Investments

I’ve been spending more and more time alone as of late. It’s been by choice. Solitude breeds solitude; my introverted side has shone brighter than my need to be social, as if my world has rotated ever so slightly, just enough to change my season.

My Thanksgiving plans fell through last minute and though my gracious friends offered alternative plans (One including, “Have you ever seen two deaf people get into a fight?”) I decided to spend the holiday alone.

Best decision I’ve made this year.
Thursday morning I slept in, and then made a breakfast sandwich on one of the bagels I’d picked up at Bruegger’s the day before. I fixed a bloody mary (I decided the holiday was the best time to try new recipes) and sat on my couch in the sunlight, reading. I stayed in my pajamas all day, moving from couch to couch, changing only to switch activities from reading to watching to napping. I didn’t talk to another person until my father called at 5pm. I had a dinner of sage crusted pork chops, roasted brussel sprouts and rosemary red potatoes and ended the day at Ian and Tammy’s relaxing in their hot tub and playing the Monty Python version of Fluxx. My Michael Caine accent needs work apparently.

And so the day was lovely. I didn’t deal with the drama, old wounds or latent insecurities that come with all family get-togethers, not just mine. Didn’t have to spend time getting to know people I won’t see again, or telling the tired stories of who I am. I relied on no one, and I loved it.

And yet, I worry. I worry because it came so easily to me, and as I spent almost four full days alone, I came to crave that solitude even more. In my selfishness I became more selfish. I didn’t want to invest in others or settle in a community, didn’t want to share hearts or laughs. My solitude spiraled in on itself and I’m still fighting to get out of it, even as I enjoy it. I know it to be untrue, but right now investing in others sounds like so much work that I don’t care to try.

Every Time I Blink

There was something so odd about walking the beach in November. The shore is empty, save for occasional little clumps of fishermen, their legs covered in rubber waders and their hands full of beer. Without the sounds of the summer beachgoers the ocean was free to be as soothing or as surly as it liked. The first day I walked along an ocean calm, the water the color of oxygenated avocado, the sky a crayola blue. The waves rolled and bounced shells toward shore, the broken bits sounding like shards of glass laughing. I'd never heard that sound.

The second day the ocean looked furious. As far out as I could see was white foam and water the color gray one use to describe old love gone old. The wind whipped everything it could, the sky built gray atop gray, like painting with only two colors. Tumbleweeds of seafoam skipped and rolled down the shore. The fishermen were gone. There was no one. The seashells kept coming but didn't laugh like the day before.

Not surprisingly, I thought of an Ani DiFranco song:

“The sky is gray, the sand is gray, and the ocean is gray
And I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome
Alone in my way
I smoke and I drink and every time I blink I have a tiny dream
And as bad as I am, I'm proud of the fact that I'm worse than I seem.”

I didn't get to write at the beach. I let every sort of distraction get the best of me.

The Conductor

I live with an operatic chorus.
At least it feels that way, and in each moment one of those choir members has stepped out front to sing their solo. They are men and women, this chorus. Some sing so lovely that I stop and listen and savor; others are so jarring I grimace when they start their solo. But they sing louder than the beauty and try as I may to avoid them, I listen.
They are Self-Loathing and Pride; Guilt and Despair, Confidence and Loneliness, Destruction and Hope, Lust and Love and on and on. Somehow their songs make me, and no matter how I try I never seem to know the melody. I don't know where the song is going. Often I don't even know who is singing until they finish. But I'll find myself mouthing the words to an aria that I do not wish to know, or repeating lyrics to songs from too long ago that I cannot forget.
I wish I knew the song of my heart, of my character; wish I could read the music of my bests and worsts and direct them. The people I most admire seem to walk though life with a conductors baton in their hands, waving off the swells and beckoning the sweetness.
Oh to go from audience to conductor.

Address the Harms

“I thank God for pain,” said Dr. Paul Brand, “I cannot think of a greater gift I could give my leprosy patients.” Brand is the doctor who first discovered that leprosy does its damage by killing off nerve endings and was a leading expert on the treatment of a disease that still exists and still holds a vicious stigma. The loss of pain receptors means that simple injuries, like a splinter or a blister, become problematic, because the victim doesn't have the ability to feel these injuries and tend to them.

Our ability to feel pain is often the conduit we need to address the injury before more damage is done. Pain saves us; forces us to identify and address the harms facing us. One of the main injuries suffered by lepers is the loss of sight; the nerve endings that remind eyes to blink are destroyed, so dust settles in and causes infection.

My pastor, Amanda, spoke on exile this week, and the story of Jesus healing the lepers (Luke 17 for those who want to reference) and only one came back to thank him. I wonder if the reason only one came back is because of what this healing looked like. Does healing mean that all the sores left and the lepers went away looking brand new, or does it mean their nerve endings grew back? By that I mean, did Jesus blessed them by restoring their ability to feel, even while leaving the sores and infections? To an outsider, no healing would've taken place. But to that leper, it would certainly be known. How overwhelming that would be, to suddenly feel for the first time these wounds that were visible but unfelt. It would be painful, but it would be progress.

I wonder how our pre-defined definitions of what healing looks like limit our understanding of it. Maybe part of the healing process is feeling, for maybe the first time, the wounds we carry, the dust in our eyes.

Danger Takes a Lifetime

Friday night was fun. I met up with several friends at Dirty Jacks and slowly the night turned into a pub crawl that included an a Capella group singing to Emily, a hilariously awkward run-in and the worst game of pool I’ve ever played. I left downtown earlier than I would normally; I haven’t been sleeping well for several months and knew I needed the rest. Jane was out of town so I’d have the house to myself for some necessary quiet.

I pulled into my driveway to see the lights on in the house. I was confused. I hadn’t left lights on. Through the kitchen window I could see the refrigerator door moving, meaning someone was getting something out of it. I was still confused. I walked up to our glass French doors and looked inside. The couch cushions were upturned; the drawers in the kitchen were wide open. I unlocked the door before what was really happening hit me. I dialed 911 and slowly backed out of the house. I had to tell the operator what I was wearing so they wouldn’t arrest me.

There is something so incredibly odd about being the victim of a crime; I’ve heard that it takes a long time for the reality of a situation to catch up with a victim’s thought process, simply because it is so far out of the realm of what their subconscious deems possible. Danger takes a lifetime to register. My realm of possibility didn’t include coming back to a man in my house or seeing cops with guns drawn running through my home while I stood in the driveway alone, not sure if I should be hiding. I wondered what I was supposed to do if I heard a shot. I was almost too confused to be scared.

The cops told me I was lucky the man wasn’t armed; they said I’d probably have been “in trouble” which I don’t want to fully address. Emily picked me up on a very different Friday night than the one we’d been living an hour earlier. I called her after the cops went through the house but before forensics showed up. I stayed at the barn. I had nightmares.

I’m doing better. I still have moments. I’ve developed a fear of the dark; I hope its temporary. The house is almost back together.