roads to go

We always walked wherever we needed to go--mainly because the only place we went was to Derek's house, but the notion of "see you in five" has swooped back into my adulthood. I feel twelve again--no car, nowhere important to drive to, yet most of my friends are within a ten minute walk in almost any direction, so when we make plans, it's a simple "see you in five" conversation.

 I have mixed feelings about the whole concept--I love the ability to walk out the door and be with people so soon, yet the thought of living in such a small radius when there is a whole world out there frustrates me.

 Tomorrow, I board a plane for Atlanta. I'm going to a conference for work, and while a few months ago, I was excited--excited by thought of "travelling for work", of visiting a new city, of feeling like I'm "going somewhere", as I procrastinate trip prep, I'm rather saddened by the thought of it all: leaving my dog, leaving my friends, leaving at what always feels like the least convenient time, even though there really isn't anything to hold me back.

 Maybe that's what keeps people living in the same place for years and years or going back to the places they grew up. Are we all just bodies in search of "home"? I recognize that some people were born to travel; they live for seeing the world and never settling down in one place. I thought I could be one of them, but the longer I stay in Seattle, the more it seems I'm supposed to really be here, stay here. I could explore this area for the rest of my life and still not see it all, I think.

And yet, does the notion of "putting down roots" mean anything in a world that is so dynamic, in a market that keeps all residents unsure of where they'll call home for the next year or two?

life in the woods

We used to create pretend lives in the woods.

 

The first instances I remember are with my sister. Our first pretend home was the center of a circle of forsythia bushes. They were directly outside of our real home, but it was our own little hideaway. The round bushes seemed to create a wall with a tunnel to enter through. Once inside, it was like we were "big kids" in our own little home, closed in by powdery yellow with an open sky.

 

Our next was the giant pines a little farther up the yard. Pennsylvania really has some great pine trees. These were maybe forty or fifty feet tall with long, thick branches along the bottom, which were great for two purposes: 1) they created a skirt around the tree where we could hide (our new walls) 2) they were thick enough and low enough for us to begin the climb. We'd take turns, each climbing as high as we could (we were always climbing trees). Sometimes we'd lie down on the branches & pretend they were our beds, as if our bedrooms were just on different levels of our house.

 

(Now that I think about it, my sister always begged my dad for a treehouse. We sort of got it after years and years of piece by piece construction. We spent one night in it (still unfinished), and that was it. Never got done. But that's okay because I think we were better off for it because we had better times living in the trees because a treehouse isn't a wooden structure built among trees--it's just trees & an imagination.)

 

I have no idea what I thought as a four or five year old climbing those pine trees. The memories come in small snippets of questionable truth. Picturing me up in the pine feels like we were pirates, climbing the highest mast to lookout for intruders. I guess that's partially true--we never wanted to be found.

 

Yet a smidge farther up the yard, there was a small opening between clumps of trees that was its own cove, complete with…you guessed it--a brilliant old clawfoot tub. By brilliant, I may mean covered in dirt & algae and filled it the greenest water and the occasional turtle.

 

As I'm writing this, I’m realizing that is becoming more a list than a story of our many play-venture homes in the woods, barely touching the details of each. I'll settle for a few more before making my point.

 

There was this place we called the picnic area--a spacious opening between the trees where my family had set up picnic tables, a barbeque, & everything else necessary for a party. However, by the time we took to playing there, it had been long out of use and falling apart: a shadow of its former life.

 

At the far end of the clearing, a large beam sat propped on poles--a few railroad ties broken & balanced in their own little Stonehenge. We used to climb on the tie and use it as a balance beam, though I think its intended purpose was to be a serving table for food. Over a dip in the landscape, near the thickening woods, a small rotting hut sat full of pots & pans & random kitchen utensils. Sometimes we would go in there (usually on a dare) to sneak around for something for our pretend homes.

 

The picnic area was great for our play-pretend because everything we needed was already there. When the area was cleared away, we scraped our way deeper into the woods to build a new house. We’d graduated far from our old homes in the woods where we just played pretend that the trees were walls & rooms & living utensils--for this one, we took a level & made our best twelve-year-old attempts to create flat ground out of the hill. We then laid down plywood: floor complete.

 

Living up the road from a junk yard, we decided we should go rummage around for some other household items. We settled for one tire, which we rolled all the way up the hill around the bend, down & up another hill & back into the woods. We dug a hole and placed the tire over the hole: toilet.

