Along With the Leaves

As if taking cues from the leaves, I can feel parts of me dying and falling away. It sounds bleak but like the autumn time it is a beautiful experience nonetheless. These many deaths seem to be making space for new growth. While in this moment I’m grieving the loss, I can see that this is the right time and place to come back to myself and rediscover my roots— so to speak. The cycles of destruction and creation —of the deconstruction and reconstruction— move slowly. It would be easy to cling to what used to be, but that would be a waste. I would rather hold space for myself and cling to the beauty of the process. Today I did something brave I took a risk and painted something original. It was scary and exhilarating, and I am so proud that I honored my process. That’s all I can do- honor my process. So I will.

Volume Levels

Today I thought of a way to articulate my pain threshold, and compare my “chronic” pain threshold with my “average” pain threshold. This is all incredibly subjective of course- more of an art than a science. For me “average” pain is much more manageable. I would consider a sprained ankle and a paper cut “average” pain. The terms “average” and “chronic” are a measure of quality as opposed to quantity. 

So a paper cut or sprained ankle are examples of “average” pain. That seems pretty straight forward, and it is (for me at least). The trickier concept is chronic pain, for which I have crafted an illustrative analogy:

Imagine that you are teaching a group of children. In terms of classroom management the volume of a classroom tends to follow a trend, and each phase requires a different teaching response.

Volume level 1: The children are mostly attentive, with only a few quiet whispers. You are able to teach uninterrupted. 

Volume level 2: A couple of children have outbursts that you cannot ignore. You need to stop teaching to address those outbursts, but you are able to continue teaching after that.

Volume level 3: That group of children continue to have outbursts that are disruptive enough to get other students excited as well. Now you have to drop everything and lay on your super serious teacher voice in an attempt to salvage the lesson. The children may or may not quiet down.

Volume level 4: The children do not quiet down. At this point there are two many children acting excitedly and you need to address the volume level of the room as a whole, which is rising at an alarming rate. You give up on the lesson and switch gears to damage control.

Volume level 5: The children are having a shouting match. You can’t hear yourself think, and they certainly can’t hear you call for order. At some point you admit defeat and resort to yelling “EVERYBODY QUIET DOWN” until the children get scared enough to shut up. It’s a lose/lose situation. 

For me, chronic pain is like classroom management. Throughout the day my chronic pain level fluctuates from volume levels 1-4, and on a good day I can stop it there. My functionality is largely based on the amount of energy that I am devoting to keeping the shouting match at bay. Some days I can see a volume level 5 coming on from the moment I wake up, other days it is harder to tell what will happen. It really does feel like a shouting match too-- one pain always trying to speak over another. The real trouble is that when they are all yelling it is impossible for me to address one at a time. The volume level of the room starts to rise, and from there it’s just damage control.

To be very very clear: I am not looking for pity. Or sadness, or even for help. I just want to offer some
 context to the people who know me (or others with chronic pain) so that when I say that I can’t make
 it to an event, or start to go quiet in the middle of an activity, it makes a little more sense. Because
 unless you know me incredibly well you would probably never guess that my volume level is at a four
 on average. In fact, I go out of my way not to divulge that information. Why? That’s for a different blog
 post. Suffice it to say: I struggle every day to maintain control of my body and I don’t need to exert
 energy moderating people’s reactions to that fact. It is what it is.

Moving to Monmouth

I have decided to start journaling again, and hopefully blogging as well.

Moving to Monmouth has changed everything for me. I am amazed that living in a small town has opened my eyes to consider just how big of a world I live in. It is peaceful here, and I feel like I am recovering the mental and emotional space that seemed to overflow with stressors in Portland. It’s not that Portland was a bad place for me to be-- on the contrary, I would say that that I exploded with growth and understanding for myself and the people around me while I was there-- but that took an unseen toll that I am only now discovering to its fullest extent.

I haven’t written in a long while and the topics that have been on my mind aren’t exactly lighthearted. For now I cover a few main points that I hope to expand on in the coming days and weeks. If I can help it I would like to write regularly moving forward. Hopefully posting this to the blog will help keep me accountable. I don’t understand how my unknown, unseen audience could possibly prove an effective motivator but if it works, it works, right?

Family and friends: Nobody warned me that growing up means watching your loved ones age, and most times from a distance. I know that I am not much farther away than I was before but the idea of their lives moving along without my physical influence is suffocating. The rest of the world must be walking around with this weighty concern as well but, but apparently they all have more endurance than me.

Career: A couple of key variables pertaining to this topic have come clear to me recently.

1)    This is likely the only time in my life that I will be financially able to work part time, and I think I would like to use this opportunity for school.

2)    For the first time in my life I feel absolutely certain about what I want to do- what I could do until the day I die. I want to go back to school and become a counselor. I don’t know what I want to specialize in, where I want to use those skills or really anything else. I just know that is what the rest of my life will look like someday. In a way I have probably always known. Now I just need to start moving that direction.

