The Blue Morpho Butterfly

By the time I arrive, there is only half of it left. I do not know how long it has been slamming itself against this window; I have only been around to witness the past five minutes of relentless masochism.

I know it must have started its journey as one of the most beautiful butterflies in the room, with royal blue coating the inside of its wings and owl eyes spotting the outside. But now, its wings have lost their sheen, the edges frayed, the pattern faded.

I look around me. The butterfly room at Calloway Gardens has every possible amenity: any flower, any tree, any fruit, any companion.

What have you seen of this world that makes you so unhappy? What could you even know of the outside world you are killing yourself for?

It rises and falls, a death ritual of tattered wings and frantic catapults, with an absurd silence that seems at every moment on the verge of betraying an audible gasp. It pauses only at brief intervals, alighting atop a pile of remains- its own, intermingled with fallen comrades- before starting back seemingly where it began. No progress, nothing fulfilling to show for its efforts.

I want to scoop you up, and hold you if nothing else. But you cannot afford to lose more of your precious, life-giving scales that slough off so easily at the first sign of contact. And I realize, I have no real solution, no real wisdom for you, butterfly.

I tear myself away only when I know I cannot bear to look anymore.

A poem I stumbled across in a coffee shop.

How I managed to copy this entire poem down and still forget the name of the author I will never know. All I want is to find more poetry by this man who can communicate with such piercing honesty an experience that resonates with me in a way I can't describe.

On Love and Loneliness

I have walked down enough silent streets,

Lost in the shadows of my own consciousness,

Afraid to love lest I lose the fantasies

that never really came true,

Afraid to surrender lest I lose some control

that I never really wanted,

Glancing from left to right in hope that joy

and freedom would envelop me.

Loneliness became a gradual companion

when I had not really known him before

And choice terrified me lest I be

only like everyone else,

Which in truth was all I ever wanted to be.

To be myself should be nourishment enough,

according to the wise and self-contained,

But for me it never seemed so from childhood.

Neither was admiration or the embrace

of loving strangers.

It was not beauty I sought,

in some current cultural vogue,

But a heart which touched mine, captured mine,

clung to mine at its very core and drew me

as powerfully to love in turn.

Forever it seems I sought one to love

without a backlog of private hurt and pain.

Without the invading fog that would somehow

mar our love and make it human.

Such never came and I searched the books

that told me what rightfully should be mine.

As the time passed I feared I might not love at all.

And the nourishment not given in childhood

might be lost forever.

When I did not want to live without such love and

seemed incapable of enduring the pain others

silently bear,

I traded loneliness for love, fragile, feeble, afraid,

But locked in my will and my heart:

to see as well as to be seen,

to listen as well as to be heard.

Love was not what I had been told or

what others projected upon me,

But my private gift which promised

to grow every day,

And slowly the loneliness lifted

beyond anything money or power could buy.

Now I am a man among men, loving

far more rationally and willfully

than I knew could exist,

In the massive, enduring, most significant

struggle of all,

that of loneliness and love.

-author i wish i knew

Raw Ode to an Internet Advertisement

Don't read this is if you're not ready for honesty that will probably make you uncomfortable.

I see the curves, the shades, the skin of her body, and I die a little inside.

Some days, I sit naked in front of my mirror for almost an hour, turning this way and that to see how the light catches my silhouette, to reward myself with pride and attention for a good day, or more likely, to criticize my inconsistencies compared to her- to them- to what is desirable. My eyes bore into every scar, every hill, every valley of my frame and I wonder why it is that God didn't grace mankind with more graphic visibility for our emotional pain. I would like to believe that if every time a man's eyes bore into her body, a knife wound bore into mine- the way it feels it does- he would not, could not help but restrain. So many minds I can't understand.

My own, a lot of the time.

And men, so organically wired to feed visually off of stimuli, an impulse I cannot identify with.

And "hers." It keeps me awake at night, wondering how she can do this to us, her fellow women, when all we want is to be able to share a love and a heart with someone we believe will value them. How she can do this to the woman who has pledged to give herself wholly to a lifelong commitment of marriage she's been working through for over a decade, maybe longer? How can she do this to a generation of girls growing up in a world that convinces them that the best way to assert their femininity is to lord their bodies over men with sex and sensuality.

