Just Another Girl

"What song is this?"

Over the sixteen odd years of our friendship, Michelle and I have come to a tacit agreement with regard to driving. Namely, I don't drive. Ever. Instead, I'm in charge of watching for deer at dusk, navigating (inexpertly), keeping an eye out for roadside attractions to take goofy pictures at, and (most importantly) am in charge of the radio.

"It's your jam!"

"Nope. No idea what this is."

"The Killers."

"Honey, my jam is Shot at the Night."

"Oh, right! This is my jam."

She shakes her head.

"Give me a break. It's been a rough couple weeks."

"Just this once, I'll let it go."

***

On the list of embarrassing places to start crying, a feminist sex shop has gotta be at the top. 

I know because over the past week I've made a list of embarrassing places to start crying, as a result of crying all over the damn city. The bathroom at work is fine as long as you can muffle it. The car is less than ideal as there's always the chance of causing an accident. The bar during trivia and the bus are also right up at the top of the list. 

And I'm not talking dignified, silent weeping. I'm talking loud, totally unanticipated sobs that make the entire establishment turn and look at you. 

It's been a pretty great week.

So crying in a feminist sex shop is awkward for a lotta reasons, not the least of which is that you're harshing everyone's dopamine high. When I start welling up in the middle of the Smitten Kitten, I reach into my purse for the packet of tissues that's been in there for the past couple days, wave my friend off (wondering for a moment if refraction is distorting the size of what's in her hand) and bolt for a bench outside. 

The woman I'm with comes out about twenty minutes later and starts rubbing my back. "Are you all right?" 

"Yeah," I manage to hiccup out. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." 

"No, it's my fault. You said you didn't want to come. I hoped it would cheer you up."

"Yeah. It's just . . ."

"Oh, honey. I know." 

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I put my head in my hands. "I forgot it was like this." 

***

"I think that saying that you love someone unconditionally is idiotic."

I was prepared for a lot of things on this road trip, but this conversation was not one of them.

"Why?"

"Because no one means it. If someone murders your whole family are you still going to love them?"

"I think that might be a bit of an outlier."

"What if they spend all the money in your joint account? Screw your best friend?"

"Really, I think that people who say that they'll love someone unconditionally would accept those as, you know, extenuating circumstances."

He blows a raspberry and I start to laugh. "Why," I ask, "are you so worked up about this? Has someone claimed that they'll love you unconditionally recently?"

"No, but I'm a firm believer in saying what you actually mean."

I study his profile for moment before saying softly, "Yeah. Me too."

***

"Kels, do you think that maybe you're pushing yourself just a little bit too hard?"

I'm standing off the path, about waist-high in some bushes, dry-heaving. I shake my head. "I'll be fine in a minute." 

"I'm just saying, maybe I need to take you over by Michelle's so you can talk it out?" 

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and emerge from the bushes. "I am so fucking sick of talking. Let's just run."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm certain." 

***

"I don't get dumped."

"Kelly, everyone gets dumped." 

"I don't. It's one of those laws of the universe, like the second law of thermodynamics or how Doctor Who is the greatest sci-fi show ever written. I am always the rejector, not the rejectee. It is known."

"Yes, well, I mean, it's really not that different is it? You'll do the same things you always do: drink a lot of bourbon and listen to a lot of Patsy Cline, eat Indian takeaway, and run until you're exhausted." 

"You forgot "Come to in four weeks with a new PR and a haircut I don't remember getting." That's always an important part." 

"See, it's not actually that different."

"It is."

"How?"

"All that serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine made me stupid. They made me giggly and gushy and just stupid." 

"What's different? That's what happens every time with you." 

I sigh, giving my best impression of eighteen year old, emo Kelly. "I felt like I was someone special. Like this time I was more than just another girl." 

30x30 #30: Healthy Fasting Blood Glucose

Sometimes being an adult is amazing.

I mean it. Sometimes it's a business dinner and drinks on one of your favorite patios to celebrate a successful collaboration. Once in awhile it's waking up to someone bringing you coffee and making pancakes while wearing your bathrobe. One of the amazing things I still haven't gotten over is not having to do homework when I get home (post-graduate disorder anyone?).

Sometimes being an adult is terrible.

Of course it is. Sometimes it's standing in the kitchen at 2:00am taking a break from a work project to eat peanut butter out of the jar because you've been too busy to shop. Once in awhile it's waking up to find a note that says "I'm sorry, I just can't." One of the terrible things I still haven't gotten over is how many people have claims on your time.

About a year ago, being an adult suddenly got really, really terrible.

I was still reeling from the emotional shitstorm that was the 2012 when a friend announced that they had recently been diagnosed with Type II diabetes. I was having an extremely difficult time managing my obsessive-compulsive disorder and immediately upon hearing that she had diabetes I decided that I had diabetes (and high cholesterol and heart disease and and and). I immediately made an appointment with my doctor to go in and have a full physical and get all of these things checked.

Before I continue, let me be clear about one thing. These concerns, while certainly amplified and made worse by the OCD, were not entirely unfounded. I have a family history that includes high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, various forms of cancer, and mental illness. Our genes are a mess. Armed with the knowledge that I was taking proactive steps to manage my health, I went into my doctor feeling empowered.

