I have always had a hard time leaving home. When I was a kid I would have panic attacks when I’d go away to summer camp and I wouldn’t let myself have a good time until I heard my mother’s voice on the phone. When I moved away for college I made sure to make a home for myself, not in the dorms, but in other people who would not have my mother’s touch but would fill parts of me I didn’t know were empty. Washington is my home, in it’s precipitation is all of my memories and all of my love. I talked about leaving all the time, absent mindedly, but I always talked about forever. Or at least a long time. I wanted that distance, I wanted to be able to love these people and this place more but the web I had spun for myself and the beauty of it was entirely relying on my place in it. Still, I bought the ticket to France and I did it before most people in the program. I was ready.

It’s surprising what you’ll part with when you figure out what you want.

What sealed the deal for me was the architecture. I knew I couldn’t find those vaulted ceilings and reliefs in Seattle or Tacoma or Olympia or in the living room of my poorly made house. It struck me that though I was letting go of a lot (albeit temporarily), I would gain invaluable experiences and those were the experiences I truly wanted to pursue. It was the first time I was faced with the truth of what I wanted and I treated myself fairly by tearing myself away from home. For the first time my absence would be noted not just by my family at home who fed me spaghetti every birthday and brought me to church every Sunday (like good God fearing Christians), but my family in a town where a sense of “community” is a joke. Special people, all of them. My former family sent me off with hugs and well wishes while my latter family wished me luck with forties and drugs.

And then there I was waiting in the terminal, reading teen fiction, and eating caramels I had meant to save for my Homestay family in Rennes; across from me two children fought over an iPad while their mother stared deeply into her blackberry like if she bent down far enough she would be able to fall into the screen and away from the children whose voices were prepubescent and shrill. I looked around me quickly expecting to see someone ready to hold my hand from one family or the other but instead all I saw were my bags. I immediately became envious of the children in front of me. I wanted to be able to bring home with me, too.

I could not do that. All I had was a picture of my mother in my wallet and a Christmas themed bracelet that I hadn’t taken off in two weeks (and wouldn’t remove for another year). It wasn’t enough but at the same time it was too much, I mean, being reminded of what you’re leaving can break your heart. Even if it’s only for a little while.

But then it was our turn to go. I watched the airplane roll into the gate and my heart didn’t race. It stopped. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. I blacked out to flashbacks of the last time I was on a plane to Florida next to a German kid who wouldn’t stop eating and wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom. Deep breaths weren’t helping, I was on autopilot as the people around me rushed to line up and sort their boarding passes. I froze for a moment forgetting the hectic scene around me to look outside at the Evergreens in the distance not swaying for the wind, black against the achromatic sky. My senses came back to me and I reprimanded myself for being so melodramatic, so removed from the bigger picture – I told myself the trees and the grey would be there when I got back.

And then I was up in the sky and the screen on the chair in front of me told me the plane was heading northeast and I realized I had never gone in that direction before. I flew over houses and my fingers touched the glass only to remind myself that I could touch nothing I loved. Those things were as unattainable as the clouds we were ascending through. Everything around me was clean, even the air. I had the option to be upset about so many things, (leaving always leaves the people I love a little bloody), but there was nothing to be done. My words would be at home, but that’s all that would linger. And that helped me go to sleep.

We landed in Iceland and then Norway and then Oslo. I wandered around each airport trying not to listen to all of the languages I didn’t know. I was in the air for a little over twenty four hours and when I finally landed in Charles de Gaulles and heard all of the words I’d been studying eight years prior to that moment, what I had been working towards became less of a concept and more of a paralyzing fear. I made a friend on the plane but she didn’t know any French, we shared a taxi ride into the city because I told her I’d let her stay at my apartment with Kerry. Forty euros later we were in the 10th arrondissement; she was trying to find the building where I was staying while I fumbled with our luggage and admired the night life surrounding us. Everyone was drunk and on a bike, all of the girls were screaming, “Attendez-moi!” at men four blocks ahead of them, it was one in the morning and everything was open like it was the afternoon. After finding Kerry and depositing all of my things in our room we immersed ourselves in culture by drinking overpriced mojitos under a heated lamp smoking the last of my American Spirits from back home. I didn’t understand what was happening around me but I didn’t need to. That first night is what I visualize when I think of relief.

The next day I was on my own while Kerry was in class. I wanted to go see the city but I’ve never had the best navigational skills. I got very, very lost. Strangely lost, seemingly perpetually. I stayed on the M11 until I had to be escorted off. I walked up the stairs of the metro, turned a corner, and ended up at Notre Dame. No picture does it justice, nothing can describe the magnificence of the glass, the stone, the light. It might have been the cigarettes or the fact that I hadn’t eaten but I think it might have been sheer wonder that fucked me up; my knees went weak and my hand didn’t leave my heart. Oh, my heart ached when my eyes traced every stitch of the dauphin’s robes, I trembled at the altar of St. Peter, I stopped breathing when I looked up and the rose window was staring down at me like the eye of God. Say what you will about religion or God but there is something holy about that place that dismissed the embarrassment of my earlier ventures.

