To break, to bend.

It starts with a text to a dear friend, that nattering anxiety and worry you’ve been wrapped in all week, this week, the week of holidays and loneliness and estrangement tipping off a rush of worry about people you love. It’s a simple, frustrated text that he quickly intuits where you are. “I’m going to leave the door open and put a bottle of wine on the coffee table. Curl up on the couch and I’ll be down to talk in 20.” And moments like these are the test, you who are embarrassed by your neediness, not wanting to be a burden, not really wanting to admit that you need some love and a good talk and just a moment. But you go, because that act in and of itself is a bravery, and on the way out the door you grab the wishbone that has been sitting on your windowsill. “A wish in wait” you call them, ready for times like these.

Fast forward to a crisp, chilly afternoon with an azure sky and a smoking fire pit. You are sitting outside with another dear friend, glass of champagne in hand, escaping what can only be described as the smelliest fish dish in the world. You have been invited to her family’s small gathering, her welcoming heart opening another spot for you. It’s a timid acceptance of the invitation that leaves you wondering why you keep doing this, the resisting, when there are people to love and friendship and sisterhood with people who know your spirit.

Smelly fish and blue skies turn into singing “Proud Mary” and “Easy” and drinking cheap wine at karaoke with new, lovely, gorgeous friends and their friends whom you’ve never met, the invitation that was the hardest to say yes to (sober-ish karaoke at 7:30p? Um, ok...), but the greatest yes because this friend knows the struggle of finding a place in a city of odd circles and she’s very intentionally trying to make that change for you. And this is an act of caring that you haven’t felt in a really long time, not because it’s not ever been done, but because you’ve been so reluctant to accept it.

In truth, we are at our best and worst sometimes in these moments of acceptance, the urge to mask our own needs by wanting to be helper but not the one in need. The feelings that sit under that discomfort—embarrassment, shame, humiliation, abandonment, rejection, loneliness, loss, hurt, worth— are real and deep, their roots are so firmly planted that unearthing them feels like the ground underneath would give way. Some of us, most of us, are pack animals. We need our people, a place to feel protected and be productive, a group in which to make and sustain a life. And in creating that belonging for others, you have to accept it for yourself.

You sit on the couch looking into your friend’s eyes, having explained the simple rule of the wishbone (as you play it): each person makes a wish for the other and pulls on behalf of that wish coming true. “One-two-three...” and the snap comes away with your friend holding the winning piece. “Oh, good!” he smiles, “that’s going to be a good one.”

And you know you can’t ask because it won’t come true.

And you know that every good thing that happens to you in the future will be sweetened by wondering if this is the grace he gave you in that wish.

And you are so grateful.

This is the Sea

Crouched on the dusty floor of my new studio, light streaming through the huge casement windows, I took a deep breath and lifted the first plastic lid off the first randomly selected box. I'd brought all of the archives into this new space, the boxes and bins of my college and high school history kept for years at my childhood home, my compulsion to keep scraps of notes and cards and pictures and random fragments of my life come to roost in a city so very far away from the ones where I was from. I'd decided that it was finally time to sort and parse, to try to make sense and to try to remember and to be in what was my history at that time as I had recorded it through pieces.

The first piece of paper held my best friend's signature scrawl, the words of a song that sang in our souls at the time, nailing me between the eyes.

Damnit. 

I walked over and dialed up the Waterboys This is the Sea on my iphone and let the music wash over me.

These things you keep
You'd better throw them away
You wanna turn your back
On your soulless days
Once you were tethered
And now you are free
Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!

One verse in and the irony of standing in the middle of this excavation hit me.

Now if you're feelin' weary
If you've been alone too long
Maybe you've been suffering from
A few too many
Plans that have gone wrong
And you're trying to remember
How fine your life used to be
Running around banging your drum
Like it's 1973
Well that was the river
This is the sea!
Wooo!

Verse two and I couldn't read the page for my tears.

Now you say you've got trouble
You say you've got pain
You say've got nothing left to believe in
Nothing to hold on to
Nothing to trust
Nothing but chains
You're scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
Scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
But that was the river
This is the sea yeah!

Three and my heart broke open.

Because that's really what this excavating was about, the finding, the sensemaking, the retracing steps and remembering who, what and why. Recounting, recontexualizing, renaming what has been lost and forgotten and erased and left behind over the countless miles. The who I had been back then made me the woman I am today.  

Two inches down and I found an envelope containing melted coins from my brother Hunter's car wreck.

Another layer and I found a cache of old love notes.

Another brought a rough letter from my mom.

Another offered hilarious cards from friends sent in the days before texting and email and iphones.

Hot, tired from the sorting and feeling, I was about to close everything up when I looked over to see that unmistakable handwriting once again, this time written across the entire swath of the envelope headed with PLEASE READ THIS.

oof.

My heart went zooming back to 1990, standing in my summer sublet, staring at this envelope from my clever-as-hell best friend. Months earlier, we had a bitter break, one so deep and severe that it felt it would be impossible to overcome. I refused her calls and wrote Return to Sender on every card even as they continued to show up. I was hurt and that hurt felt so huge that I had to throw gasoline on it, light it up and take it all down, even if it meant losing the most important person in my life. 

But she kept at it until one day this letter showed up with her message on the outside, her knowing damn well that I would be powerless not to read it, the message explaining that she refused to give up, that she was standing for me and for our friendship. That she wasn't going anywhere, for life. 

It also taught me a lot about myself: that friendship and loyalty are not light things for me, that maybe I expect too much or don't communicate clearly enough, that sometimes my favorite flamethrower is on deck with trigger finger poised. But also that I am there to extend the olive branch to work it out, show up, be there willing just as she was for me. 

I have never forgotten that act of love, just as I have never forgotten her patience and willingness to put herself out there again and again to rescue something that, decades later, is deeply precious to us both. That day, and the miles with her before and after, taught me about trust, what is earned, what friendship means, about not giving up. That people stay. 

These things you keep. Eternally grateful. Love you, sister.