Writing Wrongs

The word 'right' can mean a lot of things in the English language.  The need to be right is one of the driving forces in conflict/debate, having rights is a privilege enjoyed by very few people on this planet, and making something right is what we do when we fix a thing that's broken.  There's also the right way to do things, and the direction, right.  Lots of rights we have surrounding us.  More rights than wrongs.  I guess that's good.  

Being wrong is simple and seemingly undoable. There are a lot of ways to get there, but only one name for it.  It's easy to be wrong, but somehow easier to believe you aren't.  And maybe it's because it's this deadweight of a word -wrong- with no way out, that makes it so difficult to admit to being associated with it.  Wrong just sits like a stone in the bottom of a muddy riverbank, and it sounds like a low-pitched gong resonating loudly in your head and for everyone to hear for miles and miles. Right flits around changing shape and color and meaning as it pleases, it's whimsical and everyone loves it, it sounds like birds chirping or windchimes.  So pleasant.  If I could choose one, I'd choose right.  Who wouldn't?  And I have chosen it again and again throughout my life. 

Conflict is important to growth.  And what I'm learning is that I. Hate. It.  I wish I could avoid it altogether.  And even when I can't, I sometimes find a way by shutting down, out, or up completely.  And honestly, that's wrong.  What I do when I think I'm protecting myself is shut people out and choose what I see as right action (or inaction) to take over where peacemaking, resolution, or understanding could be present.  I could spend a lifetime writing out the wrongs inflicted upon me by others, while I wait for someone to apologize or validate what has hurt or felt unjustifiable.  I have written countless rants about the wrongs, and not enough about what people have done that has felt, right by me.  

My friend Jadyn said she'd learned that it's better to be happy than right.  She said every time she's confronted with conflict with another person she asks herself quietly, 'Would I rather be right?  Or happy?'  She almost always chooses happiness, and when she doesn't, she regrets it.  

I have been battling it out with a friend for months.  A miscommunication that turned quickly into an unfixable break that has seeped into these sacred places in my life.  It's inescapable.  It's not going away.  And I was refusing to face it because I didn't want anyone to see me as wrong.  What would that steal from me?  What amount of pride would it take away? 

I was riding my bike today and found myself drawn to her apartment.  I wrote a note on her car just asking what I need to do to make it right.  I wrote the note to begin making it right because, it isn't worth it.  It just isn't.  Sometimes I think that fights are just our internal conflicts manifested in another person.  Our personal battles, fears, and judgments projected onto each other and then of course amplified by our own unique inability to understand or help.  

I'd rather be happy than right.  I'd rather offer my friend and myself the right to a life without unnecessary conflict.  And I hope to keep trying to choose this, even though it is so hard.  I don't want to be the person who creates discord and unhappiness for anyone in this world.  And, as I've said before, this is where I have to start if I ever want to do things differently; with what's right in front of me.  Taking right action.  Making something right.  Writing a new set of rules. 

Faith Needs A Backbone

There's a lesson stirring for me that I need to put into words.  Since I've let go, recently, and been floating in the quiet surrender of knowing that I'm moving east in September, I've felt like an observer of my own life.  I've been enjoying it, really.  I've been choosing to let go of the desire to control or demand things.  I've been trusting that each step along the way has been a part of the grand plan.  I haven't been questioning as much, which is a very new thing for me.  I thought.

When my roommate suggested we move into a one bedroom for the remainder of my time here, I was open to the idea.  It came suddenly and in reaction to a one-week consecutive stay at our apartment where our upstairs paranoid schizophrenic neighbor was raging on the streets, and our uniquely loud next door neighbors were having their usual high volume, repetitive conversations.  It was the standard cacophony of sound and insanity I've not yet grown accustomed to here, but have at least come to know.  I understood her reaction and let myself float along with the romantic idea of shared space for a brief period of time.  I imagined my bedroom in the living room and let myself see it as the dorm room experience I'd never had.  Even still, I imagined that she might change her mind while looking... perhaps realize that it was a hasty decision, and just stick it out with me until September.  I didn't say or question any of this out loud, though.  Just kept it in strong faith that it would work out, no matter what.  (Which I'm still sure it will.)

