22

She accused me of lying about my age this afternoon as I was teaching her to use her computer. "There's no way you're 22" she told me, "22 year olds aren't this smart." I smiled and told her she was giving me far too much credit. Her sixty-plus years on this earth have surely given her more wisdom than she allows herself to believe. There are so many things she has experienced that have yet to even cross my mind.

Still, I carried her words with me throughout the day. People have always guessed that I was older than I am. All of my friends at work are older and tell me on a regular basis that they forget about our age difference. I forget too. Relationships really do have so little to do with age, as does intellect, as does, as I'm slowly learning, wisdom. I have always been wise beyond my years.

For the most part, I enjoy that. I like that people seek out my advice, that they believe my opinion is worth seeking. I like that I think deeply about things, that I take in every piece of my life and explore it, cherish it, let it become a lesson. I like that I have so many thoughts.

And yet, there is a part of me that often wishes I didn't have that ability, that I could stop thinking, that I could turn off the constant turning within my mind and just be. There is a part of me that wishes I didn't know things that I know. There is a part of me that wishes I could just be the average 22 year old.

Because so many of my friends are older, I've begun to compare my life to theirs, not as a 22 year old, but as a human being. So many of them have children and spouses and homes. So many of them are adults, not because of their age, but because they fit the criteria of being grown up. They worry about bills and mortgages and obligations. They work, not for the sake of working, but for survival.

That's what I've wanted for as long as I can remember. I wanted to struggle. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be grown up. I've created my life around this idea. I've based all of my decisions around it. I've stepped away from my youth and crossed over a threshold that can never be reopened. I've closed the door to my childhood.

And the further away from it I get, the more I regret closing that door so soon. It's not that I'm unhappy living this life, it's more that I feel as though I've missed the opportunity to just be young, to be care free, to know that no matter what happens, I can still go home again.

I have no home. Not anymore. I have this apartment that I love, that I have filled with my own essence, that feels like home for the moment, but that I know is only temporary. I don't get financial help from my parents. I no longer seek their approval or fill them in on the details of my daily decisions. I no longer feel that they know what's best for me. This is my life and I am free to do with it as I please.

Which is terrifying. To be alone that way means that I have to look after myself, take care of myself, in ways I'd never had to worry about before. To have that sort of freedom means that I have no one to blame but myself if things go terribly wrong. To be on my own that way means that I am truly on my own.

I wanted that. I wanted not to feel like I had to depend on anyone for anything. I wanted to be self sufficient. I wanted my experiences to bring me wisdom. And they have. And I am grateful for what I have learned and that I know now that I am stronger than I've ever thought I could be.

But still there are those rare moments when I wish that I could fall into my mother's arms and feel completely safe again. I wish that I could depend on things to be taken care of with or without my help. I wish that I could spend my days writing in the park, my nights hanging out with my friends, and still have a roof over my head and food on the table. There are still those rare moments when I wish that I hadn't given up on my childhood so soon.

At 22 I have already been living in the "real world" for years. I have felt it's glorious highs and it's devastating lows. I have gained strength and knowledge from both. I have become wise beyond my years.

But still there are those rare moments when I think to myself "there's no way you're 22," and for an instant wish that I could take it all back.

From The Ashes

She posed the question of whether we have to give up our dreams to live in the real world, whether it is possible to have a plan and follow it, whether it is foolish to believe that we really can have it all.

And it made me stop and consider my own life. So many times I have felt as though I was settling, as though each point I reached was simply a safe place to sit and rest a while, waiting for my real life to begin, waiting for my dreams to find me. I have worked hard and a lot, but have only had two real jobs. Because after some time, they begin to feel easy and safe and mine. They begin to feel comfortable.

I'm often jealous of those people who spend their lives bouncing from one profession to another, one country to another, one identity to another. From the outside it feels like they are living, like they are experiencing life and all it has to offer. They are alive. They don't settle for comfort, but rather, stretch their bravery to the limit. They are afraid of nothing. They don't know what their tomorrow will bring and are okay with that, embrace it, in fact, for its delicious potential.

That's what I thought my life would look like. That's what I thought I would be. But instead, I've become much more of a settler. My coworkers and I have come to consider ourselves "lifers" at our job. I'm beginning to explore the idea of a more permanent residence with one of them, somewhere close, somewhere we can consider home. I'm beginning to get comfortable with this life.

And like most decisions, it both thrills and terrifies me. I fear I'll become a woman wishing she had done things differently, wishing she was living while her life passed her by. I can't help but think about what I'm giving up by choosing this permanence. I can't help but think that staying still means letting go of any chance of becoming that fearless wanderer I'd envisioned myself being. I can't help but think this is the small death of a dream.

I've surrounded myself in my comfortable life, created a cocoon of silence and fear. I've placed myself within this cold, hard shell hoping to both change and stay exactly the same forever. I do not feel like a butterfly. I feel like a scared caterpillar hiding away from the world. Possibility offers itself up to me and I politely decline its invitation and settle into the life I know.

I wanted to be a person who spread joy, but I fear I've become someone who makes connections through shared sadness. I wanted to be alive, but fear I am only living. And in times I've wanted to die, I've discovered some small part of me already has, some idealistic hope I once had that became smothered within the crevices of disappointment.

And yet--there is new hope. There is the small lingering faith that among the ashes of my unfulfilled longing there is still a burning ember or two that refuses to go out, that will ignite the growing forest of my ambition and spread like wildfire through the trees of my desire. There is a part of me that will always believe in that kind splendor, that rebirth of the spirit. There is a part of me that will always believe in the power of dreaming.

And in light of that, where I am or what I'm doing seems irrelevant. Being comfortable is not the end of me. Choosing a life does not mean surrender. Standing still does not mean that I am stuck. It only means that I'm giving those few embers time to light, to ignite, to rage.

And I will burn with life.

Re: Regrets

I know that I am the one who did this. I shut you out. I avoided phone calls and emails and gatherings because I couldn't bear to think about you, much less see you. Your face is a reminder of everything I long to escape.

Please understand that I hate what you've done to me. I hate that I see every part of me that I dislike reflected so strongly in your eyes. I hate that when I look at you, I know what you're seeing in me. I hate that you were never there for me the way I needed you to be. I hate that it had to be this way. I hate that, even in your attempts at regret, you still don't understand.

But mostly, I hate that I can't hate you. I hate your attempts at regret because it only turns the blame on me, and I know that's what you want. I know that you blame me. I know that you've decided this is what women are like -- emotional, irrational, dramatic. I know you've put me in this little category of people you cannot connect with, as a woman, as my mother's daughter, as someone you wish was a better reflection of you.

I am not you. Nor am I my mother, or my sister, or my brothers. I am me, and never once in my life has that been enough for you. Not once have you allowed me to feel worthy of your time, or attention, or love. Not once have I felt the unconditional love of a father.

You invited me to return, no questions asked, but that's always been the problem, hasn't it? Too few questions, too few answers. Nothing real. I cannot keep having the same conversation about the literary world over and over again. You are a wonderful English teacher, of that I am certain, but you are not MY teacher. You are my father. Somehow the roles have become blurred for you. I am tired of discussing books. I am tired of being your student. I am tired of attempting to be your daughter. I am just so tired.

And for anyone who reads this who is without a father, who has lost one, or never had one, I am sorry. I am sorry for your loss and I am sorry for selfishly ignoring the father I have, but this is how things have come to be.

You "guess" that you have hurt me. "Perhaps" your remarriage hurt too. I "guess, perhaps" you haven't been listening to anything I've been saying to you over the past two years. I am not angry that you got married. I want to make that very clear. I am angry that you got married to a woman you allowed me to meet once before your wedding. I am angry you didn't tell me you were getting married. I am angry you did it while I was on the other side of the world, that you told me in a three sentence email accompanied with the news that my new step-brother was dead. I am angry that you put me in the position where I had no choice but to be angry.

You are angry that I refuse to be a part of your "new family," but I am angry because you didn't invite me in. I wanted so desperately to be the opposite of every step-child ever portrayed in movies. I wanted to be supportive of the new people, the new love, in both of my parents lives. I wanted to be a good daughter and step-daughter and person. And you robbed me of that. You robbed me of any possible relationship with my new step-mother, and you robbed me of any real relationship with you.