I'll never forget the phone call from my doctor. I could hear her flipping through my chart.

"Yeah, your LDL and HDL levels look good, so do your triglycerides. Your pap was normal, your breast exam was normal, your other tests were all negative."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. It appeared the issue was, as it always seemed to be, my over-active amygdala freaking everything else out. I was all right. I was better than all right. I was healthy. I started to say my adieus when she paused.

"Oh."

Oh followed by a long stretch of silence is never something you want to hear from your doctor.

"What?"

"Well. Kel. Your fasting blood glucose is . . . elevated."

"What do you mean "elevated?""

"I mean it's not diabetic, but given your family history it gives some cause for concern."

We then have a long conversation about what cause for concern means. Essentially it boiled down to the following: either make some significant lifestyle changes or be diabetic in ten years. Possibly.

Normally when I have a bugaboo about diseases, it's a bugaboo about a disease. Measles. Ebola. TB. Something that is deathy and feels like it comes from a science-fiction novel or is antibiotic resistant.

With the exception of diabetes.

I watched my grandfather deteriorate slowly from Type II diabetes and it was horrible. I refused to conceive of a future that required insulin shots and compression socks for anything other than a distance race. I insisted that my doctor give me information on how I could address the issue of an elevated blood glucose.

What it boiled down to was "move more, eat less, eat selectively."

At this point in my life I was already running three days a week, averaging between nine and fifteen miles weekly. Getting told I needed to move more was like a punch in the gut. And while my food consumption had never been, you know, the best, I had never thought I ate a particularly trashy diet.

But, with the specter of shots and socks constantly in front of me, I upped my workouts from 30 minutes to 60, and then again to 90. I walked to and from the gym. I religiously accounted for every single calorie I put into my body. I taught myself to eat fruit when I'm hungry and that dinner can, on some days, just be vegetables.

It was amazing.

I'm serious. It was like one of those before-and-after weight loss reality shows, the ones where the contestant realizes how much their life sucks because they can't do what they want. I was scared. It worked. I dropped thirty pounds in a year. I biked 150 miles across the state of Minnesota. I ran through two Polar Vortexes and dropped a minute off of my mile times. I'm to the point now where a seven mile run is no longer a thing, it's just a run.

Yesterday I was sitting with a new doctor doing the whole "getting to know you thing." I made a comment that I'm turning 30 in September and she asked how I was planning to celebrate and before I knew it we were talking about 30x30 and I was telling her that one of the goals I had was to bring my blood glucose levels down to a normal range.

"Well."

Well followed by a long pause is never something you want to hear from your doctor.

"What?"

"I mean, you're doing everything right. It sounds like you've made some progress, but the thing is, sometimes genetics just gets you in the end. So I don't want you to get too down on yourself if today's labs don't come out the way you want them to."

I was a little devastated (have I mentioned that I believe with the right data and the right work ethic I can actually achieve just about anything?) and I didn't want hear that all of my hard work may have been for naught. She gave me the normal "It won't have been for nothing, these kinds of changes are amazing" speech, but I wasn't  really listening. As we wrap up she shakes me hand and says "You should have your results on the website tomorrow."

Imagine the nail-bite-y 24 hours I've had.

When the email popped up today that my results were available I broke off the conversation I was having with my coworker and raced outside to check them on my phone. I was preparing for the worst, incredibly upset that I was going to have to report failure not just on the 30x30 front but on the "I'm a healthy-able-to-take-care-of-myself" grown-up front as well. By the time I had clicked through to the website I was shaking.

Normal.

Just . . . normal. Not bad. Not good. Just right where they were supposed to be.

The note that accompanied them was "These are good, but you need to keep up the work you've been doing to get them like this." It hit me that over the past year I've been treating these changes in my life as a means to an end. That some day I'd be able to go back to not tracking everything I eat and scaling back my running and biking miles, getting something less than 300 minutes of exercise every week. I suppose I still could, but the problem is that doing so makes it all the easier for genetics to get me in the end.

It was terrible, the sudden realization that I'll have to be vigilant about the bits of my genes that are trying to kill me faster than I had planned.

While I was standing outside shaking my mobile buzzed with a text. "Hey, there's this adventure race I want to do, will you do it with me?" I recalled the seven and a quarter miles Andy and I ran last night and how it wasn't a thing, just a run. I started laughing when I remembered our bike ride from hell last summer and considered the prospect of coaching someone through a half in D.C. next spring.

It was amazing, the sudden realization that I am a different person than I was a year ago. That I am stronger, faster, and better because I have to be vigilant about the bits of my genes that are trying to kill me faster than I had planned.

Sometimes adulthood is amazing and terrible all at the same time.

Wonderful

I am really good at New Year's Resolutions.

It is, I suppose, the benefit of being someone who has worked in the position I do. As someone who is used to quantifiable goals, who is a bit of a nut for data (I look up 2010 Census information for fun), and who gets (as previously mentioned) really excited about holidays that make you retrospective, I'm bound to be good at New Year's Resolutions.

My goals for 2014 are relatively straightforward. I want to cross 12 finish lines this year, read fifty books, write more than I did last year, and do something incredible and challenging on/near my 30th birthday.

Such go the goals.

