landslide

It would be a challenge to describe the true extent of this past year, as I near my 31st birthday.  What has my new decade introduced me to?  I've been changing.

Maybe last year I was feeling liberated, at least marginally, from the grips of heartache.  Of rejection.  I was being squeezed through a tiny portal into my new self, and it was desperately painful.  And then I was through it, after some transformative therapy, an incredible birthday party attended by dozens of people who still refer to that event as the one that brought new friends and new loves together...I was so happy to feel so loved and embraced by people that I loved and embraced, and we were all being our authentic selves.

It's like a kaleidoscope filled with bits of colored glass.  Every view is beautiful, and then you turn the eyepiece a little and everything shifts, and that previous image is gone forever, replaced by something new.  The challenge, perhaps, is to stay open to the beauty of each arrangement, the inherent possibility with each new turn.

For a while, my heart brimmed so heavily with gratitude and love that the struggles seemed trivial and peripheral, or at least ultimately worth it.  I fell so in love with my students that I literally experienced grief when the school year ended and they bounded happily into their summer of freedom.  Several of my favorite people left the faculty.  I spent the next six weeks working in a chemistry lab at the university, and it was such happiness.

Dating was a tenuous circumstance, but I had a few options to consider and I was enjoying my time with them.  I poured a lot of my heart into a tiny baby tortoise I got in October, and we were very much in love.

With my summer job money, I committed to a trip back to southeast Asia, where I traveled throughout Thailand, into Malaysia, and out through Taiwan.  I had no idea what to expect, but maybe I was expecting something, because I went back to some of the places I had previously visited and I felt a little let down.  However, I did meet some amazing new people and I did and saw some incredible things.  I'm convinced that I am destined to live in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  It felt a little like Tucson; small and intimate but bustling with development, while embracing its history as a very, very old city.

Honestly, by the time I had been traveling for two and a half weeks, I was exhausted.  My pack was heavy, the humidity was oppressive, and I was basically very lonely.  The last three or four days of my journey consisted mostly of traveling to and from airports, waiting in lines, waiting in airports, and suspended over oceans.  I started to attack myself in my journal, feeling desolate and hopeless.  I knew I didn't want to travel alone again.

I started this school year with some hopes for improvement, but it has been difficult.  My class sizes are large.  There are a lot of students with "differentiation" needs, who basically don't show up regularly to class or turn anything in, but still hope to pass the course.  I've probably gone too fast, neglected crucial details in conveying lessons, and mapped out my curriculum without considering how much my students could probably digest.  They are very lazy this year.  I feel an added sense of pressure because our evaluation process is holding us accountable for this kind of bullshit, and because I'm also working on (and paying for) my student teaching modules this year.

My tortoise disappeared.  At first, I had hoped he merely dug himself a happy little spot, because I had spent so long trying to secure my little yard as a suitable home for him.  One day he was happily munching some sprouts in the gravel, and we had a little talk about how much I loved him and how we were going to be together for a long time.  I was holding him in my hand, and I rubbed the top of his tiny head with the tip of my finger, and he closed his eyes and held his head up and steady.  Then he went to bed, and I have never seen him since.  I put up lost posters in my complex, but I don't think there's any hope.  It's anyone's guess what has become of my Littlefoot, but I'm very sad about it.  He was my peace and love this past year.

I went on a trip to a festival in northern California with a girlfriend of mine that I haven't actually gotten to spend much time with.  We had poor chemistry, and I think it was a culmination of stress in our busy lives, fatigue from trying to prepare for this journey, and our different communication styles, but we are on different spiritual paths and it was very plain to see.  There were mishaps, as there often are in situations like this, and we were both in hormonal duress.  I thought the overall experience was quite interesting, but I found her company to be grating and tedious, because she talked about herself the entire time, repeating the same dozen or so things over and over, even sometimes interrupting the rare comment I attempted to make about anything.  She was self-centered, snotty and passive aggressive, and never laughed at any of my jokes, which truly comprise half of what I ever say.  So it was clear that she didn't really enjoy my personality, and I instead grew grumpy and maybe a little cantankerous.  Mostly, though, I just stopped talking.  We spent four days together, except for the part where she walked off the first day "to get water" and I didn't find her until I went back to the campsite at the end of the night.  We were much better when there was someone else, anyone else, to dampen our energy, but I felt unappreciated and misunderstood.  When we finally made it back to her house, I expressed dismay that I still had two more hours to drive (it was already 11:30 pm on a Monday night).  She argued with me about how she drove the whole way back (by choice) and that I wasn't being sympathetic about her plight.  I immediately conceded, and tried to thank her for all she had done.  She said I complained "a lot," and walked away, just as we got out of the car.  There's not really anything I can say to that.  I asked her not to do this right now, and she said she just needed to get it off her chest...and then dismissed it as her being tired.

