Yesterday, on my morning subway ride, I looked up and saw my reflection. Oh, yes, there I am. Not
a passing thought, but steady and centered, it held onto me for a
while. Hair half-dried, half-wet, black trench coat tied lop-sided with
the belt hanging down to my knees, skinny jeans, and black ballet flats.
A recognition, re-cognition, of the lines of my legs, the curves of my
waist, the slight arch of my shoulders. Balanced and full and calm. There I am.
Recognition and re-cognition, as if I had been missing all this time.
All these years. As if I always knew I'd be standing there on the A
train on a Thursday morning in my twenty-ninth year, despite and in
spite and because of it all. Waiting for only myself. Oh yes, there I am.
May 17, 2013
April 5, 2013
Wanted: Local BFF
Wanted: Local best friend who loves coffee and/or tea and/or wine, meandering conversation, and silly jokes. Must have a penchant for long emails, late-night confessions, and stargazing. (Translation for stargazing: a hunt for direction, light, and hope amid the city's concrete and skyscrapers. A sincere belief that we can find them, even if, even if...) An appreciation for words in any form is a bonus. Must be familiar with the falling down aspects of life but mostly with the getting back up part. Ideally finds over-communication endearing. Willing to spend too much time pondering what-did-he-mean-when-he-said, even when we both know he meant precisely what he said. Hoping for someone who likes five minute phone calls mid-afternoon to discuss whether or not vitamin water goes bad and can handle almost-panicked phone calls at 11:49 pm about a helicopter flying over the apartment searching for three men who held up a bodega at gunpoint. Someone who knows when to insist on an immediate glass of wine to analyze all the details and who also has a thing for long-term plans. Someone who had no judgmental tendencies of anyone, ever. Well, almost ever. Most importantly, must be intimately familiar with the concept of throwing oneself into the unknown in the name of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and figuring it out along the way. Actually, the very most important quality - just knows how to be a good friend.[I am very, very grateful to have many wonderful friends in my life who match this description. I'd just like one a little closer by, please.]
April 3, 2013
a thousand thank yous
A thousand thank yous I sent across the avenues and down the streets on foggy mornings and snowy afternoons, sent upward beyond the tops of the buildings and through subway tunnels. And still, a thousand thank yous could never be enough for the moments when life swoops me up and carries me over the thresholds of doorways I once deemed closed-doored and dead-bolted. Again and evermore, thank you.
March 27, 2013
whoa.
I had no idea it had been a MONTH since I last posted. I had no intention of leaving this space for so long. Actually, I even have a few blog posts scribbled in notebooks from the past couple of weeks that I just haven't had a chance to dig out and type up. Oops.It's spring break (which feels a little weird to be typing as an almost-thirty-year-old, but so be it), which means I actually have a bit of time to slow down and hopefully get some writing done. Or at least dig up those old, handwritten posts in the next few days. Want the quick overview? It's been a pretty spectacular past few weeks stocked-full with hard work paying off, great news, and lots of smiles. I can't wait to share more, but for now I just want to post a quick hello because omg-I-can't-believe-I-haven't-posted-in-over-a-month panic set in when popped over here. Eeeek.
I hope all is well with you all!
(p.s. that photo is from an old trip to Seattle, because I also haven't picked up my camera in months. double eeek.)
February 23, 2013
{ a case of you }
trav·el /ˈtravəl/ verb: make a journey, typically of some length or abroad.
Long car rides, cross-atlantic-cross-pacific-cross-continental plane rides. Baggies full of candy, playlists composed, sunglasses pushed up over our foreheads, sitting on the bridges of our noses. A gentle shift of the transmission, hand over mine at takeoff, open windows, the place where the night sky kisses the dark tops of trees. Song lyrics belted out, palms and fingertips against the steering wheel drum set, laughter and laughter and laughter... Backpacks or suitcases, off-the-beaten-path tiny coffee houses where the locals discuss town politics and fine wine, the golden light of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, late nights or early mornings, afternoon naps, crackers or steak for dinner. Showers optional and sleeping bags rolled up, champagne room service, say hello in every language. Step by step, the miles rolling by, side by side, you and I.
