fires in the heart and in the mind. a loving dissection of a crush through the lens of the diary. a live report from the land of fires. miracles, magic and more. from my page to yours<3
December 1, 2024
Hello December. Here I write the anatomy of a crush so I can integrate it instead of repressing and resisting.
No name to protect anonymity.
I like his big green eyes. I like how friendly he is. I like his naturalness, his simplicity. I like how open he is with people. I like his physicality. I like that he read Don Quixote, a father symbol. I like that he tries to help me. I like if I ask for something he’s there. I like his tattoos, his arms. His boyishness. I like that he includes me. I like that he’s capable of blushing. I adore a man who blushes, especially if I’m the source of the blushing.
I love that when I expressed that if I was a real bookworm I would live in Shakespeare’s folio. I was looking at the folio and he was looking at me.
“You’re such a nerd,” he said, mouth agape.
I blushed because I felt seen. And I immediately left. Such intimacy destroys me. He felt me. And that’s on being seen.
I’m terrified this crush is only a regression and not true. I’m terrified of making the same mistakes, of chasing, of delusion. Perhaps I can reframe everything by writing it down. I brushed against his hand by mistake and he did not jerk. I have never heard him call me by my name. I’m afraid of losing nothing.
Fragmentation: getting in the ring with all the parts that keep me stuck. I am questioning deeply my own sources.
It is Dec. 1st, 2024. I have a crush, I’m lonely, I have trouble with intimacy and I’m writing a novel. This is the current state of things.
December 2, 2024
To dream of integration. The softness of a crush. A man turns boyish.
And I think of all the wonderful, things that haven’t happened yet. I’m a star in full discovery, half-lit like the moon, half-stone, half-force.
December 4, 2024
Integration is such a curious thing. I’m getting to experience a crush in a more open sense and yet I find these pockets of shame I must contend with. The irrational fear I will be punished if I’m seen expressing love or desire.
I placed something in his hand. It was left open for me. These things I write down. I accept and embrace the desire. His eyes so green, his gaze so intense! I wish for closeness, intimacy. So I place something in his hand.
Later, midnight
He leans over to see what I’m reading. It’s Left Hand of Darkness. So good, he says. I hate sci-fi, I say. It’s not fantasy, he says. Does he remember I like fantasy?
He talks to me, he smiles, he’s awkward, he behaves strangely. He tries to accidentally touch me. But I desire a true intentional touch. His eyes look blue when he’s sweet. I love their sad, downcast shade.
December 5, 2024
Tired, sleepy. Taking it very slow. I have at last changed. An openness blossoms. A sincerity, a call to cultivate intimacy. Rose-quartz colored world.
I want to touch him.
December 7, 2024
My red shoes arrived on Friday. Changing my core beliefs to change me.
Later, 12:30am
Put my red shoes on for the first time while “fetch the bolt cutters” played. I am afraid of desire because I’ll get hurt and it will get worse and worse and I will never recover.
Healing my relationship with desire by wearing it on my feet. These red shoes. I desire love and change and travel and magic and abroad and green eyes and red shoes and having a following online. I desire to influence and capture the beauty of now.
I miss J. I do not think I will never see him again but I miss him so much. I don’t understand how he can’t miss me. Is one love so easily forgotten among the love of the new?
I really like [crush]. He remembered I liked One Hundred Years of Solitude some weeks ago. Will you watch the show?
I’m skeptical, I say.
Of course you should be, he says.
It takes me aback to be agreed with. To be validated cuts me open. It rips through the flesh like needles. I remember where I was when I first read it, I say. I was walking, wind in my face.
He laughs, he likes this, I can tell.
I say, I’ll watch the first episode.
It should be pretty, he says so near my face I’m unsure it was a cut-off sentence. Pretty, said so softly. I like hearing him say soft things. I fantasize about him kissing my breasts.
December 8, 2024
Emotions are strange creatures. I’m often so afraid of my feelings. That I’ll get perpetually stuck in a feeling. I’ve been shamed all my life for my sensitivity.
What would life look like if I saw this as a gift? A talent, something that grounds me and holds me. What if it was not the enemy?
December 9, 2024
A day full of possibility. I’m claiming my second renaissance.
There is so much love left to experience in this world. There is so much outside of what I think is possible.
