Purpose

...when you realize that all the time you were wondering what you'd be when you grew up, you're already there. This is it. This is what you are. And suddenly you've got to figure it all out fast...

Tonight I was set on fire. (Metaphorically.) And found something that I think just might be my purpose for living. (Not metaphorically--literally.)

It has been said thousands of times that all human beings want to answer three basic questions for themselves:
--Who you are
--Why you're here
--Where you're going

Religion has found infinite ways to answer or conveniently redirect these questions, as have politicians, governments, cults and communities. To an extent, I think these answers are fine for general direction. You are a citizen of the United States. You are here to be more like [insert religious figure with multiple admirable characteristics and values]. You are going to eat jello shots until you puke. (You'd be surprised how many people follow that one)

But throughout your lifetime only you can decide the answers to these three questions, and often those answers are as malleable and fragile as we are.

For example: today our journalism professor asked us to write a short piece about ourselves, how we defined "I" and where we thought we were going. I wrote the following.

                  In my psychology class Winter Term we were asked to make ten statements about ourselves beginning with the words "I am ___." My first three were "I am madly in love," "I am a student," and "I am strong." These have become significant and surprising truths for me because of the changes they represent in the direction my life is heading. I am so madly in love that I got married, a decision which has come to affect absolutely everything and put me in situations where I have had to make the tough adult decisions my parents have been making seem simple for over thirty years. 
                 I am a student--but it's become increasingly clear that I won't be one  forever. Soon I will be defined by career and family along with the rest of my generation, no matter how we dig in our heels and try to stay irresponsible. The last "I am" of the three is far easier to write than to express. In part, it is simply the realization that I am more than I thought I was. It is a strange place to be in when you realize that all the time you were wondering what you'd be when you grew up, you're already there. This is it. This is what you are. And suddenly you've got to figure it all out fast...

This assignment was more than just a few minutes of introspection. It made me realize that the answers to "who I am" and "where I'm going" had changed, almost without my noticing it, in just a matter of months. What else had changed? When would it change again?

Several friends over the years have pointed me in the direction of social work, and until now I simply did not believe or want to believe that that was a career option for me. I'm too shy, I get too attached to people, I stress too much, I'm nobody special, I wouldn't really make a difference. All these thoughts vary in the amount of truth they hold,  but I realized tonight that it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is to find something you're passionate about, pick yourself up, and RUN FOR IT.

On my food bank deliveries tonight I talked with several families whose situations made me FUME.
--Rae*, who has such painful arthritis in her back she can barely move, but she continues to work forty hours a week to support her family because the company she works for won't qualify her for disability or get her physical therapy.
--I was excited to start Felipe's family today only to arrive at their address and find blackened windows, an abandoned home, and a foreclosure lock clamped tightly around the doorknob.
--My friend Nikki was recently detained for reported drug usage, although she has been clean for months and only failed the urine test because she'd been on prescribed flu medication. Not only did she spend two weeks in jail while her kids tried to fend for themselves, she now has to undergo weeks of classes and community service and her graduation from Drug Court has been suspended, maybe indefinitely.
--Christi's grandfather died recently and it has completely drained her. She can't afford to lose any more work and her kids need her to stay strong, but the grieving process is overwhelming.
--Then there's Carmen and her husband, who want nothing more than a decent job that isn't just seasonal, and who get denied at every turn...

I listened with patience and tried to understand, but inside I was shouting for justice. Why wasn't anyone fighting for these people? How could none of them understand the options they had or have connections to agencies who could help them? Why were they being forgotten?

And with an equally loud voice I was shouting: I want to be that person. I want to get Rae to a real physician who will be able to tell her employer that her concerns are legitimate and at least get her the care she deserves. I want to find out what happened with Felipe's family and if there was a way to prevent it. I want to give Drug Court the finger (metaphorically or not) and provide all the evidence they need to see that not only is Nikki clean, she is an exceptional single mother, has a powerful work ethic, and is longing to get over the parts of her past that led her to them in the first place. I want to get Christi a counselor and find an employment agency that won't turn down Carmen just because her English is scattered.