February 17, 2013
On Social Science and Matters of the Heart
"You look tired," he approached the topic gently. "Are you tired?"
There are all the ways I wanted to respond.
I watch the clock change to 1:45 am and force myself to shut/put/close it off/down. The book, the article, the computer, my journal. Its pages filling since September with run-on sentences and multi-colored ink. All of it, all. of. it. perhaps, with run-on sentences and multi-colored ink. Trying to make sense of. I chastise myself for confusion and the time lost, the hours ticking by on the clock, and so little to show for it all.
Or I force myself to crawl into bed moments after I walk through the door. 10:30 pm filled with hope for an easy descent into a dream. Hope drains and the hours fill with worry. Theories and data and what has come before and what I want to come after. I see 1:45 am and chastise myself and finally collapse into darkness.
My roommates come and go at all hours of the night. Visitors parading through our kitchen and shouts catapulted from the street towards our windows. After-hours showers at 4:30 am. Night and day, week and weekend, all mix and swirl. I roll over, careful not to fall off the edge of my narrow mattress, temporary turned permanent. I think this must be the early, carefree twenties that I missed. I think of everything I chose over that. Everything I chose that led me to this. 4 am and the twenties and then suddenly the thirties.
I screeched in the hallway the other day before class. Accidental and involuntary, I hardly recognized it as my own voice. Everyone looked at me, as startled as I, and I blurted out quickly before I lost my nerve, before I lost the truth, that I am tired of hearing about shriveled, old eggs. Tactless, yes. But only as a mirror of the tactlessness in which it is thrown my way. Without the necessary conversations, the necessary understanding. As if I am not also up against that ticking clock and watching the hours turn into years. As if I have none of the same decisions, the same struggles, the same hopes and dreams. I may not, but it is not known, it is not considered, it is not set in stone. These words, thrust my way, as if I am a non-participant, other than, not-seen. "That is on you," she said. And she's right. But it's still a heavy weight to bear alone.
"Do you want children?" he asked me one evening. I took a deep breath and pulled away from the leather couch already sucking me in and enunciated each word with its matching weight, "Right now, I don't want to raise a child as a single mother," I began. He laughed loudly and said that's the most cynical sentence he has ever heard, did I really feel that way about love? I didn't try to explain that it is perhaps the least cynical sentence I could have produced; that it's filled with hope and possibility. Hope and possibility for love and life and life and love and life and love and love and life... both and the spaces in between and for all the ways they combine. It's not the 'no' of my early twenties, it's not the 'yes' of somebody else's early twenties, it's a yes to life and love and however they combine. To hope and possibility and life and love and their endless combinations, I answer yes.
My alarm goes off at 6:45 am and I forget to calculate the five hours between the shut off, shut down, and the alarm. I've never been good with numbers and estimate eight hours of sleep. Heavy eyes, heavy bones, achy skin, a tiny bed in an unpacked room in a quiet apartment. I can barely roll over, getting up seems out of the question. The thought that I'll never be a morning person brings me to the brink of tears. Don't fall back to sleep, don't fall back to sleep, don't fall back to sleep becomes a semi-mantra, half asleep still, fighting with every demon I have. I think of the kids walking to school, the professionals sipping coffee in their cars as they commute to work, the stay-at-home mothers who have already made two batches of chocolate chip cookies. I diagnosis myself with some type of sleep-inducing disease, some form of mono. I worry I am depressed. Every morning. It's the bone-chilling fear of that black hole that leads me to finger counting. 5 hours of sleep. Minus the 4 am shouting. I am not depressed. I get out of bed. Some day, I will be a morning person.
The days are long and short and orderly and disorderly. Every day. Always, always filled. With the best of the best of gratitude and hope and life and love and their endless possibilities. Cynical? It's laughable. Depressed? Haha. Tired? There's always more coffee. I've learned, since 14, since 19, since 25, to make my decisions in the daylight.
I am terrified by my decisions. An innate disbelief in security, a trust for the disregard of risk. This is who I am. By my nature, by my nurture. My nurture as in what I choose to tell myself, what I choose for life-design, that which I value. The terror is still exhausting, of course.
