I just got home, and en route I was thinking about my fancy new iPhone and the things I’ve been posting.  Social media in general, really.   From these pictures, from my statuses and what I’m tagged in, you’d assume I just walk around having the time of my life.  Being out of work the last two weeks looks awesome.  There’s been Tempe Town Lake girl-talks, water-fall jumping, margaritas (Morangaritas!!!!!) and general goofing off with my family.

And that’s all true, but what’s also true are the things I don’t post, and the things you don’t post, either.

For instance, the hanging out with my family?  What you don’t see is that my auntie quit her job last year because the stress and anxiety of it was wrecking her life.  She was able to spend time with us this weekend because she doesn’t have a job right now.  That party I held two weeks ago, where all my old middle school buddies came over and drank wine and cracked each other up?  And we posted this picture?

Man, we got together like that because the hero of our teenhood was murdered last September and we needed comforting on her birthday.  And the silly hashtag “14hoursofChris”?  All those goofy pictures you like of my brother?

Yeah, those fourteen hours were the day-pass out of rehab he earned.  The boy is in rehab.

I post such pretty pictures of the urban garden I work at, and you like them, but what you don’t see is that I need that farm a hell of a lot more than it needs me.  You don’t see that the farm is restorative for me, a sanctuary for me.  The more scrapes from weeding I come home with, the more at peace my anxious heart feels.  You read my dad’s blog and like his business advice, but you don’t see him walking up to the aforementioned farm and his tears welling up when he saw me by the pool, playing lifeguard.

Those misty eyes are because he knows the wreckage behind the pictures, and he felt it too; that the farm is a safe, hopeful place.

And Spaghetti-Swing Tuesdays?  Friends, there have been nights we don’t even leave my house, we’re too engrossed in tearful confessions of our souls.

There is a brokenness in this world I can’t come to terms with.  There is a brokenness in myself I can’t come to terms with.  I mean, I’m unemployed right now because of it.  I got testy with someone this weekend actually about the nature of his joking and kind’ve told him to cut it out.  He obliged, but also asked how the view form my high-horse was.  I laughed.  “Oh, they don’t even let me near that horse these days.”

I just wanted, ehem, to be square with you.  I know you’re aware of how cool you make your life out to look on Facebook and Instagram and all of that, and that behind those pretty things you post you’re a mess as well.  And you’re probably lying awake at night, too, feeling like a phony.  I bet you’ve had your fair-share of rage at the weight of this messy world and your messy heart.  I bet you’ve shaken your fist at the stars too.

…And I bet you’ve been as astounded as I am at the common grace you experience.  Betcha receive unexpected encouragement sometimes or fall into charmed friendships you don’t deserve, and you’re floored by all this goodness.  I’ll bet you take those gems and cling to them, and you take pictures of them and post them and look at them later and reflect on how lovely your life really is.

You take those fourteen hour day-passes and run wild with them.

…I guess I’m not ashamed of posting such happy pictures, in that case.  And I’m glad you post your happy pictures too.

“In  that place where morning gathers you can look sometimes forever till you see

That time may never know, time may never know

How the lord takes by its corners this whole world and shakes us forward and shakes us free

To run wild with the hope run wild with the hope.

The hope that this thirst will not last long…”

-Rich Mullins

Let’s just do it.

Now, the first thing we have to get out of the way re; depression is that its not all black and white, and depression isn’t something that only friendless losers catch like a cold.  You can’t pick the depressed out of a crowd of people because we look and act much the same way as everyone else.  We’re just more bummed out.

Hey guys, I’m Jess, and I have chronic depression.   I want to say I struggle with it, but what the hell does “struggling” with something even mean?  Who came up with this metaphor?  Ok yeah, I don’t want to be all depressed all the time, but if by struggling you mean I’m living my life as damage control and plugging my ears (“la la la la la”) to all those “triggers”, then no, I’m not fucking struggling with depression anymore.

I’m owning it.

I want to tell you that I’m depressed because A.) my bestie was butchered last fall or B.) because it was winter or C.) because I’m not making enough money/have pimples/my iTunes is really sad, but the truth is I’ve been depressed since I was like thirteen.  And I have lived as damage control, trying not to see, hear, or speak any depression trigger.