Things kept moving forward in the search.  She found a place she loved and I should have known then that it was inevitable she'd get it.  (She has a way of making these kinds of things happen through tenacious persistence and insistence.  It's admirable, really.)  But I still clung to the hope that she might change her mind, and if not, I still had that vision of living there together.  When she got the apartment, she came to talk to me about it.  It was the first time we had actually sat down and discussed it.  It was real.  She asked me what I would be taking with me.  I told her everything.  We started to discuss the logistics of it all.  I started realizing I'd have to find places to store my things.  That would be difficult, but I was willing.  I thought about moving twice in less than six months.  A bit overwhelming, but I was willing.  When I told her I'd keep my bed in the living room, I saw her wince just the tiniest bit, and at that I winced, too. Today, following that conversation, I received a text message explaining that I couldn't have my bed in the living room.  I knew then that I wouldn't be living there.

I haven't thought for a moment that this was intentional on her part.  I've not even given a second's thought to the possibility of her not caring.  I could spend some time writing about my feelings of disappointment or hurt or indignation or frustration, but I'm not going to.  Not here.  What I want to acknowledge is the lesson that San Diego just refused to let me leave without: Know how to honor what's best for me, even when it might inconvenience someone else, or ask of someone else, or feel uncomfortable to say.  Know how and when to ask, rather than find an answer.  I've given lip service to some of this, and to my credit I've gotten much better over the years.  But when it really comes down to it, in the moments of true need, in the moments of really having the choice to say the difficult thing, I still turn away.  I space out.  I hope that someone else will just take care of me.  I trust that someone else is considering me along with themselves.  I believe that this is possible, because it's what I do.  It's a hyper-awareness of others that, for me, often leads to a lack of self care and consideration.

I wish I had asked the questions.  I wish I had at least asked her to wait until we had the chance to discuss our ideas and needs.  So, even though I am sitting with a lot of emotions right now, I'm thankful.  I'm so thankful that I didn't leave without this one.  I'm so thankful that I've been given the opportunity to face this lesson knowing what I know now, being fully present to myself and in my life. I'm thankful that I can see so clearly where I abandoned myself in this situation.

No one in the world has an obligation or responsibility to me.  I won't put that on my roommate.  I won't project that sense of abandonment onto her, even though it would be easy to do.  She did what she needed and desired.  I could learn a lot from her in that respect.  What I promise to myself is that I'll raise my hand the next time I'm unsure of something and ASK.  I'll ask for time if I need it.  I'll acknowledge and honor the importance of my own needs when they might be compromised.  And I'll forgive myself and anyone else involved when it doesn't work out perfectly, because it always does work out.  So, my faith in humanity, in life, in spirit, carries me in many ways.  But, it doesn't always have to look like quiet surrender to circumstances.  Sometimes having faith means joining the conversation, feeling discomfort, asking of another.  When faith has a backbone, it speaks up and trusts that even when the questions/words/requests might not be welcome, that they will be received and acknowledged.  I'm looking forward to the next opportunity I have to put this into practice.

