"Robyn you baffle me"
Somehow I was not surprised. I'd gone into this "session" with the full intent of crossing my arms protectively around my heart and letting the man across from me ask the questions while I gave short answers which revealed nothing. I would be stone.
So much for that plan.
"Most people come into this place because someone else makes them. Most people don't want to see their problems and try to solve them. Most people, in fact, resent the very idea of counseling."
I flinched at the word. I couldn't help it. Counseling implies broken. Counseling implies troubled. I was neither. Or maybe I was both. I preferred the word survivor. I was still here, wasn't I? I hadn't taken the pain killers. I hadn't given up. Not yet anyway.
"You are not most people."
That got my attention. Wasn't I? I was just as hesitant about "getting help" as anyone else would be. I hadn't expected that I'd be sitting here facing this same man for over an hour and a half, words tumbling fast and measured and sometimes torn from me by sobs I could not control. He had handed me a tissue box with gentle concern and gone back to his seat opposite me, contemplating me like a bird contemplates something strange in the grass. Head cocked to the side, he listened and wrote and listened some more, sometimes interjecting with a question but never interrupting the flow of my story. I was surprised that so much time had passed and I still had more to say. I guess I had never told anyone the full details cover to cover before. It was my story. It was our story. And it was painful.
"Robyn, I want to help you." Sure you'll help me. I pictured prescriptions for strange pills. Referrals to psychiatrists in long coats who stood around and shook their heads at me, declaring me "incurable." Or even a round of flashcards where the "patient" stares at ink blobs for an hour wondering if this is all their life is worth. A bunch of half-formed splats on a note card. A series of accidents. Nonsense. It was all nonsense. Making something of nothing.
"You are obviously a writer. A story teller. Well, we are going to rewrite your story."
I thought about this. What did that mean? Here I had spilled my mistakes into his hands, laid out every doubt and fear and painful moment in a row like children lay out rails for a toy train to chug around. The perfect set-up for a train wreck. Only the wreck had already happened, and I was here to try to put it back on the rails.
I have written this particular story a thousand times in my head since last June, when it all started. Sometimes it was a drama, a soap opera where each of the actors cried a lot and seemed to take several episodes to get anywhere. Sometimes it was an action piece, or a love story, or a comedy. Sometimes it was even a fairy tale, complete with the words "happily ever after" inscribed in gold on the back cover. But most often, it was simply a tragedy. And that's where it stopped. That's why I was here. No matter how I looked at it, the past year of my life had been one big loss. Loss of family, loss of control, loss of self. And now loss of the only person who had come to know me better than I knew myself. The only person to say she truly hated me.
But to rewrite my story. This was something else again. How does one begin to rewrite themselves? Is that even possible? Was that saying I would ignore what I did? Forget my guilt and cast myself as a hero? Impossible. I couldn't do that. In at least one way, I was the villain in my own play, in turns ruining and trying to UN-ruin the lives of those around me. I couldn't change that. I couldn't re-script it. It had already happened.
But maybe my counselor meant something else. Maybe he was referring to the future. Could I change the future? Hadn't that been my goal for the last four months? Or was I still stuck in the past, just like all of us? Was I only fooling myself when I said that I had gotten better, had stopped my old habits? Suddenly I wasn't sure.
I hope to God that you never know what it feels like to want to die. To know that your actions may have helped cause someone else to want to die. I had contemplated suicide, helped cause someone else to contemplate it, and talked another person out of it; all in a matter of weeks. I told them that life was worth living, even though I wasn't so sure myself. I was driven to undo the damage I had helped to inflict, and in the process I forged a deep connection with a woman that until January, I hardly knew.
This young woman and I had a strange understanding. Over weeks of e-mails, messages, and visits, we got to know each other. I realized the extent of my influence on her life and tried to reverse it, to smooth out the bumps and return her to the simple road she once traveled down. Only it wasn't so simple to begin with, and the scars of past misunderstandings cast a shadow over everything. Depression was common. Mood swings were common. One week she was as serene as a lake; still as glass. She told me she loved me as a sister, and she forgave me, and that things were getting better. The next week she was a raging swollen tide, shattering in on itself and reminding me of my part in her pain. She shouted her rage, her hatred for me, and the hopelessness of her life.
I could only tread water in this host of intense emotions, neither drowning nor making any progress to land and to normalcy. But what was normalcy anymore? Did it even exist? I didn't realize that I was so invested, so convinced that if I wasn't able to help her than I was a failure. In the end she shut me out entirely, choosing to keep the hate and discard the friendship.
Can this be rewritten? I don't think so. I am not the author of her life, and as much as I would like to say that I never did anything wrong in trying to help her, I know that is a lie. I know sometimes I made it worse. And maybe it wasn't intentional, but in this life, that hardly matters.
So what CAN be rewritten? Not the past, because it is already done. And not the future, because it is full of uncertainty and pain. But maybe the present. Maybe I can dedicate myself to this moment, and this day, to not hurting anyone anymore.
I'm sorry for the changes I made, and the person I became in the process. I'm auditioning for a new part now, and I hope it makes a difference.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sistine Casserole
Here is the revised draft of another workshop writing piece. Our keyword was "disgust," and of course my subconscious picks Rome, city of my dreams, as the topic. I have an odd imagination.
Most people, I would imagine, return from a trip to Rome full of stories of inspirational pilgrimage, cheeses and wines, or swapping tales of how they spotted the Pope’s bald head and it changed their lives forever. For me, the thing I remember most about being inside the Vatican is indigestion. It was only months later, when looking back through photographs and videos on my digital camera, that I could recall anything else.
I didn’t go to Rome to find God, I had already found Him. I didn’t go for the food (although that was certainly a plus) or for the fashion or the shopping. As a student my passions were less glitter and more grit. I was in love with the heart of Italy. The people, the history, the art and the works of civilizations past that lived and bled and died there. It was a school trip that I had helped plan together with two of my friends and our history teacher my Junior year of high school, and it was something I had sweated a year and half at a small Italian restaurant for. Working regular twelve hour shifts crammed with noodles and screaming children and spills, I was no stranger to discomfort. But perhaps I had hoped that I could avoid it in any measure while in Europe. I should have known better.
Pictures remind me it was a sweltering June day, and as I sat in the shade of the massive semicircular colonnade I wished I had thought to pack lighter clothes. I remember pigeons flapping above my tour group’s heads, their wings throwing feathery shadows across the cobblestones and startling tourists into craning their heads up towards the blue heavens, searching for angels. I remember the obelisk towering in the heart of St. Peter’s square, and having just read Dan Brown’s latest novel, wondering if a cardinal really was murdered there. I imagined hallelujah choruses breaking out and a lion cub being held high on Pride Rock every time a cloud shifted and a shaft of sunlight poured forth onto the granite floor. I remember wondering whether it was sacrilegious to compare the voice of James Earl Jones to God, especially since the role of Darth Vader seemed paramount to evil, and surely God was not inclined to Death Stars and light-sabers.
Our guide interrupted these thoughts with his late arrival, and while apologizing in both Italian and English he passed out our “whispers;” little walkie-talkies through which he could speak to us quietly without disrupting the serene atmosphere of the Holy See. For some reason I had hoped that we might march straight up the white marble steps, past the Swiss guards in their silly striped pantaloons, and enter the front doors of the Vatican under the carved images of the angels handing St. Peter the keys to paradise.
Instead we were led into a yawning cave-like opening in the shadows topped with the image of the Pope’s seal, as though each entrance into the museum was granted individual permission by the Pope himself. This was probably meant to make us feel a little more human, a little more special upon our arrival to one of the most sacred church headquarters in the world. It was a nice thought, but as with any tourist enterprise, we would ultimately be nothing more than numbers to Vatican City. There was a blur of bag checking, ticket purchasing, and photo snapping around a replication of the famous Laocoon statue, immediately recognizable because of the leaves glued over the private parts of Laocoon and his two sons. The real statue, uncensored and baring all in cold marble, resided within Vatican City’s vast network of gardens and artifacts, far out of sight of the disapproving public eye.
The excitement crackling in the air began to rapidly fizzle out as we approached our first destination: the cafeteria. I had become spoiled by what I’d seen of Italy so far, and half expected a grand piazza framed with marble cherubs, frescoes, and priceless artwork. In actuality the cafeteria was disappointingly average. Whitewashed walls, tile floor, rows upon rows of fold-out tables crammed ceiling high with what appeared to be mostly Americans, judging by the khaki and bucket hats. We shoved our way like bellowing livestock to the trough, in a line that seemed thousands long. Each person was granted only a minute to choose a tray and its contents before being spewed back into the general cog-work of noisy tourists.
From afar I scanned the food and selected with my eyes a golden crusted substance that looked like chicken pot pie, a can of peach soda and a chocolate dessert, the name of which didn’t matter as long as it included chocolate. When my turn came I was secure in my choices, but almost immediately things took a turn for the worst. The cafeteria woman before me was a mammoth, unmovable mountain of hairnet and attitude, and I could have sworn I saw her smile as she transferred a huge quivering mass of orange mess to my plate, neither chicken nor jello but somewhere suspiciously in between. This was not the golden crusted bliss I had seen twenty yards back, and I opened my mouth to protest. Her eyes dared me to utter a word, but with the weight of a hundred starving people behind me I knew it was worthless to try. I swallowed hard and moved forward to the desserts, where all things chocolate had been stripped from the shelves already. I had approximately half a second to grab something at random before being elbowed out of the line, and I settled into one of the only open seats left, aware of the many pairs of jealous eyes behind me who wouldn’t have a place to sit.
