Asides

Cold feet in May, double-socked, toes still stiff
warm cheeks because of something you said to me,
blood still flowing
somewhere, at least
I smell cut grass, taste the chill of night descending
What season am I in?
What life is this?
I want someone to comfort me, to tell me I’m doing right
or just to tell me to do something, and what that something should be.
I can’t take this change alone, this hurtling towards some wild what.
The world isn’t stopping so I’m holding as best I can,
holding my very best
Earlier today I sat in a dim-lit room and listened to nothing but everyone breathe
and that was everything, everything!

It’s not even early morning, but I still want it. The minute my butt hits the thin-padded, plasticy airport seat, I’m itching to pop back up again and start prowling. The temptation that began as a wisp of an itch while I struggled out of my boots in the security line has bloomed into a siren call screeching through the most primitive fold of my brain: need coffee. Go get coffee.

Easier said than done, because I had just been deposited in this seat by an airline employee who had intercepted me while I was waiting for my boarding pass.

“You need help,” he said, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his arm against my shoulder. Too close. “I saw you, and I could tell.”

This is why I need coffee.

And this, also, after another employee had offered assistance before I boarded the tram, and when I accepted: “thank you”, he said, “I’ll give you my uninjured arm. Ha ha, I don’t know about this, I have an injury and you’re …” Here he trailed off, and I declined to fill the silence. Let him keep inserting his foot, we were stuck with each other. “… blind,” he finally said, then rushed ahead, “I’m not sure we can make it to the ticket counter.” Chortle chortle.

“I think we can,” I said dryly. “I have confidence in us.”

We did make it, but still, that is why I need coffee.

I should mention that the guy who could tell how much I needed his help tried what I can only assume was empathy. “I know what it’s like,” he said. I should also mention he spoke with a stutter. Blindness and stuttering aren’t the same, but I took his point.

After escorting me to my gate, he stood behind me, too close, again, breathing on the small hairs at the back of my neck. So, like, how long does he plan on staying? I wondered, as my itchy coffee-deprived brain started working through the possibilities. Could I ask him to go with me to a Starbucks? Could I endure more “empathy”, even for caffeine? No, there are some things I just can’t endure, even for my most beloved elixir.

“So, thanks a lot!” I said finally, too loud, too cheerful. “I think I’m good!”

“You’re in seat 24 F,” he reminded me, again, for the 17th time.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll come back in an hour to help you preboard.”

“Really that’s not necessary. The airline folks usually do that.”

“I’ll save them the hassle.”

I decided to say nothing, least of all how annoyed I was to hear the word “hassle” from his mouth, a word I have long wrestled with and worried over. That, and “burden.” “Hassle” and “burden” are two words I know well and worry over like a fingernail bitten to the quick.

As soon as he finally, finally, shuffles away, I slam the door definitively on “burden” and once again open the hopeful floodgates of “coffee.” Can I do it alone? Can I, by wanting it badly enough, make my way to an americano?

As usually happens, once I stand up and begin to move, my timidity and uncertainty become exhilaration. A cup of coffee, a perfectly routine task in the itinerary of a sighted person, is a quest for me if I have no idea where to procure one. And while that can be daunting, it’s also a little adventure, if only I choose to accept it as one.

Kiva and I hit the concourse, the traffic of people and carts and suitcases sweeping us along like a current. I prick my nose and ears into the dense, noisy air, just like Kiva on the first warm day of spring, hoping for a roasty hit from a nearby cafe or the sound of a steamer wand in hot milk. I pass bathrooms, (thank you, loud flushing toilets), a water fountain grumbling with fatigue, gates full of the agitated energy of boarding. No food court. No coffee.

I reverse direction, scootching into the other lane to flow with my foot traffic river. It amazes me how, in an airport, everyone is always moving. No stopping to check a text message or take pictures or chat obliviously in the middle of the concourse. Air travel forces us to give up a semblance of control over getting to our destination. Possibly, like me, others who could (or should) take the opportunity to relax and let go instead must keep moving, so we can pretend we have some say in getting from here to there.