I've had a tradition over the past few years of including a New Year's Wish, something I close my eyes and say to myself at (or near) midnight. Last year it was that I would be OCD free by the end of 2013. While wishes, they tend toward the pragmatic. I've wished for a new job, a new bike, a new start. I've wished for forgiveness. I've wished that I'll get over my OCD and panic attacks.

2014 brought something different.

To begin, I went to an actual Honest-to-God New Year's Eve party. With noisemakers. With champagne. With friends. With dresses. It was, somewhat embarrassingly, the first New Year's Eve party I've been to as an adult (I typically work both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day) and the whole night seemed to have some sort of magical realism about it. I didn't feel like myself in the best possible way. Or rather, I felt like the best possible version of myself. Then, at midnight I closed my eyes and made the following wish.

In 2014, I want to be kissed by someone who thinks I'm wonderful. 

I know. Trust me, I know how this sounds.

***

I wanted to see the Aurora tonight. 

The chances were good. There was a major solar flare earlier this week, and the skies are relatively dim. The issue, of course, is that I live in the city. While I love urban life (mass transit, restaurants, music) I have to admit that sometimes the star-gazing gets me a little down (I did, afterall, grow up in the country). However, despite the good chances, there were myriad factors that kept me from going out tonight: busted car, lack of interest or availability on behalf of my friends, an ill-timed glass of wine on an empty stomach. 

All of these things, of course, added up to me not going Aurora questing as planned. 

***

I cancelled my OkCupid account.

It was the most liberating decision I've ever made. After a number of unsuccessful (and horrifying) dates, one or two truly terrifying encounters, and any number of interactions that make Anthony Weiner look like the paragon of chivalry, I finally broke down and cancelled the damn thing. 

I don't regret it. At least, not yet. Because I refuse to buy into the mentality of You've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. Because, firstly, who the hell wants a prince anyway? I'd prefer a barbarian or master spy or Rumi-reading lumberjack or reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt. And secondly, that implies that those frogs deserve a kiss anyway. Trust me, if you use the word "skinnier" in any capacity other than "If that girl got any skinnier she'd disappear. She needs to eat a cheeseburger" in front of me, you don't deserve, well, anything. 

***

Earlier in the week I got a little uppity with a friend who hasn't read a book I maybejustatinybit consider essential to being a well-developed adult. When he called me out on my snobbishness (snobbishness around books is something I really do work extremely hard to avoid) it made me start to wonder if it mattered in our friendship (the answer, of course, is no). Then I started to ponder whether or not it would matter with someone I'm dating. If bookishness or rather, lack of my particular kind of bookishness, in a potential partner would be a dealbreaker for me. I thought about it again tonight, as I wondered if an eventual partner would be willing to (on a work night) stay up late with me and drive out to the sticks on the off chance we could see something wondrous. Silly, I know, but I couldn't help but think that if it didn't matter perhaps deleting my online dating profile was a bit premature. 

Then I thought about the wish that I made on December 31st, at 11:59pm. I realize how frivolous it sounds. How extravagant and ridiculous and middle-school that wish was. But it has been too many years since I've been kissed by someone who just . . . likes me. I mean, actually likes me. Not likes me for the night or the afternoon or for-the-time-being but likes me. My relationships with men tend to be, well, rather utilitarian and brief. And online dating, at least the kind that I was doing, made those relationships (liaisons, probably) thrive. 

But I don't want that. I. Don't. Want. That. I'm tired of those kinds of relationships, those kinds of encounters. I don't need someone to geek out over the new season of Sherlock or understand the conflicted feelings I have about IVAWA straight away, but I want someone to try. I want is someone who will read The Brothers Karamazov, who will go look for the Aurora on a work night, not necessarily because those things are important to him, but because they're important to me. 

I want someone to do those things for me because he thinks I'm wonderful. 

Amen. Alleluia.

My apartment smells like homemade funfetti cake. It's clean, at least, as long as you don't open the closets. Miles Davis is playing ballads on the radio. 

"Oh my God!" One of two favorite former roommates walks into my apartment. She and her husband are not normally this effusive but within fifteen seconds of them entering I'm introduced to their daughter, hugged, and told "Your apartment is so cute! It smells so good in here! You look incredible." I warm up, almost instantly. I've been simultaneously excited for and dreading the evening all week. My phone rings and I run downstairs to bring up another guest. 

It's November 7th, the date of my annual birthday party for Lise Meitner and Marie Curie. 

I have, as I've noted in the past, keep some strange holidays. I can generally be relied on to read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July and recount the Haymarket Square riots on Labor Day, sure. I think anyone who has known me for awhile knows that I have a minor Lincoln obsession and will celebrate his birthday with a Mary Todd Lincoln almond cake every February (this is the holiday I celebrate instead of Valentine's Day). These are the somewhat normal holidays I repurpose every year. 

The odder ones are, in no particular order: the day Teddy Roosevelt was shot in Milwaukee and continued reading the speech he had started before accepting treatment, the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the publication dates of The Great Gatsby and The Lord of the Rings and the birthdays of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Meitner, Curie, and Jane Austen.

