Couldn't sleep, so I had to write something. I started down that way thinking about Alex and thinking about leaving. A specter said to me, "Let him go." I don't know what that means. It means to take time to let the experts help him maybe. I look at the time it will take to get him to do what he needs to and think that maybe he will not live that long. At 2:00 when I woke up after 4 hours of sleep, I think I knew something. I'm alone. I'm alone, because I want to control things that I have no power over. I hadn't planned on a specific intervention before I got here. I needed inspiration from him. I needed to see the potential. I've spent almost 3 years wondering if I had done something horribly wrong at times. I had resented my professors. I had victimized and punished myself. I don't know how to make it work without me there. That's what hurts. I haven't wept over him on this trip until tonight. I can't get everything done and I don't know how to set things in motion so that I can release myself from this responsibility. I can't relinquish control, whether it is a noble aspiration or not. I'm fighting that. Teo asked me the question a couple weeks ago, "You're doing great, but what happens when you're gone?"
That was always the question. That was the question the first time. I fell apart for months when I got back. I had a vague idea of what to do when I got back. Just a name: Betty Ashbaker. She gave me hope that it was possible. I gave her assurance that I was capable. I put it in writing. I got back out here and things changed. I had to adjust and I didn't know how to get things done.
The first time I had a reason to be at BYU and I was on the Provo Plan as I have heard it put before. Now I'm already starting to feel like a falling bullet shell jettisoned from a rifle. I've spent the last couple years trying to fix myself. Trying to fill some fundamental flaw. Trying to find some ultimate answer to why I can't seem to get that thing that everyone seems to know about life. The one that allows them to be OK with things not being OK, or at least enough to wake up every morning without ever wondering whether they have something to live for. Not the there's no reason to stay alive type thinking. Forget that. I'm just talking about wondering whether I'm really doing anything worth doing and if not, is there a point?
I thought a relationship or marriage would change that, but it only made me forget what I wanted sometimes. That's not her fault; at some point, I made her my god. Or the idea that she would change me. I can't say this is the reason things went sour. There were other things that choked the rose. The band (the real one) became a superpower in my life and not for sinister reasons. I met and maintained some of the best friendships I will ever have in this small group of people. It felt like we had something special. Sometimes it was spiritual, which may have moved into pretentiousness at times, but we had a higher trajectory in our minds. During that time, real life was a little quieter. That came from the high I got when things clicked. We weren't the most talented musicians in the world, and we didn't write the best songs in the world, but we had love and purpose I learned to find joy in the simple connection of playing together. There's no words for that. That's why I sort of reverence that video and that Iron and Wine song that Dave put together, because it represents a period of purity and joy in the band I loved, with people who were my best and closest friends. When those things left, things fell apart. Personalities clashed and things became less forever feeling. I had found someone I wanted to be with forever and she had to compete with that. She won for awhile and I gave up the band. But in time that feeling of incompleteness came back. I didn't know how to make sense or even acknowledge losses at the time and so I panicked. I put her through some serious bullshit and I spent the year after that trying to forgive her and mostly myself. During that time, my love was the band again. But I slowly watched that hang by a thread and then self destruct.
Where was Alex during this period? He was living the same life he had when I left. He became a myth as I stared at the witch's fire of people convincing me that life had more important things to offer me. The second visit was there somewhere in the transition period between my love for the band and my love for Dorothy. When I met her, the only thing that was keeping me busy was my project with Alex. I had taken the summer off and I found myself blowing things off to be with her repeatedly. I couldn't help that though, and later I realized that all the book stuff I had stressed out about nearly went out the window when I got there. Soon I was in Iasi again. I was happy to be back in Iasi, but there was an urgency in our 3 week operation. Nothing is as simple as you think it is going to be there. We had to solve problems that we never expected in ways we were unfamiliar with, we had almost no communication with our mentors, and we weren't even sure that the solution we provided was adequate and of course the continuity was difficult to establish. I will be forever grateful to Holly for sacrificing time to help us with the project. Being a facilitator now, I start to realize what that meant. And she kept the project alive for the next group, and I am filled with appreciation for her for that as well. I came home to a rush of new commitments and fulfillment, which accompanied by the lack of communication with the faculty connected to the project, led to me losing the vision (or at least the motivation to finish the paperwork).
