Last Monday Richard came to this office during lunch to chat and say hi while he was in town. And as we sat out back amid stacks of flat boxes from ULINE talking about each other’s lives, I had flashbacks to that old “warehouse” at 1220 Alden. We’d listen to music and pack resource kits for some 300 pastors and leaders. And when he got a job there too, he’d come back to the warehouse sometimes to talk life and girls and I’d talk life and boys. We didn’t agree on all the ways each of us lived out dating and relationships, but there was (and is) always a mutual respect and understanding of our differences.

I saw the stacks of pallets this morning while I made my usual first trip walking by someone’s office to the kitchen to put my lunch away, rinse out my smoothie bottle, and fill up my old purple water bottle. I saw the stacks of pallets and pictured myself carrying them through the old office in Orlando, using the leftover plastic shrink-wrap from a shipment of magazine boxes to avoid splinters.

I don’t have to move any pallets here and there are no splinters to avoid. Just knowing glances that this will all be over soon. And how I wish my eyes would have told you then I’d be sorry soon.

Then why am I not happy?

This was the question she came back to. The nagging uncertainty of “am I supposed to be happy?” Or is part of life just learning how to be okay with the unhappiness. Is part of life “paying your dues” as the financial advisor said. Maybe 22 year olds can’t be happy in between college and “real life.”

But this is real. This is life. This unhappiness is as real as the sky and the people’s faces and the street itself.

You can’t shake the unhappiness. You can’t just trade in unhappiness for happiness. Joy may come, joy will come to you. But you have to feel whatever it is that’s hanging over your head or sitting in your guts. And when you’ve felt it, you can begin to shake it. And you can begin to trade it for whatever’s next. But you must feel it first because it will return someday. And you will have to learn how to feel it now or when you’re 48.

Feel it now. Learn now. And when it does return (because it will even if you’ve felt it and moved on), you will recognize it and you will welcome it a little more because you will know this is temporary but it must be felt.

Happiness is as real as unhappiness is as real as happiness. You can’t have one without the other.

Joy will return.

The light metallic blue two-door Mazda I passed on the road could have been your car. It wasn’t yours though. I’m sure you didn’t also end up in Roswell, Georgia.

But it reminded me that I will soon forget about the last guy I went on a date with because until I saw that car, I had nearly forgotten about you.

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“Did you feel that chemistry?”

The Starbucks barista who had a total of 28 piercings at one time in her life asked me after observing an interaction between you and I.

I can’t even remember your name now. But I put my number on your car then. Kelsey and I laughed as we pulled out of the parking lot. It was a moment that made me feel a little more alive and happy because I was doing something I hadn’t done before.

You called me and I sat on my red futon as talked. We knew very little about one another.

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I lived at home in Deland and you at home in Deltona. Yet we still met up at the Starbucks in Lake Mary. You were just training there since Starbucks bought out the Barnie’s in the mall. You told me you’d soon return to working in the mall.

I took you up on your offer for a free latte before you drove us in your Mazda to the nearby theatre.

You let me pick the movie and payed for our tickets to see Babel.

“I hope the whole movie’s not in subtitles,” you whispered to me in an empty theatre when the movie began.

And I feared it would be. And I’d ruined the night with my movie choice.

I don’t think either of us understood the movie.

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The next time I saw you your hair was shorter and you started lightening it. The longer, black hair was now strangely in between blonde and brown. And cut short in a way that made it look like your mother or sister had cut it.

We hardly talked after the date. We knew there was nothing there. And soon you returned to the mall. I’d see you working the Starbucks counter as I came up the escalator. But I never stopped to say hi.

I wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence and so it stuck.

Silence, I guess, was the answer to forgetting our few interactions. Maybe that’s why people often don’t want to stay friends with the people they dated.

But when I see a car like yours I’m taken back to the night before the silence. The night there was still a chance, though slim, that such a silence wouldn’t overcome you or I.