The mystery gelatinous casserole turned out to be made mainly of noodles, cheese, and grease. I looked around me to see if anyone else was losing their appetite, but my ravenous table-mates were having no trouble in packing away whatever was on their plates. Closing my eyes, I choked it down and followed it with the soda that was ninety nine percent syrup and one percent peach, then said a prayer for my stomach as I eyed the dessert. But the powers above seemed to be preoccupied with the more prestigious parts of the Vatican, leaving the cafeteria dwellers to suffer alone. The dessert in question looked, smelled, and tasted exactly how I would imagine caramelized play-dough would, and having received no divine intervention to the contrary, I erroneously took that as a sign that it was edible.
The single photograph I have of our tour guide that day reminds me that the man was indeed an average Italian, and to all appearances at least human. But that’s not the way I remembered it that day. His dry, monotonous tone managed to put our entire group into extended comas, drool slipping out of the sides of our mouths as he explained in great detail 15th century tapestries that smelled of dust and mold. He also had the uncanny knack of finding the absolute hottest, most humid places to stop the group and point out this or that trivial detail for fifteen minutes at a time. We could actually FEEL our sweat evaporating into the air. Worse, he had stated firmly that he would be taking no questions until the end of the tour, and so while I could wave my arm in the air and telepathically demand of him where the bathroom was with all the urgency of a dying woman, he would only forge ahead with his mile-long monologue, his eyes carefully averted from mine.
The mystery casserole bumped into the play-dough and the two went at it while I clutched my stomach and silently begged for deliverance, glaring at the cloudless sky which refused to promise rain or an early Christmas snow. Finally, our guide led us into the shade of the sculpture galleries, traveling through centuries of past discoveries and talking right through centuries of future ones as well while other luckier tour groups scurried past us, shooting sympathetic glances in our direction. I watched them go and wished I could follow, hopefully to a world of pleasant cafeteria women and air conditioning and indoor plumbing.
And then came the staircases. Endless staircases winding higher and higher until I thought we would surely arrive at St. Peter’s gates prematurely. I had the feeling that we could collapse from heat stroke right there on the steps, and scores of tourists would walk over us, our guide still preaching to our deaf ears about the fascinating applications of lime and intonaco. My nausea increased the higher I climbed, and my head began to pound from the heat and buzz of the “whisper.” I cursed the casserole with a vengeance, apologizing to the man upstairs in the same breath. As we mounted yet another set of staircases I turned down the volume on my walkie-talkie until I could hear only the blood pounding in my ears. The peach soda had now joined the fray and the brawl inside me had escalated into all-out warfare. I couldn’t go on like this. I hoped that there were tums in paradise.
Cappella Sistina…mumble mumble…What was that? I turned up my “whisper” but heard only static. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed above me to a “NO ELECTRONICS” sign. We were there. We had finally arrived at Michelangelo’s most famous stomping grounds. Two large Roman security guards on either side of the door watched as we turned off phones and cameras, repeating over and over the only two rules of the Sistine Chapel: “Silencio. No photos por favor. Silencio.” As we stepped into the dimly lit room my misery began to melt away. For forty minutes I simply stood and stared, my neck craning upwards to the world’s largest canvas, following every line and stroke and curve and feeling smaller by the minute. Drinking in the beauty of the artwork and the stories it told, I discovered my first slice of peace all day. The contents of my stomach began to settle down at last, and in a moment of sudden charity I forgave our guide for the purgatory he dragged us through, for without him we would never have glimpsed this heaven.
I suspected one or two of the individuals in that crowded room were praying, although I never turned my head to look. The silence was overwhelming. I wanted to stretch out on the ground and watch through the night, the way people lay in a grassy field to count the stars. I tried to picture the human hands that had mixed the rich colors, laid the wet plaster, and with infinite patience brought to life saints and teachers, angels and devils, children and cherubs and flowing robes in a dozen shades. I wondered how Michelangelo could possibly have resented this commission and not taken more pride in what he accomplished. Although his sections are considered the masterpiece—the ceiling and the far wall depicting the Last Judgment—the entire Chapel is covered wall to wall with other painter’s works; students and aspiring artists of the time. There was so much to take in it was impossible to focus my eyes on any one spot for too long. Later while sifting through photographs my parents would ask me what color the floor was. I still don’t know.
Too soon we were shooed down our last stairwell and back into reality. Dusk was fast approaching and the last tourists of the day trickling into the Square. I looked to the sky and was wondering how long it would take to paint a canvas of that size when one American dressed in her khaki best waved a few of us over. She looked hot and uncomfortable in her heavy clothes, but her excitement was undeniable. “Tell me, what was it like inside? Is it beautiful?” We all nodded, searching for the words to express what we felt inside.
“It’s perfect,” was all our group could manage. As we boarded the bus back to our hotel it struck me that I probably should have warned her about the pasta. Ah well, she would learn.
Most people, I would imagine, return from a trip to Rome full of stories of inspirational pilgrimage, cheeses and wines, or swapping tales of how they spotted the Pope’s bald head and it changed their lives forever. For me, the thing I remember most about being inside the Vatican is indigestion. It was only months later, when looking back through photographs and videos on my digital camera, that I could recall anything else.
I didn’t go to Rome to find God, I had already found Him. I didn’t go for the food (although that was certainly a plus) or for the fashion or the shopping. As a student my passions were less glitter and more grit. I was in love with the heart of Italy. The people, the history, the art and the works of civilizations past that lived and bled and died there. It was a school trip that I had helped plan together with two of my friends and our history teacher my Junior year of high school, and it was something I had sweated a year and half at a small Italian restaurant for. Working regular twelve hour shifts crammed with noodles and screaming children and spills, I was no stranger to discomfort. But perhaps I had hoped that I could avoid it in any measure while in Europe. I should have known better.
Pictures remind me it was a sweltering June day, and as I sat in the shade of the massive semicircular colonnade I wished I had thought to pack lighter clothes. I remember pigeons flapping above my tour group’s heads, their wings throwing feathery shadows across the cobblestones and startling tourists into craning their heads up towards the blue heavens, searching for angels. I remember the obelisk towering in the heart of St. Peter’s square, and having just read Dan Brown’s latest novel, wondering if a cardinal really was murdered there. I imagined hallelujah choruses breaking out and a lion cub being held high on Pride Rock every time a cloud shifted and a shaft of sunlight poured forth onto the granite floor. I remember wondering whether it was sacrilegious to compare the voice of James Earl Jones to God, especially since the role of Darth Vader seemed paramount to evil, and surely God was not inclined to Death Stars and light-sabers.
Our guide interrupted these thoughts with his late arrival, and while apologizing in both Italian and English he passed out our “whispers;” little walkie-talkies through which he could speak to us quietly without disrupting the serene atmosphere of the Holy See. For some reason I had hoped that we might march straight up the white marble steps, past the Swiss guards in their silly striped pantaloons, and enter the front doors of the Vatican under the carved images of the angels handing St. Peter the keys to paradise.
Instead we were led into a yawning cave-like opening in the shadows topped with the image of the Pope’s seal, as though each entrance into the museum was granted individual permission by the Pope himself. This was probably meant to make us feel a little more human, a little more special upon our arrival to one of the most sacred church headquarters in the world. It was a nice thought, but as with any tourist enterprise, we would ultimately be nothing more than numbers to Vatican City. There was a blur of bag checking, ticket purchasing, and photo snapping around a replication of the famous Laocoon statue, immediately recognizable because of the leaves glued over the private parts of Laocoon and his two sons. The real statue, uncensored and baring all in cold marble, resided within Vatican City’s vast network of gardens and artifacts, far out of sight of the disapproving public eye.
The excitement crackling in the air began to rapidly fizzle out as we approached our first destination: the cafeteria. I had become spoiled by what I’d seen of Italy so far, and half expected a grand piazza framed with marble cherubs, frescoes, and priceless artwork. In actuality the cafeteria was disappointingly average. Whitewashed walls, tile floor, rows upon rows of fold-out tables crammed ceiling high with what appeared to be mostly Americans, judging by the khaki and bucket hats. We shoved our way like bellowing livestock to the trough, in a line that seemed thousands long. Each person was granted only a minute to choose a tray and its contents before being spewed back into the general cog-work of noisy tourists.
From afar I scanned the food and selected with my eyes a golden crusted substance that looked like chicken pot pie, a can of peach soda and a chocolate dessert, the name of which didn’t matter as long as it included chocolate. When my turn came I was secure in my choices, but almost immediately things took a turn for the worst. The cafeteria woman before me was a mammoth, unmovable mountain of hairnet and attitude, and I could have sworn I saw her smile as she transferred a huge quivering mass of orange mess to my plate, neither chicken nor jello but somewhere suspiciously in between. This was not the golden crusted bliss I had seen twenty yards back, and I opened my mouth to protest. Her eyes dared me to utter a word, but with the weight of a hundred starving people behind me I knew it was worthless to try. I swallowed hard and moved forward to the desserts, where all things chocolate had been stripped from the shelves already. I had approximately half a second to grab something at random before being elbowed out of the line, and I settled into one of the only open seats left, aware of the many pairs of jealous eyes behind me who wouldn’t have a place to sit.
