Troubleshooting with Worth

I’m sitting on the second story of a bus somewhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco, in that good stretch of land where the earth just looks so dang thirsty, watching the headlights fly by. I’ve got a heart beat in my chest that is much faster than usual, a pace that’s been lingering for a few hours, and a stomach that’s flipping all over the place. My heart beats seem to have genres that tell me different things, and this one is the same genre that tells me something’s not okay, and it wants something to change, the kind that tells me I’m doing something that isn’t good for me. It’s the kind that tells me that maybe I’m around too many people in a small area and I should get out, or maybe I’m making myself do something I don’t want to, or that there’s too much on my plate, stuff that maybe doesn’t feel worth it.

I’m pretty sure that last one is causing this fast paced heart beat as we trail on somewhere on the 5 back to SF as I type next to a guy who is knocked out, clearly without the same anxious problem. (I should note he did offer me a banana before he passed out, and the people next to me on way down let me share their portable phone charger with them. People are great sometimes, but that’s not what this post is about.)

Writing has always made me feel better, if I’m successful at it. If I’m not, it makes me feel much worse and makes that heart beat a little bit faster and that stomach a little floppier. I don’t know until I try, but the last several attempts have been a swing and a miss. I sit down, start typing away, and my words lack heart and direction and it doesn’t take me long until I slam the computer shut and wonder what is the blockade between my heart and my finger tips. But I know what the blockade has been this time, and so I’m writing about it.

As humans, we are constantly analyzing worth. Like, constantly. And maybe the concept of worth is unique to human behavior. It wasn’t born out of instinct. In fact, quite the opposite. We wake up and maybe our bodies and minds ache to stay in bed, but we analyze the worth of getting up. Maybe we need money, maybe our jobs are important to us, so we decide fighting the instinct to stay in bed has worth, so we get up. And then maybe we want a cinnamon roll, but then we consider the calories and the sugar crash, and decide it’s not worth it. And these decisions, these micro analyzations of worth,  no matter how seemingly silly or small, happen throughout our entire day.

That alone would be exhausting, but then we have these bigger inner evaluations going on the in the background. Maybe we get to our jobs and our stomachs turn just by walking in, or maybe we feel under-appreciated again, and the background evaluation grows louder. Am I getting paid enough to put up with this? Will it be too hard to find something else? Do I need this job? Is it important to me? Is this doing more harm than good? Am I even in the right field? Are these choices making me happy? Is this life making me happy? Is this life worth it?

It feels like I’ve learned more in the past year than I have my entire life. Not the kind of learning that happens behind a desk listening to an instructor, but the kind that happens when you throw yourself into a situation that’s pretty outside of your comfort zone. What I’ve learned more than anything else is there is so much I don’t know. Every day I realize there’s a ridiculous amount I just don’t know, so much I don’t understand, and maybe things I won’t ever know or understand.

An understanding of worth falls into that “things I know I don’t know” category, but that doesn’t mean the concept of worth isn’t constantly calling on my heart and my brain and my energy, begging for answers. This gets exhausting. Really exhausting. And maybe the way worth really pokes and prods at me kind of goes hand in hand with that fast heart beat and upset stomach thing I was talking about, meaning maybe its call to action is louder for me than others, and that’s why fast heart beats and upset stomachs and shortnesses of breath (a.k.a. anxiety) follow.

I used to have a different definition of the things that I considered had worth. I think at first I started believing that anything that made me happy had worth. And then I started believing that making a name for myself, working hard, not giving up, and being successful in whatever situation I was in was what would make me happy, so I started more so believing these things had worth, and forgetting that if I did these things but they weren’t making me happy, they did not have worth. That’s where I started buying into the dangerous lie of “success”. That I had to be good and content in any situation that may lead me to “success”.

I’m sitting on the bus wondering where these people around me, dimly lit by the green cabin lights above them, are going or coming from, and wondering why this (small, but still significant) journey was worth it to them.

Maybe they wanted to see their new granddaughter before she started running around the house, maybe they had to be somewhere for work, maybe they just wanted to get away.

That last one scares me. It’s the reason I’m on the bus. I wanted to get away for the weekend.

I’m a month away from 22; I have some time to trouble shoot with worth. Maybe not plenty of time, but some time. What scares me is that there are people around me with forty years on me who are still trouble shooting with worth, and it’s more trouble than anything, and that’s why they just want to get away.

So that blockade I was talking about, the fast heart beat, the flipping stomach, I think they’re all there because I’m headed back to a situation that I’m doubting has a lot of worth to me. It has a lot of those things that I used to believe defined success, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy.

Maybe our lives are just the results of us trouble shooting with worth, and maybe we never really get it down. Maybe we never really get to a place where being grateful trumps our constant evaluation of worth. Maybe being grateful quiets this evaluation for some of us, but I worry that’s another thing that’s contributing to this fast heart beat is that I fear I’ll always be analyzing. Maybe it will always feel like something’s missing. And I’ll always be wondering if everything in my life, my imperfect relationships or career or responsibilities, are worth it. And then this makes me wonder if this type of exhaustion is worth it. Maybe I’ll always be wanting to get away, and maybe this restlessness and uneasiness will always be here. I fear it’s an endless cycle, but maybe these fears fall into the “things I don’t know I don’t know” category, and that’s scary, too, but maybe okay, too.

