June 01, 2001
Catching Up
What a long strange month it's been. One month ago today, I was in California. In fact, right about now I think I was being awakened by the sonic boom of the space shuttle overhead as it landed at Edwards Air Force Base. It was a wonderful, wonderful vacation, and I know that by not writing about it right away I've probably lost some of the minutiae of the trip forever. The important stuff, however, remains. Mo and Josh and Laura were absolutely a blast to hang around with (I already knew Brand was cool), and it was agreed that the five of us hanging around together seemed the most natural thing, as if we'd been doing it for years. In a sense, we have, just not face to face.
Among the things I learned that week were that you should never give Mo dairy products, because they make her high -- I'm not joking. As evidence, I offer an image of Mo, sitting under a tree on State Street in Santa Barbara, ice cream in hand, belting out Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" -- "Picture this, we was both BUCK NAKED bangin' on the bathroom floor" -- at the top of her lungs. I learned that I am both stronger and weaker than I think I am, and that jealousy is not the end of the world -- or of a friendship. I learned that slumber parties are still loads of fun, whether it was just me and Laura exchanging sad stories and Kleenexes at five in the morning, or whether it was me trying to stay awake and listen to Laura and Brand's theological, philosophical discussion as the sun came up. I learned that Josh is probably the coolest middle school teacher in Southern California -- soon to be the coolest high school teacher -- but his students probably don't appreciate that. I learned that the ocean has a powerful, powerful effect on me, and that my whole selkie obsession has reasons behind it that I'd never considered before. I learned that Panorama City isn't (isn't a panorama, that is), but getting stranded there makes for some good stories later. I learned that I can kick Brand's ass in Trivial Pursuit. I learned a lot of things, but most of all, I learned that I am lucky to have so many fantastic friends scattered around the country -- and that includes the ones right here in Michigan too.
Online journals are strange things. They are intimate, but they are intimate at an arm's length. I've come to some hard realizations about myself over the past week or so, very hard realizations. Over and over again in this journal, I've prided myself on how open I am, and how very much I let people get in close to me, and how often I get hurt because of that.
That's a lie. It's a lie that I've told myself for a very long time now, and one that I believed whole-heartedly. That doesn't make it any less untrue. Just like in this journal, I am intimate with other people, but at an arm's length. Even with my closest friends, I have control over who sees what side of my life, and when. Just like in this journal, I control what I reveal and what I keep secret. That's why I am more comfortable living alone. That's why I have so many friends that live so far from me -- even most of my friends in Michigan are a good hour or more drive away. Because that way I have control over who gets close, and how close they get.
That was an amazingly hard thing to realize about myself. All my life, I've had this image of myself, only to realize that that image was a façade. It's like discovering that you've been living under an assumed name and never knew it. You start wondering who you are. You start wondering what else you've been lying to yourself about. The truth of the matter is that I was, once upon a time, the open person I believed myself to be. Then I got too close, unhealthily close, to someone, and Bad Things happened. I swore that would never happen again, so I started to change. Then the next person I got close to had walls built all around him, so I built walls of my own in defense, finishing the change. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming either party for where I am. I'm just talking cause and effect here.
So I've recognized the problem. What do I do about it? For now, I stretch a little. If I seem, over the next few months, to be acting contrary to the me you know, chances are you're seeing a side of me that I don't usually show you. And all that means is that I trust you enough to take down some walls around you. I've always wondered at people who said they couldn't get close to people, wondering how on earth they kept separate and why. I'm still amazed to learn that I'm one of them.
Posted by Lisa at June 1, 2001 12:15 PM