I have tried so many times to find forgiveness, but each time, nothing changes. And it is that, that stagnant shallowness of our relationship, that has lead me here. It is that coming and going with "no explanation needed" that destroys me. I cannot keep opening up to something, someone, that will never let me in. I cannot keep giving you my heart and trusting that you will keep it safe. I cannot have faith in you.

And I do hate that. And I hate that I can't move on. And I hate that I have to spend each day unsuccessfully trying to shut you out of my mind. And I hate that I can't hate you enough to forget you.

I'm sure that you think that I want you to make an effort, but I don't. I want it to be over. I want to be able to forgive myself for what I'm doing here, and I can't do that if I'm being constantly reminded of what things should have been, what they could have been, had you been a better husband, and father, and person. All I want to do is move on with my life, and somehow, I can't seem to escape you.

I just want you to let me go.

The Story

Sometimes I am not sure if it is your memory or mine. I know so few of the details. I couldn't possibly remember it, not logically, not accurately, not the way I've created it within my head. I am certain I would never have thought of it had it not been presented to me by you. Surely it is not my story.

Surely the pain it causes me is sympathy. And when I wake in the middle of the night in a panic, when my eyes are filled with tears I cannot explain, it is your anguish I am feeling, not my own.

But sadness is funny in that way, in that it is never truly confined to just one person. The moment you shared your story, it became my story too. The moment you released the inner workings of suffering within your heart, it became intertwined with the inner workings of my own heart. The moment your burden was lifted, mine was made heavier.

Which is not to say that I am angry that you told me. I don't regret knowing. I never regret knowing. I just wish it was a problem with a solution. I wish that I had known sooner perhaps, or that I had asked more questions when we spoke. I wish I didn't have a mind filled with limitless possibilities of how difficult it might have been, how truly awful it might have been. Having only pieces of the story simply leaves room for me to fill in the holes with my own wonderings. And that tortures me.

You asked me once to never write about it here, so I am trying to work through it as evasively as I can. This is the only way I know how. To write it, to post it here where others can see it, even if they have no understanding of it. This is the way I begin to lift the burden.

Sometimes I think I remember you crying that night. Sometimes I think, even as a child, I knew something had happened, something was wrong. Sometimes it scares me to think that none of that is true, that I didn't know, that I never would have known. I am glad that I know that part of your history because it helps me to understand pieces of mine. It helps me to fill in those holes that have been left to my own imagination. Now there is fact. Now there is truth.

I wonder if after all these years, it still haunts you. I wonder if years from now, it will still haunt me. I wonder if any of us ever get to a point where we really can leave the past behind us. Of course, I don't mean healing. I believe people can and do heal. I believe it's possible to move forward, but to get to a place where it no longer sneaks in to your idle thoughts from some back corner of your mind, well that I'm not sure of. Have I ever really forgotten anything?

Because all it takes is a single moment, a single word, a single idea from someone else, and the wounds become undone like a freshly picked scab. The gates are reopened. The flood begins. And I wonder if you feel that way too.

There is a kind of pain that helps us grow, a kind of pain I am mostly grateful for, a kind of pain I revere as a doorway to something new, something better. It is the only kind of pain I have ever really experienced. But this pain, your pain, is something different. Something I hope I'll never have to experience, but something I wish I could better understand in order to better understand you. Would you tell me more if I had gone through it?

Of course I wish that it had never happened. God, do I wish that. But I wonder if you ever stop and think that you wouldn't be the same person if things had gone differently that night. I wonder if some small part of you is ever okay with your past. I wonder how you have such strength, to wake each morning and greet a world that has been so unkind to you, that seems so unfair. And I wonder how you have the courage to not share it, to not post it on some blog, to not want anyone else to. Sometimes I feel like the truly brave people are the ones who carry their heaviness alone.

I am not that brave, and so I write this now, because it flooded in this afternoon, into my idle thoughts from some back corner of my mind, and I didn't know what else to do but write it here. Surely it is not my story, but somehow now, it is.

Yes

"But it's sunny outside" she said, pointing at our snowflake covered walls. Trying to explain the concept of seasons to two year olds is difficult when global warming is involved. We spent all morning playing outside, running through the leaves, standing with our arms spread wide, letting the wind blow us whichever way it chose.

Despite the harm I know our poor earth is facing, I've been grateful for the gorgeous weather. It's been lovely and rejuvenating, like spring itself. It's been exactly how I've been feeling, a rebirth of the spirit, a mending of the soul.

I've been trying to say "yes" to things and to stick with those promises. It sounds like such an easy task, but it's been difficult for me these past few months. It's been difficult to agree to go out, to make time for things beyond work, to step out into the world and explore it the way I had always done, the way I was meant to. Sometimes it feels like the real work of my life is simply to savor the beauty around me.

And somewhere along the line, I think I forgot that. Or at the very least, ignored it. Somehow I allowed my job to consume me, and not in the fun way where I devoted my everything to it, but in a way that allowed my waking up each morning for that purpose to define me. I allowed the definition of myself to be reduced to a title.

When in fact, I am so much more than what I do. Of course it is a part of who I am, and I am grateful for the label of teacher, but I am also grateful for the rest of me. I am grateful for the labels of writer, traveler, explorer, thinker, dreamer, sister, daughter, friend. And I am grateful for those pieces of me that cannot be labeled, defined, condensed into words. I am grateful for my layers.

I have never truly considered myself a pessimist, but when it comes to how I view my own life, I always have been. I have always felt that I was lacking something, that I was less than I could be or should be. Even as I write that, I still feel it to be true. And of course, it IS true. There is so much more that I'm capable of. There is so much more that I could be if I just tried. If I just opened myself up to possibility. If I just had a little faith in myself.

But instead of searching inside myself for faith, for strength, for courage, I've looked outward. I've looked to other people. I've looked to define myself in labels, in concepts, in these tiny categories I've created within the world. I've looked for so long at this idea of who I should be that I've forgotten who I already am. I've forgotten what I already have. I've forgotten to embrace my triumphs along with my failures.

And so I am trying now to not only say yes to social invitations, but to say yes to myself as well. Yes, I can be something more, but yes, I am already something. Yes, it is okay to feel a little lost and confused and even sad and alone, but yes, it is also okay to feel happy even if not much has changed. Yes, I am capable of things, but yes, it is going to take more than capability to accomplish them. Yes, I am a dreamer, but yes, I also must live in the real world. Yes, I have a blessed life, but yes, I do want more.

Yes, it is January, but yes, it does feel like spring.

The Mountain Disappears

I don't have a lot of time or energy tonight to write a post. At the same time, I don't want to fall out of the habit of writing here, and know that I will always find an excuse such as the one above not to. So I'm posting just for the sake of posting. This is a wonderful essay by Leonard Bernstein. Enjoy.

"I believe in people. I feel, love, need and respect people above all else, including the arts, natural scenery, organized piety, or nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the whole mountain disappear for me. One person fighting for the truth can disqualify for me the platitudes of centuries. And one human being who meets with injustice can render invalid the entire system which has dispensed it.

I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. Armed with reason, he can see two sides and choose: he can be divinely wrong. I believe in man's right to be wrong. Out of this right he has built, laboriously and lovingly, something we reverently call democracy. He has done it the hard way and continues to do it the hard way--by reason, by choosing, by error and rectification, by the difficult, slow method in which the dignity of A is acknowledged by B, without impairing the dignity of C. Man cannot have dignity without loving the dignity of his fellow.

I believe in the potential of people. I cannot rest passively with those who give up in the name of "human nature." Human nature is only animal nature if it is obliged to remain static. Without growth, without metamorphosis, there is no godhead. If we believe that man can never achieve a society without wars, then we are condemned to wars forever. This is the easy way. But the laborious, loving way, the way of dignity and divinity, presupposes a belief in people and in their capacity to change, grow, communicate, and love.

I believe in man's unconscious mind, the deep spring from which comes his power to communicate and to love. For me, all art is a combination of these powers; for if love is the way we have of communicating personally in the deepest way, they what art can do is to extend this communication, magnify it, and carry it to vastly greater numbers of people. Therefore art is valid for the warmth and love it carries within it, even if it be the lightest entertainment, or the bitterest satire, or the most shattering tragedy.

