I Thought I Might Be Wrong...

Someone needs to tell my emotions to cool it. I just got out of a long-term crush (I would tell him if I thought he'd listen) with the help of a rebound crush (I wouldn't tell him unless my integrity depended on it). Bear in mind that crushes are the closest things I've got to relationships. They're safest, closest to my bubble and inside the door to this strong room that I never willingly step out of. It's the weirdest thing, though- I've been carrying around this boy in my heart for the longest time and then he was thrown out like a song I've listened to too often or a movie I've watched too much. Then, with this other one, I got all giggly and dumb and happy and thought for sure this one was going places. Of course, I was a little crushed when it wasn't. And it's certainly my own fault for thinking that I had something here, proof of the fool that I can often be.

I love driving. I can turn up my music ridiculously loud and sing along and there ain't no one to judge except at the occasional awkward stoplight. Recently, this has consisted of Pretty Girl From Cedar Lane by The Avett Brothers loud and often on repeat. One time or another, listening through again, I realized that I had had a moment, and that moment was gone and that's fine.It's fine. And that, realizing that, is like coming up gasping for breath after being underwater too long or singing 'til you can't push another molecule of air from your diaphragm. It's a beautiful, beautiful feeling, being free.

And you know, I have depended for so long on the wrong perspective to make me feel right, to make me feel beautiful and wonderful and appreciated. Sometimes you just can't help but feel like less of a human being if you've had the epic lack of a love life that I've had. No, legitimately, if you can't find some boy who actually likes you by this age, you have to be doing something wrong, right? Yeah, screw that. I have a group of about 50 people who are willing to tell me at the drop of a hat that I am beautiful and I'm going to start believing them.

Because I want to live, so badly. I want to fly. I want to keep my head in the stars and never let anything pull me back down. And I think we spend so much time on this romantic love and finding our worth only when we find the one that we miss out on the everyday love that surrounds us and protects us. I want so badly to have this tangible love, the kind that you can hold in your hand or let slip through your fingers, the kind that binds you to a person like nothing else, the kind that you give, you hold out to them with tired arms and shaking shoulders, never wanting to let go. But I know that there's so much more to life than that, so many different ways you can give your love until it's gone. You can live and move and breathe without that one someone to tell you that you're worth the air that your lungs are stealing.

So I will not be heartbroken simply because I am not loved in the way the world wants me to be. I have these wonderful, beautiful sisters and friends who never fail to remind me of the huge number of good things in the world. There is Good, and it's going to win, and I am happy to love that, to work for it and hope for it and spend my nights singing from the rooftops instead of waiting on them. For once.

My Difficulties (Or, A Vote of Confidence)

You know what my problem is? I'm always going to believe the best in people. That's my problem.

I am never going to give up on someone I know. I'm never going to believe that their heart isn't in the right place. I'm always going to assume that they are trying their hardest, and if they're not, that there's a legit reason why they aren't. I am going to take them at their word, because I trust people. I am always going to hope that they're going to do what they say they're going to and be the people that they say they're going to be. I am always going to believe that their hearts beat with honesty and love.

You know why? Because I can't take a world where people don't do that. Because I know you, because I hear your story, because I listen and because I believe that you are good and wonderful and better than you believe. I can't understand why someone wouldn't give their best, so they must have a reason. I can't believe that someone would treat someone badly just out of spite- there must be some anger, frustration, some other care that stops them from being the person they can be. It breaks my heart to see people ill-treated and it shatters it when I can't do anything about it. But the worst is when I can and don't.

I can explain my actions away all day and be kept in perpetual remembrance of my sins with a thousand words to blot them out. I can use every talent I've been gifted with to block out all of my problems, or pour them out like so many emptying bottles, but at the end of it all, all the efforts and explanations that drain me until my heart is too tired to beat, all I truly own is this stupid, brainless hope that tomorrow won't be like that. Tomorrow, the misunderstandings don't take over everything. Tomorrow, everyone understands and no one cries. Tomorrow, everything makes sense. Tomorrow, I stand up and I make the right decision. Tomorrow, there will be less pain than there was today, because tomorrow is when right has the opportunity to win.

And I will always believe in grace. There will always be a second chance, if it's mine to give. I might live the rest of my life being disappointed and I might lose as often as I'm disappointed. I might cry every night until my pillow cannot dry over the things that break me down day by day. I might spend all my days wondering why I ever hoped for something better.

