My job is to live in the liminal spaces.
My job is to recognize the unique core of every person I meet.
My job is to merge life and death until they are indistinguishable.
My job is to lie down in city graveyards.
My job is to stare at the trees dancing in the late August wind.
My job is to close my eyes and recognize the infinite grasping and gulping for air.
My job is to watch the blades of grass caress the cut stone of the graves, to absorb the desperation and intention with which humans desire permanence.
My job is to find people who will build me up and create a clear space for work and play.
My job is to stay clear on what my job is.
My job is to find ways to do my job.
My job is to remain open to new channels.
My job is to break myself open, again and again, trusting that I will always be whole, even as I fall apart.
My job is to expect nothing and everything all at once, forever.
My job is to be human and allow others to witness me being human.
My job is to create spaces for people to feel safe being human in concert with one another.
My job is to ask questions.
My job is to be part of nature.
My job is to gently unfold the blocks inside of me, inquiring into what might lie behind, underneath, and between them.
My job is to look at my hands in wonder.
My job is to use my hands to create music, writing, dance, thus communicating in the most direct way I know how.
My job is to feel the earth holding me.
My job is to discern discomfort from endangerment.
My job is to cherish the creative connections, friendships, and relationships I have been gifted with.
My job is to lead with honesty and compassion.
My job is to remain present with the stuff that feels ambiguous, confusing, murky, muddy, in between, and fuzzy.
My job is to translate the immediacy of life and death into art.
My job is to hold hope.
My job is to feel the seasons change.
My job is to let go of “shoulds” and find what feels good.
My job is to decorate Easter Eggs with tiny broken treasures I’ve slowly and intentionally collected over the years.
My job is to listen to the small voices, and report back.
My job is to commune with souls while “performing” (sharing, broadcasting, communicating) music and spoken word on stages, in living rooms, and in headphones.
My job is to turn towards the truth of being alive in the chaos.
My job is knowing myself well enough to know when something in my life is dying.
My job is to hold hands.
My job is to dance, sweaty and joyful, among people I love.
My job is to recognize the the sadness and hurt in others, and to hold space for it without becoming it myself.
My job is to lean into sensation if it’s pleasurable, and say no to sensation if it’s unwanted.
My job is to surrender to the mystery.
My job is to shout my humanness from the tallest hill where somebody and nobody can hear me.
My job is to follow the softness.
My job is to pull up my socks and keep going.
Tag: trauma recovery
the mess that remains
We are racing through a living room, on the north side of the house, unsure if this is a game or a real life-or-death situation. My sister has a box in her hands, and she is running from me. The box is plastic, with tiny compartments, each filled with a different type of colorful bead, and her hands are small. My hands are clenched into fists.
Anger billows up out of my armpits, my shoulders, my knees. I sprint faster, finally gaining on my younger sister, Maya, who, in a flash of inspiration, runs up the stairs.
NO. The hot pressure sticks to my ribs, threatening to detonate. A word blooms in my stomach, burrows up through my esophagus, presses against my tongue, digs deep into the crevices of my jaw. I’ve said this word so many times before, in thousands of ways. Sometimes it comes out soft, gentle, imploring, but other times it comes out fighting, harsh, urgent.
I see what is happening in slow motion. That’s not even the right way to describe it. It’s not slow motion. It’s focus. Detached focus. I see what is happening with a focus so clear, it’s as if I am a monk meditating in a Himalayan temple. I know I am about to scream. I know that it is going to be so loud that it will hurt my throat to do it. I know my sister will not be happy about it. I know I will do it anyway.
“MAYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” I bellow.
Everything stops. She comes to an abrupt halt and looks back at me, full of genuine innocence and hurt. I stand breathing heavily. The anger dissipates. She comes down the stairs. She is deflated, I am deflated, the whole expansive moment is forever deflated.
All I know now is that my sister is sad.
And then it happens. I don’t want her sadness to be my fault. The blame is too much, the guilt overwhelming. I make a pact with myself, then and there, in the pregnant pause between the yelling and her response. I will never scream at my sister again. No matter how angry I get, how much pressure builds up in my body, I won’t let it escape again.
Ever.
I kept this pact for years, almost perfectly, not just with my sister, but with everyone else in my life.
Until the Ritz cracker incident.
The next time I let the word “no” escape from the surface of my skin was in a middle school cafeteria. I sat with my stomach pressed up against a round, dark brown, plastic lunch table. My legs fidgeted under the seat as I manically devoured a bag of Ritz crackers, butter and crumbs spreading thick over my fingertips and tongue. We were debating over which deodorant worked best to keep our sixth-grade sweaty armpits dry. You interrupted our discussion with a question: can I have a cracker? you asked.