I felt forgiven in more than one way. I was blown into the cathedral and my doubt was blown out as if the saints knew that my soul belonged there and not my mind.

I grew up in awe of stained glass. A little girl at St. Elizabeth’s church always tracing my fingers along the iron molding while the preacher preached. Art has always been my God, my religion. I had more than a spiritual experience. I’m still shaking.

4 April 2015

Stephanie Zavas

In Search of Lost Time

A Memory

I can’t remember when the flowers appeared in the heating vents of my old Volkeswagen, but I left them there. Wherever they came from, they came at a time when the sun still warmed the earth and the breeze blew soft and satiny. This mind of mine, a time capsule, a storage unit frozen with age, recollects, at the most unpredictable of times, memories that are not just images of previous encounters with songs, roads, love, struggles… They barrel through my eyes, through all of my senses in an overwhelming vacuum-bag of life-times. I see and feel days in an instant, yesterday and coinciding with years past, a past and present imperative plagues the future with a sandy fog– the Dust Bowl of my dreams. In these moments I despair, rejoice, panic, hate, and fall in love. Time warps and fades, and I expand and contract across dimensions, I become dimensionless.

What form do memories take? Is there a universe where they repose, waiting, existing, remembering a time when they had yet to transcend this world in me. If it is so then my memories refuse enlightenment. They seek refuge in the moments when I see a familiar place, a long forgotten snowflower, trapped in the heating vent of my car.

I’ve moved a lot in my life, from just being poor and all kinds of other issues, to foster care, to some other sad stuff that is, you know, just the way life goes. But in this situation, I had moved back to an old foster home, having dropped out of college and moved away to Los Angeles which wasn’t healthy for a multiplicity of reasons. When I noticed those flowers, preserved and lingering, for how long and for how many cross-country trips I’ve taken trying to find my home, I discovered a fascination with memory, and and how one reconciles memory and time . It was a pleasurable thing, so innocent and beautiful, these flowers which endured through death, dread, enchantment, mountain passes, grassy plains, deserts and country roads, circumnavigating the country with me through every kind of weather and season.  

When I was eight years old I told my parents I didn’t want to eat meat anymore. My mom, raised in the heart of Kansas, preparer of most of our meals and a firm believer of the 1980’s dietary guideline for healthy meals being one source of meat protein, one starch and a side of veggies, promptly replied “not while under my roof.” Being a cunning eight year old, I decided to interpret this statement literally and that weekend, when my parents and I stopped at a restaurant on the way home from an outing, I ordered a salad.

Fast forward twenty-seven years, and I still don’t eat meat.  It’s a personal choice, based on compassion and one that has defined my identity. When I was younger I spent my allowance on memberships to environmental organizations; Greenpeace, World Wildlife Foundation and others. I had a plastic briefcase which I covered with the stickers of all the different organizations I belonged to. This was my badge of honor, and it symbolized my dedication to an ideal I believed in and to the adult I wanted to become. The older I got the less my mom was able to strong arm me into eating the meals she made.  By the time I hit nineteen, I went vegan, bringing home a package of tofu, plopping the foreign spongy cube in front of my mom and declaring this my new diet deity. I’ve suffered through dinner parties hungry and I’ve sat through hours’ worth of bacon jokes. I’ve accepted this lifestyle without regret, empowered by the idea that I was doing something honorable, and until one faithful Easter Sunday, three years ago, I thought I’d confronted and conquered every trial placed in front of me.

I was fostering a dog for my friend Carrie’s rescue organization; a neurotic creature that was terrified of people from years trapped in a crate at a puppy mill. When needed, I would coax the dog into my Subaru and take her to whatever event my friend had found, hoping to find some understanding soul willing to adopt her. The “event” my friend had found turned out to not be what she had expected. It was Easter Sunday and a local family was putting on an egg hunt and celebration for the kids in the community. When we arrived we were directed down a muddy road into a wooded section of land. She was told she could set up her booth in a grassy section at the edge of the trees near the place where everyone parked. After getting the dogs situated I was off duty, and had a few hours to kill before I had to pick up the dog and return home. So I waved goodbye to Carrie and followed the muddy tire tracks into the woods to check out the festivities.

It is strange how some moments in your life become burned into your memory, your mind places a bookmark between the pages of your experiences saying “this is something to come back to from time to time”.  It’s as if your subconscious marks the moment as a preliminary to something important, the memory becomes the title for the next chapter of your life, an important chapter.  I can open the book and feel that moment still, as if I am there; from the way the watery mud splashed up the side of my legs as I walked, to the way the trees stretched above my head to close in around me. I can still see the patterns of sunlight on the ground, dark holes punched through the light where the leaves above danced. As the trees thinned into a shadowy clearing, the warmth of the sunlight and the pleasant Easter day drained from my body and sunk into the mud at my feet.