Or I might not.



And I'd rather believe in that.

Saturday Night Eulogy

When I was in the 4th grade, I was in an academically gifted program. We met in a trailer at my elementary school near the end of the day, I guess, because one day my grandmother came to pick me up from school early and I was in AG and my teacher, Mrs. Purcell, said, "Oh, look, it's Mama Jo coming to pick up Mama Jo!" We all call my grandmother, whose name is Sara Jo, Mama Jo, and in elementary school, my friends called me Jo (without an e, thank you very much, years of childhood scarring) and Mrs. Purcell called me Mama Jo on occasion, probably because I'm bossy and protective and in general a domineering, matronly figure.

This is a trademark of many of the women on my mom's side of the family. We know what's right and we're not afraid to tell you that we're aware of the best way to handle any given situation. Ten seconds at Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter with my family is all the scientific proof you need to see that fact.

Which is why, I guess, I'm not surprised that Pawpaw waited until after the Carolina game to pass on.

Man, I balked at that idea the first time someone said it. I think we were standing in the hall, waiting for my dad and my older brother and Diata to get to the hospice center and exchanging hugs when someone seemed like they were going to break down in tears again, and someone asked me if it was me that said that he had waited for the game to get done. And I said no because I was appalled at the idea, that life and death waited on Carolina basketball. I might be a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred and when I die, I will be a Tar Heel dead, but I know that my time of death isn't going to depend on a game unless they actually succeed in giving me a heart attack one of these days. It just seemed crass and terrible and a joke in very poor taste. We had all just lost someone close to us all. Why on earth would someone say something like that, minimizing the traumatizing event that had just occurred down to a glib comment about the timing of a basketball game?

We had all tried to be quiet during the game too, which is quite a feat, considering it was me, my mother and my two aunts all in my pawpaw's room with him sleeping on his bed and my grandma sleeping on the chair. If you've seen me at a game, you're aware of the amount of passion that goes into my support of the team and I can tell you for a fact that I didn't get that from my dad's side of the family. My aunt got up and walked around and left the room for good luck while my mom listened to Woody on the radio and grabbed my knee every time a shot went in, and I only clapped every once in a while and was probably loudest when I breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the game. It's nice to see the Heels win an ACC opener.Seems like it's been a while.

Then we all walked down to the sun room because the nurses were going to give him a bath and let him sleep in a different position. It's strange how it's always too soon, even after a more massive heart attack than we had thought on Monday and the move to hospice on Thursday, Friday? It was around three o'clock on Saturday, because I was going to wait on Jackson to get back and trade off the grandchildren duties and drive back to Chapel Hill. My stuff was all packed in the car. I was just going to head out of town, be back for everything that needed me on Sunday, and come back for the funeral that I knew was coming sometime next week, with them stopping dialysis.I was counting days in my head, next Wednesday, next Thursday, maybe I could get a ride back with one of my cousins, hopefully the snow won't be too bad... then the nurse comes running in and my mom and aunts are running down the hall and my cousin is helping my grandma with her walker and me and my little brother walk slowly down the hall behind them.

The thing that gets me the most isn't how I feel because I couldn't actually tell you how I feel right now. I guess I'm peaceful. I went to go see him in the hospital on Monday, that seven county drive behind me, and he seemed OK. That's what I'm going to keep as a last memory, if I have to keep one. Mama Jo told me that I used to say, "Pawpaw, it's getting dark outside... Pawpaw, it's dark outside," in the winter, when it gets dark outside early, just like this. In my mind, I'm on my knees on the couch looking out the big window in my grandparents' house at their street, with the white curtains framing the deep dark blue outside and happy little worried me turns to my grandfather in his chair by the couch, letting him know that the sun's gone away for the day. Mama Jo says, "Do you remember that, Jim?" and he says, "Yeah." And I have to laugh because my pawpaw was never a man of many words.

The thing that gets me is everyone else's sadness. I'm getting better at telling people that he's passed when the thought of it initially just made me start crying. And I'm not going to think about graduation and how I won't have to get an extra handicapped parking pass because that can't end well. But I can't think of my mama crying or my aunts crying or my cousins crying because all that vicarious pain is just going to set me off again into a red-nosed fit of grief. See, my pawpaw was a man who loved his family and it's too beautiful to bear to see us love him back.

