Never, Never

I came home from rehearsal with Tinker Bell still in my hair. Wire garlands of tinsel were wrapped around my head. It took forever to put them in. I was too exhausted to take them out.

I crashed down into my bed, too worn out to even shut the bedroom door behind me. My mother walked by.

“You can’t sleep like that, darling,” she told me.

“I don’t care” I said, too tired to care.

And without another word, my mother walked across the room and sat on the bed beside me. Then carefully, gently, she began to untangle the tinsel from my hair. She pulled out shining piece after shining piece, and when they were all gone, she stayed and stroked my back.

I was a teenager, and I remember thinking, ‘I am too old for such tenderness.’ And I remember thinking, ‘I hope I am never too old for such tenderness.’ And I remember thinking, ‘there are some things we never stop needing.’

One day you left your childhood behind. You stopped believing in fairies. And whether you welcomed the change, or fought against it, or simply shrugged your shoulders in resignation and said “okay,” adulthood arrived. You forgot how to get back. You ran out of pixie dust. However it happened, it happened.

But not fully.

Because you never, never stop needing what you needed as a child, what you cried out for in the middle of the night as though – because – your whole life depended on it. You never, never stop craving comfort. You never, never stop wanting to be held. You never, never stop chasing the shadows of your youth across bedroom walls.

There is a softness that never, never leaves you, no matter how hard life becomes. You are not the shell that cracks. You are the delicate baby bird. You crow. You spend your whole life flying toward adventure. The song of your joy is laughter. The sound of your laughter skips about. You create magic, but also, you are magic, and not even the ticking crocodile can take that away. Not even hooks and swords.

Never.

Never.

My mother sat on the bed beside me as I hovered in the place between awake and dreaming. That was ten years ago now. But day after shining day, I have pulled from that night the memory of tenderness. I have carried it with me through the stars and straight on ‘til morning. It is a happy thought.

Fear

If I could tell my younger self only one thing, it would be this: Don’t be afraid. There are no ghosts in your closet or monsters under your bed. Do not be afraid of wild things. You are a wild thing. Roar like it. Have a wild rumpus or two.

When you are learning how to ride a bike, you will fall down, a lot. You will get injured almost every time you try to play a sport. It will hurt, but you will survive. Don’t let your fear of pain keep you from trying. You will spend your whole life regretting the chances you didn’t take.

When you get a little bit older, you will be afraid that no one will like you. You will constantly fear with others think about you. When you aren’t included in something, you will see it as your own failure, and you will cry about it. You will try to be more like the person they want you to be. You will buy clothes and accessories that don’t suit you. You will beg your parents to get you what all of your friends have. You will play so many roles trying to impress them.

You don’t need to impress them. You need to be kind and compassionate. You need to care about their feelings, but you don’t need to worry about what they think of you. You need to worry about what you think of you. Don’t be afraid of yourself. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. People will like that about you.

Don’t remain quiet about things that matter. When you know something is wrong, speak up. When you know the right answer, say so. Always raise your hand when you have something to contribute. Don’t doubt the sound of your own voice. It is more powerful than you can imagine.

Later you will become afraid of your own body. It will grow and transform in ways that disappoint you. At times you will hate it. You will try to hide it, and to change it, and to beat it down until it is something you find beautiful. You will never find it beautiful. You will spend years chasing an impossible ideal. You will always fear you have failed.

Don’t be afraid of all that your body is and all that it can do. You can run. You can jump. You can dance. You can climb trees and swing from monkey bars and hold people in your arms. Do all of these things. Do them proudly and gratefully and often. You only have one body. Don’t waste that gift by fearing it.

You will be afraid of boys – that they will ask you out and that they won’t ask you out. You will be afraid that they will love you and also that they won’t. They will seem different and complicated and scary. Your heart will get broken a few times. The pain will seem unbearable, but you will survive. Don’t fear this pain. Don’t let it stop you from taking risks with your heart. Don’t close yourself off to love.

You will waste a lot of time in your life fearing that you are unworthy. You will be afraid that you’re not good enough, that you don’t deserve all that you want and hope for. Don’t do this. Please. It is silly and foolish and it will keep you from reaching for a great many things that were well within your grasp. You will look back and see that. You will wish you had stretched yourself a little. You will wish you hadn’t been so afraid.