Six years later I can’t remember your name. Just barely I see your face. But your car is stuck in my memory, and inside of it I found those mornings at Starbucks and our one date.

Not because it’s super hard to tell someone, “I don’t like who I am.” But because I don’t know how to put it all into words to explain why without it sounding ridiculous or self-loathing. I don’t hate who I am or have been, but I’m not satisfied with who I am. I love myself, sure, but I don’t love who I have become lately. I like who I was, but now? I don’t think the person I’m presenting myself to be is the person I want to be or am or…something along those lines.

Like I said, I’ve had a hard time putting it into words. But I find myself here after couple months of very strange attempts at dating, a dash of too much drinking, and not enough real conversation. I find myself not challenging myself or allowing myself to be challenged by others. And I know that I too am not challenging others (directly or indirectly). And I cannot blame anyone else for this or for mundane days and nights.

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I Googled “roswell ga small groups” recently. The church I attend doesn’t have small groups. They encourage people to volunteer to meet people, but I’ve been volunteering and introducing myself to people. It’s a slow process, I guess. So I stopped going for a month. Gave up for a little while. I didn’t want to go to church just to go and leave. I wanted to go to church to be a part of it and know people and do something with those people… which is impossible if I don’t go and meet people in the first place, of course.

I didn’t feel like going a couple of weeks ago when I went back for the first time in awhile. I took my time getting ready and contemplated not going the whole time. But something instilled in me growing up was to follow through with things you said you’d do, to show up if you said you’d be somewhere. So I went because I said I’d volunteer and the whole drive down I considered turning around. But I went, against all I had felt, I went.

And it was good.

I didn’t feel like going to see Neulore play after church. I wanted to see them but the driving to some old bar and the parking and the cold weather… But I met up with Ginna and we went. And we got in for free. And it was a small, pleasant show.

And it was good.

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The “feel, feel, feeling” is good but sometimes you have to go against what you feel. Not always, but in the case of “I don’t feel like…”

There’s a million little things a day I don’t feel like doing. And I can acknowledge that, but I don’t need to follow all of those little feelings.

Sometimes, oftentimes even, the things I don’t feel like doing will actually leave me feeling better on the other side when they’re complete. But when I put off gathering paperwork for this or staying home instead of doing that, I get buried a little more by the weight of what I could or should be doing because I did what I felt like doing.

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I can’t wait for people to challenge me. I can’t hope that someone will force me into fun again, into adventure again, into life again. I have to challenge myself. I can be easily influenced to do a whole lot of nothing. But the days or nights of nothingness aren’t going to be the stories I tell or the moments I remember. It’s the befriending the guy that worked at the mattress store next to my old favorite cafe, the wandering around the Disney camp area when we couldn’t get into the Animal Kingdom Lodge at 10pm, the meals cooked alongside friends–new and old…

So yes, I’m going to “feel, feel, feel.” I’m going to feel the sadness and the happiness and the anger and the bitterness and the joy… But I’m not going to always follow what I feel like doing. Because there’s a difference there, yes, I know you know. But for me it’s been easy to just do what I feel like doing or not doing and to go back to coasting and surviving daily life.

Like I did all last summer when I was just getting by, just surviving.

Some days I will still watch three episodes in a row of Brothers & Sisters until I finish the show. But Lord help me, I won’t spend my life watching other people’s stories while not living my own.

Here’s to challenging myself and getting to know myself again.

And again.

And again.

Because I love myself enough to want to like myself again.

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Our lives are the stories we are ultimately responsible for telling, and the richness of the stories we tell will be a reflection of the richness of the lives we live. It is a rich person who has stories to give away that others want to hear and take to heart as their own.
We listen seriously to the stories told by others in order to make their stories a part of our lives, to give our lives that richness and depth which only stories can provide.
…We are all Rodrigo, we are all Storytellers.
- Robert A. Williams, Jr. in his forward to The Rodrigo Chronicles

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(Side note: I understand that some people are homebodies, etc. Different things make different people come alive or feel alive or enjoy life.)