I believe that my country is the place where all these things I have been speaking of are happening in the most manifest way. America is at the beginning of her greatest period in history--a period of leadership in science, art, and human progress toward the democratic ideal. I believe that she is at a critical point in this moment, and that she needs us to believe more strongly than ever before, in her and in one another, in our ability to grow and change, in our mutual dignity, in our democratic method. We must encourage thought, free and creative. We must respect privacy. We must observe taste by not exploiting our sorrows, successes, or passions. We must learn to know ourselves better through art. We must rely more on the unconscious, inspirational side of man. We must not enslave ourselves to dogma. We must believe in the attainability of good. We must believe, without fear, in people."

A Bit Of Light

These past two days, I've felt better. People can say that it was only time fulfilling its role, healing wounds, but I know better. It was not time at all that lightened my heart. It was this.

It was writing here. It was the lovely comments and emails and conversations sparked by my writing here. It was the simple act of writing itself. It was the simple act of giving my angst a voice and sharing it with the world.

A dear friend of mine asked me if I censored myself on this blog, knowing anyone could see it, and I surprised even myself that the answer was no. Of course, I try to use names as little as possible and would never write anything that would hurt or embarrass anyone else, but I have never once hesitated to write exactly what was in my own heart. I have never edited a post I've written here, because often in retrospect, I know there are things I'd wish I hadn't said, but of course, know that I needed to say them. All of this is honest and real because it does not come from my analytical head. It comes from my open soul.

Friday I returned to work after being home sick for two days. The majority of my little students had returned from their holiday breaks. It felt so good to see them all again, to have a full classroom, to be busy and useful and needed. I felt more like myself, like the teacher I knew I was and could be, than I have in a while. I was calm and patient and attentive. We played games and chased each other and danced. We comforted one another. Their little smiles and hugs and laughs saved me.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with two of my favorite people. One is the friend I spend every weekday morning with. I see her more than anyone. I tell her more than anyone. She's become my family. The other had just gotten a new house and moved out of our daily lives at work. We went to visit her and her two year old daughter. We drank and ate and gossiped and bonded. We watched America's Next Top Model and made snide comments. We played with her daughter. It was simple and easy and natural. It was exactly what I needed.

I dropped my friend off and raced home to change, raced back out to a country club in the middle of nowhere to celebrate a friend's graduation. It felt so nice to be busy, to have a plan, to not have time to sit and dwell upon everything in my life. The party was lovely. I sat with a group of the best friends I could ever ask for and we ate and talked and laughed. It was perfect. I didn't think about the rest of life. I didn't have things in the back of my mind I was longing to say. I was simply in the moment, enjoying the moment, the way it deserved to be enjoyed.

Today I have a luncheon with a bunch of girlfriends I haven't seen in forever. It will be nice to reconnect, to see them, to know that all of this time can pass between us and we are still friends. It's been far too long. It's been a lifetime.

And perhaps these are only momentary distractions from things I need to deal with, but right now, that's all I really wanted. Just a few lovely events to renew my happiness. Just a few reminders that I am anything but alone. Just a few wonderful people to light my mood, my heart, my life, as they have always done. I am so grateful for the distractions.

Independence

Over dinner one night we discussed the idea of weakness. We found it funny that we had both come to associate it with dependence. Needing something was weakness. Needing someone was weakness. The opposite of weakness was independence.

Which was funny only because we are two smart women who know that isn't at all true. But as she so wisely pointed out, knowing something and feeling something are two very different things indeed.

I cannot speak for her, only for me, but for most of my life, I've felt that being independent was everything, being independent guaranteed me freedom, being independent made me strong. And so I've spent the vast majority of my life trying to claim that independence, trying to prove to the world and to myself that I could handle everything on my own, that I could do it all myself, that I didn't need help from anyone.

And instead of finding freedom, I simply ended up putting myself on this little island and calling it independence. As though that were something real. As though that somehow proved my strength. When in fact, all it did was isolate me. So I stand here on this island. I watch boats pass by and say nothing. Because that way being stranded can be my choice instead of something that's happened to me. Maybe I've spent these last few years preparing myself for a lifetime of loneliness. Maybe I've somehow always felt that was inevitable. Maybe that's why I so often feel alone.

I am never closer to a person than when they reach out to me, ask something of me, share with me something real. I never love a person more than when they open their life and invite me in. And yet, somehow, I'm unable to do the same. I can love almost anyone who enters my life so whole heartedly, and yet I have never let anyone do the same for me. I have never let anyone love me the way that they want to, the way that they claim I deserve to be loved. It is how I protect myself. It is how I guard my heart.

And I know that it's illogical, but again, knowing it and feeling it are two very different things indeed. I could so easily blame my family history, the five divorces in the past three generations. I could so easily claim that it's my loss of faith in relationships that makes me keep my distance from love. But the truth is, it's so much more than that.

It's about loving myself, something I have not yet learned to do for even the slightest of moments. I have loved my life, yes, but never fully loved who I was within it. It is that self doubt, that knowledge of all versions of myself, that fear that someone will discover all of the unloveable parts of me that keeps me from ever letting anyone in. It is fear. It is doubt. I am scared of my own truths.

I am scared that when I reach out, it will prove my weakness. I am scared that becoming dependent on someone that way will only mean the loss of knowing how to survive without them. I am scared of losing my independence. I am as scared to not be alone as I am to be alone.

And I am scared that because of that I will spend my entire life on this small island, calling it independence, as I watch those little boats float further and further out to sea.

This I Believe

In light of what I wrote yesterday, I suppose I wanted to clarify (mostly for myself) that I have not lost faith in things. Despite all the sadness and angst I've been feeling, despite my lack of interest in the world around me, despite the fact that I spent all morning crying about things I can't even define, I still believe in happiness. I still believe in joy. I still believe I deserve them, not because of anything I've done or anything that's happened to me, but simply because I am human. Being alive entitles me to happiness. I still have faith in that.

At a tram stop in Prague I once watched a small boy of about 10 through the window of a cafe. He was eating a sandwich. He had food smeared across his face, his tiny fingers gripping the enormous slices of bread on both sides while all of the contents fell to the countertop beneath him as he attempted to bite into it. His eyes were wide. It was the quintessential European scene. It was the opening to every pretentious black and white french film ever made. I was in love with that moment.

And I remember, even then, the awe I felt in watching his happiness. I remember the way it seemed so new to him, as though it was the first sandwich he had ever eaten, as though it was the first delicious thing to ever touch his lips. I remember the way that simple act seemed to bring him more pleasure than I could recall anything ever bringing me.

Until I realized, of course, that the moment in and of itself brought me that same kind of joy. And so I began, slowly, to return to myself, to begin to notice those little details that make the whole experience of living worthwhile. The scent of an early morning in winter, a child's laugh, the way the soft afternoon light pours so gently through my windows. It all began to make sense again.

I think of those little things now, as I sit here feeling unmotivated and uninspired. I think of them and understand that I am not foolish to hope. Hope for something more, hope for something beautiful, hope for the future of my life. Because as sad as I may feel, I know that it's possible to be happy. As lost as I may feel, I know that feeling lost is the only way to find, to be found. As alone as I may feel, I know that I am not alone, as no one can ever really be alone. As much as I feel disconnected from my family, I know that I still have family in the people I have chosen to love, the people who have so graciously returned the favor.

There's a great line from an essay by Cecile Gilmer from the This I Believe series on NPR that goes "I believe that families are not only blood relatives but sometimes just the people that show up and love you when no one else will." I think fondly of this line as I receive calls and messages from my friends. I know that they're there. I know that they'd be willing to help me in any way that they could if I asked for it. I know I am endlessly blessed for these amazing people.

And somehow, it's still so hard. It's still so difficult for me to call them up and say "I'm sad. I need you." It's still so hard for me to admit that I can't do things on my own.

