lessons from the road

This post is long overdue.

Spending two weeks living out of a bag will teach you something about yourself; spending two weeks living out of a bag in the company of deep friendships from different seasons of life will teach you about yourself and who you want to become. 

These are excerpts from my journal during that trip…

“I’ve been thinking lately how my defenses may have changed shape, but they are still the same at the core: I run.

It is no coincidence that I’m leaving Seattle less than 48 hours after finishing my classes, even if it is just for a trip and not moving away. I still run away from endings. Hindsight being what it is (20/20), I wish I would have waited a week, or even until May, to have this East Coast adventure. I wish I would have given myself time to be in Seattle with my peers, and allowed myself to mourn the ending and to celebrate the accomplishment of finishing graduate school, but instead I left. I rushed through my Day After to get to my Departure Day.

Maybe it’s because my imagination cannot hold what life will be like in this city without school. I graduated from high school, then my mother and I moved a month later; graduated from college, and left town to move back home; laid off from my job, so I moved across the country a couple of months later. Why would I stay in Seattle after graduate school? It seems I associate endings with leaving, so what does it mean to stay?

What does it mean to finish, but not leave?

My hope is that it means breathing deep, anchoring myself in community, and growing roots without forgetting how to fly….

During the past 4 years, I have been deconstructed and loved into life like I have never known before; I have been shaped and challenged into further growth by my school, my therapist, my friends, and my family in ways that cannot be described, but I feel them in my bones. I have learned how to love myself, how to love others, and how to receive love from others.  I have found breath and life, darkness and light, and through it all have come to know God is such a way that words escape me.

Maybe it’s time to learn how to be home in the midst of transition. Maybe this is the phase of life where I learn to stay instead of leave, where I choose to be in it (whatever ‘it’ may be) rather than running towards a new place, a new ‘me.’ Maybe, just maybe, this time I will turn my face to the rainy city I love and finally listen when it says, ‘Welcome home, Courtney.’”

May we all know the power of being home.

 

Selah, my friends. Peace be with you.

sabbath

Holy Saturday.

Sunshine. Scandal. Rest.

Lazy? Maybe.

But holy? Yes.
Human? Yes.
Imago Dei? Yes.

Selah.

My East Coast Tour, part 1 [aka: how small is this world? REAL SMALL, Y'ALL]

the Red Sox game I didn’t get to see [super sad face goes here]

The only day I was in Boston to sight see and fall in love* happened to also be the day that the Boston Marathon bomber was on the loose, so the city was on lock down. No buses, trains, or any form of public transportation were operating; residents were encouraged to stay home and not open the door for anyone except uniformed police. The possibility of being shot by a SWAT team puts a damper on a day of wandering through a city.

My friend and I ended up leaving earlier than originally planned, saying we would return that night if the game wasn’t cancelled. We had purchased our Sox tickets before we bought our plane tickets because what says Boston more than a night at Fenway with the Red Sox?**

The game was cancelled. 

We drove to New York that evening in a rental car
instead of riding a bus there the next afternoon.

Boston, we’ll be back; that’s a promise. 

three items, three phases of life, fully lived in 24 hours.

You want to know about my trip to New York? Ask me about the 24 hours in which these three items were given to me. I ran into an old friend from high school at a club in NYC; I saw one of my all time favorite shows; and I randomly sat next to one of my heroes at that favorite show of mine.

New York is magical.

There is a word that speaks to the magical, other-worldly, human connectedness that happened to me in that brief amount of time… but I can’t think of it right now because I’m totally sleep deprived and on a train. Who can get shit done on a train?***

On to DC for a night, then on to North Carolina. My East Coast Tour of Graduation Celebration is only half over.

Selah
———-
*in love with the city, mainly, but I was open to love in all it’s wild and crazy forms.

**Answer: NOTHING.

***You, maybe, but not me and this is my blog, so the answer is no one.

why did I even bother with the mascara today?

