Unresolved

"You marry your unresolved issues."
Dear sir, you have uttered a phrase that is unparalleled in how much fear it gives me.
I could feel my heart clench in as these words fell upon me. I could envision the roof falling in with the sense of complete dread I felt.
How could you? Your authority gives you every allowance to say something like this. Your experience should have taught you not to.

There is no such thing as normal. Were you aware, sir? Normal is nothing. Don't tell me that there are cases where this won't...your words blur as I imagine the worst for my future.

No wait. Not that. Not that.
I deserve love, don't I? Don't we all? We do, we must, we must. I can't shake this DOOM but at the same time, I hold out much more hope than your statistics. At the most inappropriate of times, under these fluorescents, you have tapped into my greatest fear. If you have nothing, but you have love-you have wealth. If you have hatred, you are poor. You are nothing.
And I refuse to be nothing.
So, I will be your exception, your "special case" that you mentioned for courtesy's sake please and thank you very very much.

For now? My hope is not gone. It is low, it is founded in the nothingness I have. But I am young, still, too young to really be despairing that love will never come.
I am young, still. I am hope.

Please, oh please. Please, God. Let me be the exception.

Tech

Great relief and incredible discomfort. These are adjectives for the pulling of a wisdom tooth, the finding of passion, the cool of aloe against newly sunburnt skin. One thing these words are not for, is the loss of PING PING PING.
My emails stopped coming through to my "smartphone" while I was on my "disconnected vacation". Disconnected. What a joke. My phone was in hand the entire time, reminding me that beyond the perfect simplicity of my family and being a visitor in their domestic lives, I had the real me waiting for me, just one clickclicksend away.
My phone has a tendency to snap back or freeze up with great overuse. No wonder they are called smartphones...they are smart enough to know when to quit. For me, I just gulp more caffeine, and will the treadmill to do its worst.
I have a strange awareness of how wrapped up I am in my projects and my BU life. It's like I can sort of see myself as someone on the street might, stomping about and being...determined. I will never have this kind of energy again, and I am filling up every moment I can with these things that I love. For someone who loves their downtime, it's a strange habit, that I am the busiest person I know. I wish I could articulate myself further than...I love it, and I'm addicted to controlled frenzy.

When I was in high school, I would go to Mexico every year. There was no way to reach me for 6 days straight. I was in a bubble, talking only to the group I was with. The greatest entertainment came not from internet gossip or anyone's facebook, but from the best stories told around the nightly fire as we huddled for warmth against the thick fog, or in the whispered secrets of the crowded, freezing tents at an unknown time in the night. We spent a week without any real concept of time, with "electricity" consisting of a flashlight here and there. Luxury was a sweater that was warm enough, a non smashed sandwich lunch each day, or a loan of a headlamp to be able to read at night. Luxury was beef at dinner, finding a pair of clean socks, and being the first person to use the clean boiled water, before dust could settle in it.
What is luxury now? A beautiful new car. A 200 dollar meal at the most popular restaurant in town. The smartest smartphone around.
It is the best of what we have, and maybe we have too much. The "best" is different to different people, but what does a car mean if you have no one to sit with you on long drives? A fire seems the "best" when what you want and need most is anyone else.

You know what? My phone is a necessity to me. If I didn't have communication, I wouldn't have the opportunities I am getting these days, to shoot for the career that I really want. I'm not oblivious to that.

Allow me, however, to miss my Mexican Nowhere. There is a part of you that isn't really allowed to exist in the insanity of regular life, a part that can only emerge when comfort and preoccupation and familiarity are stripped away. I wouldn't say that this is the "true you", really, but I would venture to say that it is an important part that isn't allowed out often enough.

Today, there are "technology retreats". They are vacations of all shapes and sizes, but one overarching rule: no internet, no phones, no connecting. So we need uniformed attendants to instruct us to drop the email and connect with the human next to us.
No.
I'm challenging myself to be more here, where I am, wherever that may be. That email can wait. Life is right here, and we are all so busy trying to catch up with a life over the airwaves, a life that can't even exist on the ground.
Now, when I am with someone, I am with them fully. No texting, no emails. I give you myself, as simple as falling rain. Human connection is inevitable, sometimes painful, and completely necessary. Don't let that smartphone, outsmart you.

And the Gray Glows to White

Revelation: Noun. something revealed or disclosed, esp. a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized.

I feel as if I knew it all along. Today's lightning bolt, fueled by unusal caffeine and usual knowledge seeking, felt familiar as soon as it hit. It was the closest thing to a healing burn that I could imagine-I was scarred and spurred and struck, all at once, all in the same moment.

"The rest of my life." A daunting phrase, that also carries the possibility of such incredible comfort. A path not taken may be an adventure, but it is also a frightening unknown. For someone who likes control, planning, predictability, and those things well thought-out, it took someone impulsive and spontaneous conversation to finally figure out that my life could be truly different from what I pictured, different from what anyone pictured. I have had two rules for myself, always: do good for someone else, and love it. Love it to the core of its being and to your own soul.