"To collect your own data will take a year or two longer," we are instructed. I already know I will collect my own data. It will take me longer. I planned and planned and planned to do this and that by then and now. Those plans based on other people's data, other people's theories, based on other people's methods. Data and theories and methods and plans that crumbled under testing. My life as the test. I let it crumble. If I have agency, I will find it; therefore, I let it crumble. I will collect my own data. It will take me longer. It is the best of myself. It is all of myself.
"To collect your own data will be more expensive," we are warned. I think of the price I have already paid. In square footage, in paychecks, in evenings on the couch watching Friends re-runs, in road trips south, in mortgage payments, in double beds, in Friday happy hours, in hours of sleep. Yet, I only know the price I am not willing to pay - the price of hope and possibility and life and love. I know which is more expensive.
Significance. That is the goal of social science research. Data collection and theories and methods all should result in significance. It means something. The patterns point to something. It is not random. Perhaps it wasn't actual, by definition, data collection that I did last semester. Perhaps it was more the assembling of already available data into something I wanted to interpret. But still, I tried. Data and theory and method and... no significance. Of no importance. Random. Means nothing.
Last week, after trying again, after assembling different data, data that took longer to assemble and took into account a broader depiction, I found significance. It was, in some ways, the same - different measures but the same concepts, the same theories, the same units. I just had to look harder, look again, look broader. "You must be so excited," I heard a few times from a few people. I was. I was. But I also found insignificance last week. In a quiet, tucked away corner, I collected data, compiled theories, assembled a method and ran a test. The results came back insignificant. Of no importance. Random. Means nothing. Except that I have learned, when it is your life, insignificance means everything.
I went for a walk alone Friday night. Down through lower Manhattan as rush hour turned into happy hour turned into moonlit hours. For miles and hours, I walked alone. Amid twenty-somethings crowding the sidewalk in small groups, amid thirty-something couples who meandered the crosswalks holding hands. I thought about significance. What has turned out to be my insignificant twenties. How much I fear the same for my thirties.
He would be the first to tell me that my twenties were not insignificant. He has, time and time again. He knows how to rearrange the data. And yet, he is the one at whom I wanted to scream "INSIGNIFICANT!" Friday night. Loud and full of emotion. And I wanted him, unlike the others, to hear the hope and the possibility and the love and the life. I kept my mouth shut. The burden too heavy to bear if he only heard cynicism. I walked the night away, instead.
"You look tired," he approached the topic gently. "Are you tired?"
There are all the ways I wanted to respond.
And then there is the way I did respond.
"Yes, I think I need to get more sleep."
There are all the ways I wanted to respond.
I watch the clock change to 1:45 am and force myself to shut/put/close it off/down. The book, the article, the computer, my journal. Its pages filling since September with run-on sentences and multi-colored ink. All of it, all. of. it. perhaps, with run-on sentences and multi-colored ink. Trying to make sense of. I chastise myself for confusion and the time lost, the hours ticking by on the clock, and so little to show for it all.
Or I force myself to crawl into bed moments after I walk through the door. 10:30 pm filled with hope for an easy descent into a dream. Hope drains and the hours fill with worry. Theories and data and what has come before and what I want to come after. I see 1:45 am and chastise myself and finally collapse into darkness.
My roommates come and go at all hours of the night. Visitors parading through our kitchen and shouts catapulted from the street towards our windows. After-hours showers at 4:30 am. Night and day, week and weekend, all mix and swirl. I roll over, careful not to fall off the edge of my narrow mattress, temporary turned permanent. I think this must be the early, carefree twenties that I missed. I think of everything I chose over that. Everything I chose that led me to this. 4 am and the twenties and then suddenly the thirties.
I screeched in the hallway the other day before class. Accidental and involuntary, I hardly recognized it as my own voice. Everyone looked at me, as startled as I, and I blurted out quickly before I lost my nerve, before I lost the truth, that I am tired of hearing about shriveled, old eggs. Tactless, yes. But only as a mirror of the tactlessness in which it is thrown my way. Without the necessary conversations, the necessary understanding. As if I am not also up against that ticking clock and watching the hours turn into years. As if I have none of the same decisions, the same struggles, the same hopes and dreams. I may not, but it is not known, it is not considered, it is not set in stone. These words, thrust my way, as if I am a non-participant, other than, not-seen. "That is on you," she said. And she's right. But it's still a heavy weight to bear alone.
