update

It feels so terrific to finally be at a point where I'm not asking myself "what am I going to do?" but "what do I want to do?"

Life is one wide open world right now, and I am laughing and dancing along the path like mad.

yes

The changes are bubbling up like sweet foam and I'm bouncing with anticipation. My mottos for now are kindness before everything and, simply, the word yes. Yes, I will take that risk. Yes, I will write a little terrible something because I'm feeling in the mood. Yes, I will push forward with my life into unknown territory. Yes, I will embrace my flawed story and flawed relationships with everything I have. Yes, of course, a thousand times.

Things get good and bad again and good and bad and good. The sun hangs out over new green lawns til past eight o clock now, just yawning at me. I'm sick of travels and ready for nothing. And after too much nothing I will scurry around, filing financial documents and deleting old files off my computer. I try one thing for a while, love it, hate it, and move on. There is ebb and flow. There is fear and freedom.

Everyone is graduating again and the world flips on its back like a puppy. Let's start over. It's spring, another beginning, what would you like to do? I think I'm gonna be a teacher. I think I'm gonna get married some day. I think I'm gonna get bored and hate my life a million times only to wake up feeling better, filled with perfect blessed gratitude.

I'm glad I'm me. I'm so glad to have had time to grow up and make big mistakes. I'm a guilty freak, ask anyone who knows me, but I've carved out a place to feel good about all the stuff I simultaneously hate myself for. Live and learn is absolute truth. Living is learning, and learning is a type of change that only emerges from the deepest emotional experiences, and some of those (or maybe most) are painful.

And now I'm thinking about freshman year American Literature, reading about Frederick Douglass and reading Emerson's essays, those searing, eye opening, can't look away truths. Yes, learning is painful. Yes, I hate myself sometimes. Yes, this is all good. Yes, I will push forward. Yes, everyday is new. Yes, I can love life wholly and embrace the other side of joy. Yes, of course, a thousand times...

where's the magic?

This post is born out that feeling you get every birthday when, undoubtedly, someone asks: "so, do you feel any older?" And, just like every other year (which is why this question is always the. most. annoying.), the answer is no. Of course not.

When I was 10, I thought 20 was the stuff moms were made out of. GROWN UP MATERIAL. Finely, aged cheese. Marriage and wisdom and all that other stuff we're supposed to have. I never really thought about those four short (so short, mind-bendingly short) years that separated the high school babes from the marriage makin' mamas. You emerge from college and... that's when the magic happens.

Here's what I'm asking: where's the magic? Because I honestly feel like I haven't changed a bit. I still feel 19 and 15 and 12. I'm so many little girls, year after year, and yet, somehow, I'm also a woman? (Woman is still a mouthful that I don't feel ready to claim)

I'm no grown up and I've realized recently that there will never be a moment where I feel ready to say "okay, I'm an adult now." Sure, it would help if I moved out of my parents' basement, got a dog of my own, made a baby someday, but in my heart of hearts, I will always just be me, experiencing the world and changing so subtlety that I don't even notice I'm different.

I guess I just always thought, as a kid and even as a teenager, that there would be this moment (see: magic) where I would just feel transformed. I would know stuff. I would be confident and successful and changed. I thought that stuff just sort of happened. But it doesn't. You don't become anything, you make choices everyday or things happen that shift the light ever so slightly. Seconds become minutes become days become years. We are the repetition of everyday. We've had infinite moments, but none of them suddenly reform us. I mistake life as being fast. Life is slow and it works like an ooze.

I think about the magic in different ways, mostly when I imagine other people's lives. It's so easy to forget the slow process, the endless days upon days upon years, that creates what you see. Hard work, people! It is the painful, frustrating, fearless faithfulness that creates success. I always think of what I see as what has always been. But people pave the paths to the things they love, and it's never, ever easy. We can never see what lies before us, but courageous people push forward, they keep working, no matter how many tables they have to wait on or how many unpublished, terrible poems lie in their nightstand drawers.

Basically, there is no magic, not in the perfect sense. There is only hard work and lots of minutes.