Choosing To Leave

Six years ago I made a choice to leave home.  It was a choice I made out of desperation and in blind hope.  I sold off or gave away a houseful of things, said goodbye to dozens of close friends, abandoned a city I adored, and let go of the safety and absolute endless support of my family.  I did all of this because I believed there was a chance I could find myself, my truest most authentic self, only if I left behind all that had ever lifted me up and defined me.  Some quiet voice inside of me said that it was time to go, that there were lessons to be learned, that it was time to see myself outside of the world I'd always known.  I bought a one-way ticket to San Diego with a few bags and one or two boxes on their way in the mail.
It was a painful choice, and for a year after I arrived here I fell into deep moments of despair and grief, but never fully regret.  I hid from my intentions in leaving and questioned my motives often.  I wasn't ready to face myself, and I found convenient ways to avoid doing so.  I felt so alone in those days.  So exposed.  I realized that the life I had built in Pittsburgh had only kept me from knowing who I truly was, and kept everyone else from knowing, too.  And here people were waiting for me to be someone and, I didn't know how to be.  I was starting from scratch and had not yet learned how to listen to myself, so when I fell in love for the first time, with someone who was willing and eager to tell me how to be, I listened and molded my life skillfully.  I spent a long time with that love, trying to make myself fit into the life he created.  It was the most painful experience of my life.  And I don't blame him.  I understand that the way we hurt takes different shapes, and his just looked like creating safety by making me safe for him.  But, I entered into that relationship without even having come close to knowing who I was, so to find myself after I was buried under his definitions was a task that took quite some time.  I loved him.  There was never any doubt.  And when I look back on myself in those days I feel immense respect and admiration for my heart's ability to love so deeply and willingly and tenderly.  I'm glad I know that part of me exists.  It took years and months of uncovering, of digging into the ground and hitting the red clay of my own resistance to truth, before I could see that I was not alive at all in that life.  That I had chosen to leave myself the day I met him and that, certainly, I was crying out to be found.  I remember when I heard the voice again, say to me that it was time to leave.  I was astonished.  I was dumbstruck.  My rational mind could not believe that this was the answer I had received.  But I listened, and I left.  I left a houseful of things, said goodbye to the only man I had ever loved until then, abandoned a home that overlooked the ocean and was flooded with moonlight at night and sunlight by day, and let go of the dependable willingness of him to hold me and hear me and let me be as broken as I could have ever been.  I took my car and my clothes and a few items in one box to a studio apartment with a twin-sized bed and I started again.
It's been two years and two weeks, exactly, since that day that I landed in that little apartment and began my search for myself.  It's been two years of learning and growth and building and breaking and loving and letting go.  Thinking back, I can't believe it's only been two years.  It's felt like a lifetime.
I heard the voice again, recently, after I spoke to my twin brother about helping him move across the country.  He had asked me if I would come along for the ride from Tucson to New York, and I readily agreed.  I have always wanted to drive across the country.  I've had visions of it a thousand times over the past six years I've lived here.  I've fantasized about doing it in a truck full of my own belongings, heading back to my family.  I've dreamt about it on the cusp of heartbreak and loss and failure.  It has been my lifeline, holding on to that hope.  And now I can do it with my brother just for the fun of it, I thought.  But when I was walking later that day I heard that voice say, "Why don't you pack your stuff in that truck, too?" and there it was.  The question was offered and I knew the answer.  For two weeks I sat with that question.  I spent days crying about the loss of this beautiful life I've created here.  This life I built from scratch... from negative space, even, because I didn't start on neutral ground.  I started at a loss.  And finally here I am and my life is full and beautiful and thriving.  And now I'm being asked to let go and start again.  I cried and I prayed and I waited until I knew with certainty that it was time to go, and it was.  I heard it again and again.  I saw it in the life around me that had been falling away and making room naturally over the past several months.  I saw it in myself and the peace I felt at knowing the answer.  I felt and knew it in the swelling of my heart at the idea of being able to own my responsibility to love and honor my family, to show up for my niece and nephews and brothers and sisters (in-law and in heart).  I felt the willingness to let go, to surrender to the absolute truth that everything changes.  Death and rebirth and loss and rebuilding are the inescapable basis of the human experience.  Everything I know today will be different some day sooner than I'd like.   I am willing to let go and leap without looking.  I am willing to do this because I know that I will land in a place full of people who are ready to love and learn with me.  I know this because it's happened to me more than once in this strange city I grew to consider home.
I'm choosing to leave San Diego in September.  I'm going to take a lot of stuff with me this time.  I'm taking my couch and my bed, all the furniture that was gifted to me by the people who helped me land softly.  I'm taking the art I've created and collected, the books with the words that became my companions, the blankets and lamps and things and things and things that become our lives and world.  I'm taking them all.  I'm taking so much more that can't be seen.  I'm carrying with me the wisdom of having hurt deeply and healed, the warm embrace of friendships that waited and witnessed and accepted, the strength of forgiveness and compassion for myself and others, the weight of obligation to truth.  I'm taking my love of language and words, and my dedication to pursue that love with the same tenacious and unfaltering desire I have to know and see myself clearly in this world.  I'm taking a vulnerable and strong heart.  I'm taking all of me.  And gratitude, so much gratitude, but that's another post altogether.

