The Wishing Well

I am almost remarkably bad at wanting things.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I want things. But, like, general concepts of things. I want a career. I want a career where I can create, make people laugh, help people, make empowered decisions, put things together, and organize things. (That sounds weird, I know, but I think it's really, really fun to organize stuff.) I want a relationship. I want a relationship with a guy who is kind and funny and smart and mostly level headed. I want a house. I want a house with a porch and hardwood floors and a bay window. I want a pet rabbit. Or maybe a guinea pig. Or a small dog. Something like that.

So, see, I'm good at liking dreams of things and outlines. I'm good at thinking up characteristics and sketchy blueprints in my mind. I'm good at staring off into space, wistfully, crashing back to reality, and sighing, "Someday."

But when it gets to be concrete, when there are specifics involved, I get... knocked off kilter.

I once wanted a dog. A specific dog. I had jokingly harassed my parents about getting this dog for years. He was old, a cairn terrier, and perpetually happy. His name was "Yoshi" and he was missing some (or maybe all?) of his teeth so his tongue hung limp out of his mouth. I knew, when I lived with them, that my parents wouldn't let me get a pet of any kind. So for years I wanted this dog, but I wanted him in a light and noncommittal way, with just a pinch of insincerity.

This is Yoshi, by the way. As you can see: he is very cute. You can't see his tongue in this picture but I think that's just because of the angle. 

A few months ago, I had the realization that I didn't live with my parents any more and that meant that I really could get Yoshi. And then? I really wanted him. It was my most frequently recurring thought. I scoured the Furry Kids Refuge page but couldn't find him anywhere. Not as an adoptable dog, not as an adopted dog, and not on the memorial page. I started searching other local rescues, but couldn't find him anywhere. I felt sick and sad almost constantly, until my dad, who is somehow always in the loop when it comes to Furry Kids Refuge, told me that Yoshi had been adopted. 

I imagined him trotting around in a backyard somewhere, getting showered with affection, and I consented that his life was probably better with whoever his new owners are than it would have been living with a perpetually busy 24 year old on the second story in an apartment building. 

Sometimes disappointment is the only relief from desire. 

In my last blogpost, I talked about praying that God would change the desires of my heart to align with his plans for my life. I think this is a solid quest because God's plans are guaranteed to come to fruition, and I would like to be happy and excited when they do. This prayer has always referred to the more general desires of my heart because, as previously mentioned, I'm pretty bad at wanting specific things. 

Lately, though, concrete desires have been at play and so the nature of my prayers have changed. I still ask for my wants and God's plans to align, but, there's a lot more of "I think I'm going insane" thrown in there. A sense of urgency I'd never included before. "Lord, I want this one, this time, and I think I might be going crazy, so if it's not going to happen, or even if it's not going to happen soon, could replace that desire with something else like now please please please??" 

My problem with wanting specific things is that my life feels so askew when I do. My mind keeps wandering back to the same places. I can feel my heart and stomach tying themselves into anxious knots. I'll start to pull out my hair and rip off my nails. It's like I'm drunk on a poorly mixed cocktail of hope, disappointment, nerves, and longing. 

Veruca Salt'n It

I believe that as human people we owe it to God and the world and all other human people to always strive to be better human people than the human people that we have been up until this point. (I know, I said "human people" too many times in that sentence, but I just so thoroughly enjoyed it that I don't mind making this particular linguistic faux pas.) 

So, as someone who believes we should always strive to be better people, I try to live out that belief. By which I mean, even though I'm pretty spectacular already (and humble, too), I have a laundry list of areas that I want to improve. Like, I want to be more patient. I want to be more compassionate and understanding across the board. I want to be friendlier, particularly in situations where I'm a little uncomfortable. You get the drift. Mostly I just want to be a nicer person. 

The problem with striving to be a nicer person is two fold. First, I, at least in part, believe that I am becoming a better person. And second, I become hyperaware when a situation proves that's not the case. 

Oh, fine, I'll just tell you what happened instead of just dancing around the point. 