Later, 3:39AM
Sex with Z. Sore nipples, bruised with soft bites and rough kisses.
December 10, 2024
Sore, sore, sore.
Gonna shower to wake up.
December 11, 2024
I cannot do this anymore. Having sex with Z showed me so much. I can’t be trying to get love from people who do not care about me. If the original wound is that I’m shut out and unloved because of something I did, I have to realize the impossibility of this.
A child is a child. It is guiltless for being as such. I can’t carry this heaviness around me. The same result is that I try and try to be loved only to be disappointed in my efforts to do so.
I need to arrive as I am. I have to read books because I like them, not because I want someone to like me. Then it is false. love is not so contingent on the the small details Kindness is free, love is free.
I want to be loved but most importantly I want to be known. I want to be felt. Treating my inner child today. God knows it is the only way not matter how cringe I experience inside. The work is never done.
December 12, 2024
Many, many dreams. All about relationships not fitting or working. I dreamt with V again and I’m reminded how much I miss her and that I should text her. Even if I feel somehow I have nothing to offer her as a friend.
December 13, 2024
I need to address the ghost in the room, the one in the subconscious.
December 14, 2024
I think he likes me and I don’t know what to do about it. I never been in this situation, I’m always wanting something I can’t have.
But he talks to me, every time I say nothing he tries to start a conversation with me. He gets shy like a little boy and it’s so cute because he’s normally such a confident man. He tells me, “I got you,” and I swoon. I’m like a little girl in his presence, he validates me, he’s so sweet to me and so kind. I like being around him. I want to touch him yet it overwhelms me to be so near to him physically. He radiates warmth, heat. He is a heat source I want to be held by.
I love the intensity of his stare. I pull the Golden Rose from the Alchemy deck. “The Secret”. It means to not try to figure this out, to stay in the process. The sacred laboratory of life.
He reminded me of A Room with A View (!!!) when I told him he would hate me because I stopped reading Left Hand of Darkness. He said why and I said cause he liked it. He said that was him, he liked it. “Read what you like,” he said. He never makes me feel like anything I do is wrong. Everything he praises and agrees with.
I dare to think he wants me to have my own thoughts even when he’s holding me in his arms.
December 18, 2024
Don’t know what to do with my crush since I’m so afraid of old patterns. So I decide to let go, there’s no planning, structure or outcome. There’s only feeling.
December 20, 2024
I dreamt with J. In the dream I talk to him, I ask if he didn’t like me at one point or if I did anything. We talk, we embrace, I cry. I don’t even want things to go back as they were but rather to believe it was real. That love is eternal and that is never fades. That people can grow apart and love still be left there, at the center of it all. I want to believe he truly loved me and our friendship was real. What one coffee cup conjures in the subconscious!
We work in the same city (maybe) yet are farther apart than ever. Tomorrow winter solstice, the darkest night tonight.
Later,
It’s almost midnight in California but I’m watching the sun rise in Stonehenge. One world away, England is calling my name. I think of magick, the winter solstice. The darkest night of the year. Someone to dance at Stonehenge with.
Someone sweet who sees the child for what it is, a child.
December 22, 2024
There is so much anger inside of me. I want to protect the child. Everything hurts me when I like someone. I take everything personally. The wound is triggered. You must hate me, you must not care for me, I’m making you uncomfortable, I’m the problem.
I hate it. I hate him and I hate her, the inner child so ready for hatred and rejection that that’s all she sees. And I hate it cause I never know if I’m crazy or just right. I just want to be held. I can’t handle uncertainty. I can’t do it. Softness, kindness above all.
I want to be treated like a princess I am a princess metaphorically. I need constant praise and adoration. I am a princess, wayward and lost.
I am so tired from so many processes.
WE SHOULD NOT BE SO BUSY SEARCHING FOR MEANING THAT WE FORGET TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF THINGS.
December 23, 2024
There is a grief so great in me that I wake up and shed a tear. I have no friends and no lovers and no family. I have only my pets, my diaries, and my cards.
This ancient grief becomes a waterfall that begins in my eyes. Perpetually on. Afraid it will be forevermore. But I cannot curve the feeling any longer. I shall sit with it.