The mystery gelatinous casserole turned out to be made mainly of noodles, cheese, and grease. I looked around me to see if anyone else was losing their appetite, but my ravenous table-mates were having no trouble in packing away whatever was on their plates. Closing my eyes, I choked it down and followed it with the soda that was ninety nine percent syrup and one percent peach, then said a prayer for my stomach as I eyed the dessert. But the powers above seemed to be preoccupied with the more prestigious parts of the Vatican, leaving the cafeteria dwellers to suffer alone. The dessert in question looked, smelled, and tasted exactly how I would imagine caramelized play-dough would, and having received no divine intervention to the contrary, I erroneously took that as a sign that it was edible.
The single photograph I have of our tour guide that day reminds me that the man was indeed an average Italian, and to all appearances at least human. But that’s not the way I remembered it that day. His dry, monotonous tone managed to put our entire group into extended comas, drool slipping out of the sides of our mouths as he explained in great detail 15th century tapestries that smelled of dust and mold. He also had the uncanny knack of finding the absolute hottest, most humid places to stop the group and point out this or that trivial detail for fifteen minutes at a time. We could actually FEEL our sweat evaporating into the air. Worse, he had stated firmly that he would be taking no questions until the end of the tour, and so while I could wave my arm in the air and telepathically demand of him where the bathroom was with all the urgency of a dying woman, he would only forge ahead with his mile-long monologue, his eyes carefully averted from mine.
The mystery casserole bumped into the play-dough and the two went at it while I clutched my stomach and silently begged for deliverance, glaring at the cloudless sky which refused to promise rain or an early Christmas snow. Finally, our guide led us into the shade of the sculpture galleries, traveling through centuries of past discoveries and talking right through centuries of future ones as well while other luckier tour groups scurried past us, shooting sympathetic glances in our direction. I watched them go and wished I could follow, hopefully to a world of pleasant cafeteria women and air conditioning and indoor plumbing.
And then came the staircases. Endless staircases winding higher and higher until I thought we would surely arrive at St. Peter’s gates prematurely. I had the feeling that we could collapse from heat stroke right there on the steps, and scores of tourists would walk over us, our guide still preaching to our deaf ears about the fascinating applications of lime and intonaco. My nausea increased the higher I climbed, and my head began to pound from the heat and buzz of the “whisper.” I cursed the casserole with a vengeance, apologizing to the man upstairs in the same breath. As we mounted yet another set of staircases I turned down the volume on my walkie-talkie until I could hear only the blood pounding in my ears. The peach soda had now joined the fray and the brawl inside me had escalated into all-out warfare. I couldn’t go on like this. I hoped that there were tums in paradise.
Cappella Sistina…mumble mumble…What was that? I turned up my “whisper” but heard only static. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed above me to a “NO ELECTRONICS” sign. We were there. We had finally arrived at Michelangelo’s most famous stomping grounds. Two large Roman security guards on either side of the door watched as we turned off phones and cameras, repeating over and over the only two rules of the Sistine Chapel: “Silencio. No photos por favor. Silencio.” As we stepped into the dimly lit room my misery began to melt away. For forty minutes I simply stood and stared, my neck craning upwards to the world’s largest canvas, following every line and stroke and curve and feeling smaller by the minute. Drinking in the beauty of the artwork and the stories it told, I discovered my first slice of peace all day. The contents of my stomach began to settle down at last, and in a moment of sudden charity I forgave our guide for the purgatory he dragged us through, for without him we would never have glimpsed this heaven.
I suspected one or two of the individuals in that crowded room were praying, although I never turned my head to look. The silence was overwhelming. I wanted to stretch out on the ground and watch through the night, the way people lay in a grassy field to count the stars. I tried to picture the human hands that had mixed the rich colors, laid the wet plaster, and with infinite patience brought to life saints and teachers, angels and devils, children and cherubs and flowing robes in a dozen shades. I wondered how Michelangelo could possibly have resented this commission and not taken more pride in what he accomplished. Although his sections are considered the masterpiece—the ceiling and the far wall depicting the Last Judgment—the entire Chapel is covered wall to wall with other painter’s works; students and aspiring artists of the time. There was so much to take in it was impossible to focus my eyes on any one spot for too long. Later while sifting through photographs my parents would ask me what color the floor was. I still don’t know.
Too soon we were shooed down our last stairwell and back into reality. Dusk was fast approaching and the last tourists of the day trickling into the Square. I looked to the sky and was wondering how long it would take to paint a canvas of that size when one American dressed in her khaki best waved a few of us over. She looked hot and uncomfortable in her heavy clothes, but her excitement was undeniable. “Tell me, what was it like inside? Is it beautiful?” We all nodded, searching for the words to express what we felt inside.
“It’s perfect,” was all our group could manage. As we boarded the bus back to our hotel it struck me that I probably should have warned her about the pasta. Ah well, she would learn.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Nuclear Googling- Those Silly Interwebs
So sometimes I am pretty sure that I am not paying to go to school here to have teachers tell me something about life and making a place in society...sometimes I'm pretty sure their goal is just to scare the hell out of all of us. This week I learned two very scary facts:
Numero Uno-the Cuban Missile Crisis, believed to be the climax of the culmination of the Cold War, came thiiiiiiis close to destroying everything on the planet. In fact, (and our professor says this with a chuckle) a single Trident Submarine carries weapons with 24 megatons of firepower, enough to destroy every major city in the northern hemisphere, and there are eighteen of these owned by the US floating around somewhere. Our professor then whipped out a paper covered with little dots. A single dot, he told us nonchalantly, was the equivalent of all of the explosive power detonated during WW II combined. The paper represents how much nuclear power is estimated to exist twenty years ago, and there are 6,000 dots on it. SIX THOUSAND. And that was in the eighties! There are probably more now.
Numero Dos-in our Journalism class Professor Minskoff's favorite new catch phrase is "In today's society, we don't find the news, the news FINDS US." We watched a short documentary which pointed out that if Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest, get this, in the ENTIRE WORLD. There were millions of facts I'd rather not scare you with, but suffice it to say that the internet is way more enormous than any of us realize.
I can't say much about the first discovery except that I hope to God Dr. Strangelove is going to stay OUT of my dreams tonight with talk of mine shafts and "breeding methods" and world destruction. But the second one concerns me just as equally. My teacher made it sound like conspirators around the world were wringing their hands and plotting the demise of everyone on the internet, and stressed the importance of security measures on our personal usage of the web. (But really, after discovering that one person with a few loose marbles and nothing to lose could blow us all to pieces, do I really care what people are saying about me in Guam?)
I was curious. So I Googled myself. (NO, that is NOT what she said). I found that a complete stranger could type my name into an internet search engine and find these (shocking!) things about me:
-They could see a letter to the editor I wrote in eleventh grade to my high school newspaper in the school online archive. (It is not that impressive. Don't go and find it.) From this they could deduce that I was once in a high school that had a newspaper, and I can quote some dude named Finley Peter Dunne.
-They can see a few postings I made on friend's videos or blogs earlier in the year, and from this deduce that I do in fact have friends. Or at least I do on the internet.
-They could see a message of gratitude I wrote to the Southern Cross organization after my family took a humanitarian trip to Peru in 2007, and learn that I have at least one brother, a love for Peru and its people particularly the orphanage called El Girasol (The Sunflower), and read about an experience deeply personal to me which opened my eyes to third world conditions. Now they know both I am interested in international affairs and that I cry a lot.
-They could read excerpts from my sister-in-law's blog posts from two years ago and discover that I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite park with my father and my brother that summer. There are even pictures of us victoriously pumping our arms on the summit. So now they know I have the capability to walk and pump my arms in the air.
-They can see references and links to THIS blog, and read all of the information therein. This would let them know several important and potentially harmful facts, but chief among them are these:
I really do cry a LOT (what's with this girl?)
I like jazz music
I run into scary homeless men a lot
I write posts that are waaaaaaayyy too long (thus the title "rambling")
I like to use quotes and italics
The taco bell lady knows my order by heart
-They can find an online posting of the Dean's List at the College of Idaho and learn that my name is spelled with two "Y"s and not "I"s.
-Finally, they can see a single profile picture of me and a few categories I am a fan of on Facebook, which include:
"When I was your age, we had to blow on the video games to make them work."
"I redo high fives if they weren't good enough the first time"
"God"
"Wishing I could sometimes punch someone in the face with no consequences"
"College students need more naps than Pre-Schoolers"
"Mom mom mom mom mom mommy mom mom mommy WHAT? ...hi"
There you have it. Terrorists around the world now know that I, Robyn Argyle (spelled with Y's and not I's) am a student who cries, gets abused by the homeless, does in fact have the ability to read and write AND pump my arms in the air, went to a school with a newspaper, am seriously OLD (blowing on video games??? what is that??), am a perfectionist in the "high five" department, is a fan of God, has violent tendencies (punching people in the face with no consequences?? Think about this folks. You know you would like to too), likes Family Guy, and needs lots of naps.