AS PER USUAL, I was talking to God about boys. I talk to God about boys so often that he's probably starting to regret ever creating them in the first place. Just kidding. Kind of. 

Anyway, I like to talk to God about boys more than I like to talk to anybody else about boys because unlike all of the people in the world, God is not disillusioned about anything. In this instance, he's not disillusioned about me. So, unlike you, dear reader, God did not believe me when I called myself "pretty spectacular" earlier. He was just like, "I mean, yeah you're cute and funny, but you think it's fun to lie and you own too many cardigans and you're super quick to anger. Didn't I tell you not to be quick to anger? You never listen. Sheesh." 

My point is, whenever I talk to my friends or family about my perpetual singledom, they're like, "You'll find someone EVENTUALLY" and the thing is they do 100% believe that. Because they like me. And that's why I don't like talking to them about boys.

Also, side note shout out to my friend Laurie who is the only person who has ever said to me, "Isn't it kind of a bummer to know that you'll eventually probably get married?" I liked this particular conversation because none of us know how a person's life will turn out, but right now there's a possibility where I don't ever eventually get married and then just Laurie and I are happy. Lau because she's apparently bummed out when people get hitched, me because I was right and everyone else was wrong (haha, suckers!), but then nobody else because they were hoping this shit would turn out all right for me (haha again suckers!). 

So, anyway, the way I see it is this: there are some people who totally want to find someone, but then they never do, and that's a major bummer. And a lot of those people are really likable people--funny and pretty and intelligent and cool. So, just the fact that people like me isn't enough to guarantee that major bummer won't be my reality. 

See what I'm saying? No, you probably don't, because you're probably somebody who already knows and loves me and is tsking at the computer screen all amped up to tell me about their third cousin who never thought they'd fall in love but then did when they were like 37 or 62 or whatever and now they're the HAPPIEST PERSON OF ALL TIME. But shut up because that story is 110% of the reason I prefer talking about boys with God. God never tells me annoying stories about third cousins. 

Anyway, for the past year or so, whenever I talk about boys with God it's been like this: "I don't know what's going to happen, but I know you know what's going to happen, so just prepare my heart for whatever that is, and, ultimately, just make me want whatever it is you have in store for me anyway." I also have basically the same conversation with God when it comes to things like work or school or whatever else has me panicked about my future. Which makes me feel like I never had to admit to talking to God about boys in the first place, I could have just set this whole thing up to seem like I was talking to God about something more sensible, like, careers or whatever. 

But, alas, I've already typed so much of this. And we're all about honesty here, right? Right. 

The point is: God's ultimately going to get his way, right? So I just want to be happy and excited for whatever that is. So, what I want is to want whatever it is that God wants. OR SO I SAY. 

I had the terrible realization recently that... I think I've been lying to God. And myself. But I'm pretty cool with being lied to by myself. But I am absolutely not cool with having lied to God. 

I believe what I said before. Ultimately God is going to get his way, and I want to be happy and excited for it. So what's the lie? The part where I want to want whatever it is that God wants. See, what I really want is to want exactly what I want but for what I want to also be what God wants so that I can have what I want. 

 You followed that, right?

This is me, apparently:

Ultimately, I'm glad that I realized where I had been coming from. Because, I think the initial prayer was a solid one. The words, I mean, I just needed to... get my heart there, too. 

I also think I need to spend a little bit more time actively considering and trying to listen and find what God actually wants from me, rather than spending all of my mental energy on what it is that I want for me and then occassionally glancing up towards the heavens and saying, "Hey, if you have something else in mind just, you know, make me want that instead." 

Yeah. So. That's the end of this blogpost. 

Fin?

The End.

Come on, this is seriously it.

I literally don't have anything else to say.

WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS?

Finished. Faneto. El fin! 

This is it. Bye??

SERIOUSLY?

