A Gross Northern Healing

  Today, I sat with the girls putting together this month's zine for MAM. We thought up scriptures surrounding our theme: Empowerment. We discussed quotes, decided on a summery color scheme, and analyzed our drawing board. Our deadline is July 18th, however we have to have everything in by July 9th. All of this is in preparation for Unity Fest in Muskegon, Michigan this August.

  Michigan.

  Okay.

  Let's talk about it.

  "Are you going?" Christy asked me from across the table. My toes curled, my throat got tight and I immediately felt a lump of anxiety crawling up from my stomach through my esophagus.

  "No."

   I said.

   I am running out of things to blame it on.

   In the beginning it was the $400 fee.

   I can now no longer use that as an excuse because realistically it could be entirely affordable.

   I then blamed it on the fact that I hate being outdoors.

   We'll be sleeping in a hotel.

   I blamed it on the fact that music festivals are not my scene.

   What about the countless Norman music festivals I attended religiously?

   It is hard to verbally communicate:

   "I am tremendously afraid that I will bottom out emotionally, feel inadequate, fall back in love with a boy I don't know, and wonder if my life is nothing without him."

   What a high strung and honest answer.

   Sometimes honesty is not best.

   I've never been to Muskegon, Michigan. But I know it is too close to a wound--a sore spot I still can't mend; a love I still can't dissolve.

   I hate my heart.

   I hate how I loved him.

   I hate how I cannot seem to do the things that it is crucial for me to do to feel Empowered.

  With honesty, I say:

  The only thing that would convince me that this month's zine is something I have any right to publish is by facing my demons head on so that I might feel empowered. That would require a gross northern healing.

  Sometimes the best medicine is a bite from the dog that bit you. And as Stephanie looked up at me and said over a Pizza Perfect lunch:

 "It's not really about Michigan."

 It's not really about Michigan.

 And it's not really about Tennessee.

 It's about how I loved you.

 And how you stopped loving me.