As the miles between me and the place I currently call home grow smaller, the best I can do is to hope that I’m doing my best. The best I can do is know that I don’t know much, and more trouble shooting lies ahead. I’m not going to prevent myself from trouble shooting just because I fear I’ll always battle with worth. And I think that’s all I can ask of myself. Trouble shooting seems worth it.

The Gray Laundromat

The laundromat down the street was gray. Not just in the color but in the overall mood, as most laundromats are.

I had passed the little laundromat several times on my Sunday walk, and each time I tried to not let it remind me of the pile of wrinkled tops and jeans I wore at least one too many times each that were waiting on my closet floor, and how badly I didn’t want to take this pile to the laundromat.

But one Sunday when I walked past and realized I really had not a thing to wear for the week ahead, I decided today was the day to visit the gray laundromat.

Laundromats can’t really help but be gray; the muted, soap-residue covered silver of the machines, the common white textured wallpaper that’s yellowing in the corners, and just the overall mood of doing something no one wants to do but everyone has to do, one of those nasty adult responsibilities, make them gray.

But this laundromat’s shade of gray was different. It was a quirky gray, a colorful gray if gray could be colorful. It was a gray that was trying hard not to be. A gray that almost wasn’t.

A little white wooden “welcome” sign hung on the glass door and banged around a bit when I pushed my way through with my bags full of neglected clothes. It hung by curled white wire, with a little pink bow glued to the top of the “W” that was probably purchased for $6.99 at Marshall’s down the street.

It hung there behind the glass as if to say this wasn’t your everyday laundromat, and once I passed that dangling white welcome sign, I expected to find the owner sitting in an old wooden chair with the paint chipping off, reading a book about a family that lived in a house on a sunflower farm or something.

The owner was sitting there in a chair, but not reading a book about a family living on a sunflower farm. At least, not at the moment.

She was a heavier set women with hair that may have been bleached a few too many times, with pastel blue cotton pants and an oversized blush pink colored t-shirt. She was sitting there, trying to talk to her few customers about little things.

Maybe it wasn’t small talk, because maybe to a small laundromat owner who has clearly had the place for a while, it was just normal sized talk about things that she liked talking about. She tried talking about cooking, and about a pan she recommends. She tried talking about how pretty the seventy-two degree day was, she tried joking about doing laundry, something about how mundane it is, “But hey, we’ve all go to do it!” She tried, but the people just kind of sat there, responding with the occasional quick comment or chuckle, not really wanting to be bothered as they were too busy checking their e-mails or sitting there in silence.

There was one of those little quarter candy dispensers at the entrance just a few feet from the white welcome sign. It was one of those where you get a handful of probably a few month old Mike and Ikes for a quarter.

I wondered why she put this little candy dispenser there.

Maybe it was for the kids that get dragged along to do laundry with their moms and after they lose interest in watching their soccer uniforms swoosh around in circles through the glass after a few moments, they can exchange one of the quarters jingling in their parents’ pocket for some artificially colored sugar.

Or maybe she put it there for the adults, the ones that have let their dirty clothes pile up because they’re too busy doing the dishes or staying late at work or forgetting to pay their car registration, and maybe she put it in the little laundromat so when they’re sitting there attempting to bury themselves in their self-help book that just isn’t giving them the “ah-ha!” or warm fuzzy inspired feeling they seem to be searching for, they’ll put it down and notice the colorful Mike and Ikes sitting in the corner, just a quarter and a turn of the metal handle away from being in their hands.

Maybe she put it there so that if one of those adults does wander over while their socks and slacks and button up shirts are tumbling around and they go for some Mike and Ikes, they’ll remember how when they were  kid they wouldn’t eat the green ones, and they’d give them to their little sister, and maybe they’ll sit there in that seemingly gray laundromat and divide up their handful of Mike and Ikes and pick out the green ones, and maybe she’d hope they’d offer her the green Mike and Ikes and talk to her about how when they were little they’d never eat the green Mike and Ikes.

There was an attempt of a mural on the wall, bubbles painted probably by the owner or her niece or something. They were just blue outlined imperfect circles of various sizes with a little “c” shaped line inside them to give the bubbles a little reflective and dimension feeling, I suppose. There was also a little orange bottle of laundry detergent painted in the corner, and what I think was meant to be a washing machine, but it sort of looked just like a gray box with a blue circle in the middle.

On the opposite wall of the mural was a poster that read “Voted Best of the Bay 2009” with a clipping of the short magazine article about the “cleaning village” posted under it. I wondered if the magazine was still around, as many magazines no longer are.

This was obviously a laundromat that was giving what was probably its best effort not to be gray.

And if I’m honest, maybe this laundromat wasn’t gray at all.

Maybe what I found most gray about the laundromat wasn’t the yellowing wallpaper, the dingy silver machines, the dust covered dangling welcome sign, the overlooked candy dispenser, the quickly painted bubbles on the wall, or even the people trying their best to ignore the chatty and optimistic laundromat store owner.

What I think I found most gray about the laundromat was something much worse.

It was the fact that the happy little dust-covered welcome sign kept me from going home after my walk to grab my laundry and bring it there to get it taken care of. It’s the fact that the first thing I thought of when I saw the candy dispenser was how old and crusty that candy probably is. It’s the fact that the first thing I saw when I looked at the hand-painted bubbles was the pencil circle outlines no one bothered to erase and how I thought the circle outlines didn’t really help because the circles were imperfect anyway. It’s the fact that I didn’t want to make little conversation so badly that I’d rather drive to a Mr. Bubbles or something where there’s no owner lingering around and everyone has their headphones in and I can throw my underwear in the washer while not attempting to explain why I moved north or about company I work for or what my five-year plan is.

