The world is your oyster this year. Carved for two and a half years by the impenetrable weight of the ocean, your shell is a rippled masterpiece created by the push and pull of every wave. You may appear still and secret but you have been busy deep inside yourself, sublimating irritation into pure form. Never untouched, yet somehow untouchable.

The world is your oyster this year. Immeasurable richness and luxury await those with the patience to reinvent their defenses layer by layer. It will look like goo and slime, gross and inedible. But you will slurp it up like the finest delicacy because courage is expensive. It makes you feel good to eat the secretions, to get high on the increase of your raw desire.

The world is your oyster this year. Natural pearls are extremely rare. Most of what you’re sold (told to create) has been artificially manufactured and while the process is the same, true pricelessness comes from what could not be otherwise contrived. When summer comes what was once shut tight inside will be revealed by knife and hammer. But you cannot afford to sit and wait to be revealed by force.

The world is your oyster this year. Round and round and round until you shine with the iridescent glow of integrated awareness. You’ll find treasure at the bottom of the ocean when you’ve given up self-inflicted suffering for the pearlescent shimmer of transmutation. Do not seek reclamation. There is nothing to “take back” and no rights to reassert. There is no former, better state. There is only change.

The world is your oyster but if you crack it open you will find nothing there to satiate your longing. Let yourself be pressed and squeezed. Let yourself be an irritant. There is nothing to lose. You decide what can be gained. Being consumed is tempting, but it’s not better than being alive.

The world is your oyster.

Be the pearl.

I want to die a painful death. I want to feel the excruciating pain of love leaving my body to exist in some higher realm. I want my husband to sing love songs to me every night so when he dies I can remember how he made me feel, each one the next one in my death by a thousand cuts. I want to get right into it as if there’s no way out. I want no threat of leaving, I want to let love (w)in.

Eat the anger while it’s fresh. A fleshy, almost alive, salmonella risk. It must be so raw it might poison you. You must be so cut open and dirty, at risk of infection. Eat it like this, blood red, and you’ll grow to be a fighter. Pro-body, you’ll become the antibody, turned against yourself, dis-eased. Eventually you’ll learn the art of dosage, the red hot immunity that will one day save your life.

I read someone on twitter asking people to name a single benefit of having children that isn’t selfish. Hearts opened and closed in the comments. I scanned through them scared to discover what I already knew I’d find: I’m a monster for wanting to create life. A common argument from those who decide to be childless is that it’s inherently selfish to have children and therefore it isn’t a worthwhile pursuit. What a beautiful testament to the truth of creation that having children can be considered the ultimate selfish act. Of course it is. It’s life. Is it inherently selfish to breathe? Shouldn’t we have the decency, after all we’ve been through, to spare the others? Is it fair to the rest of the world to exist? These dinner table questions, sophisticated as they seem, taste like suicidality. No one realizes we’re as inseparable as we are separate. I would be having my child as much as my child would be having me. In the deep mystery there would still be a universe between us, making it so that we could never truly, fully belong to each other. But he showed up after midnight dressed in his father’s old flannels, telling me he didn’t want to be here anymore. There is no greater wave of disappointment than when you have to crush your ideals with your own hands. It wasn’t until I woke up, wailing about how I ripped my own heart out with my bare hands and flushed it down the toilet forever, that I realized life is mine. I am allowed to have nouns— people, places, things. Still, I wandered through the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, each day full of bloody battles, looking for my life. It was half surrender, half defiance maybe, to kill myself so I could live.