So, I hurriedly loaded my stuff from her car to mine, and apologized to her for 'ruining her trip.'  Then I said thanks again for everything, got in my car, and as she demanded to know why I was "so angry," I closed the door and drove away.  The following weekend I decided to send her a thank-you note, because she really did move heaven and earth to make the trip a success, and I looked up her address from a private message thread on Facebook.  So I've been unfriended and she changed her name.    I sent the card anyway.  I'm at peace with not having someone who clearly doesn't love me for who I am as a "friend."  Who knows what she was expecting me to be, but I was obviously a disappointment for her.  I won't lie; I'm still working it out in my heart and trying to let it not make me angry, but I believe she deserves to be forgiven and I would like to see her with compassion anyhow.  It was an unfortunately expensive way to lose a friend, but maybe she wasn't really that much of a friend and the rewards of the festival experience will reveal themselves in many other ways.

I have met a boy, this time in person, and simultaneous to me shutting down my online dating endeavors.  I was fed up with the quality of the experience, and had told myself that I could literally meet someone at any moment.  So far, we have communicated for about a month, with a handful of dates.  It feels different from my typical encounters, and he has a very good energy.  I sense more inexperience and less crippling baggage, so that's encouraging.  We have a nice time together, and I got to meet some of his friends, who are just as cool to be around.  He makes no effort to show off or tease me, but instead actually laughs at my jokes and treats me with respect.  I'm going to try my best not to juxtapose this experience to anything else; it's unique and he's very nice to me.  I don't have that same grim pessimism about being incapable of meeting people in person.  I haven't let someone look into my eyes in a long time.

I've arrived at the realization that I am going through very profound spiritual changes right now.  Like a molt.  I compiled a bunch of videos for my kids of arthropods molting, and they lay still and struggle slightly while this too-small shell splits open along a seam and they carefully pull themselves out of the nooks and crannies.  It's a terrifically long process, and several of the videos are time-lapse to capture the whole thing in a bearable amount of footage.

I think that must be what I am doing.  Responding to these tight quarters and the growth happening beneath the surface, and now I'm vulnerable and struggling to free myself from what used to be comfy digs.  And it's painfully slow!  My Netflix suggestions lately are all about spiritual growth and existential accounts and everything is energy and how to be happy, because it's all I'm compelled to watch and internalize.

My sense of gratitude went away.  Nothing really changed about my life--I still have the same basic circumstances, my health, employment, beautiful town, and friends.  I lost my overwhelming awareness for the beauty and love around me.  I know it's there, but I haven't been dwelling on it, and now it's clear that I need to be dwelling on it.  I forgot that this was all a gift.

Enlightenment is a process.  The Buddha faced years of questions before he finally understood.  Christ talked about the God within Himself but emphasized that the same God was in all of us.  That makes sense to me, but we are also equipped with the option to filter out that divine connection and focus on the preoccupation with this limited, material world.  I'm trying to conjure back my feminine energy, the yin, to balance the yang male energy that I have allowed to dominate my presence.  I'm trying to focus on the powerful loving energy in everyone with whom I have any kind of encounter, and see them as energetic beings, rather than frail and flawed.  I'm trying to find joy in my job, because it is a source of frustration and despair more than accomplishment or growth.

Though I realize that this means I really am learning a lot there.  Who I am now and what I choose to do at every moment is important.  If I make a mistake, I must learn from it and forgive myself and everyone else involved.

So I've been 30 for almost 11 months.  What a year.