I have to wonder. Did she grow up insecure, too? Did her mirror reflect her face, or her silhouette? Does she know the pain of losing sleep knowing that somewhere, someone she loves or has loved or will love is choosing something else, someone else?

Surely she knows- I can use no excuse for a "different brain setup." We are women. We draw the parallels.

I try to believe in a greater purpose- a family to feed, a financial crisis that enslaves her to a cruel debt, an accidental photo shoot? I want nothing more than to hear an excuse so I can forgive us all, and ignore my own guilt, ignore the fact that as a woman I can trace the breadcrumbs of her mentality. Because even on my best days, I too am wired to seek out others to make them enjoy something I have to offer. I work for the approval of at least one guy I meet at random every day, maybe every hour. And most if not all days, I give little to no thought as to who that guy might be, and the fact that he may have circumstances in his life- commitments, struggles, someone special. Things that if I knew about, or even just thought about, would keep me from ever trying to charm him.

Lord have mercy on me for the way I become "her" nearly every day. All I want is the motivation to keep myself and others pure until my dying day. In the meantime, I wouldn't mind any reassurance that I'm not just spinning my wheels in a time and age where purity seems as though it is hardly maintainable and rarely desirable.

Y'all, I went to a real gym and sweated real sweat.

When Dad asked me if I wanted to go to the Wellness Center with him, I knew I had to make a decision. It's not that I hate exercising, or sweating, or being tired. But being out of breath sets my body into panic mode; it's the same reason I don't take hot baths.

On the other hand, my parents are trying to stay healthy and I knew that if I accompanied my father, he'd have one more reason to go. So I bucked up and took the plunge.

"That sounds great, Dad. Give me a minute to get ready," I called down the stairs.

Then the real crisis began: crisis of mind. I had never been to a gym to work out. I've exercised in my own home or outdoors, but this gym territory was foreign to me. I racked my brain. How could I make myself look the least like an outsider?

Clothing. This was a particular challenge since I usually just do abs in my pajamas. I dug to the bottom of my drawers and this is what I came up with:

A dry fit shirt, purchased two years ago for a wilderness trek I endured as a mandatory event for a class. Worn maybe twice.

A pair of sofee shorts, which appeared in my drawer after some sleepover and have been collecting dust ever since.

A pair of socks with a Nike swoosh on them, which I scavenged from the trashcan this past year on dorm moveout day.

My tennishoes, lightly used after five years of ownership.

My costume donned, I pulled my hair back in a ponytail that was higher than I've worn in years and silently wished for one of those elastic headbands that cool soccer girls wear. Or a sweatband at least. People wear those, right?

I walked downstairs and looked down at the snack I had set out earlier for myself. Two graham crackers. Better eat just one, I thought, since I haven't yet built up an immunity to stomach cramps.

I decided to bring my iPod, because from my observation, people who listen to music during workouts look much more intense. But I couldn't find my earbuds anywhere. My usual headphones, huge padded Sony's, would be a dead giveaway to my outsider status, so I snagged a pair of airline earbuds, straightening out the curves in the cord from where it had been shrinkwrapped, hoping no one would notice.

On the car ride over, I made a mental layout of the gym. (Before I was old enough to stay home alone, I used to go with my parents when they played racquetball, but I would just read in the Children's center. I intentionally left my book at home this time to eliminate the temptation.) I called to memory the location of the elliptical machines and my mind created the quickest mapquest route through the weights and the bowflexes, hoping my knowledge of the floor would make me look like a regular pro.

As soon as I stepped into the gym, I realized how silly I had been. Most of the constituents of the Wellness Center are 45-and-older New Year's Resolution members who are in too much agony over their own workout to be worried about anyone else's.

We only had about half an hour before closing, so I ran about 3 miles on the machine and did some abs. Totally fine. No one cared.

On the ride home, I contemplated what my own actions had said about me. There's the obvious: I care too much about what people think when most people are too worried about themselves to worry about me.

But I came to another conclusion as well.

Sometimes, I spend more time trying to give the semblance of proficiency than actually working to become proficient. Take the mornings where I debate with myself over whether or not to shower. I spend five minutes in front of the mirror trying to see if I will need a shower. I spend five more minutes washing my armpits and face, because they must be cleaned no matter what. I spend ten minutes trying to do my hair in a way that will not betray the grease. I spend five more minutes examining my reflection to see if I succeeded. I could've taken two showers in this amount of time.

