Twenty~Five

The end of the year is near, once again. Why does the time go by so fast? The days are getting colder and the daylight is getting shorter. During this time, the loneliness sneaks up on you so easily. It tries to convince you that the coldness and austerity of the outside has moved into the inside, too. I'm missing the Florida sun and all the love I was learning, exactly one year ago. This year, I am back to snow, old friends, and a familiarity that I have been allowing myself to mistake for boredom. Such a mistake on my part. This kind of familiarity should be defined as a constant stream of love that you get so used to it becomes unrecognizable. It is an extreme privilege to experience this, it is an extreme mistake to let it go unrecognized. My wish for myself, as the year comes to a close, is that I no longer "get used" to the love I am given. I hope I can re-learn to relish in every single bit of it. I'm sitting here in chorus class right now, listening to the...

I'm writing right now, because I am in a beautiful place in my life and it would be a shame not to type the words written on my heart. How my heart always aches for some tangible evidence of what being alive feels like at any given moment of this journey.  I was talking to Keeley last night about how I feel some profound changes within me and I can't seem to describe the deep gratitude I feel. When I think about the love and beauty this life has brought me, tears well up in my eyes. When I think of all I've learned in the past few years, I realize how infinite the ability to grow really is. I love myself now. It took years and years of trying and failing, and trying and failing, but I love myself now. I hope these words have enough weight to settle down in my heart and stay there for the rest of my existence. I found a real love, and then I lost it. One of the most beautiful aspects of this life, in my opinion, is the ability to feel. I feel your absence now, more than ...

I woke up this morning and I was alone. I walked into the kitchen, where normally your faces would be waiting for me. Faces I will never erase. Faces I woke up to every morning for 10 short months. It's difficult to describe the emotions this goodbye brought for me, and at this very moment i feel kind of numb to it. But when I was laying there on the floor with Jon during our last hour, watching the strips of flickering daylight fade from the walls of his mom's rented apartment, I felt like I was getting stabbed in the gut. He held me while I cried and drooled all over him for at least the fourth time this week. I looked back at Keeley the moment we got to the airport to drop me off. Tears were streaming down her face and I thought to myself, "how is it possible I've found so much love here?" I'm so deeply sad that this chapter of my life is over. I fell completely in love with a group of people and let them become my world for a while, and i will never forget...

The thought of Americorps ending in less than two weeks makes my stomach sink to the ground. Ten months. Ten months of endless inconsistency, moving a billion times, eating food off the floor and wearing the same clothes seven days in a row. My standards have been significantly lowered, for sure, but my expectations have been exceeded beyond my wildest dreams. It may seem unbelievable to compare this program to a dream, after the bed bugs and moldy walls and baling cardboard for 8 hours straight and some *very* difficult people. But I've discovered that if you do the most mundane tasks in the world with people you love, they can easily transform into bliss. And I learned that any difficult person that makes you feel tiny and worthless can be buffered by someone who sees the entire world in you. I've been so lucky this year to find people who see that in me. I see a world of love around me everyday, my life is painted with gratitude where a little more cynicism used to be. ...

It's difficult for me to find the words to encompass the past few weeks at St. Dorothy's Rest, and something inside me has prevented me from writing. But here I am, because I know later on I will be thankful for every piece of evidence I can look back on that this year happened and was very real, even if this kind of evidence feels a bit contrived. It is beautiful here and often I feel as though I'm living in a dream. We're surrounded by fields of green and tall trees that reflect the sunlight in the most perfect way. Often I walk out to a look out spot at the perimeter of the property at the end of day and watch the sky change colors ever so subtly. The sunsets here don't scream at you, like they did in Vegas. There are no explosions of color, no lava or cotton candy pouring out of the clouds, or if there are, we can't see them from where we are. Instead, it's the slightest change from baby blue to light grey to pale pink, a change so delicate it could ea...

8:59 am. I'm getting all goofy and sentimental right now, maybe because I got four hours of sleep and just chugged a strong, nearly unpalatable cup of coffee. I feel like laughing and crying and taking a calculus test and listening to Fergie all at the same time. I'm inspired, I'm motivated, I'm grateful. There's three months left, and even though that's a long time, it doesn't seem long enough. Joining this program has made my whole world bigger. It has changed my perspective. The spots where my life used to feel limited now feel limitless. The spots where loneliness resided are filled with love. I don't know how I will be able to leave this, this hallowed experience. There is this tremendous, simple joy I feel just to know I have crossed paths with these people and will never be able to uncross them. I was listening to this Bon Iver song last night, and though usually his lyrics are a bit incoherent, one line stopped me in my tracks. "At once ...