At this point though, I’m tired of acting like my chemical imbalance is something I need to hide from you guys.  What’s worse than being depressed?  Getting even more depressed because you’ve isolated yourself, which you did so as to keep from showing them the initial depression.  Because how dare you, Christian, (Christian white American female in the 21^st century, no less) be bummed out?

There’s a weird kind’ve pride in being sad, too, which also makes it harder to get help.  If you’re not depressed, that’s fine.  We still like you, even if we don’t necessarily trust you.  We wish we were like you, although we hold suspicions that you must be completely vapid not to see how sad this life actually is.

Anyway, I wanted to let you, dear Depressed, know a few strategies for coping with being what a friend of mine once called a “morose bastard.”

1. Own it.  Just accept it.  You’re bummed out, and you need to stop feeling so guilty about it.  Most of the chronically depressed people I know have no good reason for being that way.  They just are.  And you know what?  You just are the way you are.  Chew on that.  Maybe this is weird advice, ‘cuz like, who wants to “own” their personality disorder, but dude, its going to be there anyway so you might as well treat it like family.
2. Admit it.  Yes, even to the ones who aren’t bummed.  I know that’s difficult because you have this sinking fear that you’re going to evoke eyebrow furrows and a non-comprehending, “like, seriously? What have you got to be sad about?”  But you’ve gotta just do it.  If you’re me you’ll play it off really cool, with a smile and maybe a dance move.  “I’m chronically bummed out! Haha! Watch me twerk it!”  This is really hard, I know, and you’ll want to be sarcastic about it.  But stop.  The church, while traditionally being the absolute worst to admit being bummed, is getting better.  “Depression” isn’t as dirty of a word as it used to be around here.  It used to be all “Jesus Jesus Jesus”, but they’re getting better at being like “Jesus Wellbutrin Jesus” these days.  When cornered, I used to admit my depression with an attitude of defiance and self-defense.  Like, “Yeah, I’m bummed out.  COME AT ME BRO.”  But I’ve learned to be more gracious with people, because Lord knows I need the same grace exhibited for me.  I know you’re still going to run into those assholes who can’t understand how you can possibly grasp an iota of what redemption means and still struggle to get out of bed some mornings, but trust me on this; there are gems in the church, and they love people like you.  They do! They love honesty.
3. Then.  Go talk to a professional.  I’m serious here.  Go get shrinked.  I think everyone needs to be in counseling, because (shocker) we were all raised by imperfect people and we were dropped into an imperfect world, and not only that but we were given imperfect bodies and imperfect desires.  So go talk to someone who’s spent way too much money on a couple degrees in psychology and wants to make it their entire life’s work to hear people’s stories.  Go tell your story.  Tell the gritty parts, too.  My brother’s mentor told him that most people go to counseling and delve into 85% of the pain and anger or their lives, but keep the 15% locked up inside.  Fuck that.  Tell the 15%.
4. Start doing things.  Do things like go swing dancing.  Or film your own Harlem Shake video.  Walk your dog for hours along the canal behind your house.  Pray.  Agree last minute to go on a road trip to Austin next week.  Skype your Aussie friends.  Read.  Call your dad. Go watch the stupid bachelorette finale with friends.  DON’T LISTEN TO JOE PURDY*.

I don’t know, man, because I’m in it too.  But these things help.  You can’t live dong damage control all the time.  You can’t edit your soul.

And on that note, I’m back.  Hai guyz

*Purdy’s my absolute favorite, and I’m chronically depressed, so I give him a hard time.  Its all with the utmost affection.  And tears.

Can we redo the New Year?  We can do that, can’t we?  Who’s got the rule book?

You may have noticed I blanked on the whole, End of the Year Review and Look Ahead.  December got weird, and January stayed that way.

Let’s pretend we didn’t buzz through this symbolic and uplifting, hopeful little refresher.  Let’s say we’re still on the cusp of all this sparkling newness, and we’re not blowing it with cheap wine, a cute boy, and the best friends we’ve ever had.  Let’s throw the last five weeks or so in a bowl, do our best quizzical observation of it, and chalk December (and then some) up to a bemusing “weird month”.