He and my grandmother were together for more than sixty years. He didn't ever say much, but when Mama Jo came back in when I was visiting for a second time on Monday night, he dropped the entire conversation with my aunts and me and put up his arms to hug her saying, "I love you." And she is so strong, you know, standing up there and praying with the whole family in a circle right after he'd gone, and I don't know that someday after I've found someone who's loved me that well that long I'll be able to stand up and say anything at all when he's left me.

My mama has two sisters and my pawpaw was a deacon in the Baptist church. We went back to the house my mama grew up in (how can you just leave people there? Is that was people do, when someone dies, you just leave them there? I just don't understand death, can't deal with it, don’t want to face its reality) after everyone had gotten to say goodbye again and the hospice people knew which funeral home to contact. Mama Jo was in the dining room searching for a phone number and she comes out and all her daughters are standing around, beers in hand. She says, "You know the preacher's coming over." And my aunt says, "We'll tell him we're Methodist." And my grandma says, sassy as anything, "Well, you may be Methodist now, but I am Baptist and you were raised Baptist and the preacher's coming over." And somehow the beer found its way to the hidden back bedrooms of the house.

And so it goes. The everyday beauty of life doesn't stop just because the darkness has come in for a little while. I didn't ever pray on my own today because I thought it was a little redundant, telling a God that was already there to be with my family. Even as the night comes early, little lights pop on in the distance, like my aunt chasing my uncle around their living room for making fun of her in front of the preacher or my dad holding my mom or my older brother getting to know my grandfather in months before today or my little brother high-fiving me as we left my aunt's house tonight, making sure I drove safely back home.

And if a patient man who knew and cared for his family wanted to wait until the end of the game to head on to the better place that's been prepared for him, so be it. I'm just glad we didn't go into overtime.

One Second Hopes: A Bowl Game Story

*Editor's note: The explosion of life events in my recent past has led to an explosion in writing. Sorry to flood the world with excess writing in a non-chronological order.*

Snapshot: This is me, in the final 20 seconds of regulation time at the Music City Bowl. I'm slumped over, still on my feet but leaning on my seat, in full, properly buttoned, band uniform with my ball cap on top of my bowed head. Amid the groans and the yells, I'm hoping that no one will notice the tears that foronceinmylifedammit I am not going to stop.

Rewind.

Sandra Bullock. The Blind Side. She's talking to Michael, encouraging him to pick his own life and assuring him that, even should he choose Tennessee to play for, she will attend every game. "But I will not wear that gaudy orange, I will not. It is not my color wheel and I'm not going to wear it."

I felt like The Blind Side was an appropriate movie for a 9 (read 11) hour bus ride taking us to a football game versus Tennessee, where we hoped for some sort of moral victory over the stadium covered in that gaudy orange (seriously, the stuff was everywhere. EVERYWHERE). As the credits started to roll and everyone readjusted their seats for sleeping as opposed to watching, I pulled out my phone from my backpack to check my messages, because whenever I have it on silent, I tend to obsessively check it for messages unless I put it away.  The texts I'd been getting had been making me smile because it would tell me it was sent an hour after I received it because of the time change. I liked to think my phone was just precognizant, but whatevs.

In my phone was a text from my mother, telling me that Liz Helms had gone to be with her Lord and to pray for her family. Now, I've known about Liz for most of my church life. She went on tour with Crossflame, our youth choir, back before I was old enough to go on tours and she's always been involved with things around the church. I'd see her at F.E.A.S.T on Wednesdays and she'd let me skip through the line to go find my mother and see if she'd paid for me to eat right before I'd run off to whatever musically-related thing I was doing next and I'd see her in the church office sometimes when I ran in, which tends to be pretty frequently. I didn't really get to know her any better than that until I got to be college-aged and started going to college programs whenever I was back in Hickory, like trivia or the couple of times I went to the college Sunday school.  She was always good to be around, always positive, always kind. She was a true Carolina fan as well, cheering just as hard for the football team as anything else.

