my right now.

..........................................


If you can change your mind, you can change your life. | William James


You are so good. So good, you’re always feeling so much. And sometimes it feels like you’re gonna bust wide open from all the feeling, don’t it? People like you are the best in the world, but you sure do suffer for it. | Silas House


All I really want to know is how other people are making it through life – where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside it. | Miranda July


She hoped that although he could not hear her she could somehow imprint her ordinary love upon his memory through all eternity, hoped he would rise thinking of her, we were each other, we were each other, not that it mattered much in the long run but what else mattered as much. | Joan Didion


Give me something real…
Something that makes my heart stand at attention…
Something that makes my spirit shriek…
| Steven R. O’Brien.


Let go? Hold fierce and fast? Ask for what you need? Claim it for yourself? What do you need, lover? What you do you want? Stop quieting that inner voice that whispers in the night? | Jeanette LeBlanc


And I will love with urgency / But not with haste | Mumford and Sons

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i want to melt.

Perhaps just settle in, knowing that whatever you're giving is enough. Whatever you make or eat or do or not do, is totally and completely and positively enough and totally beautiful.  

-- Stephanie Perkinson

Angelo comes in every day with his red-and-white Igloo lunch cooler and sometimes I walk in on him in the kitchen standing at the table scarfing down his breakfast, embarrassed. He's difficult to understand but I know he gets upset when his back goes out or when kids mess with the toilets or when someone steals his hat, and I know he's in every day by seven and out by three. He's the nicest man around (there's no one else around) and in a strange way I'm grateful for him.

He's like the man on the bus, the elderly one who hobbles on to face no empty seats (it's crowded at 5pm) until a younger man gives his up, without even hesitating, and stands holding the bar.

Or the woman sitting in the back shouting into her cell phone about hospital visiting hours and PriceRite and whether or not someone just farted. Or the little girl sitting behind me, dangling her feet and saying, "Weee!" giddily, quietly so as not to disturb her mother too much, as we pass through the Thayer Street tunnel. Or the Asian woman and her daughter I see every day, both donning backpacks and holding hands and hurrying to get off at their stop downtown.

The bad is good and the good is bad and in the end none of it really matters. Or rather it all matters. They all melt into one, into One, and soon there's no difference between the bearded guy in the Converse shoes smoking a cigarette outside his shop and the bearded guy begging for change on the sidewalk, showing his hospital bracelets as some kind of proof that he "just got out" and needs help, desperately. Soon there's no difference between gritting your teeth through family tension and drama as you breathe deep and count backwards from ten, and riding in the car in peace listening to This American Life amidst raindrops and heat coming from the vents, warming your face. Soon there's no distinction between happy and sad, loud and quiet, sleepy and awake, sunny and cloudy. It's all just as it's meant to be.

And I want to melt into all of it. I want to melt into life and make no more distinctions, no more differentiations, no more judgments and scrutinies and considerations.

I want to glide through life pain-free, seeing the trials as acceptable and the joys as fine, and even the pain as okay. (Because it will never be pain-free.)


Let's melt. Let's melt into a low, steady hum of being that neither drops too low nor rises too high, existing on a perfectly informed and satisfied plane of existence.

Reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn alongside the likes of Rumi and Mindy Kaling. Lying sleepily on an acupuncture table while the needles burn, for just a second. Proclaiming yourself gluten free and taking some bites of the pastry-wrapped brie because it's nearly impossible not to. Hitting the snooze button in a haze as your brain decides it'd rather be awake then snoozing, despite the available extra nine minutes and the warmth of the comforter and the lack of sunlight. Smiling down the sidewalk and frowning down the sidewalk.

The black, and the white. The gray.
The iron grip, and the release. The melting.

Like Angelo the custodian and elderly men on buses and little girls with backpacks.

I want it all.

I want to melt.

this year, I’m grateful for truth.

This year, I’m grateful for truth.

For that liquid, uncomprehending, wily and enigmatic thing that scrabbles out of your hands at the very last second and leaves you peering into your hands wondering how you could have just had it 

and then not, so quickly.

For the words aren’t felt tumbling out of your mouth free-for-all and happy-go-lucky as if you were spinning around a carousel with a lavish grin and a loose grip.

No, it’s not that.

It’s not that the words are felt being held over the edge of a cliff, crying out and thrashing about in your hand begging to be let off, either.

There’s no forcing the truth, is there?

Sometimes it’s more like climbing that cliff from the bottom with nothing but your fingernails and a prayer. Struggling tremendously for miles, straight upwards, in search of the thing.

And even once you get to it, you might grasp it for a moment only for it to morph into liquid again and run through your fingers, despite your best attempts to clench your fingers together and pool it in your hand.

I want truth like friendships that you never need explanation for.

I want truth like words that are just as they are, words.

