lemon ruth

last week i witnessed a small act of kindness.  it was unassuming in the moment, but since that moment i’ve been thinking about it a great deal.

someone i’ve had the pleasure of getting to know (by sheer force of will, considering how many metaphorical walls this poor girl’s life has forced her to build) and who has so very little in the way of physical possessions, was the perpetrator of this act of kindness.  i watched in complete shock last tuesday night as she gave what little she had to the 3 homeless people who live in the doorway next to the coffee shop.  she could have kept all of it, or even just some of it.  but she gave every bit of it away.

i’ve spent countless hours with this girl and there have been times when i’ve thought i’d never see even a hint of anything resembling human emotion, let alone compassion, from her.  and in approaching her with these biases, i’ve judged her.  the fact of the matter is that i am the one who doesn’t understand real compassion.  she knows what it’s like to sleep on the sidewalk, to rely on others for provision of your basic needs.  she knows compassion in a way that is so intertwined with true solidarity, it’s like i’ve been watching shadows on the wall of plato’s cave and calling them humans my whole life.

for me to expect her to approach the world in the same way i do, with careless emotional frivolity, is to try to fit her into my middle-class-sized box.  i felt shameful as i hugged her goodbye that night.  it’s not easy for her to let people in.  she’s had to protect herself any way she could.  what do i know about that?  my general posture towards life is that of a reckless bull in that old proverbial china shop.  i’ve seen hard times, but i’ve been so well-loved and supported for all my 25 years.  i have so much to learn about strength and resilience.

a similar act happened this morning.  we have a group of about 15 students who live in myanmar, one of the poorest countries and one which is currently governed by a harsh military dictatorship.  i’ve gotten to meet several of them, and i’ve spent the last 2 years emailing with all of them, and it’s become such a huge blessing to know them.  a few of them send me weekly updates on their lives, complete with pictures of their families and the small nonprofits they run.  they always inquire about my life and wish me “many countless blessings” and so on.  my boss recently spent 2 weeks there and upon her return, we all met in the library to hear stories from her trip.  the whole thing was totally shocking.  the poverty our students live in is heartbreaking.  she showed us pictures of their homes and some of them were the size of an american garden shed. 

but as my boss described all of this, she related how motived the students are for helping their communities, for giving away what little they do have.  they’ve built several schools for orphaned children, and my dear friend No Pum runs a small nonprofit in which he and his wife teach battered women how to be seamstresses so they can start a new life and support themselves.  a few weeks ago he sent me photos of all the new sewing machines he saved up for months and months to purchase, all the while raising a family of 4 in a shack with no running water.

since our financial crisis at work, i’ve had to try to brainstorm ways to keep our myanmar students moving through the program without any real guarantee of scholarship funds (nearly impossible), and it’s been so heartbreaking to have to tell them we’re doing our best but we have so much less money to give these days.  thanks to several professors who have donated their time to teach and distributed hundreds of dollars of books for free, we’ve been able to ensure that these students have work to do while we come up with more permanent solutions.  but it’s been so draining on all of us on staff to have to break bad news to people we’ve grown to love.

at any rate, back to this morning.  i received an email from Thang Khan, one of the students i helped get into the program back when i first started here, saying he felt so sorry for me for having this burden and that he doesn’t want me to feel bad but rather encouraged since he feels hopeful for the future.  he was trying to encourage me.

i think all of this is to say that when i see hope coming from the darkest, most dire situations, i can’t help but feel that all my silly drama is very childish.  i’ve been so humbled in the face of all of this.  as all of the streams of my life are starting to finally converge, i can see a very distinct purpose to all that’s happened, to the people i’ve met, to even the most devastating seasons of loss.

i’ve wasted a great deal of time on things that don’t matter.  i’ve given away what little i have to undeserving places (not people, mind you, just situations).  it’s time to take a cue from the person i mentioned above and to restrain my emotional nonsense and give everything i have where it’s needed most.  i’ve been running around in every direction, pointlessly throwing emotional energy at every silly thing.  that was SO 2009.  heh.

things are changing now, and this isn’t about learning to withhold in general, because quite frankly i am not going to withhold anything when it comes to the few things that really matter to me.  i’m going to expend every bit of what i have on these things/people that i love.  that’s what 2010 is going to be like.

what’s amazing is that all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork to join me.  in the past week alone, i’ve met half a dozen people who are passionate about the same exact things and who are already full on running down the road i’m tiptoeing toward.  it does my heart good to meet such different sorts of people doing such similar things, making art and helping people and doing it together without a hint of self-awareness.  it’s reckless in the good way.  and completely inspiring.

as i’m trying to figure all of this out and trying to dispel the pointless guilt i feel for taking so long to let go of childish nonsense, please be patient with me.  i’m just as awkward as ever.  and i mean super ultra awkward now that i’m in a transition phase.  you’ll be seeing me around, but in different places.  i hope.

as always, thanks for listening.  love you terribly.