Of those holidays, November 7th is the most important. It's my secular Christmas. It's a mash-up of all the things I love. History, science, feminism, excellent writing, discovery. Every year I celebrate with a birthday cake and when possible, friends over for tea and birthday cake and conversation about women in science or books or writing or that article in The New York Review of Books that's been irritating me all week. 

It's one of my favorite parties. 

This year I almost canceled. 

***

I am, as I wrote previously, having some issues with OCD and anxiety again. And while they're no where near as bad as what I experienced while living in the North Country, they're bad enough that other people have noticed and insisted that I return to treatment. The amount of frustration, anger, and disappointment I feel over being unwell is indescribable. I suppose I always knew that I would live with anxiety and OCD for my entire life, but there was a not insignificant part of me who hoped that it was really a function of loneliness and the place where I was living, that once I moved back to a city I love and was surrounded by people who love me, all of my mental health issues would vanish. 

I have a slight giant tendency to be extremely hard on myself. I'm also stubborn, proud, and am used to fixing things on my own. It is, of course, what kept me from getting treated for so long (which, of course, ultimately meant that I had a bigger hole to clamber out of when I finally did). Becoming a sane, stable individual is, for some of us at least, an entire life's work. 

There's still a version of myself who is constantly telling me "It doesn't matter. If you can't make yourself happy here, you won't be happy anywhere. You're a drag on all your friends, no one is ever going to love you, and you might as well accept that you'll die old, alone, and crazy." 

That Kelly is such a bitch. She's also unbelievably loud. And convincing. 

***

The Benedictines really did a number on me. 

After seven years of schooling with them it was, I suppose, somewhat inevitable. But they didn't make me want to become a nun, and they certainly didn't keep me a Catholic. What they did pound into my head were those damn Benedictine Values: Community Living, Taking Counsel, Listening, the Dignity of Work, Hospitality, Stewardship and the rest of them that have essentially told me for my entire adult life "A job that pays you piles of money, a big house, all of the trappings of the successful adult world are not the way to live." 

The Benedictines would ask "Are you doing God's work in the world?" and despite the fact that I'm an atheist, it's still a question I ask myself, on average, three hundred times a week, even if it comes out a little differently:

"Are you living a life of deep meaning? Is this the life you want to live, because your existence is so improbable and you only get one shot at this. It better be."

That's the damndest part of dealing with mental health issues. I feel like those Benedictine nuns are looking over my shoulder tsking at how because of anxiety and depression I'm not able to be my best self. I can't be the Kelly I'm supposed to be because when I come home these days I go right to bed or sit down in front of the television so I don't have to think. They serve as a constant reminder that this is not the way you're supposed to live, Kelly. 

***

Six people drop in for the Curie/Meitner party, which is the perfect amount for my tiny apartment. We end up talking as much about books and family law as we do about women and science, but we drink six pots of mint tea and eat all of the funfetti cake (homemade funfetti, who knew?). It's a fun, quiet party, full of the kind of conversation I love most. 

Despite the week I've had and the depression I'm struggling with, despite the fact that we used literally every single plate I own, despite the headache throbbing behind my eyeballs, I'm really happy. Happier than I expected to be. 

Those nuns, I realize as I stack plates in the sink and check the oven for what feels like the seven-hundredth time, aren't tsking over my shoulder. If anything, they'd be offering me a cup of tea and asking in that wonderful women-religious way how are you doing? 

I finally give in and take something for my head, switch out the lamps, and crawl into bed.  The bitchy, anxious side of my brain immediately starts up These aren't tension headaches, it's a tumor and you're going to die in your sleep. Your cake was terrible, people just ate it because they feel sorry for you. You are never, ever going to be well. 

I think of the people who have just spent the evening with me, the conversation we had, the list of books I have to read, the suggestions for therapists I've procured. I consider the holidays I celebrate, and the fact that despite being a bit odd they hold deep meaning for me and that the friends I've made are willing to celebrate them with me. I remember my favorite bit of Marie Curie's writing:

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this something must be attained. 

Anxiety, depression, and OCD are, truthfully, going to make my life extremely difficult for at least the foreseeable future. I will struggle with them to varying degrees for my entire life. While that's a pretty grim reality, it doesn't mean that I'm not going to be able to live the life I want to live, the life the Benedictines taught me was important. And as the medication I've taken for my head gently tugs me towards sleep, I murmur two words that haven't slipped out of my mouth in a long time.

Amen. Alleluia.  

Black Hole

I'm in my early twenties, sitting in my Literary Criticism class with one of my favorite professors. I've spent the first part of the class discussing Kate Millet's Sexual Politics. I'm pretty fired up, as I always am when we're discussing gender, sex, politics, and writing. Somehow the conversation takes a turn toward the movie The Notebook, which another student recently recommended (idiotically) to our feminist firecracker of a professor. When we start discussing the movie, the professor gets really wound up and eventually shouts, SHOUTS at us:

"Come on you guys! This is like dumping laudanum on your ice cream!"

The class dissolves into silence and then raucous laughter. Everyone picks up their pens and scribbles the quote down in the margins of their texts. We collect ourselves and resume the thread of the conversation.

I've never forgotten that professor's description of romantic comedies, partly because it's hilarious and partly because it's so apt.

***

"So, what does Mr. Right look like?" 