This is my last day of graduate school and I cannot stop crying.

People keeping asking me, “Are you excited?!” and it feels phrased in such a way that they really want me to be excited. I know that on some level I am excited. I’ve been working toward this goal for almost 4 years now, so yes, let’s celebrate! Let’s dance and sing of all the hard work, the late nights, the papers and projects that led to this moment.

But right now all I can feel is sad. This is the place and these are the people that have formed me. I came here so wounded from life that this school has been my incubator; I have been embraced here like I’ve never experienced before, and I have been changed by the people here. I am changed because of the people here.

I have been loved into life. My peers, my friends, my professors have loved me in such a way that they have breathed life into me, and I am forever changed.

I do not doubt that today will bring laughter, dancing and singing; but for now, right now, I will not hide my tears, either.

I will feel the loss of this school that has been my center while I attempt to find a new equilibrium; but for now, right now, I rub my tears into my cheeks and say a prayer of thanks.

Soon I hope to toast my accomplishment with friends near and far; but for now, right now, I sit in the sadness that comes when good things end.

This is what I have been trained for: to sit in the tension of endings and beginnings; that life is not black and white but swimming in gray; that sorrow and brokenness is not the end of the story.

This is the holy work of becoming a person.

I hope to never forget this day.

 

Selah.

 

my corner of the world

Here I sit after work while I fill out externship applications, job applications, tax forms, and write letters to friends. I’m running low on words, so I give you this picture instead.

What are you doing today?

 

Selah.

feeling all the feelings

Nothing seems more emo to me than walking down 2^nd Ave, listening to Coldplay’s The Scientist on Pandora, and crying (my hesitation and/or shame about crying in public slowly died out around the end of my first year of graduate school). I see people watching me cry and I want to tell them,  ”I cannot hold my own sadness right now so I cannot be responsible for your unease. Please stop staring at me.” Anxiety has been my constant companion lately, shaking my body day and night; tears could be found just below the surface with no quick and easy explanation.

WHY AM I CRYING?!?
Oh yes. I am sad.

I am swimming in a deep, dark sea of sadness, unable to see the shore. Receiving the kindness of others feels like drowning, but I may not be able to continue to float out here all alone. This is what endings do to me. They make me feel utterly helpless because they are a marker in the journey that says, “This thing is over. You must move on.”

Yes, I am so incredible sad.

My dearest, bestest friend has moved away; we are now separated by half a country. We met almost 4 years ago during the first week of school and have endured the hardships of self discovery that comes with being a student at TSSTP. She is my person. I spent holidays with her and her husband when I was here in the city; I was always invited over, her couch always available to me. Her husband loves her and told her upon marrying her that he knew I came with the deal, too.

When trying to describe her to someone, I said that she is my witness. She can speak to who I was when I arrived in Seattle and to who I have dared to become. She has had a front row seat to my journey, even when we went through what I call our Dark Year. She knows me now; she is the keeper of my secrets, my heterosexual life partner, my best friend. She fights for me when I cannot fight for myself because she seems to always see me in the best of lights even when I am in my own darkened spaces.

Yes, there will be phone calls, text messages, Facebook, and all the trappings of this technologically minded world, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as eating sushi together on a Tuesday afternoon, or being with each other at the spur of a moment because one of us needs the other. I can no longer ride the bus to her side of Seattle and lay on her couch while we dissect my dating life, enjoy a Crap TV Day, or comfort each other when life just feels really shitty.

Deep, deep sadness.

I usually long for the spring in Seattle; the time of year when things begin to bloom and take on new life reminding us, once again, that winter is not the end of the story; spring means summer is near with it’s sunshine and warmth. However, this time around I find myself asking the flowers to slow their birth, to take their petals back into their stems, and rest in the ground for just a bit longer. With the bloom of the tulips and the cherry blossom trees that I have come to love, also comes the end of school and with that I am distraught.