I first watched the movie Deliverance when I was in high school. The movie’s protagonists encounter some back-woods mountain people with apparent hygiene defects and manners befitting an abused dog. They are actually really creepy people; people so beyond normalcy they are perfect as villains. Characters I applauded the movie’s director for inventing. Characters I was certain did not exist in the real world, but still gave me the chills when I pictured them. I bring up this movie because when I attempt to describe the scene before me nothing comes closer. I’ve witnessed some really strange things in my life that still felt “real”, this however, dropped me straight into a movie. The people around me looked meticulously costumed, the props methodically planned. The scene staged before me seemed straight out of the movie Deliverance.

The “egg hunt” was a small segment of land, roped off with bailing twine tied to trees, with plastic eggs scattered around on the trampled vegetation as if someone had just thrown them into the air and let them fall like brightly colored hail stones upon the ground. Children with dirt caked faces were running around, shoving each other aside to snatch up eggs while a horde of adults stood behind the twine screaming encouragements. In another area roped off, I saw a man in overalls holding a baby pig in front of a group of adolescents. Only later did I see the outcome of this tutelage; a terrified greased pig trying desperately to avoid being tackled by a swarm of greedy children.

One of the strangest things about the landscape were the random piles of tree saplings, unearthed from the ground, root balls exposed, placed in stacks around the clearing next to signs that read “trees for sale”. I could picture the landowners coming down from their mountain dwelling to this clearing to prepare for their annual Easter event and forlorn to see all the little trees that has sprouted during the year. After hand plucking the saplings to tidy up the area and thinking it an economical solution, they piled them up and placed signs to sell them. Of course any person with a small amount of plant knowledge would know that leaving the roots exposed all day long to the warmth of the air would kill the trees.

I was in awe. Not the good kind of awe either.  A woman passed me holding a toddler with hair matted and a filthy ring around his mouth from days of eating and no bathing. An old man, perhaps one of the land owners had a cardboard box of chocolate candy bars which he was throwing at people. When one of these chocolate projectiles hit me in the arm I picked it up and was astonished to read an expiration date of two years prior! On the other side of the clearing sat an old 1960’s pick-up truck, the bed held five rusty wire cages, each one containing a poor rabbit to be handed out as a prize for the most eggs collected. The memory in my mind becomes hazy at this point. My ability to recall the details of this place is muted by the overwhelming shock and dismay I was feeling. I walked around in a daze taking in this bizarre scene, until my memory suddenly focuses in again when I see the pen.

In the corner of the clearing tucked among the trees, in a tiny pen made from shipping pallets, stood a scrawny black and white calf. Being from Chicago, I’d never actually been up close to a cow before, and so I felt drawn to the pen, curiosity mixed with a sense of marvel. The calf was hip height, boney, with giant soulful black eyes embraced by long elegant lashes. It stood in mud, wobbly, sickly and weak, staring miserably out at the waves of people that passed by. My heart, as if I could truly feel it, seized into a tight ball. My mind transported for a second into the body of this helpless creature. Just a baby, with a child’s view of the world, placed by uncaring hands into a wet and dark enclosure, looked upon by cold eyes that saw only my flesh as a commodity. How scary it must all feel.

A young man, perched on a stool sat beside the pen in front of a tall table, a coffee tin placed in front of him. He was selling tickets to raffle off the calf. People were buying stacks, one dollar a piece, hoping to win this cheap food supply. Each ticket he would tear from its counterpart and drop it into the coffee tin. The calf was obviously not getting fed enough, and was to spend the entire day with no water and no food. I thought about leaping into the pen, fighting off the boy barehanded and carrying off the calf into the sunset. This of course was not an option and I knew I was helpless to save this poor creature. I pulled out five dollars and waited in line behind a man who bought one hundred tickets to purchase my five. Why did I waste five dollars? In my heart, as silly as it sounded, I wanted just a few of those tickets inside the coffee tin to represent kindness towards the unfortunate animal. Those five tickets were powerless to save it yet maybe they would somehow tip the balance toward compassion in this cruel world. Yes, I am an idealist.

My friend Carrie purchased twenty-five tickets and asked me to stay for the announcement of the winner. She’d already decided that this was not a place to find good owners for her rescue dogs and was busy packing up. As the crowd gathered to hear the winner of the cow and also a pet goat, I found a spot at the rear. I squatted down to lay out the raffle tickets on the ground in front of me, my back against a huge Douglas fir. I can still feel the sharpness of the bark on my skin through my t-shirt as I waited. When the number was called I scanned through Carrie’s tickets carefully, my heart heavy at this whole process of raffling off a life, angry that I was unable to change it. When the tickets did not provide the corresponding number I folded them up and tucked them in my pocket to throw away later. At the same time I glanced quickly at my five tickets but stopped after reading the first one.