We made it back from Vegas yesterday and I'm back in my little air force dorm room in Sacramento. I don't really have words to describe my time in Vegas, but the beauty and craziness and excitement of that city will stay with me forever. The memories I created there were some of the best of my life.  I will miss Fremont street, with its bubbling energy and flickering lights. I will miss the warm sun and the incredibly kind people we met. I will miss the fun-loving spirit the city instilled in us and how we never hesitated to go out and enjoy it. When I think back on my times there, I want to remember our smiling faces glowing in the fluorescent lights, dancing like our lives depended on it. How the Fremont Casino somehow became our refuge, where we would smuggle in cheap beer and tell each other secrets and invent songs and hide from security because they knew us as regular loiterers there. My heart now holds warm memories of late night Evel Pie pizza, live music at Containe...

We went to the Hoover Dam today, what a friggin cool place. The enormity of it was overwhelming in an exhilarating way.  Immediately after, Matt dropped some of us off at Fremont street to party for a few hours with Jasmine's friends from home. I put exactly one dollar into the "I Dream of Jeannie" slot machine because Alexis's and my running joke that we are genies and constantly try to grant everyone wishes. Everyone kissed my dollar, and we waited eagerly as the buttons flashed and pictures spun. I won a whopping 8 DOLLARS! We got so excited and started jumping around and everyone in the casino thought I won big time and kept asking me questions that were embarrassing to respond to, leading to convos like "So, how much did you win?" "Uhhhhhh..... 8 dollars!. but it's exciting because I only make 12$ a day?" ".... oh, that's..... nice." At about 8:30, Mike called us and told us we needed to move out of boys and girls club immedi...

I'm remembering that being who I am is inescapable so I might as well embrace it. As my fav poet Buddy Wakefield always says, "The only person you're ever going to be, and I know it, thank God, is you." We finished up renovating the homeless shelter and moving everything into it today. It looked surprisingly incredible. A homeless woman shared how grateful she was for us fixing up the place and nearly brought tears to my eyes. She said she wanted to show us off to her daughter, she told us how we were directly helping her improve her life and get back on her feet. Hearing the simple yet profound impact we made on her life was beautiful and I felt lucky to have contributed to that. The rest of the day was a bit less sentimental, but good nonetheless. While cleaning up empty lots, I found a used condom and almost stepped on a dead cat. We have a little game where the grosser the things we find, the better. So, I was doing pretty well for myself. A little girl in t...

Last night, I stood outside alone as rain drizzled from the sky, creating little puddles of glimmering water on the pavement. It only rains 6 days out of the entire year here, so I felt a bit wonderstruck, like I was in the midst of a mini-miracle.  I watched four planes take off from the Las Vegas airport, way in the distance, ascending into a horizon of palm tree silhouettes and a smoky gray sky.  I stood in that rain until my sweatshirt was soaked, feeling the droplets of water trickle down my face, feeling everything. In this moment, the present (whom I've shamefully been avoiding), snuck up and reminded me it's okay to let go. It was like the clouds in the sky could speak to me, telling me to learn an important lesson from them. They float freely and change effortlessly and release the rain when they need to, bringing life and making the world beautiful. They don't hold onto anything they don't need to. They don't cling.  I'm trying to learn from you, cloud...

It's 11:32 pm on Friday night and I'm completely restless. It could be because Keeley and I just spent an hour laying on  the floor improvising storylines for the faces we drew on our bellies and laughing so much it actually hurt. There are few things in this life I love more than laughing until it hurts. I guess I'll flash back to yesterday, where we spent the day on the "real" Vegas strip, wandering through boujee stores and spending too much money on fancy drinks. It was one of the rare times almost all of the group went out together, and by the end of the night we all agreed it was also one of the most fun times we've had while here. Keeley fake proposed to me and we got a crowd of strangers to cheer for us. We all slow danced while a street performer played "Perfect," and that it was. Roy, Jon and I snuck away from the group and ran into a club so we could dance for precisely one song, just enough time that our absence would not be noticed. We...

It's 9:14 pm and I'm sitting in a run-down laundromat listening to change clatter and old dryers whir. My body is exhausted, my mind even more exhausted. We stayed out late last night to enjoy a last hoorah on Fremont before moving to a different part of town. I had a weird spiritual revelation last night while walking back at 2 am through the streets, perpetually fluorescent and bubbling with life. I thought about souls and how I think they are more connected than I allow myself to believe. How there is this feeling that comes over me every now and than assures me life is more than just coincidence. Roy was talking to me about how he feels like I only put my faith into the things I can see. It's true, I like science and concreteness and practicality. It scares me to put my hopes into what is not guaranteed, why not just appreciate what I can see, what's right in front of me? Slowly I think this view is starting to change, and I'm realizing there is far more out...