Okay b--

On Friendship

One of my earliest memories goes like this:

There are, at most, six of us. We're probably all, approximately, four years old. They're, probably, all kids from the church. We're sitting in a circle, in my parents' basement, cutting up those little, paper valentines. There's a girl sitting next to me. I look at her and think, "Why is she here? I bet her mom made her come. She doesn't even like me." I went to the same school as this girl from kindergarten through graduation. Since graduating, my mother has mentioned her to me a time or two. And that entire time, my opinion of her has been colored by this memory. To me, she was and is and will always be, this girl who doesn't really like me.

The thing about memory is... it's super fallible. We have limited understanding of events from the get-go. Then, as we process them, we change details and blend stories. Red sweaters become blue ones. Your aunt becomes your best friend's mom. 2004 becomes 2008. We forget things that don't uphold our pre-existing concepts. We morph events to uphold our worldview. We have biases towards the negative. What I'm saying is: maybe we weren't at my house. Maybe we weren't cutting up valentines. Maybe I didn't even suspect that this girl secretly disliked me. Hey, maybe she wasn't even there. But I often wonder if my friends really, actually want me around and, when I do, I wonder if I've been carrying around this fear for, well, ever.

The whole reason I mention the fallible memory thing, I guess, is because... I've decided to kind of skip over elementary school, middle school, and high school. During that time, I was part of a friend group, and I didn't necessarily doubt that they liked me so much as... I felt like the person who was liked least. You know what I mean? Like... the one who was almost forgettable or unimportant. Like... a thread you could totally pull out of your sweater without unraveling the whole thing.

But, to my friends' credit, at the time I was dealing with adolescent depression so I was kind of twine ball of tears, self-pity, and frustration.

Anyway, let's just skip forward to college, okay?

The cool thing about college is: you're suddenly surrounded by totally new people, almost all of whom are in exactly the same stage of life as you. Nobody knows what's happening, everybody is hopeful and idealistic and force fed a steady diet of interesting information. (Seriously! College taught me that "dysnomia" refers to that moment when a word is on the tip of your tongue but you can't quite recall it, that in the original version of Little Red Riding Hood the wolf feeds the grandmother TO Little Red, and that, one time, a pair of sisters convinced a hoard of people that they could speak to the dead by cracking their foot joints!) So, even though college can be a terrifying and nerve-wracking experience, you just have to show up at the "tie-dye on the quad" event and after .7 seconds you'll find yourself with a whole hoard of new friends.

Let me take a beat to say: some of the best people I know are college friends. There are people that I befriended during college that I fully expect to maintain friendships with throughout the rest of my life. People who are kind, funny, crazy smart, intelligent, interesting, and, (I know I said it before but it's so important I'm going to say it twice) kind.

But I also experienced a cornucopia of the unpleasant. From the generic to the infinitely frustrating.

My freshman year, I befriended a guy. If I'd been able to watch my life as a made-for-tv Hallmark movie, I'd probably groan every time this guy came on screen and then complain to my character and the television set, "How can you be so dummmmmb?" But I wasn't the audience, I was the participant, so I was really, really forgiving of faults. He was loud, disrespectful, and selfish. He would take things that I told him in confidence and reveal them in public settings to embarrass me or force me to pay attention to him. He was controlling, but childish, like an 8 year old trying to force his way, so he somehow seemed harmless.

Like most terrible relationships (of any sort, like I said, this one was a friendship) things eventually imploded. And in, like, a major way. So one night I found myself standing in a pile of broken glass, pointing at different shards, and saying, "Manipulative! Deceptive. Controlling?" (This is metaphorical. There wasn't any broken glass. Though I did, at one point, chuck a lampshade across the room. To my credit I was 19 and everything sucked. It's a pretty good story, so, feel free to ask me about it sometime.) Throughout the spring semester, we tried to be friends, but that was, to be frank, a shitstorm.* He continued to try and manipulate and control me, he was continuously disrespectful and obnoxious, and I no longer had any tolerance for it.

The next year, I retreated a little bit. Or maybe a lot. I remember I kicked the semester off with a bout of about three weeks of depression. I would go to class. Work. Wherever I needed to be. Then I'd go to my room, lay in my bed, and cry. I was a delight. (Shout out to my Australian best friend who put up with me that whole time and would try to cheer me up despite the fact that I was, perpetually, a grump-toad.) By my junior year, I had bounced back a bit. I was living with three friends, I was super active on campus, and I felt like I was getting a genuine college experience.