How do you text your husband to tell him you just won a cow? It’s not a task one faces very often. Needless to say he wasn’t too happy with me. “Where are we going to put it?” He asked, “We don’t have any fencing, or knowledge of taking care of a cow, we can’t keep it.”

I knew all of this to be true, what was I thinking? The sadness and helplessness that I had felt moments before had turned to complete and utter panic as I realized what I had gotten myself into. Carrie, found this whole thing to be very amusing when I told her my dilemma. She had finished packing up and was waiting by the cars for me to return, her arm draped over her head to shield her eyes from the sun. She told me it all had a simple solution with a monetary gain for me, even. Calling out to the people heading to their cars she promptly sold my cow for fifty bucks to a tall man wearing a white tank top, with long arms and a goatee.

My memory of this time seems to be stuck on fast forward. Fueled by my distress and surprise at actually winning the cow, I was swept along by the circumstances of the moment. I followed the man, back down the muddy road toward the clearing to inform whomever it was that owned the cow that I would be exchanging the winning ticket to the man. My thoughts on the other hand, felt thick like the tree sap seeping from the bark of the trees around me. The forward movement of our walk seemed to unclog my thinking and I began to process what had just happened. At the same time an unsettling feeling of what I was now doing began to creep up. I’d bought the tickets to symbolically save the cow. Although I had fantasized about winning, I had felt safely tucked behind the microscopic chance that I would actually win. Now I was selling him, making a profit, becoming exactly what I had bought the tickets against. My husband’s voice rang in my ear, he was right; we were not set up for a cow. How long did a cow live? Did they just eat grass? How much space did a cow need?  We were not ready to take on something like that! This was the only option. I turned to the man and said “Take good care of my cow,” in which he replied with a sly grin, not even bothering to look at me, “Oh I will, until I eat it.”

The words were like spikes in my sides, jabbing me out of the trance I’d been in. A thought slowly surfaced in my mind. This was one of those defining moments in one’s life. A rare divergence from the main path, where everything you had carefully built around your identity is thrown into a mirror and set defiantly in front of you. This was a moment, like a weary traveler who comes to a fork in the road and must decide which path to take. It was a metaphoric fork in the road with two choices; the hard or the easy, the right or the wrong path. This was a blatant slap in the face by life, daring me to be the brave, compassionate person that from a little girl I dreamed of being. If I stayed the path, handing over my ticket, nothing harmful would happen to me. I would go home and eat my tofu and continue my life. However if I stopped right there in the mud and made the insane and ridiculous choice to keep the ticket, and the cow, I would forever alter the course of my life. I would be heading down a new path, one that perhaps I had this one chance to jump on to. It would be hard, it would be crazy, but it would be right.

I told the man I would not sell him the cow. And I will not go into the brief ten minutes of insanity after this, in which I ran around yelling “will anyone take my cow and just milk her for the rest of her life,” before being informed it was a “boy” cow. In the end, I faced myself in that mirror, and I gave her permission to be. I took the hard road with unbelievable challenges ahead. I knew my husband would feel the same once he looked into those deep and gorgeous eyes. Call it destiny, fate or random chance, whichever it was; it changed my life. So I crammed the calf into the back of my Subaru and brought him home.

Austin Milner

In Search of Lost Time

Turning Point Essay

The Three-Month Long “Cold”

In the late summer of 2012, just after returning from a summer camp that I was a counselor at, I caught a cold. It was nothing to out of the ordinary, with the usual coughing and running nose, so my mother and I addressed the illness as usual, with a movie marathon, a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and a handful of saltine crackers. I admit, it was unusual for me to catch a cold in the summer season but I had assumed that I had gotten it from a camper that I worked with or something of that nature. In the early fall of 2012, anxiously on my way to my first day of my senior year of high school, I still had that cold.

I had quite the line-up of classes, projects, events and goals to conquer during my first semester of that senior year and was not about to let some silly cold get in the way of what the world had explained to me as the most important and enjoyable time in my life. I had just started dating someone and was in the process of founding a theatre club for my school and discovering a passion for writing. Missing school and social interactions didn’t seem worth it to me, even if it meant that my sickness would linger a tad longer but when my sickness refused to subside in the weeks to come, my mother decided to take me to the doctor’s office. “It’s just that time of year”, he said. We reassured him that a sickness lasting for about a month now was indeed out of the ordinary but this didn’t seem to change his diagnoses that I just had that seasonal fall cold. So we went home, I ate my chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers, finished up my 8-season marathon of Weeds and continued on with my “cold”.

