Fall reminds me to quiet down, to just sit in the buzz of other people's laughter, private talks in the cafe, hoops and shouts on the street. I am learning that in new places I become paranoid. I feel desperate for validation, for someone to say, "WOW, I am so glad you stepped into this corner of the world." I find that I am more doubtful, that if someone seems happy to see me, I get very squinty eyed in my deep self. I am chock full of disbelief.
I noticed yesterday that I try to close the gap I create with my paranoia and doubts through speech. I talk a lot. In class I am half dying to answer a question (I am becoming THAT girl). In all honesty, I feel like I have to prove myself. I'm sure just about everyone feels this way in new situations, but I'm becoming exhausted by the desperation of it--the worries.
Yesterday I tried to quiet down. I let myself sit back, I let myself listen. I thought to myself, Is it really such an emergency that you be known, heard, loved? It felt so good, just listening. Just letting myself feel okay about not contributing constantly. I felt more myself, more composed. Immediately I felt that I didn't need to speak. I could if I wanted, but I didn't neeeeed to.
The road from Blacksburg to Roanoke is sometimes unpleasantly long and car-sickness inducing. I plug my ears with so much sound to try to pull me out of the twist-bounce-headache of it. But yesterday afternoon, winding up and down through the mountains in the high-up bus had me looking out at dozens of birds hovering high above the valleys between mountains almost sweatered in pine. I felt the word height press down into my bones. I began to value their distance; the boundaries of birds. They could touch down on a tree top or rise. They could walk in the shadowy woods or cast cloudward. They let themselves mingle, speak, and hover in softest silence.
I remembered times with very dear friends. Andrew and I sitting on a hill side smoking cigars, watching deer, and riding our bikes through town to the fireworks. We were twenty-something-year-old-kids playing, flying kites. Chase and I walking the Hope College campus at 3 a.m. baring our souls, sharing pain. I remembered sitting at Noshville reading Lewis and working through difficult theology till 6 a.m. Paula bringing me Thanksgiving left-overs after I got out of work, walking every subdivision sidewalk, and waiting for meteor showers under dozens of blankets. I remember porch nights with Alicia and our endless conversations.
I felt so lucky, so buoyant. I remembered that by some miracle I met these people and they met me and we prize each other and our memories as some of the best that ever happen. I have my value. Everyday spent with them and other friends and my family and David have just pressed it into me. I forget it. I wake up empty, unfamiliar even to myself.
And I can't wait to grow new friendships here, to still this new space for a moment with a kindred spirit. And I'm excited for that exchange of value, and humanity. But I don't need to prove myself. That is not how friendship, how validation, ever works. You don't work for it. You just let it.
One of the two things I have learned (over and over again...and again this weekend) are to quiet down, listen, and just be. Stop proving. Hold back the need. Listen. Speak words that are true and aren't asking for anything. Secondly, I need belief. I need to start opening up to the possibility that it is okay; that I am okay now.
Here's to a new place and the way a new place pulls at your limbs, opens you up and sifts through you looking for ways to grow you everywhere. I am glad I am here, glad I am surrounded by such cool people I can't wait to continue getting to know, and glad to be inside a courageously dying season here.
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