All of the feelings in between.

Just gratitude. For it all. For the struggle and the same lessons learned time after time after fucking time. Or for the love and arms or even the drives to know where. Or the falling and the crying and the I'm out of my mind. For the whole fucking thing. The long, endless journey with no destination besides fullness and aliveness or death in numbness and comfort. For each growing pain along the way and the sheer panic and moments of crystal clear clarity. Every fucking breath, every fight, every smile and every rain storm. For every sunny morning. For everything. 

Gratitude. Day One.

I'll start with you.

Since you're always the first thing that comes to my mind. This isn't because you're obvious. It's because you make me stronger. When I'm spiraling out of control, and you stop me. And remind me to breathe. Because you stand up for me, and stand up to me. And set me back in humility. To remind me how far I've come, and how very far I must go. Remind me to let the stress slide right off my back, because no matter what, you've got me. And I've got you. 

Do the fucking work.

As we get deeper and deeper, I get more and more peeled away. As you strip the layers of superfluities, you see the core. Radiant light yes, but deeper than that I see imperfections and rawness. When it's possible to be so insensitive and so sensitive at the same time you question everything you do on a level that makes you consider what kind of person you're being daily. Who am I? (I) Could I have handled that better, did I let myself be carried away? While being graceful cloud of energy masses floating from scene to scene it's so blissfully easy to be pulled by the inflation and deflation. In the pull of life, to create your own rhythm and float? How? You love. You love hard. It's only bullshit when your ego gets involved. Don't fool yourself into thinking your judgement is safe, and pure. None of us have enlightened in to evaporation, so you can be sure there is work to be done. Your world is a reflection of you alone. 

Crowds

Sometimes I can't breathe in crowds because I can hear what they're thinking. And I don't understand why they can't feel their souls. I loose mine in the chaos of trying to exist in society, but then when I die enough I hear her cry out to save me. When money and stress chain me to this real world in a way that makes my heart constantly beat sorrow, I can only find my bliss by connecting with my body and the words I love you. You ask why I say it so much, I can only explain all I do is feel. Feel everything, every molecule in my beating and vibrating body with joy or pain or whatever concoction my consciousness can imagine up. I only know how to bleed them and try to follow the lightness. For one day of auto-pilot makes me die a little more in a way that I cannot describe to anyone who has never freed themselves. I see the way you look at me and I know you don't understand why it's so hard for me to be like you. I never wished I could, but never imagined how painful and lonely my path could be. I stopped writing because I was connecting with my heart in a different way, when I realized I was always alone the words came back. 

I wish I could keep my feet on the ground.

I swear I don't mean to be like this. For you I wish I could keep my feet on the ground. Either twirling in circles or swirling ferociously in a hurricane. I know no in-between. Heart on your sleeve is an understatement when every emotion can be seen in my face and heard in every breath of my voice. I've never been good at hiding, just running. For you I wish I could keep my feet on the ground. That calm place I preach to go to, ceases to exist in my whirlwind of emotions and desires. I bounce from petal to petal, with my head looking back, chained to whatever has come before as I try to run faster. Every experience I've breathed through has carved veins in my arm, tainted with blood that will never cease to course through their streams. I cannot forget. I am not strong enough. This is my evolution and we all live and suffer through the process. Being bound to all that has come before and enslaved by time we cannot escape. This world doesn't fit me. I am not anything but energy and there is no limit to my chaos. In so many ways, I can not expel enough, and my constant struggle is to harness and focus. For you, I wish I could keep my feet on the ground.

Sanskaras

Sanskaras. are the imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience in this or previous lives, which then color all of life, one's nature, responses, states of mind.

Years pass before you realize you haven't grown up. Sometimes that's something I champion on my shoulders, other times that lack of growth is crippling. Free spirit, wise soul; I'm speaking to you. (To me.) Where are you? Your words slice souls, and even when they're easy to forgive they leave scars deep within the mind. How I yearn to burn off all these imprints from time. That timeline you use to get from there to here. All that has happened. In a way your mind can comprehend. Because you're always thinking, and always swinging, depending on those thought qualities. Every body movement, glance, and interaction leave those impressions. How do you go on when the scars are still bleeding? How do you stop the swinging mind? Find the stillness. Let their be chaos. And be the stillness. Resonate what your soul is, pure love. Express that through your words and actions steadily, for whatever stream of vibration you send out, will come back and you will bathe in it. Whether with love or with fear. I need more hearts burned into my chest. 

Joan of Arc

I am not afraid; I was born to do this.

