firsts

Even after three years, I am shocked by how many "firsts" there are.

It's gotten easier to talk about Derek. Sometimes he feels like a far-off memory. I often wonder what my life would be like if he were still here. It's a simple fascination: I've learned so much since coming to Seattle two years ago. Everything really has changed.

And yet it's the little things that tend to catch me off-guard and send me swirly into tiny sadness and the ever-frustrating tear wells that I hate to let fall. It's been too long, I tell myself, but I know that even still, it's been hardly any time at all.

I don't even know how we got into it, but my friend & I were at a restaurant, sitting across from each other. A normal scene. Towards the end of the meal, we started playing thumb-of-war. Part way through, I paused, realizing that the last time I had done that had been with Derek, but we both played with our right hands because we were lying side-by-side in his hospital bed, and his hand couldn't fold the whole way closed, and sometimes I let him win, but on really good days, he'd win on his own. Feeling the strong hand of my friend across the table felt both comforting and wrong. Comforting just to feel someone's hand in mine; wrong that it had last been Derek's twiddling thumb.

A week later, at a different restaurant, I ordered jalapeno poppers, thinking hmm, I haven't had those in a while. It wasn't until I tasted them in my mouth, all of the flavors absorbing, that the memory hit: New Years with Derek. Years and years of New Years with pizza and poppers or Friday nights with rented movies and poppers.

 The tiniest occurrences can stir up the little memories that mean the most. The tiny, happy memories mean more than a hundred nights in the hospital or months of putting him to bed or the years the disease took away.

I've found myself ending a lot of thoughts with "by now". I thought I'd miss him less by now. I thought he'd feel more distant by now. I thought I wouldn't be so sad by now. Three years feels like a long time without him, but I know that in the long run, it is short. I have my next three years seemingly planned out in my mind, but I don't see it as a long journey, just the next steps for my life. And I realize that three years from now means six years without Derek, and the number will keep growing, and no matter how many years continue to pass, I may never reach the sentiments I thought I would "by now" because it takes more than time to fill the emptiness.

In a week-and-a-half, I will turn twenty-three. The thought has bothered me for a few months now. Derek would be twenty-five now, but he never saw past twenty-two. The thought that I will overwhelms me with a guilt and sadness that I cannot control. I sink into it like a potato into a stew.

A good friend told me, regarding this notion, that he knew someone who's therapist told her that there is the world that you live in and the world that everyone else lives in. He tried to give an example of how this applies with Derek, noting that Derek does not live in the world everyone else lives in now, of course he is dearly remembered in my world, but I have to exist in the world everyone else is in. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but the stew simile reminded me of it--I'm just a potato trying to blend in, but I've still got roots, and they're thick & tough and hold deep to who I am as a lone potato. But I bring that to the stew and it contributes in its own way.

So three years sounds like it should be "enough" time to stop being so very sad about missing Derek, but it's a big year, my twenty-third. I guess every year from here on out will be another that he didn't have; this is just big because it's the first.

happiness & doubt

"Do smoking and drinking affect your relationship with God?" we asked a group of Muslim boys at the hookah bar.

"Yes."

I've been thinking for months now about what this could mean: what are the implications of such decisions? Why do we directly disobey our own beliefs? Why do we do things that keep us from happiness? What is happiness?

Happy [hap-ee] (adj)

1. delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing
2. characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy

But what does it really mean to be happy? What does that look like?

I think the boy answered that way because he recognized, as many of us do, that it is easier to do what feels ok rather than what is ultimately good for us. Of course we know that smoking leads to lung cancer and drinking to liver disease, but we do it anyways. Just like how we worry about tiny concerns or eat that second piece of cake--because it takes us out of our fears and into a feeling of --dare I say it?-- peace.

 

In a documentary called Happy, the interviewers ask people in different regions of the world what the most important aim in life is. They all say "to be happy" then go on to describe what brings them joy. I am still amazed by the simplicity of it--a rickshaw driver loving his job and his family, and that is his joy. Why do we find ourselves so wrapped up in nonexistent complexities and still fail to see the simple joys?

 

I have been using happiness and joy synonymously,  but I don't think that is true. I think you can find spurts of joy in the midst of depression, but it is the lasting happiness that we ultimately seek.

And how does God fit into it all? If we ignore the earthly pleasures (be they drinks or worry) and turn to God, will we know happiness? Surely the answer is dependent on what a reader's view of God is, if at all, but speaking from a Christian God perspective, I feel a bit lost over it due to my constant recognition that those earthly pleasures seem to offer more than the silence of God.

 

It goes back to the long-term perspective: what is ultimately good for us. We are taught that overindulgence (note: over) in earthly joys leads to consequences (as stated above: a few examples). We are taught that obedience, faithfulness, & repentance to God promises us eternity. I think the hardest part of that is that it's so difficult to envision this "eternity" when all we know is what we've seen--the current world around us.

 

All of these sorts of speculations fascinate me, knowing that I will never have the answers. I can only believe. How do the questions & the doubts affect my current search for happiness? Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the confusion of spinning circles of "what ifs" and "buts" and "hows" and "whys". It's a distraction that sucks me in like a blackhole, taking over and consuming me to distract from my initial destination of the boundless universe of imagination.

