storyteller.
About once every couple of months, I devote the better portion of a morning to building a new playlist. The entire process – scouring the Spotify world for new gems, trying to build the soundtrack to life as is, working to encapsulate it all with the right title – takes a fair amount of time and invigorates me for the days ahead. Not all playlists are created equal, however, as evidenced by the dusty ones at the bottom of the list.
I’ve written before about running as it relates to my weight loss journey, about the first time I stepped onto a treadmill and forced myself through a song. I’ve written about the gradual increase in my running competence, from four minutes on a treadmill to the completion of half-marathons. But, as I realized earlier this week as I was running around the recreation center track, I haven’t truly written out what running does for me.
Habitual runners can agree: Running is (mostly) free therapy. Prior to a run, I often find myself cranky, aimless, and bored; following one, I am usually spirited, motivated, and enthused. Running has helped me sort out more than a few knots, as it enables my mind to wander and reflect at length. But that’s not what I’m writing about today.
Somewhere along the chronology of my life – maybe in the early, awkward middle school years – I stopped feeling ‘at home’ in my body. As I gained weight, ever self-conscious of the rising number on the scale, I began to feel a strange dissonance between the person I was and the person I saw in the mirror. Growing taller, broader, wider, I found myself feeling clumsy and a bit confused.
Beginning at the end of my high school tenure and moving through my undergraduate years, my weight loss journey enabled me to gain some authorship over the state of my body. I came to understand the transactional nature of exercise, of taking time to strengthen and work my body. Grad school marked a bit of a decline for this time, and then moving into the workforce provided me the opportunity to find this authorship again.
When I run today, I am often amazed at how quickly I am compelled to feel ‘at home’ in my body. Running requires that I pay attention to the mechanics of my feet, my ankles. That I notice the sturdiness of my legs, the muscular cut of my calves. That I hold my shoulders in a position both relaxed and upright, keep my stomach and arms engaged. On my best runs, sometimes under summer night skies and others through monotonous laps in the gym, I find myself rolling my head back and forth, spreading my arms like wings to accept the moment. Before and after each run, I stretch, feeling my muscles respond.
I am alive in this body, running reminds me again and again. This body is mine, and I must treat it well, appreciate its strengths, respect its limitations.
What running does for me, I have come to understand, is to bring me back in communion with the body I sometimes forget is my home. It connects me to myself; it breathes life into the vessel.
I’m sitting in a coffeehouse. It is a Tuesday, and I am sitting in my feelings.
A former student, a friend, is missing. He is a leader, a guy with an offbeat brand of humor and a knack for thinking from unusual angles, and he was one of the bright lights in my first year of graduate school. He’s a law student, a dweller of Chicago, a person just stepping into the courage of his story. I’m not eulogizing; I have to believe that he’s okay.
There are four armchairs in this coffeehouse. I am in one of them, tucked back in the corner by the wall separating the people from the machines. There is the whistle of a latte being foamed. In the other three chairs are three older people – two men and a woman – who meet here, I am guessing, on a regular basis. They are discussing current events in their lives and the world. Sharp minds in older bodies. One of them just began a sentence, “The first time I got pneumonia…”
A text message from someone I miss. Checking in about the missing student. ‘I would hug you, but distance, ya know.’
Driving soon, across miles of highway in the dark. Preparing to kick off a new semester.
There are so many uncertainties: Where’s this road go? Is it going to be okay? Are we going to be okay? Does the dust ever settle? Are we better for the choices we’re making?
But there are also absolutes, too: Love survives hardship. Our stories matter. We are here, right now. This is it.
With the jump into 2016, I paused a bit to create a few resolutions. Because my 2015 found me making steps in positive directions, I opted to forego taking wild stabs in new directions, instead creating a list of ‘Resolutions, More or Less’:
MORE:
• Reading
• Running
• WritingLESS:
• Hustling for approval
• Space for fear/self-doubt
As an undergrad, I was invited by a mentor to discuss my experiences with masculinity. Walking into the meeting, I expected to feel good about helping a friend with her graduate school work; walking out, I was startled at how busy my mind was. Masculinity, particularly the pressure to perform masculinity, had been a particularly pervasive force in my life.
In grad school, I based my thesis work around the topic of masculinity. My participants seemed equally startled by the volume of messages, of rules and codas, they were working to perform and uphold. So many messages about what ‘real men’ do.