There’s a particular knot that has continued to stick around these past few weeks. I’ve worked it out then it’s there again. As she was working it out on my neck, she said, “Have you been sleeping differently, like taking something to sleep or just more stressed out?”

I’m not stressed out.

“No… Just life,” I said.

“Well, not to discredit whatever is going on. But always remember no matter what is going on with you, someone somewhere has it worse.”

True indeed, Cassi.

A friend of mine died Friday night. More than that, he was friends with a lot of people I know up here and many of them went to high school together. I met Andrew one weekend trip to Atlanta last March. He met us on a Saturday while hanging out with Aaron and that Monday he picked my sister, Ginna, and I up and took us to Stone Mountain when Aaron had to work. The three of us later talked about how kind and friendly he was. He was also one of the most welcoming souls to Ginna and I when we moved up here. I wasn’t super close to him. And I don’t bring this up for me. But it’s been hard to shake how heartbreaking this all is for his family, his lovely girlfriend, his many friends. I can’t imagine losing one of my closest friends or siblings.

Indeed, others are going through worse.

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I watched something while eating dinner that reminded me to just talk to God. This part in particular (it was an old Nooma on YouTube, okay):

He says “When you cry out to me, I listen.” He even says “I cannot ignore the cry of somebody who is afflicted”, it’s like if I’m hurting, lost, soaking wet, scared, and confused, God says “you cry out, and I hear.” God even says that when you cry, He’s close to the broken hearted. He’s close to those who cry out, admit they’re scared, lost, soaking wet, and confused.

And so when I got in the car to drive to Massage Therapy, I talked to God in a way I hadn’t in awhile. Even saying that feels weird because I’ve been so distant to the idea of all of this for months now. But scared, lost, and confused sounded pretty familiar. The belief never left, but the belief as it is a part of my daily life has.

I was talking out loud. And I wasn’t praying for someone else. Praying for others has been easy. Sometimes it’s easier to hope for other people or pray for other people than yourself. Because me praying for someone else doesn’t mean I have to face my own problem. It doesn’t mean I necessarily have to admit my lack of trust or satisfaction.

And there was a moment on the table while knots were being worked out and I felt more relaxed than I had in weeks. There was this moment where I felt parts of January being released. This past month was one where I asked to “feel, feel, feel” and I did. Most days felt like a fight to stay happy, a fight I kept failing by the afternoon. But I felt and that felt good. And January was a month where I tried new things like dating. Which I hadn’t done in a few years. It was a month I didn’t want to wait for true joy or satisfaction (a month? maybe life).

Yet I missed that man earlier tonight. I told God that, partially because I don’t want to have to make someone listen to me talk about that again. And I admitted how I liked the immediate satisfaction of dating, even if half the time I was left wondering. And I admitted I wanted to live a life for God again and with Him but not the way I’ve known. Which seems like something I’ve said a few times in the past year. And that’s where my challenge has continued to be. It was my challenge back in Orlando and it is my challenge here as I type in bed in Roswell. And I said I don’t know the kind of person I want to be anymore. But this month taught me a little bit about what I don’t want and a bit about what I do. Not in the way that I have anything to regret, thankfully.

I learned a lot, January. You weren’t easy, and neither was I, but you taught me some things.

Some pursuit of a life worth living is better than none right now. Some pursuit of God is better than waiting for the right new way to do it all. It’s going to be an interesting restart, I think. And maybe I’ll stop again soon and repeat myself again in April. But I hope not. I need to not for the sake of loving myself and the life I live and the story it’s telling.

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These knots were meant to be untied. They feel tight and permanent, but they’re meant to be released. What they’re holding within, the month of January 2012 and then some, released. Not forgotten. Not regretted. Released.

