What's new? Tell us.

This was the first line of an email I received from my college last week. I'm a proud alum: I subscribe to (and actually read) the emails that share fundraising goals and construction updates and student stories. I keep up with (and truly care about) what's happening on campus, even though all the current students I knew have already graduated. I keep in touch with professors (more than I can count on one hand), grabbing coffee when I'm back in town or sending e-updates back and forth. So an invitation to contribute to a class letter didn't make me think twice.

We want to hear what's happened in your life this past year. Family changes? New job? Travel opportunities? Hobbies? Send your class agent some news to share with your class.

I certainly had things to share about this last year -- things that I'd feel reasonably comfortable sharing with my graduating class of 700ish people. The standard class letter topics that, from the outside, define my day-to-day life and Instagram and résumé. I work as a Residence Director at a diverse university. I had the opportunity to travel to Minneapolis and Chicago and Denver and Milwaukee and Atlanta. I started graduate school. I live in Portland and get to go on frequent hikes and visit the coast and live in a progressive and socially-conscious and active place, all while spending time with a great community of humans. Sounds awesome, yeah?

And I also had things to share about this year that wouldn't necessarily make it into my school's publication, but still feel like defining victories. They're the small victories, as Anne Lamott calls them. The things that I don't typically name when acquaintances ask, "What's new?" but are usually on my mind more than what I actually say in response to that question. Like the fact that I finally got my Oregon driver's license last winter. And that I had jury duty for the first time! I started drinking coffee and quickly moved to drinking it black. I decided to wait to go to seminary. I started a job that has me interacting with 18-year-olds every day. I moved. I voted for a woman.

I found this request for submissions again last night in my Gmail inbox, after sorting through the bill reminders and LinkedIn notifications. And as I was reading, I didn't think about those big and small victories. I thought about all of the things -- in my own life and in others' -- that wouldn't be shared in this class letter. The things that we intentionally don't say when people ask, "What's up?"

I read the questions again. Family changes? New job? Travel opportunities? Hobbies?

What are the answers that we wouldn't dream of submitting for our class letters?

I thought about people from my college who have gone through a major breakup this year. Or had a death in their family. Or a miscarriage. I thought about the people who have lost their jobs, or who feel like they'll never be able to get their dream job, or feel stuck in jobs that drain their time or energy or souls. I thought about my classmates who travel all the time for work, but hate being away from loved ones, or not feeling grounded in a community, or hate that they're hurting the environment a little more every time they have to board an airplane for that meeting. I thought about my classmates whose lives or budgets or realities don't allow them to go very far from home, who are frustrated with the repetition of their day-to-day lives. I thought about my classmates whose hobbies include Netflix bingeing and social media scrolling and a lot of time spent sitting alone in their expensive apartments, wondering what the hell their twenties are supposed to be about -- because it certainly doesn't feel like it should be this.

My class letter, if I was being honest about this past year, would include some of those things. A breakup that gutted me. A lot of Gilmore Girls in my apartment. A lot of late nights and Saturdays and middle-of-the-nights spent working. It included appointments with a counselor. It included a lot of questions around vocation, worth, relationships, finances, and location. A lot of unpublished writing drafts for this blog.

I've been seeing things like this -- publicly calling out those things that we feel ashamed of -- circulate on my Instagram and Facebook feeds before. Some call them honest résumés, some call them real résumés, some call them failure résumés. They list the musicals that she auditioned for, but never got called back. They list the fellowships that he applied to, but never got an interview for. They list the jobs or internships, the research opportunities or awards, the thing I worked really hard toward or the thing I really wanted that I never got. Basically, they list the things that we wouldn't dream of putting on our résumé.

But by putting in public these things that so often shame us, that make us feel like we don't have our lives together, maybe it allows us to take back these failures or disappointments or heartbreaks and remind ourselves that they're just a part of life. All of the things that we wouldn't dream of putting in a class letter? Every alum from my college (and every human in the world) has a few pages' worth of those, too. We’re not the only ones.

A public letter sent to our entire graduating class of over 700 humans maybe isn't the best place for us to lay out the innermost pages of our souls. But as we submit these life updates, maybe we can still find a way to check in about all those things we won't share there. Maybe the next time a friend or parent or partner asks us, “What’s new?” our answers can be a little more real. They can have a little more truth. They can include a little more of the “here’s what’s hard” and “here’s where I’m hurting.” It takes a lot of effort and bravery to ask that question and want to listen to the honest answer. And it takes a lot of effort and bravery to respond to that question when that answer doesn’t feel picture perfect. It requires us to show up, to ourselves and to each other, as whole people.

So, what's new?

“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.”
-Cheryl Strayed

I sat in the dark on the hardwood floor. I stared at my bright computer screen, at the blank page, at the blinking cursor, willing something—anything—to come out of me. Willing the words to reveal themselves—finally. I had so many thoughts. So many jumbled and confusing and clear and real thoughts about what four months had done to my soul, my present, and my future. I sat for a long time. Long enough for the tea to get cold. Long enough for the heater to turn off for the night. Long enough to know that no matter how long I sat and stared, nothing would come.

That was a year ago.

I made it my mission to write something on the two-year anniversary of leaving India. I reasoned that if I wasn't going to get something out now, I probably never would. I told multiple people about this goal, often unprompted, as a way to keep myself accountable. I’d offhandedly tell someone and they’d reply, “Wow! That’s great!” or “I look forward to reading that!” or “I’m sure you have a lot to say about that experience.” I talked about my unwritten prose like I already had a story outlined in my head with a beginning and end and a meaningful take-home message. Like I knew exactly the words that needed to be released into the world. Like I knew that those words would resonate with every person who had ever traveled abroad.