It's a bit difficult trying to pick up where I left this blog, it seems impossible to sum everything up. I've been meaning to write but haven't been able to bring myself to, not sure why. I'm in a bit of a lull. But here I am, trying, that's what counts right? Work is definitely slower than it was in Florida, and it seems like we've been doing everything under the sun and nothing at the same time. These past few days, it's been freezing for Vegas and we've worked at the Mayor's Cup Soccer Tournament, picking up trash from 11 am til 8 pm. People keep thinking we're in trouble with the law because of what we're doing, so we made up ex-convict alter egos. My name is Viker, Jasmine is Jailee, keeley is KeKe and Alexis is now Rexi. We've been laughing a lot and for now, life is simple. We're moving out of the Veteran's village soon. The bed bugs and cockroaches are still very present despite the endless bombings of our rooms by the l...

The suns light painted over the mountains at the end of day, picking and choosing where to place its last rays. I see a man, standing in front of these mountains with his arms wide open as his girlfriend takes a picture of him. He's smiling, as if he is seeing the expansiveness of the universe and is holding it in his hands. You would think holding this, the entire universe, in your hands, would get heavy. If that were true, god would be very tired all the time and perhaps that man wouldn't be smiling. Maybe a better word for holding in this context is embracing, you never really get tired of embracing. Usually, embraces are mutual and loving and make you lighter. I feel like that smiling man feels today, or at least like I imagine him feeling as he embraces the world. I felt the sun on my face and the coffee on my tongue. I saw time with no constraints and no ceilings and no floors or endings. I'm not afraid that the sun is disappearing behind the mountains and soon I ...

We've been in Vegas over two weeks already, somehow. It is both a great time and simultaneously an incredibly weird time. I haven't written in too long, and I can feel it. I don't know which words to place where. The flow of language isn't coming naturally. Las Vegas is a sketchy place. We've had several run-ins with very creepy men, one of which had to get kicked out of the Veteran's village for his behavior towards us. This clearly isn't ideal, but we've been dealing with it. We never walk anywhere alone, ever. In other news, our room has been ridden with bed bugs. The bugs have been furiously attacking Keeley and Jasmine, leaving them with over 50 bites each. Somehow, I haven't had any type of reaction to the bugs, or they just haven't been biting me by some miracle. I don't know how I somehow got out of that one, but I feel terrible about what Keeley and Jasmine have been going through. The maintenence people have come in multiple ti...

We made it to Vegas yesterday at around noon and I've loved every moment since. The veteran's village we're staying in is modest, to say the least, but beats living on cots by a landslide. We have beds and doors that lock and laundry in our building. Jasmine, Keeley and I are sharing a room with two beds, that we spent most of the day yesterday decorating/unpacking/making feel like a home.  Being able to actually unpack all my things without fear of having to move in a day is a wonderful feeling. I don't have to live out of my red bag anymore, I can actually settle in somewhere and make it comfortable, and this small sense of stability brings me great comfort. Jasmine covered our fridge in pictures of our adventures and we filled our shelves with books. There was a minor setback later on in the day, when I rolled around on the floor and stretched for a while and got bitten by bed bugs... but this issue was semi-addressed.... As in Rohan and I killed the ones we saw on t...

I'e  been experiencing a weird wave of anxiety/depression since I've gotten back to campus. My toxic thoughts have been off the charts and I've just been trying to stay afloat and keep them at bay to get through the day. They warned us that coming back from disaster relief could send us into this state and that it could take a while to adjust to it. I always thought myself to be somewhat resilient towards changing circumstances. I always think my "positive" mood is infallible. That is, until I start to feel bad, then I can barely stand it and my entire sense of self gets thrown off. Currently, there are things and people on my mind that I can't let go of, that I have to let go of, there's a present moment to pay attention to that I haven't been paying enough attention to. I'm learning there are always more things to learn about myself. The most important thing is that I must be patient. This morning I feel very good. Like I'm starting to retu...

A new year is upon us. As you may know, I'm nearly incapable of handling the passage of time, though I have to. So another year is gone and I'll keep it locked in my heart. 2017 was one of the best years I've yet to have. I am at a loss of words at the sheer beauty it brought me. And the knowledge, and the pain. I screwed up more times than I can count this year, I really did. It seems there were millions of times I was telling myself I would learn from my mistakes, then I went and made them again. I had to apologize to others a few more times than I would have liked to. But I guess the point of life is to make mistakes, and through them I have learned about forgiveness and how incredible of a thing it is. I could dwell on the mistakes, as I have a thousand times, but what's done is done and we're all human. At the end of the day maybe it's not about our mistakes but rather our triumphs. 2017 was a year of tiny triumphs. 2017 started out with a terrible hair...