Among the Roses

Today, I went for a very long walk. I left out of the white picket fence and stopped into Hannah for a coffee (okay, it was mostly just milk…) and was greeted by the friendly baristas. I walked along The Alameda. I walked by the place where I got my Harold and Maude tattoo. I walked by the churches I’ve never been to. I crunched through the early Autumn leaves. I listened to kids playing, babies laughing, moms on cell phones at the park. I photographed a picture of a girl releasing bees from a small house. I crossed the street. I sat among the roses, and thought of you.

I thought about the book in your hands now. I thought about the pictures, how when they came in the mail, I ran my fingers along the white edges smiling in remembrance and in hope. I thought about coffee brown cartoon eyes in all the pictures. I thought about Christmas. I thought about you not talking to me, thought about what you could be thinking about.

If I know you at all, you are not thinking about me too much yet. You are working. Listening to the Hipster International playlist and petting your dog’s smiling head. You are getting things out of the way. You are in your time. You are thinking about how good it is to have things going on, getting things accomplished. You are doing fine.

And in my way, so am I.

This is the thing: I am not looking to “feel better.” I am looking to feel. My whole life I have seen people trying to fix other people and trying to repair their sadness and I have watched tv seminars late at night about people helping other people “get over” heartbreaks and failures, etc, etc. I have heard people go on and on about self-help books and workshops and I have had a psychiatrist who didn’t even listen to my story tell me that I had something distinctly wrong with me. I have had people closest to me find their rescue in those things, and in alcohol, and in hitting rock bottom, and in entering programs. But I am not those people.

I believe in my heart of hearts that those programs and books and teachers guide people in the right direction. I think some of the most valuable stuff of this earth is the human capacity for compassion and helpfulness. I think it is really beautiful to stand somewhere and say I am broken, help me get better.

But that’s not where I’m coming from.

It’s funny how when you tell people about a distinct sadness or broken thing of your life, they begin to give you advice, list off books, tell you not to “fall apart,” tell you how strong you are— and as much as those people are trying, I am not sure any of those people are listening. Or at least I’m not sure that they know me. I’m not looking for a solution. I am looking just to say — this is where I am. This is my heart. It’s okay. It’s just cracking. It’s just life. It’s just feelings. It’s not a problem. I am not looking to “get over it” or get better. I am not looking for a solution or a book to read. I am looking to sit with myself and process my emotions and understand that the person I am is a person I love and respect enough to let follow her own path, whatever that means. I’m not yet concerned with getting better or listening to other people talk because none of those people have actually listened to me. As much as I appreciate the people in my life who just want to help Kate be Kate, I have to know that only Kate knows what Kate needs.

Heartbreak is not a disease or something I am looking to get over. I am not even sure if things have ended yet. I am only sure that in this moment, I am very sad. And I don’t know what’s going on. And that’s okay.

Now, I am sitting in my bed and thinking of a time where you fell asleep on the couch behind me as we were watching Ghostbusters. I remember thinking when you were snoring just how nice it is to be together and alone at the same time, with the same person, in the very same room. I am not ready to let go of you.

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A Life Internal

“No one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.”

About a month ago, I started writing this entry as defense: I realized that most people in my life emote based on external situations or conversations, “actual things happening,” and I realize my emotions are generally born within and not always (almost never really) based in the external world. What is happening is happening is how I usually see it, and although I always voice an opinion, I see the world in constant flux and I know things are moving forward all the time, so I tend not to trip too hard on that which is unimportant. But at that point a month ago, I was going through something very hard within myself and although I can’t exclude the external from my experience (as everything is all the same anyway- boundaries are just illusions to help us navigate reason, thought, feeling, etc.), I know what I was feeling was something innately bore within me. That hard sadness within is inclusive of my essence. I had a coworker ask me what was going on because I’m also not good at hiding my emotions and I felt so defensive that something had to be “going on” when my experience had never been relevant really. I guess that is maybe the whole point. But I’ll see if I can explain.