My therapist and I have been talking at length about loneliness and isolation before she asks the question. I, still incapable of not being a smartass, answer:

"Ryan Gosling." 

We sit quietly for a minute and she rolls her eyes at me, which is my cue to stop being flippant. 

"Smart. Preferably a little smarter than I am or smarter in a different way so I don't get lazy. Well-read." I pause. "Articulate and equally ambitious. Funny and interested in science-fiction and board games and going for walks after dinner."

We talk a little more about what I expect out of my romantic partners and whether or not I'll be able to find someone in a city as small as the one I'm living in currently (short answer, no.) We finish our session and I put in my headphones and turn up my coat collar for the walk home. 

As I'm walking I think about what I held back in that session. After all, it wouldn't be me unless I refused to disclose some tiny part of what I was thinking. In this case it was that I want the proverbial laudanum my ice cream.

Not all of me and not all the time. Most of the time, I want exactly what I told my therapist I want: an intellectually stimulating, emotionally and sexually satisfying man in my life. Who likes jazz. And science-fiction. But there's this tiny part of me, a part that often goes unacknowledged, who wants to be carried away. 

Let's be honest, that Kelly is kind of a dope. Inclined to pop-sentimentality and gooey love songs, romance novels and daydreaming, she's a real drag to be around. She starts nattering on about surprise trips to Paris with her hypothetical boyfriend. She sighs, audibly, during parts of Pride and Prejudice she's seen/read so many times she can recite them from memory. 

Thankfully, that Kelly doesn't have a whole lot of resiliency. She can usually be dealt with by putting on a Bessie Smith album. 

***

I feel like I'm letting the home team down lately. 

After a lot of hard work, my career feels like it's finally going in the direction I want. I have incredible friends. My OCD is slowly coming under control. I've discovered in the past few months that I'm a pretty tough person. I have all of these things heading in exactly the direction I want them to be heading. I'm really proud of the challenges I've faced, the risks I've taken, the things I've achieved.  By all accounts I should be happy. 

No, it's not that I'm unhappy. I'm . . . wistful, maybe. A little too inclined to go back and read old love letters and think about what old boyfriends are doing now. A little too teary at weddings. Feeling a touch too much like I want to watch Bridget Jones's Diary. 

It's the wistfulness that I find troubling, the fact that I feel like something is missing from my life because ohmygodhowfuckingclichedcanyouget? I might as well put on a pair of yoga pants and eat an entire pint of ice cream. Covered in laudanum. 

It's my hangup, of course. But from the conversations I've had, it seems like it's the hangup a lot of smart, successful, single women have. It's as though we've all acknowledged that we're bright, capable, for-the-most-part together ladies and that's what we project to our families, friends, coworkers, whomever. And that's great, because that's who we are. Yet at the same time, we all seem to have made the decision that the bright, capable, for-the-most-part together ladies are the only aspects of ourselves we're allowed to show the world. Ever. We've bought into the bullshit that in order to be successful and respected we can't expose these small parts of ourselves that need to be loved and cared for to other people. Because the second you say "Yes, I'd like to be dating someone" or "Yes, living alone can be really lonely" what you're really saying, or what people perceive you as saying is "Oh my God. I need a boyfriend six weeks ago and I'm going to settle for the first guy who comes along because I'm lonely and desperate for companionship." 

Suddenly, instead of being the woman who's single by choice or inclination you're the friend who's single because she's a huge swirling vortex of neediness. A relationship black hole and any guy who gets too close is going to experience emotional and mental spaghettification. 

This, of course, isn't the reality. Or rather, it's not the reality of who all of us are as people. It's the reality that's been put forth in those laudanum-on-your-ice cream movies. And while none  few of the women I know who admit to occasionally feeling lonely or isolated or who just want to be dating someone are actually at emotional black hole, I think we all fear being perceived as it.

 As a side note, I wonder if men feel the same way, or if this is just the gift that entertainment has given women.

Back to my point. It's this emotional clusterfuck that has me feeling like I'm letting down the feminist side of things. The part of me that wants to be swept up, swept away, the part of me that was raised on princess movies and who still reads romance novels is slowly becoming more resilient, less inclined to be silenced by a blues record. That Kelly is not a bad person. Sure, she's a little dopey, a little dreamy, but she's also a hell of a lot more sincere and less jaded and less angry. There's nothing anti-feminist about wanting to fall in love in that breath-taking, heart-stopping, annoying way in which I like to fall in love. Just like there's nothing inherently feminist in listening to Graveyard Blues.

Pass the ice cream. 

Fear

I'm on the bus, having just barely caught it after running out of my office half in tears. I'm struggling to hold it together until I can get into my house. I've always prided myself on keeping the me that cries very separate from the me who lives in public.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

It's like a prayer or a mantra. Words I hang above my desk at work, words that I repeat to myself when I'm in the midst of a panic attack or on rare occasions  like this one, my emotions threaten to overrun in a semi-public place.

I must not fear. 

Fear is the mind-killer. 

It's not a prayer. Or a mantra. Or the beginning of a poem I love. It's the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic Dune. And in moments of intense anguish, fear, anxiety, it's what pops into my head. It's not entirely unexpected. Dune is one of my all time favorite series, and the Litany itself does not ask for divine intervention or the wisdom to understand what's happening. Instead, it appeals to the intellect:

I must not fear. 

