Thoughts on a Life

We humans enjoy putting people into boxes. Tie the bow nice and tidy, and we won't have to have our world-view questioned. We'll never feel uncomfortable! Pride is so familiar and warm, like a wood fire in a Maine winter.

I rarely actually have to use my lifeguard certification.  Sure, we retrain often and we always know that we might have to go in at any second, but a good lifeguard's job lies mostly in prevention, and the people that frequent indoor pools often know how to swim.  There's less glory than they tell you in the movies.

So when I kicked off my shoes and jumped in last week, I can assure you it surprised me as much as it did him.

You see, there's a group that comes to my pool every week. I have them all in a comfortable box. They are from a college nearby and they tend to be oblivious to the fact that I just mopped that floor, or that I don't really want to watch them make out for the half hour that I must guard them, and their conduct can be (at times) disorderly at best.  That was all there was to them.

Until one of them started struggling and then slipped under the water.  And suddenly I was right above him, using my weight as a counterbalance to pull him up and onto my rescue tube (this is why we retrain, I thought to myself). He had only been under for a moment, so he only coughed a little, then looked at me with surprise in his wide eyes and exclaimed,

"I can't swim!"

I almost laughed right then and there. But instead, realizing that such behavior might be inappropriate under the circumstances, I simply asked him if he was alright, and whether he needed help getting to the shallow end or if he could get out at the wall where I had brought him to.

He said he could get out and so he did.  Then I did the half hour of paperwork due every time a lifeguard has to jump in (another thing they don't tell you in the movies), then I changed out of my sopping wet clothes, and went home.

No thanks. No glory.  That was all. But I don't do it for the thanks, so it doesn't really matter, right?

Right. And besides, he was only acting the way I knew he would - his box demanded it, after all.

Until he came back with his group tonight. He had been banished to the shallow end, perhaps been taken down a peg or two, poor guy, but he did come back and that I could certainly respect.

I saw him and made eye contact as I was about to go on deck and relieve the guard that was stationed out there. I saw him just in time to hold the door so that he could go through before me.

I gave him a small smile, wondering if he remembered me. And he looked straight back into my eyes and said, "Thank you." He held my gaze just long enough for me to wonder whether he was thanking me for the fact that I was holding the door for him, or for what I did for him the week before.

I suppose I'll never really know for sure, but I choose to believe the latter. My silly box isn't that important, after all.

I am not regurgitating useless words, I am regurgitating words

Why am I my own worst enemy?  Why does my pride and vain ambition, my desire to be liked, my desire to be right, plague me so? And oh, the bitter knowledge that these are just a few of the pennies in my jar that’s filled with all the things that I hate when I remember the words I've spoken, when I remember what and who I truly am inside.

          And then there is the trait in me that seeks to escape oblivion.  The trait that tells me that I can, I should, I must.  Yet, when I square my jaw and clench my fists and shout to the world,

“Do your worst, I can take it!”

…somehow I am surprised when the world answers by doing just that.  When they pick up their gloves and swing, burying their fists in my stomach, my eyes fill with tears and I lose my breath as if I hadn’t asked for it in the first place.  As if it wasn’t me who sent out those query letters. As if someone forced me to go to two auditions in three weeks only to be answered by that deafening sound of silence. 

Rejection has become my only friend.

Because those who I gave my heart to (freely, freely) have given it back.  It is not wanted they say, there is no room for me in their heart.  Not any more.  
        I thought we would raise children and experience all of life together. We promised that we would.  Now whenever I see her, she speaks Words when she used to speak Meaning.  When she used to speak tenderness.

But that doesn’t matter.  Or maybe it does, but all I know is that I want to be ferocious and a force to be reckoned with.  Instead, all I seem to be good at is honing my pride and driving away the people I love.

       Such a vast number of the words written on the internet prove to be nothing more than a regurgitation. Just noise, noise, noise and words that are meant to draw you in and then empty you, never filling you. And maybe I'm regurgitating too, but I hope that you'll see that I'm meaning to be more. I'm trying and failing and trying to make something more.

And still, there are those who have stayed.  I am always afraid of taking them for granted.  But I know (I know) that I do that, too.  The people who  have stayed are the people who gave me the world – Parents who give their love and pride and understanding, never wavering.  Siblings who listen to me and forgive me.  A husband who thinks I'm a beautiful soul who can do anything that I put my mind to.

So I circle back to what I cried out in the first place.  I am the enemy inside of me.  And though I suspect that what I really need in the end is sleep, my words will not let me rest until they are written.  Until they are placed on the page – a promise that I will pick myself back up, dust off the pain, and try again. 

         

Pieces in the Wind

Dear Friend,

How did we come to this?  I now understand why people say, "it just didn't work out between us." Sometimes the problems are so varied and confusing and sad that you can't do any better than a vague and cliche statement.

But I'll try to do better.

I wasn't hesitant to hand you my pieces.  The others had all paired off and I was alone, you were a friend that I both wanted and needed. I marveled that I found a soulmate in you - our backgrounds were so different.  Every time you gave me a glimpse into your past, I wanted to gather you, embrace you, and tell you that you were enough.  You did the same for me.

