Open and Shut

When one door shuts, another opens. Right? Kind of.

Last Thursday I was acutely aware of the feeling of wanting to "go through a new door" but needing to shut one first. I guess it's good housekeeping. But mostly, it felt final, nauseating, and a little scary.

Let me move beyond metaphor.

Since March I have been in contact with a company trying to figure out if they have a place for me. This is a career change. And it is not a fluid one. We are talking about the difference between wrenching on airplanes and selling fair trade food products. I originally applied for a warehouse position. We interviewed. I networked like mad, wore my orange pants, and in general tried to be as kind and as memorable as possible. That process was from March to May. They gave me the kindest "no" I have ever received and promised to call if there was another position. Everyone promises that when they don't want to feel the discomfort of denying you. The thing is, my interview questions were *hard*, personal, and to the point. These people do not do things the comfortable way. Some part of me actually expected them to contact me. That optimism held out for a week or so and then back to the problems at hand.

July comes and they call me to request that I put an application in for a sales position. My response? "What makes you think I'm qualified for sales?" I receive a rather thoughtful answer and submit my application that night. Two weeks and three interviews later, I have a job offer. A door opens. But I cannot walk through it with my airplanes in tow. And that terrifies me.

Do I want too many things out of life? Do I even know what I want? What on earth makes me think that I can do this? I have a vacuum of experience to offer where I usually have a cornucopia of skills and experiences from my long history of dabbling. Now, I have a two year contract in a job that I would have laughed at if it were any other company asking me to do it.

And so, last Thursday I gave my notice. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done in pursuing a future and dreams and purpose. I was so very aware of the sound of my doorway to flying closing. No one ever told me that I would ever have to be the catalyst to my own doors closing. All of my skills are in finding the new options, in reacting to closed doors, and in identifying that they are indeed closed. But this one? I shut it. I can't blame my family, my boss, my husband, or even God. It is hard to close a door that I worked so hard to fabricate.

I love flying. It has long been the dream. But I am so disenchanted with the industry surrounding flying, I cannot see straight. I am angry because I feel like it didn't have to go this way, but I am hopeful that leaving will make space for me to come back in a healthier way. But maybe it won't come back at all. I did shut that door. Of course, the nature of doors is to open and shut, to provide passage, to keep some of us out.

I cannot worry about which of those will happen to me. I am not fully in control of that. I will always love flying though. Once the love of flying bits you, it stays in your blood.

Saturdays are the most glorious days. I can tell that they were the day on which God rested. I feel this even on Saturdays when I have had to go in to work or do some unseemly, unglorious task. It seems to violate a law of the universe. Seriously, it is as though I can feel myself doing more work than God on Saturday. I hate that feeling.

My big accomplishment today was cleaning out the refrigerator and getting half-way through laundry. But! I am trying to write again. I mean real writing, not stream-of-consciousness-write-so-you-don't-forget-how-when-it-matters blogging. Here are two sections to a story that I just might finish before my hair turns grey.

Caelum became aware of his dreaming. He was in a painting. No, he was a man on a green and sunlight hill so picturesque it looked like a painting. Coming down the road toward him was a figure. The dreamscape swirled like smoke in the wake of their path.
Prophet, prophesy!
It was a woman who spoke. He did not recognize her though he suspected that she was from the desert. Her voice hurt him because she had borrowed it from his wife. Strong and familiar. He felt resentment rise up. Who was this woman to use his wife’s voice to command him as if her voice were only a tool for distributing obligation and burden without giving back to him any other aspect of his favorite person?! 

Prophet! You must prophesy.

The woman in his dream looked at him earnestly, maybe even apologetically. She seemed desperate. And then the dream took her away.

Caelum lay there awhile not wanting to be awake, not ready to be awake. He hoped his dream would fade like unimportant dreams do. It only burned brighter turning up every emotion he had as he tried not to think, tried a bit too hard to go back to sleep.