Fear is the mind-killer. 

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

The idea of it appeals to me. Fear is what shuts down your cognitive functions. Shutting those functions down brings about your annihilation  When you stand face to face with your fear you can acknowledge it and use your intellect to vanquish it.Unsurprising that it appeals to me, right? The intensely cognitive one, who's always trying to think her way out of problems, who increasingly uses facts as a weapon to undermine her anxiety, wants to think her way out of fear. Sometimes I'm so cliched it bothers me.

Anyway, as soon as I step off of the bus, I book it down the block to hurry up and get into my house. After fumbling the keys for minute, I get the door open, get into the house, and sit down at the kitchen table and fall apart.

I've just gotten off the phone with someone I love very much. During the course of the conversation they used one of those disease words. You know, those big, scary disease words. The diseases that have their own foundations, that researchers get funded millions of dollars to cure. The ones that we think could one day be fixed by gene therapy but we don't know, and by the time we figure it out, the people we love will be long dead anyway.

I couldn't hear any of the specifics I was supposed to be getting over the phone because the word just kept reverberating off the insides of my skull. Now I'm sitting at my kitchen table wishing I had heard all the details about treatment options and prognosis and all of the facts that should be helping me through this.

Once, when I was hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge in China and had to cross a waterfall without a bridge and with a sheer drop to my right, I was pretty scared. I often feel anxious when I'm working on a big project or driving through bad weather. But I have never felt terror like this before. The first line of the Litany Against Fear pops into my head and I try to breathe deeply. I try to calm down and follow my fear. I try to pull those facts about prognosis and treatment options out of the ether.

I wish I could say that it worked. I wish I could say that I calmed down, that I sat my zazen session tonight, that I realized that worrying and fear would do nothing to help out this person. I wish I could say that I looked at websites with facts about the disease and could think optimistically about the future. And at first I thought I would be able to say that. But when I stopped repeating the Litany to myself and stopped breathing deeply, when I came back, so to speak, into my own thoughts at the moment I realized I was shaking. And was about to be comprehensively ill.

My brain has spent twenty-eight years tricking me into thinking that facts, that knowledge, that rationality would save me. That these things alone would be everything that I needed. I could just hide behind a wall of facts and figures, take refuge in knowledge and rationality and use those things to confront my fears. When I confronted my fears, I'd be able to disarm them with all of these things. To a certain extent, that kind of thinking has helped me to face the small fears I've encountered in the past. But tonight my body is telling me that this fear is a little too much for my brain to handle.

The past month and a half has been, frankly, terrible. My professional life has been extremely busy. My family lost someone very dear to us. My grandmother was unwell. I got into a car accident. Now there's this life-altering disease to cope with. These are big, scary things, things for which I am ill-equipped to cope because I want to beat them back with facts. But while the atoms in a loved one's body will continue to exist past their death, losing them is still permanent and horrible. While medical treatments continue to get better and easier to access, they're not always successful and they're no where near affordable enough. My family and friends and support network are incredible, loving people, but they still live hundreds of miles away from me. For the first time, I'm unable to cope with fear armed with facts alone.

After awhile I manage to clean up and warm up. As I put on my sweatpants for a night in front of the television in an attempt to turn my brain off, something that isn't the Litany Against Fear, but still a prayer of sorts, pops into my head. It's a line from my favorite Dylan song, one I've loved for fourteen years:

The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin' on. 

Permitting your fear to pass over you and through you doesn't mean that you don't address it, that you manacle it with facts and rationality and stash it away somewhere. It means feeling it in all of its horrible complexity and then, when it has passed, picking yourself back up and keep on keeping on. 

I am more scared now than I have ever been in my entire life, but I feel like maybe I'm just starting to fully understand the Litany and Dylan lyrics I've been mumbling to myself for years now. 

Feast

It was a sunny, late August Sunday morning. I sat outside at a cafe in Minneapolis with friends drank coffee and ate brunch. We skipped lightly over subjects after spending the weekend in one another's company. Eventually we settled on what we did on our Sundays when we were growing up. There were a few church-going families in the group, a few families who always cleaned on Sunday mornings, football seemed to play a big role, as did Sunday dinners.

As a child I spent most of my Sunday mornings in church. As a young adult, I spent most of my Sunday mornings trying to avoid church. Sunday Mass was an important part of life in my house, and my parents very rarely missed it. And after Mass we all rested. My folks would watch football, take a nap, putter around the house.

There was always something sacred about Sundays.

I brought up this sense of sacred Sundays with the brunch group. It's hard, I said, to think of ways to instill that sense of sacredness in the family I hope one day to have without church attendance. We kicked around a few ideas, museums, concerts, cultural events. Meals with family whether that's actual blood relations or people like the ones sitting around the table who are as close as family.

I felt better after the conversation. At least, I felt a little better. But I know the gifts that religion gave me, a sense of awe and wonder, a feeling of being loved, and role models. It gave me early lessons in what to value and how to make sense of the world around me. It gave my life meaning, depth, and purpose. That's not to say religion was all rosy. Catholicism also gave me an unrelenting, crippling guilt complex, fear of a punitive God, and tried to impose upon me a sense of values which ran counter to what I observed about the world.

