The Champagne Soapbox

  • soft animal

    I’ve been trying to write a poem like a tattoo. Ink on a pen. Underneath the skin. Except now it comes up my throat. I say words I could’ve never wrote because ink is forever and I shake stutter when I give speeches. Becoming more of a bitch lately. Young, fresh smelling leather. There’s a lot of empty space. And, I contemplate the difference in a circle and a hole. A lasso before it catches the animal, and what it looks like around something another something needed. 

    Needles, guns, grass. 

    Some important song.

    And, most of my words will pass. 

    The ones not written by tongue.

    My arthritic hands flip hymns from mass. 

    To do and not to say. 

    Slurring laughter with a meaningless hum. 

    Wake up asleep, just another day. 

    Believe the foggy lullaby that shares the tune of my future hand’s shakiness. The surrealist is opening his eyes. How can you be nostalgic for things your mind made up? Feel the eternity lineage women making up your fingerprints? Pushing each other for a chance to catch the light of your reflection. No phones until Friday, far from parents or road toll. A broken fresh individuality in independence, staring into the mirror for years picturing wire steel hairs red nails cigarettes accents curves like the ones you grew into. They thought of you, never knew you, “couldn’t be you” they moan and release between scrunching dirt between motionless toes. 

    That’s what they all say. The soft animal of our bodies when they become stray.

    I’m doing the same shit another day. The same shit stomping mommy come feed me again. Daddy I miss you again. Do you think of my voice when you want to be needed again? My room is red at night. I didn’t bite. My tongue is numb from cutting my teeth throughout the night. I’m doing the same shit yelling mommy don’t look at me again. Daddy do you see me? A sister is here and we love to play pretend. She lives alone now, we both do. Mend the urges while his forgiveness is true. Pray that when you get caught, the folds in your forehead wrinkles are warm and eyes you look into still seafoam.

  • ALICE IN CHAINS

    Are you ready for this life? Like tracing fingers on baby feet, you only notice emotions when you feel excitement or pain or certain specific things. Drunk breathing keeping you from going to sleep. Your body vibrates from the movement of your drumming heartbeat. Between the cities and thrills we keep cheap, something inside doesn’t rest. A social unrest: the collective understanding that when we lay for our final rest, the rest will watch us regress into the wet paved grass. They will see you at your worst and joke about death, but in death, we don’t see or think or joke at all. We just cease to exist.

    The last time I saw my dad smile was when he saw my sister and I argue. His brother loved sailing swamp water and shooting guns and Alice In Chains. I inherited more things than just my father’s pain. He lied about getting his tear ducts plugged. I tasted the cajun salt from my tears and saw my dad looking at me like a mirror with broken glass. Surrounded by strangers, it seemed as though he does not even recognize me when my water is not enough to warm my frozen expression. I learned to stop crying when he took my phone away, after my window was locked and the belt withered.

    Though a crowd of familiarity, I notice his red face and blue shirt and pale white skin stained with colorful emotion. The last time I saw my dad cry was the first time I saw him as someone other than my dad. Pictures of his childhood flipping over like a book on a screen. He got a new phone the other day and called me from it. The child now standing in front of me, pointing at me, telling strangers how proud he is to have made me and how sad it has been to lose you.

    At my new home, I walk around like there is a veil protecting me from maintaining peace. I feel people stare at me when I tell them where I have been. I’ve become accustomed to this sheet in front of me. I fucking hate therapy because i can’t tell people about myself, i just want them to see me without having to ask me about my favorite things. Have my friends wonder about me without having to ask them if they want to meet for coffee. It’s not their job to look after me. It’s my job now to work on getting me back to me after losing you.

    You haven’t talked to me in months, but your dad commented on his memorial page. I valued us, now the me after you. When I die, will you let me know on the internet?

    I’m starving but bloated from the sea I’m swallowing. She told me that my face looked really puffy, so I sat in the bathroom stall swallowing my own spit. I think I made myself sick from all this mucusy saliva succumbing to gravity when I cry prior to sleep. I went to the doctor, got a shot, and look at the bruise. Now I’m the sick one.

    My friends are sending me pictures of their babies. My dad is telling me he needs to pull himself together. My work expects me in the morning.

    It’s raining tonight. Tomorrow, sun.

