So I took this one class in college, my first religious studies class (which also counted as my philosophy credit, which meant that I could drop Philosophy of Physics, which was the last honors course I attempted to take and was the beginning of my downward spiral into average academic achievement, thank goodness), called Heaven and Hell. Now, to be fair, there was both heaven and there was both hell, but we really only spent one week on hell and I’m not even sure that we mentioned Paradise Lost, which I thought would have been required for the understanding of hell. But I digress.
In this class, we had to write three papers about the soul/the afterlife in popular culture. I picked 2 C.S. Lewis books and a movie with Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr. in it because that’s the kind of person that I was. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And I was really proud of my papers. They were fine papers. But I think this is the beginning of my condescension of my condescending college self, because I know now that there are so many other possibilities out there that would have leant themselves to those papers, things that were outside of my worldview back then. Things like vampires.
Now, feel free to judge away again, because I’m going to dive into Buffy-land. First off, where was this show when I was a teenager and why did it never come across my path until now? Maybe I just had to wait until I was ready for it. Second off, Joss Whedon has no problem killing characters and bringing them back again (something I should be familiar with as a Stargate: SG-1 fan, since killing Daniel Jackson is a recurring theme in that show) so that just screams for investigation into how life and afterlife work in the Buffy universe. And what do you do with the undead who walk around? Are vampires alive? Where do they go when they’re slayed? When people are sent places and brought back, what were those places? How do those places correlate to western theology and how are they different? Why am I interested in this now when I could have had two or three killer papers, which is what life is really all about?
Also, how did I miss the opportunity to write about zombies? ZOMBIES. Maybe I just wasn’t as into the internet then as I am now. But there are endless possibilities here and I don’t think I had the courage to dream big enough yet at that point in my life. I mean, it’s easy to stand higher up on the hill and say that I had no idea what was going on when I was down there, but there are going to be (hopefully) more years of climbing and looking back down and wondering. I can’t let myself get sucked in too much here either. The internet is a fun place, and watching shows on Netflix is wonderful, but there are loves to be regained. There are books and there is writing and there are minor dreams to be dreamed again.
But it’s good to look back sometimes too, you know? It’s good to look back and know that it wasn’t perfect but it was good enough. Room to grow. Room to grow is good.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Three Pages of a Quick Second and Two Pictures
Let me tell you about my day today for just a quick second.
My alarm went off at 4:45am so I could take a shower before going on a school visit today (I drive a travelling planetarium around the state. Yeah, my job is awesome. Deal with it). I did not get up then. I did the eh-I-can’t-possibly-smell-that-bad-and-I’m-going-to-sweat-anyway roll over to turn off my alarm. Then I woke up in a panic at my next alarm and packed things in my suitcase in record time and nodded in approval at how everything magically fit (I left my shampoo and conditioner in the shower) and rolled my suitcase down to the cul-de-sac and got in the state van and struggled with the GPS (who I like to call Gipus in a loud and often angry/condescending voice) and started my morning drive.
I got to the school and sketchily waited in the darkened office because no one was around but I couldn’t find the light switch and I wasn’t sure where else to look. Then someone came in and found people to help me unload and I set up the planetarium and nodded again in approval because the door was behaving itself (it often doesn’t) and I had been very efficient during setup this morning (this was before I noticed that I forgot to put up the flags). I got the confidence boost that comes with singing along to the musical of the hour and hearing the echo of your voice around a big empty room and being happy with the way it sounds. If you have never had this confidence boost, I recommend burning a CD of songs in your vocal range and singing along in the car where no one can hear you until you’re confident enough to fill up a room where no one can hear you. Then maybe you and I can get together and we can figure out a way for our voices to fill up a room with people in it. It’s a process.