The rise of a new year is an invigorating time; the idea of a clean slate, of our very own tabula rasa, grants us the opportunity to dream in new directions. ‘What can I make of this year?’ many of us find ourselves asking, ‘Who can I be?’
A friend of mine Skyped at the dawn of December, and she let me know she’d be shutting out of social media for a bit. “December is my reflective time,” she said to me. Her time to pause, look back on the year freshly fading, and figure out what mattered.
I have a tendency to try and chronicle my life, to set aside the meaningful pieces and write them out so I won’t lose sight of who and what mattered, and how I lived and struggled and grew and changed. The act of boiling a year down can become cumbersome, not only to write but also to read, so this year I am working to edit. I have given myself five moments. The following is an incomplete and imperfect gathering of important moments in my 2015. Nevertheless, these were the moments that sifted above the rest.
“The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.”
― John Steinbeck, Once There Was a War
“When acquaintances ask me what I do, my usual response is this, ‘Take everything fun you associate with theatre, and I do the other stuff.’ Now, before you paint the mental picture I sit in a cubicle and run expense reports from nine to five each day, let me lay some Bob Ross happy trees on you.
“I lead the marketing, operations, business, and outreach activities for a historic nonprofit community theatre. Having first started as a volunteer, I’ve worked with the theatre for five years now (though only three of those years were paid). In those few years I’ve been able to take part in raising this old theater out of its own ashes, and work to preserve the future of this great local tradition for another century. Developing sustainable business models and patronage that spans generations are the two visionary goals that focus my everyday decisions.
“Most businesses don’t have the forethought to plan for 100 years of business, but we have four generations walk through our doors for various programs. How do you cultivate customers for more than just one lifetime? By taking full advantage of the power and lasting impression art has in people’s life story. I’m defining what it means to genuinely be a community organization; we enrich our whole community through theatre performance, education, and outreach. The impact I make on an organization that transforms real lives through art is my ‘raison d’être.'”
– C
This summer, following my first year of professional work, I indulged in a trip to New York City. On the second day, invigorated and equipped with a purpose, I made my way to Union Square, where I immediately hit up the Strand Bookstore.
A friend of mine, Valerie, works at a religiously-affiliated institution of higher education. Having experienced the coming out of several of her grad school friends, my friend Valerie took it upon herself to become an ally, and she carried that passion into her professional work, taking on an advising role for her new campus’s LGBT+ student organization.
Recently, Valerie shared with me that the group has faced some hardship, and she asked me to put together some words. Sitting down this morning, I wrote them a letter. The following, edited a bit so as to apply to a broader LGBT+ community, are my words:
“It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly when I knew I was gay. For me, it was more of a process of coming out to myself and accepting who I really was.
“Growing up, I was an Air Force brat. In those days, not long ago, to be gay and to be in the military were not compatible. Even though my family never really spoke one way or the other about the topic, I presumed it was unacceptable to be gay because ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was in action.
“That being said, I always felt a little different. I was never really into girls. I found myself much more interested in the guys in the locker room during gym class, but I never really thought about it much.
“The first time I really thought about my sexuality, I was in high school. Joining the drama club, I met an openly gay man for the first time. I admired the confidence he projected and his attitude, not only about himself but about life. I felt something for him, but I could not pinpoint what my feelings were. I told myself I needed to let it go because it was wrong. I had various moments like these throughout high school, always with the same thought process.
“My Sophomore year of college, I tried dating a good friend of mine from high school. She was my first ‘real’ girlfriend. I had relationships prior, but – looking back – they never really moved beyond friendship. She would have been the perfect girl by all standards. She was pretty, smart, kind, and she was going to school to be a dentist. We dated for a few months, but something did not feel right; it felt forced and unnatural. I think it was at that point that I really started to question my sexuality.
“I became an RA in my junior year of college. During a conference for student staff, I met a few RAs from other schools in the state who were out. Watching them, I saw that they looked so happy with who they were. Like they didn’t care what others thought of them. It was inspiring.
“Back at school, I brought the topic up with my hall director while we were in a one-on-one meeting. At the time, I regretted broaching the subject. The more we met, the more she really pushed me to talk about it, and it was a talking point during many of our one-on-ones. Listening and providing words of support, she really helped me through the process of accepting who I was. She helped me reshape my perspective. It is because of her that I am who I am today. Had she not pushed me and affirmed that it was okay for me to be gay, I probably would still not be comfortable with myself.”
– E