LR

airplanes make me terribly sad because they remind me of all of the times i’ve had to say goodbye.  it’s been a million times by now at least.

i’ve tried to write it down so many times but i always end up erasing what i wrote a few minutes later because the words mock me so terribly.  the existence of the sentiment behind the words mocks me too, but that’s easier to handle when the words aren’t written down.

the truth is that the file here where i write down all of my thoughts on my laptop is so big that it takes almost 5 minutes for my computer to open it.  but this is the one thing i’ve never been able to write down.  i’m getting a little fevered at this very moment, even.

i wanted so desperately to spend this year helping people who are broken but what i discovered instead is that i am broken.

i’ve never been much good at letting people in or allowing people to support me or take care of me, but there have been a few who broke through my stubbornness this year all the same.  i.e.  when i thought i lost my job, three people called within the hour to offer me a free place to live for a few months.

this year was filled with these small bits of salvation and perhaps that’s what it was meant for.  for me to understand my own weakness and to allow others to come in and be strong for me.  for me to let go of the need to always be the strong one, the independent one, the detached loner.

we are human and that means we need community.  it’s at the very core of who we are.

and in my brokenness, i am suddenly uniquely qualified and more prepared than ever to walk alongside those who are also broken and in need of someone to extend a bit of solidarity.

yes i think the importance solidarity has been the greatest lesson i’ve learned this year.  you can give charity, hand out meals and whatnot, but until you simply walk through life with someone, allow yourself to know their circumstances and join them in the experience of those circumstances, you’re only hurting an already harmful situation.

for all of my awkwardness and self-doubt, i can still offer a few things to those in need: some loyalty and a listening ear and just presence.  that’s who i am.  i hate the spotlight or getting attention or being forced to be extroverted.  i’m a bit more subtle than all that.  i’ve always envied those girls who are at ease in large crowds and who put it all out there all the time, but there is a place for my type as well.

my boss moved his family into the highest crime, highest poverty neighborhood in fresno 20 years ago, and he puts it this way:  ”when we moved into the neighborhood, my wife was worried she wouldn’t have anything to offer since she wasn’t an extrovert like our friends’ wives.  what do you think?  do you think there is a purpose for someone who is more of a listener in a neighborhood where the women are treated like servants by their husbands and who are constantly verbally and physically abused at home?”

2010 is going to be a year of discovering how to be there for other broken souls, how to love them best and put my own needs last.  that is the sort of person i want to be.  after spending so much time with people who already have that mastered, i cant imagine wanting to spend life any other way.  the selflessness i have witnessed in the past few weeks has been the most refreshing sight.

so now the task at hand is to let go of the relationships that have become too damaging, to take several steps back from those who this year have repeatedly abused their power over me and used up my loyalty for their own gain.  these people will no longer be part of my days or my thoughts, and i’m relieved at the prospect of this final closure.

quite frankly, i don’t even understand how a person gets to be like that.  then again, they’re just broken too i guess.

to be honest, all my heart often longs for is to know that even one person is listening.  take last week, for instance.  i spent my days surrounded by people who have given every ounce of themselves to the pursuit of social justice in their cities, and i would have given anything to be able to debrief all of it with someone experiencing the whole thing as well.  i mean, i had a bunch of friends there, but they were experiencing it all from such a different place than i’m coming from.  it was so great to talk it out with them, but honestly it still felt a little shallow.  and then talking to my dearest friends about it on the phone afterward is little more than a recap.   i feel like i’m boring them with details that can’t even measure up to how it felt anyway.

throughout these past 365 days, i’ve been so tempted to grow more hard-hearted, to build these walls higher and higher.  but that will never ever be who i am.  i’m not unaffected.  it would be such a huge pity to lose the ability to feel all of it deeply.

