It’s July 1st?? Whaaa?! d’uh fuq?…I just came in from my night walk in my neighborhood park brimming with ogling lovers spooning ice cream to each other, dogs dashing the field blissed the fuck out because wheeee GRASS!!, old friends at stone tables intent on crushing the other on the chessboard between ’em, and i’m swooning up at the moon who is most definitely smiling precisely back at my twitterpated gaze, and i feel…..romanced (athat moon and i are something of an item, you know) and i’m falling madly deeply in love with my life all over again. (I’m talking in that hardcore, teenage way – yeah, that intense)….when it suddenly dawns on me – it’s my San Franciscaversary….!!!!! 2 exact years since that fated first blind date, when I rode in past midnight, travel-bedraggled and weary, with little more than my houseplants and an AirBnB reservation. This SF with her sexy reputation, and me, Bay Area Bambi on her wobbly legs and doe-eyed high hopes – I knew not one of her dizzying streets, not one of her (many) suitors or lovers, not any of her murky moods or sunny spirits. I was simply a girl showing up, hoping to be loved. I wasn’t even sure I’d grow to love her. I wasn’t quite sure of anything really – except that i was terrified and thrilled and everything was possible and nothing was certain (as any epic love begins). i’d left my life and all that was familiar 3,000 miles behind, for what MIGHT await me here.
And now here i am, two full cycles ’round the sun later, looking up at that same all-knowing moon i once begged for answers from on a night back in Philly concerning the decision to take this very life leap i ended up pursuing, and it’s all so sparkly crystal clear why i left, why i showed up. It was who and what lay on the other side awaiting me, that pulled me here – like that voluptuous moon’s pull on her abiding sea. i just didn’t know it then.
If you’re reading this and you’re one of those folks residing on the other side of that giant YES i bellowed those years ago, i want to thank you in ways that “thank you” doesn’t quite have the muscle to deliver, but you should try to grock anyway.
I want to thank you for being my moonpull. The invisible force that hooked into my heart and led it West, whispering “Come with me; we’ve got plans for you.” For getting especially loud around the time of Colorado I-80w, when i very nearly turned the car around to head back east, mid-“what-in-holy-fuck-am-i-doing?!”-sobfest. “You can cry as much as you need, just keep driving West,” you echoed in my heart. So i rode – trusting and crying and driving and meltdowning, interspersed with bison jerky breaks (man, i love those Rocky Mt. pitstops), following that pull, my heart irrevocably lassoed by it. It had a present for me. You.
And oh man, You. You who makes my life fertile and rich and alive and replete with nutrients that feed my spirit and rapacious appetite for delight and laughter. You who so often, and without knowing, bring me to fat, blubbery tears of joy out of my sheer awe that i could be loved so well by so many perfect precious people. You who hopped on my path and shifted its curviture forever. You are why I find my life so divine, so delicious. You are the sweet in my honey moon.
If perchance you don’t know you’re in that You, then this: if ever I’ve said “i love you” this side of the Mason Dixon, you’re the you my Cali residency belongs to, the you I heard piercing through the sobs; and when I’ve said “i love you”, what i’ve always meant is all that i’ve stated here. “I love you” is simply the Cliff Notes. When i say i love you, i’m saying thank you for guiding me down roads I do not know how to traverse alone, even when you don’t know you’re doing it, just by virtue of your being. I’m saying thank you for giving my life shapes I didn’t know it could ever make. I’m saying i’m in on your secret, you time-hopping travel guides. A girl back on Interstate 80, trembling at a driver’s wheel, listened…showed up…and now finds herself in a future rife with delight, swooning under a sweet honey moon on a murky July night, falling madly deeply (epically) in love with her life, in that teenage way. Because of You.
So thank you…and all that it means.
The Blyss Catalyst 