Dear Kates: A Friendship in Letters

[dearkatesproject]

8.18.2014

Dear Kates,

Today was one of those days where I really wanted to throw in the towel at Stadium View. I worked all weekend and came in, still, to a myriad of problems and a superbly cranky boss and I had it up to here two minutes after I walked in the door at 7:30. I could say that I tried really hard to keep it in perspective that I should be thankful for a job to be frustrated over, period, or that I prayed for some patience and asked the Good Lord kindly to grant me a longer rope than I had, but those would both be lies. I didn't keep that perspective, and I didn't say a prayer.

I let myself be thoroughly cranky until about 3 in the afternoon when an early move in by the name of Brianne came in and delivered chocolate bars to us for being so kind to her and getting her in early when she moved up from Texas. All in all, we didn't do anything, really, but being recognized for doing something correctly, instead of many of the other residents who singularly highlight everything we do wrong, meant the world.

It had me thinking for the rest of the day about the human tendency to only see what individuals fail at versus what they do correctly; its just so easy to take the shortcomings of others personally and use that as a catalyst to justify whatever other anger or angst we have going on in our lives and build upon that one misgiving until you've convinced yourself it's actually their mistake you're angry at instead of your own internal battle. I do this too often, and that's bad. Really bad. 

I think this is what broke Brendan and I up. Slowly, and over time, I let what he couldn't do for me, give me, or be for me outshine everything he did, provided, and was for me. It was easier to pick at small shortcomings and make them into big deals because it made me feel justified in the attention it got me from him. Between classes and work and everything else in his life, there wasn't much time to give to me, which in hindsight I understand, even if it's still hard to admit that, but sure enough if there was an argument you bet we would pay attention to one another. And after you make up, there's that instantaneous but fleeting burst of affection. Wash, rinse, repeat, and then we were no more and the bad broke the good. I know you know it's all a lot more complicated than that, but that's certainly part of it.

I fail at this all day every day, but I do try, and will try, to get better at this. 

Oats.

[dearkatesproject]

8.15.2014

Dear Kates,

Lindsey kept asking me last night why I was so quiet, and truthfully it was because I was preoccupied with this project; this idea. By no means do I figure this to be a kind of "catch all" for the shortcomings we gave each other this summer when we both deserved more, and better, from one another, but I'd be lying if I wasn't putting a lot of stock in this. Maybe that's misplaced, but worrying about that is neither here nor there because I won't be able to measure the meaning in this until you receive it and read it. At any rate, I was wondering if this would come across in a sort of 'smothering crazy ex' way, and I really hope it doesn't.. Really really. Then again I worry about too much what others think of me anyways, so it's probably best to say eff it and do it anyways. Right. Back to the point.

I was going back and forth as to if this was a good idea to pursue, and while I didn't pray about it, as I know you'd tell me to, I woke up this morning and you were all over the place. You left some Valentines candy in my nightstand drawer when I was looking for my checkbook, your old shower gel somehow made its way back into the shower, and the first song I heard as I took lunch was 'Born to Run' by Bruce and the exact line I heard was 'let me in I want to be your friend'. The song references some nondescript Wendy character, but all the same, I figured it to be a small Godwink of sorts.

All of that being said, here's letter number two which is one more letter than I anticipated I'd actually write. I have a bad habit of starting online projects with the best of intentions and keeping them and then failing miserably: I figured this would be another one of them. We'll see.

My mind is all over the place today. I need to focus on work but I'm slowly waning in that department, and I keep wandering between the events in Ferguson, Missouri, PhD's, my inability to accept that summer is on it's way out instead of way in, and what seems like a million other things. I'm restless and can't sit still and I don't know why, but what I do know is that in these moods I always seem to be called home. Literally, home. I want to not be an adult for a few hours and have someone make me dinner and sleep in my bed as if I were 18 again and wake up in the morning feeling more settled than I am now. Is that odd? I feel as though I dance between embracing the responsibilities of adulthood with this seriously intense nostalgia for years past that, truth be told, weren't all that spectacular compared to parts of the here and now. It's this kind of melancholy that hits and I want nothing more than to press the rewind button instead of the fast forward button, because there's something dangerously comforting about the past in comparison to the yet unknown that the future holds. I feel like I spend too long in these moods than most people, and while you can romanticize that into a hundred different tween novel plots, it feels unhealthy to me. Like overindulging in sea salt caramel gelato: it's good while you're in it, but you know you should stop, but when you've gone too far you just feel nasty and wonder how you're 3/4 of a pint down. 