This is where I'm going. This is why it's worth fighting through this overwhelming pile of homework and working crappy minimum wage jobs until I get my Masters. This is my purpose. And to all those agencies who would take advantage of honest families like I find in Food Bank--be on your toes. I'm coming for you, and I'm coming in fast.

*Names have been changed*
*Picture by Google*

"We're Talking About Pain Here"

"If you create a situation of unhappiness for someone else, shouldn't you share in it?"

Besides learning how to be a "mom," Spring Break for me was also an opportunity to go meet with Bob, a counselor at my dad's work that I've been seeing sporadically for three years. He's the man who helped talk me through the hardest period of my life--helped me recognize the bigger picture. Still, I was absolutely positive walking in there that he wouldn't be able to help me this time. Not with this.

For the first few minutes we caught up from the last session, talking about school and family and my recent marriage. Then he asked the question that begins a thousand questions: "What can I help you with today?"

I told him about the returning bouts of depression, the constant obsessing over the three people that I'd hurt so powerfully over the last few years. I told him I couldn't forgive myself. That I felt that none of my accomplishments, none of my improvements really seemed to outweigh the truth: at the end of the day, I was still just a home wrecker, a heart breaker, and a bad daughter.

He listened patiently as always as I tore myself down, and then finally he stopped me and asked me whether or not I felt like I had to pay for my mistakes forever. Was the self-hating obsession a life sentence? I told him I didn't know...but, if you create a situation of unhappiness for someone else, shouldn't you share in it?

This puzzled Bob for several minutes, and inside I thought well, that does it then. There's no helping it now. Finally he spoke, and what he had to say blew my mind.

"We're not talking about paying for a mistake anymore Robyn, we're talking about pain here. You created a situation of pain for these three people in different ways, and now you feel like you have to share in that pain, and that's admirable. But you see, emotions are limited. There is only so much that you can save up and expend in a day, and if you spend all your time dwelling on the pain of the young woman, the photographer, and your parents--you will have nothing left over to give to the people who need you now. You will create new pain instead of soothe the old. You will be letting your entire future be defined by a few moments, and I don't know about you, but that just seems like a waste."

I'd never thought of it this way before. I guess I'd always assumed that by keeping the awful memories fresh in my mind, it would keep me from forgetting. What I really wanted was to not feel the helplessness of accepting that it really was over, and there was nothing I could do to fix it anymore. As though hearing my thoughts, Bob commented that "dwelling on" was not the same as "helping."

"I'm not expecting you to forgive yourself in a day, or to ever forget what happened. Just promise me that you'll think about this. Let it distill. See what happens." 

A lot of things started to make more sense as the week went on. Why the past few months just felt like a blur. Why my grades and my motivation had begun to plummet. Why I couldn't remember day to day events, deadlines, even important occasions with family and friends. I was never really there--I just drifted, physically present, but mentally and emotionally expended. By trying so hard to focus on those I'd wronged I hoped to give them something or, I don't know, telepathically send them the message I haven't forgotten you, I'm still feeling the after-effects, I'm not going to abandon you. Like somehow my pain could translate into good things for them, like some twisted kind of karma.

But Bob was right--it didn't do anything but cripple the future. At some point, I've got to close the book. Stop writing letters that I can never send.

It's time to be present in my own life. Time to try to let go of the pain.

It Was A Dark and Stormy Field Trip...

It was a Sunday morning in March--the air was warm and overcast, the roads clear and promising. My geology classmates appeared one by one, by foot or by car, to gather in the parking lot in a pile next to the faithful hulking twelve-passenger van. We were preparing to venture out on a field trip to various parts of Madrid and rural Idaho. I volunteered to pilot van, confident that my three years of experience driving for Food Bank made me more than qualified.

Note: I furtively avoided making eye contact with that long blue gouge, violently vivid on the driver's side, when I agreed to drive. (The product of an unfortunate end with a cement pole in a parking lot two months before.) I also didn't feel it necessary to mention to my classmates or my professor that the Maintenance crew had taken to calling me "crash" since last fall.