 

Derek's parents had this little plastic garden wagon. We would fill it with utensils & snacks & attach it to Derek's wheelchair for him to tow it back into the woods for us--the beginnings of yet another woodland home.

 

So there we were: us & our play-pretend homes with our play-pretend lifestyles and our play-pretend futures.

 

I went camping last weekend. I snuck away a few times to just sit in the woods alone. There was a "primitive campsite" back into the woods--just a small open clearing, big enough for a tent. It wasn't occupied, so I'd go & sit on the small stone bench. Looking up: the break in the trees; looking around: the rustling, moving stillness of the forest; listening: silence, silence & birds in swooping whistles.

 

These are things I haven't experienced in a while. I've missed them. It all feels so familiar; I wished I could lie down in the grass & pretend that I was in one of our play homes in the woods. I actually did try, but it didn't take long to realize just how far removed my current life is from all of that--city, noise, pollution, solitude. I think that's a major downfall to being an adult: even when you try to imagine your life as different, it's all of the current intricacies that keep you bolted down in what is real.

 

I began to wonder if I would ever again have a home in the woods. I tried to imagine a career scenario that would allow it. I've often dreamt of living Annie Dillard's solitary writing life in a cabin in North Puget Sound. I don't know how to make that happen; now, after living so deep in the city, I’m not sure I could. Like how I wanted to live alone in the desert and am now beginning to realize how crazy of an idea that was for me in particular.

 

The idea of life in the woods again feels distant & impossible, like the prospect that one day I would have a husband & children. The truth is that I don't know what I want. I know what I've had and what I've loved, but I cannot say with certainty what I want. This is a strange place for me --yes, me, the girl with the evolving 5-year plans. Maybe it's just today.

 

I soaked in as much of the silent time with the trees as I could. Those moments are extremely rare these days, so I sopped it all up like our campsite did the rain, & I packed myself home to return to the present, the city.

welcome home

I’ve been at my new apartment for one and a half weeks, and I’m nearly settled in. I keep telling myself that once this happens or that comes in the mail or I do this one thing, I’ll be home; I’ll be settled. I’ll be in it for the long run.

I feel shockingly committed to this apartment. We always knew that the last place was temporary. This one feels good—great location, great space, solitude. I’m really happy about it and hoping to stay for a few years. Yes, I said years. Plural. We’ll see how I feel in 6 months or so.

But really, I am oddly happy. I think I am caught in the euphoric novelty of the apartment & living alone. Before I moved, I was afraid that I would be too lonely. I’m still afraid of that, but this week is aptly filled with hangouts, so really, I’m not too worried. What I am worried about is the sadness.

The sadness that creeps in whenever it wants to, without warning or cause, and overrules anything else I may be feeling. Week one was okay, but by Friday, I could feel it pushing its way in through the register and the windows and the cracks between the couch.

I guess there’s no sense worrying about something I don’t feel yet, especially when I feel so happy now, so totally content with what my life looks like from a bird’s-eye-view. I get too worried about details. Let’s be real, I’m settled in here.

Pickle is too. She loves running from the living room to the bedroom, and just getting to say that makes me so happy: rooms. She loves jumping onto the bed or over the couch. She also has a strange obsession with hiding her toys under the living room rug and the trying to get them out by chewing on the rug. We’re working on it.

SO here it is from a glance. 

Entry way, complete with boxes, Dali calendar from 2012, and dog.

Pickle abides. 

Living room window. 

1st Ave

Broken strings, but who cares? The guitars made it up!

She's usually a better welcome committee lead than this. Trust me, if you come over, she'll leap to greet you with a much happier face. 

"The office"/kitchen "table" (this has actually progressed since this photo: now featuring bar stools & a calendar!)

The kitchen: kettle on the stove, feels like home.

BEDROOM! When I toured the apartment, we walked into the living room, and I was like "woah, this is a small studio," (seeing only the living room) and the lady said, "oh no, it's a one bedroom". I nearly fainted with joy. So.Much.Space.

 Books and more books, of course. It's a comfort thing. More decorations to come.

Maybe it's weird to showcase my bathroom, but come on, there's a corner toilet. Awesome. 

home&hope

I’ve lost all sense of home. I’ve come to the realization that I find “home” in being able to control my life.

My family in Pennsylvania is entirely well and unwell at the same time, and there’s not a thing I can do from 3,000 miles away.