What was incredible about the discovery itself, besides that it was completely unexpected, was the company to which it was shared. My mom has always been my most trusted confidante, and to receive such generous and enviable support from people who aren't even related to me-that is amazing. Not only did they temper my stunned silences with exclamations of excitement, they were able to take in stride what I could not. They were able to recognize how GOOD it is that I was able to discover something huge about myself and my future. They get it-the risks, the fear, how hard it would be, everything. They were able to bundle all of this together with the fact that it was clear: this work makes me so happy, feel so amazing and productive and strong, and nothing could be more worth risking than whatever it takes to continue those feelings. I am in love with everything I feel in this, and to be seen for that bit, a bit that is more of an undercurrent than a loud declaration-that's all we really want in a friend, truly. To be seen, to be mirrored. Jess and Cara: thank you.

The other thing, above how different this could make my path in life, is the fact that I have suddenly found things I care deeply about that I would never have expected. Community? Interaction? Belonging? All important, vital factors to self actualization, yes, but to devote so much to making this happen for others...I just never thought I'd care. But I care. I care immensely, truly, madly, deeply. I have fallen for these ideas and ideals.

None of this would have even happened without my partner in crime. I owe him a hug in thanks and an apology for never giving him a chance before. I think we owe it to each other, really.

So, in a way I would have never expected, at the middle of college, I am embarking on a new stage of this strange and awkward thing I call my life. Usually, when I change something big, I find myself being afraid of...something. I find I am often admitting fear at any crux, basically. This time?
Not so scared.

I can't imagine anything I could lose that wouldn't be worth reaching my dreams.

My...dreams.

Mistaken

Oh...a hug? Hello, a hug.
It doesn't make sense, really. It makes no sense at all.
Just a few short days ago, I don't even know if I would have given you the time of day, unless you had really asked with a measure of desperation entering your voice. If you really needed the time, I would have given it to you. But only if it had reached that extent.

And now, we are speaking about bacon and your new phone and my caffeine addiction. We speak as if we have always been this way, acquaintances and friends and intimately tied together. I answered the phone, hopped into the car, let you make the decisions, without even a beat, without a pause, without a "This is strange, Sarah, this is wrong and new and something else." It doesn't feel wrong with you. You make me laugh. You tell me stories of your high school years, using self depricating humor to softly cover how hurt you once were. You are, in every sense, a person, and I find myself realizing that there is no going back for me. I will always have this softness of you with me, and I will never be able to hate you again. You are no longer an ideal or an object to despise, but a person with a real soul and everything to offer. And my, do you make me laugh.

This is so different from the last time that someone surprised me. That was more of a shock than a surprise. I couldn't believe that you had been so disingenuous.You listened to my real concerns and my crazy rants and my opinions like no one had before. And you smiled, not just towards me but at me. Your smile is. Your smile was electric. Now your smile is a shadow of joy. I hope you feel proud, for you had me so fooled that I fell for you. I fell. I FELL, for you. I hadn't felt so excited for the possibility of something beautiful in so long, and you had me believing that you felt the same. In your oblivion, did you never stop to think that maybe you were about to crush me? That one day, with the flowers falling fragrance around me, carried on the warm spring breeze-I never thought I would see something so magical. How dare you take my magic. It doesn't help that you are such the politician. Oh A, you would never dream of directly snubbing me, but with your haughty words and priorities that have nothing to do with me, we are as good as done, but worse. I will never get the satisfaction of an ending. I mustn't burn bridges. I mustn't. I must stifle. But! We could have been a pair, you and I. A real envy. I am glad that temptation was yanked from me before it could have even really have dangled in front of me. The deeper the nail, the more pain it takes to remove it.

I take each person for who they present themselves to be-ironic. Ironic, because I am not who I pretend to be, not at all. I am something else entirely. But I take you, all of you, at face value, and I am open and ready and prepared to be stepped on. I expect too much, and I think I am expecting exactly as I should, and I am everything that is a problem.

And the one person who never fooled me? He is long gone, a ghost and a reason and barely anything more. But he taught me more than he realizes. There are people who wear their pain and their triumphs right where I can see them. They present nothing except reality. Surprise is impossible.

Surprise is impossible.

Flood

It's back again.

That flood, that nuisance.
That flood of inconsequence, of every fleeting moment that you wish you could reclaim, if only to destroy. As if ownership would give you the power to smash every last second of these...memories.
These memories that flood, like the worst kind of flood in all of history. I don't suppose that there is a good kind of flood, really. A flood of delight? Violence is built into every last letter. F-L-O-O-D. It's syllable sits heavily in the air.

You sit there, with your memories of nothing, nothings that are everything to you and to who you have become. This...flood renders you incapable of normal conversation or natural observations of the current world, as you drown in the brush of his fingers and the whisper of promise from years ago.

I am too young for this. I am too old for it, as well, too old for this sort of melancholy, and entirely too young to have enough moments of nothing and everything to build a raging...flood.

As unhelpful, as stuck as it seems, all I want to do is float in this river of the recent past. I wish it to be different, I wish to take these memories in my hand and shape them and let them shape me into a being that is moving forward instead of with the current, like I have some control. Have you ever tried to hold water in your hand?
No control.

There is one thing that is for sure, as I stare at the sky above my watery post.
The waters will dry, the whispers and his fingertips will no longer sit staunchly in the front of every. single. thought. Every. single. smile. will not hide the moments that will never be again, no matter how sweet they once were. They have bittered with age, haven't they?
Haven't they?

Float on, wistfully, wistfully. Pragmatism will come with the wind-as incontrollable as this flood, perhaps, but more accepting of standing. I can stand here in the wind.