Being in the Present

I've been thinking about this post since December.

I got together with some old roommates from my first year of college on the 28th (which I remember because that's my niece's birthday, :). ) We met at my apartment to catch up and then went to a new restaurant in town to eat street tacos--the first time for one of us, a favorite dish for me, and an ordinary food for the other. I got to snuggle the first one's second baby, and I told them about our infertility situation, and the third told us about wanting to meet someone. It amazed me, that such different women with such different situations could be there together and it could feel right to me. It could feel like home. They are part of my home.

I have this defense mechanism, you see. This thing I do to keep myself from hurting too much. I live in the present, and I work hard to do so. It takes mental and emotional effort, and there's been a casualty in this choice. I'm not good at keeping friends.

I wrote this poem in high school, and although I'm not remembering a line from the second and third stanzas, I remember the rest. It is probably the only one of my own poems I've come close to memorizing other than one about my Dad:


Lost a friend today
Or was it yesterday?
Just sort of slipped and spread apart.

Ours is now a hallway friendship--
Casual smiles, unconcerned hellos.

I am too scared to reach out
and snap us into meaning again.

Living in the present keeps me focused on the things I can influence. It stops me from being sad about events that happened years ago and getting scared about what might happen in the future. It grounds me. It makes me able to function, but also makes it so reaching out and back to people from "before" is foreign and stretches the muscles of my emotion into unfamiliar shapes.

My life is segmented into sections--high school, Snow years, before mission, mission, after mission, dating Jay, married life, changing to new job. The people from each of those periods are pretty segmented, too. I can list those associated with each point quite easily. And I don't talk to more than about two from each. Too much energy, too much to handle. Not them, but my feelings regarding them. How much it takes to be involved and vulnerable with more than a handful at a time. I'm not good at it. I rip too easily. So I focus. I stay in today and try not to think too much of befores.

December 28th is a day I remember because it wasn't entirely like that on that day. It felt right. It wasn't so emotionally taxing to reach back and out to where those friendships started and who I am now and how that integrates with what and who I was.

And on the ride back to my apartment? I was saying thank you to the girl who made it happen, and she told me that of course she would reach out when she's in the state; that we matter to her so much and helped make her who she is today. I didn't know she felt like that. I didn't know I felt like that and that it would mean so much to hear another human share the reciprocation of what I had been unable to define. She said that whenever she hears Changed for Good from Wicked, she thinks of us Snow girls. It made me cry in relief; in gratitude that someone else felt the same, in happiness that I got to hear it.

Being in the present comes at a cost--friendships lost and laid aside. I'm grateful that in this case, I didn't have to pay it forever.



I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you...
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...

-Changed for Good, Wicked

Silence

I went to Urgent Care today to get a dressing changed and noticed something while I was there.

The exam room I was waiting in had a door which connected it to another exam room. As I sat down to wait for the doctor, I heard through the door exclamations of, "Oh! Ow. Owowow! That HURTS! OWWW!" It wasn't dramatic, just  another patient on the other side of the door, getting themselves through the pain. It made me think, because I don't do that.

When I'm experiencing pain, I get quiet. I tamp it down before I realize I'm doing so. It's reflexive. Compulsive, maybe.

Hearing someone who had no problem sharing how hard it was to feel the way they did made me remember back to a time with my former roommates where we sat around and took a pop psychology sort of story-quiz together. We shared our answers to all the different scenarios in the story, then laughed together as the meaning of our answers were decoded.

One of the questions was what you would do if you were on a horse in the desert near a ravine and saw a storm coming along the horizon. I said I would go into the ravine and find the best shelter I could to hunker down while waiting for the storm to pass over me. The storm represented problems, troubles, trials, and difficulty. And there I was, hunkering down. This is the definition of my silence, my repressed cries of pain. I'm just waiting it out-- at least I've learned it will pass.

But I think there could be more. The feeling I get when I think about hunkering down... It's the same feeling I had yesterday when I went into Urgent Care to get the cyst on my tailbone drained. It's the quick sucking in of a painful breath and the water flooding my eyes but not spilling over as my body quietly shakes with the shock of the sensation; the painfully clenched fists and tremoring muscles and the breathing breathing breathing to make it through one more moment; focus in, focus in, focus in. Closed flickering eyes tightened mouth and breathe breathe breathe deep until it stops.

There's something more than nerves that hurt in that.