           

Job: This is connected with the previous topic but ultimately a separate matter for now. There is an end date to my current job and I need to start working on a plan for what will come after. Could be school, probably a different job entirely. I will be ordering a transcript from Warner tomorrow and plan to meet with an advisor at WOU to discuss my options this week.

Health: Moving to Monmouth has not been without its challenges. I have faced an unfortunate string of illnesses since arriving here. Thankfully I am now set up with the doctor in town (who is wonderful) and am moving forward with some testing. Aside from that my biggest dilemma is staying active and physically healthy now that I am working from home full time. My first line of defense will be starting a twice weekly swimming regimen at the college, though I won’t be able to go for my first visit until next weekend. In addition, I plan to start waking up for a short workout before work a few days a week.  We will see how that goes.

Driving: I am so happy to write this category! Since arriving in Monmouth, Davy has graciously offered his car and his time to help me relearn how to drive. It has been about seven years now since I was a regular driver and with a job change on the horizon realized that my ability to commute in a car will be a considerable variable in my job search. I am happy to report that with Davy’s calm and patient teaching I am able to drive us around town and to the grocery store! This may seem like small cause for celebration but I cannot express how encouraging it is for me to be progressing as quickly as I have been. My next driving goal is to take a short solo drive!

Now that we are settled in and unpacked, I have my own settling to do. With Davy starting classes I am eager to establish a routine that includes physical activity and introvert time, as well as quality time with him. I have also started reading for fun again, and it is just as wonderful as I remember. So far Monmouth has treated me very well, and I am looking forward to the duration of my time here.

Targets

It is one thing to do something that you know will be difficult. You prepare yourself. The nerves are not nerves of anticipation as much as a fear that the hard thing will not play out the way that you have imagined it playing out 500 hundred times in your head. It normally does. And in any case you have predisposed yourself to the best and worst case scenarios before you are in any position to face them.

It is another thing to do something that you don’t think will be very difficult and find out that it is the most challenging, terrifying thing you have faced in recent history. There is no way to prepare for that. You are essentially caught with your pants around your ankles, hoping not to trip and fall on your face or be photographed doing so. Today was one of those days.

Admin fun day. We had rescheduled four times and yesterday I had been informed that for Admin fun day Zack, Dave, and I would be going to the shooting range. When he told us I tried to smile enthusiastically and he believed me, mostly because he was caught up nerding out with Zack about it. I, on the other hand, was internally panicking.

I have never been to a shooting range.

I don’t like guns.

I don’t want to shoot one.

I don’t want to touch one.

Why did they assume I was okay with this?

….

But they are so excited... It will be fine. I’ll get over it.

So we are driving to the gun range and they are pumped and I am sweating. I start to think about how I can get out of it. I can watch them shoot the first few rounds and then decide what to do. Probably I am over thinking this. Probably I will calm down when I get there.

We get there.

I am not calm.

I am thinking of the people I have lost to the barrel of a gun. One grandmother, three uncles, one aunt, one niece, one nephew. 7 family members. 20 elementary school students. 50 LGBTQ community members. Countless thousands of soldiers with families and friends.

Jesus would have hated this. Just the idea of a gun is the epitome of what He died to forgive.

They are excited.

We get to the range and watch a two-minute informational safety video. We sign paperwork. We take a quiz. I slip away to the bathroom just before we enter the range because I can see their faces. I can see the faces my family and school children and teenagers at a night club and I see the faces of my two dear friends who are ecstatic to recreationally handle these weapons.

I don’t understand. It hurts.

But I don’t let myself cry.

We go into the gun range and the little old lady (her name was Jude—like the song) shows us how to fire the guns we rented. Every pop echoes in my head as what could be the last sound a person ever hears.

The guys put a few rounds in. I reluctantly pick up the 22. I force a breath and put a round into the target. I am the only one of the three of us who shoots the middle of the white box. Then I make Dave show me three times how to take all of the bullets out of the gun. Eventually I shoot the other gun (A Colt Python) one time. I hit the target in the shoulder. For the rest of the time I stand with my arms crossed and pay attention to way they hold the gun.

The thing I can’t get out of my head is the way I felt when I was holding the gun. In the lane, with the gun in my hand and my double earplugs—there was nothing beyond me and the gun. No notion of the target or even of the other people in the room with me. It was like I was reduced to the muscles of my trigger finger and my breathing pattern. I forgot about the people I had lost and the people I could lose, as if the significance of the thing had been blocked off along with my sense of hearing. The weapon was gamified and I wanted to win.

What does that even mean? What does it say about me? And about the rest of society?