there was one night after working all day at the office and then all night at the cafe with the kids, when one of them just found out her apartment had once again been burglarized and what little money she did have saved was taken.  i was at a loss for words in that moment.  i wanted to hug her but also to grab her by the shoulders and tell her sternly that it’s time to move out of that apartment (it’s a dangerous situation she’s put herself in).  when i pulled up to my house later that night, exhaustion set in suddenly and i collapsed on my steering wheel in a fit of sobs.  what could my friendship possibly have to offer a girl like that?  she’s been in and out of halfway housing for underage prostitutes since she was 12 years old and this apartment is just another reminder that there is nowhere for her to go to feel safe.  what can i say to her that will fix so many terrible years of brokenness?

i’m not going to go into specifics, but several people/coworkers who have become mentors of sorts for me this past year spoke very important words about this to me.  their guidance led me to several epiphanies about what it means to love the marginalized and what it means to accept that i have a lot to learn from the marginalized, a lot to learn about community and priorities and resilience.  our middle class mentalities have often caused the loss of our true identity as humans, caused us to love possessions over people.

you see, love is not some nebulous emotion but rather the act of solidarity with another human being, of walking with them through their struggles.  all i can do for her is be the safe place she doesn’t otherwise have.  sometimes all you can do is just be near.

at any rate, this year has been the beginning and end of a great many important parts of my life.

i really only have one single regret.  my dear Mr. Regret.  the silly thing about it is that he kept me at a distance for so long i actually started to think perhaps that’s all i deserve.

i guess all of this is simply to once again say that even though i am a trainwreck of conflicting desires and emotions and i constantly fuck up, i’m feeling pretty hopeful again.  thanks to my soulmates scattered all across the globe, i’m ok.

i hope i get the chance to tell you face to face sometime soon how much it means to me that you’ve been so available for our long talks and for support and for forgiveness when i say/do the wrong things.  if from nothing else, i find purpose in your existence.

love you all so very much.

LR

if you think of it as a recipe, there are two parts.

what i’m dealing with now is the mixing of the two.  and it’s turning out to be the most profound experience of my entire life so far.

there are the inherent factors, the facts of who i am, the mechanics of my self.  and then there is the barrage of experiences that have been otherwise external to the mix until now.

the thing about it that makes it so painful is that it’s messy.  i mean, of course it is.  this is nothing less than the reconciling of who i am at my deepest and darkest levels to the outward environment i’ve existed in and made mistakes in and loved in and been disapointed in and disappointed you in.

when you begin to examine your own heart and motives and fears and hopes, you simultaneously begin to see that the lines that separate our experience of life from others’ experience of life are so very thin.

quite frankly the difference between me and some of the homeless kids i work with is a set of good parents.  and the difference between me and some confident girls i know is the absence of heartbreak during their formative years.  this list goes on and on.

and so this particular thinness of lines has been the first struggle i encountered in this journey.  guilt was my most obvious and most primal response.   i mean, why should i have been so privileged from the moment of my birth while others are thrust immediately into insurmountable odds?

but here is what i’m learning:  the dry ingredients of those lives is no different from my own.  i too have felt unwanted and hopeless and i’ve certainly known loss.  it’s the wet ingredients that have differed for us: the experiences they’ve known have often been harsher or at least more frequently harsh.

and so we all are forced to have this same profound mixing experience, no matter the level of disparity between the dry and wet ingredients.  feeling guilty is irrelevant.  we are handed what we are handed, and whether you believe it was random or not, it’s the Fact of existence.  and as such, it creates this amazing puzzle dynamic to the nature of Community.  we need each other, are capable of loving each other, fit together perfectly, because the dry ingredients are similar but the wet ones aren’t.  we are all pieces but of varying shapes.   we are all Human but we experience it so differently.  it’s amazing when you really think about it.

the next struggle: for someone as independent and autonomous as me, it’s a frustrating reality to face the fact that i have no choice in the matter.  i can plan and plan and even arrange the circumstance of my life to a very small degree, but i CANNOT control what is and isn’t going to happen.  in my own life, i am the smallest factor in a huge pot of Factors.  the ending sum is only affected by my tiny variable a proportionately tiny bit.

this does not sit well with me at all.  i want some guarantees!  i want to feel hopeful without even a twinge of doubt.  but that will never happen.  and it shouldn’t.  because despite the mechanics of my self being that i want to have control, the mechanics of the world is that i cannot.