I want truth like clothes that hug your body in all the right ways.

I want truth like nights out till 4am laughing so hard your face hurts.

This year, I’m grateful for truth. I’m grateful for when it’s here and feels so palpable I could pick it up in my palms and squeeze it, and I’m grateful for when it’s slipped away and I’m suddenly wandering alone trying to find it again. 

It's a liquid, uncomprehending, wily and enigmatic thing, truth. 

That usually leads to freedom.

And I like that.

a little tattoo update.

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On Monday, November 18th, prices on my handwritten tattoo designs will be increasing.

It's time!

Digital file designs will go from $29 to $45.

Handmade package designs will go from $49 to $65.


But don't worry -- if you want to get in your purchase before the increase, you have until Monday to jump on it!

(And I'm thinking if you have a friend who's been wanting a tattoo and is ready to play around with a design, this could make a perfect holiday gift!)

The beauty is growing.....

the 26 fever.

The fever slipped in unannounced. One minute I was sleepily drinking coffee and readying myself for Persephone's wedding, the next I was shivering and sweating and generally feeling like falling over.

It was a sneaky thing.

But it knew what it was doing.

I made it through the wedding (alcohol helped quite a bit) and committed myself to the couch with blankets and tissues and tea for the entirety of the day Sunday.


And then on Monday, I turned 26. The fever was still passing through, but I knew what it was about.

It was the 26 fever.

The reminder that 26 will not be 25. That I will not be the same again. That I need to make space and clear the old.


The 26 fever is shaking me.

I'm still uncertain as to what 26 is about. (So far all I've got is the fact that I'm now more towards my late twenties than mid twenties...) But I'm ready for it. I'm ready for all that it has for me. 25 was a really fucking hard year that, while amazing, knocked me down time and time again.

I'm ready for peace in my body.
I'm ready for soul connection.
I'm ready for blazing confidence.
I'm ready for deep, deep love.
I'm ready for slow, deliberate aliveness.
And I'm ready to like my hair again.

The fever is passing. I can just barely see it making its way out the door, almost gone.

I'm ready.

I would really, really like to fill myself up.

I would really, really like to fill myself up on more things like

kittens, 

and sisters, 

and hot cups of tea, 

and crunchy leaves on the sidewalk after lunch,

and really good podcasts,

and clean bedrooms,

and fresh green juice,

and pure, pure honesty.

Filling myself up. 

One day at a time.

xo,

Ruth

living in the overwhelm.

I was having a conversation the other day and heard myself say the words, "I am getting everything I wanted."

I know, right? Words I never thought I'd hear myself say. Words I never really thought possible, especially from anyone in my family.

But I said them and they are true. I am getting everything I wanted. I wanted a job, I got a job. I wanted to move, I moved. I wanted a beautiful apartment, I got a beautiful apartment. I wanted soul-connected friends, I am making soul-connected friends. I wanted a better job, I got a better job. I wanted more money, I am getting more money.

And when I imagined those things before they came, it seemed like they were at some distant place in the future that looked like sunshine and rainbows and peace and happiness and perfection. I knew it was silly, and yet I half-believed it.

How could I not be happy once I'd moved out of my parents' house? How could things not be perfect when I was living in a gorgeous space of my own? How could I possibly be anything other than ecstatic once my life was not what it was six months ago?

And now, now. Six months later. I am sitting in my new gorgeous apartment that I share with two amazing women. And oh yes there is sunshine and rainbows and peace and happiness, for sure.....

.....but not every minute. There is no station I've arrived at that instantly creates euphoria.

There is extreme overwhelm. There is intense transition. In the past six months, I've quit the job I'd had for the past five years, started a new one in a brand new city, commuted back and forth almost two hours each way for two months straight, had a really difficult surgery, met new roommates on Craigslist and moved in with them in Providence permanently, began a course of medication that severely fucked with my hormones for three months and still is, moved into another apartment, quit said job, started a brand new one. Aaaaaaand deep breath.

I've been deliriously happy, and I've been dejectedly miserable.
I've been on cloud nine, and I've been in the depths of despair.
I've felt sure and solid and purposeful, and I've felt lost and confused and scared.

My point is......it's okay to live in the overwhelm. 

It's okay to be feeling all these things. I mean, if we were going through major life transitions and not feeling a range of emotions, something would be off. This is okay. This is good.

There can be balance. There can be a softening. There is safety, always.


I'm not really sure why I wanted to blog all this. But I felt it needed to be said. I wanted it to be spoken. I wanted to share it. I haven't written here in a long time, and I finally just needed to force myself to do it. Because writing it helps. Talking to friends about it helps. The processing, the sharing......it's how I move through the overwhelm. (Along with quiet nights in with my Pandora cool jazz station...)

You know?