I am so lonely and broken. I want someone to hold it and mean it. It’s no one’s fault yet it feels cruel. I will use the only friend I have right now. Me. The only one who still cares deeply.
December 27, 2024
Trying to be hopeful. There is so much shame within me. There is so much shame within me. There is a war within. The self. And trying to make peace is sometimes so impossible.
I take comfort in that everything must pass and everything you let go off is a step you take. I want to honor my choices even when I don’t see them as entirely good. I come back here constantly. The inner work and the turmoil inside.
I made a choice and I must honor it. But I’m already mad at it. I have to make peace with myself.
December 28, 2024
Pulled the Snake this morning, my unawakened potential.
When I let go, when I speak from the inner voice I feel so different. I relax and I trust. There are changes abound, this year is almost ending and something new begins. I do not want to be afraid anymore.
December 29, 2024
I am reminded of love and hope constantly. Today is a Sunday and I burn sage and want an egg sandwich and grapefruit juice and Sylvia Plath. My black cat rests on the plush blanket. This it the end of 2024.
December 30, 2024
Happy birthday Patti Smith! I made a vision board last night, its very blue. I’m torn between red and blue, the duality. Moving through discomfort.
December 31, 2024
Last day of 2024.
There was a thick fog this morning. A metaphor for the New Year. With so many unknowns you simply walk into the fog and give thanks.
I will go dancing tonight. 2nd year of revelry. But there is no other choice. We must welcome each new year with open arms and a sunny disposition.
I lost friends in 2024 but I went to Wuthering Heights. What a trade off! One day these two things will coexist and I will go to Wuthering Heights with friends or a lover even. I’m always full of hope.
I pulled the Dragon card today. The self returns with a vengeance and desire to express itself. I have to believe in myself, no matter what. I have to be in my corner and I have to open the gates of fate and love and everything else that’s worthwhile.
January 1, 2025
First dream of the year: study abroad in the Moors/England. I was looking into a program my crush was also doing. It was a remarkable coincidence that also scared me.
I spoke to angel last night dressed like Kim Catrall. Stay in the present, he told me. Positive thinking, train yourself. Don’t call yourself a coward. Say I’m a writer each day.
He told me everything I needed to hear.
The gay club became an oracle. The theme of 2025? Let the soft animal of your flesh love what it loves. I do not wish to continue as I began. I will have courage. The angel told me that everyone is afraid, but we all show up. I believe in magic. I need a break and re-assess myself.
I can see clearly now.
January 4, 2025
I dreamt I was in an orchard. Apples, avocados, fruit.
My sister was there. Then I was in my room. A large spider crawled on me. It had large fangs and I no access to a weapon. I had to strangle it with my bare hands. Poison dripped everywhere. And though I washed my hands, I felt my skin irritated by it.
I’m unsure of the symbol except if I think of poison as my own personal symbol. Poison as both elixir and antidote. Usually the thing we think will kill us, saves us. I see spider as the shadow. Letting the poison drip out and wash my hands clean. No matter the irritations.
January 5, 2025
Nothing is gonna save me, that’s a fact. But I, my choices, my commitment to my gifts, my love, my strength.
There is a huge key plastered on my vision board. I have never misplaced the key, its in here. Everything I want is so very possible. All desires are within reach. I trust myself to achieve everything. Because everything comes to me eventually. Every dream, every vision returns in full force.
Made real by the light of the moon. Made real by own intent. Everything I dream of comes true.
January 6, 2025
Woke up sore from yoga and late from watching so many animal videos on tiktok. Animals always just are, and they inspire me to just be. To not take things so seriously, to always show up as I am.
We cannot curb our natures. Perhaps it is an error to do so.
January 7, 2025
Very high winds today. I love the wind and only think of it as the winds of change. When change lingers in the air and every transmutation is possible. I want to keep positive thoughts and not be corrupted by my own sick mind. So I stay believing in my abilities and strength.
Later, midnight
The wind has turned destructive and wrecked trees, lights, and facilitated fires. Yet I love it. Several times I went outside to feel its ferociousness, its strength, its will. I love the wind, I love violent weather.
A leaf stuck to my hair, lost in black tresses like a hidden kiss. I thought of Wuthering Heights, it being like I was back there again. The “wooooooooo” sound of the wind. The winds of change, I lose my laborite stone from my ring. A sign of my completion, the transformation is complete. My red shoes arrive on the winds of change.