But the other options were still running through my mind. I pictured myself living alone and I thought, “I’ll have to get rid of my grill.” If I live alone, it will doubtfully be in a place with my own backyard. Plus, I don’t grill. I just invite people over who will grill. So I will have to find a place for it.

If I hadn’t thought about that grill I could maybe have avoided some Monday blues.

It’s my Dad’s grill. It was a collective present for his 60th birthday. Growing up he would grill barbecue chicken most Sundays on the old grill we had. But this one he barely used. Even at his 60th birthday, he had already began slowing down in every way.

All day Monday was an attempt to get myself out of a bad mood. Which, unfortunately, is harder to get out of than into. I was trying not to use my Dad as an excuse to cry and be sad. When I couldn’t help it, I sent a text to Melissa.

“Do you ever have days where out of no where you think of your Dad and just get sad?”

Sometimes we need to know that others have done this too. That we’re not crazy and we don’t have to stifle our feelings just because the people immediately around us in life don’t react this way.

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All week I’ve been trying to get myself out from under the pressure to make this week really good and be really happy because at the end of it, I’ll no longer be 22, but 23.

Monday and Tuesday and part of Wednesday were days of trying to let myself know it’s okay to just feel sad instead of ignoring it. Or it’s okay to feel ____ instead of ignoring it.

For the better part of Monday I tried to convince myself to be happy. I reminded myself of truth by reading various quotes saved in various notes. I listened to happy music.

Then I stumbled upon an old favorite quote by a favorite author:

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

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Since realizing during last summer how numb I was for a year or two, I’ve been working on allowing myself to feel whatever the day brings. The difficult part is the feeling it without being guided by the feelings or acting out of a particularly happiness or sadness. Regardless, when I finally stopped trying to be happy on Monday, I felt a slight release. I gave in and cried in a bathroom stall. When Melissa responded to my text and said, “I’ve had those days too,” I stopped thinking that I was crazy for being sad.

There was nothing particularly bad about Monday. No friends or people had done anything to wrong me. Work was work. The day didn’t mark anything special. And it’s that kind of day that is hard to let yourself feel the unexplainable sadness. It’s hard to let yourself feel sad on days when you can’t explain it. But we don’t need to explain it all the time. Our feelings don’t need to always be explained. Sometimes, they just need to be felt. Sometimes we just need to let ourselves feel.

I felt and felt and felt for years. I grieved my Dad’s death a million times it seemed. Once I became okay with crying, I cried all the time. I’m not surprised I numbed myself after he died. I’m not surprised, but I also didn’t realize it for a long time. But when you numb yourself to sadness or anger or whatever feeling you’re tired of feeling, you’re number yourself to the happiness and joy on the other side of it. At least, I was numbing myself to the happiness. I could never fully be happy because close behind it was a layer of unreleased sadness I didn’t want to have to let out.

Slowly but surely, I’m feeling what I ignored.

Feel feel feel.

And it doesn’t quite feel over. Surely a year has not passed since I flew to Tulsa, slept a few hours, then drove to Denver with Casey and Robbie to celebrate 2011′s arrival with Melissa. Stuff from last week will carry over to this week. The overwhelming feeling of being behind on many things didn’t just disappear at midnight.

In a way, it feels like a lot of healing happened last year. My life has shifted in many ways since New Year’s Eve 2011. I lived out some questions this last year and a bit, and those questions have brought me to this comfy bed that isn’t even mine in Roswell, Georgia.

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Random things became okay last year: Earlier in 2011, I was in the car with my sister and a few others and I admittedly said that a guy driving a truck was a pretty cute. Granted, my mother has this weird thing for “country” things/men (we’ll blame her Missouri half) and I do take after my mother. Oddly, I recently went on a date with a guy who drives a big truck. And American football? While I still haven’t gotten all of the rules down (and maybe never will), I’ve willingly watched some football this year (though, honestly, Friday Night Lights really helped make that okay). Remember when I used to say I hated dancing? Well, 2011 sure saw a different side of me. Shoot.

