Broken Hearts Week

The year 2018 began with an inauspicious string of break-ups in my social circles. One after the other, one involving my heart, too, left me even more skeptical of love and commitment. I labeled it "Broken Hearts Week" on my digital calendar, and left it to repeat annually, hoping that one year would show a turned tide.

Without naming names, always my challenge here, I will express what I know to be true about the changed situations.

B. met an acquaintance a month after Broken Hearts Week, and they got married in November.

S. still wonders about the person she was so into, and why it never went further. Another relationship rose out of many doubts, then faltered in Broken Hearts Week.

R. has hope. The deep kind of hope that God pours into us, not merely the hope in a romantic interest.

M. and S. are getting a divorce.

H. and M., who had been dating for a few months, have parted ways forever, and M. is now engaged to a wonderful person. H. is off in another country pursuing a certification that is one step closer to her dream.

And I. I am learning about how to love as action, and how to put imperfect trust in a person who is imperfect like I am. I'm learning that relationships can be filled with laughter and growth.

Right Now, Right Now

Over the last six months, I have had the opportunity to imagine and re-imagine what this time next year will look like. I feel...

Butterflies in my stomach!

What an incredible chance I have! To start a completely new thing! To see my friends and family! To date not-very-long-distance!

Tightness in my chest. 

What a lot I have to decide. Living in the US is complicated and everything needs insurance. The job search was a painful process. The car search is complicated. The house search is pretty much over?

To avoid serious anxiety, Stacey sent me an article asking one question: what is happening right now? The idea is to take in your surroundings and acknowledge that you're not under threat (thank God!).

Right now the car tires zing the rainy streets. Right now the air conditioning hums. Right now I have had enough food, enough coffee, enough affection, enough time alone, and enough time in conversation. Right now I bask in a few finished chores. Right now my body does not hurt. Right now I am in grace. Thank you, God.

Status: Doing All Right

It's the end of a quarter, so naturally I feel that I should be grading instead of writing this, but I'm taking a moment to evaluate my emotional state since mid-winter. I find that I took no time to slide down off of one sad farewell before leaping to another potential relationship. The pain was compounded. Maybe that's the problem with rebound relationships: you're not ready to approach the risk with a clear head; you aren't thinking about the risk, just thinking of feeling better. If and when the fall comes, it takes you by surprise because this was supposed to be your feel-good relationship, so how can it make you feel so bad?

After a month of attempts to install the Windows 10 update, I asked for help. It seemed the update had not installed after numerous attempts, but lo, and behold! thank the Lord above!, I have the beautiful privilege of using my computer. It is working for the moment, but another update could crash it. Anything could crash it. I have a new least-favorite brand, and they don't have a support center in Northern Africa, and they don't do refunds.

The job search has been a distant but real part of my daily stress. It has been the chord in a tug-of-war between trusting God and trying to be diligent, feeling like I'm not doing enough.

It seems like a lot to do, I mean... I've gotta move countries again. Gotta find a place to live when I find a job. A place that has a kitchen where everyone can hang out, living room be damned, if I have to choose.

I hesitated to write about this, because what if it sounds like whining, especially when I know that I did this to myself. It looks awfully masochistic, doesn't it? I knew this would be challenge upon challenge. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Very often it's the opposite, as you well know.

Singing My History

I have lived a short history.

Today, I stood in the kitchen making pancakes from a recipe I have memorized, and I thought about how it has come into being through many adaptations, through many kitchens. I know they existed, because this recipe exists.

I started to sing a familiar song. That, too, even more than the pancake recipe, is a continuity with my past. Even though the kitchen bears no resemblance to my past kitchens, the sun and shade, the patterns on the tile walls are all unlike my past worlds: the song is from there, and the song exists inside me and outside me, and is evidence of another world.

I have had lots of different Christmas ornaments, wall hangings, measuring cups, and all of them are gone or packed away somewhere.

Songs carry my stories.

I've Been Almost This Lonely Before

I remember the last time I was this lonely. It was my first year of teaching and being a dorm adviser at LMH.

• I never had enough sleep.
• I didn't hang out with people regularly.
• I always had grading hanging over my head. 
• I was responsible in part for the well-being of so many kids, and the job just never seemed to end. 
• I had no idea where to make boundaries. Of course I had to move all those boundaries over the next two years. 

