A Hero and A Princess

I thought the days were supposed to be getting longer, not darker.

I remember in 1997 when the original trilogy was re-released for the 20^th anniversary and Star Wars started to show up in my life. The first Star Wars movie I saw was The Empire Strikes Back and even though I was quite the precocious child, I wouldn’t have said it changed my life then, even though I remember more about that day than I do about my high school and college graduations combined. I don’t think I really appreciated the role Star Wars played in my life until I started listening to others’ stories about representation.

See, it never crossed my mind that young women couldn’t rule the world. I’d seen Princess Leia do it a million times.

Carrie Fisher redefined what it meant to be a princess for me. A princess is a diplomat. A princess is a rebel. A princess sits in on war councils and gives commands and is the last one to leave the base when it is under attack. Even if a princess had to be rescued from time to time, it wasn’t because she was powerless or useless—it was because she had been taken captive by the Empire and it’s hard to beat Darth Vader. That rescue is not an escort mission—a princess grabs a blaster and gets them out of the poorly-planned mess they’re in, or takes the chain she’s been bound in and strangles a space slug/gangster overlord. And she does it all by being genuine and unapologetically in charge. Indomitable.

Every time I saw her in a movie after that, I was always delighted. Here was my hero, from before I even really understood that I had heroes, off doing something else. I love her in When Harry Met Sally. When I started getting into screenwriting and found out that she was a script doctor for Hook and Sister Act and so many other movies, my heart jumped again and I pulled those screenplays out first. I haven’t read any of her books yet because I was worried they would just be over-dramatic tell-alls, something that I regret intensely now. I had no idea how funny and honest she was and I have been depriving myself of a joy.

And then she comes on screen in The Force Awakens and of course she’s a general. Of course she’s leading the resistance. Of course she went back to the thing she was good at: leading. That’s what she taught all of us to do. While Luke was off finding himself and losing his hand and Han was off growing a soul, Leia was always fighting, always leading, always standing up for what is right. There’s never going to be another Princess Leia and there’s never going to be another General Organa. She blazed a trail and they broke the mold after they made her, all those clichés.

Those clichés apply to the lady we lost today as well. There will never be another Carrie Fisher. She fought her battles and taught us how to live our lives without undue concern for what other people think of us and left us with a legacy to enjoy and be inspired by. She’s gone too soon and I’m going to watch Star Wars on repeat to help deal with that fact, but at least we’re left with that.

Rest soundly, Carrie. You’ve earned it. 

Afraid

I think it's time to admit that I am frightened. I am frightened.

I am frightened by all manner of things. I am frightened by the presence that hovers near the front door in the dark when I get up to go to the bathroom in the mornings. I am frightened by the space underneath my bed and what could hide there between my luggage and shoes. I am frightened by faceless things in nightmares that find me night after night and hold me down in unbearable darkness or light until I remember that this is all a dream, and then become frightened because I cannot escape it.

I'm actually genuinely frightened that I'm going to fail some of my finals this week. I'm afraid that I'll fall asleep and the work won't get done and I'll have to repeat a class or a semester and I'll lose my scholarship or I'll have to leave and I do not know where I'd go. I'm afraid I won't get another job and I haven't fully planned for that financial possibility. I'm afraid that I'll have to go home and start everything over from scratch, only with more loans this time and fewer prospects. I am frightened by my unworthiness and how very publicly it could be displayed in the near future.

I am frightened by the news from Aleppo. I am frightened by the news of hate crimes. I am frightened by our incoming government. I am frightened by rising sea water and catastrophic storms. I am frightened by nuclear weapons and biological weapons. I am frightened by guns. I am frightened of people who are stronger than me and what they can do to me. For maybe the first time in my life, I am afraid for my body and my possessions and my security.

More than anything else, I am frightened because I am not more frightened for others. I am frightened because I am more scared losing something that was never mine than I am scared by the pain in the world around me. I am scared of how easy it is for me to be frightened by loneliness and mistakes, how quickly I choose to focus on fears of situations resolved months ago, the reopening of freshly-healed wounds. I am frightened by my inability to place my emotions completely to the side. I am scared that one day I will not be able to get out of bed, that I will not care about the humans on the other side of the door enough to engage with them, and that I will never again engage with them. I am afraid that no one else will either.

I am not frightened by death or the void or silence. I am afraid of what I leave behind in life, in the world, in noisy community.

I don't like talking about fears because I know that we are not given a spirit of fear but of power and love and of a sound mind and because I know that there is a spectrum of rationality to my fear. I know that I am not called to be afraid, just as I know that some of my fears are born ghost stories and an overly analytical mind. I know what imposter syndrome is, guys, and I'm aware of how fear sells in the media. I know how my basic need for control, whatever its root is, is reflected across all of these fears.

But I don't want to explain away the importance of naming our fears. I don't want to shy away from analyzing what makes us withdraw from the world. The tensions and contradictions of human fear are fascinating and complex, but the reality of my fears and my fear of my fears is something I need to acknowledge and wrestle with without academic detachment. Because I shouldn't be driven by fear. Fear should not be what motivates my action. If I can see it, I can address it, re-shape it, speak life where it is lacking. All the same, I have to repeat again and again that fear does not define me. The foundation of my life isn't built on anything that can be taken away. I'll see my fear and work with it and know that my hope rests somewhere else.

Stolen

The stories we tell ourselves matter. The words we say to ourselves matter. And the words that we say to other people matter, because all too frequently, they become the words that people say to themselves.

I got on the red line train last Tuesday and the car was so crowded, I couldn't even reach into my pocket to get my headphones so I could block out all the humans and make the ride tolerable. With one hand trying to find a railing and the other clutching the book I was meant to be reading, I decided that instead of fumbling around for something to do, I would pray for everyone on the train. Now, I know I'm in seminary and so this should seem like it's in character, but I want to say right here and now that the only time I pray for large groups of people is when I'm asking for them to get out of my way. I am not present in a crowd. I enjoy the escape more than anything else.

But pray I did. I prayed for our journey to our homes and for what waited for each person when they arrived: their families, their meals, their loves, fears, frustrations, work, relaxation. I prayed for the people who jostled and bumped me on their stumble toward the door. There were a couple of people in eyesight that seemed particularly weighed down and so I prayed for a blessing in their lives, that whatever held them low would be removed or mitigated. I prayed grace on everyone.

I felt lighter when I got off the train. I didn't put my headphones in, didn't open my book. I just kept the headspace I was in and thought about what I would do when I got back to my empty flat. Something needled at the back of my mind, but I assumed it was just something I had forgotten about work or school or something. There's always something. But the bus ride and the subsequent walk home were pleasant, I think. We've been having a lot of the kind of crisp fall days and nights that require a jacket and a scarf, but gloves are optional. The air's easy to breathe. It was nice.

When I got home and put my bag down, I realized that one of those humans that I had prayed for had stolen my laptop.

Well, I suspected. I put off the panic because maybe I had just left it at the office and anyway, there wasn't anything I could about it right now. The next morning was the day before Thanksgiving so the usual people who opened up the office weren't there and I ended up putting off the search for my laptop for another hour or so. And even when I did get to my desk and saw that my laptop wasn't there, I didn't feel anything except a sinking feeling in my stomach. Okay. My laptop's really gone. So we're dealing with this.