With this information at their fingertips, what's stopping them from...adding me as a friend on facebook? Reading my blog? Pumping THEIR arms in the air? Watching Family Guy (new season on HULU people!!!!)? Abusing the homeless as revenge? (okay I jest on that) Perfecting their own high fives? PUSHING A BUTTON AND SENDING A NUCLEAR WARHEAD CAREENING TOWARDS CALDWELL???
Ah these silly interwebs. Personally I think people need to just calm down and enjoy the internet for its ability to meet new friends, learn new information, and keep up with the world in general. We could all be dead tomorrow anyway (enter Dr. Strangelove snickering in the background) so there is no need to waste what time we have left wondering what the Australians think of our Finley Peter Dunne quotes. (Who is that anyway?)
Numero Uno-the Cuban Missile Crisis, believed to be the climax of the culmination of the Cold War, came thiiiiiiis close to destroying everything on the planet. In fact, (and our professor says this with a chuckle) a single Trident Submarine carries weapons with 24 megatons of firepower, enough to destroy every major city in the northern hemisphere, and there are eighteen of these owned by the US floating around somewhere. Our professor then whipped out a paper covered with little dots. A single dot, he told us nonchalantly, was the equivalent of all of the explosive power detonated during WW II combined. The paper represents how much nuclear power is estimated to exist twenty years ago, and there are 6,000 dots on it. SIX THOUSAND. And that was in the eighties! There are probably more now.
Numero Dos-in our Journalism class Professor Minskoff's favorite new catch phrase is "In today's society, we don't find the news, the news FINDS US." We watched a short documentary which pointed out that if Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest, get this, in the ENTIRE WORLD. There were millions of facts I'd rather not scare you with, but suffice it to say that the internet is way more enormous than any of us realize.
I can't say much about the first discovery except that I hope to God Dr. Strangelove is going to stay OUT of my dreams tonight with talk of mine shafts and "breeding methods" and world destruction. But the second one concerns me just as equally. My teacher made it sound like conspirators around the world were wringing their hands and plotting the demise of everyone on the internet, and stressed the importance of security measures on our personal usage of the web. (But really, after discovering that one person with a few loose marbles and nothing to lose could blow us all to pieces, do I really care what people are saying about me in Guam?)
I was curious. So I Googled myself. (NO, that is NOT what she said). I found that a complete stranger could type my name into an internet search engine and find these (shocking!) things about me:
-They could see a letter to the editor I wrote in eleventh grade to my high school newspaper in the school online archive. (It is not that impressive. Don't go and find it.) From this they could deduce that I was once in a high school that had a newspaper, and I can quote some dude named Finley Peter Dunne.
-They can see a few postings I made on friend's videos or blogs earlier in the year, and from this deduce that I do in fact have friends. Or at least I do on the internet.
-They could see a message of gratitude I wrote to the Southern Cross organization after my family took a humanitarian trip to Peru in 2007, and learn that I have at least one brother, a love for Peru and its people particularly the orphanage called El Girasol (The Sunflower), and read about an experience deeply personal to me which opened my eyes to third world conditions. Now they know both I am interested in international affairs and that I cry a lot.
-They could read excerpts from my sister-in-law's blog posts from two years ago and discover that I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite park with my father and my brother that summer. There are even pictures of us victoriously pumping our arms on the summit. So now they know I have the capability to walk and pump my arms in the air.
-They can see references and links to THIS blog, and read all of the information therein. This would let them know several important and potentially harmful facts, but chief among them are these:
I really do cry a LOT (what's with this girl?)
I like jazz music
I run into scary homeless men a lot
I write posts that are waaaaaaayyy too long (thus the title "rambling")
I like to use quotes and italics
The taco bell lady knows my order by heart
-They can find an online posting of the Dean's List at the College of Idaho and learn that my name is spelled with two "Y"s and not "I"s.
-Finally, they can see a single profile picture of me and a few categories I am a fan of on Facebook, which include:
"When I was your age, we had to blow on the video games to make them work."
"I redo high fives if they weren't good enough the first time"
"God"
"Wishing I could sometimes punch someone in the face with no consequences"
"College students need more naps than Pre-Schoolers"
"Mom mom mom mom mom mommy mom mom mommy WHAT? ...hi"
There you have it. Terrorists around the world now know that I, Robyn Argyle (spelled with Y's and not I's) am a student who cries, gets abused by the homeless, does in fact have the ability to read and write AND pump my arms in the air, went to a school with a newspaper, am seriously OLD (blowing on video games??? what is that??), am a perfectionist in the "high five" department, is a fan of God, has violent tendencies (punching people in the face with no consequences?? Think about this folks. You know you would like to too), likes Family Guy, and needs lots of naps.
With this information at their fingertips, what's stopping them from...adding me as a friend on facebook? Reading my blog? Pumping THEIR arms in the air? Watching Family Guy (new season on HULU people!!!!)? Abusing the homeless as revenge? (okay I jest on that) Perfecting their own high fives? PUSHING A BUTTON AND SENDING A NUCLEAR WARHEAD CAREENING TOWARDS CALDWELL???
Ah these silly interwebs. Personally I think people need to just calm down and enjoy the internet for its ability to meet new friends, learn new information, and keep up with the world in general. We could all be dead tomorrow anyway (enter Dr. Strangelove snickering in the background) so there is no need to waste what time we have left wondering what the Australians think of our Finley Peter Dunne quotes. (Who is that anyway?)
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Rice Krispies
This is a portrait piece for my workshop writing class...we were asked to pick someone who has made an impact in our life and "flow write" on them for thirty minutes. It turned into a memoir/tribute/therapy session/something way more personal than I expected. Interesting how we discover who we are when we write about ourselves. *Names have been changed*
She poured out the puffed rice, each grain clinking against the sides of the glass measuring cup as it filled to overflowing, like rain on a tin roof. She leveled it off to a perfectly smooth top with one hand. Must be meticulous in the measurements; the OCD demanded aggravatingly precise standards. The extra rice, the loose drifters of the overflow, must be kept in a separate container entirely. Everything must be kept perfectly in its place. No matter how many extra dishes it created. She handed over the cups and the rest of the rice for me to finish. What was I doing? Melting the marshmallows. There were four different kinds: plain white, rainbow, chocolate, and jumbo. Which bag? Which one? Too many choices. Panic. Close eyes, pick one at random and empty the contents into the pot on the stove top. Ok. Breathe.
Funny how her face reflects peace, I thought, funny how the act of creating something new gives her light. Was she remembering Christmases past? A bigger kitchen maybe, elbow to elbow with her sisters and her mother, before the accident. Before the misunderstandings began. Always the endless misunderstandings. Was that an actual smile? I tried to think the last time I’d seen genuine interest and joy for anything in her expression. I was grasping at straws. No such moment existed in my memory.
What is she doing? She just dumped the extra rice back into the bag? And look at her scoop the rest of the cereal without measuring it first. I saw anxiety etched in her frown, but we both remained silent. Keep stirring. Keep measuring. A pool of pastel cream frothed inside the pot, like a multicolored ocean. I got out two potholders, one checkered sunset orange and the other cornflower blue, and took the handles of the pot. I poured the melted mess over the rice while she stirred, and both of us watched the dry cereal crackle with heat and form bigger and bigger clumps, the marshmallow goo sealing the gaps in between. Head bent over the bowl, she concentrated on the task at hand. Make it even, make it perfect. I took the dishes lying at random around the kitchen and bathed them in suds in the sink, washing quickly and quietly to prepare for the next batch of krispies.
A hard ceramic bowl suddenly slipped from my fingers to splash into the muddied dishwater below, making a loud “thud!” as it hit the bottom of the sink. Who’s there? Like a dreamer rudely awoken, Sheri’s eyes snapped to mine, all tranquility and peace scattering across the floor and fleeing through the open window. It was as if she had forgotten my presence in the room, or in her very life, and I had now very unconsciously reminded her of it. I felt every bit the trespasser. As if I had dropped the bowl on the floor and it had shattered instead. I wished I had. Ceramic could be swept up into neat piles and carried to the dustbin and forgotten. Hearts were different. I couldn’t begin to find her pieces, let alone organize them into little piles. And there wasn’t a dustbin big enough to fit them.
That night, I realize now, I didn’t really know Sheri. Had it really been a month ago that my cell phone had lit up with the words “she tried to hurt herself again. Glass everywhere. What do I do?” The frenzied phone calls, the panic that I was too late. The endless talking and praying for guidance (on my end). The silence (on hers). Question. Pause. Reply. Pause. It was not the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. But I did not know that then.
When she was fourteen years old, tragedy struck Sheri’s family. The lives of her sister in law and two nephews vanished in a matter of seconds, smothered by the impact of cars grinding, metal twisting, and windows bursting on the highway. A funeral service was held, a period of mourning begun and ended some weeks later, and the family moved on. Racing, always racing. Work, school, appointments. Why didn’t they slow down? Life drove away from the accident like a hit-and-run, and Sheri was left standing on that highway road, waiting for closure. Representing the lost. For whatever reason, she was the most affected by what happened. But in a family of twelve it was difficult to be heard, difficult to demand recognition for her pain. So Sheri allowed herself to be swallowed up instead.