Time of your life…in my kitchen.

(^But really, how did half a wine glass get itself wedged in between there?!?)

And now let’s move forward.

We’re twenty-two now, and while there’s a bit of grace and a whole handful of “grains of salt” regarding binge drinking and all manner of foolish endeavors when you’re twenty-one, let’s not stay here.  We’ve got bigger things to do now that we’re Real Adults.  Also, I’ve got an associate’s degree now and am peacing out of furthering my formal education for now, and the only way to do this without looking like a complete slacker-dropout-asshole is to be doing a Really Awesome in the stead.

So.  For the Really Awesome.

Tell me, as a blog reader (and actually only if you’re not my immediate family, you stalkers) what you like reading.  What do you google, and why are you interested in what people in the blogosphere have to say?  Do you want to hear how I save money (toobadIdon’t!) or do you want ridiculous anecdotes to make you laugh?  Do you want to know what I’m learning (and re-learning and reconstructing and puzzling over) about God and people?  Do you want me to go travel, or live in community here in the lovely Aye-Zee?  Do you want me more involved with that awesome little farm downtown?

I just want to get a feel for what you want, and maybe it will help me figure out what I want.

Because I want truth, meaning, beauty and aesthetics.  I want weird anecdotes and moving ideals, dynamic concepts about God and a consistent lifestyle.  I want to punch Apathy and Boredom in their collective uteri and flip the bird to every time-waster I anesthetize myself with.  I want to be comfortable in my skin and my values and be able to get behind my life, verses the recent shrug and admittance that, you know, December’s been real weird.

Boredom is, as mused by Henry Nouwen, “a sentiment of disconnectedness.  While we are busy with many things, we wonder if what we do makes any real difference.  Life presents itself as a random and unconnected series of activities and events over which we have little or no control.

To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing.”

Ooh I love that.  I think, when I look back on the misplaced convictions and the mayhem of the last weird month-and-then-some, I’ll remember I was incredibly, hopelessly bored when it all started.  Not because I wasn’t busy, but because I felt disconnected and helpless, which lead to apathy and quiet desperation that got loud.  Very loud.

And now?  I want some quiet, please, and I want some connection.  I want the green tea lifestyle over the vodka/red bull one.  And while I think my lipstick stains on my cigarettes are sort’ve beautiful, I’m sick of wearing lipstick and I’m sick of smoking cigarettes.

Here’s to a new year.  Here’s to a new age.  Here’s to you, and here’s to me, figuring it out and enjoying the mystery of whole Being Human.

Cheers, darling.

Dear 2012,

I love you.  In a bemused, kind’ve melancholy way, I really do love you.  You’ve been a wild year, a heartbreaking and hilarious twelve months.

You turned me twenty-one, right off the bat, like you wanted to kick things off with as much celebration as possible.

Then you took me to Australia, and there you had me realize I’m the same no matter the continent, or any other circumstance.  You showed me that I still have my insecurities and eating habits and personality and awkwardness, even when I’m in foreign hostels with nobody who knows my name.  You also showed me, in Australia, mankind’s desperate need for genuine community.

Coming back from this little stint overseas, you gave me a sinking feeling of pointlessness when everything back here was the same old same old and no one had time for my stories.  At least not the stories that mattered.  This probably led to what you taught me next, about alcohol.

2012, you taught me that even I (yes, intellectual badass that I pride myself on being) can struggle and stumble into weeks of binge drinking and self-destructive lifestyle patterns.  Its like humility in a bottle.  Or shot glass.

You got my old roommate and closest friend married, and let me be a part of the wedding.  Thanks for that.  (You also spared no time and got her pregnant soon after, you dirty year, you.)

You gave me two sets of new roommates, one set I differed from but needed to learn to cooperate with and love, and two I fell into natural affection with.  One of these roomies I happen to make my favorite bad decisions with, causing family members and ex-boyfriends to question my mental stability and spiritual health.

You gave me validation from those other than family and loved ones that I’m a good writer.  You gave it to me in the form of a congressman’s letter, which had me elated and full of hope for days.