At the end of the day, it has never been my life that was hard, or the people in my life cruel, or the temperatures too cold or the world too harsh or any of any of any of it. I love the world, dearly. And in my experience, the world has always been good to me. But there are days when I wake up and feel an actual fear of waking up. If you have ever experienced depression, this is probably a familiar feeling for you. My conflict is that positive relationship with the world confuses my experience of depression and anxiety, as those seem to come from a natural instinct within me that says my mental state is shifting into darkness. I feel this is the meeting in me of my parents in some ways – my dad always starkly aware of the pain the human brain causes itself (internal) and my mom constantly a bubble of positive energy for the love of the world without any regard to self (external). This is not to suggest my dad is a sad guy or that my mom is necessarily a happy person, but that their approaches to the world shaped my understanding of who I am and how I grew. I draw my energy from the external, but feel exclusively from within without much regard to how I should be feeling based on how things are outside of me.

People are always asking ‘why’ we are upset. And I’m not sure if I am the only one or if it’s just not as normal for other people as it is for me to cry in public, but I don’t always have an answer. Sometimes there is a weight within me that draws slow tears. I’m not doing anything. I’m not anywhere specific. All of the things that have happened in my life have lead up to this moment, but it is instinctual- I’m crying just because it is within me to cry. I’m terrified, and it’s not of the world. Most of the times I have ‘not’ done something in my life was based on this weight— I can barely lift myself out of bed sometimes, hardly can imagine pretending that I’m enough of a person to do this great thing. It’s not that the world has ever once told me I wasn’t good enough— the people in my life have generally been colored of the extraordinary and encouraging and I just never had that on my own. I never knew how to listen to the world telling me all of the good things within me because I have a brain full of self-definitions.

And here we are again maybe at misunderstanding. The darkness was never something I hated. In fact, I love my blues. I love what they are inside me and that this moment is always impenetrable by the external. That no happy or good thing can understand it. It’s nice to have a secret, I guess. There is an insane joy within me paired with that darkness that I value as much and it is my secret too. It’s the way I am, these two in constant conversation, “pools of sorrow, waves of joy,” all of the insanity bubbling within me is what pours out and makes me the person you see. It’s just not always a person I know how to share.

There’s some kind of judgment that happens when this is your nature, though. That you just are sad, or you just are happy, or you just are whatever you are.  If people ask, know that you don’t always have to have an answer. It’s okay. Sometimes people just feel the way the feel. Sometimes it’s a lack of awareness, sometimes it’s hormonal, sometimes it just is. Sometimes it isn’t.

I’ve never had an easy time answering when people asked me ‘why’ I was upset, crying, etc. I just did those things. I just had those feelings. Sometimes I feel because of _________. Sometimes I cry because ____ said _______. But often, I am crying because my insides overflow and reach out into the external. But I just question, ‘why’ is it so important anyway? When I am crying, sometimes I wish somebody would just sit with me, and not ask me anything, not try to hug me super tight or kiss me or talk with me, but just let me be who I am in front of them. That’s all I’m asking for. I think that’s all any of us are asking for, no matter what stuff our tears are made from.

The next time you’re crying, instead of asking yourself why, look in the mirror. Investigate the way your eyes probably change colors, the way your nose wrinkles like the way your grandma’s always did, how your cheeks get hot. Look at that person and see if you are okay with it. See if you can look at that person in the mirror and not feel pity or curiosity, but acceptance. The most important thing sometimes is just to be wholly aware of who you are in the moment of those tears coming down your face and other times the most important thing is just to know you’re crying. Okay.

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How I Deal with Growing Explodey

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”
-Henry Miller

( It becomes relevant – I promise. )

What I like best about the world is all of it, or most of it at least. I love remembering (in this moment) that my kindergarten best friend had a playground behind her house and how her sister would read us the “wayside school” book series while we wore parts of princess costumes. I love the sound of my cat snoring and purring and the way she is unaffectionate until bedtime, when she reaches out for me with her small paw, just to make sure i’m within reach. I’m grateful for the way it never rains here, grateful for the way people always love to come through, grateful that I am not where I started even when that is exactly what it looks like.

