Dear ---,
Returning home always brings a slew of emotion up from the depths. Memories reside on every surface here. I am never quite as happy or nostalgic as I am here in my room. I sit here quietly with the stream of light that comes from a lonely streetlight falling gently on my feet. Sitting on my bed, I can look across the rooftops of the bungalows of the neighborhood below and see that small mountain that is and has always been just within my arms reach. This house is everything to me, this street, the kitten at my feet, and that mountain. They are home and they represent the most complicated of emotions, the brightest of smiles, and the biggest puddle of tears. These are the material constant in my life. This home contains my ugliest past but also contains more love than I have ever known, perhaps more than I ever will know. My mother is just down across hall, she is snoring after a day of striving for perfection, I am sure she is exhausted. My sister is possibly awake I can hear her stirring down the hall. This is home.
It is officially Christmas, it is now 12:14 PM and I just finished reading the night before Christmas to myself. This book was a gift that first Christmas after the storm. Little did I know at the time that the storm had only just begun. There is a letter folded in the first page and it brings me to tears now. The words are written in the most permanent of ink with love from my mother. “The sun will shine brightly again for all of us. We just need to hang on to each happy moment we have now and glue them together and then moments will become hours, then days…. Merry Christmas Anna. I love you. Love always, Momma.
Tonight I think about how far things have come. It is a distance you cannot measure with time or inches. It is only represented in the mere evaluation of what was and what is. Of course this is the case with most growth. We tend to eliminate the middle once we reach the end. Making life just a series of beginnings and endings instead of a middle grey area, where let’s face it, most of us are chronically stuck. I prefer grey but admittedly forget that daily. Once this week is over, this day, this job, this night, this relationship, this year. I wish it away hoping to move away from where I am. We have goals, but I wonder if running towards goals can be running away from the present, running away from that rarely appreciated time in between. If you stay there too long you become a failure, but if you don’t stay there long enough and enjoy it are you also a failure? Who knows?
Tonight in the bi-yearly church service I attend, I sat next to a man I have never known but have known my entire life. Going to Catholic school I became familiar with this gentleman who attended every service, every day, every week, every month always sitting near the back, always with a hunched back and a pained grimace that could shake you to your core. When I was girl I feared him, but tonight I shook his hand in an offering of peace just before communion, just after alleluia and somehow no longer felt afraid. Perhaps its because I’m grown or perhaps, he is different. His grimace is gone, he is still stoic but no longer frightening and that’s comforting. I know he has nothing, the stocking cap he wore tonight was the same he has worn every winter I have “known” him. His grimace is justified I’m sure. His loneliness emanates and holding his hand even though it was only for a mere moment I felt it, that Electric connection, electric loneliness and it became my own. In an instant, his loneliness temporarily vanished, and swept over me. There I was surrounded and lonelier than I have ever been. I wanted to cry and wanted to hug him. If just for second, we were connected and I knew more about him and his pain than I probably do about myself and then it vanished. Tonight I find myself wondering if he lives from beginning to end and forgets the middle or if he is simply caught in the middle. Maybe he looking for answers in his regiment of prayer or maybe he is just looking to accept the answers he already has.
This Christmas I feel lucky but lonely, maybe it is because I took some of his loneliness away in that electric moment but I really can’t flatter myself with that. I am lonely because I have become caught in a regiment myself. This is the regiment of not appreciating the moments that become hours, then days. Rather, I have allowed myself to become absorbed in success and forgotten what I need to survive in the first place. My friendships mean everything to me, much like this house does. Just as the light filters into this very bedroom from the street and gives me the security it always has, I need my friendships to keep moving and feel safe.
Last semester was far from easy, emotions, were purposefully stifled by work and then spewed at the most inopportune of moments. Next semester, I have planned will be worse, 19 credits of classes which I am actually excited for… Crazy I know. However, despite my excitement for Arabic, international relations and Advanced Painting, I am rushing to finish, rushing to rush, and running towards the end, when in truth I have absolutely no Idea what the finish line looks like. Death… that’s one answer. I have two years of a bachelor’s degree left because I spent two years chasing a childhood dream to become a famous fashion designer. Pff right… I am beginning to wonder if the race is worth it. It’s the beginning and the end but what’s in between? Marathoners forget what their doing and strive to finish, but life’s not a marathon or at least it shouldn’t be even if your goal is to eventually reach the finish line. We do have to take time and smell the roses, the most neglected of all things in this world. It is really hard to remember though, I’ll give you that.
I have ignored people out of necessity because I have become over involved and over achieved to the breaking point. Next year could bring great things, great on paper at least. I could spend part of the summer in DC in training, the next part in Cairo, and then the following year in Iraq. These are applications that I am waiting on. Security clearance that I’m hoping for, Funding that I am praying for, and loneliness that I anticipate. I could not get accepted and it would all go down the drain… or get approved and get thrown into a world with no beginnings and no ends, where the personal good moments to be glued together might be few and far between. Granted, hearing bombs go off blocks away no doubt would warrant personal growth but would it be worth it? It would be leaving behind my personal in between for a professional finish line in an area of the world so deeply caught in the in between that the there are wars going on to attempt to again make things black and white. Does this even make sense? What the fuck am I talking about? I have no idea. All I can do is wait here. Waiting for answers, waiting for permission to finish, permission to begin, and permission to wait. Permission from myself, permission from the state department, and permission from whoever stumbles into my life between now and then as I wait here in the chronic in between.
All my wishes,
Stitches
