the not hello

  You meet a person and immediately you go from strangers to something else.

And maybe you meet again. And something is shared.

And then one person, or both—but rarely both—decides they no longer want to share that thing with you.

And poof. You are strangers again. And somehow stranger than before.

And you live in this small city for months or years and you have these parallel lives that never intersect.

And then boom. One day, when you least expect it, you look up and find you’re looking right at this man who was once not a stranger, but is again.

But you don’t yet know it’s him. You just know enough to look again. And awareness creeps round the edges of the mind. And then you see the chain around his neck.

And that’s all it takes, a small, silver strand, and the blood drains from your body.

Because here is a stranger who was, for a moment, not.

Here is a man who decided he did not want to know you anymore.

You pretend not to recognize him. Wonder if he’s seen you. Perhaps not. Your hat is large and your sunglasses dark.

And you turn to the sweet boy next to you and ask him to look at you, for just, like, ten minutes, as if you’re the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. And you wrap your rapidly burning shoulders in his oversized button down because suddenly you feel so very exposed, naked to more than just the sun. And he gives you that loopy, lazy grin that comes so naturally to politicians and movie stars, before returning his gaze to the group. And you are left to your own experience, a very private one, in this very public place.

You weren’t meant to come here. You had no intention of coming here. Sort of dragged by a group of half-friends.

He’s with someone. And she’s so obviously cooler than you.  Lithe and pretty and funky in that way you’ve always lusted after in other woman.

And you cannot say hello.

But isn’t it his hello to give?

Your mind wanders to the man you’ve been dating since back when it was still cold and you’d escaped into a small West Village restaurant, sat at the end of a long table with your best girlfriend. He’d been at the other end, part of a larger group, and as he was leaving he’d paused, chatted, called you charming (and you were, you were so charming that night—it’s so easy when nothing is at stake) before inviting you to dinner the following week—his invitation more a request than anything else. And you had been done in by this. By his supreme confidence. His absolute nerve. In the time since, he’s said again and again how shy he is and you know he’s not, but you play along: Why then did you approach me that first night? you ask coyly. And he answers with one word, Irresistible. And somehow that one word is enough—somehow in his less than perfect English that one word is absolute perfection. And it is a little truthful and a little not and you know this--you are smart enough to know this, but it is enough true that you smile in that way that is just for him and tuck your head into that space below his chin.

But whatever it is the two of you have been building is a flimsy thing, a we’re-never-going-to-love-each-other-but–isn’t-this-nice-sort-of-thing. Already you know you are on borrowed time--that it's only lasted as long as it has because you've been so lonely (and you so liked telling the story of how you met). But you’ve learned so much from this man who never loved you—this man with no intention of ever loving you. This man who always paid for dinner and when he smoked never did so in your presence. This man who offered to call the airlines and reminded you to wish your mother a happy mother’s day. Who always gave you his jacket and always ordered dinner and always asked  just what it was you wanted to do with your life. This man who was so not the right man, but cared for you as he knew how, and held you close when he could. This man who you will meet one lazy Saturday years from now, who will buy you a drink and say hello and kiss you softly and ask how you are and really want to know. This man you will never pretend not to know.

Because I don’t really get it. How we can so totally make a stranger of another person. How we can pretend not to know them so completely.

I mean, I was a little afraid and I was a little hurt and I was a little embarrassed—so not terribly courageous, but I don’t know what the hell you were.

more faith

i was at a party on monday night with a bunch of people i don't know terribly well, but know enough to know that we're mostly all at different points in our lives. not all of us, so much as, all of them, and then me, on the other side of some invisible line.

and one of the girls was asking about dating in new york city, which if i know anything at this point in my life it is that 1. dating here is absolutely unforgiving and hard and new york may very well be the worst place to meet anyone. ever. and 2. the experience of dating here is a perpetual case of heartache--mostly mild, but sometimes not.

over the last few years i've gotten really good at crafting stock answers to questions i don't want to answer. like what do you do for a living or what do you want to do with your life or are you seeing anyone. i answer obliquely or flippantly or, upon occasion, with a question that is just disarming and (relatively) charming enough that the person laughs and we move on to another topic.

on monday night someone asked about a man. and i let out a long breath and sort of chuckled. and i had no words. because sometimes the truth is too sharp to gloss over. and before my wise-ass mouth could catch up to my mind, i found myself saying, but you know, not everyone gets to have this experience. and maybe it's a bit lucky that i do. 