"Do you want children?" he asked me one evening. I took a deep breath and pulled away from the leather couch already sucking me in and enunciated each word with its matching weight, "Right now, I don't want to raise a child as a single mother," I began. He laughed loudly and said that's the most cynical sentence he has ever heard, did I really feel that way about love? I didn't try to explain that it is perhaps the least cynical sentence I could have produced; that it's filled with hope and possibility. Hope and possibility for love and life and life and love and life and love and love and life... both and the spaces in between and for all the ways they combine. It's not the 'no' of my early twenties, it's not the 'yes' of somebody else's early twenties, it's a yes to life and love and however they combine. To hope and possibility and life and love and their endless combinations, I answer yes.
My alarm goes off at 6:45 am and I forget to calculate the five hours between the shut off, shut down, and the alarm. I've never been good with numbers and estimate eight hours of sleep. Heavy eyes, heavy bones, achy skin, a tiny bed in an unpacked room in a quiet apartment. I can barely roll over, getting up seems out of the question. The thought that I'll never be a morning person brings me to the brink of tears. Don't fall back to sleep, don't fall back to sleep, don't fall back to sleep becomes a semi-mantra, half asleep still, fighting with every demon I have. I think of the kids walking to school, the professionals sipping coffee in their cars as they commute to work, the stay-at-home mothers who have already made two batches of chocolate chip cookies. I diagnosis myself with some type of sleep-inducing disease, some form of mono. I worry I am depressed. Every morning. It's the bone-chilling fear of that black hole that leads me to finger counting. 5 hours of sleep. Minus the 4 am shouting. I am not depressed. I get out of bed. Some day, I will be a morning person.
The days are long and short and orderly and disorderly. Every day. Always, always filled. With the best of the best of gratitude and hope and life and love and their endless possibilities. Cynical? It's laughable. Depressed? Haha. Tired? There's always more coffee. I've learned, since 14, since 19, since 25, to make my decisions in the daylight.
I am terrified by my decisions. An innate disbelief in security, a trust for the disregard of risk. This is who I am. By my nature, by my nurture. My nurture as in what I choose to tell myself, what I choose for life-design, that which I value. The terror is still exhausting, of course.
"To collect your own data will take a year or two longer," we are instructed. I already know I will collect my own data. It will take me longer. I planned and planned and planned to do this and that by then and now. Those plans based on other people's data, other people's theories, based on other people's methods. Data and theories and methods and plans that crumbled under testing. My life as the test. I let it crumble. If I have agency, I will find it; therefore, I let it crumble. I will collect my own data. It will take me longer. It is the best of myself. It is all of myself.
"To collect your own data will be more expensive," we are warned. I think of the price I have already paid. In square footage, in paychecks, in evenings on the couch watching Friends re-runs, in road trips south, in mortgage payments, in double beds, in Friday happy hours, in hours of sleep. Yet, I only know the price I am not willing to pay - the price of hope and possibility and life and love. I know which is more expensive.
Significance. That is the goal of social science research. Data collection and theories and methods all should result in significance. It means something. The patterns point to something. It is not random. Perhaps it wasn't actual, by definition, data collection that I did last semester. Perhaps it was more the assembling of already available data into something I wanted to interpret. But still, I tried. Data and theory and method and... no significance. Of no importance. Random. Means nothing.
Last week, after trying again, after assembling different data, data that took longer to assemble and took into account a broader depiction, I found significance. It was, in some ways, the same - different measures but the same concepts, the same theories, the same units. I just had to look harder, look again, look broader. "You must be so excited," I heard a few times from a few people. I was. I was. But I also found insignificance last week. In a quiet, tucked away corner, I collected data, compiled theories, assembled a method and ran a test. The results came back insignificant. Of no importance. Random. Means nothing. Except that I have learned, when it is your life, insignificance means everything.