And sure, you had flaws. I knew that from the start. Demonstrative, arrogant, foolish, selfish, needy, vain.  But wasn't I all those things, too? If you listed anyone by only their faults (without the lens of love or understanding) then of course they would look like a monster.

We always said that we never would be those people - the ones that grow apart.  But I guess everyone tells themselves that sort of thing.  Why else would we stay in a relationship, unless we thought it would last?

But people make mistakes. People change, and now I cry when I read our old letters.

Somehow, our running conversation began developing holes.  We stopped talking about important things.  I became the third or fourth person you'd tell big news to.

And you made a mistake.

Sometimes I think this is just a lull, that we can't really be over. Not us. Not really. But some choices can't be taken back.

I don't know what I can offer you. I don't know if we'll be friends two years from now.  I don't know why you chose her over me. I don't know if you knew what you were doing at the time.

I don't know much these days.

Your mother used to say that we were made for each other - that our souls were knit together like those two friends in the Bible.  Maybe  we weren't. Maybe I should have been killed in battle sooner so that I wouldn't have to outlive our friendship.  Maybe I was convenient for you at the time, but your older friends are enough for you now.

We were quite something though, weren't we? I thought we were.

Sincerely,
Jonathan

Forgive the Hero's Self-indulgence

In story-writing, there are certain character types (like the hero or the best friend) that are used often enough that people have analyzed them and written whole books on how to best represent them when writing novels or screenplays.  A neat thing about this is that these character types can be found in real life – and often the way a best friend would act in a novel is how you can expect a best friend to act in real life and so on.  Yet another instance of art imitating life, or vice versa (I can never remember which is correct).

So today’s question: How should a mentor be written?  Mentors, such as Obi Wan Kenobi or Yoda in Star Wars, Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, etc., all hold common traits.  They may be a bit reclusive and strange, but they have once been in the hero’s shoes.  Their job is to earn and keep the trust of the hero in order to aid, instruct, and grow said hero into who s/he must be in order to defeat the Big Bad.         
Their end can be in glorious death (usually while protecting the hero), but there are also many examples of the mentor living to the end of the story and becoming an advisor to the main character.  Optionally, he can also allow the hero to ride off into the sunset after teaching him all there is to be taught.

One thing mentors are not supposed to do?  Betray the hero. 

As I’ve turned him over in my mind these past few months, I wonder if he was wearing a mask all along, or if people sometimes morph into villains over time?  I’m not sure which idea is easier to digest. 

To think that he was a wolf in mentor’s clothing all along is unkind to both him and myself.  That would mean that every laugh we shared was false, every piece of advice was simply a stepping stone to the day when he would turn his back on me and focus his attentions on someone new.  But the idea that he slowly morphed into something villainous is also an unwelcome thought.  If the one that I trusted to lead and teach me can turn on me, then what about all of the other characters that I’ve trusted in this drama of my life?  Will my best friend step out of character and leave me?  My mother refuse to take me in?  My true love find someone else’s arms to lie in at night?

I suppose the hardest part in all of this is that I thought that I would have him forever.  I thought my trust was well placed when I set it in his arms.  But when I saw him last, something cold and hard had lodged itself inside him where there used to be love and respect for me.  He was the one to turn away when my eyes searched his for some proof of who we were.  Asking why and when and how this all happened seems pointless after seeing that look in his eyes.

The knowledge that there are now two mentors that I looked up to and respected that have left me behind is difficult to bear.  First I was left while surrounded by the scent of pine - our friendship disintegrating like an old campfire's ash in a rainstorm.  Now I'm left in the place I felt sanctuary, where I used to feel so at home.

Maybe I need to grow up.  Maybe everyone’s mentors let them down and literature only makes us believe that those men and women can be trusted.  Maybe if I were more of a hero, if I were better, then they would have chosen pride instead of shame.  

Maybe I’m just a fool, thinking myself the hero in this drama of life.   

It’s too hard to comprehend.  I’ve tried to turn it into a textbook study to try to analyze it, tear it apart, and somehow force it to conform to some sort of logic when what I'm left with is simply this:  He may as well have chopped off my foot and taken it when we parted for the last time, since he helped to build me in the first place. 

Perhaps the limp would be a stronger metaphor for the fact that I am struggling to navigate this hero’s journey alone.

Unanswered Corrospondence

The heart is a strange thing.

Because you're gone and I miss you like crazy. Like absolute insane crazy.  But when you reach out, I don't want to respond to your letters, answer the phone, or even see your face.  Because what's the point? You'll be gone as soon as I finish writing.  As soon as the phone is back on the hook.

As soon as your face goes away with the plane, soaring miles and miles away, my mind will reach to try to see your image on its own.

I'm terribly selfish, I know. I should always be excited to keep up with you.  But we used to be real and present, I used to see the thrum of your pulse when you were laughing, and the brightness in your eyes when we stayed up too late talking.

And somehow, now it always feels like we're just reaching.

Bonnie and Clyde and Love and Disgust

It isn't fair. But then, I suppose, nothing ever really is.  She threw him a wink, he smiled back and together they danced to the beginning of the end.