We started off, the radio pulsing, the wheels happily gripping the road that would take us to Lizard's Butte, French John Hill, and Buck Mountain. Everything was fine until we made our first stop, an abrupt patch of gravel in a canyon across from Buck Mountain, where we were to make our observations and sketches. The wind had started to pick up as we drove and I could feel it testing the sides of the van when we ground to a stop, pushing it here and there like a child tapping the glass of a fish-bowl, trying to gauge a reaction. The wind transformed from playful to pushy when we trailed up the hill, trying to find a good spot to sit and write. It shoved the hat off one student and sent it spinning into the road. Then it tore the front page of our assignment from the hands of another classmate, whipping it high into the air and dashing it against the rocks of the canyon wall opposite while we all watched.

We didn't bend. We stayed and tried to finish our sketches, crouching in protective positions here and there along the highway, trying to keep dirt and gravel from our faces. The wind grew more furious still, whistling in a torrent through the narrow canyon and creating a wind-tunnel effect that drove us running, stumbling, back to the van. Students slumped in their seats, letting tired limbs find relief. A few closed their eyes and dozed as we drove on.

Our second stop was, if anything, more perilous than the first. The professor directed me to some obscure dirt road, which we followed up a hill and around a bend rich with sage, clay, and cheat grass. Suddenly the road disappeared beneath us, gouged out in the center by some wide, invisible hand. I tried to go around the hole, urging the van up the side of the road.

I didn't realize how steep the incline actually was, and for a sick, horrible moment we were suspended in the air, half of the van swinging dangerously towards the road as it tipped. Eyes flew open. Muscles snapped with tension. There was a collection of breath from everyone in the vehicle--one student instinctively threw his body against the opposite side of the van, trying to push it upright again. All of us waited, with one mind chanting "oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit" until the wind slowed and we settled back to the horizon, all four wheels firmly on the earth.

Our instructor snapped the radio off, trying to offer reassurance. "I trust you," she said, turning to me with a look that amended: ..."but don't ever do that again."

Shaking, I hit the shift into reverse and we backed carefully away from the rut, taking it from a different, flatter angle. My confidence was shot and as we wound through the tight, yellow hills I drove a little too fast, plowing over too many big rocks, my heart thudding too loudly. A vacant part of me recognized that I really had to pee. One of the students whispered: "This trip just got REAL." My face burned bright red at the words, and I tried to concentrate on driving better.

A few minutes later we came to a stop in a narrow place between a ditch and a long drop down a beautiful canyon, the skeleton of rivers and volcanoes past. It felt surreal to be standing here on the edge of this steep drop, the dry remains from a very different Earth, six million years old. I kept having the sensation that we were tipping away from our vertical centers, caught in a limbo of air and earth. I had a weird image of the van balancing on the edge of the rut again, only this time the rut was that canyon, and we were hurtling  towards the bottom in a landslide of dust and car parts.

It was all we could do to get back into the van and try to turn around. One of the students wisely stayed outside in the wind and cold, directing me in an infinite series of gear shifts. Reverse and Drive. Drive and Reverse. Those within the vehicle looked anywhere but at the lip of the canyon sprawling in front of our bumper, no doubt having the same imagined landslide fantasy I had had a few minutes earlier, wishing they were outside directing too. One girl mentioned she had a fear of heights and of canyons, and our collective mind began to chant again, sharing in her fears.

Finally we picked our way through rubble and ditches back to the highway, noting as we did the decaying carcass of a coyote discarded on the banks. It was an unfortunate choice of carcass to be finding, since our college mascot is a coyote. Again I flashed on the vision of the van spinning down a hill, metal and glass everywhere, our own bodies joining that of the coyote to decay quietly, violently, unresolved.

The inside of the van was unnervingly silent all the way to the next site. Gradually we began to reassemble into the casual postures and rhythms we had before the trip had begun, although there was a marked difference of tension levels. To the west, roiling black clouds bullied the timid white sky, fighting for a place. The car's frame rattled and shivered uncontrollably as though sensing the change. Our professor told me to slow down, and we continued on at a fraction of the speed limit. The rattling stopped. A few minutes later we had a line of frustrated drivers trapped in single file behind us, waiting for the first double lane to escape Sunday-driver hell. The need to pee was no longer a dormant concern.

