Big.

Adapted from Highly Illogical, Volume 2, Issue 3, sent on July 19, 2017

Hey, you. 

I'm writing today because there's something I need to say. A lot, actually. I'm writing today because I have so much to say that I have been stunned into silence for months, worried that if I began writing to you, my love, I would never stop. That I would die of dehydration at my keyboard, typing furiously, hoping to make you understand the way I have been feeling. Dear one, my greatest fear is that you will never understand me, not because you cannot, but because I fail to give you the opportunity. So I am here, hunched over my tiny laptop, legs sprawled across the bed, writing to you. 

I was walking home from the bar this evening. It's summertime, so the sun was still out. My favorite thing about the city of Portland is the moss. There is moss growing on the sidewalks, on the stone walls surrounding gardens, on the stoop outside my back door. Life, it seems, is irrepressible here. I passed by a house on a hill, its front yard surrounded by hedges and a moss-covered dividing wall.

It smelled so strongly of earth that I stopped walking for a moment, and I remembered standing at my desk at work on a Monday morning several months before, eating a slightly overripe blackberry, its juice staining my fingers and lingering on my lips, and feeling like I wanted to find a soft patch of wet, grassy earth, and dig into it with my bare hands until my fingernails broke and sweat stung my eyes and the only way to soothe the heat of my skin was to cover it in earth, to roll in mud until I couldn't remember smelling of anything but sweat and soil and blood. I could almost taste it.

Tonight, standing on the sidewalk, breathing in the cool air surrounding this stranger's garden, that same desire came over me again, stronger this time. I had to stop myself from reaching down and trying to extract a chunk of lawn in my hands, burying my face in the dirt. The feeling passed, as it has before. I walked on.

For the rest of my walk home, I examined my heart and guts, searching for the source of this sudden wildness. I am afraid, darling. I'm afraid all the time.

The country I live in exposes uglier parts of its soul every day, and they are not unlike the ugliest parts of my soul if I'm honest.

There's a man who sleeps on the sidewalk outside of my office building, he's been in the same spot for a few months now. I have only seen him awake on a few occasions. Despite many people's attempts to help, this man will not live very much longer, probably, and everyone who sees him knows it. I feel complicit in this and completely inadequate. 

For almost a year, now, I have been silently hoping to earn the love of a man while keeping a cool distance, always hoping for and relying on his attention without being truly vulnerable with him. We have given up on each other.

If I died tomorrow, I don't know if you will know how much I love you.

This is the first time I've really written in a long time.

A huge fucking earthquake is going to tear the Burnside bridge apart and ruin everything at some point, apparently.

These things make me afraid. They are big fears, and they never go away.

There was a time in my life, not so long ago, where fear made me small. With shaking hands, I would fold myself up, trying my best to disappear so that frightening things would pass me by, leave me alone. They never did.

A couple of nights ago, I fell asleep on the couch. In my dream, I sat on a rock in the moonlight and watched a grizzly bear catch salmon in a river, hold it wriggling in her mouth, then straighten to her full height, arms stretched wide, looking up towards the sky. 

I'm afraid, my love. But I will never be small again. 

xo,
Sammi