I want all of those good things for my children without the guilt and terror that came along with it.

***

I love Catholic feast days.

There are of course, the big ones, Christmas, Holy Thursday-Easter Sunday, the Marian feast days, the Epiphany. But the ones that I like are the smaller ones, the ones my graduate school friends celebrated because something about that saint's life or death had touched them. It made them think of something they wanted to strive for in their spiritual lives.

My friends tended toward the (relatively) obscure when it came to these saints. I had one friend who loved Saint Maximus the Confessor and (the fake) Saint Urho. Another, a feminist and later ordained female priest, Joan of Arc. Another, Kateri Tekawitha. They also had feast days they hated. One woman in particular would routinely remind us every August 15th about how much she thought the Feast of the Assumption was a "ridiculous feast day" because (as one of her friends put it) "Where does Mary go? I mean, does she just get sucked up into heaven like one of those tubes at drive-thrus at the bank?"

To digress, The Assumption was always one of my favorite feast days until I heard this description. Then it was impossible to attend church with the, shall we say, gravitas demanded of such a high holy day.

Anyway, I could continue. Everyone seemed to have their favorite saint and their favorite story about that saint or least favorite saint and least favorite feast day. Some of those stories and saints were uplifting, others horrifying, others just plain strange.

My friends would celebrate these feast days quietly for the most part. They would read from the works of the man or woman, ask for their intercessions, think about their spiritual lives and development, walk out to see a statue or contemplate an icon. Of course, there were a few feast days that we celebrated boisterously, with big meals and wine or whiskey and raucous stories, but for the most part, these were private devotions.

***

I keep some strange holidays.

Of course I celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family, those aren't the holidays I'm talking about, although God knows those celebrations are strange enough. I'm talking about the ones that I schedule into my calender throughout the year that hold no national or religious celebrations, the ones for which I practice my own traditions. On Lincoln's birthday I make Mary Todd Lincoln's almond cake and reread Lincoln's second inaugural address. On the Fourth of July I reread the Declaration of Independence and The American Crisis. Starting next year, I'll also spend the 4th of July celebrating, somehow, CERN's announcement that they found the Higgs Boson. On the spacecraft Cassini's 15th anniversary of launch, I insisted that everyone I spoke to watch a video of the most moving images from that mission. 

It wasn't until this week, when I was trying to figure out how best represent Radium on a birthday cake for Marie Curie that I realized that I'm keeping feast days. The small things that I do on these days represent my devotion to these people, certainly, but to what they represent in my mind. When I eat almond cake and reread Lincoln's second inaugural address, I think of how I want to emulate his writing and his passion to preserving a strong federal government. When I read those early American documents I admire the courage of the men and women who fought and those who continue to fight for democracy. When I think of the best way to represent radioactivity on a cake, I think of Marie Curie's unwavering dedication to scientific inquiry and the sexism and xenophobia against which she struggled every day. These men and women represent who and what I want to become during my life, the same way Catholic saints inspire my friends in their spiritual lives. 

It may be that when I'm speculating about how to give my children the positive things that religion gave me without giving them all the hang-ups I have, what I'm really saying is that I want to find some way to give my own life meaning, depth, and purpose now that I've chucked Christianity. As I build my calender of secular feast days, I begin to see patterns in the things I celebrate: creativity, curiosity, drive, ambition, and an unrelenting passion to do what's right. These in and of themselves are not unchristian sentiments. Indeed, they are some of the very things that made me celebrate the Catholic feast days I did. 

It could, of course, be that I'm over-compensating. I could be once again intellectualizing the emotions of loss and abandonment I feel at no longer being a practicing Catholic, a member of the Christian community. That could be true. Although, all things considered, eating Mary Todd Lincoln's cake and pondering democracy sure beats sitting in Church wondering if Mary was sucked into heaven just like one of those tubes at the drive-thrus at the bank. 

Perseids

I wanted to write a poem
about how I went to the woods
to watch a meteor shower
and commune with the universe
Then I looked at that sentence
"commune with the universe"
and realized that it makes me sound
like an asshole. Like someone who believes
in healing through energy fields and crystals
instead of antibiotics and good hygiene.

Instead I will write a poem
about how I went to the woods
to a cabin my family has had for generations.
Where for many summers, I swam
and ate raspberries off the bush,
fished and grew sunburned.
And how this time I drank beer.
And my oldest friend came
and some new ones joined us
and we watched a meteor shower.
And how, for the time, it was enough.

Neutrinos

Neutrinos


I know so little


about them 
aside from the fact
that they are 


tiny


beyond my ability
to comprehend.
And, that somehow
they make their way 
across


spacetime.


The result, I think,
of a reaction 
inside of the sun.


They are, apparently,
coursing through me
at this very moment.
By the billions
and billions and


billions. 


Stardust mingling with
stardust. 

Kindness

I love when objects have a story to go along with them. I have a friend like this. When you walk into her house, you can point to almost any object in her house and she can tell you the story about it. Some of them, particularly the ones regarding moving heavy pieces of furniture, are ridiculously funny. Others are moving and sad. There have been a few that have left me cocking my head and saying "huh?"

