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i don’t know if i can be considered a risk taker or if my life, more accurately, has just always been filled with risk.

i’m about 8 years old and had gotten a new skateboard. and by new, i mean, my first. as in ever. in front of the greyish-blue ranch style house at the end of bolick drive in which we lived there was a steep hill that dead-ended into a cul de sac. i’d seen other skateboarders fearlessly careening down half-pipes, or whatever you call them, and it looked easy enough, so when you get a new skateboard you do “as the romans do” and you careene, too. i climbed the hill all the way to the top, until i could no longer see the cul de sac or the house and figured that was probably high enough. i put the board down on the pavement, set both my feet, and shifted my weight really hard toward the decline. i’m pretty sure it only took about 3 of the seconds that followed of gaining speed to induce the subsequent tumbling head over feet, then feet over head, the rest of the way down the hill, skateboard trailing more slowly behind me. when i came to and managed to stand up, a blood curdling scream emerged and i began to run. i began to run, blood dripping from every limb and bending joint i had, straight to safety toward the house. my mom was already making her way hurriedly out of it, probably having seen the entire acrobatic non-feat from just inside the door, to meet my road-rashed self halfway. she just knew, as if by instinct, what had happened and then knew exactly what to do to “right” it. my entire life my mother's voice alone has illicited many a reaction inside me, but almost always an “it’s all ok, i’ve got you now” calm. and let’s just say i’ve given her many an opportunity to perfect it.

i’m 28 years old and my best friend has just picked me up from the burn unit at UNC Hospital, though at that moment i wasn’t sure to where she’d be taking me exactly. the house i had been renting on byerly street, again at the dead-ended cul de sac of a tiny neighborhood street, had just hours before in the early evening burned down to the literal ground, almost all 4 tiny rooms of it. i’d decided it was a great idea to channel my inner bobby flay that night and deep fry some stuffed peppers for dinner with a friend, but had no idea that 7 terrifyingly fast minutes later i’d be without a home. the surreal scene of mile-high flames, plumes of thick chest-crushing black smoke, the nearing sirens wailing from this direction and that, neighbors pouring out of their also-tiny-houses to “rubberneck”, and the sounds of windows bursting and cabinets falling from their hardware all the sudden had turned into the realest reality ever. standing in my driveway staring out at the ball of flames that used to be four walls and a yard, i’d realized the answer to the question in my mind i’d been asking that entire 7 minutes, “is this really happening right now?” was indeed “yes, it just did.” the most ironic part of it all? at the time i didn’t eat fried food whatsoever. as kim and i had pulled away from the hospital she asked me where i wanted to go and i replied, “nowhere yet, not until i call my mom.” thankfully in my rush to exit the engulfed house i’d remembered to grab a few things, my cell phone being one of them. i dialed my mom's number in norfolk, va and she answered. and like all 28 years before it just the sheer sound of her voice on the other end of the phone induced an immediate reaction and i began to non-sensically bawl. somehow, though, i managed a “mommy?” through my shaky tears. to which that frantic “mommy?” then induced an actual frantic mommy on the other end and she immediately knew, just as she knew i’d careened down the hill on my skateboard that day, that something was very, very wrong. i’d just lost almost everything in my possession, had been mildly burned across my face from the explosion on the stovetop, and had nowhere to go, but in that single moment i somehow knew that it was all going to be ok. because she had me now.

fast forward to now and it’s not me who is the risk taker - it’s her. a year ago she and her husband Rick decided to leave behind the grueling, borderline abusive jobs and post-retirement stresses, sell almost everything they own and move to a beautiful village in Mexico. that takes “cajones”, as they say, to leave everything as you know it in favor of a world you’ve been previously pretty removed from and clueless to, step out on the ledge, and just...jump. people talk about jumping but rarely do they close their eyes, listen to the true song in their heart, and actually do it. and on this Mother’s Day i could not be any prouder of her that a small-town southern Magnolia moved thousands of miles away from the “home” and family she was accustomed to for so long in order to find an even more important home inside of herself.

while i don’t think i’ll be getting a call from the food network anytime soon, what i do know is that no matter where i am in the world, or what i don’t have or do, my truest home of all homes will always be where she is.

born "this" way

Miss Gaga was only partially right, at least personally speaking. i'm not sure if it was as much being born "this" way as it was a complete discovery and full evolution of self, a homecoming of sorts, to the person and woman God intended me to be. but i'll tell you how i was NOT born. i was not born wrongly, or in error. you see, i was born in the God i was so strongly raised to believe in's image. so if he can do no wrong, then he did not make me in error either. from early on i had always chosen to be many things in life: the first female NBA player, an artist, perhaps even a surgeon. one day i thought maybe i'd even finally strip away all my shyness and find my inner stage diva. but i do know that i did not choose to be gay.