Over the next few days as I assessed the damage and looked up replacement options, I would say, "My laptop got stolen." My laptop got stolen. I was clear it wasn't missing, that a theft had occurred, but I couldn't figure out why the sentence sounded so odd. My laptop was stolen, maybe? Correct that grammatical "mistake"? And anyway, isn't the end result the same, no matter what words I use? I don't have my laptop. It is no longer in my possession. It was taken from me. Who cares how I express that thought? The facts on the ground are the same: I don't have it.

Except it does matter. Someone stole my laptop. I don't know who did it, but it's not some passive event that occurred. A person made the decision to reach into my bag and take out my life and it's debatable just how over-dramatic that statement is: my work from this semester, any projects that I've been working on for the past few years, and all my notes and research from last year are gone, not to mention some of the music and pictures that mean something to me. My half-marathon sticker was on the case, as was my save the whales sticker from Iceland. And all those things that made it matter, the data and the memories, those are the first things the thief is going to wipe from the computer so that he or she can resell it. Keep the computer, then. Give me back what I care about.

To fail to hold people accountable for their actions is to participate in the problem. I won't find the person who stole my laptop, probably, and this is not a loss that I need to go Batman over; by the grace of God (and that is not an insignificant thing), this is a hit I can take on the chin and carry on. I've been surrounded by coworkers, family, friends, who have comforted me, cheered me, and helped me figure out what to do next, how to report, how to look, and how to replace. But just because I can absorb the hit does not mean that the problem needs to be ignored. This was not some indifferent force of nature or some act of chance; a person acted here, a person who is part of a system, with a level of malicious intent in their heart that could range from indifference to hatefulness, and people and systems are things that we can question, we can push, we can try to change, we can hold accountable. If not in this particular situation, definitely in others.

So everyone, back up your data. Carry your belongings in a bag that can be secured, especially when you go into crowded spaces. If you see something, say something. Learn from my life. That's what lives are for, after all. But see the bigger threads, too. Think about how you speak about events. Think about what you tell yourself about events. Have that second-check on the reality that you perceive. Think about inevitability and think about action. Think about what you can do. Be aware.

For days, I told myself that my laptop got stolen, that this was my fault and my stupidity and that I deserved to pay for it. But to tell myself that story is to continue in my personal history of unkindness towards myself and indifference towards injustice. Of course there are things that I could have done differently, but that doesn't mean I was asking for it. Someone stole my laptop. The better sentences to speak, once the comfort and grace have done their healing work, are questions, and questions in search of answers. Why did someone take my laptop? Did they feel entitled to it? Certainly not. Were they thinking just about themselves? Maybe not. What situations in their life led to this moment? Is there a way to balance accountability for the wrong committed with grace and understanding for the wrongs committed against them? What can we do here?

I'm known for drawing a whole heap of thoughts out of an event and I think I probably stopped thinking about laptops long ago. I don't want to have a conversation about hardware-- I want to talk about systematic inequality and our inability as a nation to hold people accountable for their words and their actions. I want to talk about honesty and where it's lacking. I want to talk about blame and how I'm finding it to be an unhelpful concept, or maybe a concept with an unhelpful gloss. I have questions and thoughts enough for a lifetime and maybe I fill my days too much with them. So let's end with something that just slipped on by as the story unfolded: my thankfulness for those around me and for those memories that were saved. Now I feel less bad about all those Scotland photos I practically spammed my facebook with.

Find joy where you've got it, friends, and take seriously your thoughts and your questions when they come.

People

For a couple of years now, I've fallen back on the phrase "people are the worst and I hate them" whenever I am disappointed by the world. It works out pretty well most of the time. Someone yells at you when you were just doing your job? People are the worst and I hate them. Someone leaves you in a lurch, making you responsible for extra work at your job, at school, at home? People are the worst and I hate them. Someone says hello to your chest before they meet your eye or "accidentally" grabs your butt on the metro? People are the absolute worst and I hate them.

It works for more minor offenses as well. Someone cut you off in traffic? Someone check out the book you need from the library? Someone sneeze on you and fail to apologize? People are the worst and I hate them.

But I've found that this phrase that I've clung so tightly to, the one that has protected me and my heart for the past two or three years, the combination of words that lowers my expectation for those around me so much that I can only hope that they won't be able to surprise or hurt me anymore, that phrase fails in light of the big disappointments.

Someone walk out of your life and never look back? Someone say a hateful thing to a vulnerable person? Someone do something to hurt a vulnerable person? The nation elect a candidate who in many ways represents the worst of America? People are... people. And when people do these things, I realize not our value but rather how broken we must be. How ignored. How frightened. How angry. How lost. How unloved we must feel. How hated.

I thank God that in those moments of realization, I feel overwhelming compassion instead of derision or rejection. I know that doesn't come from me. l know that quiet sadness that settles into my heart and reaches my arm out toward another isn't me. Throwing my phone across the room on election night and screaming at the television is me. Reaching for a bottle instead of the phone is me. Staring at the pavement as I walk past those in need is me. I have so much me inside me. It rises up and occupies my mind with my needs, my pain, my sorrow, my shame. It clouds my eyes day after day, only allowing me to see the problems of my heart to the exclusion of all other cares. It is focused on myself because I have believed the lie that if I don't care about me, no one will. All those people out there, all they want to do is hurt me. They're the worst. I hate them.

My sisters, my brothers, this should not be. As humans, we are capable of such terrible things. We are bound by such horrifying self-preservation. We do not let the cries of those in pain reach us. We do not acknowledge when we are the cause of that pain. We allow our fears to twist us. We do such hateful things.

But we do not have to. I know we don't have to. I know we don't have to because in those moments when I realize the depths of human brokenness, I do not feel that hate. In that time when hate should overwhelm me, when by all rights I should despair, something better works a miracle in me. A tiny miracle for me, because the burden the world has placed on me is so much smaller than for others, but I can recognize that same miracle in those from whom the world has taken much. There is a light that can shine through us even in the worst of times, a light that brings love where by all rights there should only be hate.

Friends, let us seek that love. Let us seek that love in every situation for as long as we can. Let us love and protect those who are vulnerable and let us never cease to speak out and act against the people and systems causing and exploiting that vulnerability, but let us also love those who hate. Let us hear the pain of the hateful and seek also to heal that. It is only by healing the hearts of humans that we can hope for change.

I don't have the exact actionable answer for how we do all that healing. I don't have a detailed plan for how to ecumenically reach every human heart and stop it from hurting another out of its hurt. I only really realized that I shouldn't hate people yesterday. I hadn't thought about how deeply I had allowed a flippant phrase to take root in my own heart and how atrophied my muscle of love had become. But recognizing that there is something better than hate in every situation is a step. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Be that love. Be that loud, active love.



"[16] So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. [17] Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. [18] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. [19] We love because he first loved us. [20] Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. [21] The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also." 1 John 4:16-21.

Wednesday

Think about November 9th.