My life is not like that. I've been living a really transient life since I was 18, and have managed to acquire my fair share of stories, but very few of them are attached to objects. The objects that do have stories tend to be highly portable. My copy of The Brothers Karamazov has traveled the world with me. My copy of Extraordinary Chickens was a 25th birthday gift at my favorite birthday party from two people that I adore. My Tiffany necklace was a gift to myself after I finished my M.A. The things in my life that have really good stories connected to them could all fit into a small box. 

***

When I was in my early 20s, I wanted to be a nun. 

It's less surprising than it sounds, actually. I had just gone through a rather intense conversion experience, I was living near a Benedictine monastery and being educated by Benedictine nuns. I was seriously considering spending the rest of my life studying God, and what better place to do it than in community with a bunch of other like-minded women?

I went as far as having a series of conversations with the vocational director. She encouraged me to attend prayer with the sisters, think deeply about my own decisions and what God was leading me to, and to pray on my own.

That summer I was working in an organic garden and living with a few other women, most of whom were fellow theology majors. We were all earnest in our desire to understand and love God, and committed to living lives of justice and peace. Typical undergraduate high-mindedness, but it was one of the best summers of my life. When we were talking about the ethics of food production we were talking about religion, spirituality, or what it meant to be a feminist and a Catholic. Like I said, earnest. When I first started to talk about my desire to become a monastic one of my roommates said "You need to make a promise to yourself and to God that you're going to take this seriously. Even if you don't want to commit to a monastic life, you should take your commitment to theology seriously." 

I was a little bemused, but said, "All right. I promise to take this decision seriously." 

A week or so later she came home and announced that she had something for me. It was a sterling silver ring that I had been eyeing all summer. Justly sourced silver, of course, with a chunk of yellow-green amber in it. It was to be, we decided, an outward symbol of the decision I had committed to making. 

The situation sounds a little strange to me now, but one of the things that has always attracted me to Catholicism is the symbolism behind many of the ritual actions. When the priest dons his vestments each one of them has symbolism and ritual. When babies are baptized the water and oil carry significance. We have all of these outward symbols to remind us of (at least, the way I've always understood it) the many ways in which God's love and grace are part of the world we inhabit. 

Even after I decided against the monastery, I continued wearing the ring. It reminded me, even on my most secular days, that I wanted to understand and love God. 

***

I am not a kind person.

In the past few months I've had a difficult series of conversations with the people with whom I had the biggest, angriest, knock-down, drag-out fights about Christianity and Atheism. The conversations have consisted of my having to say (through various media) "hey, remember how I used to yell at you about how wrong you were? Turns out, I'm closer to your side of things than I thought."

Have I mentioned that I'm not great at apologies?

Thankfully the people receiving these emails or phone calls have all been astonishingly gracious and kind. They have been much kinder than I deserve. They've asked me about my emotional reaction to my change in worldview and have given me space to talk about how painful it has been to give up my faith and how awe-inspiring it is to think about the utter improbability of my own existence. Their responses have made me think of what my own would have been, were our situations flipped.

I was not pleased to discover that I probably would have been jubilant at best and smugly unbearable at worst. The more I reflected on what my own reactions would have been, the more uncomfortable I became. Once that kind of self-reflection started, I began to meditate on the way I treat people--not the people I love and care about, but the people who irritate me. The ones I find challenging. The people who say things opposed to my political/spiritual/social ideologies. I am terribly unkind to these people, in the way that I dismiss what they have to say, in the things I say to them directly, and in the stories I tell about them after I meet them. Of all of the flaws I suspected in myself, unkindness had never been one of them.

***

I still wear the ring my roommate bought me. And when I look at it, I still think about my commitment to find, love, and understand God. But I alternate that ring with another one that I had made recently. It's supposed to represent the Big Bang. The first reminds me of what I wanted to know, the desire that I had to understand my place in the universe. The second, new ring reminds me of who I want to be.

That may sound a bit backwards, but it's the truth. In the conversations I've had lately, in thinking about the importance of a symbol to represent commitment, in deciding that I'm going to dedicate the next-however-many years of my life to studying the universe, I've realized that I have to take responsibility for how I treat people here, now. If I really believe that this life is all there is, I have a responsibility to the universe to understand it as best I can, and I have a responsibility to the people in my life to treat them with more kindness, understanding, and respect. 

The next time I move, these two rings, along with my bible, my copy of Feynman's Six Easy Pieces, The Brothers Karamazov and Tiffany's necklace will all be in the same box. And here's the thing I learned about this box. These things, these highly portable objects are not just a record of who I was, but they are a remind of who I want to be become. The beauty of these objects is that their stories, like that of the cosmos, like the story of the Christian faith are for the most part, still unwritten.

Stardust

Stardust
(for Kerry, with gratitude)


For weeks now, riding the bus,
listening to the radio, chopping vegetables
for dinner, I have paused to wonder
Is this it? I know the answer is probably
yes.

I am made of exploded stars.
Most days, that keeps me
sufficiently in awe
of my own existence.

There are times, though, when
that alone should be enough.
But isn't.

Perhaps, says my friend Kerry,
this is all there is. And perhaps
there will be days when stardust
just doesn't feel like quite enough.

But it's also possible
that this universe
is just one of many
paper lanterns
strung up along
God's back porch.