What I found most gray about the laundromat was that I had become the gray, grossly jaded adult that blended in with the rest of the gray customers, the kind I’d always feared becoming, the kind that preferred impersonal laundromats, the kind who wished my cab drivers were foreign so I didn’t have to talk to them about their weekend plans, the kind who was too worried about getting a promotion at work or getting my bills payed in time that I’d forget to smile at the happy homeless man down the street.

But maybe I let my pile of dirty clothes grow too large so I wouldn’t be able to wash them in our complex’s single wash machine. Maybe I let my pile grow too large so I would have to take it to the little gray laundromat.

And maybe I’d keep doing that.

And maybe each time I’ll bring extra quarters for Mike and Ikes and I’ll smile at the frowning customers with their headphones in and maybe I’ll have a conversation with the owner about why I moved north and tell her about the company I work for and what my five-year plan is, and maybe I’ll ask her about her friends and her family and who painted the mural or why she put the candy dispenser there.

And maybe each time the laundromat will become a little less gray.

Or maybe, hopefully, I’ll just be the one that grows a little less gray.

New Year’s Thoughts- Contrast

New Year’s has always been a strange holiday for me. The year starts coming to a close and Christmas just happened and I just finished running around trying to split up time equally amongst my family and shopping  for and wrapping presents and trying to work enough to pay for these presents, and then suddenly it’s time for a new year and I’m trying to whip out a blog the night before New Year’s Eve to cram reflections from the past 365 days into a few paragraphs written in an hour or two, while trying to corral a few people together and get plans coordinated for the following evening.

I’ve always felt similarly to Thanksgiving as I have toward New Years. The cynic in me thinks Thanksgiving is the one day a year when people are finally thankful and drag some family over to share time with them, when it should be every day and we shouldn’t need a holiday to be reminded too invite our friends and family over or to be reminded to  be thankful. The cynic in me sees New Years as this day that we come up with this lengthy list of goals to make ourselves seem positive and productive on a piece of paper, but months, weeks, or even days into the new year, most of these goals are forgotten and overshadowed by the demands of our busy lives.

In the past, when the numbers count down and the ball drops and champagne (or more appropriately: sparkling cider) bottles pop and people kiss, and I don’t feel any newer, or any better. It’s always felt a little anticlimactic and I feel like I should be smacked by this wave of hope and opportunity but instead I start to feel drowned in the things I missed out on or the things that brought me down over the past 365 days. I think about the people I didn’t meet or the people I’ve lost instead of the lovely  friends and acquaintances I’ve gained. I think about the words I didn’t say or the stupid words I did, the sights I didn’t see, the things I didn’t do, and feel sad. I respond by immediately trying to suppress these thoughts and remember the good times, but maybe suppressing these things is what causes them to keep reoccurring.

I’ve trained myself to run away from pain. I think this is one of the major themes and characteristics about adulthood. As a child, you stub your toe and you cry, and then you’re taught that it’s not a big deal and to save your tears. As a teenager, your heart breaks or  you get disappointed and you get angry or you cry, and then you’re taught it’s not a big deal and to suppress your pain and move on.

Growing up is about learning to run away from, hide, or ignore your pain. But maybe pain isn’t a bad thing. Maybe in those moments when the ball’s dropping and so is your stomach and you’re flooded with all these reminders of what hurts you, you’re letting yourself be honest. And sure, maybe not entirely, because being completely honest with yourself would be seeing a somewhat equal balance of good and bad, but maybe in these moments, your mind’s begging you to pay attention.

Sadness isn’t the enemy. Ignorance is.

So perhaps around New Year’s, thinking about the rough stuff along with the good stuff is what’s going to allow us to see more clearly in the following year. Reminding yourself of the lows and the things you missed out on will shift your attention in the New Year. Reminding yourself every once in a while of what you don’t want helps you focus in on and discover what you do.

So you could look at New Year’s Eve and see it as just another night in some big blurred sequence of days, and see a year as what it blandly is: just a simple measurement of time. We quantify a year by the time our Earth takes to make a revolution around the Sun. So, you could see it as us spinning around in circles that we’ve made billions of times before.

But why condescend a holiday that reminds us so boldly that we still have more chances, a holiday where we celebrate being alive and all our accomplishments, a holiday where we are encouraged to look to the future and think about what we want for our lives?

So you could be a cynic who sees it for what it blandly is, or you could consider how never before have we made this many revolutions around our Sun; we’ve never had this many chances before. You could see it the new year as an invitation to reflect, and invitation to leave behind the crap that happened to you, an invitation to grow and notice the daisies blooming in the Spring, to finally say “hi” to the intriguing stranger who orders a latte in front of you at Starbucks every morning, to be honest with others and yourself, to look at yourself in the mirror and see the things that make you happy and the things that make you sad.

You could see the new year as invitation to life, and to keep on going, an opportunity to keep or start living instead of just being alive.