Shows went fine. Kids were funny and oohed and aahed at the appropriate places and generally got edjumacated. I got to take this picture of balloons on the wall:
It was a pretty solid day. Then, as I was packing up, I got the message that my great-aunt had died, so of course I put music on and finished packing up because dealing was not something I was going to do. I mean, I was planning on going home this weekend anyway, so maybe I’d be able to manage things. This, by the way, is the kind of thing my mind does when it can’t deal. It starts to plot out a schedule and a bullet point list of things we’ll need to do in the next couple of hours to deal. This is helpful- remember, I drive a travelling planetarium around the state for a living, so logistics can be difficult. At the same time, it’s just a schedule and logistics. Dealing starts when I actually put the schedule and logistics into action and that doesn’t happen as soon as it should most of the time.
We finish packing up- the guys who helped me load the planetarium back into the van were pros and Gipus manned up and got some directions. Then, as I’m driving to my hotel and singing along to the musical of the hour, I notice that there’s a car pulled off to the side of the road. Actually, that’s not an accurate statement. There’s a Jeep that’s completely rolled off the road on its side in a ditch. I turn around and ask the guy if he’s OK and if he needs a ride. He’s fine, magically, ironically, and there’s a tow shop right down the road, so I drive him down the road. He gets in and he tells me that he just drifted off. I turned down the musical of the hour- there’s more profanity than I want someone to whom I’m giving a road after he just drove his jeep off the road to hear. You know, he was going to turn on the next road and just drifted off the road. He was very adamant that he just drifted off the road. I nod and remark on how lucky it is that there’s a tow shop right down the road, because it’s not like this a super populated area. I think I actually said that it looked pretty sparse out there. Which may have been an unfortunately complex choice in words because as the guy’s sitting there, I think, “What’s that smel- oh.” I have been in enough high school bathrooms to have a guess about the real reason this guy just drifted off the road. Honestly, this is one situation I didn't expect today.
I drop the guy off and wish him well and roll down the windows. I use the moment in the parking lot to check my phone to see if there’s any news and I see a text from my dad asking me to call him, which I do as I pull out of the tow shop. He asks me where I am (I was on the way to Roanoke Rapids, which is so far north in North Carolina that it's almost Virginia) and if I’m driving and you know that “Are you driving?” is the new “Maybe you should sit down.” My grandmother (my great-aunt is her sister) had had a massive heart attack that afternoon and had been taken to the hospital and they hadn’t started her heart back up.
Which I absolutely can’t handle. Like, should-pull-off-on-the-side-of-the-road-because-I-can’t-see can’t handle. Then again, she hasn’t died yet. And she’s in the hospital. Maybe she’ll get better! But you know that sinking feeling you get when you lie to yourself and it’s a pretty obvious lie? That’s the kind of feeling you get when your grandmother has unexpectedly had a massive heart attack and they haven’t started her heart back even though it’s been half an hour. But you lie anyway, because life would be so much better if the lie were true.
So I ask my dad when my great-aunt’s funeral is going to be, just to have something to say, but he doesn’t understand me even when I ask the question twice more (probably because I’m in an area with little to no service and I’m leaking out my eyes and nose) so I get angry and tell him I’ll call him back later and toss my phone rather violently into the passenger’s seat, because I needed an expression of my anger. I mean, I feel like my grandfather just died (I also found out he was in the hospital while at work at the planetarium, so clearly, my working at the planetarium isn’t good for my elderly relatives) and my great-aunt did just die and I can’t handle the idea that my grandmother is going to go as well. Oh, also, my old ballet teacher died. So that happened.
I go get pizza because I haven’t eaten since breakfast and because comfort food is called comfort food for a reason. And I drive to my hotel and as I’m checking in my dad calls back. Again, I can’t deal, and I don’t want to be rude to the lady behind the counter (she’s my age. Why would I call her the lady behind the counter? Society, man. Society) so I let it go to voicemail. I drop my key card and pick it up and struggle bus it to the elevator and call my dad back and start crying alligator tears in the hallway because my grandmother’s died. And the logistic panicking happens and the helplessness happens and I’m thankful to no end that no one else rode the elevator up with me because they’d probably awkwardly try to comfort me and that’s on the growing list of things I can’t handle right now.