I had several amazing conversations with the dear friend I stayed with in Prague. I told her things I had bottled up for years, things I had never told anyone because no one had ever bothered to ask, things I had wanted to say so many times. She listened. She heard me. And for the first time, in a long time, I felt somewhat better. And then of course, worse, as is the way with these types of things. Because what I had really secretly hoped was that by saying them, by naming them, by putting them out into the universe, it would all be different. But it wasn't. It only made things seem more real.

And she said "it's funny, because everyone always sees you as happy, wonderful Frankie that we all turn to for help, and no one ever realizes that you need help too." And it wasn't really until that moment that I realized I do, in fact, need help too. So I am trying now, to ask for what I need.

And I know that if I ask, it will be given to me, by all of those wonderful souls I am lucky enough to call family, those beautiful people who show up and love me when no one else will. I have not lost faith in them. I still believe that I am fortunate enough to have their love. I still believe in us.

Bang

2008. A new year. A fresh start.

I suppose I had hoped that it would somehow work out that way, that everything would just reset, that I could begin again with a blank slate to create upon. I suppose I had wished that when the clock struck twelve, my whole life would be different. The fireworks would burst open across the dark night sky and shower my life with their pixie dust. Bang. It would be magic. Bang. I would be reborn. Bang. Everything would be okay again.

But this is real life, and so that's not what happened. Instead I stood on the bridge with my friends, with thousands of strangers, with an entire city buzzing around me, feeling completely alone. And there is nothing more painful than feeling alone when surrounded by people. Truly, there is not.

It's been a rough week, but more than that, it's been a rough couple of years. I haven't dealt with it. I've been sad for moments, but let those moments pass by without much more than a single tear. I've pushed everything I've wanted to say, everything I've felt, aside to make room for the responsibilities and obligations of daily life. I've been foolish. I've cut myself off through my denial and avoidance and silence. I've closed the door to my friends, to my ambitions, to my emotions, to my own life. I've forced smiles and bit my tongue. I've distorted my body and mind and heart to convince the world that I'm okay, as though somehow everyone was watching, as though somehow that perception of me was what mattered.

It is 2008, and I am only just now learning how to ask for help. Even that is a struggle, and I fear the inevitably more difficult tasks beyond that -- learning how to express myself, learning how to allow myself to feel, learning how to be okay with who I am. I am well aware of the angst that such a journey brings. Yet still I know, I must try. Prolonging it does nothing but create more of a mountain to climb. I know that. I know that it is fear that hinders me. I know that only I can save my own life.

But knowing things doesn't always make it easier to act. Often, it makes it harder. And I know that what lies before me requires more courage than anything I've ever done. And I am scared. I am scared to open the gates of my family history, knowing what's there, knowing there's more to discover. I am scared to admit that I feel, more often than not, that I don't belong to that family, that no one does, that we're a group of people connected through obligation. I am scared of how alone that makes me feel.

But what scares me even more than that is the thought that I'll always feel that way, the thought that I'll never speak to them about it, that we'll all continue on in our silent worlds, smiling politely to one another across the table on holidays. And I can't live that way. I refuse to become them. I refuse to repeat their mistakes.

Which is why, in this new year, I know what I have to do. I have to step off of this path I am on and reevaluate my route. I have to look back to move forward. I have to be brave enough to say that I am unhappy, that I need help, that I refuse to quiet the inner monologue running through my head. I have to use this voice I was blessed with. I have to start screaming until I am heard.

And so today I bought a new computer and resolved to return to this blog. Because even if no one is reading, somehow it still allows me to speak. And so with this, I send my first loud cry out into the world, like an explosion of feeling,

like fireworks.

Bang.

Creation

Every day he comes in to report his findings. Some days he sees it, some days he doesn’t. Some mornings it illuminates the world better than all of the artificial lights in the universe combined, and some mornings it only peeks through the translucent haze of what lies between us, and everything. Sometimes it as a large as all of existence, and sometimes it is only a sliver of its former self. I know each feeling all too well. I know of the great waxing and waning of a life.

This morning it smiles at me beneath the great hollow space where the rest of it once glowed, its outline still lingering within the darkness. I think about the way I fill in that blank, and the way he doesn’t. I think about the way he enters the room brimming with excitement and joy after seeing “a moon” instead of “the moon,” as though each morning it is something different, something new. I think about the way I have learned to see this tiny splinter of silver in the grand blackness as being unfulfilled, incomplete, staring more intensely at the space where it is not than at what actually is. And I think about the way he has yet to notice that dark space, the way that minuscule slice of light is everything, the way life was once as simple as what there was to be seen.

I have Starry Night hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed. I often consider whether Vincent planned it that way, whether he could already see each stroke before he had even picked up a brush, whether he stared at that blank canvas and saw the entire universe. I consider each curve of light, and the way the simplicity of blues and yellows became as complex as the cosmos themselves. I consider the invitation they extend, to crawl up between the softness of their twisting lines, to snuggle into the delicate sweep of the golden moon.

And then I consider the town below, and how each lit house pales in comparison to all that burns above. I think of the people who live there, who are asleep, who are going about their daily life as though that was all there was, and all there would ever be. I think about how the vast majority of us don’t stare out into the distance, don’t spend our days atop a hillside creating beauty, don’t look at a blank canvas and see it alight with possibility. And I wonder, what are we waiting for?

Because we used to know how to do such a thing. We used to be able to draw a scribble on a white piece of paper and give it a name, a story, an entire lifetime. We used to believe that Harold’s purple crayon was the same magical Crayola we gripped so tightly between our fingers. Even if you can’t recall such power now, believe me, you knew it once. And like tiny Gods we stood above our creations and rejoiced in the prospect of showing our parents, our teachers, our friends, of sharing our gift with the people we loved most. We knew what it meant to believe.

The way Van Gogh trusted that the lines of his brush strokes would echo exactly those of the sky. The way Aidan points to every yellow circle and says “moon” with such authority that it becomes impossible to doubt its validity. The way Harold colored himself a moon, then an adventure, then an entire world, where once there was nothing. Nothing.

The way making life was as simple as creating it for yourself.

Two Happy Children In A Garden

Of course I love that they are beautiful. I love the sweetness of their smiles, the innocence of their faces, their tiny hands, their soft hair, their happy, shining eyes. Of course I love that almost everything they say is ridiculous and adorable and true. Of course I love them simply because they are children who deserve love, as all children do, but it is more than that. So much more.

It is their honesty, their purity, their openness. The world offers itself up to them with cupped hands and they seize its gifts without hesitation, without fear. They gobble it down. They fill their tiny souls with it, collecting its stories and images and ideas within a growing narrative that they will one day look back upon and call life. They devour knowledge insatiably. They drink each day down to its secret.

They have not yet learned what it means to be “proper.” They have not yet forgotten the simple joys of running barefoot, of rolling around in the softness of the earth, of dancing to no music simply because it feels good. Nor have they been taught that they should be in control of their emotions. When they are happy, they laugh, and when they are sad, they cry. Every feeling is felt as honestly and deeply as the last, if even for a moment. And when that moment is gone, it’s gone. When the feeling is over, it’s over. Nothing from the past interferes with the future. They have no need for the word “bittersweet,” just as Eskimos have no need for the word “war.” They are alive, as humans ought to be alive.

I love them for that. I love that no laugh is forced out of pity or obligation. I love that they are willing to laugh at everything and anything, as though existence itself was funny. I love that they know just how funny it is. And it is not because their world is small, but because the world is bigger and grander than it will ever seem again. It’s that the park across the street is as new and enchanting as the wild jungles of Africa. It’s that they’re right. It is, and I love them for reminding me.

I think of the picture she gave me of her and her brother standing in a garden as children, their small, glad faces staring back at me in black and white. They did not know then that he would die far too young, or that her life would be as difficult as it grew to be. They did not know of the wars they’d see in their lifetime, or of their own personal wars they’d fight within themselves. They did not know of death, of the ones they would see, of even the concept itself. Time had not yet begun to play its terrible role in their lives. They were simply what the caption she’d written had said, “two happy children playing in a garden.”

I think then of the card I found a few years ago sorting through old family photos. I had sent it to my parents while away at summer camp in my childhood. The front was a painting of an elderly couple sitting together in a garden. Inside I wrote that this was how I pictured them, my mother and father, their future.