A guy I once talked to told me I hadn’t quite hit my rebellious stage yet. I was 19 or 20 when we knew each other. And the “rebellious” stage he was referring to was mostly the cliche drinking and smoking and partying thing. And it was true–I had never had alcohol, smoked, or been to a party. I guess, if he knew me still, he’d say 2011 was my rebellious stage (or at least the cruise). Though my rebellious stage compared to his was probably very different. There’s more I want to say here, but it is for another time (note to self).

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At the beginning of the year I was unhappy with a lot of things: where I was, who I was, what I was doing. I guess that means I was just unhappy. I was up and down and back and forth, but at the end of the day, I knew things would have to change. For awhile I thought it was just me, and that I needed to get over myself and stay where I was. I do that with friends too–I don’t confront people often because I think it’s me not them.

A sort of intervention afternoon discussion sparked some change. I decided to move to Atlanta when my lease ended. I stopped volunteering at church and took a general break from it all. In May I left the company I’d been with since I was 17, a place I’d known for 4 and a half years. It was one of the last bits of familiar life hanging on.

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I went to a counselor for the first time over the summer. I did whatever I could to ensure that I was working on my unhappiness and working on my life before I moved to Atlanta. Because even though I could have waited, I didn’t want to act like moving to a new city was going to fix me. I knew it wouldn’t. But enacting change in my life before I moved and working on myself before I left a city I had already disconnected from meant I could more peacefully make this new city my home. A challenge for sure, but a happy challenge when you’ve been able to be thankful for the city you left instead of running from it.

I didn’t run from Orlando. In the end, I found some peace with it and its people. And each trip back since moving has been a grand time of enjoying a city I called home for three years. Do I miss it? No. But not resenting it has made visits more special and holding onto people there easier.

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I started last year with the idea of taking time to focus on myself. To take care of myself inwardly and outwardly. These were things I was once good at in years past and had managed to let go of for about a year or two.

The chiropractor, counseling, the gym, a personal trainer, being mindful of what I eat, loving who I am now and not who I’m trying to be… Those were some steps taken in 2011. I asked a lot of questions, lived out some, and am still answering others. I know some aren’t to be answered, and more will come up. But it’s the questioning that has helped me this year.

Instead of living the way I was, I questioned my unhappiness and questioned the way I’d been living. I’m questioning things I believe, the way I view certain people, the way I view myself through societal standards, the reasons I do the things I do…

Going into a new month and a new year and soon a new age, I’m not worried about having all of the answers. I’m not worried about why I wasn’t able to find the answer to every area of my life last year or why I still have days of unhappiness. Instead, I’m thankful that I’m okay with the questions and uncertainty. I’m glad that I don’t have to act like I have all of the answers. I hope that my questioning can invite others into my story a little more than if I were acting like I had all the answers, like I had it all together. I hope my questioning allows others to step in and answer the questions or ask along with me.

I don’t want to be numb more often than not in the coming months and years of my life. Much of my unhappiness, to an extent, came from being numb to life and not being vulnerable. At least for a time, that was a big part of my problem. And so I’m taking small risks (risks that are risks for me and maybe no one else), because even if it goes badly, I’ll feel something. For awhile, I walked in circles hoping the second time around would feel better and make me happy. I’ve let go of that, a bit. And even this past week, I’ve been challenged more than I expected from a certain person who I wouldn’t have passed while walking in the same circles.

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I’m not one for a clear list of resolutions. I wrote a few reminders down elsewhere. But mostly I want to carry on the idea of last year with the addition of what I learned about myself throughout the year.

Take care of yourself. Love who you are today. Don’t keep going back to the same places. Take risks. And feel feel feel whatever each day brings. Cry in front of someone. Be vulnerable. Don’t be afraid of people who aren’t like you because you think they won’t ilke you–you are probably more judgmental than them. Love yourself, respect yourself, and “treat yo self.”