In a matter of a few months, she lost her only friend at school, a girl too startled by the changes she saw in Sheri and too frustrated with her inability to communicate that she too drove away. Another casualty of the drive-by friendship. To all outside appearance Sheri was a normal, if somewhat quiet and subdued, teenage student. But there was intense emotion bubbling under the calm surface. None of her teachers gave her comfort. No counselor offered an ear. And so she faded. She graduated Jr. High and then High School, got a part-time job, and devoted hours of her time to books and fantasy and online gaming. She created an imaginary world where she could stand out, and pretend to be something bigger than herself. Most notably, the world she belonged to substituted dragons and horses for automobiles. There are no highways in World of Warcraft. No crosses on the side of the road marking another life lost.
On her twenty-first birthday, someone coaxed Sheri away from the light of her computer monitor and into the black-lights of a local bar. Excitement. Panic. It was there she had her first kiss, and with courage she didn’t know she had (probably helped by the alcohol) she exchanged numbers with a young man she barely knew. Two years later, they got married. I didn’t go to the wedding (I had midterms) but I heard it was beautiful. The flowers were cornflower blue and sunset orange, and the fall day was warm and bright. “It was the sunniest day of my life,” she later told me. I believe her.
But within two months there was trouble. Sheri still rarely communicated, and eventually this drove a gap between herself and her husband. They spoke rarely, laughed even less, and clouds of doubt and divorce began to hover. No way out. There’s no way out. Too much silence. That was the first time she became self-destructive. Her husband painted frightening images of bottles strewn across the floor, Sheri in the bathroom throwing up beer and pain killers. That was also the first time those of us at work could tell how much sleep her husband got by counting the dark rings under his eyes. Two hours last night. Another bad one. I knew him first, and it wasn’t until halfway through the summer before I actually met and began to befriend Sheri, when they were still engaged.
I still don’t know why she chose me. Why I was able to succeed in getting her to open up where countless others failed is a mystery. But sooner than I could have believed possible I became her Dr. Phil, attempting to make sense of her failing marriage, her family’s apathy, past pain, and lack of confidence in herself and her worth. Perhaps it was because I represented stability—a fairly normal family life, faith in God, friends and relationships unfettered by silence. Not so stable now. Perhaps because I didn’t ask anything of her, but only listened. Perhaps it was just because I could make rice krispies. None of us anticipated the changes it would create.
Come Thanksgiving my prayers to God had not been heard. Sheri where are you? Where are you bleeding? Drink some more water. Breathe. She was not getting better. So many questions and images from that night, but chief among them are mirror shards littering the bathroom floor and bouncing light reflections on the walls. Panic. Not perfect. I have to sit down. So tired. I need more sleep. Breathe in. Glass on the floor. Glass is dangerous. Must pick up the pieces. Put them in their place. It struck me that Sheri had not been trying to break the mirror, she had been trying to break what she saw when she looked into it. And in a way, she succeeded.
I remember the moment it hit me, while reading Pat Barker’s WW I novel in my dorm room. I am Dr. Rivers. In the book, Rivers develops shell-shock and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the soldiers he treats, and although he never steps foot on the battlefield he begins to have nightmares just as acutely as any of the veterans. I was developing the very symptoms that I was trying to prevent in Sheri: insomnia, repressed emotion, panic attacks. It got to the point where I was no longer shocked to receive a call at one in the morning—and my trained response simply to grab my coat and keys and go. Her husband and family members were torn; grateful for a person that she could rely on, but worried about the changes they saw in me. Don’t worry. I’m okay. Just let me think. Just let me breathe. Yes I’m getting enough sleep, don’t worry about it.
There was a collective sigh of relief when I went to college, but the physical support I wasn’t able to provide any longer carried over into continuous e-mails back and forth. Sheri and I relied on each other. We were becoming each other. Here, take my hope. Here, take my fears. I didn’t sleep again last night. Me either. Does it ever get better? Gradually her writing grew more positive and rang with hope and promise. I looked in the mirror one day and decided I wasn’t sure who was looking back. I loaded up my textbooks and my new college friends and stepped on the gas, accelerating slowly away from Sheri, but gaining speed the more I was convinced that she was okay. I didn’t see it as a hit and run, but she did. One more person to enter her life too late and exit too soon.
After that night she was placed under a licensed counselor and given constant supervision by family and friends. She still has occasional moments of self-destruction, ripples in a tidal pool of otherwise emotionless living, but they have become fewer and farther in between. Little by little she is finding reasons to talk, reaching for a person that she remembers she was and wishes to be again. Little by little she finds more reasons to smile. For the first time in months, it looks like there might be peace again. The girl in the mirror is not so bad. Not so bad. I can see me again. But that week, peace was not a part of our vocabulary.
Crunch. Crunch. The frozen snow underfoot reminded me of broken glass as I walked to my car, carrying a few squares of rice krispies folded neatly in a paper towel. It’s not glass. It’s snow. Keep walking. It’s ok. Breathe. I shivered and cranked the heat up when the car rumbled to life, glancing back at the porch steps of Sheri’s apartment. The street light above flickered, electricity humming inside. Tires screeched somewhere. But inside, the apartment was silent. I was embarrassed for the tears that had found their way down my face when I hugged her good-bye, herself paralyzed by the sudden emotion and uncertain how to act. It will be okay. Don’t cry. She hugged me harder, and for a brief bizarre moment I recognized that it was her strength holding me up, and our roles reversed for an instant. Am I myself? Or am I you? Who am I?
And then the instant passed.
She poured out the puffed rice, each grain clinking against the sides of the glass measuring cup as it filled to overflowing, like rain on a tin roof. She leveled it off to a perfectly smooth top with one hand. Must be meticulous in the measurements; the OCD demanded aggravatingly precise standards. The extra rice, the loose drifters of the overflow, must be kept in a separate container entirely. Everything must be kept perfectly in its place. No matter how many extra dishes it created. She handed over the cups and the rest of the rice for me to finish. What was I doing? Melting the marshmallows. There were four different kinds: plain white, rainbow, chocolate, and jumbo. Which bag? Which one? Too many choices. Panic. Close eyes, pick one at random and empty the contents into the pot on the stove top. Ok. Breathe.
Funny how her face reflects peace, I thought, funny how the act of creating something new gives her light. Was she remembering Christmases past? A bigger kitchen maybe, elbow to elbow with her sisters and her mother, before the accident. Before the misunderstandings began. Always the endless misunderstandings. Was that an actual smile? I tried to think the last time I’d seen genuine interest and joy for anything in her expression. I was grasping at straws. No such moment existed in my memory.
What is she doing? She just dumped the extra rice back into the bag? And look at her scoop the rest of the cereal without measuring it first. I saw anxiety etched in her frown, but we both remained silent. Keep stirring. Keep measuring. A pool of pastel cream frothed inside the pot, like a multicolored ocean. I got out two potholders, one checkered sunset orange and the other cornflower blue, and took the handles of the pot. I poured the melted mess over the rice while she stirred, and both of us watched the dry cereal crackle with heat and form bigger and bigger clumps, the marshmallow goo sealing the gaps in between. Head bent over the bowl, she concentrated on the task at hand. Make it even, make it perfect. I took the dishes lying at random around the kitchen and bathed them in suds in the sink, washing quickly and quietly to prepare for the next batch of krispies.
A hard ceramic bowl suddenly slipped from my fingers to splash into the muddied dishwater below, making a loud “thud!” as it hit the bottom of the sink. Who’s there? Like a dreamer rudely awoken, Sheri’s eyes snapped to mine, all tranquility and peace scattering across the floor and fleeing through the open window. It was as if she had forgotten my presence in the room, or in her very life, and I had now very unconsciously reminded her of it. I felt every bit the trespasser. As if I had dropped the bowl on the floor and it had shattered instead. I wished I had. Ceramic could be swept up into neat piles and carried to the dustbin and forgotten. Hearts were different. I couldn’t begin to find her pieces, let alone organize them into little piles. And there wasn’t a dustbin big enough to fit them.
That night, I realize now, I didn’t really know Sheri. Had it really been a month ago that my cell phone had lit up with the words “she tried to hurt herself again. Glass everywhere. What do I do?” The frenzied phone calls, the panic that I was too late. The endless talking and praying for guidance (on my end). The silence (on hers). Question. Pause. Reply. Pause. It was not the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. But I did not know that then.
When she was fourteen years old, tragedy struck Sheri’s family. The lives of her sister in law and two nephews vanished in a matter of seconds, smothered by the impact of cars grinding, metal twisting, and windows bursting on the highway. A funeral service was held, a period of mourning begun and ended some weeks later, and the family moved on. Racing, always racing. Work, school, appointments. Why didn’t they slow down? Life drove away from the accident like a hit-and-run, and Sheri was left standing on that highway road, waiting for closure. Representing the lost. For whatever reason, she was the most affected by what happened. But in a family of twelve it was difficult to be heard, difficult to demand recognition for her pain. So Sheri allowed herself to be swallowed up instead.
In a matter of a few months, she lost her only friend at school, a girl too startled by the changes she saw in Sheri and too frustrated with her inability to communicate that she too drove away. Another casualty of the drive-by friendship. To all outside appearance Sheri was a normal, if somewhat quiet and subdued, teenage student. But there was intense emotion bubbling under the calm surface. None of her teachers gave her comfort. No counselor offered an ear. And so she faded. She graduated Jr. High and then High School, got a part-time job, and devoted hours of her time to books and fantasy and online gaming. She created an imaginary world where she could stand out, and pretend to be something bigger than herself. Most notably, the world she belonged to substituted dragons and horses for automobiles. There are no highways in World of Warcraft. No crosses on the side of the road marking another life lost.