I am older now, and I am less afraid of what you, younger self, feared. But I have new fears. Grown-up fears. I am afraid of never becoming financially stable. I am afraid of becoming too comfortable with silence. I am not afraid of being alone, but I am afraid of becoming lonely. I am afraid there won’t be enough time to say all that I want to say before the words in my heart die inside. I’m afraid of becoming a “real writer” and also of not becoming one. I’m afraid of not living my life fully, they way I want to, the way my younger self hoped I would.

I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of losing those I love to death. I am afraid of the absence death leaves behind. I am afraid that no matter how many times I say “I love you,” it won’t ever be enough. I’m afraid of reaching my own death to discover there is leftover love that wasn’t spent on who and what mattered most. I’m afraid of losing sight of who and what that is.

But mostly, I am afraid of my own fear. I am afraid of what it has already cost me. I am afraid of the regrets that continue to form. I am afraid I’ll spend my whole life writing letters to my younger self, urging her, begging her, please, don’t be afraid. Take some chances. Leap. Your very life depends on it.

This I Believe

It’s been a difficult few months. I won’t get into the specifics. They aren’t terribly interesting, anyway. They’re mostly just pieces of the familiar human story –lessons about loss and sadness and growing up. I’ve been feeling what we all, at one time or another, inevitably feel. At times I have named it “hopelessness,” but that’s not what it is. Not really.

Because I’ve never actually given up hope. I’ve never stopped hoping. I’ve never stopped believing that there is something more, something better, waiting for me in the future. As sad as I may sometimes feel, I’ve never stopped believing in the possibility of happiness. I’ve never given up my faith in joy. I’ve never been that foolish.

I know that these feelings are temporary. As lost as I may sometimes feel, I know that feeling lost is a way to find and to be found. As alone as I may sometimes feel, I know that I am not alone, that none of us are. As much as I may sometimes feel disconnected, I know that I am bound by love.

I know that, because I have all of you. That’s the thing about friendship. It gives us hope. It gives us faith. It gives us the strength to keep going. It teaches us, over and over again, to believe in our past and our present and our future. It promises us happiness. It provides us with a family, one that extends further than blood relatives, one as large as all of humanity.

There’s a great line from an essay by Cecile Gilmer from the This I Believe series on NPR that goes “I believe that families are not only blood relatives but sometimes just the people that show up and love you when no one else will.” I take comfort in this idea. I have built my life upon this idea. I believe this, too.

I believe it, because I have all of you. You – my dear friends, who show up, who love me, who let me love you, who are there for me through happiness and sadness, who give me faith in goodness, who I simply could not live without – You are my family. You are my joy. You are the reason I am here.

I exist to love you.

They say you never forget your first love, and I’m sure that’s true. But of course, it isn’t really just your first romantic love, is it? And it isn’t really just the first. Because as it turns out, the older I get, the more certain I become that my favorite moments have been the moments I’ve spent falling in love with each of you, over and over, in a multitude of ways. I can’t forget any of it, any of you. Nor would I ever want to.

Friends, you teach me love – how to love, how to feel loved. Are there greater lessons people anywhere can teach one another? You – individually and collectively – are my living, breathing definition of love. You are the great loves of my life. You are the greatest thing about me. Truly.

I don’t believe in fate, or soul mates, or any of those theories that imply the universe intervenes in our lives. I don’t believe we were all somehow destined to become friends. I think it happened in a much more powerful and meaningful way than fate. I think we chose each other. We didn’t choose to meet. That was circumstance. But we chose to become friends. We worked on these relationships when they needed to be worked on. We fought for these friendships when they needed fighting for. We chose to open our hearts to one another and let each other in. We chose this love.

And we continue to make that choice. Each time we reach out on facebook, in emails, phone calls, texts, letters, cards, gatherings – we continue to make that commitment to our friendships. Every wedding attended and birthday acknowledged and sadness shared and success celebrated is, in the simplest and grandest of terms, an affirmation of love.

It’s been a difficult few months, full of the inevitable life lessons of loss and sadness and the agonizing trials of growing up. But through it all, I have never given up the love I feel for each of you. I have never lost faith in our bond. I have never stopped believing in the shared happiness of the family we have created. I have never stopped hoping for more. I still believe in joy. I forever believe in us.