A new era dawns. There is a waxing moon, more than half full. I read Sylvia Plath’s journals, a poet at heart. I see myself reflected in her. I see and I hear all that I am and I could be. And I believe.
January 10, 2024
Pasadena is covered in ashes but the sun is still shining.
In front of me is a lady whose entire neighborhood burned down yet her house remained. “It’s a miracle,” she says.
And it’s true. Life is full of strange miracles. A house remaining after fierce fires. A kind smile, the kind of magic when two people like each other. A good coffee made by a local shop.
“I’m glad your house is still there,” I say.
“God bless you,” is her response.
I keep listening to “Arcadia” by Lana del Rey. My beloved San Gabriel Mountains on fire. Arcadia, my birthplace, almost on fire. I appreciate this space.
I wore my red shoes to work. To walk in red lacquered shoes among gray ashes. To quote Joan Didion “What else is there?” (when asked about using silverware).
Red denotes fire and we’re still alive.
He is just a boy. A man but a boy. What a sweet quality. I think I like men with a boyish quality because it reminds me that I’m just a girl. Not a myth, not an archetype, not a goddess.
I’m just a girl. And while I could be all things, I remain at the core, at the center, a girl. Yet I’m also a woman. I’m infinite.
“If you think that you know yourself, you can come over.”
What a beautiful lyric, I feel it deeply.
January 12, 2025
I don’t want to live in shame, standing before a puzzle trying to make everything fit. No, no, I’m not a detective. Life is a mystery I don’t truly wish to solve.
Instead I have love for my friends but I let them go and give them to the ether. There’s no villains, only dharma and our life’s true purpose. I see my road and I set off. I might not walk alone forever but I these aren’t people I need to seek out.
My true friends arrive when I need them.
Later, full moon
It’s a full moon and I’m emotional, what’s new?
I bought a red shirt cause red enters my life, to cry out: “I want to live!” Comparison is a killer, shame will bury you.
“I’m not pretty enough to be a swan,” I said when I pulled the Swan card.
I think I’ll go to Paris again with my blue diary. Maybe visit Barcelona, let me tell E. We could travel together and party in Barcelona, and then I take a train to Paris to visit. Stay at a hostel and save money. Yes, have fun.
I want this life but I’m also terrified of it. “Take your time,” say the voice inside. “Fall back into place,” says the song.
January 13, 2025
I dreamt I was working at the bookstore but it looked different. We were near a flower field. My crush was there and my feelings intensified when he played a guitar and a piano we had there.
He said he loved to play the piano and I found that so attractive. I love music as in men who play music, a talent I do not possess. There is such inherent beauty in the language of music. A secret world made out of melody.
January 14, 2025
Now I began to understand Anaïs Nin. We all need to live out our childhood wounds in love. If we are smart and integrated, we will seek to repair this past rather than repeat it.
I don’t know precisely what I consciously seek in love except perhaps some unconditional love and reassurance and sweetness.
January 17, 2025
It’s so lovely to have a crush when you don’t attach your worth to it. When you flow and are yourself, you don’t suffer. There is peace and sweet things are happenstances.
It’s the little things that count. His sweet smile. He cannot help himself. I like the glimpses into the boy. I think I have more of a crush on the boy than the man. The soft center of it all. I need incredible tenderness. I am slightly jealous of his interactions with dogs. I wish he extended that excessive warmth to me.
January 18, 2025
Dreamt I was a person with many different lives. Every so often I wound restart from scratch. I would find myself in the strangest of situations. Last thing I remember I was working in a grocery store in Italy.
11:11pm
I see a first date. I witness and laugh. He’s talking too much, let her speak. My crush comes by, I must tell him.
“I was thinking exactly the same thing.”
We joke and laugh. I tell him about the guy. He says, “He’s scared. We’re scared.”
He is so close, he leans his shoulder against mine. He is talking about dating and love.
“At least they’re trying. I’ve almost given up.” He is saying this, so private. I listen. (Almost) why? He says they should go to a more intimate place for a first date. “A movie, a walk.”
“You create intimacy,” I say.
He agreed. He always agrees. Why? He says how awkward first dates are.
