The Girl who Cannot Be Told What She Can and Cannot Have

I will be traveling next week to Seattle, Washington.  I will be staying with a dear friend, Kelsey McClure, with whom I spent many of my most pivotal years of adulthood with.  This is a friend with whom we shared our first house away from a parental unit.  This is a friend with whom I had to discuss how to mark my groceries, in order to be most clear to have marked my territory so as to not find my food raided on a day when I might need it most.  She hated that I marked my groceries, as she said that "she would not be told what she can and cannot eat."  I was confused by this, as I had very little money to buy groceries, and oftentimes would find my food missing.  Somehow, despite the turbulence in these conversations, we both made it through this time without either of us going hungry or without money.  As it turned out, marking one's groceries ended up being an unsuspectingly minute part of adulthood.

She moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in the wintertime.  By the time February had arrived, I needed a place to escape to-- I felt that I was in a manipulative relationship that allowed me no haven and no safe friends to discuss my troubles with.  Most of them knew that I was in a manipulative relationship and had no pity left for me as to why I could not pull myself out of it.  I didn't have the strength to say no.  So Kelsey and my friend JJ, both living in New Orleans, offered me a way to take the choice away from myself, to submerge myself into the unknown, and to gain some independence and respect for myself.  So I up and moved to New Orleans.  I don't know that it was following her, as much as it was seeing her bloom in a place that she did not feel tied down by.  The idea of an unshackled place to call home has always been appealing to me. 

Sometimes I wonder if I will follow her to the West, where she has found the love of her life and a place to be happy, to create, to fall in love, and to explore.  My heart flutters thinking of these things being possible for me.  For my life.  In a way, she has always lived the life I wanted.  And she has always been happy doing so, "not being told what she can and cannot have."  Maybe that's my problem-- maybe I need to view that mindset as an opportunity instead of something threatening my livelihood.  Maybe I just need to be set free.

I want to be free.

I will be getting a tattoo while I am in Seattle-- a slingshot shooting out flowers as a commemoration to the woman I have become-- a tomboy who is a bit guarded and keeps a means of protection close to her, but leaves a trail of flowers in her path.  A spray of positivity.  It is something that I have wanted tattooed on me for a while, but something to which I have been scared to commit.  Maybe it's cheesy.  Maybe I'll hate it next year.  Maybe I won't.  Maybe I just want to inspire myself to be the person I want to be, and that I know I can be.  Maybe being strong is not as scary as I think.

Also, I have read Just Kids, a book by Patti Smith, and have fallen in love with her and Robert Mapplethorpe's friendship and closeness, as well as Mapplethorpe's art and genuine nature and Patti Smith's writing.  In fact, I have found quite a bit of enjoyment out of reading her work.  Reading in general has become a great means of focus for me--of imagination and diving into someone else's world.  It has become less laborious to me than writing, but almost just as much of a release of stress and anxiety.  Almost.  I really love it and have just ordered four more books to read, and plan on reading more of Patti's work in M. Train and The Coral Sea.  I will also be seeing one of Mapplethorpe's portraits in a museum off of the beaten path in Seattle.  I will have to take an hour train to get there just to see one piece of his art and to feel a part of his world, and it will be absolutely worth it.  I am obsessed. 

I will be traveling alone, looking at museums, eating vegan food, and purchasing little trinkets of magic to bring back home--a little piece of my journey to keep (me) alive. I will bring my journal and sketchbook on this trip with me in order to allow my inspiration to have a means in which to unfold.

Counting down days.