    I lay in the pool with my pale skin and hairy legs. I realize how much effort it is. The sun reflects off me as though I have become water. The overcast afternoon: I have disappeared behind billowing blue waves and feel covered by the sheet in the sky. Doves fly around like angels, and peace becomes independent from my struggling white flag. I’m tired, so I close my eyes. Finally warm, you surround me like a plaid flannelled hug. Don’t make me think about how you became the light that clouds invade.

    I don’t look like myself, and you don’t either. I think of you and how I will always remember how you went to sleep forever. Play Alice in Chains until my restless sleep finally becomes a slumber. They’re playing some Cardi B or some shit by the pool. I can hope it’s just my beginning.

    Are you ready for this life? Tracing fingers on baby feet. Drunk panicking keeping you from going to sleep. Between the cities and tricks we keep cheap, some guttural growl reveals that it can’t go to sleep. We all look up at the ceiling and wonder why the dead people inside painted it so cheap. In life, we joke about death. In death, we don’t see or think or joke at all, we just live in someone’s corrupted memory.

  • strangers at walgreens

    I only want to leave when I’m comfortable. What does that say about me? I get in my bed and imagine my life better overseas. I leave my peace in a room with two queens thinking that my bed is a better place to sleep.

    I found familiarity in a stranger today. I wondered if the area was safe and she interrupted my thought to say that this was her favorite place. They have one back in Austin, but I guess I wanted to see what the difference would be. The difference is a girl who doesn’t know me yet looks like someone I might have seen. I bet she wore ribbons in her hair. I wear them still. Maybe that’s the thing that ties us together.

    I met a few more people today. I rode in a car with a stranger and turned out okay. I find that I’ll find my way when I push myself to resolve future problems today. Get that thinking shit out of the way so I can stare blankly and not be filled with constant dismay. I stood outside of a Walgreens and this guy told me he liked my headphones and if I was gay. He didn’t say that exactly, but I knew if I laughed too hard or smiled too big he could either take me or make my day. He skated off, (of course he did) and my ride arrived asking for my name.

    He looked back at me. I only know because I was waiting to see if he was looking at me like a feen. Dirty boys are kind of like my nicotine. Dirty like slept in sheets or stomping cigarettes out on the street. Fingerprints left on an almost empty cologne bottle and hugs that feel like a stolen heartbeat. We can share clothes and toothbrushes and stare at the same screen. Feel the same depressions and raise each other up like a late sunrise in the spring. Just a little fling, make myself a bit dirty until I think it’s time I get clean.

    What does that say about me?

    I like the way clothes feel on me when I’m clean. Swimming in bubbles, my namesake. It’s like no one has seen me naked and my car muffles the sound of my scream. It’s like no one has seen me at my worst and I’m worthy of bigger dreams. I’ll scape my skin dry and slather myself in anti-aging cream.

    I want things so opposite of me.

    I just hope that we can all get along. I look over my shoulder cause I hear her singing my favorite song. Scream at the same sun asking some god if he has a place for my mom. If god was a girl, she would remind me of where I came from. It’s not like I forget anyway. It follows me like a shadow, because I only notice it when the sun is too bright and I turn around.

    Just because I can, I buy a teddy bear and say it’s to socialize my katze. I only know a single Germans phrase, and I repeat it over when I get really tipsy. I’ve only been to Germany once. I never left, and now I only listen to hard techno when I get a little boozy. My mind goes crazy when my body is lazy. Easy rhyme, falls off the tongue reasonably like clothes to a sleazy. I forget that my mind and body are a single entity responding through millions of filled or occupied capacities.

    Nothing bad is going to happen to me. It’s all in good time. Something bad is going to happen to me, but it’ll end up fine. One day, I’ll respect my time. I get scared when I realize everything is safe. I’m in a perfectly fine place, most of the time. When I rest my head, I think about how privileged I am to be paranoid about losing my peace when the only thing that leaves me is time and that guy who wanted to look at me twice – one first and last for the last time.

  • blonde

    Blurry morning sky, and I’ll rub my eyes awake in an hour. Sitting in the shower, feeling dirty and clean. I wish I could ask him to suck the rot right out of my bloodstream. Gentle baby, touch me just to relieve the part of the seams that are too tight and strung. You’re gone, so I press my cheek to the floor. The dirt that pollutes my environment are footsteps walking through the door. How do you tell the girl in the black sheets there will always be a layer of darkness above her? We can watch the same sunset and I’ll still get sad that it has to say goodbye so many times. You have my other hand. Promised me that you would make the time pass easily, indefinitely. I just think anywhere you are is the coolest place in the world, and now I’m homesick.