and so the wet ingredients (a.k.a. my experience of this uncontrollable world) meet the dry ingredients in such a way that mixing the two is impossibly painful.

this is why i hide and why i mull and why i start to pack my car to move every few months and then unpack it again and stay right here.

this isn’t my quarter-life crisis or boredom with my job or the final remains of love lost.  no, this is much much more.

this is the struggle at the very core of humanity.  how to reconcile the internal to the external.  how to be “yourself” in the midst of “everyone else” and to even know what “yourself” is in the first place.

this is only the very outer edge of my thoughts at the moment, but i’ve already rambled on for too long.  i have plenty more in my head, but i’ll just let that mix a little bit more before pouring it out.

love, LR

i am so maxed out i can barely function.

the shape of things is about to change soon, like it does every autumn.  some higher power has decided my life is supposed to crumble around me every october.  every single year like clockwork.  i could walk you through a summary of this for the past 5 or so years but that would break my heart all over again, so no thanks.

this october wasn’t the roughest but it was rough.  Lauren’s Financial Crisis 2009 isn’t over yet, but the worst is (i hope).  i am definitely making different choices these days, whittling down the accumulation of nonsense to a simpler existence.  it’s actually been kind of great. 

this isn’t my first time attempting this task.  in europe, i washed my clothes in a sink and wore the same outfit for 15 days straight and read the same book so many times, half the pages fell out.  when i moved to seattle, i fit my entire life into my car and 3 boxes shipped ahead. 

it’s a wonderful thing to feel mobile.

3 weeks ago when financial armageddon occurred and i wasn’t sure if i still had a job, i immediately started making arrangements to move back to nashville.  this is now and will probably constantly be my Plan B for as long as i’m living in seattle.  there is still the possibility that i will be out of a job any time before december, and i’ll let you know if my room is available for rent.  a pretty great space for relatively cheap, you know?  i’ll let you know.

in the meantime, i’m just going to sit here at my desk every day and work my ass off with no guarantees.  i think i’m getting an ulcer.

god i hate october. 

fortunately, it is now november which is, in turn, all about reconstruction.  i get to see my mom very soon, which will help a ton.  she always makes me feel sane again.  it’s been 6 months since i’ve seen my family, and that’s pretty cruel.  super cruel.

a girl needs her family, you know?

waking up every day without even the slightest bit of security has been exhausting but i’m learning a ton about my priorities.  i mean, when the rug is torn out from under you, you start to really notice what you grasp for first.  someone i met recently told me the most important thing to do at this age is examine my motives and admit if they’re ugly.  i guess that’s just step 1.

at least being all tangled up in this first step has distracted me from the petty drama of being twenty-something.  what an incestuous mess.  it’s like a decade-long gray area.  and if you know me at all, you know i am too left-brained to deal with gray.

without even realizing it, i will construct a perfectly linnear structure for my days and expect life to fall within its boundaries.  ridiculous.

anyway, that is a tangent for another day.  maybe even tomorrow. 

these are going to be some long days.  i’m working from 7-3:30 and then volunteering at the cafe from 4-8 and then walking/biking home and i’m seriously going to need to keep up this overcaffeination thing i’ve got going on lately. 

i can’t say it enough: come visit me.  i will need friendly faces.

love, LR

Last week I got to attend a 5-day-long conference on social justice in urban neighborhoods. I manned the BGU booth and helped Professor Murphy run the advocacy and human trafficking course and met so many incredible people that I just about collapsed in wonder. I got to know some new friends that I certainly plan to keep in touch with in the coming years as my own ideas begin to take form, and I plan to continue to seek their advice and support. Walter pulled me aside one night after a long group talk and said: “you don’t have to be alone.” It was pretty crazy that he could not only tell how terrified I am that I’ll never find like-minded people in Seattle but that it’s actually caused me to become totally reclusive in settings like that. Some people can see right through you, you know?

In December, I’ll be in St. Louis for another such conference and pretty much everyone I got to know over the week will be there as well. I was dreading my 5am flight the day after Christmas but now I’m stoked to go and reunite with friends.

In further news, my first shift at the café is less than a week away, and I am utterly terrified. I can make pretty ok drinks when I have plenty of time and it’s just us in the room, but when customers start lining up? SCARY. I will say, however, that that little space on 3rd avenue has quickly become one of my favorite places to be in the entire city. I hope it will be that for the surrounding community as well. In case you haven’t noticed, 3rd avenue is home to a pretty random cross-section of Seattle subpopulations.

