Some Things I Learned In 2018

• You can lose a good friend without knowing the how or the why.
• When you lose a good friend, it will remind you of all of the other people that you have lost. And you will grieve all over again for people you haven't been close to in a decade.
• Trauma is subjective. But it finds all of us.
• Growing where you are planted is hard even after you stop comparing your plot to everyone else's.
• I have a bad habit of defining how I am by the struggle I am facing. Do I even exist if life gets easy?
• I am trying to begin to define life by my questions and curiosities of which there are many. But I still don't know how to communicate any of that when someone asks "how are you?" because I don't expect them to care or understand especially when my curiosity has led me to do something like reading a couple dozen gardening books in rapid succession.
• I don't need to justify my curiosity, I need to follow it.

On Hope As Rebellion

I am not upset at growing older. I feel as though I have won each of my years from an unwilling benefactor, wrestled them from the giant's grasp, stolen them from Father Time.

Each day is an accidental miracle. Each month is a tricky victory. Each year, a gift that I've struggled to give myself. I will not be made to feel guilty for what I have taken from life, for the youth I have left behind, for the way my body has begun to creak with all of the signs of use. I am certain that some days did not want me to keep waking. And yet my eyelids still open with the barest whisper saying:

I am still here.
I am still curious.
I am still learning.
I am still becoming.

And that is the closest to hope that I have felt in a long time.

having not received the things i asked for
having learned that what i asked for would certainly have ruined me

it is difficult to know what it is that I should ask for now

a life without secret hopes and tumultuous, dangling dreams lacks purpose and direction

i have been stranded on a windless sea for a long time
the boat drifts
and i ask myself
if not there than where?

i had no other loves and no other ruling curiosities
without the things i asked for
i don't know who i am or where to go

I hide my depression to the left of the salt shaker.

When I hide my depression, I try to remember where I am going to leave it so I can find it later. I leave it somewhere obvious, that I'll return to again and again. I hide it somewhere near a joke so that I have a little warning before it comes back.

I used to think that I hid it from other people because I was afraid that they would know. Then I thought that it was because I was afraid that they would know and not care. Still later I imagined that I hid it because encountering depression is awkward and I didn't want to be an inconvenience to them. Then one day, I realized that I hide my depression and it has nothing to do with other people. I hide it because I still haven't accepted it.

I'm still desperately trying to validate all of my not depressed parts hoping that they'll get strong enough to crowd out the parts of myself dressed in exhausted despair. This is dangerous because there are days when every bit of criticism tells me that who I am with depression in charge is right. I feel the cracks between my pieces flex, buckle, and threaten to pull apart.

Most of us are paradoxes. Many of us are the same kind of paradox.

My paradox is that I simultaneously have so much faith in the strength of hope for my community, but have none for myself. I only trust my voice when I am speaking for those who can't. I don't know how to advocate for myself, to trust myself. I can summon so much strength when someone needs me, but I seem to always be brittle and empty when it comes time to care for myself.

Today, I don't feel effective. Effective at what? Everything! ..but mostly at being myself and being human. How can I feel so ineffective at something that I can't help but do? Can I be anyone besides myself? Can I be anything be human?

And yet, I am so certain that no one has failed at being human as much as I am today sitting at my desk today. I know it isn't true, but the ache in my bones tells me differently.

When did they begin to ache? Who put it here? What is the cure?

"Everything Broke Apart so Easily" or "When your Friendship Crumbles like a Stale Cookie"

"I'll pray for you...not now. But later on." The words on social media made me laugh because I've been told that people are praying for me when I was quite certain that that's not I needed from them. Sometimes people pray over you broken bones and withhold the salve that would actually heal you. All of the ritualistic respect in the world goes gaunt when it stands next to honesty and vulnerability.

What I want to say is, don't pray for me now. Pray for me later. Afterwards. Fight for me. Fight with me. Battle to understand the ground on which I stand. Love me as your equal. Look at the best in me even if it's hiding and call it out. Let me do the same for you.

Save your hasty retreat prayers. They might make you feel relieved, protected, or righteous, but they don't do anything for me. See, I know what it is to be loved. Whatever it is that you are doing, isn't love. The best that I can assume is that you don't have enough love for both yourself and me. I hope that's the case. It's easier for me to believe that you can't love me rather than that you won't love me.

I wish I had known then what I know now. I wish someone had told me. Maybe they did and I just wasn't ready to listen. Still, I wish I had felt the warning in my bones that said, "this world will try to keep you hustling. It will try to fold you up into an impossible shape. If you let it, it will ruin you."