I went for a walk alone Friday night. Down through lower Manhattan as rush hour turned into happy hour turned into moonlit hours. For miles and hours, I walked alone. Amid twenty-somethings crowding the sidewalk in small groups, amid thirty-something couples who meandered the crosswalks holding hands. I thought about significance. What has turned out to be my insignificant twenties. How much I fear the same for my thirties.
He would be the first to tell me that my twenties were not insignificant. He has, time and time again. He knows how to rearrange the data. And yet, he is the one at whom I wanted to scream "INSIGNIFICANT!" Friday night. Loud and full of emotion. And I wanted him, unlike the others, to hear the hope and the possibility and the love and the life. I kept my mouth shut. The burden too heavy to bear if he only heard cynicism. I walked the night away, instead.
"You look tired," he approached the topic gently. "Are you tired?"
There are all the ways I wanted to respond.
And then there is the way I did respond.
"Yes, I think I need to get more sleep."
February 13, 2013
Spring in DC & New York in the Fall
Oh, this is a good find in my drafts, I think. I "wrote" it back in March 2012 when spring was arriving in DC and I was extremely excited about my upcoming move to NYC. It is actually an email I wrote to Nicole cut and pasted here, which is probably why I either hesitated to publish it or just plain forgot about it.
One of my favorite things about finding it now is that so many of the things I was really, really excited for did happen and I loved them. It's a great reminder that some of the not-so-great things I struggle with right now (still unpacking my room, trying to find a quiet place to work in midtown, balancing a busy schedule) are really just small details compared to everything I love about my life in NYC. I also love how excited I was for spring in DC, because yes, spring in DC is amazing and I am so, so, so, so glad I had a fabulous spring and summer there. Looking forward to the future while living in the moment is something I should do more often. Anyway, below is the email and yes, my emails are usually this all over the place. Lucky, Nicole.
One of my favorite things about finding it now is that so many of the things I was really, really excited for did happen and I loved them. It's a great reminder that some of the not-so-great things I struggle with right now (still unpacking my room, trying to find a quiet place to work in midtown, balancing a busy schedule) are really just small details compared to everything I love about my life in NYC. I also love how excited I was for spring in DC, because yes, spring in DC is amazing and I am so, so, so, so glad I had a fabulous spring and summer there. Looking forward to the future while living in the moment is something I should do more often. Anyway, below is the email and yes, my emails are usually this all over the place. Lucky, Nicole.
----------------
I am in the best mood ever today and because I share so many of my terrible moods with you, I want to take a minute to tell you that I am positively glowing today. I'm not exactly sure why, but here are some of the things I keep thinking about:New York, New York, New York! Fall in New York is probably my absolute favorite New York season and I can't wait to finally live it every day.
Holy moly, I want to write my dissertation. I want to just sit down and decide what research and people and topics and statistics and interview questions are going to keep me the best company at 3am on a Wednesday night when I only have coffee and sour patch kids sloshing around in my stomach. Or carrot sticks! Who knows, maybe my stress-eating preferences will change.
(I'm hoping this doesn't stress you out but) Omg you're getting married. Which is awesome for your life. But is also awesome for me. Because it means I get to see a lot more of you sometime in the near future. Bridal showers (apparently you are having more than one in my head, that's cool) and bachelorette gathering (party sounds too bar hopping-esque but yes, party) and the wedding and mostly, all the time I get to spend with you and your awesome friends and family. Seriously, I can't wait to have a glass of wine with your mom. And in my head [your to-be brother in law] is going to be such a blast at your wedding and dance all night (even though he didn't dance with us at [redacted]). I'm also thinking I might be able to make it up for Common Ground Fair, which is neither here nor there really, but still. Eeek!
It's gorgeous out. Spring is arriving and I love DC in the spring and I have been here long enough to say that. I've also been here long enough to say that I love it as long as it is a sunny spring, but... I know enough to say that. Meaning, I actually fulfilled a goal/dream of living in DC. Hells yeah. Anyway. Spring. Eastern Market. Cherry Blossoms. Mid-seventies weather. Porch sitting. Skirts and sun-kissed skin. Ice coffee. Long evenings. LOVE IT ALL.
[Redacted paragraph relating to work flow and summer projects.]
