Even then I wasn’t in tip top shape. The toll of Payson St was starting to erode my new curves and lack of sex was showing on my thighs.

I was a bad bitch, I AM a bad bitch, I’m just sitting here on the porch as a bad bitch with bad knees at the moment.

I did a video version of the Baltimore debrief but I didn’t dig deeply. So let’s correct that.

Last spring after my first visit to the Summer House I was changed to the point that remaining in Pottstown wasn’t going to happen. When I arrived to live there last May I didn’t realize the next year was going to be so transformative. I thought I would hang out with MM, learn a few things, then off to fuck I can’t say I even knew where I would be off to but it would be something other than the summer house.

That didn’t happen as I imagined it would. Little in life does.

The great thing about Payson St is that it reminded me that I am not broken in the sense I thought I was.

I’d forfeited living life ‘alone’ for Bonnie and Clyde. All that I did for all of those years was about/for them. That even meant paying rent. After the incident it was immediately about restoring that which was taken from me. That occurred, but not as I pictured it. It was a long process to get to the point where I actually wanted to not die. Suicidal Ideations were as constant as my morning coffee and bedtime routine. I’d literally put my head on a pillow at night and think good girl, you made it. That changed after the first visits to the Summer House. I was distinctly looking for ways to live vs not dying and that shift is invaluable.

I have to acknowledge that the time on Payson St did wear on me in ways I didn’t allow myself to admit even if it put to bed one lie I told myself – that I wasn’t worth this effort.

After Manheim St, living alone would have meant dying. I needed the people around me then to convince myself that death wasn’t better than the life I was ‘living’. I wasn’t living then, not really.

In Pottstown, the battle became to make myself small to battle the energy I felt was directed at me.

The Summer House was survive.

Payson St was a pupa, except the me who emerged didn’t live up to the picture I had in my head. Things swiftly went from what would I be if there was no limit to every limit I’ve every known showing up and saying hello.

It always felt like it came down to money, and in a sense it does, but May 2020 shows that money is not everything.

It is a thing which is needed for shit like food, but it isn’t going to keep me ‘alive’.

I run though the mental gymnastics of what could I do with more money, and looking at the pain of this society which relies on consumption, and wanting to make this world a better place, and it all just makes me want to lay down and go to sleep because I can’t see the solve yet.

Payson St taught me though that I am worth this effort. Me being me, I caused a few things which I didn’t have to, and there were leaner times than I would have liked. I did it though, and for me. Just me. No one else was affected if I made an error in judgment and that was a lesson I’d forgotten. I am enough.

Until I made a deliberate decision to do something else the lights stayed on and the rent got paid and I did it because I was worth it, I deserved it and I was entitled to it.

Payson St had to end because the next steps weren’t going to happen there. The next steps are here, in West Philly and I can plan them from the porch. MM once asked me what it would be like to have my morning coffee on the porch. The answer to that is it is lovely. Shortly I am going to go up and complete unpacking, then I am going to rest my 47 year old knees and thighs and gather a plan to get them back to January fighting shape and beyond.

West Philly isn’t the final destination. That’s someplace else, but it is acceptable to live in this moment, this experience and enjoy the little things that can make a day smile. There really is something special about being in a city, on a block where folk smile and say hello to the new girl on the porch. There is something extra special about this new girl who smiles and waves back.

From Randolph St, to Manheim St, to Maugers Mill Rd to the current residence, this girl has evolved and its a wonderful thing.