I have yet to know this city without books, classes, papers, projects, and meetings to mark the way through the year. The journey I began four years ago feels so much closer than 2,000 miles I drove to get to this place. Nostalgia washes over me much these days because that’s what happens when your end: everything from the beginning has a bit of a haze around the edges and you can’t help but tell stories with wonder and delight, filled with phrases like, “I can’t believe that happen… I can’t believe I did that…”

Sadness and sorrow cannot be contained, just as anger, fear, and joy will not be kept silent. Emotions will only be held back for so long before they rise to the surface and demand to be recognized; they will no longer be reigned in. So I greet the sadness that comes with these particular endings; I remember the beauty of my friendship, and the times that weren’t so lovely. I look to my school with deep awe and gratitude for helping me grow into myself and learning how to do the same with other people. I feel the ending to my core, giving Sadness it’s deserved space with the promise that it will not be around forever; it will not linger past its time. One day soon, the sun will return, the flowers will bloom, and the trees will adorn themselves with leaves once again, consistent in the reminder that I am not the ruler of the universe.

Knowing all of this to be true, I still ask…

Dear blooming and growing things: please wait. Please. I want more time. Please give me more time. Hold your stems, your blooms, your leaves for just a bit longer. Please.

Selah

graduation and anxiety {also: questions matter}

My lovely and weird friends, I am sorry for my blogging silence.

I find myself wrestling with a lot lately, and then I always think too often on whether or not to push that taunting ‘publish’ button, or if that specific topic need not be shared with the world wide webs.

The biggest thing, the item that carries the most weight on The List of Things I Think About A Lot is that I graduate with my Masters degree in a few months.* The topic of graduation seems to always be a natural flow into discussing my plans for life in the Great Beyond (what I like to call The Real World). What will I be doing? Where will I be living? Will I stay in Seattle? Will I move back to Texas? Where else would I go? Will I try to find agency work? Will I attempt to open a private practice? What population of people do I want to work with/serve?

fucking. anxiety. attack. 

I seem to be denied the right to celebrate this major accomplishment because I’m too busy trying to remember how to breathe and praying that my heart rate slows down to it’s regular pace. I’m 29 and the answer to all of those questions is I don’t know.

I don’t know. Are you happy?
Hope your anxiety is as high as mine.
Let’s be miserable together.
We can share the paper bag we’ll need to regulate our breathing. 

Can well all agree that we need to learn how to ask better questions? Questions are so often a tool used to get to know someone as how we can define them. Example: the first question usually asked of a new person in your life is ‘What do you do?’ From their answer, we put them in our own specific categories to help us organize our reality. What if we learned how to ask better questions? Questions that do not serve a purpose other than to help another person dream and inspire conversation beyond what pays the bills

Instead of asking me what I plan on doing after graduation, ask me how I am a better version of me today than I was 5 years ago.

Please don’t ask me of my plans for a job, but feel free to ask me about the last thing I did that made me feel completely free.

I will not answer the questions about where I will live, but feel free to ask me about those whom I have chosen to share my life with through tears, conversations, stories, laughter, midnight drunken runs through Capital Hill, Cinco de Mayo dances, cups of coffee, bonfires on the beach at Golden Gardens, early morning tweets, and grocery shopping adventures.

I will find work; I will pay my bills, please do not doubt that. I will pull the most glorious shots of espresso, compile the most delectable sandwich, or format the best looking Excel spreadsheet known to man in order to earn enough money to pay my bills.

In the mean time, may we please pause? May we hold this moment so dear that we stop long enough to take in the fact that I have accomplished something momentous?

I hope we can raise a glass to celebrate the woman I have been,
the woman I am,
and the woman I am in the process of being.

Selah.

 

—–
*unless things go horribly, horribly wrong; which, after the Shit Show that was the ending to my 1st Year, I always leave room for the idea that things can, in fact, go horribly, horribly wrong.