2012, you gave me the opportunity to believe I could save my little brother.  You then shut me down and showed me I couldn’t; the boy’s move out here scratched the scab off some old wounds and left me reeling with shame and helpless fear.  The boy is now in rehab, where he can’t hurt anyone and we can’t hurt him.  And we are licking out wounds and trying to make sense of it all.

You also killed my teenhood best friend.  You took the action of my adolescence, the frenzied, burning, up-for-anything half of my soul and killed her.  Through this you showed me my grieving style, which is wailing at the sky, then numbness for a week, then skin-crawling, trembling defeat that kept me up all night.  You taught me to value more than air the friends I have.

You let me and three loves into the Lumineers concert for free, and it was incredible.  Then you took us out dancing.  You’re such a party animal, 2012.

You convicted me about things and had me change my buying and eating patterns, but also showed me that I cannot live by conviction alone, as they are fickle and change with the circumstance.  You showed me that convenience often rules over conviction, and I need something outside of my personal moral leanings to determine my lifestyle.

You got me my second tattoo and a nose ring.   I am a badass now.   

You earned me my associate’s degree, and I now get to crack a bitter grin and say “A lot of people go to community college for seven years.”

Thanks for three different jobs.

You got me to bite the bullet and buy a savings-account-destroying car.

You taught me how to swing dance, and got me to start volunteering at a downtown farm.

Thanks for the books that blew my mind.

Thanks for the spiritual heights and canyons and plateaus and the compromises I never imagined I’d make.  Thanks for rocking my ideas on food, God, friends and stability.  Thanks for shaking me, for rattling my brain, for breaking me.  Thanks for these scrawled journal entries and these new friends.  I wasn’t prepared for you, and I’m still taken aback by you.  I’m equally tired of and thrilled to have been a part of you.  This has been amazing.  I’m amazed.

“…nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.”

Oh year.  Here’s to you.  And as my love Kerouac would say, “Though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are still pretty glorious.”

You were bugged, 2012, but you were glorious, and I will be grateful for you forever.

Sincerely,

Me.

Year-end review

It kinda does a number on my head that I began this ragtag, somewhat scatterbrained little blog with 2011’s year-end review.  I look back at those entries bemused, because much of what went right or wrong in 2012 is the same as what went right and wrong back then.

Time is weird.  The poet Ben Johnson calls time an “old bald cheater”.

I like that.  I get that.   You’re alive, right?  You must have experienced that haunting feeling you’re being cheated out of your own life.  My pastor says that our need for sleep is one of the most humbling things about being human and not gods, and I couldn’t agree more.  We are bound in time, bound to need sleep, and tragically we often may as well be sleeping through our waking hours.  Time gets away from us, and suddenly a year has passed and you’re furrowing your brows, wondering how exactly twelve months are just gone.

And what a gnarly twelve months this has been!  There has been so much good, so much beauty and truth.  This has been one of the most humbling years I’ve ever had.  These last couple of days I’ve been replaying little events, little memories that creep in unannounced that I know, someday, I’ll just forget because they’re really that tiny.  It’s the driving around at night blasting “Starships” in Perth, it’s getting into the Lumineers concert for free, its Thanksgiving dinner feeling like a last supper before my baby brother went into rehab, its sitting on the kitchen floor with my beautiful roommates when my old best friend was murdered, talking and drinking and weeping into the early morning hours, its that trembling awareness in the dried up lake in Australia; ‘my god, I’m actually here and this is actually my life’.

This year.  2012.  We’re at the end of it now and I’m sitting here, with my coffee and Gregory Ivan Isakov singing about the moon, and I think ‘ah, so this was twenty-one.’

Do you want the truth? The truth is I’m not sure what I’m doing, with this blog or with this life.  I’m going to review this year in two parts, the way I did it last year, with what went right and what went wrong.  And then we’ll look ahead at 2013.

I love this time of year on Camelback, because someone decorates a Palo Verde tree up there.

Camelback boasts an almost cult-like following, with some patrons being crazy over-acheivers and running the mountain three times a day.  Boom boom boom, up and down, being all crazy, getting ripped and offering unsolicited hiking advise to those of us urging our dogs to just pull us up. There’s one man in particular, in cargo pants and a fishing hat, who MUST be in his sixties.  He will tell you to stand up straight so your lungs aren’t compressed and to step in front of your body, as opposed to right underneath.  Do you know this man?  Because he is my Hiking Hero.