On her twenty-first birthday, someone coaxed Sheri away from the light of her computer monitor and into the black-lights of a local bar. Excitement. Panic. It was there she had her first kiss, and with courage she didn’t know she had (probably helped by the alcohol) she exchanged numbers with a young man she barely knew. Two years later, they got married. I didn’t go to the wedding (I had midterms) but I heard it was beautiful. The flowers were cornflower blue and sunset orange, and the fall day was warm and bright. “It was the sunniest day of my life,” she later told me. I believe her.
But within two months there was trouble. Sheri still rarely communicated, and eventually this drove a gap between herself and her husband. They spoke rarely, laughed even less, and clouds of doubt and divorce began to hover. No way out. There’s no way out. Too much silence. That was the first time she became self-destructive. Her husband painted frightening images of bottles strewn across the floor, Sheri in the bathroom throwing up beer and pain killers. That was also the first time those of us at work could tell how much sleep her husband got by counting the dark rings under his eyes. Two hours last night. Another bad one. I knew him first, and it wasn’t until halfway through the summer before I actually met and began to befriend Sheri, when they were still engaged.
I still don’t know why she chose me. Why I was able to succeed in getting her to open up where countless others failed is a mystery. But sooner than I could have believed possible I became her Dr. Phil, attempting to make sense of her failing marriage, her family’s apathy, past pain, and lack of confidence in herself and her worth. Perhaps it was because I represented stability—a fairly normal family life, faith in God, friends and relationships unfettered by silence. Not so stable now. Perhaps because I didn’t ask anything of her, but only listened. Perhaps it was just because I could make rice krispies. None of us anticipated the changes it would create.
Come Thanksgiving my prayers to God had not been heard. Sheri where are you? Where are you bleeding? Drink some more water. Breathe. She was not getting better. So many questions and images from that night, but chief among them are mirror shards littering the bathroom floor and bouncing light reflections on the walls. Panic. Not perfect. I have to sit down. So tired. I need more sleep. Breathe in. Glass on the floor. Glass is dangerous. Must pick up the pieces. Put them in their place. It struck me that Sheri had not been trying to break the mirror, she had been trying to break what she saw when she looked into it. And in a way, she succeeded.
I remember the moment it hit me, while reading Pat Barker’s WW I novel in my dorm room. I am Dr. Rivers. In the book, Rivers develops shell-shock and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the soldiers he treats, and although he never steps foot on the battlefield he begins to have nightmares just as acutely as any of the veterans. I was developing the very symptoms that I was trying to prevent in Sheri: insomnia, repressed emotion, panic attacks. It got to the point where I was no longer shocked to receive a call at one in the morning—and my trained response simply to grab my coat and keys and go. Her husband and family members were torn; grateful for a person that she could rely on, but worried about the changes they saw in me. Don’t worry. I’m okay. Just let me think. Just let me breathe. Yes I’m getting enough sleep, don’t worry about it.
There was a collective sigh of relief when I went to college, but the physical support I wasn’t able to provide any longer carried over into continuous e-mails back and forth. Sheri and I relied on each other. We were becoming each other. Here, take my hope. Here, take my fears. I didn’t sleep again last night. Me either. Does it ever get better? Gradually her writing grew more positive and rang with hope and promise. I looked in the mirror one day and decided I wasn’t sure who was looking back. I loaded up my textbooks and my new college friends and stepped on the gas, accelerating slowly away from Sheri, but gaining speed the more I was convinced that she was okay. I didn’t see it as a hit and run, but she did. One more person to enter her life too late and exit too soon.
After that night she was placed under a licensed counselor and given constant supervision by family and friends. She still has occasional moments of self-destruction, ripples in a tidal pool of otherwise emotionless living, but they have become fewer and farther in between. Little by little she is finding reasons to talk, reaching for a person that she remembers she was and wishes to be again. Little by little she finds more reasons to smile. For the first time in months, it looks like there might be peace again. The girl in the mirror is not so bad. Not so bad. I can see me again. But that week, peace was not a part of our vocabulary.
Crunch. Crunch. The frozen snow underfoot reminded me of broken glass as I walked to my car, carrying a few squares of rice krispies folded neatly in a paper towel. It’s not glass. It’s snow. Keep walking. It’s ok. Breathe. I shivered and cranked the heat up when the car rumbled to life, glancing back at the porch steps of Sheri’s apartment. The street light above flickered, electricity humming inside. Tires screeched somewhere. But inside, the apartment was silent. I was embarrassed for the tears that had found their way down my face when I hugged her good-bye, herself paralyzed by the sudden emotion and uncertain how to act. It will be okay. Don’t cry. She hugged me harder, and for a brief bizarre moment I recognized that it was her strength holding me up, and our roles reversed for an instant. Am I myself? Or am I you? Who am I?
And then the instant passed.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
When Love Is a Battlefield
"To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour--the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two. Perhaps I was no longer in love but I remembered." --Graham Greene, the Quiet American
There is a pine tree next to the drive outside our brick house on Tiffany. Its branches dip down to create a little shelter on the inside, and there is a bough conveniently low enough and sturdy enough to support the weight of anyone who wishes to perch, dry and unseen from the world. In the days before the tree was trimmed of its shielding skirt there was a girl of nine or ten who took refuge on that bough, the cracked and peeling bark coming away underneath her sneakers like shingles on an aging rooftop, a book in her lap which would later have to be shaken free of dust and thin brown needles. Like the bird that shared her name, the girl found certain peace and solid strength in the tree, and if she closed her eyes long enough she could pretend she was in a forest somewhere far away and soon she would hear the urgent clattering of hooves as her prince arrived to carry her away from this fortress of solitude. But there was the buzz of lawn mowers and engines instead of horses. Shouts of neighborhood children and dogs barking woke her from her day dream and sliced its way back into reality, where there was still elementary school and homework and boys oozing cooties.
It was from this tree that I saw my first kiss take place, when my sister and her boyfriend parked their car directly below my perch unknowingly. I watched each of my siblings go through the stages of love and heartbreak, relationships and loss, and always wished I could know what they knew. What was this secret world that took them away from home so often, and took up so much room in their heads and so many tears from their eyes? I imagined that love must be a soft thing; like an embrace or snow falling gently. But it also had a cruel side. It caused tension and aching and sorrow, sometimes for weeks at a time, before another relationship started and the snow fell gently again.
I spent most of my high school life concentrating on another concept that escaped my understanding: my future. Judging from the title of my blog page, you can probably guess that this is still the case. But at least now I have the wisdom to know that this is how it should be. Our future is what we make it, every day, every hour, and if a time machine could be made I am of the opinion that it wouldn't be able to move a single millisecond forward, because that second is not yet created. During high school I focused on that second constantly, always pulling and stretching at that thin transparent space dividing me from my dreams, and wishing to rip it open and let the new, confident future me fall out, shake her wobbly legs, and walk. I wanted to grow up so fast. I wanted to take the world that I saw around me and shake it by the shirt collar, forcing it to see me and know that I existed.
But, like most young flames, when faced with separation from the things that gave me life and fed my resolve, I flickered and went out. College was a big smudged question mark the Riddler had smeared across the sky to taunt Batman with. It was the castle that you never actually knew whether it contained the Princess or not, but to hell with it you just wanted to procrastinate that Senior Thesis with more Mario time. I had been away from home before, but never for so long and never so little prepared.
On top of this, there was a sudden panic to remember all of the things I wished I had done before responsibility came to actually mean something more than the word that came right before "you're grounded." I mourned the time I would never get with friends, the effort I never put in to some of my classes, and the crazy stunts every high schooler has to have before they graduate. Where was my dyed hair? Where were my tattoos? Where were the pranks where we let loose a herd of cattle into the school or saran-wrapped the principle's car or something equally bizarre? Where was that first kiss and that dance were my date was actually more than just a good friend and saw me as more than just "one of the guys?"
The college girl cries out: "Where is your gratitude? Where are your plans for more time with people you love? What is your hurry? Slow down...slow down" But I didn't slow down. I ran faster, in the opposite direction.
Less than eight months later, I can tell you what a kiss feels like. I can tell you what it's like to go to a party where everyone around you is drunk or drinking but you. I can tell you the precise moment I lost my faith in God, and the precise moment I began to get it back. I can tell you what it's like to want to die. I can tell you how to play a two minute solo in jazz band, give an oral presentation in class without shaking, fall asleep crying, fall asleep laughing, make new friends, lose old ones, buy your own groceries for under twenty bucks, do five loads of laundry with one dryer sheet, scream at a rock concert, and which foods at the caf will make you sick for a week.
I can also tell you what it's like to be in love. It is not quite snow falling gently. It has consequences, and those consequences have the potential to take lives, to ruin marriages, and to cause pain. Mercifully, love has many faces, and the other kinds of love: friendship, empathy, and selflessness...these have the potential to save lives, fix marriages, and heal the deepest wounds.