And also:

Jullanar looked in the mirror. Her hair lay in a heap on a nearby towel. The reflection challenged her, stared her down and asked a thousand questions that all came together in three words: Who are you? She was afraid of herself. Do you know who you will be at the end of all of this? She took in a slow breath. Jullanar dreaded her work in that tunnel. Cutting her hair felt like welcoming that dark, blood-letting place and she hated it. She touched her head and turned away from the mirror. It was late. She needed to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be awful and nothing is going to change that, Jullanar was certain.

 Rolling up the towel, she tried to pray but found every honest prayer, unreasonable. She wanted to say something to the person she had been a month ago while she was still at home but she did not know what she would say even if she could. She got into bed and sat there in the dark semi-consciously reciting the lines Koi had written her when she had been reassigned ships.

“…you are coming in at a crazy time. It will get better but it may be a rougher start that I would have liked to give you. Hang in there…”

So, you faithful few who read this, tell me what you think. :)

I wake up because my mind clears and starts turning gears. As of yet, I have not found the cause. All I know is that the thoughts in my head start tumbling until I am aware and awake and there is nothing I can do about it. I know people who can go back to sleep on command. They can never wake if they choose. I wonder what that is like. I wonder if it is worth envying.

When I first wake, it is hard to hear my own voice with clarity. More than that, it is hard to hear what I would say or think today. The first few hours of each day always start with the unfinished, unpolished thoughts of yesterday. Things I heard, conversations in which I failed to accurately represent myself, and problems that I have yet to solve. There is no difficulty in remembering for me.

As the day continues, I slowly or quickly fill my mind’s arms with new thoughts and observations. This is the only thing that I have found to get rid of yesterday. If my mind can grab enough of today, it will have to drop yesterday little by little. I would not say that I forget just because I drop a thought though. It often happens but it often does not as well.

So I sit here with my sore throat tea, with the cool air creeping in the open window trying to escape the ever strengthening sun outside, with a pile of old thoughts. I am desperate to start this day, as they say, new. I want to hear my own voice sound in the present, ready and alert, arms empty. But my purpose lies in yesterday. Today does not yet have a purpose. I am trying to knit one, trying to build one, trying to write one. I struggle to grasp today’s helm with both hands, trip and fall straight into tomorrow. So very often do I find myself trying to pilot a ghost ship that I cannot control. I know nothing about tomorrow, but I throw the sum of all of my yesterdays at it hoping to create some meaning.

Somehow I have managed to wake up in the past and go to sleep in the future with only the barest of the middle hours dedicated to the day I am actually living.

I am aware of myself becoming less possessive. What I mean is, I am becoming pickier. That is to say, I am less of dragon who hoards. And by that I am trying to explain that I am changing from someone who wanted to collect dozens (if not hundreds) of beautiful things...really I wanted to own every thing that was pretty...and instead choosing to be someone who has a clutter free, but still lovely life. It is easier now to look at something that is beautiful and say, "but it is not for me." This shouldn't be so revolutionary, but I am aware of the pressures of materialism and the mysterious unnamed forces of social media that leave me always feeling like I need to keep up, live beautifully, and have a picturesque household before I have even chosen a career. It's silly. It's unrealistic. But it's persistent. Ever so slowly, I am peeling back the layers to say, "what I have is enough". Which, in this day and age, is the same as saying "who I am is enough".

Today, I hurt. Profoundly. It's probably my gallbladder they say. I should "eat light" they say. What they don't say is how long I will be like this. So, I am home from work. As it turns out, your gallbladder is the very center of your being. When it hurts, you cannot move any other part of your body save your toes and fingers without causing an eruption of pain. It makes it hard to work on airplanes. It makes it hard to think. It just makes things hard. Except drawing. I have finally made some time to sit down a little and draw.

I was reading an artist's friend's blog recently. On their blog, they had a few time-lapsed videos of their creation of paintings and other works. In watching her work, I suddenly became very aware of a mistake I had been making for awhile now. I was making art more complicated than it needed to be. I had gotten self-conscious, well, about everything since getting fired. In my terrible self-consciousness, I had been trying way too hard to be "creative". Art was no longer a refuge for my brain to wander in. It was now disciplinary ground for me to practice, practice, practice until I could make all of the pictures in my head come out exactly as I saw them. But first, I must find the best images in my head and set the bar high! I was creating with something to prove; and that is a terrible way to create.