I doubt either of them saw it coming, I'm sure at the beginning it seemed alright. Good men don't plan to ruin a young girl's innocence, good girls don't plan to spend their first night with a married man. Or at least I hope they don't. Maybe they knew all along. Who knows?


But what is not fair to me is a mother with four children now to be carried alone. A husband who loved two women too much and not enough. [And who fell from grace and ended up alone, deservedly perhaps, because of it.] What's not fair is that a young girl is lying and because of her lies sides are taken. Silent lines are drawn. Prejudices set in and the futures of many are shifted due to the war that is now born from deception.


What is not fair is that sin entered the world and made things complicated. But perhaps the complicated part is that I don't expect it. Perhaps the complicated part is that I think too much of people, and when these things happen I wonder what the terms "good people" or "Christian" even mean.


But I know that's just bitterness and I shouldn't allow it. It's just that bitterness is an easy and welcome bed to lie in for a time.


I guess the problem is that the whole situation makes me a little sick, and it seems foolish to take sides in a war that honest to heaven will never have a victor. Because truth be told Someone already won.  The Serpent's hiss became a song and two people chose to dance.


And all I can do is hope that truth will be told someday to the people that it would make a difference to. That something good will be gleaned from the ashes - even though that very thought seems ludicrous to me at the moment.  And all I can do is hope that healing can find people even if they've lied themselves into holes so deep, revolting, and treacherous that I can't even fathom the climb it would take to get out.


But I guess... all I can do is hope.

Rainstorms and Ducks

            Attending church without my husband is a funny thing – something that you’re used to doing with people (it used to be my parents and family, then my husband whenever he isn't working) suddenly becomes something solitary and you’re forced to talk with the people around you.  As a closet introvert, this is not really something I look forward to greatly.  But there’s no better place for it than church, so I shouldn’t complain. 

            During Sunday School, I went downstairs to find a seat at our eschatology class.  I found one in the corner of the second row, next to a man (his name escapes me, so we’ll go with John) who was sitting completely by himself.  I remembered him, though we had never spoken before.  His wife had died almost a year ago, and he had lost a bunch of weight after that when he had stopped eating.  Then he’d been put into a nursing home, which under the circumstances seemed like a very good decision. 

            I smiled at him, though I doubted that he would talk to me.  I was surprised. 

            “Nice day,” he commented.  His voice was almost too soft for me to hear, though with some straining I could.  I studied the grey cloth of his suit and the way it hung too large on his thin, meek, elderly frame. 

            I smiled again and nodded. 

            “You cold?” he asked. 

            Goosebumps speckled my skin (the church I attend has some strange aversion to turning on the heat in the fall) and I nodded.  “Yeah, it’s a little chilly.”

            He nodded.  “Your family here?” he asked.

“No,” I said and swallowed a rough lump in my throat.  “They attend somewhere else now.”  This was my first Sunday attending church without my husband or them.  It was emptier than I expected.

“My daughter,” he continued, "she looks like you a little, she attends church somewhere else too.  She likes the music a little more lively than we do here.”

I nodded.  “Although in the evening we have drums here now,” I offered. “Have you heard them yet?”

He shook his head.  “I live at a nursing home now and someone else picks me up.  I hate to ask for a ride twice in one day.”

I nodded in what I hoped was a sympathetic way.  I felt bad for him, but I didn’t really know what to say.

Rain made its way down one of the half windows near the ceiling of the basement.  I watched as a flash of lightening lit up the small square of outdoors that I could see and I listened for thunder.  It was too far away though, or the walls were too thick – I never heard it.

“The home I’m in is different,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

He nodded.  “When I first walked into my room, it looked so small with just enough room for my bed, and a little table with a lamp on it.  But then I saw the window and a big pond outside.  They spread so much corn out there, and there are only a few ducks.  But I thought that might be nice, I could go walk outside and watch the ducks.  I said I’d like that aloud but the lady who was showing me into my room said that I couldn’t do that.”

“No?” I asked.

“Said I would have to make an appointment and see if a nurse could take me.  Come on, I said to her, come on.  I can go out by myself, I won’t try to get away.  But she said no.”

He took his glasses off then and rubbed his eyes.  I couldn’t tell if he was trying to hide that he was crying, or if he was trying not to cry.

“Come on,” he said once more, softly, as if he could just beg me enough and I would change the rules.

I ached inside for him – and I considered finding out where he lived and going there sometime to watch the ducks with him.  I played out the situation in my head, and it gave me momentary happiness.  But then I came to the realization: he wasn’t so much upset that he couldn’t go see the ducks.  It was the fact that his home was a prison and he couldn’t leave just because he felt like it.  It was the fact that the rest of his life would be lived behind the glass, like some museum piece encased before its time - destined only to look out at the rest of the world and watch, rather than live and breathe in it. 

I put my hand in the pocket of my sweater and fingered the change that was lying therein – two nickels and a penny – and tried to find words to say.  I tried to articulate some sort of hope that I could offer him.  But then class began and our attention was taken from one another and directed towards Revelations 13. 

I had a hard time paying attention though, all I could think of was John sitting all alone later that day on his bed, watching the rain run down his window and the ducks nestle one another outside for warmth.