It was pretty ambitious. And it was also a big, fat lie.

Because I’ve spent the last two years having no idea what to say about India. People ask—with a little less frequency now—about my time there and I still come up blank. How do I describe an experience that was simultaneously life-giving and shitty? How do I explain to someone that the entire four months was a series of uncomfortable situations—being stared at by everyone I encountered, adjusting my digestive tract to new foods, getting lost in autorickshaws, walking through and bumping into people on crowded streets, experiencing privilege every single moment I was in public, contracting MRSA from a spider bite, coming to terms with my role in an imperialistic society—but that I also felt so comfortable and at home there? How do I respond to, “How was India?” in a way that doesn’t make people squirm because I want to talk about the time hundreds of ants invaded my dorm room, or doesn’t make people glance at their phones because I want to walk them through what it was like to walk through a wig factory, or doesn’t make them defensive as I speak the hard truths that I discovered about yourself and the United States and the world. So, instead, I just mumble, “It was awesome,” and change the subject.

I would rather not talk about India at all than to talk about it imperfectly. And I would rather not write about India at all than to write about it imperfectly.

I’ve waited for the right words to say—the words that would do justice to my experience. I wanted to craft something beautiful and inspiring and reflective. I wanted to write the truest truth I could pull from those months and lace them with imagery of the buildings and people and landscape and feelings and triumphs and battles. I wanted to create a piece where everyone would deem that my words about India had value and, therefore, that my time in India had value. I wanted the jumbled and confusing and clear and real thoughts to transform themselves into a nice, 1,000-word-maximum box that I could keep with me and unpack whenever “How was India?” came up in conversation.

But that is not what this writing is, and it is not what my future answers to that question will be, because that is not what India was or is to me. It wasn't neat and tidy and well-worded. I spent two years trying to put it in that constricting box, and it wouldn’t fit. It never will fit, because India was messy. Messy as in one weekend I spent almost fourteen hours picking lice out of another classmate’s hair. Messy as in when I visited the abandoned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and realized how easy it is for the world to forget about a corner of itself and its people that continue to be devastated by a disaster that occurred so many years ago. India was full of questions. Questions like “How is it possible that I just got tangled up in and ripped my mosquito net as I noisily fell out of my almost-on-the-ground bed in the middle of the night?” and “Why do I care about environmental/racial/gender/social/economic justice?” But most of all, India was real. Sometimes that looked like escaping to a Westernized coffee shop to write a paper because I needed some familiarity, even in the form of my American consumerism. Sometimes that looked like teaching a group of eight-year-old girls games like “Double Double This This, Double Double That That” and playing them over and over and over because I couldn’t tear myself away from the giggles they released each time.

India is the heart-filling and heart-wrenching, the big and little, the good and bad life-y moments that filled each day I spent there. And not one of those stories will fit into a box.

I will never find the right phrases or adjectives or imagery or box to make people see what I saw or feel what I felt or hear what I heard (or what I didn't hear) in a way that makes sense to them. These words—or any future words—on this page or any future pages will never do my India justice. They’ll never quite cut it or live up to my expectations for how I want to share it with the world. I’ll probably look back on this piece and wish I had added a sentence about visiting the Buddhist temple or throwing up on an overnight train or having late-into-the-night conversations with my mentor, Roshen. But that is the fear I have to get over.

I went to see the premiere of Wild this week, the movie based off of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of the same title. The story outlines Cheryl’s twenty-something self leaving her Midwestern life behind to hike the Pacific Crest Trail by herself. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s incredible writing that shines a light on such deep and raw emotions that resonate with humans of any age. But, if you don’t want to read it, the movie actually does the book justice. And that realization—that even though I worshipped and underlined and would always choose the book, I actually liked the movie remake just as much—moved something in me.

When Cheryl watched her movie for the first time, she could have focused on everything that wasn’t included; the parts of her book and experience that are so tied to her as a human, but just weren’t there because they couldn’t squeeze everything from a three-month-long hike into a two-hour-long movie. And maybe she would have put a stop to the movie because it didn’t live up to her expectations. Heck, I’m sure when Cheryl finished writing Wild, she could have mourned the parts of her story that she couldn’t fit in, because even she couldn’t squeeze a three-month-long hike into a 315-page book. And maybe she wouldn’t have written the book because it didn’t do her experience justice.

But she did. (Thank goodness.) The movie was produced and the book was written and maybe it was imperfect, but I’ll never know it. I read and watched and was honored to be let into even just that small fraction of her experience on the Pacific Crest Trail. It was beautiful and inspiring and reflective. And it was truth. Her truth. And that made me want to write my truth about India, and write something—anything—about being there, and now not being there. And it made me realize that if I am writing truth, without worrying about writing the right thing or cramming my thoughts into that box again, that it will be enough. I will do India justice.

So I sat down again, a year later, on the eve of my two-year anniversary of leaving India, and stared at my bright computer screen, at the blank page, at the blinking cursor. I didn’t stay still for long. Because I can either write about India imperfectly, or not write about it at all. I can either talk about India imperfectly, or not talk about it at all. I will always leave something out, always forget an important detail, and always worry about what I don’t get the chance to say. But I can say something. I can write something. I can share mostly unedited, stream-of-consciousness thoughts about an experience that shaped my soul and gives a behind-the-scenes peek into who I am as a human. It won’t be neat or tidy or well-worded, but it will be mine. It will be my truth. And that is a truth that I can no longer keep inside me for fear of it being imperfect.

That is doing India justice.

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