Oh, man. It's like, I want to be honest about this experience, but... I also feel like I'm stepping on old egg shells. Ahhh. Okay. Regroup.

Okay. So. The most we can hope for, is to build a life where we are mostly happy most of the time. You know what I mean? Well, during this time, I told myself that I was mostly happy most of the time. But in reality, I was still... mostly sad. I just would kind of distract myself from it. I had a friend who I would, at times, try to confide in, but her responses often made me feel like what I was saying and feeling was invalid or unimportant. The frustrating this was that this was one of my closest friends, and she was often presenting herself as, well, the FRIENDS theme song. Slowly, I realized that a lot of how this person treated me made me feel... lesser. And I honestly, honestly-honestly, think that the root of the problem here was personalities. See? She was the sort of person who made jokes at the expense of her friends, and I was the sort of person who has a very low threshold for being taunted. (Except for being made fun of by myself. That's like, my favorite thing. I know, it's complicated.) I was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do, and she seemed to think she knew how everyone should be and what everyone should be doing. I felt bullied and manipulated all over again.

My senior year, I spent the entire year, perpetually, as a grump-toad. Most of my friendships were surface/classroom friendships. Like... "this is my Linguistics/Semiotics Friend" and "this is my Mother Russia friend." (Actually, I didn't have any friends in Mother Russia. It was way too fascinating of a class for befriending people.) My close friends were, ironically, all kind of far away. The Australian went back to Australia (which is fine but also tragic as this is the only person I've ever felt comfortable calling when I get sad and lonely and cry-y) and my best friend since childhood was at school across the state.

Post-college, I was still pretty reclusive. But then (this is the part where the whole blog post gets happy and idealistic so... be excited)...

I went back to church.

I'd been really active in my church throughout high school, but, then kind of turned into a "Christmas and Easter" Christian throughout college. (Whoops.) The nerve-wracking thing about going back was... these were all going to be people that I simultaneously knew and didn't know. These were the "we kind of knew each other four years ago" and "remember when..." people. But, I sucked it up, and went back.

By myself (THANKS, MOM**).

But people sat by me. And talked to me. And before long, I joined a small group. It's comprised of married couples, and me. So, basically, I'm Joey after all the other friends got paired off. Only boys don't like me nearly as much as girls liked Joey. (FRIENDS references for days.) But what's strange isn't that I'm perpetually fifth-wheeling-it. It's that: there's a group (an entire group) of people that I'm not worried secretly don't want me around. (Actually, one time, I skipped small group to hang out with my friends from Maine and the entire small group bombarded my phone with messages, which is pretty cool, especially considering how few texts I normally get.)

I've always had some friends that I felt confident genuinely liked me. But, throughout most of my college career, I only got to see one of them regularly, and, throughout my senior year on, I didn't get to see any of them that often. But now I have friends who I see regularly, who never make me feel bad about myself or insecure, and have never made me feel like they wanted me to be anyone other than who I actually am. And I think that experience has helped to open me up a bit. Because now I feel like I have friends everywhere. Friends I work with, friends I only get to see every now and then, friends that I've been able to reconnect with, and friends I've definitely just swiped from my brother's friend stash.

I don't know. Part of it might just be growing up. When you're younger, your friend group is usually dictated by age and location. But when you get older, your friend group can easily span from 18 to 73. Maybe part of it has to do with finding friends at work or in coffee shops or at church--places where friendships are built around shared values and interests, rather than in shared complaints about the workload of Chemistry I. Or maybe it's because I'm more comfortable with myself, and the people I'm friends with are more comfortable with themselves, too.

I guess I don't really know.

But the point is, this year? This year I'm hoping for even more friendships that are deep and lasting, friendships that are genuine, kind, supportive, and fun.

*Mandatory apology for the church folk: sorry for the language!
**Just kidding, my mom totally comes to church with me. She just couldn't that day.