what i know to be true.

The year was 2017. Megan was on her annual trip to Portland. It was probably grey and rainy and cold outside. We’d probably had a late night the evening before. And, if those two things were true, then we definitely didn’t want to do much on whatever day this was written — lounging, watching New Girl, drinking coffee, reading our new books from Powell’s. And, when we’d cycled through all those, we did what any gals born in the early 90s do with a notebook, pen, and some time to kill.

We played a game of MASH.

You remember this game, right? The one where your entire future is determined by the size of a spiral circle your friend draws. The one where the most important pieces of your future are not only the city where you’ll live and the job you’ll have but also — at least in my preteen versions of MASH — the color of the car you’ll drive and the kind of wedding dress you’ll wear. (I went through a looooong, weird phase in middle school where everything was going to be silver. Silver house! Silver car! Silver wedding dress!) From these games, I’ve married countless exes and crushes and celebrities. I’ve been a therapist and a teacher and the winner of American Idol. And I’ve had anywhere from one to seven to 25 dogs and children (but, always, always a dog).

From the start, I knew MASH couldn’t accurately predict my future. I knew it was just a game. I knew that what was written on these pieces of paper wouldn’t come true. It couldn’t! Probably not. And yet, I’d always pin just a little bit of hope or wonder on the every-fifth-answer that got circled. Even as an adult, I’d think, “Well, maybe I could be a Broadway actress. Maybe, in another life, I could meet and marry Ryan Gosling. Maybe I could move to Norway. Or New York City. Or Minneapolis.”

Megan and I have written lots of things in notebooks together over the years — goals, resolutions, diaries of our trips together so we always remember the four hours we spent at an AT&T on New Year’s Eve or the random house party we went to in Arizona. And we’ve played many games of MASH throughout our friendship, too — while waiting at the airport, flying on planes, during sleepovers. So this one game where MASH told me that I’d be moving to the Twin Cities didn’t stick with me. I didn’t have any big revelations once it was circled. I didn’t set my sights on moving to the Cities right at that moment, or make an action plan and move forward with it as soon as the game was done. It was circled (along with the rest of my MASH-decided life plan), and then I moved on.

I’ve wondered about living in the Twin Cities for a while, but those wonderings never turned into anything more than that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever live there, especially after planting myself back in Fargo-Moorhead. But then the world changed this spring, and so did my plans. And so did my ideas of what I thought I would do next, or could do next, or wanted to do next.

So my tentative wonderings about the Twin Cities turned into more serious wonderings. And then those more serious wonderings turned into tentative conversations. And then those tentative conversations turned into something more: “Maybe I can do this.”

But moving is exhausting, job searching is overwhelming, and both of those things feel particularly heightened and hard during this time in the world. Was I really going to do this? Was now the right time to do this? And, even at almost-30 years old, I’ve asked myself too many times: Will other people think this is the right choice? 

I found myself thinking about that word — right — a lot. I’d catch myself wondering if my plans were right or wrong, easily switching into either/or thinking, even though I try to keep my feet planted in the world of both/and. Who’s to say what’s right or wrong for my life, except for me? Through it all, while I’ve been trying to shift away from wondering if what I’m doing is right, I do know one thing.

These wonderings that turned into conversations that turned into, “Okay! I’m doing this?! I’m doing this!” felt good. They felt true. I felt that it was “right,” not in that there was an unlived, opposite, “wrong” choice. But it was right because I felt it deep in my bones, even when I’ve been nervous and scared of the unknown. Even when I know I’m going to miss my mom and dog, my cozy apartment, the life I’ve built and lived in Fargo-Moorhead. Even with all that, this still feels like the truest choice I can make for myself right now.

After I had my first tentative conversation about moving to the Twin Cities with Megan, she pulled out that same notebook and handed me the slip of paper at the top of this post. She’d saved that little square of mine, knowing that one day this circled “Minneapolis” might become more than a MASH answer.

A few weeks later, she mailed me this quote by Cheryl Strayed: “Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.” I wrote this quote, probably five years ago. I sent it to her in a card, while she was in the middle of her own deep figuring-things-out phase. It’s lived on her fridge since then, but made its way back to me. Soon, it’ll find a home in our new place.

So, I’m moving to the Twin Cities next month. Now, this is more than an answer made by a spiral circle. It’s a deliberate choice I’m making for this next phase of life — on and off paper.

Here’s to this next, true thing in my life. Fargo, I’m not going far — the drive is the perfect distance to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack in its entirety and sit with your feelings for awhile. Come stay with Megan and I in our cutie little duplex once things calm down. All are welcome for a drink on our patio. 

And Twin Cities, hi! I’m so excited to get to know you.

Class Letter

May 2013

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?

august 17.