    My sheets were pink before that. Feet on the bunk boards above me and a jumping George on the screen. Double bounce so I can feel high even when you feel like my shadow – in my privileged house with a trampoline and a cat that follows. Held my hand through the crowd when you got too drunk, until we laughed about you getting too drunk and you said you thought I might be too drunk. I thought I thunk myself into a coma, until you woke me up. When I think about it, I feel like throwing up like you made this up. The highlights pulled you out of a funk and I wish you would have just owned it, like this is finally the moment. When you were my other hand, I thought about how you only took care of yourself.

    Depollute me. Water me down like rain running from my roof. My window is boarded shut from jumping too many times. Preforming myself into seclusion, and now I’m a magician with a wand and a rabbit. I sit awhile and guess my sicknesses. The shirt I wear that’s not made for me, it’s too big for me, I dried it on accident and now it hugs all of me.

    It’s funny that I only feel like myself when I’m not home. Maybe I like being a stranger among aisles. A child looking at normal things in awe. I get along with them all because I grew up with people who say y’all. A sister who answers a second after I call. Would you recognize me in a room full of people and hold my hand again after it all? A hotel room that’s too big for a girl this small. I feel comfortable in public restrooms when I’m the only one in a stall.

    Water slaps my window. I think about jumping just to feel the wind, never pain. It would only take a bit of effort to fix this. A bit of money or medications or more isolation. Finding myself in a different place, with a bit of money, medications, and isolation is enough. Music to make the cough go down. For someone so void of emotion, you knew how to make someone cry. That was a while back. I don’t cry anymore, and when I do it’s because I’m thirsty. Staring at the ones left who haven’t left and say “Bailey, I hope you never leave me.” To be fair, I even leave myself sometimes. Not recently though.

    My hair is flat from laying down on my back. Rolling around the carpet at the hotel next to the laundromat in a city where I might host my final act. Feet in the air like I’m pushing boards. White sheets with a clean smell, unfamiliar and perfect. Peace is a privilege, and I know myself too well. I know you’ll never see this. I’ve mopped my floors and your name is becoming hard for me to spell.

    2 responses to “blonde”
    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Awh

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Misery loves romance, and I’m getting married

      Liked by 1 person

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  • airplane food

    Going to Germany. Well, as I’m writing this I’m on the way there. Everyone was excited to hear I’m going, and they tried to pass some of their emotions through the phone via change of tone, but I couldn’t become excited. Why the fuck am I not excited? I’m very fortunate that I’m wanted, needed, enough to have to make the day trip to visit.

    I’m shaking at the airport from anxiety. I’m not very well traveled, it’s a new thing in my life. It was once a thing that was pinpointed as my downfall, almost shoved in my face, being a homebody by default development. For a while, I would wake up to the start of a movie I’ve seen before though all days come to a perfect conclusion- one that you know how it ends and how it begins again. How lovely it is to be rained upon by sweet nothing, that a predictable day is the pit of your depression. To be missed (by my cat mainly) with intention of goodness and not for salacious reasons because we’ve all moved on (i’m a free agent, let’s do it). To be shaking in an airport not because you’re scared of airplane food but because I’m terrified of where my mind going to go for 10 hours. You won’t believe the amount of times I researched quotes about “jumping over the boundary of fear” and “all great things are the on the other side of being uncomfortable.” Mumbling to myself cliché words in an airport reminding myself to stay grounded while being one of the highest in the air.

    On a normal day, I can’t help but to distract myself with tik toks to shorten my span for a minute. I look away from conversations that last longer than thirty minutes. Oh to be stuck in a drunken hometown bar living scenarios I’ve played in my head twice over for more than a few hours. I get off the plane that lasted a bit longer than ten hours just to see that no one has sent me a tik tok (pitiful), started a conversation (awh), or drunkenly typed out something they regret the next day (i wish).

    I tell my friends that I really don’t mind being alone, yet I yearn for them today to assure me that I’m not. I’m fine with being alone, for a while it was my preference, the time before that I couldn’t think about my next breath before that someone reminded me. Sometimes I replicate that idea of someone, being the sad girl who just dreamt of being the girl I am now, just as an excuse for poor present behavior. Maybe I relive my healed trauma for the sake of experiencing emotion that takes me out of my healed, dissonant contentment.

