell her sunscreen is cool, and brushing her teeth every night is important. That vitamins actually have purpose, and that she doesn’t have to suffer through her migraines because she’s a woman or because doctors don’t listen to her. I’d tell her to try harder. Push. Get what she needs. She deserves it. Jesus, I’d tell her to push past the knot she gets in her chest when she wants to open up but doesn’t trust her the people around with her emotions. I’d tell her she’d meet a cool guy in DC, and he’d be the most emotionally open person she’d ever date, but that she’d keep him at an artificial distance because she didn’t want to give herself up to a relationship. She didn’t want to lose control. I broke up with that guy yesterday, and I got hurt anyway. Go figures. Turned out he was falling for her; she never gave him a chance. 

I turn 27 next month, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. I feel like I’m going to throw up all the time from the stress and fear and turbulence of my 20s. I want to move to Colorado, but I’m afraid. Afraid of not liking it, of being alone, of wildfires and mountain lions. I want to move to Alexandria, but I’m afraid of it being too expensive and of fixating on not being bold enough to make my move out west. I will judge myself. I’ll think I’m a failure. I want to move in with Jen. She lives in a place I don’t want to move. I want to be a in a relationship. I’m afraid to date women; I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m afraid to date men, worried they’ll let me down. I am afraid of giving my emotions up to a relationship; to invest without being sure of the what the future would hold. I’m afraid of being seen. Of letting myself be seen, and of getting shut down. My friendships are not getting deeper. I don’t know how to dig more space for them. My roots are not growing. I want to do something other than a 9-5 desk job. I’m afraid of not having a steady income. I want to live in a van. I’m afraid of getting raped in a Walmart parking lot in that van. 

I wish we were honest with 20-somethings about the emotional trials and tribulations they’d endure. I wish we’d stop telling them it would be the best years of their lives. They don’t know their lives. They don’t know themselves. Yes it’s a time of self discovery, but that discovery comes in the form of growing pains. It’s not type 1 fun. Hell, it’s not even type 2. It’s something I’d never want to endure again. 

I turn 27 next month. I wonder what my thirties will be like.

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Words from a Mourning Daughter

I was 26 when my dad died. 
He told my baby brother that he already had all the information he would ever need to make
the big decisions about his own life.
Our last conversation was brief. He told me to
be safe.
and he thanked me.
That was four days before he pass in the hospital
where I was born.
I was there for that too.
I was going away on a trip, afraid to leave home,
fearful it would be the last time I would see him.
Before I left, when
he was too weak, too tired.
He looked at me, smiled, and kissed me
three times.
That would be the last triple kiss I’d ever get from him;
his signature way of showing affection.

It’s a hard thing, losing a father
after they’ve been sick for so long.
You feel relieved
melancholic
peaceful
devastated
calm
grateful that they’re out of pain, grateful to have your life back
but wrecked to have it back without them in it.

I cry for my father because he cried for me. He cried for everyone.
He was a gentle man
more concerned with protecting me from regrets, and
pent up feelings
than from boys, drugs or alcohol.
He cried for our graduations, prom, and college tours
He cried for little jackie paper; envisioning himself
He cried for the trees when they’d get taken down
He cried for the sad stories of the people he did not know
almost as much as he cried for the joyful.

My father was in awe of the world he lived in
often reflecting on our collective responsibility to take care of it
and take care he did.
He did everything he could do without devoting his entire life to a cause
It set a good example for how to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders
while recognizing that the weight does not fall solely on you.

He used and recycled everything
from tupperware to dance moves of rags of his old clothes.
He ran every blood drive he possibly could. I didn’t understand it as a kid.
Now that he’s gone, I couldn’t be more grateful for that work that he did. I’m sure the families of those
his work likely saved are grateful, too.
He took it upon himself to call every lawmaker he’d ever
voted for, from school board member to
the president of the united states.
They had to earn his vote again; they had to do
some good in the world we lived in.
He chuckled when he got thank you letters for his outreach from
Joe Biden.
He knew some 21-year old staff wrote it. He appreciated it
either way.