“I used to think that friction was a bad thing. You want to cut the tension. Everything is to ease pain in our society, very much like pain is the enemy. I don’t think that’s true. I think tension is a good thing. To be pulled tight is the only way you can make a proper noise on a guitar. If you feel pull, it’s not a bad thing.” – Jon Foreman

Kids Know What’s Up

If I could go back several years and meet myself in a coffee shop, I’d order my past self a hot chocolate (because I don’t yet like coffee- oh, what I was missing), and reach over the table, give myself a little slapping around, and I’d tell myself to stop wasting time disliking kids.

Because that’s exactly what it is. Just a waste.

Looking back now, I think it was a defense mechanism to “hate” kids, because I envied them. I envied how beautiful the world they lived in was, and how mine was getting uglier and scarier every day. And I blamed it on bad babysitting gigs where I got kicked in the face a few times and had to pick up small human poop all over the house, and I blamed it on my first job where kids were just so determined to give me a migraine by blowing into those collector cup straws and making it whistle, which I was fairly certain was some kind of Satan call.

I think I thought it was “cool” to dislike kids, too. I wanted to be a work obsessed, successful and independent woman who defied any gender norms and rose to my success. I wouldn’t have time to drive kids to soccer in my mini-van that never reached a speed above 45mph.

But I was wrong, not only about disliking children, but about what I wanted for my future.

I can so clearly remember walking through this home decoration place, which had these elaborate kitchen models with shiny granite counter tops and sparkling light fixtures with beautiful stainless steel refridgerators, and I remeber telling my dad, “I will have all of this one day.” He chuckled of course, but I believed it. I also remember walking into Nordtsrom and seeing tables of designer shoes and handbags, with the designers’ names in those little glass signs, and I told my mom that she will see my name on a table at Nordstrom with all my designs, and that I’ll be able to buy her whatever she wants from this place.

I was buying into the “American Dream,” although my version was slightly modified, as I wanted a penthouse in Manhattan versus a nice car and pastel yellow house with white picket fence.

I read this really interesting article from Newsweek that suicide now takes more lives than war, natural disaster, and murder combined, and despite the social progress we have made in the past fifty years, suicide is growing at an exponential rate in developed countries.

This article knocked me off my feet. I could not believe that despite all the social progress we continue to make, unhappiness is clearly at an usually high level. It certainly got me thinking. Now we all have a more equal chance at the American Dream, but maybe the American Dream is the problem, and maybe it’s not so ideal in the first place.

I held a screening of the incredible documentary Blood Brother a few days ago, which is about this guy from Pittsburgh who travels to India and comes across this orphanage with kids who have AIDS, and so many of the kids and even adults in the film had this smile that lit up the entire theater. The first time I saw the film in August, I remember thinking, “You don’t see smiles quite that bright here.” These kids and people didn’t have much, and they were struggling beyond our comprehension, but they could still smile in the most humbling of ways. They had a family that extended beyond their white picket fences and pretty cars. Their “brothers and sisters” were united in their struggle, and also in their wonder for life. Their mothers were the women who devoted their time to keeping the kids smiling. Their father was a man from Pittsburgh who left everything to keep the kids playing and laughing, one who found more love in an HIV orphanage than any cold busy big city streets could provide.

I can’t help but feel like if we listen and watch kids and why they smile so often, they’ll show us through their actions, and sometimes even their words, that we’re going about this all wrong.

Maybe we’re raising them to pursue a life that ins’t actually that fulfilling.

Everything is focused on the self in our country. Sure, maybe we put money aside for our kids, but it’s for them to go to the best school so that they can get the best job and can make the most money and just give themselves the best that there is. But maybe our idea of what’s best is really flawed, and maybe letting them continue to paint flowers with their fingers on printer paper and give their masterpiece to the guy at Dairy Queen who looks sad is what we need to be doing. And maybe maturing should be about transitioning from sharing Oreos and Legos to sharing compassion and wealth and talent. Maybe kids need to be teaching us how to grow up, not the other way around.

Kids keep reminding us that this life is beautiful and full of wonder. They are rapt in awe about all that this life is, and they can encompass us in that easily, at least for a moment.

They smile at strangers walking by and stop dead in the tracks to admire the little yellow flowers peeking through the cracks in the asphalt. They look at you wide eyed when you draw them a picture of their dog, like you could take down freaking Picasso with a single stroke of your paintbrush. They move snails out of harm’s way from busy sidewalks and name him before they continue on with their day. And if you sing to them, maybe they’ll tell you that you’re kind of a crappy singer, but its okay because you’re good at plenty of other things. They ask if the moon is really cheese, and if space has an end, and they point out the stars and keep you looking up. They keep you feeling small, but keep you feeling special. They make you notice the funny squirrels and the butterflies and make you dance with them to any song that comes on. They ask you why the lady who rang you up seemed so sad, and they’ll make you realize that you hardly noticed the lady who rang you up. They ask you how it’s fair that there are people who have so much and people who have so little and they’ll keep you thinking how it isn’t. And they keep you wondering why we teach them to always want more and better things and objects instead of more friendships and more moments that they’ll remember on their deathbed and better things for everyone.

Kids are getting it right. And maybe sometimes we have to teach them that not sharing their Oreos is rude, and taking away their Gameboy isn’t the end of the world, but then we teach them to make a lot of money and teach them how to protect it and make more, and we use the world’s problems only as a means to get them to stop crying about being Gameboy-less for an hour and appreciate what they have. But maybe we need to stop appreciating the things we have so god damn much and start giving them away, and in exchange we’ll receive smiles and hugs and friends and that’s better than any Gameboy or iPhone or white picket fence house.