If it's worth enough to me to try to look like I'm doing something, it's follows logically that the thing must be important to me, so shouldn't I spend my time actually accomplishing it?

After ruminating on these thoughts during the ride home, I'm ashamed to say...I still planned a trip to the grocery store just so I could be seen in public in my workout garb. I guess I'm a work in progress.

Still under the effects of Nitrous Oxide.

I am mostly curious to see if this post is coherent when I check back in later. But I also want to blog about getting my wisdom teeth out.

I was scheduled for 2 Pm today. I probably went into the OR around 2:30. It is now 4:30 PM, and the surgery lasted around an hour, so I am approximately 1 hour out.

Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas as it is colloquially known, was my pain assistant of choice. I could've gone under general anesthesia, but something about being totally knocked out didn't appeal to me.

When they put the chamber over my nose, I must admit to feeling like I was being executed. I did not die, though, as evidenced by this post. Instead, it felt like everything around me was a dream. The surgeon asked me if it was starting to feel right, if I was starting to get the buzz. "I don't know," I told him. "I've never been high before."

Regina, my bubbly blonde Southern belle of a nurse who granted me a warm blanket beforehand and patted my shoe every once in a while for reassurance, told me that people often say they feel light, or they feel heavy. I could identify with both of those, feeling my body become tingly but feeling nearly incapable of movement (although I could move just fine when I wanted to).

My expectations: feel silly, think everything is funny, laugh at everything, be embarrassed later on.

In actuality, I retained almost full mental capacity. The closest thing I can compare it to is the feeling you get when you are about to fall asleep. My eyes couldn't focus, and as the laughing gas had essentially numbed my body and the Novacaine had taken care of my mouth, it felt like a dream world where nothing has real physical repercussions. My reactions to any questions or commands were delayed, if they came at all. I stared at my empty reflection in the surgeon's glasses. "Who is this shell?" I wondered to myself, my mind racing but my eyes staring blankly ahead.

Determined to remain in control, I laughed only once, I think, when the surgeon asked what neighborhood I lived in. Rivoli Downs, I tried to say, but it came out "Illy ow" because the Novacaine had rendered my tongue and bottom lip completely useless. This struck me as funny, not because my words were silly (although they were) but because I had never had something to say and been physically unable to say it.

Really, most of the things that could be counted as silly that I did were things that I did in full knowledge of my actions. I was enthralled by my teeth in the little envelope they handed to me, and I showed them off to every passing driver on the way home, but I think I would've done that anyways. I watched myself eat in the mirror just for kicks, with my tongue rolling around, using my teeth to guide things to a place where I could swallow them. I called a friend just to share with someone how ridiculous I sounded with the gauze in my mouth. I even tried to tell a joke: the doctor told me beforehand that if I didn't have the usual 1/8 inch of bone between my tooth and my nerve, my lower lip could get nerve damage and feel numb for the rest of my life (I'll let you know once the allotted time period is up whether this is the case and if I am doomed to this embarrassing chin dribbling for eternity). When he finished the surgery, he told me I would probably be numb for about 6 hours. "Or forever," I tried to kid. But the words came out, "uh furilla" which did not have the comedic effect I wanted. By the time I got the right words across, the timing was all wrong. How frustrating.

The more time I spent on the gas, the more I became more intensely aware of the fact that this must be very similar to what it is like to live with a disability that only slightly impairs mental faculties but devastates physical abilities. Like my sweet Miguel, who can nod or shake his head to any question you ask but can barely squeak out what he's doing this weekend, not because he doesn't understand but because he can't form the sentences. It reminds me of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I appreciated the good will behind the childish tones they were using with me, but wanted to assure them that I could understand sophisticated vocabulary just as well. The jokes that were told were not that funny, the compliments about my teeth sounded only mildly sincere, the pitying looks seemed unmerited, and the repetition got old after a while. "You told me that five minutes ago" I wanted to say. But I only smiled and nodded, because I knew they just wanted to make sure it got through, and because I can't even say, "Thank you," much less a full sentence.

I think of how many people make themselves this way recreationally. Then I think of Lisa, copying those definitions out of the back of her genetics textbook because at age 35, she just wants to go to college and live in a dorm. I think I am going to be sick. But it might be the pain medication.

The adult wing knocked the wind out of me.

A post about how I learned more about what I didn't know that I didn't know.