If I May Be Honest

For whatever reasons, which I'll probably explore, starting this new job has brought an awareness of self that is new and, honestly, uncomfortable.  I am completely humbled by the amount of skill and knowledge I have yet to acquire.  I feel exposed.  Naked.  Under-qualified.  Like they're going to begin to suspect very soon that I tricked them into believing I knew what I was doing.  And I didn't trick them.  I really thought I did.  

So I've been learning A LOT.  And what I've noticed is that I'm quiet when I'm learning.  I don't have what it takes to put on a show for anyone.  I'm concentrating and I'm quiet.  My ego is screaming!  It's saying "You seem boring.. mean.. too quiet... they aren't going to like you if you don't do better soon... be happy!  have more energy! "  And I hear it loud and clear.  And I see it for what it is.  We all have that voice.  I feel myself resisting the urge to say to my new coworkers "You know, I'm actually an outgoing person, I'm just learning right now so that's why I'm being so quiet..." and trailing off into some long line of excuses and promises to be more of what I think they'd like to see.  Sometimes I do mention it, or I do try to force some playfulness or joking when it isn't really coming from a place of authenticity, just so they might know I've got it in me.  

It's been a challenge to be this unfamiliar version of myself in an environment where I know people have expectations of me.  It's been a challenge to be patient with myself as I unfold and learn and settle into this new community.  What I've noticed is that I default to some way of being or speaking that is familiar to me... a way I know how to be that is palatable, safe, approachable.  It's sarcasm.  Good old sarcasm.  Just yesterday I was sitting in a cafe with a friend and eavesdropping on a conversation at a nearby table where two people immediately dove into conversation about a television series they both watch.  They energetically discussed the details of each fictional character, each turn of plot, each dramatic exchange as if they were their closest friends.  I made a comment about how glad I was to not indulge in TV series.  How I believed that they are this convenient way we've found to not talk about anything real at all.  And then I find myself at work that night, concentrating so hard on learning this whole new set of skills that will really probably take me years to learn fully, and in a moment when I thought I needed to speak to someone, I chose sarcasm.  And I felt like a hypocrite, because sarcasm is an incredibly effective way to not talk to someone at all.  Sarcasm is a tool to demean, to avoid truth, to make conversation unclear, that we carelessly use all the time.  That I carelessly use as a means to communicate without risking being seen as rude.  It's funny, right, if I put that tone into it.  It's funny if I make the truth sound more like a question, or if I tell you how I really feel by pretending that how I really don't feel is the truth.  It's confusing!  And it's not honest. 

Starting a new job kicks up a lot of stuff.  The desire to be liked is one of those things.  I want to fit in.  Starting a new job really strips you down, too.  There is no social infrastructure built to support me yet. I have to build my own, and that takes time.  So, I'm new and know very little and am standing very much alone.  There's this beauty though, of having the opportunity to just be who I am and see how it feels.  The beauty of the opportunity to just be honest, to accept myself, to embrace the chance to learn so much, to be quiet and observe and find my place.  I'm going to challenge myself to speak more honestly, even though I know that makes me and others uncomfortable.  I'm going to practice being honest with myself and others, ask questions when I have them, listen and observe more intently.  I'm going to try to resist the urge to use sarcasm as a tool to help others get to know me in a way that allows them to reject or deny without anyone having to acknowledge a thing.  

Sarcasm is a way of manipulating language so that we lean away from the truth, even if just a little.  When we lean away from the truth, we lean into deceit.  That speaks volumes to me, because I desire to be an honest and forthright person.  I'm hoping that with this awareness I'll be able to do things differently today, and at least once, just say what I need to say, or even risk saying nothing at all when I should just listen.