I know that these last months have been a race to November 8th. I know it has been an exhausting time. I know we're all ready for Wednesday. But I also know that election day is vitally important for our country. I want to add my voice to those asking you to go vote on election day. This is your chance to be involved in your government, to have a say in who represents you and shapes your country. Our democracy is exactly as fragile as the people it governs. The government by the people and for the people cannot survive without the people, without the belief of the people. People have fought and died to gain and preserve your right to vote. Your vote, if you choose to exercise that right, honors their sacrifice and safeguards the nation. I can't think of anything better to do with your life today. 

If you do vote, I want you to keep November 9th in mind. On November 9th, regardless of who wins, we wake up and start holding the current president and congress and governors and state legislatures and judges and every other elected official you can think of accountable for their actions again. They have months left in office at the least and they have so much work to do. November 9th is the day we let this past season go, turn back to our current elected officials, and begin the practice that our new president and members of Congress and every other elected official should come to expect from us when they take up office in the new year: the demand for accountability. As you vote, keep in mind who you want to hold accountable in January. Keep in mind who you think will respond to your voice as a voter. Keep in mind the candidates who will listen to the criticism and critique of those around them when they are not acting in the best interest of the American people and the vulnerable citizens of America and the globe. 

On November 9th, the wounds we've inflicted on each other, the divisions we've allowed this election to foster, the angry words said and the friendships broken will all still exist. The end of the election will not change the words we said during the election season. We will need to rebuild, and maybe more than we've ever needed to rebuild before. As you vote, keep in mind the candidates that will facilitate that rebuilding. Vote for the people who can help make us a more complete nation. 

But most of all, whether you voted or not, whether you've run from this election or cheered on your candidate, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or adamantly or dispassionately neither, on November 9th, be a part of change that you wish to see in America. Pray for healing, for wholeness. Pray for our current leaders and for our future leaders. Continue to pay attention even as the lights turn away from the government. Don't step away from the world because the drama of this season is over. Hear the voices of those in need and help them or at least help their stories get to those who can help them. Do the good that you can in the world. 

The success of the American experiment is not guaranteed. It is only with the honest participation in and respect of the democratic system by voters and candidates that America survives. It is care of the people that it will carry America forward. Friends, let us be those people. Let us care for and carry this great unfinished symphony forward. 

My Editorial Ghost

I have three blog posts that I started for today but they're all pretentious wastes of words and you don't need to read them.

That's not true. I don't think they're pretentious. I'm only saying that so that you'll think I have some humility about what I write. I think there's value in the ideas, but they're half-formed and I haven't been able to sit down and make them write themselves out of my brain because I'm working and I should be studying and I have this thought that I simultaneously love having and know that I shouldn't have and my mental powers are consumed between working and studying and struggling and so my output is not what I want it to be. It's fine. It's trying. I wrote this paragraph so that you would see that I value who I am and what I do and what I think. I wrote this paragraph to set up the critique that I over-value who I am and what I do and what I think. Please don't think so little of me as to assume that I haven't already bounced this ball off the walls of my mind. The repetition has left a dent. 

You can never really know what's in someone else's mind. They can tell you, but you don't really know. You can't experience it. You physically cannot see the world through any eyes but your own. The taste and touch and smell and sound, the way the minutes tick by and the colors dance, the distance between you and every other object and being in the universe, the way in which the universe enters into your understanding of it, all of that is perfectly unique to each person who experiences existence. I can tell you that I love you, but you don't really know what that love feels like. You don't know how strong or weak it is, how much it's based on careful consideration of the emotions I've experienced and how much of it is intuited from two glances and a dance. I can tell you how my stomach jumps when I think about you, but you would still have to relate that back to a time when you felt butterflies over someone you have affection for. Even then, we had two distinct experiences that may or may not have any relation to each other. Neither of us will ever actually know if what we feel is the same thing. There might be no one else in the world, feeling what I feel right now, would classify it as love. There's no externally verifiable evidence here. There's only the indescribable qualia of the heart. And if you think this paragraph is just about processing something in my experiences, you've missed the existential point in favor of the sensory one. Maybe that's what I wanted when I wrote it. But better to give me the benefit of the doubt and think that I intended for the honest example to draw you in and hoped that you would make a wonderful connection with it.

So if there's a real way in which we can't understand one another, can never understand one another, can never actually connect with each other on a basic level, do we despair? Do we consign ourselves to waving at each other from across the chasm of our perpetual separation from every other human? Do we learn how to embrace the loneliness that the nature of our existence seems to force upon us? Are you judging me for using too many rhetorical questions? If this were a court room, would you object loudly to the judge that I'm leading the witness? Be patient with me. I promise I have a point. I assumed, when I set out to write, that you'd be with me in this, that you'd hang on for my point, that you'd trust my guidance as we wander through the mire of consciousness together. Have the generosity of spirit that I assumed you'd have.

Humanity, I think, has never despaired of its loneliness. We talk. We talk and we listen, we write and we read, we make movies and art and write songs and poetry and share those things with others. We seek experiences. We travel to new places, we explore, we seek out the company of others and when that company cannot be found, we invent others. There is some kind of calling in our bones to be community, in relationships. We will shout across that void and toss light and lifelines until our throats are raw and our arms exhausted. If you're distracted by my use of "light" in last sentence and think it was left from an earlier draft, the first thing is that the joke's on you-- the majority of my posts are first drafts-- and the second thing is that I have been told that poets sometimes will place words together that don't make sense in order to force you to lean into that incongruence and source it and wrestle with it. I revel in mixing metaphors and I know it upsets people and I am not bothered by that. There is an infinite set of things I am bothered by, but the majority of my writing choices are not contained within it. What I want most from you is for you to respect those choices, to see them, acknowledge them, listen to them, question them, engage with them, and to never sweep them under the rug as if I believed so little in the impact of my words that I would toss them about like leaves in the wind instead of the precious children that they are to me. I may toss them in the air, but never too far and never beyond me ability to catch. 

This month is National Novel Writing Month and I don't think it could have been more timely for me.  No matter how prepared you think you are for it, seminary is an upheaval of the soul. There wasn't the tearing down of foundations for me like there may be for others, but that's because I already did that on my own. I have been re-formed and I have been shaped and every step of the way I have had to be intentional about the way in which that reformation has happened. I got a thought I need to deal with, a longing that I need to write around, and I think it's going to have to be long form. I wasn't going to do NaNoWriMo this year because making the time for it will be an endeavor, but I need to shout across the void. Even if no one ever reads it, I need the practice of expressing something which I have found to be true.

Some people can express their truths through their actions. The beliefs they hold deep are written in the lines of their faces. I need to practice that, to be better at loving people in the real world we all inhabit together, to see every person that comes before me as a person and as such, valuable. I need to care and care deeply for others and I have to be better at expressing that through my life. But I have these words, you know? I have these thoughts and I am tired of apologizing for them. Because I wrote this paragraph to tell you that I know that I have to love others and I undersold my ability to care for them so that I'd fit into your narrative of who I am, or what I fear your narrative for me is. Please don't treat me like a new soul walking into this strange world without any ability to do anything other than absorb. If I am blinded by the cacophony of lights that is existence, it is because I have endeavored to see it. I could have chosen otherwise. 

