Out

take your time boy I'm in no hurry--came across all the swords you buried (tell me what it's like to never worry)

I think for the week of my thirtieth I will be giving myself the present I've been flirting with all year: a total mental breakdown about everything that happened in the second half of my twenties! Just kidding, but also not. I am wore out of this sick, unfair year, and I'm too tired not to say so.

Oh my god, I need Elkhorn so bad right now. My best happiness, my place, my untouchable woods.

I came across this picture when I was clearing stuff off my camera, and I look like such a stupid goon, but it made me stop because I also look so damn happy. I know exactly when I took it: trip 5 of 13 this year: Josh and Travis, just a one nighter way down on the sites right on the creek. And I was a creek girl here, going to fetch breakfast wood, a bottle of cold champagne in my other hand, happy to be alone in the woods, listening to the high water break through logjams.

The first camping trip I went on in 2016 was at the end of February, and I was in a state where I felt like utterly nothing. That place gave me snow. It sounds shit and gay as hell, but I realized that trip that a place never runs out on you. If I wanted to put my trust in something that wouldn't disappoint, I should spend the year out enjoying these incredible woods that I washed up on. So I went a lot. And now I need to go again, and regain something.

left me begging to the birds for a bone or offering, left me saying nothing, nothing like I always say

I remembered today that sometimes great solace is to be entirely by myself for a little while, especially up on the top of some hill in the Shenandoah, watching the sycamore turn white in the dusky cold and all the little farm lights come on across the Valley.

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On the other hand, then I came home to this:

25 things I did in an hour and a half

Hey, Jess, what are you going to do because you cancelled your long rain run because you're getting a cold, (probably from last week when you thought you were maybe coming down with something and said you were gonna take it easy but actually did a lot of cold wet bell-ringing for the Salvation army, speed running, and 3 am barefoot dog games) and find yourself with unscheduled free time?

1. Take out the garbage
2. Feed, walk said dog, tell said dog how handsome and smart he is (he just mastered the ring-the-bell-with-your-nose-to-go-outside trick)
3. Consider current full moon in Gemini with a crazy evil Saturn conjunction and all the horrible emotional really on-the-nose astrology it's supposed to portend
4. Do the laundry
5. Shot put non-pie quality pumpkins into the compost area in the rain
6. Stash pie-quality pumpkins in the cellar
7. Play favorite album again
8. Dance with said handsome brilliant dog to said favorite album
9. Burn nice new fancy candle bought because "Dark Forest" is name of said candle and in a really Nithavellir headspace re: wicked full moon
10. Prepare lunches and grind up beans and set coffee maker for tomorrow
11. Prep dinner
12. Empty dishwasher
13. Just open up trashy fantasy story to look
14. Write trashy fantasy story instead of working on, you know, the actual book
15. Love trashy fantasy story
16. Get kinda sad about stuff for a while: trashy fantasy actually v. sad when read in certain light (Full moon in Gemini light for instance)
17. Wonder if other people think about self as often as self thinks about them
18. Wonder if might have a fever
19. Think this Nithavellir candle is starting to smell like a real sucky bath and body works man perfume, decide should have anticipated that for reason of the stupid thing being called
"Dark Forest " duh Jess, beat self up about more foolish choices
20. Think that's probably what goblins smell like anyway
21. Carry said handsome brilliant dog around the kitchen on hip like a 40 lb baby
22. Get really into said favorite album again while sauteing shiitake mushrooms, recover good mood (shiitake mushrooms!)
23. Start cleaning fridge out uh oh don't
24. ...start a big project right now
25. 6:30 time to eat dinner

I was only for to die beside

I told Chris that for this Yule event, my costuming would be to dress as a girl named Jess wearing a tackyass urban outfitter t-shirt. He said, "So... Yan, as usual?" The look was short-lived, as I had to haul my dog out of a frozen pond, and then a very clingy baby put a lot of doughnut in my hair. Managed to get a photo record of it, though. I thought about cropping my knarly upper arm bruise out of this picture, but then I thought "What am I censoring anything for anymore?"

Yule was kind of fucking magic. We spent the day cooking together, as nobody had to be rushing around game-planning. Everybody awesome came, and it was the true believers, none of the lip-service heroes. We had a massive bonfire. At four am, I was sitting in a pile of my friends, drinking entirely things that were made by our talented people, talking about all that has changed and all that has stayed the same, my dog utterly draped out on a sleeping Joe, who he adores. It was so good to see the progress in everyone from last year. I miss the game, but it's been an important year without it. I feel bitterly bittersweet about a lot of things.

don't you frown when you're feeling like this: only love can dig you out of this

Sometimes, but especially right now, I gotta think: gosh, Jessica, why are you so fucking stupid? And then there's this part of me going, like: yeah, okay, and that's fine. C'mon. 

That's the thing. I always thought I was faking it, and I wasn't. I think some part of me really believes in all that stalwart crap. I don't believe in the idea of people's faith, justice, goodness, or bravery anymore. But by God, I'm not going to slink off on them. 

I did myself a little janky tarot reading, (a hot mess: star over two of pents, inv. emperor made an appearance, bunk for miles) and my personal representation card was the upside down nine of cups: heart, valor, loyalty, but not without some little ruin. 

People are not going to do right by me. I can't control that. People have been using me and taking advantage of me since I was a little girl. Since I was a literal child. They will chew me up, and then they will spit me out when they're done and bored. I can't control that. I can control me, though, and what I do back. It's so fucking cool to be all cynical and grim and cold, but I'm not that, even now. There's nothing to be gained by turning your back on people who don't even know the extent or consequences of their actions, and probably wouldn't care if they did. People are just people. 

So I don't know, I feel tired, but I'm not bitter.My heart is very full. And that's the thing I feel I've been trying to wrap my head around in my late twenties. What do you do when loss and disappointment happens again, and again, and again? What do you do when everyone is the same? Internalize it? Get furious, and atom bomb the people who hurt you? No way. you make bread. (Or pumpkin pound cake.) You love, and scrap together whatever compassion you've got, and you never, ever give up on them, because the real thing is so much bigger than any stupid wound you've got to nurse. And that can be okay.