While in this awful mindset, I made the following painting. Now, I am not proud of this painting. No amount of encouragement is going to convince that it isn't terrible. The first reason being that I had forgotten entirely how difficult the paints that I chose had been to use. I did not enjoy painting most of this. It was a struggle. When I look at this painting, I feel that struggle all over again. And I feel self-conscious and melodramatically creative.

The next photo is a dandelion I drew today in order to distract myself from the gallbladder pain. When I look at it, I don't remember the gallbladder pain, I just remember thinking intensely about the shapes, the lines, and dandelions. It was magic to watch pen become plant. And I love it. It is simple and ordinary, but I find it lovely.

Strength is a heavy thing. If you have held onto it all of your life, you probably don’t know just how heavy it is. There are those who carry strength for so long that their grasp is stuck. I am not one of those people. Today, I have to pick up my strength up off of the floor. I have to massage it gently into my limbs and legs and chest. I hope that I can rub it deep enough to penetrate the bones, the joints, and my heart. All of these things have been aching with weakness, creaking as if to break.

Strength is such a heavy thing. And it is not as necessary as we have been taught. You think that the opposite of strength is weakness and then draw lines around strength and surviving such that weakness equals death. But it doesn’t. And this is one of the deadliest lies. You think that to embrace weakness is to invite death. But weakness is only weakness, the crying out for rest. Without that cry, rest is slow in coming. Without that cry, without that rest, strength begins to consume weakness.

My strength is trying to consume my weakness. If it does, I will never separate them back out again.

Weakness is a gentle thing that stands guard in the passage between strength and death. It utters warnings and cautions that you have found your limit. You can do no more. Indeed, you do not need to do more. Weakness is a thing that the universe understands. It is a limit which God himself respects.

Weakness is such a gentle thing. And that is different than being fragile. Weakness is what invites me to slough off my strength at the end of the day, let it lay beside the night stand, and rest. Weakness is the respite that makes sure that there is strength enough to finish tomorrow. 

Every year, I ask for something for my birthday that really only God could give me. Sunshine ranks 9.87 times out of 10. This year, I am asking for enormous things. This year, I want two things. First, I want a new job or some huge positive steps toward a career that actually fits the things I have learned about myself in the last two years. Things like: I love being part of a team. Conversely, I really hate working an 8 hour day alone. It's a long list...and most of it tells me that my current job (and most of the jobs that I am qualified for) is a poor fit.

For my second gift, I want to make some new friends who are passionate and honest people. I have a deep need to be known and encouraged but when I look at the friends that I have here in Portland, many of them are weighed down with their own surviving and I do not feel like there is room for me. I would love to help shoulder the weight of their day to day, but they are so busy doing it themselves that I feel like I am interrupting. I am tired of trying to fit into their lives. Other friends seem to be unwilling to be very open and that is hard for me because I do not have very much of a middle setting in myself. And I hate the feeling of sharing more than I will ever receive. No one is unkind or hurtful... but they are not really available either.

And I get it. I am wired all funny where I feel really deeply about all sorts of things that the stereotypes don't include. I love talking to strangers about justice but I can't seem to make small talk with people in church. I love working with my hands because it gives me so much time to think. And I love to think, especially about people and what they are made of like which insecurities line the walls of the hope and good intentions that they try to build with. I prefer to just get conflict out in the open so we can go after healing and reconciliation with all that we have. I am terribly honest too. That makes things hard. Moreover, I do not apologize for telling the truth. In fact, I am learning that I have been apologizing for all of the wrong things all of my life. And people seem to resent it when I stop. But I do try my best to apologize when I am wrong.

Anyway, this birthday I want some people and a cause to pour my love and loyalty and gifts into. And sunshine.

The sun was out for the majority of the last four days.
I am solar powered.
Therefore it follows that I am budding with optimism that has been absent since...whenever the dark era started. Probably October or November. I am not quite sure since it seems like years since I last saw the sun, but even I am able to admit that this is a distortive trick of time.