This whole nonprofit venture has become my first big step into the world of social justice in my own city. The kids we work with at New Horizons come from some ridiculously tough situations, and I’m learning what it means to be there for someone without wanting or even being able to “fix” them. If anything, I think our middle-class population here in Seattle has a lot to learn from the kids. The community they have built is something to be marveled at. We are so quick to value possessions over people and to devote our lives to a “career” but we’re missing the point if we don’t remember that humans are meant to need each other, meant to be in constant community.

At any rate, after all of these occurrences and all of the mental wrestling I’ve been doing with these issues, I decided it’s necessary to understand the public policies behind my city’s systems. So I went to the Seattle city council public hearing the other night, and it was fascinating. For one thing, it’s completely disturbing to see how much smaller the general fund is this year when we’re at a time when more people need direct services than ever. There were dozens of people there to lobby for their organization’s portion of the pot, and I felt sadder and sadder for the state of things as the meeting progressed. The mayor is spending $100 million on one road, and yet many nonprofits have to fight tooth and nail to get back their meager $20k a year to provide human services to our most at-risk residents.

Something that I’ve been mulling over in the wake of all this is that this isn’t my yolk to bear. It’s OUR yolk to bear. I think my niche might be finding the connections between the things we really love (coffee, bikes, music, art, etc.) and the importance of advocating for social justice. A few months ago, my best friend and I brainstormed over a few beers and even as the conversation got sillier, I felt more and more like we were on to something. Most of us are just scared to get involved because we don’t even know where to start. It doesn’t take an expert to recognize that our city needs help. I mean, it pretty much takes one bus ride downtown to see how much poverty exists here.

This isn’t meant to be a rant or a soapbox speech. I really do think we all care but don’t know what to do about it. I have some pretty big ideas for bridging that gap and you’ll be hearing from me soon. I need your brainpower and your big strong arms and mostly just your presence in the seat next to me. I am so thankful for those of you who’ve already been part of these ideas.

Love you, Seattle.

LR

this was a very awkward summer.  right now i’m watching the rain fall from a dark sky outside my big office window, and i’m surprisingly excited for these first signs of impending winter.

i love the idea of rest.  i love the fact that even the natural world works in the same way our hearts do.  it’s a tribute to the power of a good “retreat and regroup.”  when nothing esle seems graspable, there is always time.  nature takes 3 or 4 months to rebuild its strength right below the surface and then one day in april, all of winter’s silence is replaced by millions of small expressions of new life. 

i’m ready for a little quiet.  i’m ready to focus.  i’m ready to rebuild.  

for me, this winter will mark the beginning of the manifestation of a long-standing dream.  the best part is that in the midst of the jumble of humanity in this city, i’ve found others with this same dream and in the past few months we’ve built and built and tonight is the first celebration of the project at hand.  when i’m in that space surrounded by people so in love with the same idea, i feel completely and utterly at rest. 

i’m excited about a lot of things right now.  and since there are no trees to climb or tennis games to be played or bike rides to the beach to make, i am free to be undistracted for the first time in months.  i’m thinking that a nice quiet house this weekend will be the perfect setting to take the first steps toward allowing my heart to rest.  i’ve done a lot of soul-searching on this west coast adventure, and i’m nowhere near finished. 

i am a writer and a seamstress and a rider of bicycles and a lover of songs and a recluse and a reader and a chef and a creator and a decorator and yet none of these things are who i am.  i’ve often confused people with their simple definitions but these things are nothing more than the outward expressions of the self.  we try to fit into categories because that’s easier than truly learning to know ourselves and to examine even our most despicable motives. 

we are strange animals, to be sure. 

it’s still raining and i don’t even mind.  even the smell of wet pavement makes me feel at home.  i’m at home.

love, LR

in the past 48 hours i’ve learned how to hold onto things more lightly.

none of this is permanent or final or secure.

there have only been a few times in my life when i’ve felt like things might not actually be ok, and last night was one of those times.  i weighed every option that came to mind and not a single one felt completely right or even completely feasible.

the amazing thing was that so many people came to my rescue.  it was almost shocking to realize how much support i have out here.  i wasn’t expecting that in the least.  i love to take care of everyone else, but i rarely allow anyone to take care of me.  perhaps this is the lesson i need to learn: it’s ok to need help.