Perhaps I simply liked the idea from that old photograph, of two happy people playing in a garden. Perhaps I really believed it would be them. Because of course, I had no way of knowing then that they were unhappy. I had no way of knowing they would get divorced. I had no way of knowing that I would spend my life trying to find and define and believe in love. I had only this image of unbridled happiness. I had only this dream that children dream, that joy is as simple as two people in a garden.

There are photos of me and my brother that I’ve held next to that original picture my grandmother sent me. They are essentially the same. They are the same photographs being taken of siblings in gardens all over the world in every moment of every day. And I’ve watched, over the years, the progression of the pictures we’ve taken together. I’ve looked closely at the changes; the slight strain of our mouths as we smile and pose, the unfocused distant gaze of our eyes, the way even in a still photograph, you can see our minds are racing about a million other things, a million miles away.

Our pictures will never be what they were as children. Nor will our laughs, our ideas, our hearts. Life shows in each of our faces, and we learn, too late, that our innocence meant everything.

Welcome Back

It was funny to open my email and find I had a new comment posted from the wonderful Sky, as I’d been thinking about returning to this all week. Without going into too much explanation for my absence, or making promises I may never keep, I’ll just say that for now, I’m going to do my best to return to this and write as often as I can. I do miss it terribly. Welcome back into my life, sweet blog. I’ll try not to dismiss you so easily again.

Abandoned Spaces

It’s not as though I had stopped writing. I’ve filled more than a few journals since my last entry here. I’ve written letters and emails, some that I’ve sent, some that I had no intention of sending from the start. Still, when I opened this page of my blog this morning, when I finally returned to this abandoned space, I found I had been missing it in ways that hadn’t even occurred to me.

I’ve moved since April, into an apartment almost painstakingly perfect for me. Within it’s abandoned rooms I arranged myself, not necessarily with material things, but with the roles I envisioned myself playing. In this kitchen I would learn to cook, on this patio I would become the perfect hostess, in this living room I would soak up every book I could, in this office I would be a writer. And so a new me was created here, not from a slate fresh and clean, not from a past life, abandoned, but from every thought I had already come across in my life, from the foundation I had already built.

At school, our enrollment for the summer has been low and so I’ve had the pleasant opportunity to take the occasional day off here and there. Today is one of those days. I awoke, went for a walk, came home to make coffee and have since been sitting on my new red couch reading The Lovely Bones all morning. A day full of nothing, yes, but also somehow one filled with everything. Time can be so funny that way.

I hadn’t taken all but ten steps from my building this morning when I came across a roll of cash in the street. I imagine it had fallen from an early morning runner’s pocket, and that they would have no idea to come back to look for it there. Had it been more than nine dollars, I would have left it there just incase they did know, but instead I picked it up.

I walked and walked down my typically busy street, abandoned now in the early light of dawn, and turned off onto a small road I’d never taken before. A few feet down, I was greeted by a garden next to the sidewalk that seemingly belonged to no one in particular. Yet I knew someone must tend to it, must love it so whole-heartedly that they come there often to carefully and meticulously nurture each delicate petal. I bent down and buried my face into a large pink flower whose name I did not know. I smiled, reached into my pocket and pulled out a dollar. I can't explain why. I placed it at the bottom of its stem.

A while later, I passed an elderly gentleman walking his even more elderly looking dog. Slowly they paced down the path together, two old souls who had seen it all. “Good morning!” He bellowed, more loudly than I had expected. I enthusiastically returned his greeting, unused to walking around a neighborhood and being spoken to like an old friend. We stopped and chatted for a while about the beautiful weather. When he left me, I pulled another dollar from my pocket and placed it in the crack between the squares of sidewalk.

I continued along, and then, there it was. The house. The house I would paint if someone asked me where I’d want to spend the rest of my days. The house I would paint even if someone didn’t ask. The house I would paint if I were a painter. I lifted another dollar and placed it under the first stone of the pathway leading to the front door.

I placed the other six in a similar fashion, one beside the anthill with its small workers marching up and down it. One in the hollowed space inside the giant oak tree just outside the entrance to the park where my little students spend so many happy afternoons. One near the ten year old riding his bike who had greeted me with a sorrowful “hiiii,” as though being ten years old was in and of itself the most excruciating pain in the world. One for the birds nest fallen from its tree, and one for the single roller skate, inexplicably left beside the road.

And then one more, hidden just for me, stuck away in some abandoned little nook in the world -- a secret I prize as a child would, a secret I keep within me, in a place I had assumed was abandoned long ago. But I have found it. I have filled it with these tiny treasures.

The Half Life

I stepped out of the front door into the still of morning. The moon greeted me with half a face, half a smile, as if to say, enjoy the bittersweet days while they last. She lay dead on the road before me.

Her wing shielded her head, and I wanted to believe that it was her final act on this earth, the way a human closes its eyes or a superhero covers itself with its cape. I wanted to believe that she had not fought or suffered, that she had simply wrapped herself into death, slowly, calmly.

I don’t know how she died, whether she had dropped from the sky or been hit by a car in passing, but she lay there, still and quiet as the dawn itself. I wished I had time to bury her, but instead I could only move her to the side where she wouldn’t be hit again, where she could remain in the same serene state I found her.

Her feathers trailed the street as I walked the few blocks to my car. Their grey softness danced quietly through the blackened street against the blackened sky. I thought of petals thrown by flower girls. I thought of orange leaves in fall. I thought of the way old movie stars glide through ballrooms with such precision and ease. I thought of how beautiful her ordinary feathers seemed after she was gone.

And I thought of what my feathery trail would look like after I was gone. If I were to add up all of the wasted time in my life – if I were to believe that there was such a thing as wasted time, that is – would it follow me? Was this her trail of feathers never used? A relationship never explored? A place never visited? A writing talent never developed to its full potential? Each feather that floated past me seemed to ignite some longing within me that I had yet to admit to myself.

And then the feathers stopped. And so did I. Dead in my tracks. I looked back up at the half moon watching me. I looked at the blackness beside where her other half would be. I decided each were beautiful, the space already glowing with silver divinity and the space left empty, the space burning with the potential of fullness. The feathers not yet used were as beautiful as those who still clung to her fallen wing.

Perhaps I am no different. Perhaps the space not yet filled will be the most beautiful of all. Perhaps being whole is not about being complete, but about being happy enough to leave room for possibility. The blank canvas of my life that is to come is just as full as the colorful tapestry of my life that I have already created. It just needs to be put in the right lighting.

Even if that lighting is the simple darkness of morning, where a dead bird glows with the passionate wildness of fire. Where a half moon looks down, and knowingly smiles her bittersweet half smile.

Happiness, In Its Purest Form

Sometimes I consider leaving everything. Sometimes I consider living in an isolated cabin in the woods for a year and do nothing but write. Sometimes I consider that happiness in its purest form: To live in the quiet, to wake each morning and walk out into a world where everything is just as it should be, just as nature intended; To have only my journals to speak to, and of course the birds, and trees, and grass; To create with all of the passion and determination that could flow from each of us were it not for the distractions of the everyday. Happiness, in its purest form.

I think of her washing her clothes in a basin on the street. I think of the three walls, the thatched roof, the blanket she calls her bed. I think of the way her home reminds me of the kind of dioramas I used to make in the fourth grade, one side cut off of the shoebox to see the life inside. I smile at the thought of the poster of Rocky hanging on her wall. I do not doubt the sorrow of her life, nor do I doubt the happiness of it. How she must love that poster, that shelter, those clothes she washes with such tenderness in the muck of public water.

What material thing could I possibly love with such fervor? How could my tongue possibly understand the richness of food without gratitude for it? What secrets does she know that I will never comprehend?

My first thought was that I wanted to save this woman from her life. I wanted to pick her up in my arms and hold her, tell her that everything would be okay, and mean it. I wanted to give her everything I had, from the money in my bank account to the shoes on my feet. I wanted to take her to the field of sunflowers I once walked through in France, to show her such priceless gold existed. But she probably already knew of such beauty. And while my first thought was that I wanted to save this woman from her life, my second thought was who would save me from mine?

Who would teach me to walk through fields of flowers, to navigate by the stars, to make my mind so clear that each pound of my feet upon the earth became a tiny miracle unto itself?