It quickly became apparent to me that my sickness was getting worse. It seemed like every day in October added another symptom and, in addition to coughing and having a runny nose, I now was experiencing cold sweats, constantly fluctuating in body temperature, losing weight, feeling weak and had daily asthma attacks (I did not have asthma before the sickness began). I was unable to go to school. I rarely saw my friends. I became too depressed to write and I continued to eat chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers while binge watching shows on Netflix. The fun of a day off from school because I was sick was gone and every visit to the doctor’s office yielded the same response. I remember one day in particular, when I drove to school after finally getting my driver’s license on my eighteenth birthday and parked on a hill above the UW campus in downtown Tacoma. As I was walking to my statistics class I began to feel incredibly weak and collapsed onto the sidewalk. I deduced that I was unable to walk down to my class, let alone pay attention to my teacher’s lesson and then walk back up the hill to my car at the end of the day. So I got back on my feet and walked up the brief incline to my car and started it up but before I could put the car in drive I experience yet another asthma attack, not my first of the day and it was still morning, and was unable to breath for the next minute and a half. As I watched the minute on my cars cassette tape clock change I believed that I was going to die. Here in my car, without an inhaler for help because the doctor never prescribed one to me, I managed to take another breath. I put the car in drive and made my way back to my parent’s house to tell them that something was seriously wrong and that I needed to go to the doctors yet again.

We got the same response from the doctor, though this time with a little more concern because it was late October and I’d been sick since August. My mother and I decided at this point to see a naturopath near our home, giving up all hope on our usual doctor (I have not gone to see him since). We visited the naturopath for the first time near Halloween of that year and I was weighed at 105 lbs. We took a blood test and found out that I was severely allergic to gluten. The more gluten I ate the worse my immune system became and the harder it was for my to properly digest my food. The chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers turned out to be the culprit all along. Over the course of the next seven months I was able to finish my schooling on a high note, even accidently being awarded honors at Stadium High School (a school that I had attended for my freshman year only) and gained most of my weight back. I was glad for a happy ending to this chapter of my life but I felt foolish all the same. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t make any active effort to change how I was feeling.

In realizing that I had been living with an illness for three months when I could have prevented it with a simple blood test or some deductive reasoning I learned that I wasn’t really taking care of myself and that I was putting my goals in front of my health. I had a habit of letting things build up until I would be forced to deal with them. I needed to change the way that I interacted with the world and how I reacted to the things that were in my life, whether it be an allergy to gluten or how to balance my hobbies with school and work. I was becoming an adult and would be heading to college soon and would have even more things to juggle.

This realization is universal I am sure but the way that I came about it with my turning point caused me to go into the beginnings of my adult life with more caution and forethought. I don’t know if this is the best way that I could have started off my independent journey but I can surely say that gluten is the culprit for how I’ve shaped myself, for better or for worse.

My circular field of vision contains hundreds of flickering black specks, only unlike those televisions from the 90’s, whose screens flicker white and black when not set to the right channel,  the white is a deep, dark green, and I’m able to make out objects only by a vivid contrast of black blobs against crackling green dots.  The sweat collects upon our foreheads and slowly makes its way down the sides of our faces, sometimes ending in a salty swipe of the tongue. I pass him and contemplate a “fuck you,” but decide to be serious for once. We make it 100 meters down the hill of which he lay, carefully measuring our steps in silence, gradually increasing the size of the objects in the distance. There’s a flash in the sky, then a peal in the distance, followed by another crack seconds later. We fall on our bellies and look around, and the seconds grind against our ribcages until we hear the sounds of what should be courteousness being replaced with pleading. At first the flash appeared on the horizon, originating much the same as a rising sun. My belly then wrenched as the pleading noise shook me out of my shock, making me realize our small group was turning around and running back up the hill, recalling those grueling runs up Monte Berico, which rewarded us with a breathtaking view of Vicenza. A friend of mine lost 40 pounds from that run, not immediately, but from a persistent nagging that if only he was faster, they’d be alive. We get to the top and I see him, a dark green object slumped against a moving dark green object, who is whispering “stay with me.” We keep moving toward the screams, and I see dark splatters everywhere. There’s one more flash, and the rest is where awards are won, but not worth mentioning.

I tell myself we’re all okay, and he taps me on the shoulder, whispering the names. I nod my head, and when he walks away, my eyes well and coyotes begin to circle meters in front of me around the dark, lumpy object.  My spine explodes with shivers, and this is the first time I notice how soaked I am from sweat. Shivering from the cold, I ask myself how I can care about being cold at such a moment, and the last things I’d said to these lumps.

Ten hours later, our small group is still on that hill, and the village is wide awake, in full force. I’m sitting at the peak of the hill, with Espinoza at my side, and say, “We’re gonna get fucking shot sitting here.” 2 seconds later I feel that first snap crack past my face, and we still talk of that moment to this day. They told us not to look at the bodies, but we stared at those souls who’d we’d grown to love more than family, our hearts plunging into that deep abysmal rift which manages to eventually slice through our innocence at one point of our lives, entrenching solidly and forming a sturdy foundation. Three days in is too short of time to pray for a year to end quickly.