That’s the middle I’m talking about. That’s the back and forth. It’s choosing which voice.

I know what I believe. And I feel like I’ve said this all before. It’s the why and the how do I want to live this out and what can I do differently than I’ve been doing my whole life and why don’t I want what they have…

But I’m in the middle on some things. Wanting to listen to this voice one day and that voice the next. Wanting to live this life one moment, then not seeing the worth in the effort of it the next moment.

The tiredness? That’s just an excuse. Overwhelmed? Just an excuse. I’m slowly making time for the questions and the process that follows. Because it’s being in the middle–questioning and being unsure of so much–that keeps me tired and overwhelmed. And while the questions and the process can be exhausting, they can also be life-giving. Still, most days it seems like it’s too much to take on.

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I had a strange experience recently and without going into detail, it left me questioning a lot. It forced me to very quickly decide where I stood on a few things. And where I stood was farther than where I did a few years ago. And surely, farther than most friends of mine assumed.

When you’re questioning your beliefs or figuring our where you stand on a topic (which is always happening in some way, isn’t it?), it’s important to be able to talk it through with someone. Maybe not for everyone, but for me it’s important. I don’t expect the answer to my life from the person I’m talking to. I don’t expect much really. But I’m a verbal processor, oftentimes, so I need someone besides a stuffed animal to talk to (though Floppy is  a good listener).

The understanding and lack of judgement from the friends I talked to about this struck me in a new way and with a new appreciation. I hadn’t needed such a response before, but I needed the openness they gave me. Especially when others’ judgmental responses only made me want to run in the opposite direction I was feeling pulled to in the first place. It’s that condescending tone of those who would rather act like they have it figured out than be open to your questions.

At any time, your friends or the people you’re around can kill you or bring you to life. I’ve needed friends to bring me to life (and so many of them have–directly and indirectly). And I’ve needed it in a way that is indirect. I’ve just needed to see people living a life I’d want. To see people loving and listening and being themselves. What I haven’t needed is for someone to tell me what to believe. Not someone who looks down on me for being open. And there is a time for the directness, for the honest and not always wanted words of a friend, but who those kind of words come from can make or break them.

Who I was–
who I want to be.

They’re talking,
looking at me. But
I’m looking
for who I was,
not satisfied
with who I am.
Not sure who to be.

The other sees
forward change–progress.
“How’s the new job?
How’s the new city?”

But on the inside,
I’m stuck
turned around yelling

“Come back, Rachel!”

I’m lost now
between who I was
and who I want to be.

Screaming for the girl who
met new people often,
took adventures.
The girl who loved others
first, not after she judged
if they’d like her–
which decided
if she’d like them.

I’m calling back
for that peace
with myself. A love
for life my drawn face
no longer expresses.

It would be wrong
to assume I no longer love
life or others,
my job or city.
Instead, I see
I could love it all
more. There’s a love inside
of me, it was there
and I believe it
will come back.

With small introductions
and situations that turn
my face red, I know
I’m coming back to life.

Soon I won’t wish so often
for the past. New peace will come,
I’ll learn to love myself
and others more than I ever
did before.

I haven’t given
up. I’m turning back around,
yelling ahead
for the love
yet to give, the people
I’ll meet, the adventures
we’ll make, the stories
we’ll get to tell.

A first favorite–Robert A. Williams, Jr. in his forward to The Rodrigo Chronicles:

“Our lives are the stories we are ultimately responsible for telling, and the richness of the stories we tell will be a reflection of the richness of the lives we live. It is a rich person who has stories to give away that others want to hear and take to heart as their own.
We listen seriously to the stories told by others in order to make their stories a part of our lives, to give our lives that richness and depth which only stories can provide.
…We are all Rodrigo, we are all Storytellers.”

And in the book, Richard Delgado writes:

“We are all characters in a narrative, Professor. We just fool ourselves into thinking that things are otherwise. Perhaps we want to escape responsibility for our own stories.”