Anyway, all this to say that I might be a little spotty with the posts this month. I hate not keeping a commitment, especially when I've gotten so much from writing here, but I do genuinely think there'll be a benefit to the change. My pride sits at the back of my head like a little editorial ghost, telling me that I'm good enough without trying, telling me that my disposition is only an advantage, minimizing the effects of the truth spoken to me. Even though my heart and mind has felt the rumbles of the past few months, it'll be good to move into a space with a different kind of resonance.

Maybe I'll learn something that way.

Tell Me What's So Bad

I remember waking up one morning in Scotland and just being happy. It wasn't some transcendent joy and it wasn't due to anything in particular, as far as I can remember. I just woke up happy. On the right side of the bed for once, I assume. It's a little bubbly feeling in your chest and a lack of headache in your temples. I was just happy, for the first time in as long as I could remember.

Monday was like that for me here. Not in the morning necessarily-- I woke up early to work on a paper-- but it was such a lovely crisp morning and I got to see the sunrise on the bus. Then at work I got to do a planetarium show and I had forgotten how much I love doing shows. My friends have been bearing with the brunt of my bursts of astronomy passion in the past couple of weeks as I send them quotes from adorable children or pictures of artifacts in the Air and Space Museum or yet another expression of how happy I am to be back working the telescopes and editing curricula. I had forgotten how much I loved this kind of work and the kind of people that are drawn to it. Add in the autumn that has been cascading around us the past few days and I didn't think that my little heart could be happier.

But then it was. I went from work to class, bouncing facebook messages and texts off the satellites as I walked to the metro stop, then running into some girls from my program on their way up to a different class, and having a good talk about where we're all at and what's expected from us. Later, during the break in class, one of my other classmates asked if I was okay and asked what was going on in my life and my best answer, and the truest one, was that I was in my happy place. I've been swimming in a lot of theology lately and I'm in that exciting place where I'm reading edifying material and making connections and putting pieces together and having lovely, deep conversations with lovely, deep people, and I don't feel like I need to slow down the spin of the wheels in my brain. I don't know what my face is doing while that thinking is happening (I've been told I look somewhere between distraught and distracted), but I love letting my brain chase ideas down. I love letting it explore. And it brings me so much joy when an idea clicks into place that I have a tendency to confuse the messenger with the message, forgetting that what I've been looking for is the spark and not the human that evidences it, but right now, I'm just happy that so much is pouring into my brain and wedging its way into my soul. It feels like everything I ever wanted.

I know that we only get a fleeting number of days and I know that one day, barring any kind of intervention, the Earth will be consumed by the Sun and everything we ever loved will be obliterated by the heat of a dying star, but I could live for days like Monday, where the good was more than sufficient and the bad did not suffocate, where the world was beautiful around me and the people near me kind. My disparate passions have found their way into life, all at once.

Monday was one of those days that showed you what to wish for.

We could all use that sometimes.

---

Today's blog post title comes to you from the song Happy by John Fulbright.

Thoughts From Places: Newport, Rhode Island

I know that I've talked about running a half marathon since forever. It's legit, I think. I'd never done anything like this before. I didn't think that this was something I could do. I needed to process what I was convincing my body to do. I needed to provide an example of the excellence my body could aspire to, especially in this year when there has been example after example of negativity towards or disregard of female bodies. I needed to re-write the story that has been handed to me about what I'm capable of and what I desired to do. It has been no small factor in the creation of my character.

I don't imagine that I'll set this story down anytime soon, or stop displaying the medal with absolute pride, but I did make a video about it and maybe this will be a momentary button on the end of the story. It was a good weekend. I'm glad of it.

Kind of Tired

I forgot what it was like to feel tired like this. It's the good kind of tired, the kind that happens when you've spent most of your day on your feet teaching and engaging, giving bits of your knowledge and yourself away without any expectation of reciprocity. It's the kind of tired you feel after your body has carried you places you never thought it'd go, muscles feeling that exhausted tight-looseness as you stretch and settle into a chair for the first time in hours. It's the mental quietcalm that comes as you push open the door to your home after a long drive, leaving the rumble of the road for the stillness of being here. It's the slow blink, eyes open then shut for seconds, as you lean into the last sentences of a conversation you don't want to end but can't continue. It's the kind of tired that makes settling in to your bed at the end of the day feel like your wages for the day, letting your mind slip off to sleep unconcerned for tomorrow because you know that you did as much as you could today.

I long for this kind of tired when I don't have it. I'm frustrated by the kind of tired I've been: tired of the election, tired of thinking, tired of being lonely, tired of trying, tired by the mountains we've set before ourselves, tired of the mountains we've brought down upon ourselves, tired of worrying, tired by the things I do to avoid worrying, tired of carrying around the weight of this tiredness. That's the tired that chains you to the bed or to the couch, the kind of tired that makes you ask whether anything would really be any different in the world if you just didn't get up today. This kind of tired claims victory over your crumpled body, crows over your admission of defeat, promises you that you will never stand again because you're incapable. This kind of tired assures you that you are alone, have always been alone, will always be alone, and fantasizes about tomorrow when its mass can press down on you again, cracking your ribs and crushing your windpipe.

I love this time of year, when the air's crisp, wakes you up when you step out the door. I love watching the leaves change. I miss the daylight when it's not there, but I can't say that I mind the extra quality time with the stars. It's been quite the week, between last week's post and a birthday and writing eleven pages and driving to New York City and then Rhode Island, then running a half marathon in the pouring rain, then driving back, returning the rental car, and starting a new job the next day. I've earned my exhaustion. It's good, it's all been good, but it makes me wonder about who I am, who I've been, when the weather isn't kind and my friends aren't around and the days aren't packed. Am I allowed to be displeased with who I am in the desert, even as I live my life in the harvest?

I got ninety million questions about how we move forward as individuals and communities and as a nation. I want to give my life to answering them, to help us all heal from the pain the world's thrown at us. I want each day to end with that good kind of tired.

Let's see what we can do.

Eggs

I have polycystic ovary syndrome. The lady doctor diagnosed it in 2013 or so. It’s where a bunch of little cysts form around your ovaries to prevent them from working right. Basically, a normal ovary is like this:

All pink and normal and stuff. (Images taken from attainfertility.com)

And here's what mine look like:

LOOK AT THE CYSTS. ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE.

For me, polycystic ovary syndrome meant that the first time I got my period, I called my mom to come pick me up from school because I thought I had appendicitis. It meant that I didn’t tell anyone when my periods didn’t come every month because I was so glad to be spared the nightmare that they were. I thought everyone needed a jumbo combo pack of ibuprofen and maxi pads to get through their periods and I marveled at the girls who could just handle it. It meant that I lived with the shamefully loud plastic peel of the wrapper on an overnight pad echoing around the school bathroom every three hours and still managed to bleed all over every pair of jeans I ever owned in high school. It meant that I embraced fun phrases like "shark week" and "moon time" so that I could explain why I bailed on social activities and commitments without grossing out the boys around me. It meant that I spent a chunk of the last football game of my college band career curled up in the fetal position in my hotel room, praying that I could pull it together in time for the game. I rattled as I marched with a bottle of pain pills hidden in my uniform.