    Is there something to be hungry for when your plate is already full? Am i so starving to the point that I’m just used to this empty stomach feeling? Staring into an abyss of algorithms, staring through the person explaining to me how they operate, them staring at me and seeing the girl I still don’t quite understand yet. What do you think of her? Is she worthy of a swipe, a quick smile across the bar, a friendly hug paired with a “How is your mom doing?”, a glimpse of her getting into the car with someone else, an explanation of how you can’t seem to pay attention to her more than you can a football game or the girl pouring your next at that hometown bar?

    I’m still on this flight, thinking about how I’m hungry for something but I can’t understand to admit who… I meant what. One thing about me is that I’m too creative. Before you spend your time giving a response, which could be my reward, I’ve already pictured the conversation we will have the next ten hours. How is it so far? Jet lag is a bitch, but damn you’re just as exhausting. Why aren’t you hungry? Have I fed you enough? What if I put it in a 60 second loop enough to make it last for the rest of our years together? Keep scrolling for content. I’ll be sure to provide it.

    I’ve been watching Friends on the dash of stranger adjacent of me. I cant hear the sound, but I’m picturing what their mind is reacting to in real time. I know people are doing the same to me. I bet they’re guessing my age shorter than a few years, picturing me waiting to text some guy that I made it safe, that I’ve traveled enough to know the exact plane model and meal they’ll serve me. I’ll choose a movie that they’ll expect me to watch, some American feminist she is watching Little Women and not crying at the part where she denies Timothee Chalamet but wipes tears when the main character runs away from it all. We’re much more alike than I want to be.

    I had multiple thoughts on this trip of running away and becoming an anomaly, my true yet completely false essence. I walked around the town at night and said thank you in different languages to see their reaction; do they know I’m the foreign one? I’ve imagined myself being a pinpoint on the globe and having my friends scroll to Europe to find me independent of their time. I’ve prepared my responses for them in advance when they ask how it was.

    Before this trip, I only asked what I could give, when really all I need was to be fed myself. Were you starving? I actually just ate. I opened my arms and received as much (metaphorical/actual) food as I could. The waiter put his hand on my back and we walked through the cobblestone and he asked if I ate well. I was so full that night. I looked around the city with this man’s hand on my back, and I realized that I actually was always full. I am SO full that I poureth my cup until it drips over onto the counter to the floor and got my feet wet. My feet are wet, your socks are wet, and here I WAS asking YOU if you would like more water. Asking people to participate in my communal drowning for the sake of not feeling alone in my quarter-life crisis. Here, I became satisfied.

    In fact, I assume that position so much of others that it’s way easier to talk about the struggles of my generation than to have a ten-minute elevator pitch of who I am and what I do over dinner with whomever I’m trying to impress. Just get to the good stuff before my stomach starts growling. I guess that’s the point of being in a foreign country. You don’t really have time to cater to others, and you really are stripped to your basic needs until your feet are dry and you can walk around confidently knowing you are the inside the mind of the outsider (over thinker, under appreciated, equally oblivious).

    I’m coming to terms with the fact that allowing people and experiences and culture to share their portions with me is why my plate is full. Or at least, that’s why I want it to be full. Not full of empty thoughts of who I will be in a year, what her occupation will be, how will she make it through the day without becoming the person whose kids ask her when dinner is ready.

    I’m on the returning flight looking straight forward at my own dash. I look through the movies and imagine what it would be like to be in my own bed, in my own apartment, in my own shared city of people who moved to get away from everyone who’s plates were empty. No one knew I was on this flight, I didn’t want people to ask me questions just yet. I wanted to enjoy the simplicity of having a perfect cup full of fulfillment and a plate complete with white sausage and Moroccan waiters who get paid a living wage and Prosecco at hotel bars with people who address you as “Ms. Champagne.” I really loved the persona I built over this trip, until I realized I was the one who created it. I’m the one with a cleaner closet, the one with the personality to want conversation with people she doesn’t know, and to embrace the mystery she finds in herself. That’s so cheesy.

