The subject was manifestation. I think it's like learning a new word, she said. You suddenly start seeing it all over the place.

So, that is how it was tonight. I knew I would see you. The word was riot grrl, and everything was set up for this manifestation. I recognized the back of your head, the way you sat and everything that radiated from your body. Perhaps I felt the resentment like lasers from your red plugs. I was holding her, leaning into the love that has become my sweet life... and I looked up just in time to see you make a 180. Perhaps it was the whiskey; maybe it was the friendship, but everyone instantly said "wow. what was that?" For a split second I felt guilty-- like it was my fault....  like I had done something bad... But then I remembered that it was all on you-- a resentment you hold tight to... A resentment born of your own sad stories...  a resentment that surely kills you slowly.

It's sad really. I know it is yours to hold, but I still feel sad about it. I watched the documentary and thought back to the 19 year old me and you. I remember driving to the coffee house, hoping to meet some goth girl.... And I remember sitting down with my super goth journal, ready to write about the sadness that was my life... I looked up to see this amazing blonde punk butch coming to take my order. Nothing was the same after that moment. If I could point to one moment that defined the rest of my life as a dyke, that would be the one. You. The punk I never expected.

Fast forward 17 years, through heroin, cocaine, crack, booze, love and heartache.... and I wonder what we have manifested.... what are we manifesting?

I want to say love. I want that to be the word I see all over the place... but then I think back to the last year and the word that comes to mind is "shut down." The words of this documentary radiate through my stories, my veins, my words, my herstory. For a split second I feel guilty-- like it was my fault... Like I had done something bad... but then I remember that it was all on her-- a sadness she holds tight to... A manifestation born of a self-fulfilling prophesy of selfishness.

Fast forward 14 months, through cutting, whiskey, random lovers, weed, love and heartache.... and I realize what I have finally started manifesting....

The subject is love. It's what I see all around me, in me, and before me, I think.

I reach down and clench the door handle-- the "oh shit bar," my brother used to call it. I grasp on out of fear, and remember that time on my birthday when we drove on those winding roads. I kept grabbing the handle, while trying desperately to hide my anxiety... and you kept saying you could see all. I think back to that time and remember thinking that you didn't see all. You saw so little. I grasp on and wonder what you are doing at this moment, letting my mind wander to the past, out of genuine fear of my present. I feel like I have been transported to some weird past vortex. I know no one here and everything is unfamiliar; like this feeling of loving without reciprocation... this feeling of vulnerability and lack of strength (I want to say weakness, but that's not it)...

I push down on the pedal, and pull up on the other... and I feel a sting on my arm. For a split second, I feel a flash of shame, thinking this sting is something of which I do not speak. But then I remember the night before in the tattoo shop. I let my mind wander through the mazes of cycling meditation and experience the winding road in front of me. I think to that moment on the land when I felt shame. It was so expected and so surprising at the same time. I had been there for something like 10 days and had not even remembered the marks that advertise my self-hatred, my struggles, my shame. I felt a tornado of emotions from fear to elation to confidence to happiness to love to anger to exhaustion to those unnamed feelings that happen only on the Land.... but no shame. And we sat there in the field and it came in a flash but took over my body like a jolt of electricity trying to kill me from above and below and beside... And much like electrocution, I was not the only casualty. You reached over and pulled down the fabric of my skirt. I can only imagine that you were trying to hide the reminders of my imperfection, your vulnerability, our similarities.

And my mind wanders down the winding roads it traverses as I ride, feeling free and not scared like it has on so many other winding or treacherous roads. You and I really are so similar in many ways, I think. Similar in completely incompatible ways. We both need our independence, but in completely different ways. We both close into shells we have created over the years-- protecting ourselves from the lives we inhabit. We both experience shame in the most intense ways, even though it looks so different on each of us. I have seen that face when you are at your most vulnerable, and as much as you would deny the truth of those moments, I know what I have seen.

But in the end, I am ironically the one who didn't want to continue to grasp on to the "oh shit bar." I am the one who wanted to throw my arms up in the air and scream "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' as I hurled myself off the cliff, letting myself fall. In the end, the one ironic difference is that, while you might have seen all, you couldn't ever be seen completely. You couldn't let go of your own "oh shit bar" and just experience the terrifying joy that are the winding roads.

So I will let go without you. Let go of the shame, the fear, and the not strength... and just experience the winding road of now.