Joan of Arc

The Death of Wanderlust

I remember distinctly sitting in my dorm room in Ireland listening to these twenty-somethings from all over the world talk about missing home, their lives, and all the different people in them. And not feeling anything. Nothing. I remember them rushing to book their flights home, and doing anything to put off finding mine. Roaming around the country for an extra month just to fill up some need for more. Same thing in Austin. Blank. Nothing. No desire for anything but more new. More exploring. I just wanted to be exactly where I was. Then New York and Hawaii, and Sydney, just kept filtering through my eyes. Through them. And then something happened along the way. I stopped feeling unattached. I fell in love, rented an apartment, got a job, then owned a business. And now, two days away from home and I want my bed, my boyfriend and my life. It's amazing. There's still this need to roam and explore. That'll always be there. I just don't need to be surprised to be happy. Traveling brought me into the present, with the amazement of everything that was around me. But I don't need it anymore. It's not that I won't or don't want to travel, I just don't need it to feel alive.

Don’t date a girl who travels

• Adi in Better Humans

Don’t date a girl who travels. She is hard to please. The usual dinner-movie date at the mall will suck the life out of her. Her soul craves for new experiences and adventures. She will be unimpressed with your new car and your expensive watch. She would rather climb a rock or jump out of an airplane than hear you brag about it.

Don’t date a girl who travels because she will bug you to book a flight every time there’s an airline seat sale. She wont party at Republiq. And she will never pay over $100 for Avicii because she knows that one weekend of clubbing is equivalent to one week somewhere far more exciting.

Chances are, she can’t hold a steady job. Or she’s probably daydreaming about quitting. She doesn’t want to keep working her ass off for someone else’s dream. She has her own and is working towards it. She is a freelancer. She makes money from designing, writing, photography or something that requires creativity and imagination. Don’t waste her time complaining about your boring job.

Don’t date a girl who travels. She might have wasted her college degree and switched careers entirely. She is now a dive instructor or a yoga teacher. She’s not sure when the next paycheck is coming. But she doesn’t work like a robot all day, she goes out and takes what life has to offer and challenges you to do the same.

Don’t date a girl who travels for she has chosen a life of uncertainty. She doesn’t have a plan or a permanent address. She goes with the flow and follows her heart. She dances to the beat of her own drum. She doesn’t wear a watch. Her days are ruled by the sun and the moon. When the waves are calling, life stops and she will be oblivious to everything else for a moment. But she has learned that the most important thing in life isn’t surfing.

Don’t date a girl who travels as she tends to speak her mind. She will never try to impress your parents or friends. She knows respect, but isn’t afraid to hold a debate about global issues or social responsibility.

She will never need you. She knows how to pitch a tent and screw her own fins without your help. She cooks well and doesn’t need you to pay for her meals. She is too independent and wont care whether you travel with her or not. She will forget to check in with you when she arrives at her destination. She’s busy living in the present. She talks to strangers. She will meet many interesting, like-minded people from around the world who share her passion and dreams. She will be bored with you.

So never date a girl who travels unless you can keep up with her. And if you unintentionally fall in love with one, don’t you dare keep her. Let her go.

Behind the Wheel

You'll always find something in your life to stress you out or make you upset. What I need to rediscover are those things that make me better and stronger and alive. They're still there. They're all still there. All the time. Coexisted and creating chaos (or a symphony). Pick the right thing to focus on. Focus on your problems, they'll get bigger, becoming monsters right in front of your eyes. Focus on what makes you stronger and better and up you go. Whatever you focus your energy on, you're feeding. It seems so simple from my bed. It gets so much more complicated behind the wheel. But that's the point, I'm behind the wheel. So monsters, back the fuck up. I'm back. 

Will you love me?

Everything still smells like you. And I'm trying not to notice, and most of the time I'm fuzzy, but then I wake up in the morning and everything's clear. I remember where I am, and how I got there. I look back at all the things I've done, and sometimes it's too easy to remember what you did wrong when you feel guilty. I remember doing things right (hold me), and wrong (GO AWAY). All of that residual childhood energy leaks out, when you forget how to act. But now I remember that everything's fragile and nothing's for sure. It makes you feel alive. Something that cuts deep into raw skin. And then all of a sudden I'm alive, listening to every breath come in and out.

Free Fall

I don't remember the last time I wrote. I don't remember the last time I needed to so bad. This house feels empty. I could literally feel the connection between us disappear as you walked out the door. You know how you can feel the person you love, even when they're far away? They're still with you. It's gone. Like all the wind comes out of you at once and you just feel everything you had slip away. Like you can't breathe and you don't remember how to rewind time or how it all came to this. And you just want to shut your eyes so it all disappears. Maybe you can wake up and it'll all be a dream. A really bad nightmare. But days go on. And the minutes seem like hours. And you just can't figure out how to turn off and go to sleep. It's that nauseous feeling of free fall.