Moving the Couch Part 3: Moving

If you read my initial angsty post about the difficulties of making friends with teenagers on a choir trip, you heard me say that my home was hundreds of miles away. Turns out that home is an ill-defined term and any level of ambiguity is helpful when you’re doing your best to not offend anyone in anyplace that you deem home-worthy. Because otherwise, you know, tears.

Now, I fake moved out from my place in Chapel Hill about a month ago, before Crossflame tour, because the original plan was for me to move out then and because I like even vestigial plans. All I had left to pack was the odds and ends before my little brother came to get my bed, but I took about a week so that I could revel in the joy that is my own space. I mean, I have my own space at my parents’ house, but, as anyone who’s moved back in to their ancestral home can tell you, there’s a whole different set of expectations for your “own space” at your parents’ house. Plus, I adored my little room at Tottenham. I had a chalkboard wall and fairy lights and nerd posters galore. 

I also had some goodbyes to say. I’d already had my work goodbye and my church goodbye and there’s no reason to redo those, but I had some friends in town that I wouldn’t mind another week with. We watched TV and talked and went to movies and cooked and drank and that’s about all I need from life, I think. We went to go see that Disney movie about feelings and I have to say, you do not feel the extent of that movie until you’ve watched it with your friends on your last night in town. 

And then I came home. Well, I mean, then I packed everything I had left and it was just an absurd amount of stuff that barely fit in my little car and then my brother came by and we put my mattress and box spring and other sundries in the back of his truck and he put a tarp on it that I had acquired and thirty minutes down the road I realized that we had forgotten the bed rails for my bed and had a minor emotional breakdown and I am surprised at how often those occur when moving. Goodness knows where my life-couch is now. I may have left it somewhere along exit 266 on 40 west. I’ll start looking soon.

See, I never really moved. I mean, I moved into Tottenham three years ago, but we had the storage pods that they drop off and pick up and drop off and pick up and all you have to do is load your stuff into it and that’s so much easier than getting a mattress into the back of a pickup and driving it a couple hundred miles across the state. And I know I must have moved my mattress into my Rock Creek apartment the year before that, but I don’t remember that at all. Maybe we had a van? 

But I never did the pack-up-whole-rooms-of-the-house-and-pray-you-can-see-out-the-back-window kind of move. And I never crammed a whole comfortable life back into my room at my parents’ house, which already had its own established comfortable life. 

Moving is… hard, you know? Leaving people you care about and may never see again and will slowly lose touch with as you both go about your lives even though there’s the entire internet to help with that. Tearing down a place that has been your comfort in exchange for a place that hasn’t felt like yours in years, even though your furniture and pictures and awards and books are all around. Figuring out what to do with your time and how to explain to your parents that so much of what you want to do with your summer off involves a computer and a set of headphones. Not knowing whether to be sorry or persistent about that. It’s all those readjustments on top of digging through yet another box of clothes to find one decent tank top that makes you squirm in your new old bed, uncomfortable on the down and in deep desire of your own sheets and comforter and tiny, flat pillows. 

You lose a little bit of yourself when you leave. And I’d heard that, but I’d never felt it. That’s really the definition of my life experience. I’ve heard that leaving is difficult, but it hadn’t been for me. I’ve heard that you need other people to care about you, but never lived that need. I’ve heard that people cry when they think they’ll never see each other again and… well, that still hasn’t happened to me, but expect me to blog about it when it does.

As a segue, I’d love to introduce you to my new blog, Allowed. It’s still finding its legs, but I want it to be a little more focused than I’ve been. I’ve got a journal let’s be real it’s a diary where I can chat into the ether about my feelings and hopefully you’ll get the more processed version of that. There’s a lot of nevers that are going to get knocked off my list in the near future- I’ve never been to California, I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon, I’ve never gone to a gigantic nerd conference about Youtube, I’ve never moved to another country, I’ve never gone to school in a castle, I’ve never written a thesis. I want to take those things, those first time feelings, and situate them in light of what I think I can be and what I’ve found I’m allowed to be. 

So yeah. The writing continues. The thinking continues. Because if we’re talking about homes, the one I’ve always known is the one I've carried around in my head, and, no matter where I physically end up, I’m pretty certain I’ll always have one here on the internet. 

Thanks for that, everyone. 

Moving the Couch Part 2: Crossflame Tour Continued

(Missed part 1? You can read it here: http://blackbirdberry.blogspot.com/2015/07/moving-couch-part-1-crossflame-tour.html) 

I’m a problem solver. I pride myself on that. I’m a strong person. I pride myself on that too. Pride, really, is the dolly upon which my life-couch rolls. I’ve crossed many a rough terrain with the help of my pride.

I almost lost it on the Saturday night of Crossflame tour, but there was a concert to do and smiles to be smiled and if there’s anything I can do, it’s smile in front of a group of strangers while keeping the bitterness locked behind my teeth. What I can’t do, apparently, is skip dinner in order to cry aggressively towards the ceiling, do a concert, stay up until 1am to make sure no middle schoolers are up on their phones, do two services on Sunday morning without breakfast, and have three people ask me if I’m okay. Two, apparently, would have been fine, but after the 9:30 service as I was sitting in a pew waiting for lunch, the third came in the form of a youth who wouldn’t take yes for an answer, probably because tear streaks and a shaky voice are the least convincing bouncers for the emotional state to ever exist.