“We must resign ourselves to the awkwardness of life.”
I quote Before Sunrise. He agrees, life is awkward. I like his eyes. When he told me he’s almost given up, I wanted to touch his shoulder, caress it tenderly. “There, there.” Or grasp his hand and kiss it.
I want to give him infinite tenderness because I feel he needs it. And I have an excessive amount.
January 21, 2025
The world is crazy right now but like Lana said, “We’re getting high in the parking lot. We keep changing all the time, the best ones lost their mind. So I’m not gonna change, I’ll stay the same.”
I’m always choosing hope and presence and love. Sacred love.
January 22, 2025
Feeling better but so lazy. Getting out of bed feels like a herculean effort. Very horny as well. I blame my crush. I played Kate Bush first thing in the morning.
I can’t help others who lack faith in love and fate and magic. And a little sadness comes because a strong desire for care seems refuted. And I just let it hang in the air. I write with a pen given by someone sweet and caring and isn’t that enough?
I repeat this creed: love is all. Giving someone love and attention and care even though they don’t understand it means the world. And love is everywhere and something wonderful is seeking me as I am seeking it.
There is something soft and wonderful and beautiful and I can’t miss it. Because how can I? I get older and wiser because I don’t give up.
I believe.
January 24, 2025
Will officially return to writing today. The work, the diary, the dream are my holy trinity. I’m a good man in a storm. The dream church is within, we must find it and touch it with our bare hands. Listening to Fiona Apple first thing in the morning. Magic afoot.
January 25, 2025
We are never stuck unless we chose it. I liberate myself by cutting forth my chords of restraint with bolt cutters.
I don’t want to be afraid of myself, of my mind. I can be my friend and take myself where I want to go. I’m very powerful. I dreamt with the house of my childhood again. The place where everything originates from.
My shell that I fully crack open. It is a cloudy Saturday, the planets will align tonight. I feel there’s a palpable change coming, yet it is also a change I’m choosing to create. I am very afraid but I must choose different. There are great things for me out there if I only trust more.
Get curious on how the world can be. Do it for the reveal like Gabi says. The reveal could be glorious and unexpected. The world could be great and magical. There’s magic everywhere.
January 26, 2025
It’s raining hard outside. I dreamt with Disneyland Resort and my passport. I dreamt I had both an American and European passport in my book! I even remember the numbers that I could clearly see in my dream.
Hitting a wall with self-expression. I’m still so afraid of being judged, it is so ridiculous. I have nothing to lose. No real close friends that would judge me online. And, anyway, if someone would judge me, they are not my real friends!
I think I need to be a better friend to myself because I’ve never been a real one. Too many rules and self-hatred. What would make me very happy would be to express myself.
I feel a kind of release every time I do it. Like I’m unclogging pieces of my heart.
Let the rain come down, I’m coming clean. Water calls. Water whispers. I made my bathroom a prettier place. I make everything prettier if I can help it. If I don’t have friends right now, I’ll be my own friend.
January 27, 2025
Sometimes I wake up with no thoughts except a deep presence of where I am. A soreness from yoga. A pocketful of dreams. A large desire to take every single risk and eat every fig. My life is my making. My myth is my legacy.
Later, 1AM
A strange anxiety came to me before bed. A fear that is so well known by me. That there is something inherently wrong. Something needs to be solved. Instead I took to reading Piranesi.
My anxiety vanished. My mind how preoccupied with the reality of the world I am perceiving. I remember how much of an animal we are. Our mind has evolved but its still an animal mind hellbent on survival. It must find danger even if there’s none.
We use this instrument of ours for good for it is easy to succumb to its appetite. I read Piranesi and I’m reminded of what I love most. To read and write, to create beautiful worlds to live in. I didn’t write in my laptop today, I wrote here.
The diary is important. We are all our own Piranesi, making sense of our strange, archaic, and mystical worlds.
January 28, 2025
I think the substack needs to feel more like a diary. I’m way too conscious of who’s reading it and how it sounds. And that’s just not my intention at all. I want a diary out in the open. A diary like Anais was for me.
Later, 2AM
I didn’t like when they explained the origin of the house in Piranesi. I love the mystery, we should never explain things. I must go to great lengths to never explain myself.
