less fear

So much of me has been kept inside for so long. I share, but only in very small, safe ways. This week I'm realizing how lonely and selfish it is to keep my words and song and art so far inside of me that even if it does escape it's murky, unrefined and only at a tenth of it's potential. Shame and fear have shrouded my being from the time I could remember experiencing.

My dad would throw away the gifts I gave him, always small things like flowers or drawings but they would always make it in the trash before he ever uttered a word of appreciation or thanks. I can remember balling my eyes dry on the floor, asking my mom why would he do that! What I gave him was clearly beautiful and why did he hate me and what I made?! I was so young than, I was four and he was thirty.

For awhile there I had a step dad, he stuck around not so long but long enough for me to grow in the ways he saw me. He disliked me and my body. Constantly I was urged to work out and stop eating so much peanut butter and god, elise why are you such a pig all the time?! I was seen as a threat to his happiness because of my existence. If i kept being overweight and unhappy around him my mom would need to spend more time with me, give me more love that he thought was all his. So he solved the problem. He took care of me and all my problems by convincing my mom militant berating and arbitrary rules would whip me into happiness, a smaller waste and ultimately I would leave him and my mom alone. I was always in trouble those days. I could do nothing right and wasn't given a single chance to try, if I tried that was too much effort on somebodies part to support me so I got in trouble for trying to do good things. Eventually I gave the fuck up and forgot myself, forgot myself in food and self hatred and eventually gave up all that was my own to any man that would have me. My voice, my song, my words and my love were silenced by another man.

It's taken me my whole life to be able to reflect on these things in a way that is not self destructive. It's taken me my whole life to have the courage to even think about allowing my voice to be heard by anybody but my angry reflection. This is me being a little less afraid today.

wom(e)(a)n

Skin's bleak, body weak and energy dragging. I'm worried for myself and everyone. Last night scared me so much. Hoping, praying I wouldn't get harassed or followed or eyed. All I could do is hope and pedal real hard. Passing people and people in cars whose intentions are unknown. It has little to do with their dress or color but everything to do with not knowing. Gender plays a part in all of this, at least in my experience and opinion. I've only experienced cruelty and violence from men in my life, my experience has molded my fears. Theyre real to me...and so many others.

I wish you could understand. Thats asking too much...just sympathize, thats all. Hear me and listen to my voice, hear my weariness and uncertainty and know that youll never understand and don't feel bad or ignorant for that, just sympathize with me and my hurt...listen.

I've learned so much and have sorted through what fears are rational and which are bred from years of abuse or ignorance. I'm no longer afraid of men expressing their thoughts on my physical me, althrough I am uncomfortable with it and and almost always insulted and sad to be seen before I am really seen. My fears are of men who take advantage and make the choice to be vocal about my body in situations that could clearly be marked as dangerous for the woman involved, i.e in the dark, on empty streets, while im on a bicycle and theyre a motorist and they scream and honk and pull up far to close just to get a better look. Don't they fucking get it! They are the carrier and spreaders of fear in a world where a woman is just trying to live, to live! To eat and to shit and to pay all these bills and to laugh and to spread love and kindness and awareness, we're just trying to do all this and more. We have the right to safely, strongly and joyfully do all this and more.

bike bites

So full right now. Full of hope, inspiration, anxiety, terror and life. I'm alive and want to take on so much, why can't I move forward. I need a project, a focus something so far removed from myself that I'm almost out of body when I'm working. Stale, stagnant air and sedentary life is munching at my bones and brain. Keep myself moving, going, feel the strain of forward motion through activities and adventure. Physical pain is simple. Mind over matter, I can push my body without ceasing. But my soul, oh my soul! How do you push something so abstract and placeless? Building up endurance and acceptance will lead me where? You can only keep saying I'm young and still learning for so long. Why, does it seem, that so many people relinquish the quest for knowing so early on? Settle, never will I. But mustn't I? People seem just as happy as they are unhappy all of the time. Happiness, then, is irrelevant when seeking. Happiness is just as much as unhappiness is, no more or less. So, it's not about happiness. It's about experiencing together. What you choose to experience is based off of available experience, exert choice over every situation but accept that choice has its limitations. No longer do I want to care for others for sentimental reasons but now, for the first time, because I realize it is the only choice I can make. Warm and fuzzy has faded, my love is available and extended often but only because it must be. Don't take that as being cold and shut down, it's just the only way. Disillusion robbed my heart of what really is. I give because I have. I cannot create intentions anymore or pull bananas out of thin air, they exist before me or they do not.

Someone, please, put a wrench in my hand. It's time to get greasy.

A letter to a friend...

This is a letter I just sent out tonight to a friend. I felt it appropriate to post on my blog and share what has been going on in my life. I'm not really certain who reads this but ultimately it serves as a reminder to myself that I have grown is ways that I am comfortable and happy with. That's all.