The Frazer Center has a wing that helps adults with a varying range of mental disabilities receive job training and, hopefully, find purpose in life. The clients range from ages 22-72, most funded by Medicaid, all in some form of assisted living. All told, there are about 90 of them. Some are working off-site in grocery stores, factories, etc. Those on the more severe side of the spectrum remain at the center and do tasks around the facilities (sanitation engineering, gardening, cooking, waste management, and the like) to improve their self-sufficiency.

I look back on the week preceding my time with the adult clients with no small amount of shame. I was dreading this part of the rotation. My supervisor told me before I began that if it was too much for me, I didn't have to finish out the week. And before I even began, I had disgracefully prepared myself to take him up on that offer. By the time I entered the building for the first time, I had already built up walls to "protect myself" from the smells, the saliva, the general fear hinging on a stigma I had allowed to intensify over time.

I was wrong. Allow me to say again, I was wrong, and I apologize.

I had not known imagination until I met Micah, late 50's, mentally delayed, who is "studying to be a doctor." Every day, I would pretend to have a different ailment, and he would make up a cure for me. I even taught him how to "stitch me up" after I "got a gunshot wound in my shoulder." He would hum the Sesame Street theme song as he "cut the thread."

I had not known suave until I met Maurice, early 20's, Down Syndrome, who would bust a move with all the grace and agility of Michael Jackson, complete with sound effects.

I had not known true love until I met Charlene, early 50's, mentally delayed, and Martin, same age I assume, largely nonverbal cerebral palsy? who are "getting married next July." Charlene's face lit up every day when she heard Martin crashing down the hallway, using his entire body weight to thrust his walker forward and then collapsing onto it for every step. He would burst into the room and beam at Charlene as she danced around his walker and dodged his strands of saliva.

I had not known heartache until I met Vanna, a beautiful 40-year-old victim of surgery malpractice who has retained her mental capacity but cannot speak, swallow, walk, or use her hands as anything more than hooks. And Miguel, 35, who had just graduated from high school and was helping a stranger change a flat tire when an oncoming car crashed into him, impairing his walking, cognitive function, and speech. And Lauren, 32, cerebral palsy, who drove her power chair over to me clutching a 1980's genetics textbook on my last day. "Will you help me study this?" she asked. "I want to go to a college where I can study this so I can live in a dorm and do homework." I found a test in the back of the first chapter and started reading a sentence aloud, but I trailed off somewhere between the words "eukaryotic" and "diploidy." What do you do? What can you say? We spent a painstaking hour and a half copying definitions from the back of the book together, 15 minutes per sentence. I left that day swearing up and down that I would never take school or learning for granted again. But I know that in less than a month, I will start classes, and reminiscent of Peter, I will probably have complained three times before the first week is up.

Watching the clients crave attention, latch onto any morsel of conversation they can get (and wouldn't you, too, if every person you encountered avoided even your gaze, much less tangible interaction with you?) is like a mirror in which I see myself along with the rest of typically developing humanity. We are more sneaky about our need for validation than they are, of course, but we're all seeking the same end.

Being with the adults helped/helps me keep myself in check. I am humbled by their gratitude. I am honored by their trust. I am challenged by their boldness. I am uplifted by their joy.

I am going back on September 29th for Charlene's birthday. A promise is a promise.

My friend still walks.

He is probably 6' 4'', late 50's, gray hair, stocky. My headlights found him pacing the streets of my neighborhood nearly every morning since the first day I drove myself to high school. Some days it was just the two of us inching up the hill: me shifting gears in my plaid skirt, him shuffling determinedly in his sweat-drenched track suit. Every morning, like clockwork, a smile and a wave to start the day off right. I once considered writing him a Christmas card to thank him.

On a visit home from college this summer, I awake in a cold sweat, teeth loose and aching from clenching for hours as I labored through a bad dream. My dad strokes my hair. My dog licks my face. "It was only a dream," they reassure me. "Sometimes," I tell them, "it's not about the dream." The dream is just a reminder of uncertainty, of a lack of control over my own subconscious. Like a wolf nipping at my heels, it seems to slowly gnaw away my base, my security.

It exhausts and derails me, but it is a work day, and I have a long drive to campus ahead of me. So I get in my car, and I set out. I am almost to the exit of my neighborhood when I see the tracksuit, my friend, panting, still ready with a smile and a wave. A reminder that some things in life do remain constant.

My friend still walks, and I still stand.