So I’d tell myself to stop being bitter toward kids and to keep listening to them. But most importantly, keep listening to the one inside yourself, and don’t let her go, because she will save you and tell you to ask the girl crying outside of your work if she’s okay and she’ll keep you wondering about how rivers flow and she’ll take you to the ocean and make you think about things. But most importantly, she’ll keep you wanting more for other people, and she’ll lead you on a more rewarding path than any one society has laid out for you.

Why I’ve Been Angry All These Years

I have less than three hours left of being a teenager.

It seems silly, but I’m freaking out a bit about turning twenty. This doesn’t say much considering I have panicked about every birthday since I was nine. But this year, I’m leaving a huge chunk of my life behind, and I can’t help but look back on these several years since I turned thirteen and remember what those dreaded teenage years were like.

I look back and regretfully realize it was the chunk of my life that I fell out of love with the world. When I was a little girl, everything was beautiful. I believed I could become anything; I believed nothing, especially myself, would hold me back, and everything would go according to plan. My parents were perfect, as were all the adults in my life that I looked up to. I couldn’t wait to become an adult like them..

Teenagers get a bad rap for having raging hormones and attitudes to match, and I can’t say I was an exception. But what I want to realize as I leave “teenage hood” behind and enter my twenties is that there was so much more to me than the hormones in my body.

I don’t mean for this to sound so grim, but I feel like the stages of life somewhat mirror the stages of the grieving process. A  tragedy is often followed by denial, anger, then acceptance. When you’re a child, you’re sort of in this denial kind of phase. Everything is filtered for you; all the ugly is withheld. When you’re a teenager, the veil is removed, and you start to learn about all the ugly in the world. When you’re an adult, you have to choice but to accept the situations and move on.

I remember being so overwhelmed by all the things I was realizing about the way this world worked. I was absolutely terrified about this world I had inherited. In a way, I was heartbroken.

When you come to realize the way the world works, you begin comparing yourself to it, trying to find where and how you’ll fit into it. I hated how shy I was, I hated my body, I hated how I wasn’t as talented as my sister, hated my lack of athletic ability, hated the way I had the answers but couldn’t raise my hand, hated how I felt like I took everything too personally. As I learned about wars and religion and hate crimes and the extremely uneven distribution of wealth and all that ugly muck, I resented the world and resented my country- I couldn’t believe there were children dying of hunger while we were dealing with the problem of child obesity. I also hated that everyone wasn’t angry- why weren’t we demanding change?

As I continued to grow older, I hated money and the power it had on us all. I didn’t want my life to revolve around it, I wanted to follow my heart and help people. I saw the effect money had on my parents, my family, and the people around me, and I hated it. I hated love as almost every “relationship” and marriage that I came to understand was so flawed and seemed like such hard work. I didn’t think love should have to be work; it should be like the fairytales I had once believed in. I was incredibly angry, and I think pretty understandably so. 

I wasn’t the kind of kid to dye my hair red, pierce every part of my body, drink away my pain, and “date” every guy I could in rebellion. I have always been the type to internalize the things that bother me the most and estrange myself when I’m upset. I carried all this pain with me, and I can still feel it in my stomach as I write this. I got a lot of criticism for having an attitude and being mad, as all teenagers do. But the veil of innocence was removed so fast- how could I not be angry understanding that so many of the things I believed in weren’t  true? 

I looked at the adults in my life, many of whom were the ones poking fun at me for having this attitude, and it only made me more upset; they were people who had just blindly accepted all this crap that existed in the world.

I was estranging myself with my attitude, but what I needed more than anything was someone to tell me things were going to be okay instead of make me feel ashamed for being angry. Was that what adulthood was about? Was that inevitable?  Was the only method of going on to ignore and accept all the crap that existed in the world? How could they criticize me for feeling so honestly, for letting myself be raw?

As I approach my twenties, I face the choice of what kind of adult I want to become. I don’t want to be the ignorant adult who believes that happiness comes from simply accepting all the ugly in the world and going along for the ride, doing the best I can. That would be a complete slap in the face to my teenage self. I want to become the type of adult my teenage self didn’t really know was possible. 

I have to let go of all the things that tore me up for all these years, for if I don’t, I simply can’t move forward. But letting go and simply accepting things are completely different. I want to face all the ugly; I want to look it right in the eye and show that I’m not running away without a fight. I want to fall back in love with the world and all of the beauty in it, without forgetting all of the bad. But what my teenage self would have really never imagined I would want to do is to forgive. I have to look back at all the people that I cared about who have made poor choices in their life and forgive them. I have to look back at all the catty girls who went out of their way to do their best to make my friends and I feel awful and forgive them, for we were dealing with our pain differently. I internalized my insecurities, trying to face and overcome them in a very personal way, while others outsourced them. I have to forgive myself for letting things affect me the way they did and I have to learn that I’m going to have to forgive myself for meandering off this perfect path that I had illustrated. Life’s not about following this perfect path- it’s about straying off every now and again and allowing ourselves to make mistakes. But it’s also about learning from them, and to help others to along the way.
But I think what’s most important is that never want to forget what it felt to be a teenager, because I never want to estrange and ostracize others who are going through the ugly, terrifying years that are being a teenager. I don’t think my experiences were too unique, nor do I think I was dealt a hard hand.