When I went to the gynecologist on my state employee insurance after college, they tried to confirm the diagnosis by giving me an interior ultrasound, but the picture wasn’t really clear. A medical test which left me sobbing on the examination table in pain couldn’t actually confirm that PCOS was the reason that my period, when I did have it, lasted for a week and a half and came with migraines and cramps that leave me bedridden. The ultrasound wasn’t covered under my insurance. I paid hundreds of dollars so that I could cry in front of a stranger and be told nothing new. 

When I went back to the gynecologist to get the results (mostly, you know, to be sure that I didn’t have cancer of the ladyparts), I was so relieved I wasn’t dying that I must not have been really listening when the doctor told me how hard it would be for me to have kids. I was single. I’ve always been single. Motherhood is a bridge to be crossed when you come to it and at 24 or 25, I didn’t see any need to speed toward it. I was so flustered when she asked if there was someone special in my life that I missed the part where she said, “Well, when the time comes, it’ll be a little more difficult” and “you’ll need to consider hormone treatment” and “you might need to try for a couple of years.” I just signed up for birth control to try to regulate my periods a little and went on with my life.

Later, after seeing a friend’s Facebook post on PCOS, which is the most common cause of infertility in women and affects up to 10% of women, I went into an internet spiral. “Infertility” caught my eye everywhere. Other than the pages that described the symptoms, which were spot on for how my body behaves, the pages I read most were about how you deal with this if you want to get pregnant. There are hormones you can take. There’s a surgery, which is a bit of a last resort. If you’re loaded, there’s IVF. Every body is different but as far as I understand what my doctors have said, it will be a long and difficult process for me in particular to get pregnant and even if that does happen, the pregnancy will likely be difficult. 

When I read this, all I could visualize was night after night of my imaginary future husband holding me while I sob through period cramps. Night after night of fuming at my body because the pregnancy test was negative again. Long night after long night at the hospital as I recover from yet another miscarriage. He’d get worry lines that should be saved for when our sixteen-year-old son is learning how to drive a stick shift. His heart would endure stress that should only be caused by the batter standing between our nineteen-year-old daughter and pitching a no-hitter. There would be a herculean effort that would put a strain on our jobs and our marriage, all because I was born with a downstairs that wasn’t able to bring life into the world on its own. 

I want four kids. I want a house full of life with two dogs to clean up the mess that my infant daughter makes with her cheerios and a cat for my three-year-old son to chase and adore. I want to sit through oboe lessons and violin lessons and the endless screeching hours of practice. I want to sing my son to sleep with an alto version of Summertime from Porgy and Bess. I want to bundle up my kids and make my husband carry a thermos of hot chocolate so I can teach them how to find planets in the sky and show them every constellation I know. I want to read The Hobbit to my whole family. I want to watch Star Wars with my daughters and help them make lightsabers and do their hair like Princess Leia. I want to fall asleep beside my baby's cradle. I want to fall asleep in a blanket fort with my five-year-old. I want my seventeen-year-old to fall asleep in the hammock with a book across her chest on a pleasant summer day and I want to leave a glass of water beside her for when she wakes up thirsty. I want my husband to carry our kids on his shoulders and I want us to go on road trips to see the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty and Disneyland. 

But as I read these articles, my body screams that those dreams I have about parenthood are ridiculous. The cry is not entirely irrational. PCOS comes along with a whole host of symptoms, stemming from the way it messes with my hormones, that affect attraction and relationships in ways we don't even think to think about. And even if I do find someone, again, how can I put him through all that pain and disappointed expectation? Anybody I’m going to pick is going to be smart and kind and the world needs more people like that. He should have his own kids and there’s someone out there who would make him just as happy as I would with much less stress. A little piece of that wonderful human out in the world, continuing the work of making it a better place. I can always take one for the team to make that happen, bow out before he commits to walking down this complicated road with me. 

Plus, like, overpopulation, right? And adoption’s always an option. A long, bureaucratically-mired, painful-in-its-own-way option, but an option nonetheless. Or being a foster parent! I’d make a great foster mom. There are so many children that need love in the world. I don’t need to bring new ones into it. Never mind that my arms ache to hold a son I’ll never have, a child I’ll never name or teach how to change a tire or explain sex to or demonstrate unselfish love for. All the lessons I’ve learned in my life, the generosity of spirit I want to cultivate in the next generation, all that can be imparted to a baby I didn’t make. I can write a book. I can travel the world and talk to people. I can travel and talk and write a book. With my husband. I can open my house to all people at any time. I can grow a garden and feed anyone who needs it. I can care for the women and children whose men didn’t deserve them and I can care for the men and children whose women deserted them. I can invest in a community and be a mother to hundreds of kids, going to football games and swim meets until the wheels on my chair will no longer carry me the places I want to go. Pregnancy’s not the only way to wear out a body. 

So, as I turn twenty-eight, please don’t joke with me that the clock’s ticking. My biological clock turned off almost as soon as it turned on. Don’t base your expectations for my life, body, or purpose on Genesis alone. I have done that, and sometimes continue to do that, all on my own. I have carried the weight of my imaginary children and my imaginary husband around with me for years. I understand that God is on the side of life and makes miracles happen but I don’t know how to ask for, or even if I should ask for, the miracle that would fix this. I don’t know how to ask God to change the body he knitted within my mother’s womb. 

What you can do instead, and what has been done for me, is to wrap me up in community. Be Christ for the bleeding women of today who long for healing and reunion with the community. Encourage us women who live and work and exist with PCOS, so that we can educate and help others manage their symptoms. Embrace the fact that some women will need the hormonal regulation that the pill provides or the almost-elimination of period symptoms that an IUD allows and see that that fact does not cause moral corruption. Acknowledge that family and parenthood take many shapes and forms and God doesn’t bless children differently because of how they were born and to whom they were born. It is our responsibility as much as we are able to care for every child and every adult who used to be a child with the unselfish love of God. 

This is an especially profound responsibility here and now, in this world where my body is made vulnerable and vilified and deified all in one tweet, where it is elevated and weighted down with sacred expectations over the course of the same sermon. We are capable of such kindness, though we don't always act like it. As you meet people where they are, as you encounter their hurts and their strengths, find a new way to be kind in the world.

Ask Me Again

Ask me again.

Because I walk through this life with eyes wide open and I feel like I see so many things and so many people and so many events and they all set me running towards understanding but sometimes that understanding is hard to come by and so I just don't know how to answer. But

ask me again.

Over the course of a week in my life, a friend had a baby and my brother got engaged and another friend got married and a different friend lost her grandfather and I want to speak about the beauty of life, how it allows us to see beginnings and endings in the span of a few days, how it doesn't slow down, even when you feel like it should, how it pulls together the disparate parts of your being as it throws you into new communities and reminds you where you came from and where you're loved. But I don't know how to say all those words exactly, to tell the stories of the leaves that only have the potential to change, clinging to summer green when the world around them aches for autumn, to talk you through involuntary smiles and sing-alongs, to teach you how to drink deeply from the wine of good conversation or let kindness flow from the store of goodness recently renewed in your soul. I'm still trying to give shape to these thoughts and so what I need you to do is to

ask me again.

