Amy Rebekah Holt

[amyrebekahholt]

Dreary Durham and Hope

A friend took the above photo of me on January 1, 2016. We'd woken up on that morning in a hotel room in (dreary) Durham, North Carolina. It was a non-smoking room that smelled of smoke, a room in which we'd gone to sleep long before the clock had a chance to strike 12 AM.

I like this photo because it makes me feel small in the best way possible.  

I remember feeling small last New Year's too, but in an entirely different way.

I don't have a photo with which to mark the beginning of 2015, but I am able to remember the details as vividly as if they had happened yesterday. 2015 began with me listening to too many sad songs, and buckets and buckets of rain, and making wrong turns alone in shady areas of Birmingham. The beginning of 2015 left me feeling disappointed and invisible and alone. Deep inside, I fearfully wondered if the beginnings of the year were an indicator of what the rest of it would look like.

And no doubt, 2015 was an incredibly difficult year for me. But it was also a year filled with a lot of personal growth.

It didn't take but the passing of a few short days into January of last year to decide that I needed to pour my negative emotions into an activity other than lying around my bedroom feeling sorry for myself.  

I needed to exercise, I decided. Exercise releases endorphin's that make you feel good, and I definitely needed to feel better. Plus, I was beginning to grow paranoid that if I didn't actively begin to take better care of myself, that on my thirtieth birthday I would wake up and look in the mirror to discover the Grim Reaper staring back at me. And so I began a new routine.

I would wake in the early morning and force myself to go running in the January cold. I'd zip up the golden zipper on my navy blue jacket and I'd pull my hair up and lace my shoes and stretch and then I would run. Or I would try to run. I wasn't very good at it, but becoming especially sad had awakened some source of determination that had apparently been sleeping inside of me for some time, and running took my mind off of my heartache. At least, it did while I was actually doing it. Whenever I slowed down to a walking pace, I would glance at my surroundings, and it would all come flooding back to me, all of my unanswered questions glimmering in the sleepy, golden, six thirty am morning light. So I'd speed up again, focusing my attention on how gratifying it felt every time one of my feet hit the ground.

There's seldom (if ever) an immediate cure for pain. There's no one routine you can follow that will eliminate all of the negative and leave you with only the positive.

But there are steps that you can take to become a healthier person. For me, running was one of those steps.

When I ran, I didn't think too deeply about all of the unanswered questions that had lingered around for so long.

When I ran, I didn't think about my the dysfunction in my family, or the ever-present uncertainty over my future, or my depression, or my disappointments and mistakes with men.

When I ran, I stopped reflecting on the sinking feeling that I'd felt so strongly on that day alone in Birmingham.

Running gave me hope. It gave me a kind of hope akin only to the hope I experienced when I played old hymns on my piano alone at night. It gave me hope that if I continued to choose to try every single day then eventually it would become easier.

It gave me hope that the rest of the year might hold better things; hope that the following New Years would be better than the last.

[amyrebekahholt]

Reckless Optimism

While I was on my way to have dinner with a friend tonight, I was listening to the podcast The Nerdist. The particular episode that was playing featured Hannah Hart - a woman whose name I’ve heard but have never known anything about. (I learned that she is an internet personality, comedian, author, and actress.)

Hannah talked a little about pessimism and optimism and about how people sometimes ask her why she has such a naturally positive outlook on most things. She explained that her real natural tendency is to lean towards pessimism rather than optimism, but she instead makes a daily choice to be positive. She went on to to call this choice “reckless optimism.”

I love her phrase. I love that she believes that people have the choice to be optimistic and that optimism is not something that only a select few people are somehow randomly gifted with.

I love the idea of reckless optimism because by first appearance it can seem like a rather foolish phrase. I love it because it flies in the face of practical cynicism. I love it because I lean so naturally and easily towards bitter-laced expectations (is bitter-laced a thing?) and my own cynicism fits me like a glove. I love that my low expectations can be proven wrong.

I don’t think that reckless optimism is naivety. I don’t think that choosing to be optimistic is choosing to pretend that negative things do not happen.

I do think it’s about having hope. I know that not everyone’s hope comes from the same source, and I am fine with that. But when I think of hope I think of this quote:

“When we’re talking about God, we’re talking about every single one of those moments - whether they’re earth-shatteringly loud and large or infinitesimally small and whisper-like, mere slivers you inadvertently stumble upon - moments when you are convinced, even if you’ve been burned and let down and betrayed countless times - that cynicism does not have the last word, that life is not random or meaningless or empty, but that what you do and how you feel and what you say and where you go and what you make of this life you’ve been given matters.” - Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God

[amyrebekahholt]

Atlanta

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall guy appear at my side.

“So, your friends are dancing and left you over here by yourself?”

“Oh, god, no.” I hate these sort of situations.

“Yes, and I’m fine with that,” I replied.

There was a pause in our dialogue. I don’t think that he’d expected that response.