Optimism manifests itself these days in the following faces: I have chosen and re-chosen approximately 6 careers for myself to enter ...in the last week and a half. Somehow this weekend I managed to make hummus, banana bread-huckleberry-chocolate chip muffins, chia seed pudding, and all of the normal meals. I planted bulbs in the freshly weeded garden...even though the last day of frost in supposed to be April 26th. AND I did the laundry.

I sorely need a practical outlet for my new found optimism. What I mean is, I need encouragement. But not just any encouragement. I do not know if you can tell, but I am splitting at the seams as one thought takes me one direction and a dozen others also vie for the right to captain my poor vessel. I am a ship sailing in circles. I need encouragement like I need the kindness of the trade winds. Something strong and gentle but wise enough to take me out of these circles.

Sometimes I wish that I would be happy working for money. Money is a simple goal with a clear path. But I want a job that allows me to collaborate with a small team for a cause that I care about in a manner that is healthy...and pays the bills for a modest lifestyle. I will learn any skill, trade, art, or craft in order to pursue such a career and lifestyle. If only I knew what I was looking for!

I spent months waiting for someone to tell me what should be done next while I was unemployed. I realized that I was waiting for a prophet even though God had told me what I needed to know. I knew he was not sending a prophet and still I looked anxiously hoping that someone had conversed with God about me and would be willing to drop some heavenly gossip my way. Now, I am learning in this new job what it is that I hope to find (but have not yet) in a job, in a day, and in my life.

I find it hard to expect God to act on my behalf because I have already seen how so many people never find the blessing that I, in my optimism, am asking for. My singular encouragement remains the idea of asking like a child. Children ask their parents for every thing that enters their minds as good. (Just take your child or your friend and their children to the grocery store.) They know (or imagine) their parents to be capable and obligated to meet their needs. Somehow, God's goodness binds him to answering when I come to him with my needs. He is the only one who can meet this need. He is good. He has to come through. And so my optimism lives. And even as I hope, I sail in circles waiting for the right wind to indicate the course.

If you have any encouragement, send it my way. And if, for some reason, you know what it is that I should be doing, please send that too. I have tried to go any direction you can imagine. I have renounced aviation at least 8 times in the last two weeks and I have sworn to better it ...probably half as many. I have decided to go back to school for a dozen subjects and then found a flaw in each of them. Yet, I have discarded no thought outright--only tucked them into the bottomless sack of options that I hope to empty considerably someday soon. Circles within and circles without.

Ultimately, every villain in a given chapter of my life has never been evil. Our living stories are seldom epic battles of good versus evil. Rather, wars are waged and grievances accumulated over selfishness. That is it. Nothing more. 

But these selfish people will rob from you your comfort hoping to increase theirs. They will steal from you the truth hoping to change the confines of their reality. They will deliver harm to you hoping to add to themselves, protection. They will replace your justice hoping to bring an excess of mercy for them. And no matter what evil they leave on your doorstep, they will always lack, always be victims of want and need. Always, there will be some sense that they wish things could have been different. How different things will need to have been for them to have chosen better will always be undefined and unattainable. Ultimately, the villains who has hurt me the most simply chose their own interests over me.

I am trying to craft a storybook villain with this in mind. I want to exaggerate his lack of other flaws rather than his multitude of them. Ironically, I am finding that he must be carefully written and rewritten so that any other flaw that may come from his selfishness, however naturally, grows late in the story. 

The student physician escorts me from the waiting room. She is smiling enough for four people. She asks me how I am and I compromise between her feelings and mine by claiming that I am 'making it'. Her smile trips and she looks overly concerned.

To her credit, all she says is, "making it is good." Had her response been any less kind or neutral or whatever it was, I might have broke just then,. Inside, I am asking how she can see patients all day and expect them to be having good days. My blood pressure is escalating.