it’s ok to need.

i still feel panicky and i’m still confused, but the immediate crisis has been averted for the time being (at least another 2 weeks).  there is the ongoing fear that we could shut down any day and all be out of jobs, but for now we are getting paid something and the doors are still open.

of course this has all reopened the debate of whether or not i am moving back to nashville and/or how soon that would or could happen.  last night in the thick of things, i was certain this was the final straw in this ridiculous city and i’d have no choice but to cut my losses.

however a huge part of me was so terrified to give up on the west coast that easily.  yes, this has been difficult but it’s also been really really good.   my mom said something along these lines last night and i felt for a moment like i could survive anything on the other side of these 2 heart-shattering years.

some people make it look easy.  they are confident and carefree and when i see these people around i wonder what it would feel like to care so little (in the good way).  as for me, i give too much of myself to even the tiniest of details; i don’t save an ounce of it for tomorrow because this could all just end at midnight.  i feel too much.

and so now that i’m on this shakier ground, there is an urgent set of questions to be answered:

stay or move back?

save or spend?

look for a new job or stay here on good faith?

mostly just those few things need to be figured out.  the problem is that my job is so much more than a job.  i am invested in every bit of it.

i don’t have answers right now.  all i have is this sinking feeling in my stomach that yesterday’s events are just the beginning of a terrifying new phase of my life.  i mean, i’m up for an adventure but a bit worried about where i’ll end up this time.

all of this is to say:

to my friends/family here and all over the country: thanks for your support yesterday and every day before that.

love, LR

there are times when the normal (and for the most part: good) tension of life escalates to an almost unbearable level.  it feels something like the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, like in those bad nineties movies.  too many conflicting motives/desires/emotions.

i mean, it’s difficult enough to come to conclusions about each day’s happenings, but when the tension rises it becomes nearly impossible.

i’ve got these steadying influences in my life.  as always, i have my family and my best friend (very far away, to be fair) and a pretty good career.  the cafe has been a huge part of this recently as well.  it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the city, and the people there are already family.  nothing is quite like being surrounded by likeminded friends.  i don’t have enough of that in my life these days.  it’s one of the things i miss most about nashville and even jersey.

but despite these steadying influences, there is also that little devil on the other shoulder.  for one, there is a person in my life who has slowly transitioned from one of my dearest and oldest seattle friends into a manipulative and damaging force.  he twists my words and actions into personal attacks on him and any time i make plans with anyone else, he launches into a verbal tirade.  this is all coming from someone for whom i have given everything i possibly could and in letting him in so close, he has become one of the select few who has the power to hurt me the most. 

and then there is the stress at work.  here is an example of a situation i get caught in the middle of:  the chief financial officer scolds me for allowing an ethiopian student to register for another course when he has yet to pay for the last but the student emails me telling me his monthly income to support his family of five is $250.  as the admissions coordinator for all 5 of our programs, i get to be the first to know the students and hear their stories and brainstorm ways to get them the resources they need in their region.  in doing so, i get way too emotionally attached and then all of a sudden i’m supposed to tell them there are limits to how much we can help?  (we are a nonprofit after all, and scholarship funds are limited)  TOO DIFFICULT.

as much as i love my job and my coworkers and the students (especially the students), it’s the most intense way to spend 8 hours of my day.  i am exhausted and maxed out and last week i actually got in trouble for taking on too much.  seriously?  who is supposed to do all this work then?  we are all at our absolute limits in our individual areas, and i’m the only one who understands the admissions and registration processes anyway.  sigh.

on a good note, i get to go to india for two weeks next year to visit the slums alongside our students.  and next week i leave for 5 days to represent the school at a community development conference.  my boss is doing some workshops on inner-city issues like gang violence and homeless youth, and i am so proud to be there beside him to talk to prospective students.  i get a beautiful hotel room at a resort all to myself, and i’ll get to meet people i’ve looked up to for years.  exciting stuff.

lately though i’ve felt as though i have so little energy to devote to things i really love.  the cafe fits in this category, and i’ve decided to just jump on every available training slot in the next few weeks before we open.  i’ve had my new sewing machine for weeks now but have lacked the time/energy to test it out.  and i’ve been spending way too much time hiding in my room listening to records and mulling over the looming decisions ahead. 