Some days in my life seem endless, others fly by, but many seem pointless. I used to do a lot of waiting and planning and imagining a future I never really reached for. I was forgetting about all those birthday mornings, feeling the same, being the same as yesterday. There's no one moment, there's no magic slipper. Time will not make it easy (it will always be difficult) but it will give you a place to start, a space to stop waiting.

where I've been

I was so disillusioned by the pressure to achieve and our culture’s skewed definition of success that I forgot to want something for myself. Beyond forgetting, I ran away from trying. I told myself I didn’t need a career, that it was useless to plan and downright foolish to dream. So I stopped dreaming up a future life and sat still for a long while, treading water and chasing hopelessness around my brain. These past months have been a stagnant aching, but slowly my inner truth has revealed itself. Don’t be afraid, it whispers, take a risk. My heart stretches wide to allow for learning. I suddenly see all my fear laid out before me more plainly than ever before: the fear of failing, the fear of not knowing, the fear of pushing myself far, far away from every comfort. These are the big conclusions grown from long stretches of waiting, listening, thinking, crying, and wondering. These are the answers to my prayers, these final chest cracking breaths, teaching me the sound and definition of epiphany. These months I’ve learned about work, and fear, and trusting myself. I’ve searched—chiseled at, tore apart—my insides and now I am crawling out a new woman. I hear my fears in every sour-stomach, heart-pounding choice that tells me to run away, and I’ve just decided: I’m done being scared. The word “strong” motivates me so much it brings tears to my eyes. But the most sensational thing is the sun that has poured in from every single gaping hole there used to be. I think it’s called hope. 

on love and somethingness

I've been thinking about what it means to be truly unique. Earlier today I was struck by a Google search result: "uncommon baby names." I was disturbed by the parent (worse so, all the many parents) who searched for such a thing, hoping to distinguish her child with a stand-out name before he or she was even born. The Ashley-Sarah-Jessica-Katie's of the world lament those standard titles. Give me Cornelia, Daphne, Daisy, Valentine. Personally, I can't stand those contrived names and aren't the Katherine Elizabeths of the world just as lovely?

We don't believe that though, do we? We really think that bestowing some grandiose name will lead that baby into a life of SOMETHING-ness, a life of power and celebrity and color and recognition.We're so afraid of being boring. Being shy is synonymous with being disabled. Americans are constantly provoked to stand out, to be SOMETHING, to be THE ONE AND ONLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's an intense amount of pressure to be expected to amount to something so intensely important. And to be honest, everything feels more boring when our expectations for what is respectable (what is acceptable) are so incredibly high. Anyone who's been depressed (or even just been human) knows that on some mornings getting out of bed is an applause-worthy accomplishment. But what space is there for small human achievements on our resumes? 

Being human, being alive, is work. Taking care of our physical bodies, the spaces we occupy, the other humans we love, and the ever exploding incomprehensible boundless expanses of our human minds, which constantly question and analyze and bleed into every moment of our days, takes time and patience and love and a lot of energy. When did we forget that it takes hard work to be a human? When did we stop believing that that work is important? 

These days, no one sleeps. We don't eat real food. We abuse our bodies and we suppress our minds. We throw away relationships and forsake our families all in the name of making a name. God forbid we take a day off work because we're sick or refuse to move across country for a high-paying job because we don't want to leave our family and everything we love. How startling it would be to believe that we don't have to "become" anyone, that we already exists perfectly, exactly how we are, and no job, no amount of money, no plastic surgery or extreme dieting, no perfect person or picturesque home can give us any more than we already have, just by being human. 

There's a song covered by one of my favorite bands (The Avett Brothers) called "Where have all the average people gone?" and I love that message. Life used to be simpler, and I find myself wistful for a world I never knew. The web, the media, this iPhone, all that crap the parents cringe over and croon about, it really is doing terrible damage. We weren't meant to write and edit virtual biographies about ourselves. Not everybody is "somebody" and that's supposed to be a good thing. What do we love about celebrity? Maybe it's thinking that if you could only be SOMETHING, then you could finally be worthy of being loved. Because these days, everyone's staring at their toes (their phones), trying to say the right things, instead of looking in your eyes and listening quietly and caring to really know you, know you. 