and how shocked i was by those words. because where did they come from? that was my thought--i had that thought?

but out they came. and they felt really true. and really good.

but like a peripheral truth. sitting just on the edge of myself. and if only i could reach out, wrangle it, pull it in closer.

there's a man named brian doyle who is one of my very favorite writers. and once upon a time he wrote a nearly perfect essay on what it is to be a writer. and i've underlined and dog-eared and highlighted the whole of it. and i go back again and again (and again) to find answers to questions that have both nothing and everything to do with writing.

so i pulled it out sometime just after monday night searching for what follows:

I was visiting a class of fourth graders recently, and going on at tiresome length, as is apparently my habit, about Robert Louis Stevenson, and how great he was, and how he wrote timeless and vigorous stuff in every genre, novels and poetry and essays and travelogues and letters, like a pitcher who could throw the best curve and the best slider and the best change up and the best head-high heater, and a girl in the third row raised her hand to ask an honest question: 

"If Stevenson is the best ever, and you say you'll never be as good as him, why do you write?"

She had me there for a moment--what do I say? Catharsis? Or benign neurosis? Or prayer? ...

My job--my itch, urge, dream, hobby, entertainment, prayer--is to tell stories on paper, to try to choose and tell stories that both inform and move their readers, and that is what I do to shoulder the universe forward two inches. I was given the urge, and a little of the requisite skill, and I have to do it. It's what I do, and what I love to do, and no once else can do it quite like I do. 

Better, perhaps--but not with my peculiar flavor and music, and somehow, in a way I do not wholly understand, that is important, and in a very real sense miraculous, and necessary."

i believe that of writing. and i believe that of life. which i think is what i meant when on monday night i said, not everyone gets to have this experience.

i wouldn't wish my life on anyone. as lucky and charmed and impossibly blessed and undeservingly fortunate as i have been, i would not wish my life on anyone. because there were whole stretches of time in which i thought i'd been swallowed whole by sadness. and i was. years of my life i can't remember. whole years. just the other night i was out with a friend i hadn't seen in five years and he was talking about the last time we'd been together and my recollection was so vague and so dark that all i could do was turn to him and say, i can't recall. and the thing is, i have an exceptional memory. that's my thing. so to not remember is unnerving and terrifying and says more about a very sad and very lonely stretch of time than the small words i might choose to use ever could.

but here's the thing, and this is a relatively new thought for me, i wouldn't trade my life for anyone else's. because not everyone gets to have this experience. and maybe it's lucky that i do. and others may live their lives "better--but not with my peculiar flavor and music." this is my lot and i'll be damned if i don't figure it out. and frankly i'd like to see how it all plays out. which is to say, i'm invested in the story. i'm invested in the story of my own life. which, i think, is not a bad place to be at twenty-seven.

i used to think the not knowing was the worst bit. the great gaping unknown--an endlessly terrifying thing. but i'm starting to realize it's actually quite thrilling. it's actually, absolutely, the best bit. there is so much to look forward to, so much still to do. i have yet to live that night on which i'll meet the man i marry. yet to get my first piece published. yet to give birth or buy a house or figure out non-oblique answers to all those damn questions. there are so many firsts still ahead of me. and what a blessing--what a particularly exciting thing about standing on this side of that invisible line.

what i'm just now coming to realize is that the difference between the terror and the thrill--that razor-edge that separates the two, is faith.

i remember sending up a particularly vociferous prayer towards the start of the year, which wasn't so much a prayer as a demand, what do you want from me? what do you want from me? six words i said again and again. six words i angrily flung upward. and the answer came back immediate and clear: more faith.

more faith.

which at the time i thought meant more patience, and patience has never been my virtue.

but now, these many months later, i don't think it is patience. it's not about more patience or less patience. it's about a seed of self-belief. and how that seed is actually a divine thing. it's about embracing the bits that don't make any sense. trusting that the story is in fact made by the departures and aberrations. it's about wonder and curiosity. about moving forward and upward even if the movement is a sort of graceless thrashing about. it's about clawing and clamoring and dirt beneath the fingernails. it's about saying i don't know. and i don't know. and i don't know, again. because one day i will. and if one believes that in the end it'll all work out--even and most especially in the face of overwhelming doubt--then those moments of discomfort and unease and fear are made sweet and holy and wholly lovely by their impermanence.

more faith.

hell.

that really is the answer, isn't it?

a thought on which to end the week. (and to carry forward forever more).