So I sit on the edge of my hotel bed and sob, not even bothering to check for bed bugs (which I still haven’t done- and don’t call me paranoid, because I’m statistically more likely to run into bed bugs since I travel more than you [probably] and I like my clothes and luggage). Because how much must this suck for my mom and my aunts and my uncle and my cousins and my brothers and my dad? And me! How much must this suck for me! Here I am, hours from home with a travelling planetarium and a full week’s worth of shows and a dead grandmother and alone. All I want to do is go home and hug my mom and tell her not to die without letting me say goodbye, please and thanks, and I surprise myself by wanting to do this, really wanting to be home and not just saying that I want to be home because it’s societally expected of me. I want to be home because home is where my grandmother was and I didn’t get to make it back in time to say goodbye, and regret, you can just take your place in line because you’re an emotion I’ll deal with later.
Then the call to work to try to get people to cover, which was wonderfully, thankfully painless. Then the texts to roommates and friends, cancelling or changing plans. Then how many times do you have to tell someone news? Can’t they just know? Do I have to say this again and again? Because it brings the tears up every time and my face is already puffy. AND ALSO, they put the tissues IN THE BATHROOM COUNTER which is just an added difficulty when I clearly need the tissues on my bed.
On the upside, I could now change out the stuck-in-the-counter tissues if called upon. Life skills. Check.
I cringe a little when I make a joke. I think humor while grieving is appropriate in public, but it sounds crass in a text. But I don’t have anyone here with me to make the joking less crass and I have to deal somehow, so I joke away. And now I have to get my pizza out of the state van and bring the projector up, because I’m in no state to drive and I don’t want the van to retain any of the smells of the day. But I’m mourning, right? I mean, I’m not watching Castle right now, even though I have cable right in front of me. [Insert joke about missing the d00k game.] [Retract joke.] [Struggle to decide how to feel about all of this and the internet, which is still perfectly happy to say funny things that I feel like I can't like right now.]
I also can’t help but think about how differently I’m reacting to this news than I did two years ago. I processed things more easily back then, I think. I don’t think I joked because I don’t think I had switched from the silence shield to the bitter humor shield. I was also perfectly happy to internalize things, but I don’t do that so much anymore. External expressions of internal pain have gotten more real. More real in that I don’t just post them on facebook. I talk to people. And people have offered to do nice things for me. People can be nice.
It’s just that the adult in me can’t handle the third grader in me right now. “People can be nice”? Nice, kid. The adult in me is standing beside the checklist lady in my head, the one who started making plans earlier. The checklist lady is kinda satisfied. I mean, biologically, everyone has two parents who, biologically, have two parents, so you’re going to have four grandparents die, so this is just another check mark completed. It’s all the same to her, whether you make the check mark when you’re in elementary school and don’t really understand death or whether you’re legally an adult and don’t really understand death. I don’t think I let the checklist lady have any soul, so we can’t blame her too much. But I think the adult needs to man up and stop shaking her head at me. This is hard. And I think it’s important that we know that this is hard. I think it’s important that the checklist lady and the analyst lady go home and just let me be me for these moments. Because these moments are going to come again in the future and they’re going to hit harder and I need to learn to deal. I’m growing up and I can’t ignore that fact anymore.
My alarm went off at 4:45am so I could take a shower before going on a school visit today (I drive a travelling planetarium around the state. Yeah, my job is awesome. Deal with it). I did not get up then. I did the eh-I-can’t-possibly-smell-that-bad-and-I’m-going-to-sweat-anyway roll over to turn off my alarm. Then I woke up in a panic at my next alarm and packed things in my suitcase in record time and nodded in approval at how everything magically fit (I left my shampoo and conditioner in the shower) and rolled my suitcase down to the cul-de-sac and got in the state van and struggled with the GPS (who I like to call Gipus in a loud and often angry/condescending voice) and started my morning drive.