Slowly I am learning to listen to the rivers as they lap against the shore, to watch the sun rise each morning with all of the amazement and gratitude it deserves, to feel the depth of each color that emerges with the coming spring. Slowly I am teaching myself to save my own life. Perhaps it takes a lifetime to reach even the tip of understanding, but fortunately, a lifetime is exactly what I have.

I envy flowers for the way they rise and bloom in a moment of fiery exquisiteness before falling back to the earth, for ours is a much more difficult journey. We rise and fall again and again, each time with a better understanding of the cycle, with the knowledge that we will have time to try again. And I think because of that knowledge, I often dull the blossom with the subtle inklings that darkness will soon occur once more. I’ll have another chance at greatness, but meanwhile, I’m passing it by. Flowers don’t have such regret.

And so I left her there on the street, washing herself clean. I left her there, beautiful flower, soaking her roots in life. Happiness, in its purest form.

What's Next?

I ask myself this question a hundred times a day. I do not know what is to come. I do not know where I’ll be a year from now, ten years from now, where I’ll be standing when I take my final breath. It consumes me. It haunts me. It thrills me to think of the endlessness of what could be.

So often I long to be settled into a life. I watch the families that come through my school and long for that kind of stability, that kind of ability to define oneself as a parent, a spouse, a professional. I long for that kind of understanding, because as of right now, I’m just a young, dumb kid with her entire life in front of her. Every decision seems life-altering. Every choice seems to change my future. Every idea I have could be the answer to which path I am supposed to take. It’s sometimes too much, to have such fundamental power over my own existence.

And sometimes, I adore it. In the past few days I’ve gotten a new job offer, a plea to return to school, and an invitation to move to Prague. What’s next? I could go anywhere and do anything and be anyone I choose. There’s something really poignantly grand about that idea.

And still, I do not know what is to come. Perhaps it’s something I have not yet even considered, some new and exciting adventure that hadn’t crossed my mind. The possibilities are infinite.

What I do know, what I have decided for my life, is that I would rather spend my time here doing what I love than waste it preparing for things that may never come. I get stuck in this contradiction. I want to see the world, but want to save enough money to be able to settle one day. I want to own a house, but want to move from place to place, exploring new surroundings and people and ways of life. I want to love people so deeply that to be away from them for a moment means missing them, but I also want to be free enough to leave my world behind.

And to make any one choice means a loss of the other. To live for the moment means to be unprepared for the future. To live for the future means to be unappreciative of the present, and I am now struggling somewhere in between.

What’s next? Well, I’m not sure. All I can really do is be grateful for what has been and what will be. And I am. I’m grateful for all of the adventures I’ve been through and all that are to follow. I am grateful for the choices I’ve made and the choices I am continuing to make and that I have the choice at all. I am grateful that I am alive and living my life.

And I am grateful for the certainty that when I draw that final breath, whenever it may be, wherever I may be, that it will be one of gratitude, of fulfillment, of understanding. I will close my eyes and wonder, what’s next?

The Loss of Za

I know that they both read this. In truth, it’s why I hardly ever write about them as a pair. One I admire more than anyone in this world, the other I’ve never gotten close to. I use those differences as a scale for the people I encounter in my life. The world boils down to two categories; people like my mother and people like my father. People I love more than anything and people I’ll never connect with. There is no middle ground.

When my parents got divorced, I took sides. It could be argued that there were no sides to take. It was, as divorces go, a fairly amicable one. Both seemed to be in equal amounts of pain. Both had tried their hardest to make things work. Both had reached their breaking points. Both understood that it was now time.

Still, my heart was with my mother. She was and is and always has been my best friend. So instead of blaming my parents, blaming divorce, I blamed my father. I blamed him for hurting my mother. I blamed him for hurting me. I blamed him for my confusion about love and life and family and who I am. I blamed him for everything.

And while I am only just now beginning to move past that, the point is, I am beginning. Maybe forgiveness is too strong a word, but certainly I have come to accept that there are things and people in this world that I cannot change. My anger and bitterness towards someone hurts only me, changes only me, into something I cannot forgive myself for. I’m tired of being angry.

On the way home from work a few weeks ago, I began thinking of nicknames. I can’t tell you why, but that’s where my thoughts led me. I thought of the way my mother always called my father “za,” and was suddenly overwhelming saddened by the fact that no one would ever call him that again. “Za” was a part of his life that was now over. It was a part of all of our lives that was now over. She will never speak it again, and he will never hear it.

That was the first time, almost two and a half years later, that I was truly heartbroken that my parents had gotten divorced. It was the first time, almost two and a half years later, that I thought about their divorce without thinking about me, about how it effected my life. They were two people who had struggled to make a love, a life, a family work, and they were two people who finally had to admit that they couldn’t. My parents broke up, and somehow that seemed so much more difficult to say than the word divorce ever had.

I do not know what love is and it is because of my parents. That sounds like blame, but I assure you, it’s not. I don’t know if my parents knew what love was. I don’t know if they know it now. I don’t know if anyone ever really knows it until they know it, and even then, everything can change.

But it is what I think of most when I think of them as a pair. I think of the way I thought I understood something, and the way it instantly disappeared. I think of the way I may never be able to love fully because of it. I think of the way I may be destined to repeat the same mistakes.

And it breaks my heart, because what I want, more than anything, is to believe in love. I want to be able to enter it without fear, without doubt, without the knowledge that so often, things don’t work out the way you’d planned. I want to stop being angry. I want to forgive love for leaving my family. I want to forgive my parents for letting it.

I am sorry that it’s taking so long.

I Can Hopefully Move On

I’ve had a dreadful day. There. I said it. I can hopefully move on. To go into too much detail would involve a long list of inevitably boring complaints, so let’s just narrow it down to this: The person who keeps me sane at work wasn’t there, many things were yelled, curses muttered under my breath, tears shed, and to end the work day, on my way home another car hit me, knocked off my mirror, and kept driving. Happy Wednesday to you too.

I hate writing things like this, but my only other option at the moment is screaming and this somehow seemed a more productive outlet. There. I said it. I can hopefully move on.

It wasn’t until just now that I thought back to this morning. The funny thing about waking up so early is that by the end of the day, everything that happened in those first few hours is remembered in pieces, like a dream, like a memory I have of childhood – so distant, so scattered. It is just now that I remember his face.

He was carrying five large boxes piled in his arms. I stopped to hold the door for him as he made his way into WaWa. He caught it with his foot. “No, you go ahead, sweetheart,” he told me. I thanked him greatly. He told me to have a great day. Such simple kindness. It makes all the difference.

A few moments ago, one of my best friends called to ask me about my day. I vented, she listened. I cried, she told me she loved me. Such simple kindness. It makes all the difference.

It’s nice to know that in a day, a week, a year, a lifetime of sadness, there is still hope for something better. There are still glimmers of beauty and light and genuine goodness. There are still people with the best of intentions and still moments of happiness that can take your breath away. There is always the possibility of gladness.

I don’t have much else to say. I guess I just wanted to write something, anything, in the hopes of erasing the course of this day. Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. In the meantime, keep in mind that the little things really do add up. Spread kindness. It makes all the difference.

Running

I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned between two warm and silent bodies, measuring the passing moments by their heavy breaths of sleep. In and out, they sighed in rhythm. Trapped in that bed, in that room, in my own insomnia, I leapt up and walked out to stare at the moon. The world had never seemed so still.

And so I ran. Just to know that I was still capable of movement. Just to know that life was still continuing on. I ran down the rocky hill, through the street of shops with doors all locked and barred, across the path twisting and turning around the mountain. Two miles down the road I reached the cliff.

My favorite cliff, where I had sat on our first day and filled the entirety of a journal, where I had first lost track of the constraints of time, where I had dazzled in the brilliance of the vastness of the world. I stopped. I caught my breath.

Below lay a grand nothingness, a valley too deep to be lit by the light of the moon, no matter how large and illuminated it seemed. I stared up. I stared below. I have no idea how much time passed before I stood up again to leave. I know only how it felt to stand there, to be lost in both a moment and eternity, to know nothing and everything all at once.