“Shitty answer,” he finally said.

“Shittier pick-up line,” I thought to myself. I briefly contemplated speaking the words out loud but I didn’t have the energy at that point. I just wanted to be left alone.

Instead, I pulled out my phone, tapped on the Instagram app, and began to scroll until he walked away.

It was one in the morning and I was at a little bar in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. If you’ve never been to a bar in Buckhead, then an easy comparison would be Oxford, MS on a weekend night during the school year. If you’ve never been to Oxford, MS on a weekend night during the school year, then there are a few words that might help you form a mental image: somewhat wealthy and probably drunk.

I was leaning against a table scattered with half-empty bottles of Bud Light and watching a group of college-age guys in polo shirts and khaki shorts drunkenly dance with one another to Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off.” I was really, really tired and really, really sad and very much sober; I was completely and desperately wrapped up in my own little world of disappointment and loneliness.

“This has to be a dream. I hope that I’m just having a really weird dream.”

I went to Atlanta to have a good time. I went to eat good food and to people watch. I went to spend time with a friend and to get away from everything that had been bothering me at home. I went because I was considering a move and Atlanta seemed like a “good” idea.

I did not go to Atlanta to cry on my friend’s couch in the middle of the night, or to spend the entire weekend getting drenched in chilly January rain, but life doesn’t always go as planned, I suppose.

Besides, your expectations will kill anything and everything if you allow them to.

Three AM that morning found me alone and wide awake, trying to muffle my sobs with a pillow so I didn’t wake anyone, and wondering how my life was “falling apart” so swiftly and what it would look like next. Just when I thought things couldn’t get weirder or make me feel more out of place, I heard a couple in a neighboring apartment, very obviously having sex. I proceeded to turn on music and cry even harder.

By the time I’d fallen asleep it was seven in the morning, by the time that I’d woken up it was eleven, and by the time that I’d dragged myself into the shower the only thing that I could think was, “Get me the hell out of this city.”

It rained the entire drive home. It was a terrifying rain to be driving in, the kind that had me pulling off of the side of the highway and sitting in the dark with my emergency lights flashing, unable to see anything other than the interior lights of my car, hoping that someone didn’t fly off of the road and crash into me.

I prayed a lot on that trip. I prayed more in those couple of days than I’d prayed in the past couple of months combined. I prayed in almost every dimly lit bar and with each cup of coffee I had and on that couch out loud and in between sobs. I’d prayed in my head while walking through the Little Five Points district with my friend in the rain, the hood of my jacket pulled up over my head like the hoods of the homeless men crouched on the doorsteps that we passed. I prayed because I knew that the same desperation that the whole world seemed to be soaking in was what my heart was soaked in too, and I didn’t know how to escape it.

Every single one of those prayers was the same.

“Help me. Help me. Help me.”

Sometimes you don’t know what else to say.

Atlanta taught me to be okay with that.

[amyrebekahholt]

If You Feel Too Much Book Release

Several weeks ago I attended a book reading in Nashville. It was for Jamie Tworkowski's new book, If You Feel Too Much. Jamie is the guy who founded the non-profit To Write Love on Her Arms.

Jamie's writing has fascinated me for a while now, because it is beautiful. I think that the beauty is found in the simplicity of it.

I suppose that I admire Jamie for the same reason that a lot of people do – because when he speaks or writes he does so with both honesty and compassion; he goes to the vulnerable and painful and awkward and speaks hope. He acknowledges that life is hard and that a lot of people (perhaps most people) live with secret coping habits.

So it was a really cool to be able to hear him tell pieces of his story to a packed bookstore that night, and to hear him tell them in such a way that was so convincingly down to earth. He talked about accidentally stumbling into his current career, and about how he left his dream job to start a non-profit that he never set out to start. He spoke about the songs that have been his closest friends on many nights, his love affair with the ocean, and about his long-term struggle with depression.

Jamie said a lot of things that night that stood out to me, but the one thing that stood out to me the most was simply him stating his gratitude for being able to release his first book.

He talked about how writing a book had been a growing dream of his for years, and during most of those years he just couldn't figure out how that was done. He said that he would walk into bookstores and look at all of the books that other people had written and he would get kind of pissed, because he wondered how they pulled it off and why he felt that he couldn't.

But pull it off he did, and he seemed to be in awe of a public event in honor of own book, judging by the tears that he kept brushing away.

It's incredibly inspiring to watch someone achieve a dream that has only become a reality because they were willing to struggle for it.

I have to remind myself when I feel discouragement (which is very often), that good stories have to be fought for. I have always felt a desire for a different life, a desire for a life filled with purpose, but a purpose that I've not always been sure of how to find. Sometimes it's easy to convince myself that those desires are holding me back; it's easy to believe that I am “falling behind” in life due to feeling an ability to give them up.

I finished Jamie's book a few days after I'd gotten back home from Nashville; I read the last few pages with my morning coffee in the early quiet. As with many books that I have read and loved, many of the pages are now dogeared and entire paragraphs underlined with a pen.