I got to the school and sketchily waited in the darkened office because no one was around but I couldn’t find the light switch and I wasn’t sure where else to look. Then someone came in and found people to help me unload and I set up the planetarium and nodded again in approval because the door was behaving itself (it often doesn’t) and I had been very efficient during setup this morning (this was before I noticed that I forgot to put up the flags). I got the confidence boost that comes with singing along to the musical of the hour and hearing the echo of your voice around a big empty room and being happy with the way it sounds. If you have never had this confidence boost, I recommend burning a CD of songs in your vocal range and singing along in the car where no one can hear you until you’re confident enough to fill up a room where no one can hear you. Then maybe you and I can get together and we can figure out a way for our voices to fill up a room with people in it. It’s a process.
Shows went fine. Kids were funny and oohed and aahed at the appropriate places and generally got edjumacated. I got to take this picture of balloons on the wall:
It was a pretty solid day. Then, as I was packing up, I got the message that my great-aunt had died, so of course I put music on and finished packing up because dealing was not something I was going to do. I mean, I was planning on going home this weekend anyway, so maybe I’d be able to manage things. This, by the way, is the kind of thing my mind does when it can’t deal. It starts to plot out a schedule and a bullet point list of things we’ll need to do in the next couple of hours to deal. This is helpful- remember, I drive a travelling planetarium around the state for a living, so logistics can be difficult. At the same time, it’s just a schedule and logistics. Dealing starts when I actually put the schedule and logistics into action and that doesn’t happen as soon as it should most of the time.
We finish packing up- the guys who helped me load the planetarium back into the van were pros and Gipus manned up and got some directions. Then, as I’m driving to my hotel and singing along to the musical of the hour, I notice that there’s a car pulled off to the side of the road. Actually, that’s not an accurate statement. There’s a Jeep that’s completely rolled off the road on its side in a ditch. I turn around and ask the guy if he’s OK and if he needs a ride. He’s fine, magically, ironically, and there’s a tow shop right down the road, so I drive him down the road. He gets in and he tells me that he just drifted off. I turned down the musical of the hour- there’s more profanity than I want someone to whom I’m giving a road after he just drove his jeep off the road to hear. You know, he was going to turn on the next road and just drifted off the road. He was very adamant that he just drifted off the road. I nod and remark on how lucky it is that there’s a tow shop right down the road, because it’s not like this a super populated area. I think I actually said that it looked pretty sparse out there. Which may have been an unfortunately complex choice in words because as the guy’s sitting there, I think, “What’s that smel- oh.” I have been in enough high school bathrooms to have a guess about the real reason this guy just drifted off the road. Honestly, this is one situation I didn't expect today.
I drop the guy off and wish him well and roll down the windows. I use the moment in the parking lot to check my phone to see if there’s any news and I see a text from my dad asking me to call him, which I do as I pull out of the tow shop. He asks me where I am (I was on the way to Roanoke Rapids, which is so far north in North Carolina that it's almost Virginia) and if I’m driving and you know that “Are you driving?” is the new “Maybe you should sit down.” My grandmother (my great-aunt is her sister) had had a massive heart attack that afternoon and had been taken to the hospital and they hadn’t started her heart back up.
Which I absolutely can’t handle. Like, should-pull-off-on-the-side-of-the-road-because-I-can’t-see can’t handle. Then again, she hasn’t died yet. And she’s in the hospital. Maybe she’ll get better! But you know that sinking feeling you get when you lie to yourself and it’s a pretty obvious lie? That’s the kind of feeling you get when your grandmother has unexpectedly had a massive heart attack and they haven’t started her heart back even though it’s been half an hour. But you lie anyway, because life would be so much better if the lie were true.