Not only can I not afford a plane ticket, but I apparently can’t afford to move to a new apartment. But I also cannot afford not to move, as our rent is about to skyrocket.

I’ve been diving through possibilities, and my hope has skyrocketed and plummeted about fifteen times just this week. Endless craigslist searching, phone calls, apartment visits. I cannot bring myself to pinch pennies for a 400 sq. ft. apartment. It’s just not worth it. Maybe I won’t be okay living alone, but I like to think that I would if I had just a little bit of space. I thought space was something people needed from each other—really, space is just something we need to feel comfort.

Growing up, Derek, Katlin, and I were obsessed with a computer game called the SIMS—a simulated life. We would build houses for these charaters that we created. We’d decorate with wallpaper and furniture, and then let them live out their lives in record time. They’d get jobs and sleep and talk in jibber-jabber. Building their homes was always my favorite part, but we could never make a complete home with the allotted beginning budget. We had to use a cheat to get more money to build what they needed (and then some). And when their houses were too small, they’d stand in the room with thought bubbles over their heads exclaiming “X#?!Y*%^” as they pulled at their heads and shook their fists in the air. A caption would appear saying “Your Sim is feeling cramped. She is unhappy because she doesn’t have enough space.”

I need space. I currently have to navigate around our couch to enter my matress on the floor from the top or bottom. There is no space. I sleep on a mattress on the floor. Our walls are coated with books—my nearest solace, yet my enemy because they take up even the illusion of space. And yet, I can’t bring myself to pick up a single one lately.

Sure, I shouldn’t complain. I’m twenty-two and have a load of opportunity unfolding. I have a mattress at least, even if it is on the floor. This is how twenty-two-year-olds are supposed to live. But I’ve never lived up to my age. I don’t know. I still make friends with thirty-somethings yet am continually the youngest—at work, at church, in my family.

I like to see it as progress—I’m doing something. I’m out here testing the waters. If life would have happened like it was supposed to, I’d really be in my last semester of college. Instead, I’m just a confused person searching for years that I cannot have.

I don’t want to be older. I don’t want to wish my life away. I just want to not have to hide my age. I want to not have to live like how people expect twenty-two-year-olds to live. I want a bed. I want space.

I think it’s the country coming out of me. I dream of water views just to feel like I’m not surrounded by steel. I dream of open lofts with natural light (a rarity here anyways, especially this time of year). When Pickle & I go for walks, we pass people in groves, always paired off. We watch groups party in their apartments or stumble across sidewalks with bottles in their hands and cigarettes between their fingers, laughing and talking about the next football game.

I don’t want to be them. I just don’t want to be this. I wantwantwant. Gross.

No one ever said anything would be easy. Ever. That’s so vague & cliché, but I’m learning it’s more true than I thought. Can I really be a city girl? I think I’m only pretending. I miss my car. I miss the road. I miss not caring if I had a bed or a couch. I’ve taken it all for granted.

I want to be grateful, but it’s hard when I realize that at 567 words (and counting) this blog post already has more words than I’ll ever see in square footage for the next few years.

I don’t want to settle, but I want to settle in. I don’t want to move every year, but the housing market here can’t keep up with itself, causing costs to rise and space to decrease, and there are so many people living on the streets, yet I can’t bring myself to settle for less. This is what I was afraid of when I moved to this city—I am becoming one of them, but something within me is fighting it. I’m glad for the fight, even though it hurts—I don’t want to be disappointed in my good fortune.

So how do I trust that this will all work out? That I won’t be one of those homeless street-sleepers in 30 days time? How do I care for a dog and myself and offer more than prayers for my blood back East? How do I care for the street-sleepers and do something more than just whine about my fortunate yet unsatisfying life?

I think about that a lot with Christianity. We are called to so much: to let go of things of this world and care for people. To love our brothers and give to them. But we are selfish; I am selfish. I want a nice home, a place to feel at home. I want to take care of myself first. Christianity just seems so extreme, and I think we are all failing because if we did it right, the way Jesus says to, we’d all be living on the street helping others along instead of freaking out about square footage and being simultaneaously in and out of the city.

So there is an internal battle going on. I’m not sure who’s winning. Frankly, I can’t bring myself to route for either side.