The whole situation spiraled until I was sitting with another adult leader and the youth pastor, with guest appearances by the choir director and Cry-Inducing Questioner #3. And I’m laying out my whole sob story, how I’m, just, so exhausted (we all are), how I feel useless (a cry for affirmation of the work I’ve been doing), and how it’s a waste of time for me to get to know these kids who clearly don’t want to know me (I’m really just afraid that they won’t like me). I’m kicking things off my couch left and right so I can curl up with my Pillow of Existential Doubt and my Blanket of Defensiveness like I’m used to.

But the talk coming back to me was completely opposed to my pillow and my blanket. They were happy for me to air my grievances but their solutions were different than mine. Just get to know three kids today, it’ll be a start. Sit back and let someone else handle things for an afternoon. Let the kids see you be vulnerable- it’ll show them that it’s okay to not be strong all the time. As if every tear wasn’t rusting and aging the wheels of my pride, bringing me closer to panic by the minute because without my pride, I’d be stuck. Let them love on you, they said, like that was a perfectly acceptable option and not a red flag sign of weakness.

But eventually, there were no more tears because there was no more water in my body available to leak out my face. I went to the bathroom to fix the clown makeup that crying creates out of my regular face, realized that I couldn’t, and went to lunch where half the choir, kids I couldn’t even name, came up to me and hugged me and proved that there was some water left in me after all. And as much as I wanted that to be that, this was the start of the long pleasant/painful process of making friends, something I haven’t ben in need of doing in years. I’ve always been pulled in. I never had to invite myself before.

But then Wednesday night rolled around and we were all sitting around a bright campfire, lit with skill, dedication, and a tampon, with people opening up and hugging and caring and affirming, and you could see the exponential growth of this family. We passed around a donated glow stick and listened as people talked again and again about the kindness that had been showed to them and that they had been able to show. When it’s done right, a group like this is blessed with love. We did it right. 

I only held the glow stick for a minute, but it was to thank them all for doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. That’s all I had. It’s an experience, letting people care about you and for you. It’s an experience, too, to actually sacrifice your time, a part of your life, and have it pay off in the end, to remember that the original option was never to carry your couch alone. It was to have a family. 

So add another to the list, I guess. Crossflame Tour 2K15, family #12. 

Moving the Couch Part 1: Crossflame Tour

Life is like moving a couch. You can't do it alone.

Or no. You can do it alone, but it'll be much more difficult.

Eh. Maybe you could do it alone easily if you have a lot of money to get a robot to carry it for you, but then there'd be no one except the robot to talk to you at the end of the move and they don't have much personality yet.

What I'm saying is, you've got to have a family.

Family doesn't mean blood kin, though it can, and that's a wonderful thing. Family means the people who can drop everything to come help you, who'll hold you when you cry, who'll support you in love and kindness and force unwanted but necessary hugs on you.

That's all well-trod, known information but it bears restating. Family is people who love you. And you need that.

Now, I always knew, on some level, that Crossflame was family. It's the youth choir that I planned my weekday and summer schedules around for ten years, people I looked forward to seeing, a wonderful, comfortable place. Crossflame was the reason I first went to Scotland, so for that reason alone I'm grateful. It was one of many families I’ve had over the years- marching band, camp staff, SAI, planetarium staff, various church friends. For my whole life, I’ve never felt alone or like an outsider, even though I keep myself to myself. I’ve got a great blood family and many more besides.

But then Friday night, day 4 of this year’s Crossflame tour, rolls around and we’re sitting around this fire pit with no campfire, sharing and passing around my phone with the flashlight on, and I know I’m not a part of this family, such as it is. The kids I do know I haven’t seen since they were in kid’s choir and the rest of them have only ever seen my heightened self, the loud leader who knows the plan and how best to make it happen. That person is efficient, functional, capable, and I cling to her positive qualities because they’re all that get me through days like these. These kids don't know me. My family isn’t here with these children sharing halting stories about the profundity they think they’ve seen; it’s hundreds of miles away with my real friends and my internet and my bed and my home. I’ve made a place for myself over the past couple of years and I want to run to it. I’ve never in my life been homesick like this before.

It’s not like God’s helping either. That’s what we’re sharing- God moments- and the deity has been distressingly silent towards me for a while. All I want is a confirmation that I’m doing the right thing, the peace that I used to have, the anointment that David got. If that cheating, murdering SOB can get the full blessing of the Holy Spirit, surely I deserve at least a trickle of affirmation. And so, long after the kids have departed from the cold fire, feeling like they’ve bonded (and in some ways, many of them genuinely have), I’m sitting and staring up at the trees, silently begging and accusingly the sky for reprieves and of crimes I’m not sure I even understand. I’m angry.

By now, my life-couch is sitting firmly on the ground, piled high with wants and needs and desires and frustrations and abandonment and stubbornness and anger draped like a blanket over all the rest. Anger that I’m wasting my time with a bunch of kids who clearly don’t need me on a trip that could be running without me when I could be warm and comfortable in front of my TV. Anger that this transition is so hard, that my life is packed in boxes and I don’t know where I’m going to live come September. Anger that everything I’ve been doing since the 10th grade could have been a mistake and nobody told me. Anger over past hurts. Anger over omission. Anger over perpetual loneliness. Anger, anger, anger.

I could have tried to carry my couch, but why bother? I’d just have to move it again anyway. So all of Saturday, I sat in front of my life-couch, knees pulled to my chest, perpetually ten seconds from tears. 

(Worried that I'm going to leave you with a sad ending? Don't worry! Part 2 is here for you: http://blackbirdberry.blogspot.com/2015/07/moving-couch-part-2-crossflame-tour.html)