So I ask my dad when my great-aunt’s funeral is going to be, just to have something to say, but he doesn’t understand me even when I ask the question twice more (probably because I’m in an area with little to no service and I’m leaking out my eyes and nose) so I get angry and tell him I’ll call him back later and toss my phone rather violently into the passenger’s seat, because I needed an expression of my anger. I mean, I feel like my grandfather just died (I also found out he was in the hospital while at work at the planetarium, so clearly, my working at the planetarium isn’t good for my elderly relatives) and my great-aunt did just die and I can’t handle the idea that my grandmother is going to go as well. Oh, also, my old ballet teacher died. So that happened.
I go get pizza because I haven’t eaten since breakfast and because comfort food is called comfort food for a reason. And I drive to my hotel and as I’m checking in my dad calls back. Again, I can’t deal, and I don’t want to be rude to the lady behind the counter (she’s my age. Why would I call her the lady behind the counter? Society, man. Society) so I let it go to voicemail. I drop my key card and pick it up and struggle bus it to the elevator and call my dad back and start crying alligator tears in the hallway because my grandmother’s died. And the logistic panicking happens and the helplessness happens and I’m thankful to no end that no one else rode the elevator up with me because they’d probably awkwardly try to comfort me and that’s on the growing list of things I can’t handle right now.
So I sit on the edge of my hotel bed and sob, not even bothering to check for bed bugs (which I still haven’t done- and don’t call me paranoid, because I’m statistically more likely to run into bed bugs since I travel more than you [probably] and I like my clothes and luggage). Because how much must this suck for my mom and my aunts and my uncle and my cousins and my brothers and my dad? And me! How much must this suck for me! Here I am, hours from home with a travelling planetarium and a full week’s worth of shows and a dead grandmother and alone. All I want to do is go home and hug my mom and tell her not to die without letting me say goodbye, please and thanks, and I surprise myself by wanting to do this, really wanting to be home and not just saying that I want to be home because it’s societally expected of me. I want to be home because home is where my grandmother was and I didn’t get to make it back in time to say goodbye, and regret, you can just take your place in line because you’re an emotion I’ll deal with later.
Then the call to work to try to get people to cover, which was wonderfully, thankfully painless. Then the texts to roommates and friends, cancelling or changing plans. Then how many times do you have to tell someone news? Can’t they just know? Do I have to say this again and again? Because it brings the tears up every time and my face is already puffy. AND ALSO, they put the tissues IN THE BATHROOM COUNTER which is just an added difficulty when I clearly need the tissues on my bed.
On the upside, I could now change out the stuck-in-the-counter tissues if called upon. Life skills. Check.
I cringe a little when I make a joke. I think humor while grieving is appropriate in public, but it sounds crass in a text. But I don’t have anyone here with me to make the joking less crass and I have to deal somehow, so I joke away. And now I have to get my pizza out of the state van and bring the projector up, because I’m in no state to drive and I don’t want the van to retain any of the smells of the day. But I’m mourning, right? I mean, I’m not watching Castle right now, even though I have cable right in front of me. [Insert joke about missing the d00k game.] [Retract joke.] [Struggle to decide how to feel about all of this and the internet, which is still perfectly happy to say funny things that I feel like I can't like right now.]
I also can’t help but think about how differently I’m reacting to this news than I did two years ago. I processed things more easily back then, I think. I don’t think I joked because I don’t think I had switched from the silence shield to the bitter humor shield. I was also perfectly happy to internalize things, but I don’t do that so much anymore. External expressions of internal pain have gotten more real. More real in that I don’t just post them on facebook. I talk to people. And people have offered to do nice things for me. People can be nice.