B, It's been two months since I moved to Austin and about 31/2 months since I made the decision to leave Philadelphia. At best days are unexpected and full of quiet acceptance and on my worst days I experience the pain of giving up parts of myself that I'm no longer OK with. I;ve learned that I am not 30 seperate people with 80 different experiences, I am the same and all emotions, thoughts and actions that happen in my life are a part of me. It's super weird to be writing about what I've learned, all I've been doing is serious self reflection and than tweaking and than going back to the drawing room for another draft. There is not much in me that feels ready to share these thoughts, mostly out of fear of sounding silly, which is silly in itself! My words may not sounds very pretty but in the moment I have released that stress. Figuring out who I am has been a really sudden process filled with a lot of sitting around. Emotions aren't always the most predictable these days, but the logic and self assurance I've gained helps sort through all my emotions in a way I've never been able to. On the outisde, my life may look and seem really boring. I sit with my friends and share conversation, food, music and lots of gardening endeavors. The truth is, the small happenings in a day are always more memorable and enjoyable to recall than I would have ever guessed. The real truth is I am happy. Some days I feel insecure about myself which produces other emotions I don't particularly enjoy, but mostly I feel as if grace has found me, or I have found grace. I have learned to not be afraid of much anymore. I can see that most of my life is comprised of decisions I have made and feel comfortable (for the first time) with those choices. The parts of my life that are out of my control have been a little harder for me to accept, but I am learning there is room for me to make choices within those situations as well. There is true joy in love. The people in my life now have shown me love that holds no grudges and continually gives. Because of their love, your love, I have come to love myself. In love and understanding of myself I can say that my love for others has grown to be honest and real. Pain and joy share equal parts in love. Both are manageable because they exist as one. One last thought on love: Emotion isn't love. Emotion walks by loves side and shares loves journey but emotion is not loves journey. This realization has given my life more depth and exciting(also, weird) pathways which I never knew existed. This makes me happy as a clam. woo! -Elise

Blindly optimistic sitting in the empty living space of a few new friends apartment in a pretty foreign city listening to Cat Stevens.

Once there was a point of return, haunting and forever present clouding my me, the real me that will never be effected by the external. Touching my face, my hair, biting at my nails I remember who I am. Old love affairs with the worlds sorrows have turned on me, only my own knows the truth once again and here i am once again i said here i am once again resigning from a former position. You know, I use to care in ways that you only dreamt of feeling, but please give that search up. Turn it all inside out and than dig a little deeper than what is recommended, youll understand only than but remember to put everything back in place, not in the order it was found in, of course not! In a new order all together, alas a new order(i promise this isn't a reference to anything in written existence, stop looking into it as so!). But really now, put it all back without instruction and than you will see new life and maybe even smell something sweeter than all the illusions that perfume girl is insisting you enjoy.

The luckiest insect I ever knew spent his days bathing in the rich musk of a lilys petals that made this little creature of curiosity drunk from the wealth of the earth. The shame in desire exists only in unexplored desires, outside the realms of mischief and curiosity.

ageless stalking

The most common theme in my life since foreverever has been truth and why the fuck it wont leave me alone! Making decisions is hard, especially when you know if you make the other one, the pretty much wrong one, that means you shut an eye and an ear to what life could actually be and who can spend their whole life with that knowledge? So eventually there is no choice but to follow truth and forge and scavenge and starve and bathe in beauty and hear your body reciting pleasures.

When you have to take a shit you take a shit because not shitting means denying yourself of relief, health, happiness and the next opportunity to eat your fuckin' brains out. This is how I want to live, how I think I'm understanding living....when something so true is out there and every part of your body and mind quivers because it feels something real you follow it. Poop maybe wasn't the most poetic of examples but im a tired lady.

All I'm really saying is I'm ready, all over again I'v been coiffed and primped and im ready to be fearless. I'm going to be fearless and forge ahead with gardens, educating, loving, being a damn good friend, ceramics, learning whatever the fuck i want to learn about next. Oh, and crocheting! See..I've already started with a pair of sockies finished tonight :D


P.S I believe everybody is capable of having a showdown with your uncertainties and fears. It's all in the search.

There's nothing poetic or beautiful or even remotely enlightening about what youre reading. Being a stick in the mud isn't cute or sweet.

The longings of my soul reach out for love and touch, different than those from a lover.

Lovers love is delicate yet reassuring in a way that i know, i sure as hell know, that after dinner time kisses will be upon me. Kisses, I live for those almighty beautiful kisses. They touch my cheek, peck my neck and envelope my mouth. The touch you give is like no other, no one person will be able to duplicate the love you have stored for me, the rations of love you deal out ever so generously is something that gives me great joy. I love you for all the kisses and touches and looks of love only you can give me and only I could receive. I long for you when youre not near, I imagine the moment when we reunite. I bet that particular warmth, that one tiny but paralyzing feeling you give will make time halt, but only for a second. This love has been explored, inside and out. All the petals have drawn apart so we could peer deep inside one and other, we know this love like no other love.

What holds me tight, suffocates my breathing and keeps me from moving at times is a different love all together. The love of my painter, sculptor and conductor. This love you have in your hands, your love shines brighter than any dark. If I lose my way your light beckons. Your light looks like salvation, feels like the spring sun, melting away all cold and smells in such a delightful way I don't think I could ever tell you. The love of your light is one yet to be understood, thoroughly explored or felt from the depths of my soul. Im writing for you, please find me, my God.

Sit and wait, I shall.