Far Away

I'm not gonna lie-- I'm kind of over this breakup. It's been the toughest of my quarter-century life. However, I know that if I ever date again (however unlikely that may be), the ensuing breakup will inevitably be even harder than this one. Why? because in each relationship I somehow manage to let myself believe the lies that men in this culture are trained from childhood to tell women. Men are trained to tell these lies because women believe them.

But all that's beside the point. Really.

Perhaps it's been work. Perhaps the business of gathering my things together to move in a few weeks. Perhaps the starting of a new non-profit to promote non-political environmental stewardship.

But in all these things I've felt very distant lately. Distant from myself. As if I am dwelling just outside my head, looking over at myself. I find myself staring off and tuning out when someone's talking to me. I daydream. I don't feel like myself.

When I gaze into a mirror, I can only shrug and determine that what I see is as good as it's going to get. I go to work and smile widely, hi-five my coworkers, joke loudly in the break room, greet customers with zeal. I love my job, and I love that I have a future there.

I drive home listening to classical music, clearing my head. And then I sit, feet on the coffee table, laptop lain across my legs. I sit and I unwind. My heart and mind unravel slowly, like changing a bandage at the end of a long day. It's a soothing practice. I recharge, winding up for the next day.

Maybe I feel out of my depth a little bit. As if my entire day is spent treading water.

When I recalibrate at the end of the day, I am flying home. My feet finally hit firm ground, where I know myself. Here, in my room, there's no one to see me, to judge me, to say hurtful things.

Here, alone, I am most myself.

Let's Pretend

I shot a couple of pictures of kumquats growing on a potted tree, and then turned back toward India Street. "Let's cross," I said, after assessing that neither of my companions was particularly interested in what remained toward the south. We traversed the empty street and turned back the way we had come, noting a small but attractive coffee shop along the way.

"I think," began one of my companions, "that I'm and idealist and you're a realist." She said it as if she'd only just realized this, and as if she didn't want to say it, for fear of insulting me.

I'm never insulted by being called a realist. I describe myself as pragmatic quite readily, and am admittedly one of the most practical people you'll ever meet. But the way my friend said it, you'd have thought she was calling me a racist, or something equally reprehensible.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, being very realistic.

"Well, I think you always try to find solutions to things. You don't ever just enjoy and idea for the sake of the idea. You always try to apply it."

Now, part of being a realist is that I don't like rough generalizations. I don't dismiss them altogether, but I'll usually point out the faults in a generalization just for the sake of clarity. But I approve of stereotyping on some occasions, in order to make a point. My students can tell you that I always say, "Stereotypes exist because they're true." And most of the time I say it to rile them up, but I'm secretly serious.

"I admit that I'm a realist," I replied. "But I can enjoy an idea in itself. I can bask in the possibilities and allow my imagination to roam. Only, I need to know that that's what we're doing. It's not my default setting."

"Well," said my friend, "whenever we're together, just assume that that's what we're doing."

We'd reached the coffee shop and I needed to use the bathroom, so I left the little group and when I returned I found the girls sitting staring at the menu. My one friend got up to go use the bathroom, leaving me sitting with the Idealist. I'd thought about it some more by now, and I had something to say.

"I don't think I should always have to make that concession," I stated rather flatly.

"What's that?"

"I don't think I should always have to be the one to back off. I'm a realist, and I find solutions. That's what I do. And sometimes you need to be challenged to take action, and not to just think."

"Yes, but I feel like that's all you do. I don't ever see you allowing me to dream or enjoy an idea. You're always taking me literally." The Idealist smiled.

"So..." I thought about this for a minute, then grinned. "So you're saying that when you told me I should always assume you're enjoying an idea for the sake of it, I shouldn't have taken you literally?"

She grinned back. We both laughed.

We dropped the topic for the moment, but her request resonated in my head for quite some time. And the more I thought about it, the more it hurt.

She may as well have said, "When we're together, let's pretend you're not here."