    When I would walk away from a counter, I know I was being noticed for my accent. I liked being noticed in a foreign country, at least the positive side of it like getting discounts at places or giving tips to waiters like they don’t expect. I think of if I reminded them of someone, or if they imagined my life being completely different than what it is in reality. When my flight back was, if I even had a ticket, or if there was a guy waiting to text me when I land, or if I was the American type of feminist that agrees with the politics of her state.

    As soon as the plan wheels touched gravel, that LONG flight, my cup shakes a bit and my food falls over. It’s empty, and all of a sudden I’m filled with the urge to experience it all over again. Instead of asking others to make me full again, I have wait to get back on the aisle seat and see what will fill it. Go somewhere else other than my grudge of a room that I imagine my self melting away in. Talking with strangers and buying their art from the side of the road and asking them what their mom made them when they were little and touching ancient architecture and realizing WE ARE ALL THE SAME AND THERE ARE MORE OF US OUT THERE!

    In simple, just for the sake of giving an unscripted response, it was amazing. It was exactly what I needed. To be alone, without knowledge or understanding of culture, to be a fly on the wall and have so many people guessing where I bring my buzz to. To be the center of attention in my mind to the point that I distort my perception of other peoples perceptions of me. People watching to a psychological, slightly mentally ill (the fun kind), extent.

    If I got anything out of this trip, it was the allowance of ignorance and being blissful to things I don’t quite understand, even my own emotional depth. Realizing that I love being a fly on the wall so much that also I’m worried no one will notice me. Allowing myself to indulge and become full of other people instead of being so full of myself and my quest to solve life all the time. Finding out that it gets dark early over there, the food is better, and that you much prefer the 4-hour dinners with sparkling water and wine from next door rather than the boring drive through with five dollar boxes. There were lots of things I took from this trip. I indulged in it all.

    This may explain why I’ve been absent for a while. I’m actually happy, maybe a little too inspired, waiting for another adventure that’s in the form of a person place or thing. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to go overseas, to have a job that allows me to work with people and know people who live a life different than me, and to have the urge walk alone in a different country and become a little more satisfied not following a path popularly traveled to find my own sense of individuality.

    I mean come on, Germany was amazing. I was in a huge life rut before then, dedicating time to wrong individuals out of boredom and being revived by beer and roasted pumpkin.

  • purgatory is closed

    this sunday is yet another annual return on sacrifices made during lenten season. usually, people give things up on ash wednesday and continue to omit those things and number of other things from their lives until easter. this season, i decided to journal everyday about how i identify religion. i have held many relationships with god, or the holy trinity, or the universe. at one time or another, i was/am in a religious relationship with three things, one thing, and everything.

    three things.

    i grew up insanely catholic, alike most of the people who developed back home. i guess we could say that it started at my baptism, the moment where the sin we were born with was reset, and i was granted the key to heaven if i were to meet death earlier than expected. i really enjoyed the chaos of being catholic, at least the community aspect of it. repeating prayers back to your parents so they could be recited during the weekly test at CCD. coming to class after school hours and hearing people talk so deeply about their concept of afterlife at a very young age. going back to school the next day as if you didn’t contemplate creation together the night before. looking forward to vacation bible school and water balloon fights and desserts your almond parents probably would not approve of.

    i think my opinion of religion changed when i began to question the routine of it. i remember distinctly a teacher saying that if you were to question if he was even real, or a possibility and this effort was met with nothing, then you were already damned. if you were lucky, you can spend time in purgatory reflecting on your mortal sins for permission to enter heaven. i remember that i walked out of class feeling absolutely nauseated, scared to talk to the person next to me in fear of judgment about the way i contemplated how life was written. was the catholic ego was just an attempt to collect tithes and dismiss culture? now that curiosity was an option, i had to hide the intrusive thought behind many ideas of tradition and teachings. i’m not even sure what the person meant when saying it, but it was the first time i allowed myself to interpret religious teachings.

    however, scared shitless through tradition, i had to fall way deeper into my faith. trauma dumping at confirmation retreats directly to the guys who sexually exploited my friends. confessing widely uncomfortable things to a man you have known since birth behind a partition. listening to women of faith describe celibacy while most girls in my class have already failed the task. being taught to desire marriage over love. crying to shrine of penance bread because you feel so guilty for things teenagers fall into naturally. sitting first pew hoping that everyone in your hometown recognizes your dedication to your faith. screaming into a pillow at night hoping that maybe if you asked loud enough, he will hear you. thinking about the afterlife so much that the present becomes an afterthought.