After I watched the deterioration of my health, my academic balance, and the most important things in my life at the time, I was expected to quickly finish the paperwork I had received no guidance in completing and I submitted it somewhere, but what happened at that point was a mystery. Probably an email error. During that period, I was a mess. I just wanted out. Of what, I don't know. I just felt lost. I had a rebound relationship that was sweet and important to me for a time, but again I felt like things weren't quite right. I was pulled in two different directions. I saw two different lives ahead of me and decided to go with none of the above. Neither shore was one I could swim to, and so I felt like I was drowning.
In the meantime, I received updates on Alex now and then. When I heard he was going to school I felt like at least one great thing had happened as a result of the work I attempted. They believed in him.
I don't know why, but putting those words in front of me brings poignant tears. The feeling is similar to when someone finally helped me in Bucharest to change my ticket, and connect with the group on the way to Brasov. Like being rescued from a sinking ship.
I got back to doing what I needed to graduate and for some reason I kept going to the MTC for Romanian. It started out as some kind of Masochistic punishment by reminding me of Dorothy, but became a boon of support for me, because it provided a spiritual experience frequently. I also enjoyed the challenge of trying to keep up the language and I met some good friends including Viorica my surrogate grandmother who I love dearly now. The band also came back in a different form. We had new direction and adjusted goals, but trying to pull the weight of a couple people got tiring to the rest of us. During this time I got an email that I thought was a mistake from Holly asking if I wanted to be a facilitator for the fall group. I entertained the idea for awhile without telling anyone in the band. Holly and I sent a couple e-mails back and forth and I thought about applying. For a little bit I wondered whether it was possible, but she assured me it was. A few entertaining facebook conversations and talks with Rachel, who revitalized my sense of what the Romania experience is or could be gave me courage to believe I could do it and that it was worth doing. I will be grateful to her forever as well.
During the prep course I was consistently reminded of what happened with Alex. There was even a required reading for the students about the project and why it was culturally inappropriate. That stung. I resented it, but I wondered if the woman who wrote it had spent the time I spent with him and longed like I had to hear him, maybe she would have understood that I was kind of blind to the caution of tip-toeing around the cross-cultural ethical implications. I did realize then however in a different way, that the project was poorly planned and executed. I didn't exactly have a degree in communication disorders though.
I can blame whatever process on the failure of the project in the past, but things work out in the end. I heard that phrase when I woke up in the middle of the night tonight and I thought, "Yeah, but you say that kind of stuff to feel better about what didn't happen. It all works out in the end? Whose end? Mine? The end of what? Of course it all works out in the end; that's what religion is for, to tell us that this isn't all there is and that our decaying bodies become something great, and all the inconsistancies that make us crazy and wonder what the hell is going on, become distant memories. So tell me that again (faceless they), but this time mean what you say. Where is the end? Do I get to see it? Will I want to see it?" Things work out or you decide they are not important. Those are the only options you have next to brief insanity in this life. But Christ makes that sound like a good thing. And it is. But part of faith is believing that our pain will fade when morning comes, that all of our trials are milestones along the way, and that every scar is a bridge to someone's broken heart (Dustin Kensrue).
I turned on the lights for a second. All of the things in the past that I've seen as disastrous have been stepping stones to where I am and what I have to give, whether they crumbled beneath me or remain intact. People heal and people forgive. We reassign meaning to keep going. I saw that, though not everything I've done has been perfect, and I wasn't even going in the right direction sometimes, the work I did before was a preparation and the tool that was payed for can be used to a good purpose. The equipment is better now than they've ever had and more people have had their eyes open to his potential. I'm not done yet here and I've got a whole lot of ways to help from home, but if I cannot do anything else, I have loved this boy and will until the end. Whenever that comes, which thankfully, I have no control over.
It shouldn't be hard to sleep now.