Tomorrow begins yet another day of endless searching. The apartment of my dreams, which I was set to view at 1:00 was rented out tonight at 8. I’m running out of options. I’m running out of steam, but I’ve never been one to settle. If I were, I wouldn’t be in Seattle; I wouldn’t be a college graduate; I wouldn’t be a seeking Christian; I wouldn’t be twenty-two, living on my own, and praying for the next road to be “right”.

I can’t decide if this experience is humbling, frustrating, or simply revealing my true selfishness. Probably the latter two. The thought of packing up my worldly possessoins again for my third move across town in a year and a half makes my stomach churn. The thought of home creates an unsettling tension between tall trees and tall buildings.

I need people. I’m a people-person, I admit. Yet I cannot bring myself to do this roommate thing again. I’ve been spoiled my whole life by fields, my own room, and a spacious home that my father built. People don’t live like that here—things are provided, not worked for. People seem entitled, not earning to deserve. Finding the old ways feels impossible, but it’s all I long for. Don’t give me your fancy brand-new buildings with a high price tag. Accept me as a transplant who knows what it’s like to hammer a nail into wood and feel accomplished, who is willing to put in the hours to gain the reward of creation, not a paycheck, who cares to the point of insanity, even if there is no resolve, who will not choose to become the typical Seattlelite. I’m a Seattlelite now for sure—I’ve got all the signs of it: a dog, urban life, working for a Redmond-born company—but I’m still a small “town” girl with a heart longing to earn what I get and aspiring to deserve it before I expect it. I realize that at twenty-two, with little life accomplishment, I currently deserve very little.

Maybe this all sounds pretentious. I’m not sure. All I know is that I believe in hard work, manual labor, and the fruits of living off the land, even if those aren’t entirely my way of life at present. Isn’t that how the American Dream got started to begin with? Freedom, independence, hope.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. –Hebrews 11:1

Don’t squash my hope again, Seattle. Hope is strong and keeps coming back. I’ve got a lot of hope—in God, for my family, for the future, for happiness.

for good.

As I walked to the bus coming home from work, six o’clock chimed from some distant building. I imagined that it would transport me to another time, like they do in the movies. I closed my eyes and prayed. When I opened them, there I was, standing on the sidewalk on the way to the bus.

For one of the first time, I am openly saying it: I am sad. I am stuck. There is no reason for this sadness, but here it is. I am pushing through, forcing myself to do things like eat and work and write. I’m trying not to be rude or closed off. I’m not sure how I’m doing.

Everyone tells me to trust Jesus. Rest in Jesus. I’m certainly trying, but it’s hard to see the big picture when there is a tightness in my chest that makes breathing and moving feel like great efforts.

Clear your mind then. But meditation, I find, is particularly difficult for a writer. I am constantly writing in my head, even when a lot of it never sees paper.

I recently watched an episode of Boy Meets World where Cory and Eric are arguing and questioning their relationship as brothers. Their mother tells them that everything works out for good. “Do you really believe that?” Cory asks. “Yes, I do.”

I don’t want to be a statistic, but statistics say that the holidays are when people can be the most depressed. Honestly, I haven’t even thought about the holidays because they seem a bit unreal this year. The past two years, I’ve spent the holidays mourning—wondering why they didn’t look the same as they had the rest of my life, wondering why Derek wasn’t there. This year, I look back to last, my first in Washington, my first away from family, yet spent with really good friends. The forecast this year calls for the same. Only I feel like I should grieve less being another year removed form Derek.

I’ve been looking at pictures of him. It just doesn’t seem real. I am questioning everything I ever knew. Or though I knew. How does my life keep going yet his does not?

I’m not sure yet if my personality is a blessing or a curse. It sure seems to be a bit of both because I don’t think I could ever truly be depressed like the people on the Zoloft commercials. I have that type-A personality that says you must get shit done no matter how shitty you feel. So I do. (Hence the eating and working and writing.) So my personality is a blessing because I still have my job and my health, but it is a curse because maintaining those things feels like I am Atlas only without about as much muscle strength as a praying mantis. I don’t know if you know this, but bugs squash pretty easily.

Right after Derek died, I didn’t quit all of the things I wanted to. Of course, I can’t credit any of that semester to myself—a select few really strong people carried me along. Looking back now, I can hardly remember a lot of the details; all I know is that I somehow made it through, as if there was a wall of Saran Wrap somewhere between then and now, and I’ve broken that barrier. I think sometimes, the pieces still stick to my skin and my face and try to suffocate me, but I know I can break them again. It’s just that when it’s covering your eyes and your nose and your mouth and you can’t breathe, and you can’t think straight, it feels like it must go on forever, and there’s no way to get rid of it.