At the next stop the air was thick was a strange, burning odor. One of our classmates pointed out that the tires were smoking, and as we all piled out of the van to look it became clear that the parking brake had still been engaged for the last few miles of driving. I threw up my hands in defeat. I was done driving--with my luck I'd have wrecked the thing by lunch time. The professor took the wheel for the final stop and the drive home, and I sensed the collective relief at the change. When we made it back to campus and everyone went their separate ways I all but sprinted to the bathroom. On my way one of the students patted me on the shoulder and said: "Well, it just wasn't your day."

No kidding. I'm just glad we all made it back alive.

Becoming "Mom"

The last time I was home in our apartment our housemate Austin said a funny thing. Having packed my husband Tim a lunch for work I handed it to him and joked as I pecked him on the cheek: "Have a good day today hun--don't do drugs, be good, and don't let the bullies take your lunch!" Our housemates chuckled appreciatively and then Austin said:

"Wow Tim it looks like you left your mother and married a new one!"

I laughed along with everyone else, but inside I was stunned. Is that really how they saw me? As a "mom"?

What makes a "mom" anyway? At what point does a young woman stop being her independent self and take on the responsibilities of parent, care-giver, and maternal figure? I always looked to my mom as someone who could solve any problem, clean away any mess, and listen to any of my little issues with compassion and understanding. In this way, I was flattered that Austin had given me the title. But there was a problem--I don't plan on having any children for a good five years or so, whenever I can finish up my schooling and find a solid job. Can you be a "mom" without raising a child?

That was over a month ago, when winter semester had ended. Six weeks later I am back home in the apartment on Spring Break, preparing to finish my last semester as a Junior in college. From the start of this visit, I noticed a distinct difference in how my housemates interact with me and how they interact with each other. For one thing, they apologize to me when they make a mess. Buddies don't apologize to each other.

On St. Patrick's day they blew at least half a paycheck on booze and neatly dismantled the place, so that when Tim and I returned from a friend's house we found passed out bodies in the living room, a broken mirror, and a complete disaster in the kitchen. Our housemates greeted us in the morning with bruised bodies and even one chipped tooth, and with lowered eyes apologized profusely for the trouble they had caused. I had a weird out-of-body experience as I listened to them and watched myself accept their apologies, even cluck over their scrapes and bruises like a hen, consoling them by saying I was just glad everyone was ok. It was such a strange position to be in, and I found myself on the other side of some invisible line feeling distinctly separate and so, well, motherly.

As the week progressed I noticed that my daily routine was very different from theirs. I rose before everyone else and got ready for the day, made my husband's lunch, washed the dishes from last night, started some laundry, and then decided which task to tackle first--the overwhelming heap of homework or the continuous job hunting for the summer--all in the silence of a slumbering apartment. When I got home I'd fold the laundry, wash more dishes, pick up the general mess and take the garbage out. Strangest of all, before I went to sleep I would do a routine check of closing windows and locking doors, just as I'd seen my own mom do for twenty years.

My housemates wake on New Zealand time, at three in the afternoon. Keysha would go to work if she had a shift, but otherwise she and Travis and Austin watched movies or read books or played video games from the moment they woke until about five in the morning. They would break for at least one meal, usually some fast food or a pizza, pool their money for a little beer, and hit the sack at dawn. There were no deadlines or schedules for them to consult. No paperwork. No essays.

There isn't even a working clock in the apartment, speaking volumes for the way of life they've adopted. What time is it? Who cares!! I have a suspicion that the calendar in the kitchen is appreciated more for the cute pictures of kittens than for the actual keeping of dates. 

Most of the time, I can appreciate this spontaneous living. Sometimes I even envy it, and will try to spend a day living like them--putting up my feet and digging into a good game while the rest of the working class sleeps. But as much serenity as I can glean from a few stress-free hours, the pesky worries and responsibilities return. I can't define myself loosely enough, can't endlessly straddle that line between child and adult. I always return to being responsible. I've been living mostly away from home for three years now and moved well beyond the phase of "there aren't any parents around so I think I'll go crazy for a change." I know now there's more to it then that.