Speaking of summer, my good friend from college, Matt, will be living in DC for part of [the summer]. I fully intend on having many, many happy hours. Look at that. Me. Going to happy hour. With a good friend from college. After work. That makes me giddier than I ever thought it would.
Also? I'm pretty sure this is the year for my love life. Yup. In the next twelve months, something's gonna happen. Something's gonna spark. There's too much goodness squirling around in my heart for it not turn into a vortex of butterflies and swooning over some wonderful, fantastic, amazing, crazy-attractive, crazy-awesome man.
I can just feel it. All this happiness. I hope it comes oozing out of the screen and into your heart and you're just bursting with it too.
Happy spring, my love!
February 2, 2013
Note to Self
[Notes to Myself - To be Received at Age 21, April 2005]
That pamphlet on the PeaceCorps you have sitting on your desk? It doesn't go away. You'll lose it or toss it or hand it off to somebody else but it never actually goes away. You can fill a binder with AmeriCorps paperwork and it still doesn't go away. The LLBean employee you stopped to inquire about backpacking with a petite frame? Don't feel guilty for taking up her time. You'll think of her advice for years and years and wonder if perhaps that dream would be a reality already if you actually purchased that backpack. The unearthed plan doesn't go away either. In fact, it takes flight in your body, zipping from your heart to your head to your lungs. You'll take the deepest breaths when it is what pumps your lungs in and out. The midnight sprint you made across campus to catch him, to tell him you love him, the bodies you ran past without caring about their faces or your face, damp with tears of both yes and no, and maybe you've never felt this certain and this unsure in your entire life? That is what every real, true yes in your entire life feels like. Every other yes will become a no over time. The sustaining, the life sustaining, yeses move you. They physically move you. Across campus, down to your knees, up the city avenues - quickly and forcefully and urgently and without the need for thought. Without the need for thought. The others become others - bodies not to crash into. They can't stop you, they can't encourage you, because you don't see them, you don't see their thoughts on their faces, you don't hear their opinions, all you feel is forward movement, almost not fast enough. When certainty and uncertainty mix together, cursing through your veins, you think it might kill you on the spot. As though battery acid has replaced blood and you might actually be a Kerouac star - "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." And in those moments there is nothing better than exploding like a spider across the night sky.
These true yeses don't go away.
Other true yeses arrive.
They cannot be ignored.
They feed your lungs, your heart, your soul.
Always.
Plan accordingly. They always arrive. They always arrive on time. Make room for them. Wait for them. Build your life on them. Trust them.
That pamphlet on the PeaceCorps you have sitting on your desk? It doesn't go away. You'll lose it or toss it or hand it off to somebody else but it never actually goes away. You can fill a binder with AmeriCorps paperwork and it still doesn't go away. The LLBean employee you stopped to inquire about backpacking with a petite frame? Don't feel guilty for taking up her time. You'll think of her advice for years and years and wonder if perhaps that dream would be a reality already if you actually purchased that backpack. The unearthed plan doesn't go away either. In fact, it takes flight in your body, zipping from your heart to your head to your lungs. You'll take the deepest breaths when it is what pumps your lungs in and out. The midnight sprint you made across campus to catch him, to tell him you love him, the bodies you ran past without caring about their faces or your face, damp with tears of both yes and no, and maybe you've never felt this certain and this unsure in your entire life? That is what every real, true yes in your entire life feels like. Every other yes will become a no over time. The sustaining, the life sustaining, yeses move you. They physically move you. Across campus, down to your knees, up the city avenues - quickly and forcefully and urgently and without the need for thought. Without the need for thought. The others become others - bodies not to crash into. They can't stop you, they can't encourage you, because you don't see them, you don't see their thoughts on their faces, you don't hear their opinions, all you feel is forward movement, almost not fast enough. When certainty and uncertainty mix together, cursing through your veins, you think it might kill you on the spot. As though battery acid has replaced blood and you might actually be a Kerouac star - "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." And in those moments there is nothing better than exploding like a spider across the night sky.
Plan accordingly. They always arrive. They always arrive on time. Make room for them. Wait for them. Build your life on them. Trust them.