I've downloaded Timehop, allowing the alerts to greet me as soon as I unlock my phone. I've enabled Facebook's "On This Day," marking the notifications unread until I've scrolled through each memory. I start most days this way: lying in bed after my alarm goes off, scrolling through memory lane. Last year, I Instagrammed the beautiful waterfalls I hiked past while on retreat for my new job. Three years ago, I tweeted about being one week away from hopping on a plane to India. Seven years ago, my best high school friend wrote on my wall to tell me that she would always always always be my friend.

These snippets of the past are kind of like the songs that bring you back to that one night, that one feeling, that one moment in time. But these snippets are always the good stuff -- they're the songs you danced to at that sleepover, the one that played during that kiss, and the one you belted at karaoke. I see the picture of the waterfall and get the same excited butterflies in my stomach that I had as a three-day-old employee. I see the tweet and physically ache for Bangalore and the feeling of hopping on an international flight with my travel pack. I see the post from my friend and immediately screen shot it to her with a few heart emojis, grateful that her promise is still true. These are such good moments.

But what about the rest?

What about the nitty gritty stuff of our hearts and guts that isn't recorded on social media? What about the just-as-real (and maybe even-more-real) stuff of our lives that was around before social media? Timehop and Facebook leave out the stuff that reminds us of the loneliness or the recent breakup or the friendship drama. They don't play the song that we looped on repeat when we said goodbye for the last time, or the one that we had to avoid for awhile, or the one that has always made us tear up a bit. There aren't many Instagrams or tweets that bring up hard stuff, or under-the-surface stuff. This is, of course, by our own choosing -- we purposefully record and remember the butterflies over the breakups, the excitement over the dread, the "life is great" over the "life is great but also really complicated." But still, we feel the real stuff's absence; it's the missing part of our perfectly crafted and curated scroll down memory lane each day.

I needed to look up a date and a memory for an essay-in-progress in an old journal tonight and found that real stuff staring at me from the pages of my bright orange, tulip-covered journal from the summer of 2005. I flipped through pages and found unsent love letters to multiple boys, printed transcripts of AOL Instant Message conversations with those same boys, and my insights into friendship and relationships and school. I found today's date.

August 17, 2005: "I'm ready for school to start. Pumped. I love rain. Last night we went to bed at 5! Time for me to roll out = now (11:22)!"

I read the full entry, giggling alone in my apartment and wondering why I ever thought I should use the phrase "roll out," even if it was just for my eyes only. I returned the journal to its box and pulled out my bright pink, daisy-covered one from the summer of 2006.

August 17, 2006: "He was like 'Where have you been?' and I said 'around.' He was like 'around, huh?' and I said 'Yeah I've sent you a few texts the past few days' and he goes 'yeah' and some other stuff. He said he'd try to call me sometime. I think it was fate."

First, I laughed. (Fate? Really?) And then I kept searching through the pages, unearthing the multicolored hearts and flipping open the elephant with the balloon and holding the engraved feathers, finding the under-the-surface words and feelings from each August 17, the stuff and stories that my Timehop and Facebook wouldn't bring up each year.

August 17, 2008: "I went to a High School Musical 2 party! It was super fun even though I didn't know everyone there very well!"

August 17, 2012: "I explained that I couldn't let him take me out to dinner because I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and am going away. In other words, this is how my heart feels: UGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

August 17, 2014: "How on earth will I know if this is the right path for me? Don't I just need to take one step and then see how that goes? What if I change my mind? Then I do. Dreams and plans and timelines can change. They always do."

As I read each entry, I moved past the picture-perfect parts and into the "life is great but also really complicated" ones. There wasn't a filter or spellcheck or missing snippets in this memory lane. It was all there, messy handwriting and weird analogies and rambling monologues and all. 

And now, this one's there too.

August 17, 2015: I had already Instagrammed my three closest gals from our 7 am breakfast date today. I took my first coffee art photo and started writing my "I just started drinking coffee" Instagram post in my head. I snapped a few pictures of my students, capturing the silly icebreakers and the birthday celebrations and the sacred conversations. But there is more to this August 17 than these good, post-worthy snippets. There was the walk home from work -- to a home I've been living in for over a year now, to a bed which is finally unlofted after an epic battle with the mattress and frame. There was the writing about Wicked and watching Ross and Rachel and their new baby on Friends and, now, the reliving of so many August 17s. Good and hard, big and little, and under-the-surface pieces that make up this day.

According to Timehop and Facebook, August 17 has not been a special day in the history of my life. Except that it is. Of course it is. Because life -- good, bad, and real -- happened then and is happening now. August 17 was fun in 2008 and heartbreaking in 2012 and insightful in 2014. And now, in 2015, it's an ode to my journaling, or to anyone's journaling, or to creating an outlet to remember the under-the-surface, "life is great but also really complicated" stuff somehow. It's also a reminder that memories exist outside of those that social media reminds us of, that the unseen and undocumented snippets matter just as much -- if not more -- than those that show up on our screens. And it is a plea to my future self, who will see this on August 17, 2016: sit with and learn from and let all the snippets of your life, from August 17 and all the other days, show up beyond your screen.

Let them live in your heart and guts.

doing justice.

“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.