The 71

I was riding the bus to Warner today and things got interesting. My friends had suggested that I try riding a different bus line than I am used to (71) and so I did. Because I was not familiar with the route I got off at the wrong stop and had to wait for the next 71 to come. At the bus stop I sat inside the shelter and read my book, and was soon joined by a scrawny teenage boy who shared my smile and then crouched outside of the shelter to wait. When the 71 came he got on the bus before me and sat in the seat directly behind the bus driver. From my spot at the rear end of the priority seating area I noted his matching Star Wars vans and T shirt. He really was just a kid, but the adorable nerdy kind that I would have been friends with in High School and somehow ended up coming back around to in my adult life.

The back of the bus was sparsely filled and this kid and I were the only ones in the front until about three stops later when another teenager, older than the kid, stumbled onto the bus. This teenager was clearly under the influence of something. He wasn’t swaying exactly, but stood in a way that suggested his unsteadiness. When he put only one dollar into the cash slot and sat down the bus the driver had a hard time communicating with him through his slurred words. The driver was clear about his mistake but despite calm words the teenager became more and more agitated (a lot of profanity and racial slurs here) about the unfairness of the situation.

It was about this time that the teenager addressed the kid. He asked about a possible mutual friend, Tyler, and asked for money. (The bus driver was calling in the situation on the radio.) When the boy did not cooperate the teenager, who was sitting directly across from the boy and two seats away from me, seemed to make up his mind about something. There was a subtle shift in his gaze—the difference between coherent and irrationally enraged.

Suddenly the teenager stood up and punched the boy in the face. (At this point the bus driver called the police and reported a fight. I sat transfixed.) The boy sat back-- dazed at first-- and then stood up in time for another blow to the face. This time the boy retaliated with a shove that sent the two of them grappling towards the bus door. I had been thinking “Move! Move? Grab your mace, help the kid, do something!” but my body was in shock. It wasn’t until the boy stood that I was able to move myself a few seats back.

 At the front of the bus they straightened up and the boy grabbed something from the teenager who was at that point screaming profanity furiously. The boy managed to steer the teenager out of the bus door and after a few attempts to reenter the bus the remaining passengers, myself not included, rang out in chorus “GET OFF THE BUS”. Only when the boy threw something and a large man from the back finally stood up did the teenager run away. On his way out he pressed himself up on the window, eyes crazed and bloodshot, and screamed threats of violence at the boy.

As the other passengers watched the teenager run away, I watched the boy. He leapt back to his seat, cursed a few times, then breathed deeply and looked down at his own shaking hands. “Did you see that? I took his weapon and then he was such a pussy!” a kind of wild excitement in his voice, with only a hint of a tremble. It was as if he was looking for me to congratulate him. I did not want to condone that kind of violent conflict resolution but, given the circumstances, I was grateful. “Are you okay?” I asked, and he nodded yes. Apparently the first punch “Didn’t even hurt”.

I returned to my book. Really I just stared at the page. My heart was racing uncontrollably and my hands were trembling just like the boy’s. I could not articulate words (I think at one point I had yelled “It’s okay, just leave”) and it felt like I was trying to think through a cloud.

            The bus driver asked the boy if he required medical attention and if he wanted to press charges, and he apologized to the driver for the situation. We filed off of the bus and as we waited for our new 71 and the police, some other boys who had been sitting in the back spoke up. “Did you even know that Tyler guy?” The boy shook his head. “No” he said “I just didn’t want that guy on our bus.” The other boys looked at each other incredulously. Another boy spoke up “Did he punch you with those brass knuckles?” As soon as I heard this my heart dropped. Sure enough, the boy explained what I had not seen. “No he didn’t. He tried to put them on but I grabbed them and put them in my pocket. I didn’t ever want to hurt him, I was just trying to get him off of the bus.”

            It struck me then what had really happened. This boy, this stranger, had put himself between me and the drunken, enraged, weapon wielding teenager. With no support from the rest of the bus he single handedly defended us. I was struck with the image of the boy between myself and the teenager. This boy with his fists up by his face like a boxer, complete with a clunky black wrist watch. I wanted to hug him. To thank him and impress upon him the important truth that the nobility of his action stemmed not from his physical triumph, but from the courage it took to accomplish that triumph.

            As I was boarding the new 71 I listened to the boy give his statement to the police. His name was Augustus. My heart melted. He really was just a boy. I told him as I stepped onto my bus “Have a better day” and he said that he would try. I wanted to thank him and he was saying something else to me, maybe apologizing to us for the hold up, but the people behind me pushed me forward onto the new bus.

            I know that I will probably never see him again but Augustus, thank you.

From this situation I have made several deductions:

-          There is an abundance of violence in the world

-          Violence is caustic, but can become necessary

-          I have a very poor stress response. In the past I have suspected this but given today’s events I now know it to be true.

-          In a self-defense situation, I am helpless.

-          I want to change that.