We sat on the curb at 3 a.m., drunk and having taken a few Ambien’s for shits and giggles. He says he’s glad to have met me, that I was different than most. We talked about learning Italian for when we came back. He had one of those yellow how-to-guides-for-dummies and asked me what real love was like. What he’d noticed was that kernel I promised myself a year before, that I was here from being homeless and broke, and that I’d always maintain who I was, rather than become a robot. We walked the green mile many times together, sometimes having to drag one another after puking in the middle of the road. This moment on the curb replays every day as I remember that lump against the dark green, and when the sun rose, that gruesome spectacle of humanity at its worst spread across the sand. I remember those moments just days before, our stomachs uneasy and nervous, and his beautiful, sly smile as he jumps around, speaking only in those sporadic moments, in rapid bursts, curious and eager to find true love.

I’d started reading Cummings a few months afterward, and can’t begin to describe the beauty and truth in which poetry unfurled for me. I’d written bodies after this epiphany, and understood Bukowski’s sarcastic remark that anybody can write. It’s true, anybody who can write, can write poetry. It’s the poems that well from experience and tradition that resonate the strongest, whose words fertilize the awaiting buds of our understanding. I couldn’t write bodies again if I tried, and in that sentiment, lies the beauty in anything anyone writes. Whatever we choose to say, is probably worth sharing and says something about your life, whether conscious or not. Good writing isn’t interesting, writing that has the capacity to move the reader is worth reading; and whenever I attempt to read bodies, I’m reminded of that green hill, and of the memories which remain from those who ask about love, who exist in one moment, and leave empty beds the next.

It is extremely easy to want a lot of things. Growing up I wanted everything, nice clothes, a nice house, but of course in life you will not get exactly what you want unless you work for it. I did not grow up in a wealthy environment, but it was still good living. However, I wanted more, I wanted nice things and a big backyard and I knew I had to work hard for it.
I had my first job at sixteen serving coffee and I have had a job ever since. Because I had a job I was able to get myself some nice things and even saved up enough to buy the 1997 jeep wrangler I am still currently driving. After I graduated high school I was enrolled to attend a university that was located two hours away from my parents home. I was excited to start school and begin my life journey.
College was not mentioned much in my family, and neither of my parents had attended. I have five siblings, two older brothers, two older sisters and one younger sister. A few of them graduated high school and none had attended college. Since I want so much, I knew that I had to go to college and get some type of education for a good paying career. When I got into college and told my family they were overwhelmed with joy and so was I.
I was always into art and computer art. When I started school I took many graphic design classes because eventually I wanted to be a graphic designer. I had so much fun in my classes creating pictures, paintings, sculptures and so much more. During my sophomore year I took a typography class and the biggest assignments was to teach our class how to use a certain tool in photo shop. At first I was nervous because I am not the best public speaker, but when my turn came suddenly I was excited to show the class tricks I had taught myself in photo shop. I presented to the class how to download painting stamps that they could use for their computer art. No one knew this trick and everyone was thrilled with my teaching. Seeing all the students so interested in what I was saying and seeing them do exactly what I had taught them later in the quarter was one of the best feelings. After that experience I knew I wanted to be a teacher.
Because I had changed my intended career choice I had to start taking a few different classes. I kept at my art classes because I want to teach visual arts. At that time the school I was attending no longer offered a visual art endorsement for students who wanted to teach art. I was devastated, because I knew I would have to attend another school that did. I was not happy that I had to leave but I did anyways because I knew that I wanted to be a teacher and nothing else. When I transferred it did set me back from my intended graduation date, but for the good.
I am still in the process of earning my teaching degree and in the end I know it will be worth it. The day I decided to go to college was the best decision of life. I won’t have the high paying job I intended for to pay for all the nice things, but I will eventually have a job I love and that is the main nice thing I want. My dream job.

Vade Mecum; a book for ready reference or something regularly carried about a person. Vade Mecum is a latin phrase meaning go with me. The first known use of the phrase VadeMecum dates back to 1629, in which the item it was named after could also be called monk book. Imagine this book in all its leather-bound and stained glory. An item which emits a pleasing leathery scent and holds within its casing a collection of fibrous pages. This beautiful book piece can be made into high quality – one so great that it can throw the beholder back in times of castles and churches, where robe-wearing believers spent their time scripting away in candle lit rooms. Where the only other light source was that of the suns rays shining through the stained glass, illuminating the portrayals of religious scenery of love, life or horror.

A journal like a Vade Mecum could prove to be the perfect gift. A gift which takes its form but holds a sort of treasure within its sentimental utility. The value of this book could also prove frightening for those who are unfamiliar to writing, for its journaling purpose chronicles the passing of time that ultimately concludes with the writer’s death. Yet here this treasure lied, resting upon a plastic table around a hundred others, only waiting to be purchased away from its creator – a middle aged woman sitting upon her lawn chair, behind the table, happily shaded away from the summer sun by her booths tent.