 

i have come to learn (the hard way, always the hard way) that there comes a point in fledgling romantic endeavors in which i become just-attached-enough that i start. to lose. my mind.

fear takes hold and my deepest insecurities take root and a very small and very ugly version of myself emerges--a woman who acts out of fear and need.

and the sight is. not. a pretty one.

and what ends up happening is the very things the men were first attracted to get strewn about in the wake of my...terror.

there's a line from one of my very favorite Avett Brothers songs that i often think about:

If you're loved by someone you're never rejected. 

how satisfying it is to be adored by a person. how seductive. it is grounding. a lightening rod of sorts that harnesses the big and scary and unmanageable things and drags them down to earth. makes everything a bit more doable.

but in the absence of that adoration--in the absence of that person, we must be our own lightening rod.

and i suspect, even with another person, we must constantly remember that on our own, alone, we have the ability to ground ourselves.

i came across this earlier in the week and wanted to share. it is a father's letter to his little girl (about her future husband):

i can't get this out of my head (nor do i want to): your only task is to know deeply in your soul--in that unshakeable place that isn't rattled by rejection and loss and ego--that you are worthy of interest...If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word. 

what powerful (dare i say, holy words). easier said than done, of course. but man do i want to strive to be that person.

read the full letter here.

on how to be happy

it takes a long time

it's been a strange and wonky stretch of time, these last few months.

good and bad and a little unbearable and at times, heaven.

a stretch of time in which i've felt both deeply mired in the muck and as though i'm hurtling, lightening speed, into the great unknown.

i have this very vivid memory of being twelve years old and climbing up to the see the delicate arch in utah and how that trek went on forever. i never thought we'd get there. the land was so flat and so brown and so long before me and the sun was high overhead and i couldn't imagine an end. and then, just when i thought i couldn't go any further, we curved round a huge stone wall and there it was.

and i was breathless. it took my breath away.

that thing, that arch, that magnificent sliver made by mother nature's careful hands.

few times in my life have i seen something so beautiful--the sort of thing that people marvel at even in photos, but photos will never do justice.

it was so much more than my small mind could have ever conceived.

it was sometime between late december and middle of january that i realized the eating disorder was done.

just like that, gone.

i shouldn't say just like that--it was an arduous and often impossible journey. but the moment of its departure went unnoticed.

t.s. elliot got it right: not with a bang but a whimper.

there's that phrase: you'll struggle with this for the rest of your life. and oh how i loathed that phrase and fought against that phrase and worked to make that phrase obsolete.

but here, on the other side, i've come to realize it's not the eating disorder i may struggle with the rest of my life, but all the other things that i emptied into it.

fear and anxiety and a propensity to get sad. startlingly deep emotional reactions that overwhelm and unnerve. lack of confidence. questions of worth.

and with the eating disorder said and done those things are now illuminated with stark clarity. and a whole new journey begins. and it's just as hard and i'm sure it'll be just as good...

but what the hell.

you know?

because no one prepared me for this.

in fact each time i face something that i thought would be easier without an eating disorder and it's not--well, each time there is disappointment and dare i say, a little heartache.

each time feels like a small loss.

i came through the other side and it's a whole new set of struggles. or well, the struggles that were always there, but now there's no pretending.

there is only honesty--ruthless and brutal honesty. and a little floundering.

someone left a comment the other day saying, when are you not sad. not with a question mark though, just a period.

and all i could do was laugh because she has a point and imagine how i feel living it? i know, i really, really know.

ba-hambug. (and a little laughter along the way).

but just the other day natalie said something that made me a take a quick breath, oh! of course!

it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made. 

isn't that perfect? it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made.

and natalie and i, we both want to be exceptional. and so yes, it may take a little bit longer.

and the flip side of that? an easy path does not make for exceptional people.

exceptional people are forged by the hard and the difficult and the sad.

which is to say the hard and the difficult and the sad are all great gifts.

and perhaps this may be simplistic, but makes it all a bit more bearable--provides perspective.

it took a long time for that delicate arch to be made.

and it took a long time for me to reach it at the age of twelve.

but good lord was it worth the wait.

it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made. indeed.