Again last night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for hours. I tried to ease my mind into a comfortable resting place. Minutes turned into hours and I wrestled insomnia to no avail. What was it my body and mind were trying to tell me?

We spoke for a long time, like we used to. I knew I missed it, but would never have guessed how much. Funny how that lesson is learned again and again. How you can miss something or someone, but never realize the true depths of it until they return. I was – am – so grateful for that conversation.

When we said our goodnights, I thought about that night running down the mountain. I thought about the pure calmness of everything in the world but me. I thought about the way I chased that serenity for so long, only to find it in the unlikeliest of places, only to find it in the immense nothingness of darkness.

I closed my eyes and pictured each curve I followed along the winding road, how smoothly I had moved along with it, how clear my mind had been made. I thought about our conversation, and all that had proceeded, and how smoothly I had moved along with each bend in topic.

Perhaps it seems an odd comparison. I don’t care. The point is, speaking to you feels the way it felt to run that night. The world is still, but I am moving. Something clear and calm and wonderful is being created within me. I am understanding both the nothing and the everything. I am standing at the edge of a cliff, staring out into a universe saturated with answers.

I am running, running, running. And it is you who spurs me on.

Compliments

We have this constant struggle, you and I. You give me a compliment; I don’t know how to receive it. I deny all goodness within myself. I feel undeserving. I take your kindness and turn it into something ugly, some deep form of self-doubt I had yet to discover existed in me. I allow myself to feel worse than when we began.

On the way home this afternoon, I began to wonder why. Why can I not see what you see? Why can I not take your compliment, say thank you, and move on? Why can I trust your judgment about everything in this world except for what you think of me?

But perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that if I were to name the people I admire most in my life, you would be in the top five, easy. What’s that old Groucho Marx quote? “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member.” Well, that’s essentially how I feel. I find it so difficult to respect someone who has respect for me.

Why? Well, I have yet to reach the truth in that. It seems the entirety of my life is devoted to finding that answer. And it is a struggle – a painful, self-loathing, sometimes seemingly hopeless struggle. But I am trying. I promise, I am trying.

We all seem to have that one thing that we believe is keeping us from happiness. It may change throughout the years, but we convince ourselves that there is always something in our way, one goal that needs to be reached before we can dismiss our sadness wholly. This is mine.

Maybe it appears a simple task, to just say thank you, to just say you’re right, to just take a compliment and be done with it, but you need to understand that it’s not that simple for me. For me, doing all of those things is everything. For me, being able to believe you care for me means caring for myself, and I just haven’t learned how to do that yet. For me, learning to love myself is the greatest and toughest lesson I will ever learn.

I’ve spent so much time trying to trace the course of my life, hoping that finding the source of my self-doubt would help me move past it, but maybe that’s not as important as I’ve thought it to be for so long now. Perhaps it’s time to merely accept what I need to do for myself and embrace it, do it, make the choice to love who I am. Why shouldn’t it be so simple?

I think somewhere along the line I mistook confidence for arrogance, and I haven’t been the same since. My life is not made better by my humility. I am not made better by belittling myself. I am simply made smaller, less than who I am, and less than who I could be. So much of life is having faith in oneself, and I fear I’m missing my chance to be extraordinary because I’ve convinced myself that I’m incapable of it.

And it’s funny to say such a thing, to think such a thing, because if any one of my loved ones said that to me, I would call them crazy. Because each and every one of them is extraordinary. Each and every one is capable of anything and everything they could ever want out of life. And I would tell them that, not to be kind, but to be honest.

And I know that is what you are trying to do for me. And I love you for it. And I am trying to get to the place where I can say thank you. I promise, I am trying.

The First Day

Yesterday I turned 22. This past year went by so quickly; it hardly feels as though I’ve aged at all. It seems that no matter how many people warn you that time moves faster and faster as life goes on, no matter how mentally prepared you are to accept that, you will never understand it until you understand it. And I know each year will bring the same realization, over and over, until time seems to signify nothing at all.

I generally make a few resolutions on New Years, but it’s never until my birthday that I really decide to change my life. The arbitrary markings of a new year are meaningless. When school begins in September, it is a new year. When January 1st comes around, it is a new year. When I am one year older, it is a new year, but really, every day is the first day of the rest of my life.

I was thinking about that this morning as I walked the eleven blocks to the train station, breathing in the city as it began to rise. I thought about it waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, watching the anxious mannerisms and daily routines of the people around me. How long it had been since I had simply sat and watched the world go by.

Sometimes I become so consumed with the mundane details of my day-to-day existence, that I begin to forget that my world is not THE world. There is so much more beyond me. There is so much more that I have yet to experience, and learn, and understand. There is so much more that I want out of life.

I think that we as human beings fall into a definition of our lives so quickly that before we know it, we have closed ourselves off to other possibilities. So often I stop and wonder, how did I get here? So often tracing the course of my life proves difficult. So often I have sat and considered the lives of strangers, whether this is how they had envisioned their lives, whether they are happy, whether we are all destined to settle for ordinary in a world of such extraordinary opportunity. How sad to consider the sum of dreams never fulfilled.

Because it’s so easy to get caught up, in the here, in the now, in the checklists of things to accomplish before the day is through. And yes, I suppose that we can only really take life one day at a time, but it seems a shame somehow to be so focused on what’s right in front of me. It seems a shame to forget the vastness of life, of this world, of possibility. I forget that time is still moving forward whether I acknowledge it or not. Even taking life one day at a time doesn’t stop them from adding up quickly.

And then there are mornings like this one, when each stranger seems to carry some unique light that I had yet to consider, when suddenly I appear to have all the time in the world to sit, and wonder, and be stricken with awe. I spend so much time trying to get things done, to accomplish things, that I rush through the moments of quiet contemplation that are such a necessity of happiness. I am so consumed with what needs to be done, that I neglect to revel in what has been done, in what I have accomplished, in the exquisite beauty that is this world and each life within it.

And so it was there, on that platform, on the morning after my 22nd birthday, that I decided to love my life. And so it is here that I celebrate the first day of a new year.

Grand Symphony

A young boy in orange overalls hits his spoon against the metal park bench. Bang. Bang. Bang. The rhythm has been set.

The melody chimes in, sung by what feels like every bird to ever exist, although it is most likely just a few in the tree above. They sing separately, but harmoniously, as though each had been given its place in the score, practiced for hours, days, weeks, to ensure they got it right. They sing separately, but as one. The melody continues on.

A ladybug scurries across the open pages of my journal. Too slow to be running, but too quick to be walking, I decide she must be dancing. Dance on, little wonder, I tell her in my head. She seems to understand as she reaches the edge of the page and turns back around.

A great roar of percussion from the repair being done in one of the apartments above.

A startled group of butterflies rises from the flowers. A masterpiece in and of themselves, the flowers sway for an instant, their soft and vibrant petals of reds and pinks and yellows lightly skim against one another. For an instant, all division of color blurs into one shade of perfection.

And then the world is soft. The butterflies hover in the still air, heavy with the sweetness of scent, the fullness of life breathing in and out. They float. They glide. They move with all of the subtle intent of silence. The boy has stopped his banging. The birds have quieted their melody. The world is still.

A car passes and the song begins again. Rising. Falling. Vivacissimo. Pianissimo. Back and forth, up and down, I move with the orchestra of the universe.

I think about the song of my life, how it rises and falls, how it began with a single cry and how it is still being written one verse at a time.

In silence this morning, I watched the moon. I thought of the stars, each a note on the page, reaching to the lowest and highest octaves of understanding. The moon itself, a whole note, whose roundness I climbed into for the comforting duration of four beats. One, two, three, four. Then it was time to move on.

The wind pushed through the arriving dawn. A new movement began, quietly at first, but growing louder, passionately pushing through the stillness of morning. The day began. I began with it.

And perhaps even now, in my solitude, the vibrations are resonating more deeply, more profoundly than the simple ears of humans can detect. Perhaps even now, the hum of my computer is only the shallow surface of the music being created in my presence. Perhaps even now, these words I am writing are merely a metaphor for the notes of the grand symphony that is my life.

I hit the keys of my keyboard. Bang. Bang. Bang. The rhythm has been set.