It was all a bear of a task. What I remember, though, was feeling so lonely. I remember kneeling in child's pose that winter, crying out to God about how damn uncertain and tiring the whole thing was. Was I in the right place? Was I doing this right? How would I know if I was doing it right? Why do I feel so alone, God?It was the loneliest I had been up to that point.

This is a harder life in so many ways, but the fact that I have that experience as part of me makes this one easier. It's a lot of the same, but at least I've done some of it before:

• I never have enough sleep.
• I don't hang out with people regularly.
• I always have grading hanging over my head.
• I'm responsible for my own well-being, and I don't know what that looks like.
• I have no idea where to make boundaries.

Why not just solve one problem, and at least hang out with people more regularly?

It's partly because I need to make new friends to hang out with, and that is a slow process. Deep friendships take time, and shallow ones take energy.

I'm afraid of hanging out with only Americans, because, as I've already seen, they come and go so quickly. I've only been here for nine months, and already I've seen people leave who came here with me. That leaves local friends: Moroccan and other African friends who are likely to stick around. But there's the problem of the language barrier. And there's the problem of my disillusionment with Morocco stemming from the students I teach. It's not been a conscious decision, but if all Moroccans are like my students, how can I ever trust anyone? They lie to me like it's their job.

So, I'm lonely. But I'm not ashamed of it. It's like Jessica and the Reverend Mother, talking together in Dune... 

"I've been so lonely."
"It should be one of the tests," said the old woman. "Humans are almost always lonely."

How to Dress Like a Teacher

1. Find a dress that has no discernible sexiness about it. It should be cut pretty high up the neck, and pretty low down the legs. If it's just one color, cool. Don't want to distract the kids with multiple colors.

2. Add a belt if you must. But nothing showy. Try black.

3. Let me guess, that dress has no sleeves? Wear a cardigan. A cardigan and leggings will make your summer dress suitable for the winter. You should have seven cardigans, all varying in their intensity of boredom.

4. Don't forget your ID badge. There you go.

"You're Still Young"

"You're still young. You have plenty of time."

It's a disconcerting thing to hear at the end of a conversation where you've been talking about being single versus being married.

Plenty of time for what? To bear children? To find love and marry? To grow up? Please don't tell me I'm a kid. Even if you think it's true, I'm not having it. Biologically, I'm well into my adulthood, and anthropologically, I'm already elderly.

It doesn't feel like there's plenty of time. Minutes slip by, and some things are no longer an option. There's not plenty of time to become a ballet dancer. That ship had sailed, and I'm literally too old for it.

I'm living my life, and glad I've made the choices I have. My life has been about a lot of things: fear and understanding, estrangement and belonging. There's a list that could go on.

It's clear that my life has not been about getting married and having children. Maybe it will be someday, and maybe not. But I don't see it as my endgame, that's all. I still need love and family, and I'm so serious about this when I say I have found my eternal love, and I have an eternal family. It's Jesus Christ, and his church. 

Dear Keats

You say touch has a memory.
How to exorcise it?
You think on a good many things.
Sit and think. Sit and think.
How, do tell me, do I move on on on
On on on
And still think myself capable of loving ever?

Love was not a game to me,
Or was it? Of course not, my mouth tells me:
nothing tastes sweet.
Only the bitter things draw me,
and people not at all.

Beer, and shoveling this unbelievable mass of
snow that has graciously transported me
from my home planet to one resembling Hoth.
And all its beasts are in my head
as I shovel on on on on on
the pile topples.

I miss you, dear. And the idea of you, and
your hand on my back, your shoulders
such a sweet place to rest my head.
Your slow kiss on top of my hair, the
kind of kiss reserved for babies,
whose heads need kissing, you know.

Scenes From Single Life

Setting: Four women live together in a house on the edge of a small city.

Scene I: The Hallway

The office door is open in the upstairs hallway, casting a rectangle of light into the dark hall. Keyboard tapping is audible, as the first young woman walks up the stairs. She stops in front of the open door to exclaim some news of the day to the occupant. In a few moments, the young woman sits down, and in the office doorway, another young woman, the keyboard-tapping one, leans out. A few minutes of animated conversation pass, and a third young woman joins the two. The orchestra's decrescendo leaves traces of a conversation, "...on NPR today," "...no, not next August, this August!" "...he actually did say that, I promise" before swelling again. Lights darken.