I think what bothers me most is not that I have moved into the world of student/worker/intern/housemaid. What bothers me is that I am the same age as our housemates, and yet most of the time feel galaxies apart from them. I went to high school with Keysha and Austin and worked with Travis the summer before college at the same fast food joint. We used to play Mario Kart together and run into one another at the mall. The parts of me that accept the role of "mother" are equal to the parts of me that would still like to pick up a video game now and then, or spend the day raising hell on the town.

Now I find myself being apologized to, cleaning messes that I didn't make, cooking meals for mouths that I didn't give birth to. I realize now that motherhood doesn't begin with pregnancy, it begins with the desire to provide for others. To make a house a home. To do the jobs that no one else is willing to. I see Travis passed out on the couch and I have an inexplicable love for him. When Keysha comes home from work I want to embrace her, ask her about her day, make some coffee for us. I have started to truly care for these three like they were family, all the time recognizing that to them, I am probably just the uptight roommate with a stick up her hoo-hah.

Someday soon I'm hoping these roles will reconcile with each other, and I'll find the middle ground where I can be simply "friend," rather than "mom" or "roommate." Until then, I'll continue to appreciate my own mother more every day as I walk in her shadowy footsteps, preparing myself for the day when I have kids of my own.

Music That Carries

Just a small list of some of the songs that have carried me through many insomniac nights. You'll notice most of them are sad--for some reason when I'm sad I don't want to listen to upbeat music or dance tunes. I want Cat Stevens and Chely Wright. Gary Jules, The Fray, Billy Joel. I want acoustic guitar and melodies that will get stuck in my head for days. I want music to give words to the emotions and speak for my soul.

1) Lullaby (Goodnight My Angel)--Billy Joel

He wrote this song for his daughter after his dad died. It is part comforting reassurance and part heartache and love


2) If You Could Read My Mind--Gordon Lightfoot

This song is so beautifully worded, it is heartbreaking

3) Somebody That I Used to Know--Walk Off The Earth (Cover of Gotye)

AMAZING. Period. My favorite lines run: 
"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
like resignation to the end, always the end" 

Sums up all of my "funks" and all the times I needed to snap out of it and focus again on the blessings

4) The Raincoat Song and 
5) Red Right Ankle--both by The Decemberists

The Decemberists are incredible--their lead singer and songwriter has  a creative writing major degree, same as me =) 

6) You've Got A Friend--James Taylor or Carole King

This is my parent's song, and every time I hear it I get homesick 


7) Mad World--Gary Jules

I learned this one on the piano. I love it when a student will walk by and sing along

8) Seven Bridges Road--The Eagles

Give me acapella harmony ANY DAY--in my opinion their best song, next to Desperado and (of course) Hotel California

9) Homeward Bound--Simon and Garfunkel 

10) Iron--Woodkid

This one is a little different. I recommend you watch the music video and look up the lyrics, as the singer has a pretty heavy accent. 

11) Rocks and Water--The Weepies

There is a story in this song that changes every time you listen to it

12) California Dreamin--The Mamas and The Papas

This song makes me think of my high school friends and how we would turn up old radio songs, roll down the windows, and sing them at the top of our lungs

13) Happiness--The Fray 

The never-ending search to define that word...

14) One More Time With Feeling--Regina Spektor

15) Pumped Up Kicks--Foster the People

Ok, so if you listen to the lyrics, it's pretty messed up. But if you just let it wash over you, it's pretty soothing

16) Pretty Melody--Butch Walker

LOVE THIS SONG--and always a good one to end on 

*Picture by Google* 

Pieces Into Peace

Life is a far cry from where it was in 2009, when I wanted to die,

or 2010, when winter felt eternal,

or 2011, which blurs together now in baby steps of progress.

These years show up grainy in my mind,

silt clay running through my fingers,

trying to take shape.

The harder I press, the more fiercely it pricks at me

chafing my palms raw with each turning of the wheel,

promising shape and depth and purpose someday,

while the slightest chip, the faintest blow,

sends it wobbling, crashing, collapsing down.