I'm here, I promise. I'm focused and I'm engaged and I want to let this experience form me, make me into the person I know I've been aching to be. I'm excited for all the information that's coming my way but it's a lot to work through, you know? It's a lot to handle. We're reactivating circuits in my brain and forcing them into perpetual use and we're asking that from my brain after it's been disoriented by life and location. And then, on top of that, life kept on happening. I can't be disassociated from everything that's come before. So we're rattling the foundation I've just finished rebuilding while I'm finding my place again and wondering how it is that I've never asked these questions before or had these questions answered and where I can take these thoughts now that I've developed the muscle of chasing them down. I'm doing my best to be present but sometimes it's hard to hear over the mental gears ticking so it would help me out if you could

ask me again.

Because there's a lot going on and I don't know what my answer should be.

Because I'm good at protecting myself, but I know that I do that to my own detriment and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Because I do want this. I just express that poorly.

So ask me again.

Names

"What's their name?"

It's a common enough phrase at the ends of bible studies or small groups or any church community meetings where prayer requests are shared and taken. It was one of the first ways I learned to be unselfish, the taking down of names. So-and-so's second cousin who has a broken ankle is just the object of another sentence that I have to wait through before I can speak to my pain and grief and annoyance and ask for blessings. But Amelia's cousin Jeremy who works in landscaping and really can't afford to have to take the time off because of his broken ankle is a person, a living, breathing individual who I can pray for and who, if I have the means, I can assist and care for. Taking down a name is one of my earliest spiritual disciplines.

There is power in names. You're given one shortly after you enter this world and your name still exists after you've left it, buried somewhere in paperwork or engraved on a tombstone or held in the hearts of those who loved you. Naming someone in your prayers brings that power to the fore and calls God to accountability for this person. You connect to this person, even if it's the thinnest of threads, the most easily broken. It's not some girl who just had a baby-- it's Anna. You know Anna. Or you can imagine Anna. By naming her, you connect to her.

This is why we say their names. To humanize, to connect, to make just another black male killed by police an actual person in our minds. Keith Lamont Scott. Terence Crutcher. Two names on the litany that we should saying to ourselves every night, calling God to accountability for. Two more people who are never coming home again. Two more human lives lost among a system that has taught us to fear humans because the color of their skin, to speed up as we walk down the street or be too quick on the trigger rather than seeing the person who owns that skin. How long does the litany need to be? How many names? How many people?

Pray with me, my brothers and sisters. Pray in earnest. Say their names and call their memories up before the Almighty. Because when you do, when you come to God with prayers for these people, for this nation, for these times, when you say their name to make God accountable for the tragedy that we live in, participate in, benefit from, defend daily, I truly believe that God will move your heart. God will transform you.

God will let you know that you are accountable. You are meant to have kept your brothers and sisters as brothers and sisters. We have not done that. We have not done that.

When God changes you, when your heart is broken for these people, for their families, for their communities, come talk to me. Let's talk about police training. Let's talk about caring for our officers who mean to keep us safe. Let's talk about supporting police departments. Let's talk about building communities. Let's talk about the ways we can work on changing the human heart. To steal a phrase from a friend, let's together learn repentance and patience and grace so that we can reframe how we understand force and power and authority. Let's figure out which leaders are going to build bonds between people. Let's talk about the people who have been taken from us and let's treat every life like it belongs to a name rather than a number on a statistician's sheet.

Ask for their names. Preserve their lives. Live in this world with these people and love them deeply because they are people. Because they have names. Because they matter.

Start at the Beginning

I know, I know, I said that I'd have a post about what I'm learning for you every Friday. But I also want to make my creative projects work for me and that means every other Friday, I'll be posting my Vlogyries video on here in place of a text post because videos take time and my videos are rarely if ever uninfluenced by what I'm studying. So here, at the beginning of a new semester, is a reflection on beginnings, influenced by some of what I've learned in my Spiritual Formation for Ministry class and some conversations I've had with friends as the year begins.

Life and Lessons

A couple of housekeeping things before I get to the meat of the matter:

1. In the midst of job hunting and classes starting and Labor Day, my car broke down and I had life to deal with, so I missed a couple of posts. Sorry, team. 
2. For those of you who don't know, I'm in my third week of classes at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. I'm in the Master of Divinity (Mdiv) program, which is a three-year program that covers the basics of biblical studies, church history, theology, and ecclesiology. You know, all the stuff you want your pastor to know. Wesley is a United Methodist seminary and for ordination in the UMC, you need an Mdiv (typically). So stay tuned on all of that. 
3. As soon as all the paperwork clears, I'll be doing a more or less full-time internship alongside my five classes this fall semester. I imagine things will be busy but I do want to maintain the discipline of writing something each week. My goal is to write a post about what I'm learning for each Monday and a post about my life/what I'm feeling each Wednesday. Those may drop off as the workload amps up but that's the goal. 
4. Has anyone told you today that you're beautiful and you matter? Because you are and you do. Be affirmed, friend! 

And now, on with the post! 

***

I take almost everything in life as a lesson. Any big life event is not only an opportunity to learn something new about myself but also a chance to listen with intention for the message I'm receiving about my role in the world. I don't want this to come across as overly fideistic or moralistic or spiritual. I'm not preaching here, or trying to set an example. This is just how I live my life amidst all the chaos and bullshit and things I can't control. I can control this. I can control how I react. I can learn from the curveballs and fast balls and the occasional sweet pitch that sings right to where your bat wants to be. I can learn from the ones that earn you a walk.

Like when the car broke down. There were ten kinds of divine providence smiling down on me that fay, from the people who gave my car a jump in NC to the fair weather on the roads on the way up to the small miracle that was pulling into a gas station that happened to have a service center with remarkably kind people only a mile or so from my apartment. The car could have died in Charlotte and needed a tow back to Hickory, leaving me stranded seven hours away from where I needed to be. The engine could have whirred its last on some backroads highway in Virginia with no cell service. I could have decided to go somewhere else for gas and ended up paying for a tow and an impound fee. I could have decided to drive it to my apartment and ended up with a lifetime's supply of parking tickets. 

Through the whole thing, I learned stuff, like exactly where the alternator is and what happens when the engine mount breaks and how a tow truck hooks up to a vehicle. I learned (again) that I don't like depending on others, that I take every kindness thrown my way as unimaginable grace, that I'm uncomfortable with the impact of the whims of fate, and that I don't know how to treat those emotions and thoughts. Do I really think so little of my person and so much of the space that it occupies that I can't ask for a little help now and then? What's my deal with being unwilling to accept kindness? Do I really need so impenetrable a shield as that? And what use is that shield when forces outside my control dictate the terms of my response anyway?

When we went to orientation at Wesley, the first thing we really did was have a worship service. Now, I love me some singing and some responsive reading and a good word or two preached. But they asked us to hold hands during one song and I stepped on away. I do not hold hands with strangers. And they asked us to come up and dip our hands in the font and remember our baptism and I did not want to do that. I can remember my baptism from back here, thanks. I do not want to walk up in front of this group of people that I do not know and participate in a symbolic gesture of a faith that I hold to be deeply personal. It's been rocky sometimes and no amount of remembering a dedication to Christ that I didn't ask for is going to help with that, or at least, it's not going to help within the fifteen minute space of the end of this service. If I go up to that font, I am going to sob like a child in front of all of these people who will not understand my tears.