My favorite part of the book were the following words. They’ve been drifting around in my mind during the long days that have passed since I first read them. They’ve been encouragement to keep working, to keep searching for the better and for the golden, when I feel like it the least.

“My hope for both of us, for you and me alike, is that we won't settle; we won't walk away from what we love because it's too hard or because people are mean or they don't see what we see. Whether it's songs or sales, whether you want to be a doctor or a teacher, in life and work alike, I hope you get to do the things you love. It's easy to be a critic, easy to tear things down, easy to be blind. It's a braver thing to build, to create, and to surprise...It's better to be true than to be cool.” - Jamie Tworkowski, If You Feel Too Much

[amyrebekahholt]

November 2013 - Unedited

I was going through some old files and found this. I can remember the night that I wrote it as clearly as the events that I was writing about. I am leaving all of the flaws unedited (the skipping around in tenses among others), because I don’t feel a need to try to perfect it. I just remember that what I was feeling and going through at that time have both stuck with me, and this feels too important for me to forget about.

I didn't want to get out of bed to write this, but I felt compelled to.

I couldn't sleep anyway, my thoughts seemed bent on racing in my head, my worries unwilling to give me over to sleep.

After I pulled into my driveway tonight and turned off my car, I sat for minutes in the silence. The headlights cut off suddenly, my spirit fell with a thud, and as soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I watched the movement of trees in the wind. 

There are so many nights when the only thing holding my heart is a song.

I laid awake and remembered the years and people of my past and present. I thought of my family that I miss, now scattered all around for me to rarely see. I recalled the boy and his alcohol and how he ran. I thought of the friends giving themselves to marriage and the obvious dents in friendships that once proved themselves strong.

There in my bed, I tapped my fingers against the wall and waited. What I was waiting for I was not sure of, but I knew I was most certainly waiting on something.

And now, after I've turned the lights back on and propped myself against the headboard, I am deeply aware of the quiet. My phone does not light up and there is no social media to use as a distraction from my loneliness. I have to face myself and the silence and if I am honest, doing so hurts.

Tomorrow morning I will get out of bed and there will be lines under my eyes. I will go to church, pour a cup of coffee, and then try not to spill it on my dress. I will be thankful for the hour or two that I will be there, with people whose lives are different from mine, because I feel at peace and a sense of community. I may or may not say a whole lot, but there are times when it's best for few words to be spoken and there are times when I only need to listen to wisdom from someone else and share a pot of coffee with other people. 

I will leave church and go straight to a social event at yet another church where I will sit in a metal fold-up chair and have too many pastel colored mints because I've yet to eat dinner. I'll take slow slips in order to make a cup of (non-alcoholic) punch last and will be reminded of how bad I am at small-talk. I will wish I had alcoholic punch to forget that fact.

And then, on the way back into town, I will skip from the middle of old songs to the beginning of older songs over then over again in search of one that feels new.

The route will be the same one I've traveled multiple times before. Natchez Trace and I'm going back North, going back home. The sun will drape itself over the trees in a display of brilliance and my right shoulder will warm quickly from being closest to the window. 

Another night will soon fold in and I will wrap myself in my bedding and remember the other driving I've done recently.

It had provided the most freeing of feelings. Michigan seemed well within reach and the Gulf Coast kept calling back to me through the thick southern air.

I didn't want to go back down south just yet. The drive to Nashville provided comfort and I wanted to stay away from the discomfort of the familiar back in Mississippi.

The past few years were blurring together beneath the tears, and in a moment filled with both extreme emotion and naivety, I decided that I wanted the road to be my new home.

But I returned anyway. I unlocked the door that lead to an empty house and stepped into a kitchen torn apart from the beginning stages of remodeling. I dropped my bags on the living room carpet and almost immediately began to unpack and then pack again. I stayed for maybe thirty minutes before getting back into my car and driving another hour.

Home. I was home but it didn't feel like it at all. Everything felt foreign and heart-achingly lonesome and I knew I had to try to make a new one for myself somewhere else but I didn't know where to even begin at.

But that's life, right? Isn't that how it works? We start then stop and start then stop a thousand times over and again.

Tonight is many nights. Nights filled with widened eyes and a conflicted heart in my chest that I don't know what to do with. Twelve AM's where I crawl out of bed to scatter my fingers across piano keys, 3 AM's where I wake with panic abundant.

Nights with questions that I have no answers for and emotions that I have no idea how to handle.

I wonder why they got it and I did not. I feel pangs of jealousy both slight and severe. I  hold on to my story with fervency and struggle to keep it alive. I don't want to drift yet I wonder if that's all I ever do.

“You will be okay.”

Somewhere in the middle of this, something or someone speaks to me and I don't know if this is God or maybe myself just trying to better cope, but I feel the words deep and bold and oddly bright.

And something about them feels true. ...