Kiva weaves me through a maze of chairs, up a carpeted ramp, away from the narrow coffeeless aisle we’ve been cruising. I’m in a constant state of mentally marking our trajectory: here’s where the tile becomes carpet, here’s where the wall opens up to the right, remember this for the way back, Lauren. I hear the hopeful sound of someone stacking plates, the rush of water from a sink. I smell grease and a tickling waft of rewarmed pastry. Pastries, even lackluster ones, are a good sign.

As if linked by our barely-contained need, a woman materializes at my side like I’ve conjured her. “Are you looking for Starbucks?” she asks. Her voice is soft, probably in reverence.

“Yes!” By contrast, my excitement explodes out of me and echoes off the food court ceiling. I don’t bother asking how she knows, we are clearly kindred spirits.

“If you walk forward a few more steps and turn left, you’ll be in line.”

I thank her and follow her directions, emerging 5 minutes later with a paper cup of bitter holiness with just the right lash of cream. I begin making my way back to the concourse, checking off my landmarks: open to the left, carpet leading to tile. I’m grateful for my independence, and also for my recognition that I can’t do it all on my own.
That interdependence is where we truly begin to achieve our goals.

Throughout my life, I’ve usually heard the word “success” applied to people who have good jobs, houses, assets, and kids. This is our western ideal. This is what we say to ourselves when we think about our self-worth: “Well, I’m proud of my kids, my house, the money I make, the work I do. I’m a successful productive adult.”

I’m trying to figure out what that means for me, specifically. I don’t have a job, a house, or kids. It seems pretty unlikely that I will have any of these things any time soon or ever. How do I measure my own success when I have none of the attributes society deems successful?

Sometimes I mention this to societally deemed successful people, and they shoo my words away like a buzzy house fly. “Oh well, that doesn’t matter,” they’ll say, “I think you put that pressure on yourself. No one thinks worse of you because you don’t have those things, you just decide they do.”

Really? Because every day, I’m bombarded with messages that unemployed people don’t “contribute” to society. I’m told that I will never know a very special, transcendent kind of love if I don’t have a child. It’s fine for you to rent, people say, but I’m glad I can finally do what I want with my space now that I have a house.

What if these societally deemed successful people didn’t have their societally deemed successful authority to fall back on when they tell me not to worry about my unsuccess? It’s easy to say it doesn’t matter when you have the thing that everyone thinks matters. Being dismissive from a place of financial comfort and with the luxury of privilege and assets does nothing to reassure me of what I’m worth.

My challenge, somehow, is to find my worth in other ways and communicate it outwardly. I know, somewhere inside me, that I am worthy of stability, security, peace. Despite what I don’t contribute to society in traditional ways, I am still worth something intrinsically. My value still exists, regardless of my output.

Over the past year, I have put a conscious, consistent effort into not asking people about their work or status at parties. I’ve tried to change “what do you do?” into “what do you love?” or “what inspires you?” or “what are you excited about?” I’ve tried to meet strangers as individuals, not people who work for a company or exist in a particular partnership. I am shifting my thinking to operate under the knowledge that every person has value and success, regardless of what they “do” or “have.”

What gives you self-worth besides societally deemed success? What would you like a stranger to ask you about?

I can’t believe it’s been 5 years this month that Kiva and I have been together. She’s been with me through two big moves, three jobs, trips to Boston and Vermont and Oregon. She’s loved all my people and she’s loved me too, not always an easy feat.

I almost don’t know what to say about this occasion, though I feel like something should be said. Everything that I can think of seems so trite, so oversaid. We are such a dog-obsessed culture that there isn’t much new out there.

Of course, I love Kiva for all her doggy ways: her velvet ears, her inquisitive nose, the exuberance with which she greets the morning. I love her steadfastness. I love her loyalty. I love that she doesn’t know what an asshole I am sometimes; all she knows is I feed her and pet her every day and that’s good enough for her. I love that she leans her body against me, like she thinks I can hold her up.

But I also love Kiva for the direction she gives me. I can’t stay in bed all day because she needs to be walked. I feel safer with her, especially walking at night. She teaches me steadiness, consistency. She’s taught me about unconditional love, something that I suspect is not possible between humans, but might just exist for her, and I admire that unconditionally.