I froze. I looked at my crackers. I looked at you.
I was still hungry, and realized suddenly that I didn’t want to give up a single one. Maybe I wanted to eat the rest after school, all by myself. Maybe I wanted to finish the entire roll, right now. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with them, but it suddenly dawned on me that I could tell you no. That your request did not demand immediate obligation on my part.
I said no.
You were surprised, but surrendered.
Truly, before this moment, I had not considered the possibility that I could refuse a request. In my reality, a request from someone was like water. It filled up the space between us, swiftly and completely, flooding everything in its path. The space was immediately full, heavy and real, belonging solely to the requester. There was no room left for me to add anything of mine.
There was no room for my no.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that feeling guilt was more unpleasant than being violated. Somewhere along the way, I decided it was far better to disappoint myself than to disappoint somebody else. I could stand to internalize my own pain. I just couldn’t stand internalizing theirs.
Allowing myself to fade into the background felt easier than experiencing guilt, which inevitably led to Shame. The belief that I was bad and wrong permeated my body. It crushed me. By permitting the violation instead of the “no,” I successfully avoided Shame.
In my mind, I was a tiny dot and the other, whoever the other happened to be, was a huge sun. My job, as the miniscule dot, was to relentlessly and passionately throw energy in the sun’s direction so they would not burn out. My job was to make sure they were always taken care of. In my mind, I had signed a contract at birth stipulating that, no matter what the cost, I existed to make sure their light never went out.
I heeded that contract to the letter. I was a good rule follower. I was “good.”
My fear of being seen as “bad” always trumped the fear of hurting, or even of dying. And it certainly outweighed the fear of feeling uncomfortable in my own body. I avoided guilt at all costs. If it meant wounding myself in the process, so be it. Whatever it took, I avoided guilt.
In this way, I avoided shame.
In this way, I avoided learning how to listen to myself.
Until the Ritz cracker. This was a big deal. This was in direct violation of the contract I believed I was in with the Universe.
After I said my no, you looked taken aback. You asked, why won’t you give me one? I want all of them, I mumbled. You leaned your head back and raised your eyebrows in performative incredulity, making sure all of our friends saw how shocked and offended you were. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the scene was over. I kept my Ritz crackers. We were still friends. Everything seemed to be okay.
Except there, in the center of my chest, there was a sensation blooming. My chest was collapsing, as if a gigantic mudslide coursed down between my ribs, pulling bones, muscle, debris down into the abyss, threatening to take the rest of my body with it. My throat tightened into the size of a tiny coffee stirring straw, and my head felt thick with tension.
There was a reason I religiously avoided disappointing people. Although I had just committed a revolution by saying no, I still had to deal with the mess of guilt and shame that remained in my body.
There was no way to escape. My body would never let me.
the people want more
Onstage, we feel everything we are not supposed to feel in real life. Onstage, we sigh and gyrate our hips, using love to manipulate. Onstage, our worst memories are applauded. Onstage, we are unmasked. The shit-show of humanity is on display, and the people want more.
absolute annihilation
I don’t want to write tonight – I am not inspired. I have gotten burnt out from trying to get better at too many different things at once. There’s music, writing, podcasting, teaching, gardening, making money, and building relationships. If I’m not the best at every one of them, somehow my body will implode in on itself while the ground turns into quicksand and I disappear in under a millisecond. Somehow I know this will happen, at a deep, reptilian level. So, to avoid absolute annihilation, I attempt to improve everything I do, at all times. That shit is not gonna work. Now I’m lying in bed, super sick, because my body couldn’t handle it all. I don’t know how to stop. I wish it didn’t take getting this sick to force myself to stop. What is this thing propelling me forward?
all this will be ruins
All this will be ruins someday. The earth re-membering herself, re-calling her own Name. All this will be ruins someday. The bright red METRO MATTRESS DISCOUNT SLEEP SUPERSTORE sign will crack and sink into the soft forgiveness of the mud. Every Grande styrofoam cup will slowly settle beneath the dirt, snap into pieces, become one with bulging roots and galaxies of mycelium. There will be no plastic left, only vivid tangles of roots. Swelling. Sighing. It will all be ruins.
All this will be ruins someday. Every desperate, pavement-sodden parking lot will cry out in relief as burbling streams find their way through the concrete, saplings shove themselves up between tiny crevices, and grass sprouts up, along the perimeter, now in the middle, now in every possible direction. It will all be ruins.
All this will be ruins someday. Ruin, from the Latin word “ruere,” meaning “to fall violently,” turning into an Old English word meaning “act of giving way” and the Italian word “rovina,” meaning “to knock down, tear out, or dig up.” Ruins. What a relief to release the burden of progress and productivity. It will all be ruins.