To ask me not to be a realist is to ask me not to be myself. And if she doesn't want me to be myself, then why are we friends? She likes me (she says) because I say what I think, and I don't mince any words. She likes me because I'm real.

But now she's asked me to not be real. At least not all the time. So, for part of the time, am I not to be myself? Am I to suspend my personality for her sake?

Let's pretend you're not you and I'm not me. And then we'll get along better.

Yes, but then we're only pretending to be friends.

Where I am, right now.

I've had two weeks for working for a family in beautiful Blossom Valley (see image)

Plus, my roommate's been gone visiting her now-boyfriend in Idaho. She comes back tonight.

I've also been jerked around by Microsoft, which offered me a position in its newest retail store at Fashion Valley, but then never called me with a start date. I'm still holding out hope, because they offer amazing benefits.

That said, I've had a lot of time to think. To think about things that are important to me. About faith, and politics (grr!), and romance, and travel, and school, and life.

One frequent feature of the past 2 weeks has been the ringing phone which, upon inspection, inevitably shows the number of the collections agency of my student loans, asking me to make a payment, which I can't. Because I don't have a job.

I asked my Facebook friends to help me out with rent this month, which several did! This marks a new type of boldness that I've not seen in myself before. In the past couple of months, I've done things that are totally out of character... I'll give you a few examples:

1. At the movies with Dee, I asked a man and his wife to move over one seat so that Dee and I could sit together.

2. I walked across the street from my parents' house to give my photography business card to a young mother that I saw playing with her kids.

3. On the way to Cabo, I noticed a young woman crying on the airplane and went to talk to her. I prayed with her!

4. I asked for money. From my friends. On Facebook. 

While these things may seem little to you, they're not to me. I'm extremely shy, and I don't normally talk to people, call people, make myself noticeable in any way.

I also reached another milestone: as of yesterday, I have been single for as long as we were (officially) together. So many people say that getting over a relationship takes half the time of the relationship. This isn't true. This breakup, which will stain my 25th Birthday forever, shook me to my core and made me reassess everything I know about love.

So, as you can tell, I've been thinking a lot. Here are a few conclusions I've come to:

1. Travel is one of the most important things in my life. I need to see something new every year, or I feel like my time's been wasted.

2. Being in debt is really not that worthwhile to me. After a full month of harassment 4 times a day by ringing phones and demanding collections agents, I'm tired.

3. Our parents' generation lied to us. Getting a degree will NOT get you a better job... considering that everyone has a degree. Welcome to McDonald's. And now they're criticizing us for seeming to have a sense of entitlement.

4. I won't be going back to finish my graduate degree until I pay off my student loans. I'll work my tail off and move back in with my parents, but these loans are getting paid off.

5. Getting married because you're in love is really inexplicable. And a very American concept. The rest of the world doesn't associate love with successful marriage, nor did the Bible. My theory is that if you're really committed to the institution of marriage, AND if your faith is strong enough to withstand the trauma of marriage, you could marry pretty much anyone like-minded and make a happy life together. Of course, being in love makes it easier to tolerate each other for the first couple of years. But it doesn't make building a lifetime partnership any simpler.

6. Political conservatism and The Bible are really not all that compatible when you really look into it. How can you be so attached to your right to bear arms when God insists that vengeance belongs to Him?

7. On the other hand, the government has no business telling me whom I can marry, what kind of car I can drive, how I educate my children, or what I can build on my own land. All these laws were put in place to generate taxes. Government-approved marriage licenses, car registrations, public education, and building permits are all ways that the government is doing what was prophesied in 1 Samuel 7: 

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you in that day."

8. I've decided that I love San Diego, and I want to live here for the rest of my life. But I have a few cities where I want to live "for a while", just for the sake of the experience. New York. Paris. 

9. Slowly, étape par étape, I am learning French.

10. God is good. All the time. And that's His nature. (and that deserves a hi-five!)