I started thinking about all the things I'd miss now that Liz was gone, which is not a good idea if you want to stop yourself from crying in the middle of a crowded bus of quasi-friends and acquaintances. I thought about trivia nights and status updates from the nights when I'm not there during the school year, updates about the church's mission projects, her name among the slew of status updates after Carolina games. I'd miss seeing her at church whenever I came back, one of the many faces that was always happy to see me. I remember talking to Roy Brown before church on Sunday, when Liz was still in the hospital and talking about the things we've learned from her. She'd been in a wheelchair her whole life and wasn't supposed to live past her teenage years. At 15, she decided she wanted to get her license and so she did. At some point, she said that she didn't want people to think that when she died she'd be going to place where she could walk, she'd be going to place where it wouldn't matter. I'm going to miss that beautiful perspective.

I went through the couple of days before bowl game tearing up as I checked Facebook updates and stopping every once in a while to think and be quiet. It's remarkably difficult to think and be quiet when your days are full of rehearsals in the rain, battle of the bands in the same, epic times with the mellophone section, complete with balloon sword fights and the best shake-weight dominated gift exchange that has ever existed, pep rallies and fort explorations. I'd been in Nashville over the summer with Crossflame and I'd want to point out things to my friends but it's amazing how hard it is to explain that chaperoning a youth choir tour could have so much more tied up in it besides some sight seeing and some singing. I hope no one judged me when I stared off into space because I couldn't get away with not thinking.

Then it was actually time for the game and we walked into that orange-covered stadium and I wasn't quite sure what to do.  So. Much. Orange. And Rocky Top until your ears bled. The longest first quarter ever, then the second quarter, then almost half time, running down the stairs to fist-pound Rameses and stand near the field, jumping up and down for last-minute touchdown, marching on the field, marching off the field, wishing Tennessee's band good luck, back up the stairs, sit. Third quarter, roll eyes at the ref for six seconds back on the clock, holding up our game time, no scores, fourth quarter, no scores, no scores, roll eyes at ref for putting one second back on the clock, no scores, Tennessee touchdown, extra point missed! Drive, drive, 4th and 20, come on, comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon, INCOMPLETE, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Slump. Less than two minutes left in the game and a field goal from tying. Scream Defense!  until your lungs break apart. Thirty seconds left and we get the ball back and the magical hope is back and 3rd and 3 and INCOMPLETE and the ref comes on the field. We started out our story today in the midst of the mess of all of this.

And I was so angry. I mean, you know, I know it's just a game, but it would have been more than just a game anyway. This was my last football game ever as a collegiate Marching Tar Heel. For once in my life I wanted to walk out of football season with a smile on my face instead of trudging out of a stadium having listened to the other team's favorite songs played in their lengthy, soul-crushing entirety. I still never want to hear Country Roads again. After 2 losses in Charlotte, it sure would have been nice to feel like the curse had been lifted and to win a bowl game for once. On top of that, in my heart, this game was for Liz and all those disappointments, thinking that just for once, it might be nice to have something go my way, to go the right way, all of that came crashing down on me and in the middle of that never-quiet stadium, I was done. Feel all of that, all those emotions and hopes and fears and dreads and smiles and promises, and tell me that it's just a game.

Then people start holding up one finger. Now, if there's one thing I hate, it's that dumb 'We're number one!' finger that everyone holds up when the camera points at them. No, you're not, and even if you were, it's pretentious to remind everyone that you are. I roll my eyes. Then I realize what's going on and I start yelling with everyone else for Tennessee to go back to their bench because holler praise the game's not over. One second. I have one hand in the air, holding up a one and the other one behind my back, fingers crossed, hoping again. One second. One second.

Then the ref comes out and there's one second and Casey kicks a field goal (Casey Barth, I may love you forever and if I am ever to see you on campus, you best be expecting a hug attack and be grateful for it because I don't even like hugs) and then it's overtime. Of course, the rest is football history, though at some point someone needs to chronicle Gertrude Wocket's vital role in the victory since she's clearly more powerful than Red Vines. And Butch is all like, "How 'bout them Tar Heels!" and the players are all like, "How 'bout them Tar Heels!" and then it's tag again and leaving the stadium and a happy bus ride back to the hotel.