as a little girl, and still today, my mommy was my world. i saw the moon, the stars, and everything in between through her eyes. and it wasn't until college that we'd go through my coming out, and coming of age, story together. at the same time i was moving away to school for the first time, leaving my mother at home alone, missing her, yet spreading my big girl wings, i was realizing that what i felt for women felt exactly the way i'd always heard people describe love. instead of just drawing hearts around all the cute boys faces in our year book like my friends would force me to do, and going out on movie dates with them to prove to myself i was normal, i finally felt like i could maybe some day fall in love too. maybe some day someone would love me and i could love them back and mean it.

but the more crystal clear it became to me that i was a homosexual woman, and the more at home to myself i seemed to feel, the louder i also seemed to hear the outcries of hell, fire, and damnation preached around me. and for four years straight i have never known such pain caused by trying to live peacefully among that fire. and when that pain became too great inside that i could not hold it in one second longer, i also didn't choose to transfer that pain to my mother, or to the rest of my family. i dropped a bomb on them, i know, one that came completely out of left field and needed preparation and answers to some of their own deep-rooted questions that they were not lucky enough to get at the time. but i did not choose to splinter the love and bonds that had been created up until that point, i just chose to cry out loud for once. i needed help making sense of it too and though i didn't go about it the easiest way possible i was just simply yearning for someone...anyone...to tell me i was not as filthy and disgusting as i felt.

every day on the drive down I-40 from class to home, i would imagine how easily i could just turn the wheel ever so slightly to the left and careen myself into the cement median wall going 70 miles an hour. i even found myself sitting in front of a CVS pharmacy one afternoon, car running, trying to build up enough courage to walk in and buy enough aspirin to either stop my heart or aspirate from my own vomit and die. that would fix this, i'd tell myself. all to make the pain go away and to put my famliy out of the hardship of trying to find a way to love the real me. i obviously did not really want to die, i just wanted to be me and that be ok. to reconcile who i knew i was with what i'd always been taught.

the closer to myself i felt, the further away from God i became. i could count on one hand the number of times i'd felt comfortable in a Church, afraid that "they"...the Christians i'd grown up knowing first-hand...would be able to see right through to my gay little heart, and worse, that they'd immediately march me up to the altar and excorcise it from my soul like a demon. i was wrong to them, i was an error. i threatened anything their Bible had ever said about love and exemplified what it said about sin and disgrace. and yet the one place i'd always feared losing the love the most was there unfailingly every single moment, even through her own pain...my mother. over time, both our questions were answered more and more and we were able to begin finding some peace in those answers. peace in the fact that God was still present in those answers, that one did not have to be mutually exclusive from the other. and i think somewhere along the way we also found eachother again, this time in a more real way than ever before.

i did not choose to be gay, and my mother did not choose to have a gay daughter...but as long as i live, i will choose love over fear and disgrace every single moment of every single day. i will choose to be the me i was intended to be, to grow in His favor, and will live my life in love. hopelessly and endlessly in love with my friends and family, always striving to some day be able to pay them all back for choosing to love me without fail. no Amendment or twisted verses can ever make that pure, simple thing an error to me ever again. and i may or may not ever want to get married some day, but that in fact is my choice to make...not yours. the way i see it, the only choice you have to make at all in this issue is whether to open your eyes to the love you profess so loudly to be in God's name, or to stay blind to all the other shades and hues of it that are out there when they may not look identical to your own. so, i ask, who's the one with the choice now?

and so we pause

i'll never understand death. i know we can't expect to live forever, and maybe we wouldn't want to as our bodies become less able to keep up with the things we put it through, but to me death has always seemed like this unjust event which can never equate to the collection of humbling, awe-inspiring (for good and bad) moments you experienced throughout your time on this planet. i absolutely do fear death, despite believing in God and being "right" spiritually. and the reason i fear it, the reason it seems so unfair, is that in the exact miraculous moment a life expires his/her final burst of air and leaves this earthly place the world doesn't stop for even a tiny second. and i feel as though it should. why can't there just be a brief pause, a moment or two to nod recognition in that person's favor a "well done" of sorts. we'll give a moment of silence at a sporting event like it comes with the ticket price but never, not once, is there any silence in this world the exact moment someone leaves it. instead, as the breath leaves the body one last time activities continue all around; groceries are shopped for, clothes are shuffled through on department store racks, parking spaces hunted. time stands still for no one except the loved ones that hover in agony next to the deceased person's diminished frame and that will never be good enough for me. in life all we're trying to do is be seen, be a voice that's heard, and to make even the tiniest of impacts. so what's wrong with wanting to know that in the end our life meant something to someone other than us? that it wasn't all for nought afterall.

godspeed, margie. for as long as you could muster the strength to you lived each day with such beauty, grace, and love. your footprints will be missed...and so we pause.