i think it’s time to just let the tension evaporate on its own without wasting any more of my attention on it.  quite frankly i just care too much about things that are undeserving.  in searching for a middle ground i’ve let the bad things overshadow the good.  this is pretty sad because there’s a whole lot of good in this city.

if you’re looking for me, i’ll be down at 3rd and cedar brewing the city’s best espresso (seriously perfectly roasted beans) with some amazing kids.  come wear in our comfy chairs.

love, LR

So often I find myself unearthing small pieces of the puzzle only to realize months and months later that they all fit together perfectly.  Somewhere along the way I seem to be losing the ability to see the bigger picture.  I get so caught up in the minutia of daily living that I entirely forget to remember.

You see, what’s most important to remember is that everything is going to be ok.

Really, it is.

After all that I’ve survived, I can say without hesitation that there is absolutely no telling what is going to happen tomorrow or even in this next minute after I close off this sentence with this tiny punctuation mark.

And what’s more: even if this turns out to be an unbelievably heartbreaking day (as days so often do), I’ll be better for it tomorrow.

I can recall hundreds of nights that felt unsurvivable over the past decade, but I’m checking my pulse as we speak, and guess what: still alive.

Sometimes I’m tempted to just “keep busy” or to hide away, but these are just minor solutions to temporarily ease the symptoms of the real problems.  This tactic works for a few days at most, but what is really needed is reconciliation.

And I don’t mean reconciliation with another person, but rather reconciliation with circumstances.  I can kick and scream and fight it all I want, but what I’ve been learning recently is the importance of being moldable.

I’ve seen it happen dozens of times among my acquaintances: we let life’s difficulties turn us to stone.  We stop allowing ourselves to “feel” life in the hope that our hearts can mend without any more threat of breaking.  This does not work. 

The fact of the matter is that each situation, no matter how painful, is meant to become a part of us as integral as an arm or leg.  In this way, the lessons we learn become nothing short of the metaphorical machinery of who we are: they allow us to move.

Here is what I think: to be human is to move.

And if we think of our hard-earned wisdom as our very limbs, it’s easier to understand why it can be necessary to break in the first place. 

The struggle of course is that humans are capable of the most ridiculous stubbornness imaginable.  We are making this even more difficult for ourselves by resisting the learning process so determinedly.  Sometimes at bookstores, I peak down the self-help aisles to see dozens of people scanning titles about how to heal from breakups and how to move forward through life’s disappointments, and all of that is great but I think the key to any of that is just to remember to learn and grow through everything life tosses your way. 

We were meant to learn by doing.  We can read and ponder and mull all we want, but it’s going to cost us something to gain something.  You can’t expect to become an expert at life merely by studying.  You become an expert at life by living it.

And the cost is going to be countless bumps and bruises and disappointments.  I might even argue that the metaphorical experts are the most bumped and bruised.  They aren’t withholding a single ounce of themselves.  Nothing could possibly expose more vulnerability than that.

Of course in the thick of things, it’s nearly impossible to feel optimistic about this.  We just want to wallow and give up and shut down.  But what I’ve found in my adventures is that nothing heals a broken heart quite like dusting it off and throwing it right back into the mix.  I’m not saying jump right into new relationships by any means—simply that hiding it away forever will only make it worse.

Ok so here is the clincher: I’m talking to myself here.

I’m still in the process of debating whether or not to and/or when to move back to Nashville, and every afternoon during the drive home from work I have to psych myself up for the evening.  I am exhausted and stressed out and quite frankly I just want to stay in my room and listen to records until I rot.

And so it’s important to take those aforementioned small pieces and combine them to create some sort of map for this nonsensical existence.  I see how the events that led up to my arrival here and my subsequent struggles here have been necessary, but like you I’m sure, I’m still figuring out how to be open to life when it’s been such a dick to me in the past.

But I guess I need to refocus on remembering not to forget.

Everything is going to be ok.