I went up anyway.

It was a barrier that had to come down sooner or later and it may as well have been sooner. I participated. I was next to last in line and I splashed my hands around in the fountain because if God's not a God of joy in creation, I may as well go home now. I let this part of the service work for me. I let a community start to love me and I started to believe that they would shoulder my burdens with me. Then after that, we all hugged our way through passing the peace. I swear, hugging is a spiritual discipline on its own. I marvel at people who can just casually go up and share space with another person like that. Is your love for all humanity really of that easy depth? Why isn't mine? Do I want it to be? 

I know that I do community differently at the beginning of my stay somewhere than I do by the end. We all do. I have friendships already and I want to put time into maintaining them; I want what already happened in my life to continue to matter. So even watching television becomes a social experience, with long conversations and all caps reactions. I know my friends on the other side of the screen and they know me. They get me. They support me. We're already invested in each other. It makes me tired to think about putting that work in again in a new place where I have to spend the majority of my effort pretending that I've found my footing months before I actually will have. Anyone who's met me in real life in the past couple of weeks has not gotten my level best. There's just too much else to be worried with. 

But you get what you put in, I suppose. You only learn the lessons if you're looking for them and you generally only form relationships if you ante up. Besides, my car's dead. If there was ever a sign from the heavens that I should stay put for a while, it's that. Cars are complex systems. It's easy to read divine intervention into the perceived spontaneous mechanical failure. Now all I need is for the internet to go out and maybe that'll jump start this whole friend process.

(Dear God, please don't let the internet go out. A car I can live without. The internet is a completely different story.)

Orienting

It's funny to me how a year can reshape your mental routines. Every time I glance out the window and see that it's sunny, I start planning how to make the most of the fine weather while it lasts, forgetting that tomorrow's going to be sunny too. And the next day. And the next. And the next, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. My body's surprised too-- I look down at the blisters on my toes and heels from wearing sandals and flats instead of boots and wonder at them, tiny little painful reminders that what I used to be used to is not what I am currently accustomed to.

For three years, I was paid to drive for sometimes five hours at a time. Why am I antsy after two and a half? I grew up driving on the right side of the road and following the traffic patterns for vehicles and pedestrians that go along with that. Why does my body shy away from imaginary traffic coming from the opposite side of the road when I go through a crosswalk? I've always had an answer for every question the instructor poses to the class. Why are my answers now questions?

I had thought that I could pick up the person I was, the one I left in America last September, with little or no problem, as easy as pulling my glassware out of storage and putting it in a new cabinet. (It is, by the way, the world's biggest comfort to be able to drink water out of my glasses and coffee out of my mugs, to eat food off of my plates and out of my bowls, to be reminded of the permanence my life had before and will have again.) I mean, I don't know that I'm in love with that version of myself, but I figured I could borrow back her habits, at least, her patterns of speech and cultural acumen. Heck, the first thing I did when I got into DC was find the NPR station with the best reception in my car. I should be settled and sorted. I'm home.

Orientation was a great comfort when that idea proved to be wrong. "You have to understand that you're not where you were three months ago." "Starting seminary is a big change and you have to acknowledge that. Change is stressful." From introductory lectures to student panels, there was an through-line of understanding and acceptance. "We know you want to look like you've got it all together, to be the one who's got it together so that you can care for someone else. You don't have to pretend like you've got it all together. You won't have it together." Beyond acknowledgement of the stress of transformation that this whole experience would induce, they pushed self-care. Find your sabbath and keep it holy. Talk to people when you feel overwhelmed. You don't have to do this alone; in fact, you can't.

You know the thing I noticed about pastors-in-training? We all read responsive readings with verve. The first worship service we had together, I was stunned by how loud the voices were around me. I felt like the chapel rang with our sound. You know, I know how hard it can be to teach teachers. I've led a couple educator workshops in my day and teachers make for interesting students. But I think if we can preserve that sound, that boldness and unity, even for just a few minutes over the course of a service, I feel like we'll get through this. It's a journey to be shared, apparently, no matter where we've come from.

I missed church on Sunday but I was preached at on Friday and again on Tuesday by people of faith who care deeply about this country and its ideals and its problems. I nodded as I listened, felt a shiver every once in a while when something that felt like, sounded like, must be truth hit my ears. There's an urgency to the questions we ask. There is a world for which we are being prepared and it needs us. It needs our voices and our thoughts, our actions and our hearts. This conviction, this burden of care, this is what stops the sharp points of my mind from slicing into others. I'm called to bring grace into the world. This burden of care is acted out in love, which I feel like I'm daily rediscovering in conversations with friends, in words of support, in surprisingly still-frequent hugs, and in the thousand tiny ways those surrounding me pay attention to me, serve me, bless me, carry me.

In the National Cathedral, there's a statue of Lincoln and an inscription which reads, "Abraham Lincoln whose lonely soul God kindled, is here remembered by a people, their conflict healed by the truth that marches on." On Tuesday, I waved at the moon rock in the stained glass window, I leaned into the quiet a cathedral brings into my soul and mind, I sat in a chapel and prayed, but it was this inscription that sank down into my heart. Whose lonely soul God kindled. Whose lonely soul God kindled.

This feeling here, down in my gut, the one that promises me that we will make the world better, that we will together go forward in love and truth and freedom and beauty and all those other words that put labels on entities that we are privileged to try to understand, this feeling is home. This is where my heart rests. And when the melancholy hits, when I forget or doubt or wander or worry, I really do think I'll have people to bring me back here. God knows I'll need it.

Transition Train of Thought

Why does my back hurt so much? Oh, because I packed half my worldly possessions into a backpack that I lugged around three countries, then flew on a plane and slept on a less-than-ideal bed, then flew on a couple of planes and slept on a real bed but unpacked and re-packed the other half of my worldly possessions, then drove for seven hours, then moved all my worldly possessions into their new home and then rearranged furniture. Also, I have bad posture and carry my stress in my lower back. Mystery solved.

This'll be fine. It's fine.

I'm not overwhelmed. I'm not nervous. I've done this before. I've done this before in the last year. I can do this. I've done this. I'm fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. I'll just update my bullet journal for the next couple of weeks and...

Why is there nothing after August 27th?

WHY IS THERE NOTHING AFTER AUGUST 27TH???

Okay, calm down. We planned out this journal in June, so of course September seemed too far away to think about. We'll just update it and put all the things we need to do down in a list and then we'll do them and then we'll be sorted for the future. Before you know it, it'll be October and we'll have a routine that's much more substantial than a podcast feed and we'll forget that this whole transition period happened. One step at a time. One day at a time. That's how you build a life. Just stop for a second and breathe and we'll be fine.

I don't have a ruler.

How am I supposed to update my journal without a ruler? My edges won't be straight. I'll look back on these pages and all I'll see is the fact that I couldn't even draw a straight line and you learn how to do that as a child and that means that children are better than me at everything and what's the use of the past TWENTY YEARS OF MY LIFE if I CAN'T EVEN DRAW A STRAIGHT LINE?