I've been thinking about what it means to be truly unique and a few individuals come to mind. It wasn't anything in how they dressed that struck me. It wasn't any names they dropped or their experiences abroad. It wasn't anything glamorous. It was vulnerability, an openness to the awkwardness and discomfort of the human experience and a willingness to admit that they'd been wrong, embarrassed, or absurdly delighted. It was confidence, that easiness in breathing that comes with knowing that no matter what, what they say matters because it matters to them. It was gentleness, the quiet calm of a good listener. It was just being human, a break from the noise, an silent acknowledgment that you and I are not separate at all but completely the same. And through friendship or mentorship or a brief exchange of words, rejoicing in that sameness. Most simply, it was love. 

The best cure, I think, for chronic individualitis-- that voice that begs to know what makes you different, how you compare to your peers, what makes you worthy of recognition, worthy of love-- is a quiet visit with someone you care about or someone who cares about you. Nothing sexual, nothing colorful, maybe even not that beautiful, maybe raw and sad and shocking. But that togetherness, that knowing that it's okay, we understand each other, and thank god we can at least be human together.

relentless

Sundays are the best and worst of times. A broad of expanse of hours with absolutely no expectations or responsibilities followed by the sinking feeling that it is just a dream: I must wake up and return to real life in the morning. These days, real life has been exceptionally hard to accept. This morning, around six a.m., I trudged outside, wrapped up to my eyes, and scraped ice off my car windows. The bitter cold makes me bitter. It's a lot of waiting around, waiting to warm up and just waiting in the sameness trying to feel at peace. It seems like peace would be a quiet gray thing, but color and warmth are what I'm craving most right now. My heart is heavy.

I try to placate myself with new schemes; I think part of the problem is that I'm bored at my job and sit for hours in front of a blank screen, making up projects for myself. After sitting for so long, you start to wonder why am I here again? What is this all for? I try to remember what life is all about but the question is always too big to answer.

I want an eternity of vacation days in my bed and a million free dinners. I really don't want to grow up, don't want to have to do a single thing. It's a big, heavy weight that presses me most when I wake to do the exact same thing, every single day. Relentless is the word that comes to mind. The worst part is that I don't have it bad at all, and I don't understand why I'm not content. I think of so many single parents, working 10 hour days, 7 days a week, how completely exhausting and terrible that must be. Why can't I be grateful or even just okay?

I'm trying to muster up my patience and create peace. I take deep breaths all the time, and I slow down my mind as much as I can. This new adulthood though, it's challenging me to pieces.

progress

Week two finished on a high note: my only true day off all week. Five 6am wake-ups, 4 days of work, and two 6-hour days spent in a tutor certification class at the Rochester Hills public library. The class proved to be a happy risk as it called up all my instinctual excitement over the prospect of teaching language. And so, I've since reconsidered my whole life, as happens so often these days. Suddenly, a few more years in the classroom and $30,000 doesn't seem like so much, especially considering what I'd be trading in: life at a desk and a head full of thoughts wanting to be spent.

Other things this week:
1. The cold won't end. The schools are closed again tomorrow for wind chills in the negative thirties.
2. We finally have books again. I started into two other novels this month and couldn't commit. Behind the Beautiful Forevers seems to have stuck.
3. I cooked a true down home meat-veggie-starch meal this week, and I really felt like a grown up.
4. We are balancing friends-time and us-time, even though I get greedy, wanting to dance around the living room with him all night long. I begrudgingly gave in to a drunken game night which turned out to be fun for the whole family.
5. Funny how the moments build on each other, forming a story, though you only see it looking backwards. First is me crying, scraping pizza sauce off my plate into a sink of dirty dishes. Second is the decision to take a risk, take the class, become a tutor. Third, my tutor teaching telling me: "you're so good at this." And now, making plans for more classes, to stand at the front of a classroom one day.