Except Everything

I do not know much. In fact, all of my knowledge could probably be packed away into one average sized box, light enough for just one average person of average strength to carry. And I would let them carry it away if needed. I would let them take from me every fact I knew for certain, every detail I knew as truth, every explanation I had ever formed. Because none of it is why I continue.

What I like in this life, in this world, in this universe is the unexplainable. I like the way everything moves in cycles. I like the way my eyes open each morning and close each night. I like the way death replaces life, which replaces death, and I like the way life replaces death, which replaces life. I like that I don’t know if we are each given one life, or many. I like that I understand life and death equally, which is barely at all. I like the idea of infinity, but I also like the idea that our time here is precious and not to be taken for granted.

I like how you can lose an entire day to a book, and have really lost nothing at all. I like that each morning is a new beginning and that every passing moment is another chance to turn it all around.

I like that everything is connected and that we are still inherently alone. I like that we are never really alone. I like that in every moment we are thinking of someone and in every moment someone is thinking of us. I like that joy in sorrow are one in the same.

I like love. I like the love between lovers, and between friends, and between family. I like the way your laugh sounds intertwined with mine, which has nothing to do with love, except everything.

I like laughter. I like how every laugh of every person is unique and the way our laughter changes each time it bursts from our lips. I like the feeling right before it erupts, and the way it makes your stomach ache, and the sense of calm it brings immediately following. I like the foolishness and severity of love, which has nothing to do with laughter, except everything.

I like not knowing, and choosing not to know, why the earth offers it’s softness up to us with cupped hands. I like the way a flock of birds could easily be one bird, how each knows exactly which way to glide along the breeze. I like the way they surge from their sitting place all at once, like a bottle of champagne being opened, like laughter. I like the way they float, like clouds, like people in love.

I like the way the trees change colors, the oceans move in and out along the shore, the sky becomes illuminated with color, all of which has scientific explanation, but all of which I choose to see as free will.

I like art, but I don’t know why. I can’t tell you why I am drawn to certain colors or shapes or images. I can’t tell you why certain songs make me sad or happy or set my soul ablaze with emotion. I can’t tell you why some lines of poetry make me cry, or why I hug certain novels when I close their final page. Someone probably could, but I’m sure I’d rather not hear it.

Because what I like most in this life, this world, this universe are the things that transcend language. Or at least, my knowledge of language. Perhaps there is a word I have yet to discover that encompasses all that I do not know, but I’m sure I’d rather not know it. What I know is that I like not knowing, which has nothing to do with who I am, except everything.

Since I've Last Written

It’s finally starting to get cold. Winter got caught up in things and was late to it’s own party. Casually it slipped in, hoping to be forgiven. Better late than never, it sighs.

Since I’ve last written, the triumphs and tribulations of life have been condensed into a concrete reminder of uncertainty. With each passing day, the extremes of joy and sorrow have presented themselves, gently nudging at the soul the knowledge that life continues to move forward. Anticipation, disappointment, birth, death. Still, it continues onward. Still, time ceases to stop.

The day after my last post, I received a promotion and raise at work. It was nice to feel appreciated, to feel valued, to feel needed in the place that I’ve devoted all my time to these past few months. It was nice to feel assured that I was doing something right for once, that this is where I belong. It was nice to feel secure in my actions.

But with a sense of security also came insecurity. We had a meeting with my coworkers to explain the situation, how I was now in charge, how I was responsible for the room. That meeting was the first time I hadn’t felt like a leader there, the first time I felt as though I had to be careful about the way I worded things so as not to upset anyone. It was the first time I felt unsure of my ideas and opinions. Suddenly, I was the enemy.

Of course, it’s working out, but now that the classroom has officially become my classroom, I take upon myself all of the success and failures that arise within those walls. I take each mistake as my own. I see each needed improvement as my responsibility. I have lost that divide between myself and my job, and now each good or bad day reflects on my soul.

That Saturday was one of my best friend’s birthdays and we went out to celebrate. We had a reunion of sorts and it was wonderful to see everyone, to catch up, to erase the moments that had passed since we had last seen one another. Still, I was exhausted, and felt that what could have been a wonderful night was overshadowed by the fact that I was the only one without a winter break, the only one who had to wake up before dawn every morning that week and would have to again the following week. I questioned my ability to have unbridled fun anymore, that all-consuming lose-yourself-in-the-moment kind of fun. The kind of fun that we should be having in our early twenties. Maybe I tried to grow up too quickly.

On Tuesday, I went out with a group of my favorite coworkers. We gossiped over dinner and drinks, talking and laughing until the early hours of the morning. We didn’t even seem to mind that by the time we got home, we had only a few hours to sleep before waking to see one another again. It was a lovely feeling. It turned work into something more, something real, something about community and friendship. It brought us closer together. It solidified our place at work. It gave us a sense of belonging.

On Thursday, January 4th, my nephew was born. Little Leo Zelnick entered this world at 12:54 pm at 6 pounds, 10 ounces with a full head of dark curly hair. “He already looks like a hippy,” my sister-in-law exclaimed, as is his destiny given the family he comes from. My excitement is inexplicable. I have two nieces and a nephew already, but living in another state, I rarely see them. My relationship with this nephew will be different. It will be real and substantial. It will be what should be. It will be love.

But as if to remind us that life is not all joyful, not indestructible, not without it’s end, the universe accompanied birth with death and took from this earth my aunt, who died yesterday from her battle with cancer. On this rainy day, the city mourns the loss of our football team last night and I mourn the loss of my father’s sister. It was kind of the world to give us this gloomy day to grieve. I am grateful for the time.

Still, time moves forward. Aunt Naomi closed her eyes to finish the last thought of her lifetime. Little Leo opened his eyes to discover the lifetime that awaits him. I linger somewhere in between, reveling in joy and sorrow, and the winter that has finally graced us with her presence.

A New Rain

She said that it was appropriate that it should rain on New Years Eve. It was cleansing, a washing away of all that had preceded, a fresh beginning to all that was to come. My enthusiastic agreement excited her. She hugged me. I don’t know who she was or whether I’ll ever see her again, but it seemed the perfect way to begin a new year.

It was still raining when I walked to my car the next morning. Drops of water clung to the branches of each naked tree like crystals. The world was soft, quiet, inviting, as though it had broken open to a center of comfort. I reveled in it for a moment before making my way down the long driveway. I laughed a little to myself, and although it was only for a brief moment, that feeling resounded in me like a tentative promise of eternal joy. I could be happy like this forever, I thought.

I left for work this morning at 6, making my way down the deserted main street, smiling at its profound emptiness. The winter lights hung across the street, filled the tiny trees along the side, twinkled in the vast darkness of the world just before the sun rises. The moon shined ahead. It was a huge moon, not quite full, but grand enough to make the universe feel closer and more connected than anyone who saw it could ever imagine. It was the way a fabulous artist would paint night. It was simple and complex. It was perfection.

On my way out of Starbucks, I passed three people making their way into the day. Each one said hello. Each one smiled that smile of understanding. Each one knew the beauty of life at these early hours before the sun. We were connected in that way, in every way, if only for an instant.

I thought of all the kindred spirits I know and all I have yet to meet. I thought of those I will never meet, those who share my thoughts and feelings and desires, but whose paths will never cross with mine. I wonder if they think of me too.

Aren’t we all, always thinking, always wondering, always imagining those versions of ourselves living different lives in different places. Sometimes my soul is heavy with the lives I am not living. Other times, not. Sometimes I am happy to be exactly me, exactly here. Those are the moments I call life.

What will this year bring? Who’s to say. My life has continued to change and evolve so rapidly, that often words cannot come quickly enough to keep track. I have yet to determine whether that will always be the case or whether it’s simply what happens in your early twenties when you have no direction, when anything is possible. Does that feeling last? Does anyone ever actually settle into a life?

On Thursday I’m meeting with three of my best friends to discuss finding a house together. What a lovely new beginning that would be, a home of our own, a family I can really see as family. Just the thought of it thrills me to no end.

But of course, even that won’t be final. We’ll live there a year, maybe longer, but then it will be time for a new home, a new adventure, a new chapter in our lives. Life continues forward. We move into the new year with hope, with joy, with the knowledge that at some point, the rain will come again and we will be reborn.