I was a firebrand as a kid.
At 4, standing between the woman I would know as "Auntie Anne," and the alcoholic she was married to, I shouted at him to leave her alone. He'd fallen asleep, drunk, at the dinner table. When awoken (unsure how), he'd begun to rail at his timid wife. In my mother's words, I had known I would be in trouble if I'd done the same and I was not about to stand for it in others. I was referred to as her little hero for the entirety of that trip to Boston. I believe it's the same trip I was allowed to select a harmonica to take home as a memento, and there is photographic evidence somewhere of me and the person I knew as Cousin Neil with underwear on our heads.
In college, I had a hard time settling down into a vision for my future. Hell, truth be told, I still have no idea where my world will lead me. But a professor I came to count as a friend, and the model of patience I know I need, was talking to me one day. He chuckled when I complained that I couldn't find a cause. "Jess, you don't have one. You have too many."
I volunteered, I worked hard to uphold ideals and beliefs that were important to me. More than once, I was the biggest jerk on the planet and lectured perfectly loving people who needed none of my well-meant but goofy guidance.
June 6, 2013. I remember the day it began.
My world started to retract.
I'm still concerned with politics. I continue to read everything I can about it, and try to make sense of choices in the best of every change that comes in that realm.
There's no love like love for pets - and I myself still adore puppers and kitties always. I want them to be well taken care of, and I want them to have safe places to live.
We recycle when we can. I fight food waste pretty actively. There's nothing more goofy than my determined hunt for the way to make leftovers disappear, or at least become interesting.
I know I'm not the same. I look at the relationships I had and lessons come glaringly into focus. I was naive, and insecure. Probably still am, though in ways that have shifted and changed. It's a warning bell for me when people admit they'd rather make fun of me privately than tease me openly and let me join in. I am reticent to give full trust to the "Yes, we'll see each other soon," knowing that time will absolutely tell where I fall in the hierarchy of priority.
I don't go out of my way to find debate these days. Some would say it abounds with no effort. I would argue that my expectation - that a discussion begins and ends with respect, patience and interest - is seldom met, so rather than set someone up to disappoint me, I let the way a person reveals their opposing view inform (occasionally delight) me.
My reading and writing habits ebb and flow, an eternal ocean inside me that swells on one side as the other's waters slip away. I build worlds in the air, as ever, and find myself lost in the castles of others.
Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in The Castle" drifted across my reading list a while ago. I'd heard of it, with my propensity for older rather than current literature no doubt a guiding force. I delved into the narrative aware of my jaded expectations as well as my still-intact delight at finding a new universe I understood and could watch grow as I read. The edges filled in, as I like to say. By that I mean that it wasn't a portrait that created its own border, tidy and circumspect on the canvas. Rather, the smells and sounds of scenes not described in those ways seemed to rush toward me as I read. Kind of a mix of memory, intuition and familiarity. Perhaps another way to say it is that I knew the voice of the narrative, and when it was written, and that made it live for me even more than I had expected.
I mention this classic piece of creeping suspense, of determined obsessive literature because I would not have read it and found the same things at any other time in my life. Perhaps it's unique to look at pivot points as they happen, to literally feel the moment when your world and life shift from one phase to the next. As much as I adore and enjoy my friends, there are times when solitude is required for me. I find stillness there, and it is such a rare thing in my mind and my body that it takes on a reverence I fail every time to describe.
I am, and am not, the person I was. I carry the lessons, the scars, the ghosts, and the sadness of the choices I've made, the life I've lived. I have literally spent the past few months actively repaying old debts, filling in the edges of my own story's loose ends so that there is less for the demons of my nature to harry me. The better angels of that same nature sit quiet in this winter evening's solace, sated in all I have done today.
I know I've changed. I know I've turned a corner somewhere and there are relationships before that turn now gone. I see this in part as life progressing as it does for us all. I also am aware that I am changing again. Wounds too deep won't scar. Did you know that? Some cuts linger, determined never to close or heal. It's not always so clear as Beatrix Kiddo and Bill, where shooting someone instantly teaches the lesson that there are some things you can never take back.
I think the lesson in this phase that I've either just entered or just ended is, simply, that some things aren't meant for repair. They lay and languish, rust or rot, and I've always found beauty in those structures whose memory of their former glory seems to instill an iron resolve to say, "See what I was. Know what I meant, when first I was new and full of hope. Hope may yet be found in me, or I may fall, but I remain for now."
Will I build a new home in the bones of an abandoned barn? Will my footsteps echo down a hall where walls could have never heard voices again? What ruined, aging structures on the shores of my life's river will watch as I meander among them, grateful for their presence but never to turn their mill wheels or quicken in their pump-sinks again?
I do not carry regret. That emotion, as I can understand it, makes the most sense when you can see the totality of a life on balance. Value judgments, as those dearest to me know, are not something in which I engage often. You cannot know the weight of an experience, to look at its true impact, without the benefit of time, nor can you see the ripples of both good and bad it sent out into the world.
I am still hopeful, and still full of the hope that magical things are waiting for me. My eyes have turned from my own development of miracles to being the recipient, but my hope remains. I try to remember how staggeringly much I don't know. I try to see the lessons strangers offer me, and the wisdom friendship provide even when they drift away.
I have no New Year, New Me determination. There's too much of me still to grow, to change, to arrive, that I would feel ridiculous trying. I want to remind myself that humility in the face of another's suffering, kindness in moments where my temper would rather rage, and all the memories in my mind are vital.
There's no greater respect I can give than the amount I place on the late wife of Patton Oswald, and her mantra in this world.
"It is chaos. Be kind."
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