Whoever said love is a battlefield (I think a cheesy seventies singer) meant every word. It has just taken experience for me to discover that I'm not Joan of Arc saving the troops. I'm not Tosh, Helen Z. Smith's bad-mouthed and fiercely lovable heroine of the ambulance drivers who died in a blaze of glory. I'm no Isi the Goose Girl and I'm certainly not Elizabeth I or Esther or Cosette. In Helen's world I'm most closely related to Smithy, the woman who survives war by refusing to fight it any longer. Or Helen of Howard's End, who only asked for peace. Or Margaret who gave up Peter for the sake of sanity. I'm Eponine, Sarah Lumb, and Jane.
The point I suppose, is that I'm still here.
Perhaps I'm not who you remember I was last year. Perhaps if you knew me and judged me you would not like me. But I still believe in a God who never meant life to be so hard that it could be impossible. I still find humor in the absurd. I still have a respect and love for the people who daily remind me that the next twenty four hours have meaning. And I still hope for the day when I can take my sword and shield and enter the battlefield again, a wiser woman than I ever hoped to be sitting in a tree dreaming of castles and knights.
But not yet. Not yet.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A Cry From the Helpless
I woke up late by any standards, but in one of those restless moods you sometimes get when the air is charged with an almost palpable electricity and you feel that something needs to give. Something needs to change. But you can't quite tell what that something is, and so you start doing a million busy things to feel useful. I cracked open my Spanish textbook, worked for a while, started my laundry and realized I was out of fabric softener, then walked to Albertsons (the only grocery store you feel you can go to in your pajamas) to pick up some Downy.
It was on the return, after I hit the little crosswalk button, and I was thinking about how we all stand at crosswalks waiting for something, when I saw him. A curious individual who I almost didn't recognize, he blended in so well with the pavement. His outfit was various shreds of clothes in different shades of gray or graying, and he had a grizzled beard which hid his mouth. He had a hat pulled down over his eyes, as though to hide himself from the world. Or perhaps to shut the world out. In one hand he was holding a bag to his shoulder, worn from travel and with a couple of tin cans poking out. I couldn't read the labels. In the other hand, he held a pair of sneakers that matched the rest of him: graying, aged, and loaded with years of use. My eyes rested on the only sources of color on his person, which were his feet. I noticed with a start that they were bare. No socks, no sandals; just bare sun-burned feet, the heels hardened and cracked from the journey.
I didn't know this man. At once I felt a little uneasy, knowing that in a few moments our paths would cross. Should I acknowledge him? Offer him money? Look away? Selfish thoughts entered my mind, and though my heart wanted to go out to him my mind still did not understand him. If he had a pair of shoes, why didn't he wear them? Was he making a statement? Was he homeless? If he had no place to sleep, where was he going? What was he looking for?
Two things happened at once. The stoplights changed colors, making the little blinking "cross" figure light up opposite me. As I adjusted my load and prepared to take a step forward, the man looked up from under the shelter of his hat. His eyes pierced directly into mine, and in them there was such power of sorrow and accusation that it made me catch my breath. It was a look full of meaning and full of emotion, as though he were shouting at me: "what right do YOU have to own a place to sleep, and food to eat, and an opportunity for education within these rich walls, and I have nothing? What makes you think you can pity me-YOU-who has no idea where I've been? YOU are nothing."
After a moment I realized I had frozen midstep, and I put my foot down awkwardly. The man, his head bent forward once more, had chosen to cross the road opposite us rather than pass me. As though my very presence offended him too greatly to come within a few inches of each other and breathe the same air. The driver of the car in front of me, who had been waiting for the silly college girl to cross the road and now saw her wide eyed and staring into space, honked his horn impatiently. I snapped to, quickly skipping over the road until I was safe on the lawn in front of the dorms. I looked back and searched for the gray outline of the man, but saw only cars flashing past. He was gone.
What did it mean? Why such anger? Why such sorrow? The day seemed colder suddenly, and I shivered as I turned to go. Later, as I cranked up the heater in my room and looked around me at my bed, my little fridge full of leftovers from good meals in a safe campus, my new purchases on the desk, my laundry to be dried...I could have died. What right did i have to these things? In less than four years time I'd be graduated from here, my time in Caldwell spent. What could I possibly do in that time that would justify this comfort, while the man outside wandered without shoes and ate out of cans?
I'd like to think I do my part for humanity. I've given blood at every drive this year. I deliver meals to families in Nampa and Caldwell for the Food Bank. I slip dollar bills into the Salvation Army tins. When people drive me places, I offer to pay for gas. The tuition isn't cheap here, and I would never be where I am without my scholarships, which I work hard to maintain. Isn't that enough? Doesn't that count for something?
"What makes you think you can pity me-YOU-who has no idea where I've been?"...those words, which I remind myself were never actually uttered aloud, but which nevertheless were communicated, suggest that it's not enough. It counts for something perhaps, but it doesn't change that man's life one way or the other. My blood will not save his life. My meals will not reach his door. My dollar bills mean nothing to him. And my education? What does it matter to a man who will not benefit from my knowledge?
Tonight while on route for Food Bank, two families out of the ten asked to be removed from the program. One because they were doing so well financially they felt they didn't need it anymore, and one because they were doing so poorly and life had become so complicated they didn't want to add one more inconvenience. I've been helping with deliveries for months now, long enough to develop a love and sympathy for those we deliver to, and the two announcements came as blows to an already disappointing day. It was as if the wandering man was laughing at me: "your efforts are wasted...you are nothing..."
Upon reflection I realize that I was not the target of the man's anger. I just happened to represent the many things which he despised; I could stand there and take his silent accusation and not fight back. Along with the shame I feel at having so much while he has so little, there is also the burning desire to prove him wrong. The same desire, I think to some extent, that every college student on campus has. To prove that we are something. To prove that we deserve to be here and can do worthwhile things. Most of all, to prove that we don't forget the "wandering men" around the world.
It was on the return, after I hit the little crosswalk button, and I was thinking about how we all stand at crosswalks waiting for something, when I saw him. A curious individual who I almost didn't recognize, he blended in so well with the pavement. His outfit was various shreds of clothes in different shades of gray or graying, and he had a grizzled beard which hid his mouth. He had a hat pulled down over his eyes, as though to hide himself from the world. Or perhaps to shut the world out. In one hand he was holding a bag to his shoulder, worn from travel and with a couple of tin cans poking out. I couldn't read the labels. In the other hand, he held a pair of sneakers that matched the rest of him: graying, aged, and loaded with years of use. My eyes rested on the only sources of color on his person, which were his feet. I noticed with a start that they were bare. No socks, no sandals; just bare sun-burned feet, the heels hardened and cracked from the journey.
I didn't know this man. At once I felt a little uneasy, knowing that in a few moments our paths would cross. Should I acknowledge him? Offer him money? Look away? Selfish thoughts entered my mind, and though my heart wanted to go out to him my mind still did not understand him. If he had a pair of shoes, why didn't he wear them? Was he making a statement? Was he homeless? If he had no place to sleep, where was he going? What was he looking for?
Two things happened at once. The stoplights changed colors, making the little blinking "cross" figure light up opposite me. As I adjusted my load and prepared to take a step forward, the man looked up from under the shelter of his hat. His eyes pierced directly into mine, and in them there was such power of sorrow and accusation that it made me catch my breath. It was a look full of meaning and full of emotion, as though he were shouting at me: "what right do YOU have to own a place to sleep, and food to eat, and an opportunity for education within these rich walls, and I have nothing? What makes you think you can pity me-YOU-who has no idea where I've been? YOU are nothing."
After a moment I realized I had frozen midstep, and I put my foot down awkwardly. The man, his head bent forward once more, had chosen to cross the road opposite us rather than pass me. As though my very presence offended him too greatly to come within a few inches of each other and breathe the same air. The driver of the car in front of me, who had been waiting for the silly college girl to cross the road and now saw her wide eyed and staring into space, honked his horn impatiently. I snapped to, quickly skipping over the road until I was safe on the lawn in front of the dorms. I looked back and searched for the gray outline of the man, but saw only cars flashing past. He was gone.
What did it mean? Why such anger? Why such sorrow? The day seemed colder suddenly, and I shivered as I turned to go. Later, as I cranked up the heater in my room and looked around me at my bed, my little fridge full of leftovers from good meals in a safe campus, my new purchases on the desk, my laundry to be dried...I could have died. What right did i have to these things? In less than four years time I'd be graduated from here, my time in Caldwell spent. What could I possibly do in that time that would justify this comfort, while the man outside wandered without shoes and ate out of cans?
I'd like to think I do my part for humanity. I've given blood at every drive this year. I deliver meals to families in Nampa and Caldwell for the Food Bank. I slip dollar bills into the Salvation Army tins. When people drive me places, I offer to pay for gas. The tuition isn't cheap here, and I would never be where I am without my scholarships, which I work hard to maintain. Isn't that enough? Doesn't that count for something?
"What makes you think you can pity me-YOU-who has no idea where I've been?"...those words, which I remind myself were never actually uttered aloud, but which nevertheless were communicated, suggest that it's not enough. It counts for something perhaps, but it doesn't change that man's life one way or the other. My blood will not save his life. My meals will not reach his door. My dollar bills mean nothing to him. And my education? What does it matter to a man who will not benefit from my knowledge?