Two years ago between May and June somewhere I moved to sunny San Jose and began a different kind of life than I anticipated for myself. I say this but, the truth is, I’m not sure that I’ve ever expected anything of myself— or my life, or my future. I always just followed my instincts, worked hard, hoped desperately for the best and things have worked out in remarkable ways and I think much of it due to that comedic approach to the world, problems, challenges. A lot changed then because I stopped being responsible only for myself and became responsible for this whole entire team at my job. I have bosses. I have bills. I have a mean cat. But at the end of each day, I still answer only to myself, my own moral code, my own truth. I ask myself how I treated people, how I responded to any moments of darkness, who I behaved as. I sleep easy at night.

Whether your personal truth involves a figure of divinity or is just a human you or is the set of rules your parents have given you, that’s your call. I’m just here to say that if it isn’t authentic, raw, real, true to you as it gets, then it means nothing in this world. You have only yourself to offer — your gifts, words, character, promises, radiance, brilliance, undying music within. Why be given your truth if you aren’t gonna spit it? I had a friend say to me yesterday, “yeah, it’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason.” Not speaking in the moment to what I’m talking about, she was talking to me now in the future, all tumbling together in the Here.

I think more of us than would like to admit wrestle with what we want for ourselves and what the world expects of us. I’m here to tell you, even in your moments of weakness, that what the world expects of you is meaningless. What you are great at should not be the only thing that defines you— unless you want it to. It’s all whatever you want. It’s all whatever is already burning within you. It is your essence. It is who you are. What you want for yourself is almost as meaningless I think because you are essentially bound to this — there is a purpose, divine and telling of a life worth speaking of. Recently, I’ve been facing this quarter-life crisis, feeling so overwhelmed with whether or not I was doing the “right thing,” whatever that means, when I realized it’s all within me. I already know. I feel it in my heart everyday who I am and how is that not enough to know exactly what I’m doing? Just feel who you are, know that that person is so gifted, know that that person is insanely important— not a cog in a machine but an unrepeatable essence of humanity and the cosmos themselves.

I don’t know. That seems like it should be enough.

Anyway, I hope that if you are reading this that you have people in your life who allow you to process big lifey feelings with them, and that you’re not alone, and that people you know are as good to you when you feel explodey as the people in my life have been with me whilst going through this. The world is big. But it’s not ever going to big bigger than what you are capable of, what you are meant for, who you are. I just hope for you that when you get lost, you know for yourself what you want to do about it, and that you have people in your life to let you feel it out your way.

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Sunflowers

Sunflowers in Napa

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And in the Midst of Memory, Where Are You Now?

Jotting down explosions of something important along margins of David Foster Wallace’s narrative voice, I am remembering motive and I am remembering compulsion. I am remembering you laying on my sister’s bedroom floor asking me to listen with eyes the sound of Rain Dogs and doodling in a journal I’m not sure still exists. I am in tenth grade calling Katie to talk about a new song by a band I’m pretty embarrassed I ever loved so much. I am hugging my mother and crying with my mother and not understanding my mother and growing up. I am spitting up apologies and choking on the opposite of regret. I am wondering where I am. I am missing California. I am not home, but I am somewhere I have been before in a new way. I am remembering the words to my song. I am loving someone new.

Caught up in something like nostalgia, I am drowning in comfort. I am giving up. I am growing old with friends and being surrounded by a lack of color. It is not their fault. I just can’t do this. But right now, it feels good to be in the place I’m from with the people I’m from doing the things that built me, remembering and being away from The Now to be giving into The Then. My shoulders are shaking from someone big grin’s awareness and I learn about comfort as temptation and I am reminded that we are only good because one of us is bigger now. In the moment but aware of the Real Now, I am flung forward. I am in California drinking hibiscus tea and crying over something divinely written. Hard to know how much we can handle and hard to know where to draw the line. I am realizing how easy it could be to turn around, to pack up and walk backwards. Big words inside my head and desperate prayers over someone else’s inability to move give me something firmer to stand on. I am too big for things to go back to where I was.

I watch these incredible videos by Steve Roggenbuck on YouTube all the time (and actually met him during my 6 day stay in Georgia last week!) and there’s one where it shows a motivational speech where this guy is talking about how important it is to just love what you love and not care about reactions and responses from others… completely unaffected by the judgment of the world (the true divine quality!). He says “You have to be Who you Are.” I had this line playing in my head while I was visiting.

What in your life has helped you to stay on the path of your personal truth?

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