I continuously return to the Rilke quote "love the questions like locked rooms". It's the nearest encouragement I have to love the questions from a distance rather than being enveloped.  Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating: even just the knowing that I'll never know. Sometimes it's totally freeing: it could be anything; eternity could be anywhere or anything--the mystery of the outskirts of the universe.

Will we be happy when we know what's next, or can we learn to know happiness when we accept the unknown?

lessons in wishes, prayer, & rain

All my life I've heard the phrase "Be careful what you wish for". I wished for rain, and it appeared, accompanied by sparse bursts of thunder and a splattering of lightning.

 The first night, I took Pickle for a walk in it--these were not like the storms I knew in Pennsylvania. The thunder sounded far enough away that it could have been on the other side of the Sound. The lightning was silent. As we walked, I thought about the fear we always had walking in thunderstorms at home (before the rain). I used to fear that my belt buckle or watch would be my downfall, attracting lightning like the glow of eyes in the woods as our flashlights shown in. And yet we were always safe.

"That was some storm, huh?" my co-worker asked the next day. I stared at him to determine his level of seriousness.

 "I guess for Seattle," I shrugged. Two booms of thunder made for "some storm"? We still have power; the trees are all standing; and it rained for about 30 seconds.

 At first, I thought the storms were a sign of encouragement: I had prayed for this. Maybe this was my sign that things were going to work out--all of the work stress and worry. But then the clouds stuck around. The rain continued for a few days, and I remembered that in Seattle, grey is not a temporary word. I worried that it was here to stay already, that there would be no break of sun in a few days--were we locked in the six-month grey season already?

My worries were premature, as the hot summer days have already returned. But I love them more. The worry of winter reminded me that it's only bright for this short while--soon we won't even see the sun's shadow paint the sky. Maybe I'm still learning to the love rain, but I think I've realized this week that I'm learning to love the sun too. And learning to pray. And learning to accept the forecast.

Chompers

I went to the dentist, and they took a panoramic x-ray of my mouth. When they displayed it on the screen, the whole bottom half of my face was there: my nose & piercings, even my ears where you could see the empty space where my gauges are and the loops of my tragus piercings. My teeth are there in full array; my wisdom teeth show in the far far back, one totally buried like lost treasure.

Staring at the print, I imagine I am some ancient mummy with my elongated ear lobes and skull on display. I imagine the researchers working to figure the age of my bones and what my lifestyle was: was I spiritual? A gatherer? An artist?

During times when the words are slow and do not come, I remember how thankful I am to live in a time where I have all of these ways to let the words out. If I really were a thousands of years old, I wouldn't have known how to write, at least not in the same way. When the words are slow, they will come back because I am blessed to be an American millennial in the Pacific Northwest with x-rays and panoramas and a mouth full of teeth.

 

 

a want for rain

It's funny how late at night, time goes simultaneously too slow and too fast. I looked at the clock at 9:58; I still have a few minutes to fall asleep before it feels a little hopeless that I won't get enough. A blink later and it's 10:07; it's all fucked. Just a few minutes later, and soon it will be midnight, & the whole next day will already be happening, & I'm not sleeping. 

I'm ready for rain. I can't stop thinking about it. The summers I've always known were full of thunderstorms and lightning and rain. Lots of rain. I know Seattle saves the rain for winter, and our summers are known for countless days of non-stop sun. The past few mornings, it's been cool & grey. I soak it in like a bucket full of sand: just add water, and you can build a castle in which to hideaway.

I get a lot of sleep in the winter: the long days apply hibernation mode, where I don't feel guilty about going to bed at 8:00. Somehow sleep comes easier when the dark stays longer; maybe my brain is just fooled by the early dark--oh, it's been dark for 5 hours? It's a false insomnia, negligent of the actual hour.

I don't mean to take the summer for granted. This summer just seems uneventful. Last year, we traversed about in my car. This year, we're homebodies, sticking to downtown and the dog park and going to dinner with friends. It's a nice, small life, but I can't help but wish I were in the mountains or the woods. I have no way to get there.

I think Pickle is a bit restless as well. She's been sniffing the same street corners for months now, but the scents are the every day. Even the sidewalks need the rain to bring fresh air through the town. Not to mention Pickle looks adorable in her raincoat.

It thundered twice last Saturday. A single deep grey cloud lingered in the East then disappeared to a clear and calm day interrupted by the roar of fighter planes spinning tricks in the air. The sun was nearly unbearable to sit in, and we all took to the shade. Thunder, come back.

 The summer before I moved here was the July of thunderstorms. I remember racing around the house to shut the windows as the rain poured in sideways and thunder shook the doorframes. Somehow that feeling--the slight jolt--can be felt all through; it's one of those things that reminds me that there's something bigger out there, that I'm small and helpless, and the world is so much greater.

 I miss letting the thunder lull me to sleep or letting it shake me awake at 3am only to rock me to a comfortable pattern of zzzs. Thunder makes me feel safe. I wish a storm were one of those things you could just drive to--like I could take a roadtrip to a thunderstorm and feel satisfied and whole. I used to pray for storms.

I find the rain romantic in a this-is-how-I-idealized-my-life-to-be sort of way. There was a slight drizzle when I awoke on Saturday. I thought I'd curl up in my reading chair in the living room and just listen to it, but I couldn't hear it there, only from my bed out the window. Not enough to patter off of I guess, so I sat and watched and listened. It didn't last long, but it was something. I'm sure in a few months, I'll be praying for the sun. Right now, rain is just refreshing.