I remember when I first got Kiva, she seemed totally wrong for me. I didn’t know how to handle her, she jumped on and licked everyone, I felt like I’d never be able to settle her. My dog school instructor told me later that they almost decided to switch me to a different dog. One of the old ladies in my class with no filter and fabulous comedic timeing told me she was sure after the third day that I was going to quit. But I didn’t quit. One of the things I love about Kiva and that I value so much between us is that we didn’t give up on each other. I know now to pick my battles. I’m sure she picks hers too.

Kiva will be 7 in June. I can’t quite believe these five years have gone so quickly. Soon I know I’ll have to think about retirement and whether I want to get another dog. I want to cry every time I think about it. When I first got Kiva, I’d wanted to cry at the thought of the responsibility of caring for and training her. Now I don’t ever want to let her go.

To my Kiva: thank you for being with me, guiding me, loving me even when I am at my worst, greeting me every day with a joy that is catching. I love you. You are truly the dog of my heart.

If there is a god, she would be here now, at the tangle of winter and spring. Where the world waits for its endured hungers to be satiated, when the earth begins to rumble with life. I wait here too, in silence, sensing the changes in air and light, sensing that this is the time for resiliance.

Some animals can’t take the switch from winter to spring. The thaw is too much, the rush too full, they crumble under the weight of it all. I think of the moose bending, hooves scrabbling on frozen ground, unprepared for the melt. Even the noblest creatures aren’t safe.

I strain to recall springs past, robins showing up like a saving grace, dripping eaves and a tinged-warm wind at my cheeks like a blessing.

I remember picking up worms after rainstorms, their wet dirt-flecked bodies wriggling in my palm. I transferred them from the sidewalk to the grass so they wouldn’t be squashed beneath my classmate’s careless feet. I couldn’t save a moose, but maybe I saved a worm.

The years seem to keep rushing by, like water sluicing through my hands. The time of the Equinox seems, by contrast, to stand still, to draw breath, deciding between wind and rain, snow and sun. I long for the silence to last a little longer, for the shifting to make me strong, for the water to swallow the shore.

If there is a god, she would be here now. Waiting, too.

A few weeks ago, I made risotto for the first time in a long time. It was so much comfort, so much toothsome creaminess, and I’ve been wanting to make it again since then. But, I haven’t. The reason I haven’t is because I’ve felt that I don’t have the time or patience. My weeks have been filled with reading and writing and staring at a computer, so much that by the time the day is done I’m wondering if the words I’m speaking are even making sense. I can’t imagine standing over the stove for the 30 minutes of stiring and adding broth and stirring. I want quick fixes, I want to pull something out of the fridge, eat it fast, and be done with it.

Yet, I’ve also been thinking a lot about patience and how I have lacked it and neglected it for too long. I got tired of feeling like I had to wait for other things and other people and other circumstances in order to proceed with what I wanted. So I made quick choices, I stopped being deliberate, I leaped and leaped and leaped. Which is all ok to an extent, but I think I’ve reached the end of my leaping for a while.

For one, I’m just plain tired. For two, I’m reminded of the things, like risotto, that take more time and that pay off in ways they never would if rushed. Bread must have patience to rise. Jam takes patience to set. Pickles require patience for curing. Risotto asks for an almost trance, a quick saute of vegetables and rice until they’re glossy and smell like toasty earth, a hiss of splashing wine, and then the slow pouring and stirring of broth into rice. And just when you think it’ll never be right, it is.

There’s something sizzly and exciting about quick decisions, snap judgments, just going for it. It’s hard to be patient when you’re broke as hell and don’t exactly know where or how to be and feel like you’ve flung all your blood and tears and love into the universe with a slim garuantee of returns. But I want to pursue that quiet patience anyway. I want to be somewhere long enough, in a place or in a life, to plant and tend a tree. I want to learn all I can about the places where I am, so I can share that knowledge with new seekers and cultivate lasting bonds. I want to sink into the art of waiting like it’s warm water lapping at my cold feet.