My dad always told me to analyze my dreams.
He told me that that’s where some of our deepest feelings sat; that understanding his dreams
helped him understand the world; helped him
understand himself.
He asked me about my dreams a lot in the last year or so of his life.
I remember the hardest period of his cancer treatment; the few months where steroids intended to make him feel good
also made him erratic, aggressive and manic.
He needed constant attention to ensure he didn’t make any
life altering decisions or mistakes
He felt like he was on top of the world; he felt like we were
bringing him down.
I felt like I was drowning.
I had a dream one night that our home was being attacked by
flaming asteroids. It was one of the scariest dreams I’d ever had.
This was either right before he called the police on him self,
or days after; I don’t remember.
But he was curious about this dream, convinced there was
more to it than even I realized. He started
writing it down, only to realize that when you break up the word
asteroid
you get a steroid.
And in that moment, it dawned on him that the asteroids that were
destroying the lives of my mother and I were him and the steroid
reaction he was having.
It was then that he took it seriously. He starting
crying.
He had pain in his eyes. He was sorry he had
hurt us.
He didn’t know. He hadn’t understood.
It was my dreams that told him what he needed to know.

And now my dreams are telling me what he needs me to know.
A few nights in the last few weeks, I’ve had normal dreams
only to look through the crowd of extras and see my dad. He’s always alone, always sitting
and smiling, as though only he and I are aware that it’s a dream
and everyone else is oblivious.
Multiple times now he’s given me a wave from across the room in my head. And in those moments, the dream
pauses.
Nobody moves, except for him. Except for me.
He comes towards me, everyone around us still.
I’m scared to make contact with him; thinking that when I do, my arms are going go right through him
because he isn’t real. Because he’s gone.
And then every time, I’m shocked when I can feel him.
He hugs me, not saying a word.
Then he waves, walks away,
and the dream resumes.
He’s telling me he’s here. That I can find him wherever I go,
wherever I am.

I’m trying to start living more like the way he did.
Presently.
He was the type of person who, when invited on an adventures, said
yes.
I want to say yes more. Say yes to love, say yes to being open,
say yes to
crying in front of strangers, in front of my friends, and in front of
anyone who sees me.

I was 26 when my dad died.
But I didn’t lose my dad at 26. I won’t lose him 27, or 30, or 45 or 70.
I see him in the hundred year old trees in my neighborhood.
I feel him when I’m scared of heights and in the wind in my face when I’m cycling.
I hear him in Amy Winehouse, and the Chicks, and the rest of the
ridiculous playlist he made of his favorite songs for us to play at his
funeral;
A playlist he started years before he was diagnosed
and continued adding songs to up to a few months before he passed.
I smell him in the burnt food in my own kitchen, which I never used to overcook until he passed. Now, I can’t seem to cook it right.
Like father like daughter, I suppose.

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Ramblings, 2 Years Later

I am a female twenty-something, and the last time I wrote a post that started this way, we were two months into a deadly pandemic with no end in sight. 

I am here to report that two years have passed, and there is still no end in sight. No end to the pandemic. No end to the emotional exhaustion of societal gaslighting, leaving the vulnerable behind and the cautious alone. No end to the hammer and the dance, to the arrival of new variants, somehow always 30-80% more contagious than the last, and to the collective illusion that the pandemic has passed, for the four to six weeks it lasts each time. 

In the past two years, I’ve learned which of my friends and which of my family respect my boundaries. I’ve learned who will prioritize a party over my health. Who will protest the nose snob I request before gathering together in person. I’ve learned who I would really trust with my life, and who I wouldn’t. The list is short. It’s shorter than I thought. 

Some semblance of normalcy has returned. Moments I’ve longed for- rock climbing with friends, seeing families smiling and laughing on park benches- have returned, others still remain at a distance. I miss sitting quietly in a coffee shop, watching my surroundings, and writing. I want to eat out for dinner indoors in a quiet cozy tavern with a fireplace. I want to stay in a hostel with strangers. Perhaps most innately, I long to be held. I want to be hugged. I want physical intimacy, but of the vulnerable, not sexual sort. I want human touch, human connection. I don’t know when I will get those moments back. 

In many ways, pandemic was only the start. In the time since it started, Russia invaded Ukraine, started an unprovoked war that has killed thousands and propelled the entire world into what feels like crippling, suffocating inflation. My father was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. It’s been 15 months since it was detected. I’ve moved home, helped with care-taking, and watched a disease whittle away at my father’s body and at my father’s spirit. The impact it has had on my family is one I wouldn’t wish on even my fiercest of enemies. I am a female twenty-something, and last week, it a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked revealing that SCOTUS plans to overturn Roe vs. Wade, removing federal abortion protections and allowing states to legislate away reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. I could be persecuted for seeking an abortion one day. 

What can I do other than cry sometimes, and laugh at all other moments? This is all funny. Funny because it is absurd. Funny because it is laughable. The type of funny that turns into crying after about 45 seconds of cackling. 

It’s funny because after all of this, you’d think appreciation for human life would improve. You’d think the desire to improve human life would improve. It’s funny how the world changes, and how we as a people remain unchanged despite it. 