Society, industry, people, the world. Whatever you call it, it will always want more than you have to give. There is a hunger out there that you were never meant to feed. If you try to satisfy it, one day you will too little left of yourself to fit the important things like hope.

Today, I am the ocean. Unhappy, want-to-be hurricane.

Depression is the boat on my back that I can't scratch off. Howl and tantrum, toss and storm as much as I like, the boat remains. If it sinks, it is still with me. And as it floats, so do I.

Depression sneaks up on me easily these days. I want to change jobs, change houses, change everything. I know that happiness is just behind the next big transition. I also know that none of that is true. Unhappiness is inside of me. Happiness won't be found outside of me. There's some soul searching that needs to be done, some internal construction, some something. But I'm on hold. Waiting is one of those things that either becomes a spiritual discipline ...or it kills you. The jury is still out on which one I'll choose. Today, my body physically feels closer to death than discipline; but I think it's a red herring.

I wrote this for our housemates but I haven't given it to them. Every time I come close, I run into them and am convinced that they don't need more stress. I can't decide if it is selfish not to say anything or selfish to force them to listen to me. I can't decide if I'm more afraid of missing an opportunity to explain my self or of having been heard and rejected.

How do I explain this?

 

I have hated living with you. And I think you have hated living with us. I’m not sure where we went wrong and I’m sorry. I have an immense feeling of failure. Failure to communicate. Failure to live up to my own beliefs in things like grace, community, and vulnerability. I wanted so much more for us. I wanted to take care of each other rather than just survive each other. These past few months I have been trapped in various stages of grief fighting off anger and resentment and depression as I discovered yet another thing in between us and the type of community I hoped for.  

And I have been hurt. I’m sure we all have. But I want to say it externally, in this space so that I can be done saying it in my head. I have been so hurt. When I have been vulnerable, I have been ignored. When I have failed, I have felt like that is the only time I have ever met your expectations. I can’t help but notice and feel that at every moment that you had a choice between being present with us and being separate, you have chosen separateness and self-protection. It doesn’t matter if it was your spirituality, working hours, social life, hobbies, or meals. To choose separateness in any number of these categories is normal and good…to choose it in all of them makes me wonder why we share a home at all. It makes me feel used and unwanted. I have fought these feelings for a long time, unsuccessfully. And now I’m done. I don’t have the energy to fight them off anymore.  

I still want more for us. I know there’s more I can do and more I should have done but I don’t know what it is. I feel trapped and unequipped. I’m sorry for the ways I’ve hurt you and for the many ways in which I’ve failed to communicate.

So there it is. The monkey on my back that distracts me from my work, makes being home a chore, and otherwise complicates everything. And through all of this, I have heard the tiniest whisper "everyone is doing the best they can" which I hate because I want there to be a bad guy who has the power to give us justice. But there isn't. There's just us all trying badly because we don't know better. And we're all struggling with guilt and vanity, hurt and anxiety.

I desperately need something to hope for. And I'm waiting to see what that will be.

Would it surprise you to know that I am happy? It surprises me. And yet, I know somewhere that this happiness is a contract with a catch. I must make no comparison with the life that I was trying to build. Because the truth is, that I want it still. My bones ache when I think of what almost was. Tears live on the precipice with only my current happiness to tamp them down out of view. I forget more often now. I am distracted for longer periods of time. I don’t know if I should blame pragmatism or weariness for this but what is certain is that I am doing my best to move on. But I am also doing my best not to lie.

So I do not ask myself difficult questions with dark answers that take me back in time before I was so far down this path, so committed to the failure of the only dream I have ever given myself to. And that helps, a lot. But that doesn’t stop the stranger. I bump into my dream and my failure in the most unlikely places.  I can’t blame them. I go to the doctor, they ask about the career change. The tears rise up, but the doctor does not know about the flood or that he stands kicking at the flood gate.

I meet the friend of a friend who wants to know what my hobbies are and I falter wading through the hobbies that used to define me to find the ones that don’t hurt. I go to a church function and they pass around a hat filled with questions. The hat asks me “what is your favorite book?” But every book I have ever loved has brought me to my knees in front of my dream. Book after book flashes before my eyes and I try to find the least noxious answer or a suitable lie even though I hate lying to simplify myself. I give in and describe the writings of a pilot who pioneered so much of civilian aviation. Everyone is awed or inspired by the sense of adventure.

I am undone inside. All of the pain comes back. I ache and ache until I go to sleep. I do not dream. When I wake, my soul is sore. I can’t focus on my work. There’s no one to talk to about this though. Tears leak out whenever I think about the sky.