In a somewhat humorous contrast, there I was, on the opposing side of this woman’s table. I stood on that downtown Portland road where I was left vulnerable to the sun’s heat. The pits of my arms had already stained my shirt, and the crowd of people behind me – who flowed through the streets of this fair like a steady stream – emitted a gross collection of body heat which only further developed the production of sweat drops under my hairline. One could easily imagine the discomfort I could have felt in that time, yet my mind did not bother for such physical pitties; for, you see, my mind was fixated solely on the depth and beauty of this leather bound book.

In these similar moments I could also feel the woman’s own sight fixated on me, through her large, egg-shaped sunglasses. Perhaps this vendor was only on her toes to make a sale, but I had always enjoyed imagining that she could see my soul – one so often enchanted by ideas of mysticism and escapism. Perhaps the piqued curiosity I portrayed only screamed to her how much of a potential customer I might have been – if not for the fact that I was a broke high-school student at the time (not much has changed since then). Alas, the continuation of my Portland trip had returned, and it was only because of the price of a Vade Mecumm that I had left the city empty handed.

TIme passed by leading to the entry of a new year. It was January 18th, a day of dreary weather, however the greyness of such a day had no effect within the atmosphere of my home. That day was one in which my eldest brother had visited me, and in his hands was a gift as easily receivable as his likeable personality. This brother of mine had dropped onto my lap the familiar shape which I had seen so many months ago. I looked upon the gift, in all its leathery goodness, and immediately opened it to smell its pages once again. I had recieved my first monkbook, my own Vade Mecum, and I had applied my pen to it as soon as I was once again alone. Little did I know at the time of the experience that would follow the next year.

The receiving of this gift was my own turning point. I had not journaled before, yet I knew it as traditional to start each entry with the date. The process of filling these pages had turned into what seemed like the unravelling of my own story. I had scripted my life’s ups and downs and before I knew it, when coupled with this program, I was in the middle of an existential crisis. However negative it may seem, such an experience is enlightening, and I had developed a level of self-consciousness that had never been there before.

Through the Door

I was scared, beyond scared, terrified. I could hardly speak and was shaking so much I could barely even walk. My two young sons were with my grandmother and I was trying to do something, to be brave enough to go back to judo.

For those of you that don’t know, judo is a full contact sport, somewhat like wrestling or the now popular Brazilian Jujitsu. Women in classes are scarce, especially during this time. Joining a judo class would require me to go on the mat, do exercises to strengthen my body and to get close- very close physically to men.

I was a black belt, that meant I was expected to manage myself and behave in certain ways, and being scared to even walk into the room, wasn’t one of those ways. It had been going on for a long time. That last weekend, just 8 days before I stood in front of this door, trying to make myself go in, ended it. He came home, I wasn’t expecting him, so dinner wasn’t ready. He was angry and wanted me to himself. Shoved up the stairs, stripped and locked in the bedroom, I waited. Then he burst through the door and it began. I didn’t know what he had done to my boys and so I did my best to appease him. He would leave the room every once in a while, locking me in. I endured and he finally settled down. It took 3 days. And then he left.

Crawling down the stairs in a t-shirt and panties, I peaked around the corner and saw that my boys were ok. I didn’t want them to see me this way, so I snuck out the front door. The Sheriff’s office was only 1 ½ blocks away. This was a very small town. Outside of a few odd looks, no one said anything to me as I walked down the street barefoot through the winter snow. I entered the Sheriff’s office and asked for help.

We left the next day, I didn’t tell anyone. I told the boys we were going on a vacation and to grab all their favorite things and some clothes. I went to the bank and took out what money I had- my rent money- and hoped it would be enough. We disappeared.

And here I was, trying to find something of what I used to be. A real person, and a judo black belt. I had grown up in the sport, it was where I was strong, and it was a way of life and the culture I had grown up in. I had been away. Away from any resemblance of my life, of any employment, of anything that was me. Somehow, I needed to get through that door and join the class. I needed the strength. Judo had been a place where I belonged. I knew that if I could only get there, I would begin to learn who I was again.

The doors were glass and I could see the families on the other side, having fun. I held my breath and looked at the ground. I didn’t know how I was going to do this. I didn’t have any money to pay for a uniform, much less the national registration I needed if I was to practice. I didn’t have any of my records to prove that I had done this before, and had a black belt. I had nothing to give, I was homeless, living on my grandmother’s good will. I still had to try. My boys deserved a mother that could take care of them. They deserved a mother with strength and confidence.

Taking another breath and holding it, with tears running down my face, I stepped through that door.    I made it in.