Andrew Belle-In My Veins

feels like letting go

what does it mean to let go? to forgive, to forget, to make amends? sure, all of those things are included in the act. but i think it runs deeper than that and that if we miss this very crucial last part, we are missing the truest lesson of it all. to let go also means to give yourself permission to be happy again, severing in your heart the negativity and hurt of whatever "it" contained for you. the severing is not for the "it", it's for you. accepting the freedom into your soul that comes from saying, "ya know, it's ok. i'm ok." it's trusting yourself first, your journey second, and carrying with you those pieces of it that will forever have their impact. i once heard something that sticks to the back of my mind like a salve - love hard, then love deeper, for that is when you are at your most authentic.

words to live and then forgive by. so, it's ok...i'm ok. my love to you always...

safe deposit box

it was mid-afternoon on a tuesday. i answered my cell phone and very calmly my dad at the other end said, "i think you need to come now." i drove home to collect some things in a bag, and i remember how absurd it felt as i placed my black funeral dress and heels inside it just in case my brother didn't make it. 4 1/2 hours later i pulled into the parking deck of mission hospital in asheville. my dad called again as i was walking into the lobby and said where to find everyone, that they were all just sitting there in the waiting room on the 4th floor, but he gave no indication that anything was any different than when i spoke to him earlier. the doors of the elevator opened and over the hospital intercom a "code blue" was being called. doctors and nurses were running down the hallway and i almost collided into one as i stepped off. i could also hear the intense wailing and sobbing of someone off in the distance. i rounded the corner and at the end of the hallway i saw my dad trying to hold my stepmother up onto her feet as her weight was crumbling in agony against him towards the floor. i then made the connection that the wailing i'd just heard wasn't a poor stranger's...it was hers...and that the code blue was in my brother's room. his heart had stopped at the same second the bell of the elevator dinged. i froze and then took a step forward to enter a chaos that will never seem any less surreal as long as i live. the sounds accompanying that moment and my body shaking due to my heart pounding with such force will be forever burned in my memory. she was still wailing, "oh God, oh God, no!". my dad released her from his grip long enough so that he could crumble too, and then it was my arms she fell into. with both my bags still on my shoulders all i knew to do was just hold her while she wailed and say "it's OK, it's OK, its OK" over and over like i believed it was going to be. i yelled at my aunt to sit with my dad because his red face and sweat told me that he too may have a heart attack if we didn't calm him. and then just as fast as the chaos had begun, an icu nurse burst through the automatic doors and said they'd gotten josh's heart back to a rhythm. i think my stepmom had wailed out all the energy she had because all she could do was sit wide-eyed and motionless at the news that she hadn't just lost her only son afterall.

the realization that i've become a shell of a person, and that it's no one's fault but my own, sinks like a brick of panic in my gut. i use the word fault loosely, realizing that life just happens, but regardless of that fact no one is responsible for who, or what, i become but me. i don't want to be 45 and wondering where the last twenty years of my life went simply because i was too scared to leap. because i was too afraid to be happy. happy like "my cup runneth over" kind of happy. life is shorter than short; it's sometimes unpredictable and not to be put in some safe deposit box for tomorrows. because what if? what if one day you're not so lucky to just be the one getting out of the elevator?

in the balance

you think you know yourself well enough to know how you'll feel about something...until you have to. my entire life up until this point has been purposed by the same recurring theme: find balance, and maintain it. but what do you do when even equilibrium becomes too much? when you'd give just about anything for the scale to tip slowly over in an actual direction..any direction? instead, it hangs there...bobbing in midair...teasing fate like a donut on a string to a fat kid.

my brother's fate lies in the 4th floor icu of mission hospital, a road map of lines and tubes, and one life supporting machine after another running out of it to an unknown point out in the future somewhere. a point we hold our breath to for fear of also possibly finding out. i've never hated balance so much until now, nor do i find it amusing that the one time it has been the most tangible is also when it's the ugliest and least wanted.

and until now, i have never been ashamed that i would be willing to let someone go just to be able to have my feet touching the ground again. i want to scream out in sally field-like furor an earth-shattering 'why', only i know that as long as questions hang there silently in the balance their answers will too.