I spin the wheel again--

plunge in and press, smoothing out edges, demanding

control of where the pieces lie.

Someday, my colors might come in again.

Someday, the fires of redemption might save me,

burn this darkness and these deeds from my soul.

Someday, I might turn the pieces into peace.

I'm still waiting to be whole Lord--

still hoping for your grace.

If not to me, give it to the three

still waiting at the wheel.

...and the days churn on.

Choose

More and more urgently this semester is forcing me to make a choice.

Each of my four classes assigns about two-three hours of homework minimum including analysis readings, textbook chapters, online labs or other media and about half a dozen books ranging from fascinating to obnoxiously dry and boring. Each professor believes that their workload is manageable if students would only get off Facebook and apply themselves, but I take one look around campus and see black bruises under hunted eyes and a permanent waiting line behind the coffee station in the Caf, hard evidence of battles lost last night.

I see students taking micro-naps in various states of repose during class or in the Quad, heads lolling to the side as though all the muscles in their necks had snapped at once, snoring quietly as they take a ten-minute fall from reality. I've been there myself--suddenly waking in the middle of a lecture with my face pressed into the print of some dusty tomb, wondering how long I was out and how many people noticed. These kinds of naps don't come with dreams, those blissful neuron-patterns that make sleep a secret treasure, the kind you want to clutch in your hands and peek at from time to time with gleaming eyes. Micro-naps are dark, empty, solid. They are blanks in your memory that can't be filled with anything that makes sense. They are one brief, disorienting void that does more to weaken the mind than strengthen it as only that elusive myth, a full night's sleep, can.

Everywhere the air is punctuated by coughing, wheezing, choking, sniffing, gasping--desperate noises from a desperate population who have to make The Choice and have ended up with Strepp, with colds, with flus and bronchitis.

On one hand, I could dedicate to every class the time it deserves to truly read, comprehend, analyze, notate, study, write, dissect, and produce a valuable educational experience. Taking into account the myriad of other obligations I cannot ignore:
--the job which pays the bills so I can keep living here and attending this school
--the internship which completes my minor and allows me to graduate on time with real-life experience
--the independent study in the psychology lab for credit, experience, and a contribution to the rest of my life and career in psychology fields
--the Food Bank program which provides service hours for my scholarship and a purpose for my life
--commitments to friends, family, housemates, and husband

...when the day has ended and I've put as much as I can into all of these things I would need twelve extra hours each day to give to my classes. More often than not I carve out these hours from the middle of the night when most of Idaho is sleeping, sacrificing my health, my ability to function normally, and in the worst of cases, a little bit of my sanity to get my homework finished on time. Twice this month I pulled all-nighters so that I could catch up on class-work, staying up a record 42 hours in one case and only giving in to sleep when I had started to hear and see things that weren't there.

On the other hand, I could get the eight hours of sleep doctors say my generation needs. I could feed myself more regularly than a random meal in-between commitments. I could stress less and do yoga and have a social life and occasionally do the things I've been burning to do for months: read a book for fun, ride my bike out to Karcher road, visit family more, write more. But in the meantime, classes would get neglected, grades would rapidly fall, graduation would slip away and my future would sprawl out unfocused, unplanned, terrifying.

This is The Choice that, more this semester than at any time in my educational history, faces me and the majority of people I see on campus each day. It is frustrating and it is hopeless to find a foothold in either direction, because eventually the flu is gonna hit you or an unexpected assignment will throw you and everything will shake loose again.

Perhaps I'm being dramatic. I do know that more than anything I am blessed to be going to a good school, living in a nice neighborhood, and presented with so many opportunities I'd never have anywhere else. I'm under no delusions that my situation even comes close to someone starving in the street or living under a tyrannical regime or fighting in a war. I know there is a lot of good here, but damnit, I'm tired. We're all tired. And sometimes it feels good to produce something, anything, to voice that frustration before I resign myself back to the Choosing.

To all students out there--hang in there. Look ahead to the next break, or next term, or next year, or next graduation, and give it all you got. I hear the view is better on the other side.