If I run my hands through my hair one more time, I think I'm going to go bald.

At least my nails are short so I can't tear my scalp to pieces or nervously scratch my eyebrows off.

Okay, clearly I'm a little overly jittery. No more caffeine today. Lesson learned. Box checked. We're going to be fine.

This would be so much easier with someone else.

Nope, not gonna go down that mental rabbit hole right now. One step at a time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Make a list.

Books. DMV. Job search. Church search. Budget. Plan weekends out of town. Tick through this all today and tomorrow because you've got orientation on Friday and--

What am I going to wear to orientation? It's going to be so hot. We're going to walk around. Do I have anything appropriate? Where did all my fancy clothes go? Can I wear a dress? Would that be weird? All my dresses are wrinkled. Where is my iron? I didn't pack my iron, did I? Does the laundry room have an iron? Why do all my clothes smell like this? Why don't I smell like me anymore? And it's not like I can just open up a window-- I'm not paying to air condition the outdoors. Maybe just some air movement? I don't have a ceiling fan. I DON'T HAVE A CEILING FAN. DC, YOU'RE BUILT ON A *^&%$#** SWAMP. WHY DON'T YOU HAVE CEILING FANS?

I'm doing so well.

I'll just go over to Facebook for a hot second, say hello to some people, get a little social distraction in. And I can do some research while I talk. It'll be good. It'll ground me. It'll remind me of... of good things, right? Connections. Friends. Funny things. It'll be good.

Books. DMV. Jobs. Church. Weekend plans. Conversations. Articles. Articles. Election thinkpiece.  Buzzfeed penguin "article". Parking map.

If I open another tab, I'm going to scream.

You know what? Let's take half an hour and just not be fine. No one's home. We'll just turn up the music and come back to the list in thirty minutes. Have a bit of a singalong. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in...

"I'M TAKING THIS HORSE BY THE REINS MAKING RED COATS REDDER WITH BLOODSTAINS AND I'M NEVER GONNA STOP UNTIL I MAKE 'EM DROP AND BURN 'EM UP AND SCATTER THE REMAINS YEAH"

Lafayette, you never let me down.

Oh, hey, lunchtime! Ham and cheese, here I come!

This is going to be fine. I'm fine.

I got this.

Reverse Culture Shock

I always rolled my eyes at people who "picked up an accent" after some time abroad. No, my friend, a year is not enough time to change the vowel structure of your speech patterns. You know how you sound. Stop it. 

But then I went and picked up some oddities in my behavioral patterns that come out as I tell stories or try to refer to everyday objects. So, in order to avoid sounding like a pretentious braggart, I'm going to collect all my thoughts on the British-American cultural divide here. From the first couple of days back, at least.

-Flip-flops. Praise be. Boots, you can sit the next couple months out. 

-I don’t worry about taking my passport with me anytime I leave town. I am a citizen. I do not need a visa. I can work for whoever I want, however much I want. 

-I no longer check the currency exchange daily. 

-I just paid $5 for lunch. This is the cheapest meal I’ve had eating out in over a year.

-Tax is included in the prices. I find myself fishing for change whenever I use cash now.

-Waitstaff checks up on you over the course of the meal and tips are suddenly expected again. (Not that I’ll be doing a ton of that as I am a poor student again.)

-Do I bus my own table? I probably bus my own table. No one else is leaving their food trash. Better look for the bin, then. 

-FREE REFILLS. Not confused, really, just pleasantly surprised every time they happen. 

-Oh, you don’t want to see my signature and compare it to my card? That’s fine. That’s normal. That’s what we do. 

-Guilt-free Starbucks.

-Guilt-free McDonalds. 

-I need health insurance now. 

-Why am I awake at 4am? Oh. Because my body does not know what time it is. 

-Light switches INSIDE bathrooms. 

-Ceiling fans. 

-Outlets. 
-The paper is the right size again.

-It’s DARK by 9pm. I knew this would have happened eventually anyway, but I’m thrown off guard by it. 

-I know this is just an Edinburgh problem, but I get distracted by the stars nightly.

-The crickets are so loud. 

-The people are so loud. 

-American flags are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. EVERY. WHERE. 

-Political attack ads. 

-Someone just asked me if I was registered to vote and if I’d moved in the last year. I… yes? and yes? Should I…? Do I…? Listen, I’m just going to go google this.

-Or get distracted by ALL THE SHOWS on American Netflix. 

-“This content is not available in your region.” NOT TODAY, SATAN. 

-No, Safari, I no longer want to use maps.google.uk. Stop suggesting it. 

-“I’ll have a Tennets—Stella—Carlsberg—Uh, do you have Yeungling? Perfect.” 

-It’s 8pm. Why am I so tired? Oh, because my body thinks it’s after midnight. 

-“I’ll have a Coke, please.” *Takes a sip* WHY DOESN’T THIS TASTE LIKE COKE?

-Chips? Crisps? Fries? I don’t know anymore. I just don’t know.

-Salt. I think there’s a layer of salt on everything in America. 

-Butter. 

-ABC stores. 

-Concealed carry notices.

-I’m very aware of my gender when trying to find the restroom in a restaurant. 

-Edinburgh. Pittsburgh. Pittsboro. Carrboro. Greensboro. Edinburgh. 

-I sent that message like three hours ago. Surely they’ve seen it. Why are they not responding? Are they dropping me from their life that quickly? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? Oh. Wait. It’s 2am there. 

-“You wanna FaceTime or…? OR I COULD CALL YOU.”

-“Wanna have a pub day over Skype?”

-I keep on asking for the bin, partially out of habit, partially because I am now aware of how painfully nasal the a’s in “trash can” are. 

-“My new flat— roommates…”

-“I’ll just pop to the loo before we go, shall I?” No, self, you’re going to run to the bathroom. You’re in America now. 

-PANTS. PANTS PANTS PANTS PANTS PANTS PAAAAAAANTS. Fanny. Pants. 

-I don’t want to call it soccer but I can’t call it football… better to not talk about sports at all. 

-OH GOD EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT SPORTS. 

-Huh, that word does look better with a u. 

-Why is that word misspelled? Oh. Z. 

-Lord Almighty, everyone here sounds like me. 

-I swear the sun is brighter over here. Squinting all over the place.

-I got sunburnt from driving.

-“Better bring a jacket and a brolly,” I think, grabbing the items on the way out the door fifteen seconds before walking back into the house to drop the items back off again. 

-Seriously, excepting June, it’s been a year since I’ve seen this many elbows and knees out in public. 

-Also, been a year since I’ve seen this wide a variety of skin tones. 

-It's so hot.

-It's SO hot.

-It's like 90 degrees in the shade. (Yeah I used Fahrenheit. SUCK IT, CELSIUS.)

-I think I’m dehydrated literally just from sweating. 

-There’s so much space. 

-Driving in the car on a sunny summer afternoon with the windows down and the Avetts turned up is a familiar kind of heaven, but there’s another kind that involves a pub with friends on a cold and rainy night, listening to the words and sounds of the past year bubble up around me. 

-I have my mountains back, at least for a few days. Explain to me why there’s a near-perfect ache for the Highlands in my gut.