It's because I don't feel grounded to things. The past year, year and a half I feel like I've been in a disquiet limbo where things that I had placed firmly in the "forever" category are no longer there. The cabin, the spectacularity of belonging to a 3/3rds friendship, the hope that things with my family would even out soon: all of that isn't here anymore, and those were some pretty sturdy rocks I thought I'd ground myself in. I feel like it's just me, myself, and I hanging out waiting for the return of quote "normalcy" when I don't even know if normal is any kind of realistic at this point in life. Logically, no, it's not, but does that mean I don't want it back and envision that to be in a time already happened? Nope.

We'll need to work on this, that's all I know. It doesn't do good to dwell on daydreams, so says one of my favorite book characters (Dumbledore). Let's just add that to the list of everything else I feel like I need to work on with myself and we'll make that it's own novel, yeah? Aye.

Oats.

[tattooablequotes]

[mycontinuum]

This could easily be one of your tattoo doodles.

[dearkatesproject]

8.14.2014

Dear Kates,

Today you left for NET, and I wasn't there to see you off. I wasn't there for family dinner, to help you pack, or to wave as your parents drove you to the NET center to deliver you at the doorstep of your next adventure. These statements hurt, and yet it's what I expected, given how things settle with us at present. Despite all this, focusing on what I missed out on would be a real selfish way to go about the start of this project, and that's entirely not my intention.

You're gone for the next 9 months, and I know that realistically I'll probably only see you a handful of times between when you head out on the road and next May when you return. That thought brought me to tears as I drove down 35W into work this morning, and although that seems silly because that's about as often as we made time for one another this summer, it was unsettling nonetheless.

Your love language is coffee dates and the baring of souls while wrapped up in blankets with infinite possibilities in your eyes and your Bible in hand. These next 9 months don't exactly give me the opportunity to rectify our relationship with those things, and I took for granted the ability to do just that while you were home. Forgive me? I can't buy your Caribou or ask, meekly, for you to teach me how to read the good book, though those things might surely be a faster way to the parts of your heart I once knew, and now don't, but I have a tiny, unrelenting desire to prevent these 9 months from keeping us stagnant and politely cordial. While meeting up to walk Amos and see your family aren't possibilities for a while, I can still invite you in. Not into my house or work, but into my heart and all the integral places you need to be if we're going to try and make right our decade of friendship from here on out. You don't place as much value into words as I do, but behind these words are elements of your love language: carved away blocks of time especially for this purpose, stolen moments of reflection on what, exactly, I need you to know, and an incredible amount of intentional love.

I struggle to understand that uneven reciprocation doesn't necessarily mean an uneven value placed behind a relationship. Not being able to hear that any of this might hit home, or that you do or don't appreciate the efforts going into this, will be hard, and I know that it's probably more than likely that I'll stop this after a few days of writing because I'll think to myself "what's the point, she isn't seeing it, she hasn't talked to me about it, she doesn't care". I hope I don't. Because I can't help but feel that unless I try, try even when that can't be reciprocated, that you and I will no longer be a 'we' but two completely separate entities: 'you' and 'I'. That scares me. Until now we've had tiffs and periods of separation, but I think it was always unquestioned that that was temporary. This bridge, to me, feels uncomfortably like it might become a permanent fixture if we continue as we are, and I know, with certainty, that isn't what I want to happen.

So here are my words and time and letters and secrets and worries and life for the next 9 months. Treat them carefully and understand that they're not given lightly and are headed into an unknown variable that I can't control: the way you'll receive them. 

Love to you, Kates.

Oats.

[loco-motives]

It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.

Henry David Thoreau (via embracecstasy)

[icanread]