Love, LR

it’s been a long time since i’ve wanted to write again.  i guess this means the fog is lifting?  i guess i’m just an open book.  or at least words are some sort of catharsis for me.  what else am i supposed to do with this mess up here but map it out in sentences?  i’ve found little to no reason not to be perfectly honest.  i think this is the beauty of life: the universality of the experiences.  yes, life is quite different for each of us.  but we are also quite specifically the same in ways that all add up to what we can call humanity (thus, i have no secrets.  or at least we all have disturbingly similar secrets).

and this is what makes human connection possible, i suppose.  this makes it possible for me to sit on the couch and have hour-long discussions about life with people i’ve only just met and who have no idea who i am or where i’ve come from on any level.  and this makes it possible for us to find people in the maze of our years that we want nothing more than to hop onboard with, people whose presence in our days becomes as necessary as oxygen or a night’s rest.  yes, i truly believe that this human need is as crucial and basic as our need for food and water.  and the only reason i know this is because when taken away, the heart dies a small bit in the same way that to deny ourselves nourishment would be to cause our bodies to die a small bit (when i say “die” here, i do not mean completely… only to lose normal function to a degree).

we are hopeless creatures when left alone.  reading dostoevsky (specifically “notes from underground”) was a turning point in my philosophy on this issue.  what a terrible fate to be left to wallow in one’s own thoughts.  the soul fades leaving nothing but raw and ignorant emotion.  the beauty of our frail humanity is reduced to animalistic instinct.  and as much as we are instinctual beings, we also are intelligent and capable of so much more than blind impulse.  in a very abstract way, this could be metaphorically described by the domestication of certain wild species.

you see, i believe we learn how to be human by our interaction with other humans.  this begins the day we are born, when we first learn what it is to be touched by another, held by another, sustained by another (and this works in the opposite direction as well.  i’m sure you too have read those heartbreaking stories of orphans who were never held as infants.  what a horrible crime).  and as we grow, we learn about the power of language and expression and communication through further interactions with humanity.  it’s the most fantastic phenomenon.  we can all argue about circumstance creating who we become, but i really think it’s who we’ve been surrounded by since that first day.  we are more like our families than we are willing to admit.

at any rate, i have been thinking a great deal about these ideas.  mostly i’ve been landing on the issue of heartbreak (because it is so damn relevant to my life at any given moment.  and yours too i’m sure.  another terribly universal human dilemma).  as i mentioned above, humanity dictates that we form these connections with one another much like the rumble of a hungry belly causes us to eat.  we crave it, need it, seek it desperately.

and yet love becomes so horribly disfigured amidst our other contrary human qualities.  i, for example, am disgustingly selfish with my time.  i would die for any one of my family members on any given day, and yet, i rarely call.  and i have been known to up and leave on occasion.  leave after years of building relationships and sharing major life experiences and getting so closely intertwined.  you see, we learn from each other (from our first day on) how to need each other…. but not what to do when love is denied or taken away (unexpectedly or not).  sure, we learn to expect it from a young age (heck, just go to any middle school to witness the foundations of this drama.  we learn to expect disappointment too early in life).  but we never know quite what to do once the event occurs.

the old adage “time heals all wounds” is such a cruel lie.  i know this from experience.  i have waited and waited to heal, but i am still just as much of a mess as i was the day my biological father walked out the front door two decades ago.  despite my lack of understanding of the situation at the time (i was quite young), we are perhaps injured the most intensely by these crimes of humanity in our formative years (or at least turned into more fertile ground for the damaging events to come.  and these childhood events teach us to always feel like these new issues are only the same reccuring issue.  a.k.a.  ‘i am not worth sticking around for.  they all leave.  just expect it, lauren.’  ouch).

it’s true that we can heal in small ways, of course.  time does help with this.  so does space.  so does major life change.  so does new human interaction.  and yet the underlying issues remain, dormant at best, waiting to be awoken by even the slightest trigger.

although this seems like the grimmest outlook possible, i assure you there is hope.  you see, i would here argue that despite the horrible pain and destruction caused by our dysfunctional human crimes against one another, the general cycle of life has proven that growth and progress comes out of darkness and devastation.  it’s terrible, i know, and i have no idea why the universe works this way, but it is so deeply ingrained in everything.  the first step to planting a garden is to clear out the old growth and upturn the soil, no?  (as cheesy as that metaphor has become…)  none of these ideas sit well with me.  i hate being so broken in such similar ways (always similar).  a few months ago i found myself at the exact same impass with someone new.  and after he spoke the words, i realized they were true for me as well, which only made the pain more acute i assure you.  we are all capable of love, i suppose, but do not always have the luxury to give and receive it at will.  some figurative soil has yet to be upturned and readied (and perhaps some never will be again).

anyway, i would love for you to disagree with me.  please do.

love, LR