It’s just that the adult in me can’t handle the third grader in me right now. “People can be nice”? Nice, kid. The adult in me is standing beside the checklist lady in my head, the one who started making plans earlier. The checklist lady is kinda satisfied. I mean, biologically, everyone has two parents who, biologically, have two parents, so you’re going to have four grandparents die, so this is just another check mark completed. It’s all the same to her, whether you make the check mark when you’re in elementary school and don’t really understand death or whether you’re legally an adult and don’t really understand death. I don’t think I let the checklist lady have any soul, so we can’t blame her too much. But I think the adult needs to man up and stop shaking her head at me. This is hard. And I think it’s important that we know that this is hard. I think it’s important that the checklist lady and the analyst lady go home and just let me be me for these moments. Because these moments are going to come again in the future and they’re going to hit harder and I need to learn to deal. I’m growing up and I can’t ignore that fact anymore.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Being Neat
Whenever I feel out
of control, I make up my bed. It's this one little thing that gets totally
disregarded when things are fine and fun and hectic and exciting and is just a
thorn in my side when things are slow and sluggish and hardly bearable, but
it's an easily removable thorn so when things feel out of control, I remove it.
I make up my bed and I feel like, out of all the things I've done wrong, at
least I have done this one thing right. It might not give me a star in my
crown, but at least it's something.
I had to make up my bed when I got back home today because I yelled at a dear
friend yesterday. She told me that I had a tone of defeat and I snapped and
said that of course I did, because she had been attacking me all night, which
was absolutely true to me at the time. I went on a lovely little rant listing
off the wrongs she had done me and how hurt I was and how I really just
needed to go away and think about things like this and then I left and went to
bed hours earlier than I planned. I lay there for probably an hour, seething at the laughter coming up the stairs and listing the reasons why I was right and she was wrong.
I can't get over how
childish it was. I can't get over how defensive I was being. But maybe it'll
turn out to be a good thing that I was childish and defensive, because looking back at it has turned this into a tipping point. There have been
a lot of tipping points in my life lately, or opportunities for tipping points.
I feel like the guy on his roof during the flood, you know, the guy who ignores
the weather forecast, the storm warning, the emergency warning, the guy in the
row boat and the emergency helicopter because he says God will save him and
then when he dies, asks God why he never sent anyone to help. I might have
missed the warnings, but, after yesterday, I think it's about time I jumped on a rowboat.
I'm in a weird place
in life. Friends are getting engaged and married, they're starting careers,
they're working and living these lives that I'm consistently amazed at. I
wonder who stopped watching us and started letting us play adults. Doesn't the
world know that we don't have it figured out, that we've never filed our own
taxes before, that we barely know how to live our lives, much less combine our
lives with someone else's or even make another life? I don't know what I want
to be when I grow up. Am I grown up? Because it sure as hell doesn't feel like
it.
It feels like I'm
going through being a teenager again, you know, rocking out that angsty,
independent, finding-yourself phase. Did I never have opinions before? Because
I'm defending them now like a mama bear defending her cubs. Have I never looked
in a mirror before? I'm noticing all sorts of flaws and features I never
considered until now. And someone needs to pull me aside and explain to me that
while animal crackers and icing may seem like a great idea for a meal, it's
not. Just because you can eat something doesn't mean that you should. I have a
lot of thoughts that are all, "I'm an adult! I can make my own choices!
Can't nobody tell me what to do!"
It's just that I've
been making choices that haven't always reflected the person I should and want
to be. Some of those choices have dug me down deep and deeper into a hole that
I've been in long enough to question whether I even want to get out. Being in
that hole makes it easier to listen to the lies that echo around in my head,
and if you hear a lie enough, it begins to be absolutely true to you. And I
don't think that there's an amount of afterschool specials or cheesy morals in
movies that can overcome the lies-that-became-truths in your head. I think some
people can think their way out of it, maybe. I think that sometimes people whom
you respect have to remind you what's right and what's good and what's true,
and they may have to remind you of that often, whether they're people who've
written a book or people who've written a song or people who've made a movie or
a TV show or people who see you on a daily basis and choose to see your
potential for good as being greater than your existing bad. I think that
sometimes you need to get help greater than what is readily available to you in
your day-to-day life.
I think it's time to turn a corner. It's time
to move beyond making up my bed. Let's chose to be better today.
What about you? What
are your turning points?
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