Scene II: The Kitchen

A young woman with a messy pony tail, dressed in professional clothing, enters the shared house. She is clearly withered from the day. She hangs up her coat laboriously, takes off her boots laboriously. Beyond, the light of the kitchen is visible, and laughter between two, now three people erupts from there. The messy-pony-tail woman perks up and joins the kitchen to make four. Pans fly on and off the stove, burners are turned on with a click. The sink is filled and emptied, filled and emptied with dishes: clattering into the sink, running water, steam from a hot pan searing parts of primary and secondary conversations. Two chairs are occupied by rotation at the table; one woman stands and moves about, another sits for a moment on the stair, another gets up to continue the heating of foodstuff; for a moment, all are holding dishes of supper, and seated in various comfortable poses. Then, one must go; two, three. The young woman with the messy pony tail is last at the sink, leaving dishes in the drying rack, hanging up the dishcloth, turning out the sink light with a smile.

Scene III: Cleaning House
A black and white cat is chasing an imaginary thing up and down the stairs. In the bathroom, a young woman in a ragged band t-shirt is spraying cleaner and wiping surfaces. The black and white cat bolts downstairs, scared by nothing, or something, perhaps. The cat's reception is met with no fanfare beyond a harsh eyelock from a young woman wielding a broom and dustpan, tending to the corners and frames of the downstairs.  

Onward travels the cat, into the kitchen, to find a third young woman who, rag and bucket in hand, is giggling to a voice on the radio. This woman appears neither to see nor hear the skiddish cat now skirting the edge of the basement door, descending with speed into its dark depths.

Leaving the Dorm: Thoughts and a Prayer

"You Can Never Go Home Again"
I explain this concept a lot when I talk with residence hall students about returning home. After several months abroad, with unfamiliar food, less-than-clean bathrooms, loud roommates, and boring Sundays, they have in their heads an idealized version of what being at home will be. They imagine the simultaneity of all their favorite things. They imagine being able to control their lives, only sunny days.

I have learned that home is growing even while we're growing in another place. We (who "we" are, precisely, I'm not qualified to say) have this tendency to complain about wherever we are, then to idealize it when it's gone.

It seems right to attempt to disabuse them by explaining the phrase, "you can never go home again." (And I promise I don't whisper it in a raspy voice, like a threat...)

The Menial and the Repetitious
Last night, as everyone was headed to their halls around 10 pm, Wendy (a tenth-grader) and I sat on the floor in the hall, and talked about our impending loss of each other's company. We agreed that even though I would visit next year, "It just won't be the same." What is it about how things are right now that's so good? How is the menial and repetitious so sacred? And why don't we notice it in the moment?

What do I mean by the menial and repetitious? Just the normal stuff.
The people who live here just do normal stuff together:

- We say goodnight five or six nights a week. 

- We eat breakfast together once or twice a week. And when we are sitting there in the cafeteria at 7:20 am, we barely say anything. There is nothing to say. (We clearly stayed up too late last night, and every night.)

- We take the trash out together late at night.

- We laugh at Youtube videos. 

- We complain about the weather. 

- We talk about food, teachers, classes, and homework.

- And on a not-so-rare occasion, we talk about the heart and its workings. 

Next year I'll be on the outside of it all. I'll be back for visits. But it won't be the same, because life is built with the menial and the repetitious. I know that I have already lived some of my greatest moments, and am unaware of what they were: it was something I said, did, or did not say that a student will remember forever, that may change the way he or she treats his or her own kids... and who knows where that ends!?

A Prayer
God,
I'm humbled when I think of the impact of all those interactions, for better or for worse.
If there is glory to be had, may it be yours alone! 

Evidence Supporting the Little-Discussed Possibility That I May Not Be a Responsible Adult

I kinda strong-armed Asher into driving back from Longwood Gardens because I was hungry, never mind that he was both tired and hungry...

"When is your inspection?" he asked.

"I dunno. October maybe?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure it's this month. Unless this sticker is wrong."

"Really? Huh. That's... huh. I don't know when I would have noticed that if you hadn't pointed it out."

Inspection Friday.