February 1, 2013
How Little I Know
Walking through Grand Central the other night, a man who looked about my age approached me and asked if I speak English. I assumed finance industry professional, with his recently cut hair and black jacket and shiny shoes. Casual Sunday night wear for a stereotype of this professional group, appropriate for 10 pm in Grand Central. I do speak English so his question caught my attention. I'm always caught in the middle - I find New Yorkers kind and helpful, despite stereotypes, and I find myself in New York as cold and dismissive, despite my personality. I never know whether to stop and help or keep walking. Most often, I run into old high school classmates in Grand Central and although he wasn't asking if he knew me from almost fifteen years ago, he could have been someone I passed in the halls of my high school, which made me pause for a moment and consider how much help I might actually be.
I must have shot him a confused look, because he laughed and said not to hold it against him that he asked me if I spoke English; he doesn't like to make assumptions. It took me off my guard a little, this guy who looked about my age and had managed to stop me in my tracks and call me out in a matter of seconds and make me smile. It didn't last long though, because he started telling me how he is from a town that sounds familiar but I would never be able to place on a map and he said he was only in the city for a short time and then he cupped his hand around the side of his mouth and I think he told me he was hungry but I am not sure because confusion flooded my smile and my face and my eyes and my ears. Something wasn't computing for me and I suddenly realized I had to end the conversation I had not yet participated in immediately and walk away without offending him. Without offending him because I am always worried about my safety and not offending people sometimes feels like the only real defense mechanism I have, given that I am a tiny female often carrying my most prized possessions - my computer and iPhone.
As I opened my mouth to deliver my standard "no thank you" and walk away - which I use in both situations where that response makes sense and those in which it does not - an older women missing a few teeth, wearing layers of ripped, dirty clothing, and dragging a wooden wagon behind her piled high with plastic bags walked briskly to my side. "Honey, just walk away," she instructed me, "he tries to play this scam all the time and I tell him to stop it but he doesn't listen." She didn't wait to see if I would take her advice, she walked past me as briskly as she approached me. She was right in part, at least. I had known that for the past four seconds that either he or the situation was "off", which is far longer than I like when I'm directly involved with that person or situation.
"I'm sorry. I'm going to walk away now," I stuttered to him, which was the most honest response I've ever given in situations like that. I was sorry. I had no idea if he was hungry. I had no idea how to help him. I had no idea how to stay in that situation and remain feeling safe. I had no idea what relationship was between him and the woman. I apologized to him for listening to the woman who looked like she did not have a place to live, a woman who did not have a home, a homeless woman, rather than him, a man who looked like a man that might take me out for a drink at a swanky bar, a man that might make me laugh when I've had a bad day, a man that I might hold hands with under the table on Thanksgiving day.
The last part of the apology I regret.
I know so very little about homelessness. That might be all I know about homelessness even: how very little I know about it. I think it might wear old, ripped, layered clothing. I think it might wear clean, black ski jackets. I think it might be young men and old women. Young children and teenagers and elderly. Some days I worry that it could be you or me. How far away from it are we really? That is how little I know about it.
I do know that I have been confronted with my lack of knowledge on homelessness almost every single day for the past two and a half years. Living in Washington, DC and NYC includes living with those who have gorgeous homes and those who have no homes. Sometimes people without homes shout angry words at me, words I don't even want to type here, sometimes they aggressively suggest I should eat more, sometimes they give me unsolicited dating advice, sometimes they gift me with kind smiles, and the other night a woman who probably did not have a warm bed that night helped me out of an uncertain situation so I could return to my home and my warm bed that night. How little I know about homelessness and how even less I know about the people without homes I encounter regularly.
The night after I apologized to the man in Grand Central station and never thanked the woman, I worked with the city's official count of people who are homeless. A count that helps to determine policy and currently focuses on providing services to veterans, youth, and LGBT youth. As part of the quality assurance of the count, I laid out a piece of cardboard box and sat with a friend on the sidewalk, all bundled up in the cold night air, for a few hours. I spent most of that time wondering what it would take in my life to turn that piece of sidewalk into my home, to turn those few hours in the middle of the night into my experience night after night. A lot. I hope it would take a lot and I hope I never have to face that amount of tragedy and devastation that would have to occur before I considered a place on the sidewalk an alternative to a bed indoors. I thought about that man and I thought about that woman and I thought about the many faces I grew to recognize and then know in DC. I thought about how little I know.