I’m currently doing a manuscript review for my friend Stephany, whom I met at a conference last fall. She’s a sheep shearer, and in describing her first forays into shearing, she says: “I start to laugh a little, a deranged, half-crying laugh, in pain, out of relief that I am done and the sheep is not dead, and at the full force of knowing, so immediately, that nothing I have ever done has been hard.”

When I read that, I stopped and sat still, like I’d been given a profound revelation. What if I were to challenge myself with this thought? What if nothing in my life, thus far, has ever been hard?

When I am faced with something difficult, with a shock to my system, with a hard slog, I tell myself a little story about how I am resilient. How I have grit. How I’ve faced this challenge before, or something similar, and I’ve gotten through, and I will get through again. What if all of that is just the story I tell myself, because I have no resiliency, no grit, because nothing I have ever done, up to now, has been hard?

What I considered “hard” things: my school closing down, a cross-country move with no guarantees, breakups with people I adored, constant dealing with people’s ignorance, bias, and thoughtlessness every time I leave my house alone, bleak years of unemployment, crippling student loan and credit card debt, directionlessness, inability to do what I want for lack of funds, loneliness. Not hard. None of it hard.

What could I do with my life if I suspended all belief that what I’ve been given has been hard, and what I face will always be hard? What free, unincumbered space would open up in my mind if I could let go of all that hard?

That space could be for new creation, for love, for more hand-holding and laughing and ice cream and intense conversations where we all figure it out, and more acceptance for each of us, particular and beautiful and human.

I remember the first time I heard of text messaging. I was in Spain, it was fall 2006 and I missed a required meeting for my study abroad program because, apparently, someone had texted that the meeting was happening. There was no assistive technology then for cell phones, or none that I had any awareness of, so I never knew about the text.

For years, I avoided texting and mocked it for its “impersonal” nature. Finally, in 2010, when I had the money and was tired of being the one at the table with no phone in their hand, I bought a phone that was compatible with a screenreader whose name I cannot even recall now. I remember the screenreader being around 300 dollars, on top of the phone cost. (Have I mentioned lately how egregious it is that blind people, who statistically bring in way less income than sighted people, are required to pay for assistive technology on top of regular technology?) Anyway, with that particular phone model, (hey hey, HTC Dash!), I could text. It wasn’t always pretty or without ridiculous typos, but it was something.

In 2013, I finally transitioned to a smart phone, some kind of Android thing because I couldn’t afford an Iphone. The screenreader was built in, but flaky. I had literally bought the very last smart phone in the T Mobile store with a physical keyboard that pulled out beneath the touch screen.

Finally, in 2015, I got an Iphone. I could no longer ignore every other blind person saying how amazing the accessibility was. I was skeptical because I couldn’t picture using a phone without buttons and a keyboard. But, I found the accessibility on my Ipods to be pretty good, more or less, so I finally went for it.

This is NOT an advertisement for Apple. In fact, they used to be terribly inaccessible until they got sued for it by a blind advocacy organization. But I will say that I prefer Apple accessibility to everything else I’ve tried. It is fairly simple and streamlined across most apps. So, when I got my Iphone, I installed all the apps: Facebook, Twitter, Meetup. I set up my Gmail. I was all in, constantly checking my notifications and trying to dictate texts. (Results varied greatly there.)

Gradually, I’ve started to see the toll this has taken on me mentally. If I didn’t check my phone a few times an hour, or more, I felt stressed. When I did check my phone, I’d feel better for a minute, because I got some kind of emotional validation from someone “liking” something I posted on Facebook, or I received an instant message, or a new comment or retweet. And then I’d feel anxious until I could check my phone again. When I was out in the world, I’d walk blocks looking at my phone, not paying attention to anything else. Or I’d at least listen to a podcast or music. I fell into a trap of needing constant distraction, validation, proof that people loved me, or that they at least took a half second to click “like” on something I said. That was love now, apparently.

I only started to really realize this after I deleted Facebook and Facebook messenger off my phone. Suddenly, I was on a bus and had no idea what was going on on Facebook. I felt panicky for a while, and then not, and then relief. Facebook messages could wait.