[Notice: this essay discusses suicide. While the discussion is not graphic, if it is going to be significantly upsetting for you, I encourage you to stop reading now.]

The turning point seems like it should be the climax, but really it’s tucked away in the rising action. Or maybe it’s that the moment that looks like a climax is actually part of the falling action. Or maybe life doesn’t follow the exact form of a Freytag pyramid. There was a suicide attempt, a desperate phone call, a hospital bed. There was a treatment center, psychiatrists, hour after hour of therapy. There was misery and there was hope. How do I put the pieces of the story in order? How do I give order to the chaos of real life? It seems like the hinge should be the moment of swallowing the pills, a moment prolonged by the oversize number of them. Or maybe the turning point should be the moment the fear exploded into a 911 call. Or maybe it’s weeks later, crying across an office from a professional, compassionate, yet clinically detached. Of course, it wasn’t any of those things. It was before.

On a morning that I will always remember as the morning of my suicide attempt, but on that day was just another awful Monday morning, I had finally finished my paper. This paper had been hanging over my head for weeks. I don’t remember anymore how many extensions I had asked for, or how many days had passed since the most recently revised due date. I had spent weeks crying and drafting and crying some more. It was the first paper of my first-year writing class at New York University, and it had driven me out of school before. The year prior, I had entered as a bright-eyed freshman drama student, and quickly suffered a case of small-fish, big-pond syndrome. Leaving my tiny, nurturing all-girls prep school where I had a 93 GPA and was known for my academic aptitude for an enormous, uncaring university in an even more enormous, uncaring city was a major shock to my system. The writing I was asked to do was like no writing I had ever done before. I felt incompetent and incapable. Eight weeks into the school year, I couldn’t stop crying. Instead of turning in my paper, I went home to “rest,” my parents and my therapist claiming it was simply the stress of thirteen years of prep school on top of clinical depression that had broken me, that all I needed was a little free time. I came back the next fall. This time, I managed to actually write the paper, though I wasn’t happy with what I produced, or with anything else about my schoolwork or my life. I spent my days sleeping through classes, my nights trying to escape my shame and fear with drugs and cartoons. But somehow, I wrote the paper. I think it was about blue whales, hummingbirds, and Jung. It doesn’t matter now.

That morning, the paper was in my tote bag, and the tote bag was on the floor of my therapist’s office. I had been lying to her for weeks about how miserable I was, because I believed that if she believed I was okay, I could believe it too. If we both believed it, then it would be true. That morning I let out a little more, perhaps because of the long, sleepless night writing that final draft. I told her how unhappy I was, how behind in school, how isolated and trapped I felt. She asked me why I had been hiding these things from her. I stared at the floor, the bookshelf, the window, anywhere but her face. I broke the hair elastic I had been twisting and stretching in my hands. I told her I just wanted to get through the semester, just a few more weeks and everything would be okay. I told her that I just wanted to tolerate it and then I’d have a month of freedom from the stress. She said she didn’t think that was the problem. She reminded me that this was the space I’d been living in for years, the space of just hanging on, the space of crying too much and sleeping through school and feeling alone. She told me that things would always be this way if I didn’t commit to the hard work of making them different, making them better. She painted me a picture: a fork in the road. One road, this mysterious hard work. The other, remaining unhappy indefinitely. She said that the problem with the second road is that it always leads back to this fork. I don’t remember what I said. I don’t remember how the session ended. I remember that I went to class, turned in the paper. I don’t remember how I spent the afternoon.

But I remember that night. I had decided I didn’t want to take either road, that there had to be a third way. The third way seemed to mean jumping into the abyss between the two paths. The third way seemed to mean dying. The details of that night don’t matter; it’s enough to say that bad math and good friends lead to my survival. I realized, in the hospital, that I had accidentally taken the second road, that I was back again at the fork. I realized the second road feels like forward motion, but walking it is actually staying still. The only way for me to live any kind of life, to grow up, to create the art I longed to, or ever find love, or live in my dream house, or get anything I had ever wanted, was to get on the first road. So I did. I dug into my treatment with tenacity. It was impossibly difficult. It was everything I had been feared when my therapist had said “hard work.” But I had survived an attempt on my life; I could survive this. I survived, and I grew, and I transformed, and I embraced it all because I knew there was no other unterrible choice.

I am finally happy, at peace, in joy, at least as much as anyone else, anyway. I am alive, and I am experiencing fully the broad range of sensations, emotions, adventures, challenges, and accomplishments that life encompasses. I wouldn’t be here without the image that therapist gave me, those two treacherous roads and the invisible third. I wouldn’t be so truly alive if it weren’t for the fear of those roads that drove me towards death. Perhaps I would have stayed on the second road forever, or maybe it would only have taken me a lot longer to find the first. I don’t know; I can’t say. What I can say is how glad and grateful I am to be here, the most current version of myself, in this place at this time, and I am ready to see what new roads await.