We all have to go through that crappy time in our life, and some people may block out those memories of heartbreak and anger, but if you’re possibly reading this, I want you to remember these feelings and how this time in your life helped you become who you are now. I want you to look at yourself and consider if you’ve become the blind sided person you feared you would become. I want you to consider how you treat other teenagers, and maybe instead of approaching them with resentment and anger to approach them with sympathy and empathy, for they are the ones who allow themselves to feel raw emotion, for they are the ones learning how to deal with their anger and pain, for they are the ones that need someone to let them know they’re not alone.

I may have children one day, and if I do, I want to remember who I was as a teenager to help myself help my teenagers. I will want them to understand that life is full of shadows- full of evil and sadness and pain, but there’s so much beauty and art to admire, and to let this contrast guide our paths.

As I enter into my twenties, I want to remember the shadows I focused on as a teenager, but embrace all the beautiful sunshine and fall back in love with this crazy gift that is life.
The shadow proves the sunshine.

Pancakes

Daisy found her father’s duffel bag. When he would pick her up from school, she’d throw her binder and school bag into his trunk. One day, when she was missing an assignment, she went to look for it in the sea of office papers and garbage, and after digging around desperately, that’s when she found it. It didn’t even upset her. In fact, it even made her smile a little at the time.

Her father was the type of dad who’d have to fashion Daisy a makeshift Band-Aid out of toilet and paper and tape when she used to scrape her knees on the concrete. He wouldn’t get gas until his empty light had been staring at him for a good two days, and would go to important meetings without a pen.

But in the trunk of her father’s beige decade-old Mazda, Daisy found his packed duffel bag. It was stuffed with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor and shaving cream, two- in-one shampoo and conditioner, seven outfit changes, and a book, the same one she often noticed him reading the nights when her mother didn’t come home from work again.

After Daisy had been driving herself to and from school for over a year, she didn’t like thinking about the duffel bag too much. She knew it was still there. She had hoped it was her father’s well-intended plan for escape, but she soon learned it was just an idea that gave him a taste of empowerment. Like on a night when her mother kept throwing out the D-word threat the way she did when she liked to make her father feel very small, he’d fixate his thoughts on the idea of his idle duffel bag.

Daisy imagined her father enjoying picturing his wife, sitting there, fingers twitching the few times they did when she got nervous, waiting for him to sulkily come home, because she would never suspect her husband had prepared a duffel bag. Daisy knew that her father was only getting drunk off the idea of leaving.

She used to enjoy picturing her mother like that too. She used to stay out too late intentionally and hope wrinkles would be forming across her mother’s forehead, but her mother’s fingers had never twitched for her.

Daisy could remember the exact day she discovered her father lost his share of the master bedroom, when she had bounced down the stairs to pour a bowl of Cheerios, but was interrupted but the sight of a lump of disheveled sheets and her father sprawled awkwardly across the couch.

It was only her mother’s room now. She guessed her mother could no longer stand the way her father would take up half of the bed or the way his feet would brush against her legs occasionally.

Daisy eventually memorized exactly where to step on the stairs to avoid the creaks that would awaken her father when she tried to sneak down to eat breakfast before school. She knew he wasn’t sleeping much anymore, partly because she could hear her mother cackling at late night television downstairs every evening, and no matter how hard she tried to muffle the sound, Daisy’s Cheerios clanging against one of their ceramic bowls was her father’s premature alarm clack.

Her father didn’t seem to mind entirely, as sometimes he would pop up and enjoy a loud bowl of Cheerios with her, while her mother was peacefully asleep directly above them.

Her father would attempt to get Daisy to discuss her life, asking, “What are you learning in history lately?” or “How’s Nicole doing?” She hadn’t talked to Nicole in six years. “She’s doing great,” she’d reply blankly. Daisy didn’t talk much anymore. Some mornings, when Daisy really wasn’t saying much or the morning after her mother kept barking threats at the both of them, her father would make Daisy chocolate chip pancakes. She’d eat them because they were once her favorite, and she’d thank her father repeatedly, but he never noticed the subtle yet obviously tortured expression on Daisy’s face when she was eating his chocolate chip pancakes.

Sometimes Daisy would go look in the trunk of his car, hoping that another duffel bag would be added, but it would have things like an extra tooth brush and pajamas and her favorite shampoos stuffed inside. She’d sneak out to the driveway and pop his trunk frequently, anticipating the sight of another bag sitting next to her father’s, but it never was.
She checked one last time. When the only addition to her father’s trunk was a couple of empty beer bottles, she packed her own.

She filled it with her favorite flowy sundresses and books, soap and hair products, outfits and necessities. She pulled out the money she had been collecting behind the top right drawer of her dresser and stuffed it in. She packed photo albums that were filled with photos of her parents’ feet or half of their faces she’d taken with disposable cameras when she was little.

After she had packed as much as she could fit in her bag, she snuck out to the driveway, duffel under her arm, and hesitated for a moment, fixated on her father’s trunk.

But that sickening smell of chocolate chip pancakes was oozing from their kitchen to their driveway. She popped her Honda’s trunk and stuffed the duffel in, and ran inside to eat her father’s chocolate chip pancakes one more time.

Reflecting on Sandy Hook

When something as heart-wrenching as the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting occurs, I get pretty numb. I’ll try to sketch it out or write it out, but I couldn’t for several days, until I shifted my perspective and felt like it needed to be shared.