These days, I find myself more able to appreciate the small moments. I’ve gained more freedom than I had two years ago, mentally and physically. But I also find myself unable to truly relax. Unable to resist absorbing others’ anxiety and frustration. Unable to let the good things last; unable to sit in joy without the foreboding that comes with it. I have to figure out a way to let myself be without the guilt of my joy coming at the expense of others’ inconvenience. 

These were the ramblings of a disgruntled twenty-something.

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on shame: A footnote on sexual communication

“I fear the second I begin to love my body is the moment you’ll begin to resent it.”



When he asks me what I want
I disintegrate. 
A whirlwind of "what ifs", explanations and rejections 
build a wall in my mind that blocks my ability
to tell the truth.

My airways feel dense, cramped
by heavy breaths riddled with fear. 
Words unable to surface
and when they finally do, 
they feel small. 

Why do I feel shame about what makes me feel good?
He asks me again,
"What do you want?"
Translation:
What will make your spine curve 
like the Gateway Arch?

And again
I just crumble. 
I dutifully giggle 
and lightheartedly grin
saying "nothing baby.
You're doing great."

And why? How?
How do you so naturally take my hands
and guide them through bends in your back
and straight up your thigh
and not stop to think 
is this what she wants?

What do you want?
Do you want me to be vocal?
Will you meet me halfway?
If I tell you what I need, want, hope for
will you even listen anyway?

New York Times columns and  Reductress articles 
tell me to love myself 
own what I have to say
preach what my body needs.

I read those words, humming in agreement.
Repost here, retweet that. 
Letting someone else's words of affirmation
paint my presence as self-loving
feminist
strong 
proud. 

But with you, you no-face man
no-one identity intimate partner
He who calls me baby
He who kisses down my chest
He who sees me vulnerable in a way 
few other people do

I don't know how to be strong with you. 
I don't know how to be proud, to be feminist 
to be self-loving
because I fear the second I begin to love my body
is the moment you'll begin to resent it. 

You'll come to find you need to work harder 
to make me feel the way you think I do
when you caress me in your bare-walled room. 
Become a scholar in understanding my body. 
The pedantic type, who notes every raised hair
on my neck.

You'll realize that the mechanical movements 
of your body on top of mine
are detached from the level of intimacy and trust
that I need from our relationship. 


You'll discover that gentle susurrations of 
moans and "don't stops"
are but a footnote in my book 
of sexual communication. 

You'll comprehend how much I want
vestiges of your passion and commitment
lingering onto my back
and imprinted on my chest. 

And the rest 
will be history. 

One day, you'll ask me what I want 
and I'll commit to loving myself 
in the way that I should.

My needs will cascade out of me.
Not minimized by a girlish effervescence 
but strengthened by a woman's confidence. 
Not downplayed and equivocal.
Never muddled or inexplicit. 
They will be crystalline, absolute. 

One day I'll come to terms with 
how much pleasure, joy, and satisfaction
I've always been worth. 
Reach the zenith of bodily autonomy and self-advocacy.

And on that day, you won't ask me what I want
because you know damn well
that I'll have already told you.






This poem is a female twenty-something’s compilation of uncomfortable sexual experiences with men.

Thoughts at 30,000 Feet

I hated how often you listened to Phoebe fucking Bridgers.

I couldn’t keep up with her angst, or tolerate how she screamed at the end of that song you always loved. Somehow you thought it was poetic, or at the very least, cathartic. I thought it was annoying.

Every time we were in a car, you turned up Phoebe fucking Bridgers and sang along with her melancholic and often brutally grim lyrics as if they were your own.

It made me uneasy.

It was a constant reminder of how differently I thought you and I saw the world, and how hard it was for you to not focus in on only the most troubling aspects of your life. This would turn out to be my greatest challenge in our relationship.

You see, Phoebe fucking Bridgers sings about trauma, and fear, and a borderline millennial/gen z doom characterized by climate change anxiety, toxic relationships, mental health, and what feels like impending doom. But when she sang, I heard your doom and god damnit, that doom felt like a weight tied to my ankle pulling me farther and farther away from my joy.

So I didn’t listen. In fact, I didn’t even try.

Phoebe fucking Bridgers was your thing, and I didn’t want- I didn’t need– any part in it. That doom was part of the reason I left. I was drowning in your woes, and I couldn’t breathe.

You see, I was scared. Scared that you, and Phoebe fucking Bridgers, would pull me so far and so deep that I wouldn’t be able to make it back to the surface. That I would drown in your sorrow and anxiety and what felt like hatred of this world and everyone in it.