However, Camelback is almost not worth it due to the absurd parking arrangements.  (One must often park a mile or more away and take a shuttle to the mountain.  Ugh.)

So, if you’re me and want a good hike elsewhere, here’s some other places for you;

Pinnacle Peak, in Scottsdale.  Its basically in the fancy Troon North area, but despite its zip code its still really cool.  The only downside to this hike is once you get to the end, you remember its not the end and you have to turn around, backtrack, and trudge back to the place you started from.  Actually, this place sucks because its not dog-friendly.

Piestewa Peak in Phoenix.  We used to call it Squaw Peak, but that was when we were racists.  This is another great hike, but I can’t help but remember EVERY TIME I hike this thing that its the near birthing place of my old roommate.  (Her crazy mother was hiking away at eight months.  This is a great story, involving a helicopter and everything.)

Papago Park in Tempe is good if you want to do some trail running, because you’re a beast and running alone isn’t enough for your beastly thigh muscles.  This is right by my house, too, so me and Kira McWiggles are frequenters.

A Mountain.  I’m just kidding, this is only really when you’re drunk off Mill Ave and feel like hiking a mountain.  (This happens to all of us.  All it takes is someone’s slurred suggestion that hiking is the best and should happen immediately, and you already feel like a slurry superman so you’re totally game.)

…the fact is, Camelback is the best.  Its difficult (or if its not, you can run up there three effing times a day like my Hiking Hero) and you feel like throwing up and crying the entire way up, but the top is worth it.  You feel like Simba surveying all that he owns, for some reason.   Plus you can take that stereotypical Camelback picture everyone and their mother takes up there, and its like you’re part of some special hiking club.  The best part of Camelback is telling everyone sweating and weeping their ways up while you’re heading down that someone put a Jamba Juice or a snow cone machine up there.  (Lies are funny.)  Camelback kicks your ass and gets you coming back for more.  We’ve likened it to an abusive lover.  (“It’s just that he’s so passionate!”)

For real though, take advantage of this area’s awesome hiking.  When you live in a state that’s eighty degrees on Christmas, you’re a bit ridiculous for not being outdoorsy.

I spent this morning with a good friend who’s just lost his sister in an accident.  We shared stories of grief, of numbness, of sarcastic come-backs to our friends’ awkward sympathy.

I came home hurting for him, for myself (because I miss my own dear dead friend) for this broken world.  I am reading Kerouac (“I love you but you have no idea what you’re talking about”) and a collection of meditations by Henri J.M. Nouwen called The Dance of Life.  I found these gems today;

Complexities

“Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.  There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life.  It seems that there is no such thing as clear-cut pure joy but that, even in the most happy moments of our existence, we sense a twinge of sadness.  In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of its limitations.  In every success, there is a fear of jealousy.  Behind every smile, there is a tear.  In every embrace, there is loneliness.  In every friendship, distance.  And in all forms of light, there is knowledge of surrounding darkness.

Joy and sadness are as close to each other as the splendid leaves of a New England fall to the soberness of the barren trees.  When you touch the hand of a returning friend, you already know that he will have to leave you again.  When you are moved by the quiet vastness of a sun-covered ocean, you miss the friend who cannot see the same.  Joy and sadness are born at the same time, both arising from such deep places in your heart that you can’t find words to capture your complex emotions.”

-Nouwen

But its also fun, isn’t it?  Being alive I mean.   used to take things very seriously and I was quite depressed.  (I was also in high school and weren’t we all pretty moody back then?  Ooh the angst of being sixteen!)  Now I think everything’s funny, in a bitter, calloused sort of way.

“I cried for all of us.  There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness.  Someday we’ll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny its been.”

-Kerouac, On the Road.

And finally, this tongue-in-cheek gem via Douglas Adams, in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series;

“In the beginning the Universe was created.  This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Because none of us had any say in our being born, and being born human nonetheless.

I dunno, just pondering today.  Just introspective about how pitiful and hilarious being alive is.  Tragic comedy or comedic tragedy?  Love and hate it.