The news came to me when I was on my much needed ten minute break at work. I was stressed and anxious and wondering what I was doing with my life. But I soon discovered I was having a darn good day.

I had quite a few texts from my friends, and as I pieced them together, it became clear. Twenty kids between the ages of six and seven and six adults are dead thanks to a young man my age.

I wanted to throw up. If you think of someone who loves children I might not be the first person to come to mind. I’ve always been very mellow, even as a child, so being surrounded by kids has always been a bit overwhelming to me. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t absolutely love children.

My attitude towards kids became clear when I had the gift of reading J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I love children, but have a strange way of showing it. I love their recklessness and wonder. I love how their ideas and things they say can make adults pause in the business of their lives and smile. Kids say the darnedest things, because they still have that wonder and perspective on life that so many of us have lost. I can remember truly believing the most beautiful things, and I was able to look at a room and not see a room. I could make it whatever I wanted- a castle, a volcano, anything. As I grow up and become a bit jaded, my respect and admiration for children continue to grow.

That’s why when I discovered that when twenty kids’ hearts stopped beating thanks to the trigger of a jaded young adult, I wanted to puke. I didn’t want to be here anymore. This world is filthy, and every time I begin to feel good about the goodness of people, something or someone, well, shoots it down.

Not only were the beautiful and wondrous lives of twenty children stolen, but the innocence of every child from that school was stolen.

In elementary school, bad guys are the villains in Disney movies, and the ones your parents tell you not to talk to when they ask you if you can help them find their dog. They’re the Cruella Devils who steal puppies and the octopus like sea witches that try to steal mermaids’ souls. Bad guys in children’s films always have one thing in common- they never win.

That’s why on that day, the nation’s and world’s heart broke because the bad guy won.

His bullets claimed the lives of twenty children, six of the staff members that these kids grew to love, and even his mother.

But maybe he didn’t win.

When I got off, after wanting to cry every time a little kid ran past our restauraunt with a smile on their face, enjoying ther childhood, I checked the news.

The details were still coming out, and they weren’t pretty.

But then stories and photographs began to come out. The tens or hundreds or police officers and fire fighters that were ready to defend that school even if it meant putting them in danger’s way, the teachers hugging their students, the children holding eachother’s hands, the signs expressing their well wishes for the families people put around town- the compassion continued to blossom.

And then we find out that a young teacher barely an adult herself hid her students in cabinets and behind doors, and when the shooter asked where the children were, she told him the gym and took his bullets. Without her heroism, that ugly number would have been a lot greater.

And then the principal who absolutely loved that school and was dedicated to providing her children with the happiest and safest environment for them to thrive in education. She lost her life when she dove at the shooter and tried to take him down.

Then you hear the reaction of the world. During a time of year where we don’t have much money to spare, people are donating to help the families and people affected by the tragedy. People are getting petitions together to reform the way we deal with gun distribution.
Ann Curry starts something huge. She had the idea of commiting an act of kindness for each of people who lost their lives. The world caught on, and are documenting their acts by tweeting #twentysixactsofkindness.

The young shooter had power because the trigger below his fingers gave him this. Because of his cowardly bullets, he stopped the hearts of twenty six people, and broke the hearts of the world.

But just like in Disney movies, the bad guy didn’t win. One evil person does not triumph the millions of people who are responding in support of all of this. He didn’t steal our faith in humanity, he didn’t take our hope, he didn’t win. The absence of those beautiful children and heroic adults will leave an everlasting scar on our hearts, but the scars will make us stronger. We come together to make things better.

So when the fragile young ears hear of tragic stories like this one and unfortunately those to come, make sure those ears get to hear about all the good people that follow- the people who go out of their way to help, the people who start something beautiful. Let them know that bad guys never win.

Sorry dude, but we win.

P.S. Here’s proof.

Free Falls and Skeleton Pits

Tree branches hover over me like decaying skeleton fingers, and there’s no sign of a heartbeat from my perspective. I feel like I am the only one who feels anymore. My misfortunes gather as if they’re lonely, and they become intolerable. Intolerable. Yet I wander these empty paths with a façade blanker and emptier than my jar of hopes. In fact, that pathetic, beaten jar is gone, stolen by misfortune. If truth sets one free, then these inconveniences must be lies. Rebellion’s lost its appeal. Rebelling will only cater to the skeletons’ desire. They ache to see me self-destruct. I rebel by not rebelling, and I slip through the cracks and out of sight. My limbs often move and I stare at them in wonder. I don’t recall telling them to move. I find myself behind the wheel of my car, pedal to the floor, but I think I forgot a few things at home, including myself, somewhere behind the black curtains and beneath the dark covers. I’m babysitting this thing I’ve become. I take her to eat something; I take her to look for a job; I take her to a friend’s because she probably needs some sort of break from the inconveniences. I take her to sleep; I wake her up against our will. I take her away from the ones she loves, the ones who she cares about, the one who have the capacity to hurt her and the lack of responsibility or general freaking consideration as to when this happens.

Direction is senseless, so downhill it is, when I’m supposed to be building some sort of structure for myself. I don’t know why, but I find certainty knowing the skeletons will enjoy breaking it apart, piece by piece. I’ll tear at the pit in my stomach, the one that contains that feeling as if I’m free falling from a building, and the cement keeps getting closer and closer, the end keeps getting closer and closer, and I’m anxious.