Now, I know that God doesn't take sides in things like these. I know that He loves everyone on both teams the same. I know that even during basketball season He loves Rat Man as much as He loves me and that, my friends, is a feat of unimaginable wonder. (I would also like to state at this juncture that I do not actually believe that one person is intrinsically better or worse than anyone else based on their collegiate athletics team preferences and that I'm sure that Coach Krzyzewski is not a legitimately terrible person.) All joking aside, I know that it is ridiculous to believe in supernatural blessings or curses on athletic programs of any kind. I know that games are won on skill and the good graces of the referees and a thousand little intangibles from the lunch the players ate to the temperature outside to the loudness of the crowd might have some effect but they won't sway a game one way or another. I know that it is a rational world in which we live, despite my rather irrational actions every game day.

But...

Thanks for the extra second, Liz.

Questionable Apostrophe Placement

I think the best New Year's Resolution I've heard is "New Year. No resolutions, just no excuses." I think that's probs much worthier than anything I could have planned but my brain, before it went Facebook stalking on New Years Day, decided that it was going to steal other people's words for New Years. As I think about it, though, it's easy to say things and make them trite. It's harder to actually believe them, hope with all your heart that they're true and work to make them a reality in your existence. So suck it, doubters. This year I'm going to resolve to be romantic and live.

New Years Resolutions: 

1. Be a little better than I've been so far. 

2. To love and be loved in return. 

3. Sigh no more. 

4. Be the change I wish to see in the world. 

5. To speak words that build, that bless and comfort. 

6. To be faithful over a few things. 

7. To live in awe. 

8. Perchance, to dream. 

9. Break this tired old routine. 

10. To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. 

11. To use the love that people say you make.

Going Backwards With Time

You know how some people see an object like, I dunno, a book or a sock or a scarf or something and it brings back all these memories and they have all these stories to tell, all because they looked down and happened to see this one thing sitting all by its lonesome in a corner, forgotten? There's this sweeping motion that takes hold of your mind as the memory comes washing back in like a new tide on a cold beach and everything gets to be a different color and you remember maybe half a minute of who you used to be half a decade ago. You sit differently in your skin, your ears ring with different songs and your eyes cast around, maybe for an apparition of memories past or maybe just to remember remember remember what they used to see, how they used to see it.

Roads do that for me. Roads, and places I used to pass every day on a regular journey. Going down to South Campus, passing the bell tower, Kenan stadium, Ram's Head, Morrison, SASB, all the way down to the intersection where you can see the Dean Dome at the bottom of the hill makes me think of freshman year and jogs so many memories of early morning walks to chem, early morning runs back to my dorm to grab my shako before games, countless dinner and lunch plans before and between classes. Cutting back by the arboretum to get to the planetarium reminds me of early mornings junior year and walking across the upper quad reminds me of the summer before.

There are a couple of routes that I haven't been down in literally years simply because I haven't needed them. Like the back of the parking lot at the elementary school where the buses used to drive out every afternoon? I can't even think of what that would bring to mind. Or the parking lot behind the middle school? Or the walk between the band room and the auditorium? The practice rooms at South, and the band hallway with the lockers? The road back to the aquatic center? These are all places that I haven't seen in a long time, but even as I think about it, I can tie bits of my life back together.

There's a couple of roads in Hickory I used to take all the time to go to ballet. I'd be running from choir or practice or something and I'd definitely not speed at all down one way streets that I knew like the back of my hand, only because I'd been driven down them so many times. I used a couple today to get to Frye Hospital where my grandfather's been in CCU after a heart attack this morning. Even as I worried on my way back from the hospital to my house, my memories took me back to summer evenings with the windows down and radio up, driving with my dancer's tights rolled up showing off my taped ankles so I could drive barefoot back to Granite Falls. I followed familiar bends and thought of the things that'd changed and the things that'd stayed the same and could never decide if there were enough of either.

You know, there's supposed to be something mythical that ties you to Carolina, like the love you can have for a place is solid, something that could fall from your hands or tie them when you try to leave forever. I think there's something like that that ties me to my mountains too, and to the places I've watched them from. And even though I've spent most of my life trying to get away from here, I'm still bound because this place is where my family is and where my past sits. I've been so frustrated at the hundred and fifty miles on I-40 that have stopped me from being here when I've just wanted to be home. I'm tired of being written out of plans because I'm so far away. This car, this wonderful object that I hope will carry me to wonderful places, brought me back today and it was so beautiful to be home.

Because my family's pain is my pain. And I'm tired of carrying it on my own at a distance.