Tonight while on route for Food Bank, two families out of the ten asked to be removed from the program. One because they were doing so well financially they felt they didn't need it anymore, and one because they were doing so poorly and life had become so complicated they didn't want to add one more inconvenience. I've been helping with deliveries for months now, long enough to develop a love and sympathy for those we deliver to, and the two announcements came as blows to an already disappointing day. It was as if the wandering man was laughing at me: "your efforts are wasted...you are nothing..."
Upon reflection I realize that I was not the target of the man's anger. I just happened to represent the many things which he despised; I could stand there and take his silent accusation and not fight back. Along with the shame I feel at having so much while he has so little, there is also the burning desire to prove him wrong. The same desire, I think to some extent, that every college student on campus has. To prove that we are something. To prove that we deserve to be here and can do worthwhile things. Most of all, to prove that we don't forget the "wandering men" around the world.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
An Ode to Valentine's Past
Breathe in. Breathe out. Excitement. Did the boy with the brown eyes and the freckles really give ME a paper valentine? Does he *giggle* LIKE like me? Breathe in. Breathe out. Stress. I'm running out of valentines that just imply friendship...should I give this boy a Spongebob or a Captain Planet? Classrooms full of glue, glitter, and construction paper. The agonizing over who gets what and which message to send to whom and guarding fragile third grader feelings. Sugar cookies. Icing. I must wear pink. I HATE pink. Why do I have to wear this? Isn't white or red good enough? *Gasp* that girl wore BLUE. What does that mean? Doesn't she have a Valentine? Breathe in. Breathe out. Disappointment. I didn't get as many valentines this year. But no matter, mom made cupcakes!
Valentine's Day is one of those holidays, like Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, and that odious day dedicated to a groundhog...which loses enchantment the older one becomes. As a child, there's an almost tangible feeling of magic; of conspiracy and youth--associated with these holidays. (Okay, so there's nothing magical about a groundhog,) but there IS something magical about crayons and creativity, no homework for a day, kid's moms coming in with things that taste better than the cafeteria, stickers on noses and frosting on shoes. For just a day, the entire school is wreathed in smiles and fun and drama easily resolved with a tissue and a new activity. The real purpose of the holiday is lost of course; completely buried in layers of sticky sugar and sequined popsicle sticks. Jesus gains one hundred pounds and rides in a sleigh, or sprouts two ears and deposits eggs in secret places. Ancient celebrated saints and goddesses are reduced to pots of gold, fat winged babies and paper bags.
Years pass. Religious meaning becomes known and cherished or discarded. When work and school are no longer canceled for a rodent and his shadow, the less significant holidays' dates are forgotten. Suddenly Valentine's Day becomes something much more sinister. Of course, commercialization has superficially degraded every holiday under the sun, but Valentine's Day seems to take an extra hit from the media. "Prove you love so and so with a diamond necklace...show you care with chocolates!" In other words, "THE AMOUNT OF LOVE YOU HAVE IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE SIZE OF YOUR WALLET."
Now wait a second. Step back and think about this! Wasn't it the Beatles who sang "Can't Buy Me Love" and generations sang along? If you're actually IN a relationship, do you really need a day on the calendar to remind you of it? And if you're NOT in a relationship, do you really deserve to have it rubbed into your face for a week, watching parades of flowers and cards and kisses? I've heard that many call it "Single Awareness Day," or S.A.D. rather than it's official name. It might be a good day for the economy, but it's a sad day for the human soul.
Nevertheless, the date marches on. No amount of protest will halt the onslaught. So instead, I offer only some advice as you celebrate this year's "Day of Love," whether you are alone this year or have someone to share the celebration with.
My advice is this: spend TIME, not money, and concentrate on SHARING rather than giving. Yes, there is a difference between the two. You can give without sincerity, but you can't share without wanting to.
The best valentine's I have ever received from the opposite sex came in the smallest, cheapest, and most meaningful packages (I'm NOT talking about condoms). Many of them didn't even come on Valentine's day, but meant more to me than they would have otherwise because the command "DO SOMETHING FOR A GIRL TODAY" was not screaming at them at the time.
I remember a boy in tenth grade who did something extraordinary: he purchased two dozen or so purple carnations, and throughout the day walked up and down the halls looking for girls who looked sad, or lonely, or obviously lacked that "valentine vibe." Then he would hand them a flower, smile, and ask them about their day. It amazed me the reactions of these girls (and yes, I was one of them that year) the way their faces suddenly lit up, and they took the flower with a smile, and were from that moment immune to the gloomy all-consuming "single awareness" feeling. Why should they feel bad that they were single? What did it matter if they received one of the coveted pink delivery notes which announced a few flowers tied with ribbon, or a special card from a loved one, or any number of wonderful things that arrived for the lucky few?
The girls who held purple carnations knew that they were still human after all. Love didn't necessarily mean having a boyfriend to make out with over lunch. Kindness and compassion went on, regardless of the day. A box of lemon heads, a note scribbled on the back of a receipt, a smile, a phone call on my birthday, a courageous text admitting a crush, a burned CD, a letter, a hand to steady weak legs while ice skating, an embrace to strengthen a broken heart after a bad day...THESE. THESE are the most powerful expressions of human emotion that far outshine, at least in my memories, anything bought with money or compliments.
So when you're making arrangements this weekend for the Big Day, consider purple carnations. Close your wallet, put those corny candles and rose petals away, and do something that you won't regret months later when you're still paying off the bills for that night out that you'll never remember. Put some meaning back into the words "I Love You."
Valentine's Day is one of those holidays, like Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, and that odious day dedicated to a groundhog...which loses enchantment the older one becomes. As a child, there's an almost tangible feeling of magic; of conspiracy and youth--associated with these holidays. (Okay, so there's nothing magical about a groundhog,) but there IS something magical about crayons and creativity, no homework for a day, kid's moms coming in with things that taste better than the cafeteria, stickers on noses and frosting on shoes. For just a day, the entire school is wreathed in smiles and fun and drama easily resolved with a tissue and a new activity. The real purpose of the holiday is lost of course; completely buried in layers of sticky sugar and sequined popsicle sticks. Jesus gains one hundred pounds and rides in a sleigh, or sprouts two ears and deposits eggs in secret places. Ancient celebrated saints and goddesses are reduced to pots of gold, fat winged babies and paper bags.
Years pass. Religious meaning becomes known and cherished or discarded. When work and school are no longer canceled for a rodent and his shadow, the less significant holidays' dates are forgotten. Suddenly Valentine's Day becomes something much more sinister. Of course, commercialization has superficially degraded every holiday under the sun, but Valentine's Day seems to take an extra hit from the media. "Prove you love so and so with a diamond necklace...show you care with chocolates!" In other words, "THE AMOUNT OF LOVE YOU HAVE IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE SIZE OF YOUR WALLET."
Now wait a second. Step back and think about this! Wasn't it the Beatles who sang "Can't Buy Me Love" and generations sang along? If you're actually IN a relationship, do you really need a day on the calendar to remind you of it? And if you're NOT in a relationship, do you really deserve to have it rubbed into your face for a week, watching parades of flowers and cards and kisses? I've heard that many call it "Single Awareness Day," or S.A.D. rather than it's official name. It might be a good day for the economy, but it's a sad day for the human soul.
Nevertheless, the date marches on. No amount of protest will halt the onslaught. So instead, I offer only some advice as you celebrate this year's "Day of Love," whether you are alone this year or have someone to share the celebration with.
My advice is this: spend TIME, not money, and concentrate on SHARING rather than giving. Yes, there is a difference between the two. You can give without sincerity, but you can't share without wanting to.
The best valentine's I have ever received from the opposite sex came in the smallest, cheapest, and most meaningful packages (I'm NOT talking about condoms). Many of them didn't even come on Valentine's day, but meant more to me than they would have otherwise because the command "DO SOMETHING FOR A GIRL TODAY" was not screaming at them at the time.
I remember a boy in tenth grade who did something extraordinary: he purchased two dozen or so purple carnations, and throughout the day walked up and down the halls looking for girls who looked sad, or lonely, or obviously lacked that "valentine vibe." Then he would hand them a flower, smile, and ask them about their day. It amazed me the reactions of these girls (and yes, I was one of them that year) the way their faces suddenly lit up, and they took the flower with a smile, and were from that moment immune to the gloomy all-consuming "single awareness" feeling. Why should they feel bad that they were single? What did it matter if they received one of the coveted pink delivery notes which announced a few flowers tied with ribbon, or a special card from a loved one, or any number of wonderful things that arrived for the lucky few?
The girls who held purple carnations knew that they were still human after all. Love didn't necessarily mean having a boyfriend to make out with over lunch. Kindness and compassion went on, regardless of the day. A box of lemon heads, a note scribbled on the back of a receipt, a smile, a phone call on my birthday, a courageous text admitting a crush, a burned CD, a letter, a hand to steady weak legs while ice skating, an embrace to strengthen a broken heart after a bad day...THESE. THESE are the most powerful expressions of human emotion that far outshine, at least in my memories, anything bought with money or compliments.
So when you're making arrangements this weekend for the Big Day, consider purple carnations. Close your wallet, put those corny candles and rose petals away, and do something that you won't regret months later when you're still paying off the bills for that night out that you'll never remember. Put some meaning back into the words "I Love You."
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