I must have shot him a confused look, because he laughed and said not to hold it against him that he asked me if I spoke English; he doesn't like to make assumptions. It took me off my guard a little, this guy who looked about my age and had managed to stop me in my tracks and call me out in a matter of seconds and make me smile. It didn't last long though, because he started telling me how he is from a town that sounds familiar but I would never be able to place on a map and he said he was only in the city for a short time and then he cupped his hand around the side of his mouth and I think he told me he was hungry but I am not sure because confusion flooded my smile and my face and my eyes and my ears. Something wasn't computing for me and I suddenly realized I had to end the conversation I had not yet participated in immediately and walk away without offending him. Without offending him because I am always worried about my safety and not offending people sometimes feels like the only real defense mechanism I have, given that I am a tiny female often carrying my most prized possessions - my computer and iPhone.
As I opened my mouth to deliver my standard "no thank you" and walk away - which I use in both situations where that response makes sense and those in which it does not - an older women missing a few teeth, wearing layers of ripped, dirty clothing, and dragging a wooden wagon behind her piled high with plastic bags walked briskly to my side. "Honey, just walk away," she instructed me, "he tries to play this scam all the time and I tell him to stop it but he doesn't listen." She didn't wait to see if I would take her advice, she walked past me as briskly as she approached me. She was right in part, at least. I had known that for the past four seconds that either he or the situation was "off", which is far longer than I like when I'm directly involved with that person or situation.
"I'm sorry. I'm going to walk away now," I stuttered to him, which was the most honest response I've ever given in situations like that. I was sorry. I had no idea if he was hungry. I had no idea how to help him. I had no idea how to stay in that situation and remain feeling safe. I had no idea what relationship was between him and the woman. I apologized to him for listening to the woman who looked like she did not have a place to live, a woman who did not have a home, a homeless woman, rather than him, a man who looked like a man that might take me out for a drink at a swanky bar, a man that might make me laugh when I've had a bad day, a man that I might hold hands with under the table on Thanksgiving day.
The last part of the apology I regret.
I know so very little about homelessness. That might be all I know about homelessness even: how very little I know about it. I think it might wear old, ripped, layered clothing. I think it might wear clean, black ski jackets. I think it might be young men and old women. Young children and teenagers and elderly. Some days I worry that it could be you or me. How far away from it are we really? That is how little I know about it.
I do know that I have been confronted with my lack of knowledge on homelessness almost every single day for the past two and a half years. Living in Washington, DC and NYC includes living with those who have gorgeous homes and those who have no homes. Sometimes people without homes shout angry words at me, words I don't even want to type here, sometimes they aggressively suggest I should eat more, sometimes they give me unsolicited dating advice, sometimes they gift me with kind smiles, and the other night a woman who probably did not have a warm bed that night helped me out of an uncertain situation so I could return to my home and my warm bed that night. How little I know about homelessness and how even less I know about the people without homes I encounter regularly.
The night after I apologized to the man in Grand Central station and never thanked the woman, I worked with the city's official count of people who are homeless. A count that helps to determine policy and currently focuses on providing services to veterans, youth, and LGBT youth. As part of the quality assurance of the count, I laid out a piece of cardboard box and sat with a friend on the sidewalk, all bundled up in the cold night air, for a few hours. I spent most of that time wondering what it would take in my life to turn that piece of sidewalk into my home, to turn those few hours in the middle of the night into my experience night after night. A lot. I hope it would take a lot and I hope I never have to face that amount of tragedy and devastation that would have to occur before I considered a place on the sidewalk an alternative to a bed indoors. I thought about that man and I thought about that woman and I thought about the many faces I grew to recognize and then know in DC. I thought about how little I know.
January 26, 2013
A Favorite & A Reminder
The spring semester is a little over 24 hours away. I'm leaving this photo here as a reminder to find breathing space. It makes a world of difference.
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