And I was scared that if she, and you, were right to be anxious about the state of our society, that it meant something bad about me.

But as I stood today on the platform of a train, dreading reuniting with my parents for a long flight back to our cancer-ridden home, to a job that I hate, to a grief-filled void of a love life and a grandfather in heart failure in the middle of the worst pandemic since 1918, all I wanted to do was listen to Phoebe. Fucking. Bridgers.

I wanted to scream with her at the end of the song you always loved. I wanted to word vomit from my emotional motion sickness. I wanted to be lost in the chaotic energy she creates that seemed to resonate with every person between 18 and 30 except me, until today.

I wanted to thank her for singing about her trauma, and her losses. I wanted to hug her for walking on stage in a stupid fucking skeleton jumpsuit at every concert she performs, and for tweeting at sexist boomers to mind their own fucking business. I wanted to thank her for being raw to a point that it makes you cry.

Phoebe fucking Bridgers got me through today. I imagine she’ll get me through many days to come in this especially challenging, grief-filled, isolating phase in my life. I realized that what I’m going through and how it’s making me feel? It’s not a choice. I always thought you had a choice.

So what I want to say to you to is this: I’m sorry if I made you feel like dread, fear, and sadness were not valid emotions critical to the human experience. I’m sorry that I hoped you would stop ‘focusing on the bad’, and in turn, stop listening to Phoebe fucking Bridgers. You were grief-ridden, too. For your family. For our futures. For yourself. I didn’t know what that felt like until now.

And most importantly, I want to say I’m sorry for not seeing you when we were together. I’m glad at least Phoebe fucking Bridgers did. She held you, and now she’s holding me, too.

Isn’t It Funny

I am a female twenty-something, and I don’t know what to do with my life right now.

These days, like many others, I find myself holed up in my room with zoom fatigue, cancelled plans, riding an emotional rollercoaster with the highest of highs and lowest of lows. Though more and more these days, I find myself in moments of longing for scenes from a seemingly past life- scenes I didn’t realize would become treasured memories that I am no longer afforded. Moments like sitting alone in a coffee shop surrounded by strangers reading. Moments like walking around my neighborhood, seeing couples smiling on benches and kids laughing on bikes, without the barrier of a mask. Those were the moments that made me happy. The majority of the time, however, it feels I am stalled on the rollercoaster. I can’t get out of my car- buckled in without my consent and unable to move. I feel myself plateauing, feeling almost nothing at all on most days. At least feeling sad is better than feeling nothing. I don’t know if it is something I can change or if it is something I really need to change.

My days are riddled with anxiety that I am going to catch a pandemic virus that seventy percent of my country will have had by the end of 2020. The funny thing about this year is that we are doing everything wrong as a nation and a society. We are praising healthcare workers with an artificial sense of appreciation; a knee-deep thank you rather than a full-hearted change of behavior. Like they always say, actions speak louder than words. And those actions are screaming. They’re screaming that we don’t care about others or that we somehow believe that a cursory 13 minutes of googling will provide us with more accurate information that the scientists, public health professionals and healthcare workers who have devoted their lives to understanding crises like the one we are experiencing today. It is funny because it is absurd. Funny because it is laughable. The type of funny that turns into crying after about 45 seconds of chuckling.

Funny because politicians are all worried about the economy, fearing the crash and its negative byproducts so much that they are willing to loosen regulations to make Americans unsafe to put more money in the American pocket. But that way? That way Americans die. And if you don’t see that reality, then you’re not paying enough attention. With no people, there is no economy. American lives are more important than the American economy. But the funny thing about all of this happening this year is that hindsight is 2020, huh? I don’t want kids because I don’t want to have to explain to them when I tuck them in at night how badly we all screwed up our chance to save each other when I was a young twenty-something.

Isn’t it funny how this is all happening. Funny how we are changing, or not changing. Funny how we are prioritizing. Funny how we are locking up on our minds along with our bodies.

These were the ramblings of a disgruntled twenty-something.

Seeing Today As the Past

Today I was in one of the spaces I spend most of my time in. Where that is doesn’t quite matter, but I all of a sudden had a thought. I thought about how people would look back at the end of the 2010s. I thought about how my future kids, if the state of our environment allows me to have any, might ask me what the “good old” days were like.

In this moment, I realized that I was in what I would refer to the good old days in maybe twenty years. I looked at the smiling people around me, many strangers but all a part of my community. People laughing with each other, sharing stories, enjoying themselves, and thinking nothing of the moment they were living in other than the fact that it was the present, and that it was beautiful.

