take care of your soul.

to be
soft
is
to be
powerful
-rupi kaur

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked. 

We were standing at the bar in the middle of 80s night, waiting for the bartender to add a lime to my gin and tonic. Whitney Houston blared from the speakers, and people danced around in their brightest colors and selves. It was a bit the opposite of how I was feeling. I felt small and dim and, surprisingly, like I didn’t want to dance with somebody.

Because not even 30 minutes before, I was dumbfounded on the phone as I listened to someone spill out a truth they had been covering for months. As I learned that a relationship I had put everything into -- plane tickets and discretionary income and love -- wasn’t what I thought it was. 

I had hung up the phone and my heart wasn’t quite ready for that kind of processing at 10:30 on a Friday night. So when a picture of some of my beloved colleagues on the dance floor popped onto my phone, I put on my tennis shoes (the only appropriate 80s night footwear) and walked toward them. And that’s when I ended up at the bar with this friend-coworker, who showed up to 80s night in a cutoff flannel, ready to dance; who showed up to me with her full self, ready to listen amidst Prince, Michael Jackson, and Pat Benatar.

“What are you going to do tomorrow? How are you going to take care of yourself?” she asked.

I said that maybe I’d read. Probably write some. That I had plans to get breakfast with a friend. Which was good, I laughed, because I didn’t think I had eaten much today. Maybe I'd have a bowl of cereal once I got home.

“Good. You take care of your body,” she said. “Let others take care of your soul.”

Those words made my breath catch in my chest. They made tears appear in my eyes, they allowed my shoulders and fists to unclench, they reminded me that I wasn't in this alone. When the world feels a little shaky and your heart is aching -- whether that's because of a relationship that's ending, or because of a family emergency, or because you cannot listen to another mansplainer for one more minute -- it's okay to ask others to show up for you. To ask others to be there for whatever ways your soul needs attention.

And they have. Steph showed up at my doorstep fifteen minutes after this mess was set in motion. My mom sat with me over a computer screen and still texts me inspirational quotes every day. Luis binged on late-night pizza and wine with me, and let me yell and stomp around my apartment for an hour. Megan changed my RSVP to her wedding from two to one without asking any questions. A few days later, my Leaven family let my eyes leak through the entire service and gave me a-little-longer-than-normal hugs while we passed the peace. Brigid wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her sticky cheek to my tear-streaked one for ten whole minutes, without moving. That same night, a crew of humans came to my apartment for a potluck, whose presence and voices said, “We are here for you.” And Kim stood at the bar on that Friday night, 30 minutes after I hung up the phone, and reminded me that I have all these people. That I can lean on all these people to tend to my soul.

These humans -- and more -- have been my soul-keepers these past weeks, and I share this not only to thank them for holding me through this, but to remind you (yes, you, who might be reading this right now) that it’s okay to let others care for you. It’s okay to only think about if you’ve eaten, showered, or used the bathroom today. It’s okay to let other people ask you how you’re doing and feeling, and hold you in that -- literally and metaphorically -- when you cannot do so for yourself. That kind of vulnerability, softness, acceptance of our limits when our emotions and souls are taxed?

That is powerful.

i'm sleeping on the floor.

“I’m sleeping on the floor.”

It was the middle of the night in the middle of a 36-hour Amtrak ride from Portland to Fargo, and we were trying to figure out just how we were going to sleep. Falling asleep is hard when you’re squished into two seats that only recline 45 degrees. It’s even harder when your seat partner has five-foot femurs (Steph) and when you have never been able to fall asleep on a moving vehicle (you) and when you’ve already been on the train for 24ish hours (both of us, along with 14 other students returning from an intense alternative break trip where we slept on a church floor for seven nights). After shifting and cuddling and tangling our limbs, we decided that our best chance at success was to divide and conquer: one of us would lie across the seats. And the other would sleep on the floor.

This sparked the biggest “fight” in our almost-six year friendship. And by fight, I mean we spent the next 30-ish minutes discussing, debating, and arguing over why the other person should be the one to sleep on the train seats. Steph is the most stubborn human on this earth and explained all of the logical reasons why I should get the chairs: I had just worked so hard to coordinate all the logistics for the trip, and didn’t I have to work in the morning?, and she would actually have more room for those five-foot femurs if she could stretch out on the floor. I don’t have a persuasive bone in my body, so I’m sure I just said things like, “But, but...no! You take the seats!” or, “No, Steph, I really don’t want to sleep on the chairs. I like sleeping on floors!” We went back and forth, raising our voices ("NO! I am!") and making empty threats ("I won't talk to you for a week if you won't sleep on the floor!") and laughing ("This is ridiculous -- we could have been sleeping by now.”). We kept saying, "I'm sleeping on the floor," only to be met with, "No, I'm sleeping on the floor."

We've said this sentence hundreds of times to each other now. When I stay late to do the dishes after she’s invited me over for dinner, because I know she hates them and we’re far past the point of the typical “the hostess has to take care of everything from start to finish” relationship but she still argues with me: “I’m sleeping on the floor.” When she gets in her car before I can protest and drives across town to pick me up because my car's fender is about to fall off, and then claims it gives us an extra 15 minutes of catch-up time before I can apologize: “I’m sleeping on the floor.” When I stay long-after the end of a sold-out pizza and pie event to haul garbage and unload the uHaul and then drop off the uHaul with her, only to then be accompanied to my post-midnight housesitting and cleaning and laundry duties, even though she’s been pizza-ing and pie-ing for 17 hours: “I’m sleeping on the floor.”

“Me too."

I don’t remember who slept on the floor that night on the Amtrak. Honestly, I’m sure we both did at some point. But who slept where isn’t the point of this story. Keeping tabs on who slept on the floor, or who did the dishes twice in a row, or who paid for the last beers during happy hour — these things don’t have a place in this deep, true friendship. It’s an unspoken rule: we give when we can, whether that’s doing the dishes or taking the check or sleeping on the floor, and we take when we need to, whether that’s staying seated for an extra five minutes or pocketing that extra five dollars or curling up on two Amtrak chairs. Friendship is all about that give and take, push and pull, yin and yang, floor-sleeps and Amtrak-chair-sleeps. Sometimes you sleep on the floor, sometimes she does. Sometimes you join each other down there because you'd rather just be together, even if it means being squished next to her five foot femurs.

In Steph, I have found a soulfriend who laughs and cries and dreams and frets and rages and eats and shares and exists — so authentically, so compassionately, so truthfully — and meets me wherever I am in my brain or my day or the world. I hope that you, too, find a friend who will join you where you are, who will sleep on the floor for — or, better yet, with — you.

Before the Amtrak Debacle of 2013. (Portland, OR -- February 2013 -- Photo: Cathryn Erbele.)