But the cement looks sort of pretty to me lately.

The Difference between a Hero and a Superhuman

It’s a pretty thought to think that everyone else is perfect. Seeing the shadows that lie within ourselves, the dark thoughts that we try to suppress and ignore but they continue to influence our minds and actions, it’s nice to assume that others don’t have these thoughts. The extent of our knowledge on the world’s dirtiest issues are limited, but we like to believe that others know everything, that the people around us are guiding us in the direction we need to be guided. We like to believe that our presidents are perfect, that they never indulge in a cool beer to calm their nerves like most of us do. We like to believe that they have a perfect family, free of tension and arguments. We like to believe that the world’s famous actors living nothing but perfect glamorous lives, and automatically ascribe them to be role-models. God forbid they have a bad break up, yell at the paparazzi, or they look pretty average without makeup on. These thoughts are comforting. We may not have a freaking clue how to live this life, but we like to believe everyone else does.

We like to hold others to super human standards, because we know how dreadfully human and basic we can be, and we like to believe others are better, purer, more intelligent. Of course, this isn’t a completely conscious effort. We don’t like to consciously believe that other people are better than us. If any one accuses us of being only human, we defend ourselves with all our strength, but subconsciously, we know we are just human.

Jason Russel, a co-founder of Invisible Children was hospitalized recently on March 15th.

The Washington Post reports “The co-founder of Invisible Children was hospitalized in San Diego Thursday night after people called police to report he was running through the street in his underwear, screaming and pounding his fists on the sidewalk.”

Jason Russel had a nervous breakdown. I hate to break it to you, but guess what? Jason Russel is a human, just like you are. He isn’t a superhuman like we would all like to believe, and like we all automatically assumed.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you what “KONY 2012” video is,as it gained nearly forty million views in just a few days. It was reportedly dubbed the faster spreading viral video, and with that many views about a video with political ideas, overwhelming support and overwhelming criticism is sure to accompany. People were calling Invisible Children a scam, accusing supporters to do their research, saying the founders were only looking to get rich off of the whole campaign.

I urge you to imagine how vulnerable it must feel to pour your soul into something you’re passionate about, and to have your intentions completely misconstrued. Invisible Children said their goal was to have the video reach 500,000 views by the end of 2012. Clearly, they were not emotionally prepared for how viral the video would be.

Viewers, whether consciously or not, assumed that Jason Russel was super human. Because he was taking on an incredible responsibility, he had to be super human, right? Why did we assume this? Because we weren’t seeing ourselves on our computer screen. We were looking at a man who took an enormous risk and embarked on the mission to start a non-profit that would bring about an end to violence to children in Africa. Most of us just go to work every day for someone else, so we can support ourselves, pay for our nice cars and a nice place to sleep. Most of us didn’t dedicate our lives to such a heroic cause. Jason Russel is a hero. He is a hero for taking a risk most of us are too ignorant, too busy, too lazy to start. He makes a living by trying to help children keep their lives and to stop the violence. Yes, some of the money we “donate” to the cause goes directly in his pocket, and he certainly deserves it.

Let’s be honest. We keep giving our money to Apple because their products are hard to avoid, but Apple is one of the least philanthropic companies that exists today. The guys at the top of Apple are getting richer and richer each time they tweak the iPad a bit and announce why you HAVE to have the newest version because the camera’s like, kind of better and it’s like a little faster. The technological movement is progressing at an incredibly fast pace, but let’s be honest. They could have easily put the iPad 3’s technologically into the iPad 2. They didn’t because they knew that millions of people would line up outside of Apple stores because they had to have the newest and greatest product. When Steve Jobs died, we idolized him for making our lives “better” with the products he helped create. Was Steve Jobs a genius? Sure. He has amazing ideas. What Steve Jobs a hero? I find it hard to call him that. There is nothing heroic about my iPhone, and there isn’t much heroism that lies in the people that created it. However, people love Apple’s products, and Apple doesn’t wear the “non-profit” stamp, therefore, we don’t criticize them very much.

Invisible Children dared to wear the “non-profit” stamp. Jason Russel, unlike Steve Jobs, makes a living off of doing good. He makes a living off of running a non-profit company that has raised so much awareness about the issue of child soldiers (and more) through out the years. Steve Jobs made a living off of selling products to people.

So where are we directing our criticism? Could Invisible Children be donating a HIGHER percentage directly to the cause? Maybe. But why aren’t we criticizing companies like Apple, and Wal-Mart who donate little to nothing to important causes? Because Invisible Children is non-profit and wears the non-profit stamp, we expected the company to be super. Why don’t we challenge more companies to be non-profits, instead of slamming companies like Invisible Children and people like Jason Russel for not being perfect?

Jason Russel had a breakdown. After browsing criticisms of him and the company, I understand why. People called Invisible Children a “scam”, they called Jason Russel a “pedophile,” the Kony 2012 campaign is “bullshit”. A YouTuber said, and I quote, “the girls that [Kony] takes to be sex slaves… girls were born for that anyways! Yeah, just chill.” The company is being bullied by ignorant people who have done no research as well as concerned people who have.

Jason Russel was bullied, and had a nervous breakdown. Do we like to see people like Jason Russel running through the streets of San Diego in his underwear screaming at people? Of course not, because it reminds us that we are all just humans. We all have strengths, and we all have our weaknesses. We all break down. We all break the same.