    i moved to austin, and i learned very quickly that you need to be curious in order to make friends, succeed in classes, and to form real opinions instead of relying on other people’s stated facts of life. i met people of different religions. i met people of different cultures. i met people of different languages. i still felt faithful, to a very robust nature, until i went to a younglife event out of curiosity. it seemed like a very safe place: people were talking about their weekend plans openly, they played loud music i heard on the radio and not in a gospel book, and they wore whatever they wanted. that was the only time i went, only because i felt ten times more confused about what i was taught when my only intention was to gain more clarity.

    in college, my favorite thing to learn was cognitive psychology and development. i thought it was convenient how the most intensive religious education begins directly after our brains are drawn toward individualism, free-thought, and experimentation. right when are more inclined to explore creatively.

    now i’m sitting in a pew sophomore year for ash wednesday. i went alone, right down the street from the UT tower. in the middle of the service, i had to go to the bathroom and chug water from the sink because it became really hard to breathe when the priest looked directly at me. it was like he knew that i was lost, or that i didn’t want to be there, or that this was just a fulfillment of a parent’s holy assignment- take a picture of my ashes to convince them my mind was right, my faith was still there, and that i was still that god-fearing girl who never questioned him much like she did society. the blood tasted like wine, the body tasted like a cracker, and the girl left for one of the last times.

    one thing.

    junior year, i decided to take a writing credit course called “the bible and it’s interpreters.” i thought this would be my salvation, discussing christianity in a multi-cultural context with a teacher who speaks with a thick norwegian accent and was as kind as jesus himself. a few people in that class always introduced ideas by saying “as a catholic,” though i never felt comfortable to admit that i was one. not only did i feel that it was not necessary to announce every other minute, i did not feel comfortable talking to others about my awkward experience of what i knew church to be. the class was only intended to discuss historical context and not spiritual philosophy, and at one point i began to debate with the catholics using a hard bias of religious trauma. this peaked interest from those who joined the class for the historical context, varying religions and only present to learn about the origin of this huge religion. i finally felt comfortable talking to others about their religion. subsequently, i healed a lot of the shame i carried from my strictly catholic childhood by asking questions and considering that my idea of god was separate from religion and practices. maybe god had more than three names. if he has an abstract presence, how am i to assume that no one else experiences him.

    everything.

    i had to read a lot of scripture for this class, way more than i ever did in catholic school. now that i was held boundless for interpretation (compared to “this is what he meant by this, learn it and live it”), i began to form a beautiful understanding of what those words meant regardless if they were from god himself, by proxy, or some random dead dude in the middle east. god made everything in his own image, so he is the sky and the beaches and the dirt between your toes and the air that you breathe and the water you drink when you become nervous matching eyes with a priest who is guessing your motivations for appearing in church after so long. i didn’t want to associate myself with a god who punished curiosity, especially if he made our minds so free thinking. i didn’t want to associate myself with a god who restricted connection, because our mouths were made to speak to others with open ears. i didn’t want a god who shamed people for accepting the way in which they were created. i didn’t want a god who favored creations and allowed society to create a false narrative of supremacy.

    people don’t write books to dictate opinions. they write them to inspire.

    last week in a conversation about religion, someone told me that purgatory is closed (it was a joke… maybe). i think in this whole religious journey, which is a contemplation for many my age, i began to accept the universally unknown. i know everything happens for a reason, whether fate or god or being written in Bailey’s Chronological Life Plan according to Age dictates that (it’s probably all the same). i know that there is something that made us so individual and similar, despite whatever name we give to it (god is a good word for it).

    i know that belief makes life purposeful, even if that belief is contrary to those around you. i believe in energy and understanding motivations. in growing opportunities rather than constricting paths. in people and their psychological desire to find solutions to their curiosities. in guidance opposed to teaching. how experiences shape beliefs. how age boosts position and how those can be manipulated through ego. whatever you believe is yours, and thank god we have that freedom forever.

    now that purgatory is closed, i guess it’s finally time to start being good people! this concludes my lenten season contemplations. all that really matters is that you have your own relationship with whoever built you. if anything comes out of this, i hope you take your time to think about what you believe in. i’m glad i allow myself the space to do so, and speaking about it to my friends, myself, and the virtual abyss is more healing than intended.