This was an out of body experience for me. I can’t quite describe the feeling that I felt. Perhaps it was a serene type of content and satisfaction, or rather the feeling that I was understanding something about time and happiness and life that no one else in the room was. And that was fine. They were living in the bliss of ignorance, and I was happy to let them stay that way.

A Fleetwood Mac song was playing on the speakers in the room. I looked around once more, and smiled. A soft, quiet smile. I returned to the present, and nearly forgot the moment ever happened.

Giving Yourself Permission to Try

In a recent water-cooler conversation at work, a colleague said something that has stuck with me for days now. I was worried about advocating for myself and felt that I was not qualified for an opportunity that had presented itself to me. She responded to my fears and anxieties by saying “Give yourself permission to try. If the universe stops you, so be it.”

“Give yourself permission to try.” I thought about this for days on end, realizing that all my life, I had never really given myself permission to try anything that I felt I wasn’t ready for. I lived life in padded comfort zone. And don’t get me wrong, comfort is important. Psychological safety is important. But we are incapable of growth if we are always comfortable, and that hit me like a ton of bricks.

This past week, I’ve been giving myself permission to try. Permission to try something I knew I probably couldn’t do at the gym, permission to speak my mind at work, permission to care about myself and my well-being more than I had been. And you know what? It was one of the most satisfying weeks in my life. I didn’t succeed in everything. Hell, it would have been absurd if I had. But I gave myself permission to try, and when the universe stopped me, I wasn’t upset.

Why? Because I knew I would have continued to doubt myself if I had never tried. We learn from failure, and we’re told that over and over and over. But in the moments when we fail, we forget that growth is gradual. We forget that goals are achieved over time. We forget what we’re capable of, and we’re capable of so much more than our failures.

So tomorrow when you doubt yourself, when you say you’re not good enough, when your mind instantly says no, remember to give yourself permission to try. If the universe stops you, so be it.

If I’m Lucky

This piece is read best when accompanied by the attached track.

What I might get done today if I’m lucky is wake up on my slightly too firm mattress, alone, and catch a glimpse of the trees speaking to each other outside of my bedroom window. I’ll dress slowly, considering how my jeans might pair with my blouse to create a combination most appropriate for work. I’ll pass a chipped and dusty mirror to pick the accessory that goes best with bags under my eyes and the distress on the lips. Studs. They’re perfect.

What I might get done today if I’m lucky is walk to my office and pass 100 souls whose eyes will glide past my own, forgiving themselves for not stopping to ask what’s wrong. I’ll listen to the same song on repeat, internalizing the reality preached into my ears that the only people who know the truth about humanity are the poets. The artists who’s messages come from their craft, who’s warnings come from their songs, who’s fear gets released in their movements. Only the poets.

What I might get done today if I’m lucky is coast through my week undirected, lost, and pulled by those who are carving my path for me. I’ll strengthen artificial connections made in the places I find myself frequenting most, look to those I spend my time with and hope that there is more to them than the content and satisfaction that they paint on their face.

What I might get done today if I’m lucky is be okay enough to make it to tomorrow. Make enough of an effort that I can society into thinking that I’ll be alright on my own.

What I might get done today is not want I want to get done tomorrow. I want us all to wake up. Wake up from this story we’re writing ourselves into that doesn’t give any of us enough time to develop our characters. A story whose endings are written in stone before their chapters are even started. A story where few get the ending they want, and fewer get the ending they deserve.

What I might get done today if I’m lucky is start a new chapter that begins and ends with authenticity, truth, purpose, connection, and care.

A Rebuke of Chronic Dissatisfaction

People only put pen to paper
to write about three things:
love
pain
and sorrow.

Today,
I stand to write about something different:
Euphoria.

Euphoria is looking upon the tidal basin
cherry blossoms in bloom, 
golden hour upon your cheeks
and wind sending a chill 
down the nape of your neck. 

She is the celebration of joy
the acknowledgement of serenity 
and the acceptance of life without worry. 

Euphoria knows no jealousy. 
She doesn't recognize pity,
and averts her eyes
 from vengeance. 

Euphoria graces your ears with gentle 
waves kissing pavement 
Rewards your mind few second thoughts
what ifs 
and how comes. 
Euphoria invites herself to stay,
but only remains
if you let her. 

Why don't we write about joy?
Why don't we write about happiness?
We write about pain, 
we wallow in sorrow,
we sing about love
because they are easy. 

Joy? 
Joy is hard. 
Joy is difficult to attain because 
joy only waits for an invitation 
from self-worth
vulnerability
compassion
and confidence.

Today I choose tow write about euphoria. 
I am finally inviting her to stay.