Episode 27: The Queen Of Silver Linings

SILVER LININGS! Simplicity. NUDES. HUMMING BIRDS! Warm wooden bowls. I don’t just f**k people anymore… YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE EXPERIENCING ITSELF! BOUNDARIES! DOES THIS SPARK JOY?! I am applying for the position of…

EXERPT 1:

“ …this is your host, Olivia Wade. And this week, well, let’s just call me the queen of silver linings. I mean maybe you do already. But, let’s just start. So that’s it this week on Sunday Nights Are For Hopeless Romantics. Olivia, queen of silver linings. 

I got a voice memo this week from someone I met once, an of course wonderful human. But I was having this day… were I just kinda was feeling like, “what’s the point?” I don’t know where any of this is going. And sometimes it all just feels like a lot. I’M A LOT. I mean folks. I have to hang out with me every day. And mostly alone *insert nervous laughter here. But, this message was actually about this show. Thanking me, and saying that they knew it must feel like shouting into the void every week. Which it does… And often it doesn’t feel like it matters. But sometimes we forget, that we don’t see it sometimes. That it takes a long time. That our words get were they need to go at the right time, in the right place, in the time the universe takes them to get there. And then they matter, they matter a whole lot. And all it takes is one person. If it makes a difference, in one persons life. You are doing the thing! Because that’s all that matters. Even if that one persons life is your own. But luckily it was someone telling me, that the show was holding them. That they were grateful. That it did matter, to more than just the trees. Which was really really profoundly good to hear. 

So this week I’ve had these moments, of full bottom out. I said to my therapist this week, that I was so tired of always being the one finding a silver lining in everything. That I’m exhausted. Of being the steady one. The optimist. And I get tired of all of this loving. And I want to be angry, or sad, that people can’t show up, that sometimes people don’t change, that distance SUCKS. That not responding to my texts for a week doesn’t feel good, especially if we set a date. And then there it was. My silver lining. The message. That something I was doing mattered. That all that heartache, all the uncertainty, wasn’t useless. Isn’t useless after all. 

And so I guess you can still call me the queen of silver linings, because later that day I stumbled across this song. And boy did that feel like a weird convergence of fate. 

And boy is it beautiful. 

I couldn’t have written it more truly myself. 

So here is queen of silver linings by Amy Allen. Because I’ll always find a way to love you. Through it all. 

And then, I’ll get right to, a whole bunch of stuff I have a LOT of feelings about… "

EXERPT 2:

“Lately I’ve had this feeling, that I can’t quality explain. This strange creeping up feeling. That comes in around the edges of things. That there is something I am missing, something vitally important. Some information or piece of knowledge, or a person maybe. I think my worst fear is that it’s a person.

And in these moments, sometimes I wonder, if it’s that I’m living in a world I have outgrown, and all I’m feeling is the separating between who I used to be and who I am becoming. But sometimes I think it’s that I can feel something coming. No folks that’s not a dirty joke. I mean like a shadow of something, a life I am not yet living. As I sit more alone in the silence. When I have doubt. Especially when I am lonely. And for some reason it seems to make the lonely worse... I’m not sure why, shouldn’t it give me faith? If only it was a knowing, in my bones that the life I desire to create is meant for me.

Sometimes I ask for a sign, and often I don’t find it even if I am really looking. And I think to myself, that I’ve grown so comfortable in these liminal spaces over these last long months. And shouldn’t I know how to sit in this kind of unknowing? And when whatever it is arrives, will I know? Will something suddenly click into place the way it has in the past? The last time the world clicked back into place was on the top of Baldwin Hill, that night that we stood there finally talking to each other again.  You know the person I started this whole show about. I bet you forgot, that I started this whole show because I finally got to hold one of the loves of my life in my arms again. Before it all came crumbling down just the way it did the first time. And sometimes I wonder… Could I have done anything differently? To keep the world that pure even just for another moment. But then I remember that we can’t change the past, and that I wouldn’t have started this show if I had that power. And maybe I wouldn’t have started my business! Then I remember that things happen exactly the way they are meant to. See, there it is, the silver lining.

So what’s this feeling? And why is it still there? 

And I think to myself about the way my dog gazes at me. Yes, GAZES. And I think to myself about sitting across from my clients, and the joy their newfound sense of ease and safety brings me. And I think about how some days, most days, I wake up not knowing what will happen. About the ever present sense of adventure. Who will I talk to? What will I learn? What will I do with this day? Today I woke up and drove to Hudson, to get some iv vitamin c, and a chelation, and then I got a message from an artist who I had met while figure modeling a month ago, and I drove way out into the country side, to a house with a garden and apple trees. And I stood naked in a studio full of paintings and light. And though my hands were cold, I was still struck by standing in my own body. My body holding me up, strong, useful, brave even. Even through all it has been though.

The artist said I emanated a kind of joy, and I said that it came from starring in the face of death, and surviving. Or from a deep understanding that there will be suffering, but we are also blessed with joy. And the more joy we learn to focus on, the more joy there will be. And I think it comes too, from living the question. I am at wonder with the present, always another interesting thing right around the bend. What a river we are in. What a rush. 

And still. Still. There is this feeling. 

Somehow it seems to be drawing me to simplicity. To simplify my life. Everything down to my wardrobe. It’s brought my palate to warm neutral earth colors. Light brown and beige. To a love of simple beautifully made things. To minimalism, to modern angles and asymmetry. 

It somehow brings me to want to give away half of what I own. Go through the drawers, my boxes. And let go of everything. In favor of soft clean linens, and a beautiful warm wooden bowl. 

To sit quietly, to nourish simply.

To watch the ways I hold my body in the world. To move gracefully through the world even when it is devoid of watchful eyes. 

It’s also changed the music I’ve been listening to. Some more quiet, sweetness. Some perfection of something indescribable. Simple. Simple. Sweet. And yearning, for something I don’t know what…

 Dear August, tell me that there’s light, at the end of all this starless night.”