There’s more to it, though. The energy I had put into checking Facebook now went into me checking email, constantly refreshing, refreshing, as I went about errands and life. I recently read an article that said that checking your email more often led to more stress. (Well, duh.) This past week, I’ve deleted all of my email off my phone. All that’s left is text messaging (still full of typos, still bad at dictating), and calling. Those are the only things I can do to contact others when I’m not tied to my laptop.

I know people have described the way we constantly look at our phones as obsessive, even addictive. I’m not authorized to diagnose myself, but I know that I have obsessive tendencies and my constant phone checking got stifling. I’m really hoping I can stick to just texts and calls. I’m hoping it will reduce my anxiety and increase the awareness of my immediate world.

What about you all? Do you do anything to reduce phone gazing? Or, does the constant gazing not affect you? Or, do you think the whole screen addiction thing is ridic? Tell me in the comments, and if you have the time and bossiness level, feel free to check in to see if I’m keeping myself accountable!

I don’t want to write.
I want coziness and conversations that matter.
I want touch and cuddles and kisses.
I want coffee and tea and warm bread with butter.
I want sun on my face.
I want litheness in my body.
I want connection and figuring shit out together.
I don’t want to write.
I don’t want days of solitude
hunched in a chair, computer staring back.
I don’t want companions of just my thoughts and my demons.
I don’t want silence
Moving words around just feels like throwing myself in the same river.
I’m pretty sure you can step in twice.
We’ve all been telling ourselves our creativity matters.
This is the time for our voices.
We can’t rest now.
I don’t want to rest, but I don’t want to write.
I want to engage
I want to feel
I want to listen
to all the voices that are not mine.

When I was 17, I sat on a blanket in my backyard, surrounded by my dearest high school friends, and told everyone I was a lesbian. It was my birthday party. The tradition was to stay up as late as we possibly could, outside, until the birds chirped to life and the sun gave us the morning. In the middle of the night, coming out felt so safe and so freeing. I’m not sure anyone was particularly surprised. The cliche exists for a reason: it felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted from me, just by saying aloud, “I’m different. And this is how, and this is who I am.”

This was the start of my “coming outs.” I came out to my mother, my grandparents, my host families in Spain and Ecuador, friends and acquaintances. I stopped getting bent out of shape when someone else came out on my behalf. This was who I was.

Until it wasn’t. Until, in my twenties, I started dating men and had to tell all my lesbian friends that haha! just kidding! I’m not straight, but I’m definitely not “100 percent gold star gay” either.

And still I wasn’t done. I’m not sure when I first discovered that open relationships were possible, that there was this thing called polyamory where you could be in love with multiple people and everyone was ok with it, embraced it even. After learning about polyamory, however I did, I thought about it in my subsequent relationships, but never brought it up much. It was something I wanted, but felt strange and guilty for wanting.

When I was 26, I had the opportunity to date someone who was polyamorous and who lived with his girlfriend. She liked me, at least initially. And I got to experience a relationship model that seemed to fit me in a way that monogamy had failed to do. And that was just the beginning.

So now, I’m coming out again, publicly, loudly, as polyamorous. Many of my close friends and family know, and now all of you know, too. I have a network of people who are, in one way or another, my partners, my dearest loves, my chosen family. They are the people I want with me for big life occasions, for small life occasions, for birthdays and snow days and days where there’s nothing going on at all. These are the people I will probably introduce you to, if you and I see each other often, and they are the people who will hold my hand, possibly one right after the other, or at the same time, and it will be normal to us. Normal because we’ve actively, intentionally decided to bypass normal relationship ideals and trajectories and create our own models, which are living, not static, and changing and growing as we change and grow.

I am not writing this to convince anyone that polyamory is “better.” You shouldn’t try this at home if it doesn’t sound good to you. What I’m writing this for is to ask for your acceptance and your respect. I’m writing this so that, in the future forever, I can talk and write openly about my poly family without shame and without holding back the particular love I feel for multiple people. And, ultimately, I’m writing this to open a dialogue about relationships, about the infinite ways we humans can stretch and live and love, and to be a resource for anyone who feels like the conventional model, for whatever reason, just isn’t for them. Talk to me. I am open and I am here.

And, I’ve learned one sure thing in all this uncertainty: I’ll probably never stop coming out. What a gift and a privilege that is.