All this will be ruins someday. A re-in-statement of the natural order of things. A letting-go of the chokehold we have on the world, this dangerous and exhausting myth of control. A digging up of all that we have imposed on Her. All this will be ruins someday.
May that day come sooner, rather than later.
what am I learning to love?
Love. How this word eats away at us. How we long for the definition, some clarity, something to land in. Is it too cruel to say that landing in love is a myth? Learning to love, on the other hand, is the entirety of it. So, as I answer this question, I will be contemplating love in its entirety, in all the dark, damp layers of it. I’m learning to love the routine of folding laundry slowly over the course of the weekend. I’m learning to love the feeling of grief when another tiny seedling dies for no apparent reason. I’m learning to love the click of cheap shades against the windowsill, as the spring wind laps at the side of our house. I’m learning to love the revision process for each blog post I write for all the small business owners looking for SEO bolstering. I’m learning to love the feeling of collapsing into bed after a day of frayed nerves and lingering hugs. I’m learning to love chopping vegetables for strange stews while my fiancé practices snare drum etudes in the studio. I’m learning to love growing herbs on the windowsill. I’m learning to love saying hi to people on their porches as I walk past. I’m learning to love being financially stable for the first time in my independent adult life. I’m learning to love my fiancé’s stubbornness in the face of change. I’m learning to love my self-judgement. I’m learning to love the possibility of rest and rejuvenation. I’m learning to love the rain again. I’m learning to love uncertainty, of not knowing, of not fully understanding. I’m learning to love those moments when I cannot hold myself up for crying so much. I’m learning to love my integrity. I’m learning to love saying no to things I cannot or do not want to take on. I’m learning to love the place where “humanness” and “nature” touch noses and swirl into one another.
how tempting it is
How tempting it is to build a monument to our pain, a towering monolith of trauma, a permanent tattoo of our losses. “Look,” we call, “look at how you have ravaged my soul. Look at my body in tatters.” How we forget that we are already building the most powerful monument: the story of how we have gathered ourselves up again, yawning piece by yawning piece, warming our bodies around a new, infallible belief in ourselves, expanding as our disfigured mouths grow pink and taut with healing. “We are here,” we call, “we are here, whether you see us or not.”
starting the day with Rumi
I want to start the day off with Rumi. Everything else feels intrusive. Just the fact that I can write this sentence, sitting at the grooved wooden desk upstairs, reflecting on desire, is a miracle.
the first year
The first year that I cut down all the dead kudzu, putting a tarp down to stop the new growth.
The first year that all of our plants are on shelves.
The first year that we only have one plaid couch.
The first year that we have a real living room that I can read in.
The first year that I reread Peter and the Starcatchers and realized that even that book has dangerous patriarchal and misogynist imagery in it.
The first year that I feel capable of living.
an evening visit
I wouldn’t have thought to sit outside, with the air as cool as it was. This must be why we keep friends, I thought, so we’re not just doing what we always do, in the way we always do it. I wouldn’t have considered the blankets, and the warmth of the dogs, and the feeling of fresh air filling my lungs. It was my friend’s porch. Across town was my house, where we’ve experienced two drive-by shootings on our street, multiple stolen car chases, and a flat-out murder in our front yard, in which the wounded man stumbled down our driveway, finally collapsing and dying in our backyard by the lilac bush, where my partner found his body minutes later. Often, as I stand on our front porch drinking coffee, men will stop to inquire if I have a boyfriend, and if I work out, as if that is their business, as if I am inviting them to ask, just by existing on my own front porch in the morning. Across town, being outside has felt less relief, more risk. Outside, we’re at the whims of the natural order of things, but with guns. But here, in my friend’s neighborhood, where there hasn’t been a wayward gun shot for years, we took our blankets out to the back porch as the sun set in the evening. The light was a cool blue, sky still bright against the swallows and bats that flew eastward, mysteriously only flying in this one direction. We posited that maybe it was actually only one bat, flying in circles, just to confuse us. But this was simply a silly story made up to amuse ourselves as we sat there. We talked about the crops we were planting (zucchini, fruit trees, tomatoes) and what time of year was best to plant seeds. We talked about the work we were doing on our houses. We talked about how healing from trauma is non-linear, but how processing it seems to alleviate symptoms. We sat in silence a lot of the time. We talked to the dogs. We breathed in the air. Our nervous systems relaxed after each of our separate, scattered and stressful days. We watched the light die and noted how the longer days had somehow brought life back into our bodies. We talked about cycles. I wouldn’t have thought to sit outside, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Siena Facciolo 