I remind myself that not every patient feels as terribly as I do today, not every sick person feels like they should stay home from the doctor's.
I remind myself that I used to make appointments when I was feeling pretty ok.
I remind myself that there was a time before the pain fog.
I remind myself that just as I only barely remember "before" everyone else only barely imagines the fog.
I remind myself of all of those things two or three times, because I am forgetful today.

I borrow some of her extra smile and I try to forget everything I just tried to remember including the pain.

Getting married taught me gratitude in a deep way. Everyone told me the rules and expectations of writing Thank Yous at the end. But the way they told me about it made me think that I would not enjoy it. I have been surprised to find how much having a wedding taught me about expressing gratitude. I found that I enjoyed writing the cards. I found that I wished it was always socially acceptable to express thanks. I felt so overwhelmed by the help we received in trying to accomplish a wedding that I could not possibly say, "Thank you" enough. I wanted to write cards to people just for attending. I didn't though. I could not afford that many cards.
Since September, I have found myself often returning to that feeling of gratitude. See the people that I am most appreciative of do not even seem to be aware of *how much* they lightened my load. There were a half dozen or so people who played small roles who strutted about with significance and over-graciously accepted my thanks. I do not still feel indebted with love to them. There are at least a dozen or more people who gave, who met needs, and who love me so well; but I do not think they were as aware of the giving as I was of the receiving.
At bottom, I learned how to attend at wedding by having a wedding. I learned that I had been neutral at best and very near a burden at worst with a few admirable suggestions. At top, I watched people love me so well. And I learned how to say thank you in dozens of different ways.

I. When A Good Friend Decides to Lie to You
followed by
II. Why I Am Nobody's Best Friend


I.
When a good friend decides to lie to you, listen. Listen closely.

You will learn a lot more about them from the kind of lies they tell than from any truth they may share on that deceitful day.

For example, she does not trust you, is drowning in her pride, and likes it.

For example, he does not know he is lying, really thinks you will always be friends, and cannot see that you have not been friends in years.

For example, she thinks your silence is belief rather than grief, thinks you love the lies, thinks you prefer them. She laughs when you say you value honesty like oxygen, thinks she knows better than you.

Listen!
Listen closely. Why? Because they are telling you how it will end. They are telling you what version of themselves they think you want. They are telling you exactly what is most important to them.

Take it all in.

You already knew you were not important. Do not let this be about you. Do not let them surprise you or incite you. You are not here to lie. You are not here to compete. You are here to listen.

Listen. When the liars walk in, pull up a chair, and feed you to nausea--listen!

Listen to every word.

They are drawing you an inverted map. If you listen long enough, they will color in everything except for the place where they keep their heart.

Listen even closer when the lies grow denser, more palatable, sweeter. They will always be what you want to hear. Do not touch them. Only listen. See if you can't find  the echo of truth in the shadow of each new lie.

When the map is complete, bury it. No. Wait. Copy it. Bury the first copy like the treasure that it is. Then give the copy to the friend. You just might lead him back to himself. Or else, she will only see her portrait.

II.
When I decide to tell you that I know you have been lying to me, I say "I'm sorry" to you for weeks afterwards in empty hallways and as I drive myself to work. I know my apologies never get to you, but I cannot exactly deliver them after our last conversation went so badly.

I know that I was selfish. I have apologized for that every time I have seen your photo on social media. But I wanted you to know that I was not fooled. I wanted you to feel how nauseous I felt trying to swallow so much untruth. I wanted you to know that your lies offended my intelligence. I wanted you to know that you are a terrible liar.

When I asked for the truth, I wanted you to choose me. See the second you sat down with me and brought lies, I realized that I was not the right kind of important anymore. I wanted to fix it. I wanted us to be good friends. So I dressed my intentions up in their best shades of concern.

I apologized in the bathroom at work for not being patient enough to let you find your way back on your own. I tried to give you a map even though it wasn't complete. You couldn't think of a use for it. Instead of bringing us closer, oceans flooded in with new, uncharted territories on their tides.

I have said "I'm sorry" twenty-six times on the freeway since we last talked. Each time, I was thinking of how I could have listened just a little longer.

As it turns out, I loved truth more than you. And that is something I am still unable to apologize for even though I keep practicing.