I wonder if I’ll look back on this span and forget the details but just be glad to have made it through. I wonder if I tend to imagine my whole life like that—one big box of Saran Wrap unfolding.

I think about that when I see really happy people. How are they so happy? Why aren’t I so happy? I take happiness for granted because, let’s be honest, I am happy a lot; I just think too much and trip myself, thinking that I only deserve some thin version of cellophane.

The other day, I wrote about seeing Mount Rainier at sunrise. The next day, Pickle and I were out even earlier. I looked out to where the mountain usually is and saw only darkness. But a few moments later, I looked to that same spot and saw the silhouette of a mountain with a soft glow behind it, barely discerning its wavy peaks from the disintegrating dark. I thought about how soon that soft glow would be a full day’s light. I thought about how it hadn’t reached us yet, but to my folks back in PA, the morning was mature: how maybe it was cloudy there, and they couldn’t even see the sun, how maybe people in the Midwest were still enjoying a bright colorful sky that was coming my way. I was suddenly reminded of the curve of the earth and fell into a short period of what I can only call an existential crisis.

I tried to move on with the day. A normal Sunday: go to band, go to church, go to lunch. I couldn’t do it. As I showered, I just kept thinking about that curve—how did I get so small? This big chunk of ground is spinning so slow that I can’t tell and that it takes twenty-four hours to turn around once, yet so fast that I can’t tell and that my feet stay fully grounded. But I barely stand an awkward five feet, nine inches tall against the great heights and depths here. I couldn’t even be seen from an airplane.

I sat down in the shower. I turned the water on extra hot and sat down, letting my skin turn pink in the spots that hit. Pickle stuck her head past the shower curtain and licked my hand. She flinched as the water hit the curtain, thinking it was getting her. Ears back and sad eyes on, she understood—it’s all too big to grasp.

This is actually really embarrassing to write about because I mean, how often do you think about the curve of the earth? How small you are? How temporary this all is?

So here I am, trying just to fathom the fact that I exist somehow and for some reason and that God has some plan to make my atoms click into a smiling young woman and actually mean that smile and recognize that our hope lies, not in this spinning ball.

I imagine the globe is a basketball. When you learn to spin a basketball on one finger, you drop it a lot. You learn to control it, though—how to balance just right to keep it spinning until it loses momentum. I picture God spinning it on one finger. A quick flick of his wrist and it’s off, going going, but when it falls because the ball has stopped, that’s the end. Your life is the length of one balance of a spinning basketball on God’s fingertip.

What hope is there in that? The uncertainty of the length of time; the nauseous churn around and around. No, the hope is that someone has got it in control. And us? We’re just little mites holding on with all we’ve got and trusting that someone knows when it will stop and how it will stop and what it will feel like and who we’ll see when we’re no longer surrounded by everything we thought we knew.

Maybe the six o’clock chime didn’t take me somewhere else but right back to some sanity—the realization that I can’t fool time or place, and that no matter how hard I hope, there are some things I can’t change. And I think that’s a good thing. That dizzy feels you get when you spin around too quickly happens for a reason: to make you slow down.

I rush a lot. Like now, I want to rush out of this sadness, mostly because I want to think I have no reason to be sad. Of course there is reason to be sad, to mourn, to grieve. But there is also plenty of reason to be happy, to sing with joy, to smile. I just wish I could tell that to the tightness in my chest or to the empty feeling in my bones.

There is a line in one of my top ten favorite books, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, that I think describes this feeling perfectly, “So this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad, and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.”  

I belong here

When I arrived in Pittsburgh, it felt foreign. Of course there was the same statue of Franco Harris and the pieced together dinosaur fossil, but when I had seen them before, I was always going somewhere. This time, I was coming back first.

I am always so inclined to say that I was going home, but that’s just not what it is anymore.

I’ve started getting used to saying “my parent’s house” or “the place I grew up” just to be clear that I don’t actually live there anymore. I need to get it straight in my head or else I end up spinning in a current of uncertainty: which life is the present?

When I arrived in Seattle, there weren’t any dinosaur bones to greet me. There wasn’t a soul in that airport that I knew, but somehow, they felt like my people. They get me. I’m home.