this is a story.

This is a story of the closest thing I’ve had to love-at-first-sight paired with the biggest heartbreak I’ve yet to know. The feelings are years old now; I wrote most of this in late 2016, when the breakup was raw but my memory was clear. I added a few things in early 2017, after time had passed and I saw Hamilton and my feelings morphed from anguish to acceptance. This story is years old, though I’ve returned to it a few times each year, wondering if this was the time to finally hit “Publish.”

And now is the time. Not because of any anniversary or revelation or resurfacing feelings, but because these words do no good sitting with the other 21 drafts I have in my “Writing” folder. Though these feelings and this story are old, they were mine. Are mine, still. And putting them into the world is a reminder — to me and to you — that there is no shame in loving hard, hurting deeply, and the work it takes to pick yourself up from that. I reread this story and see — I can feel — who I was that summer, that season of love and heartbreak, that October night when I wrote most of this.

Maybe you will find a piece of yourself in these words, too.

//

I walked into my apartment after work and it felt void of him. The lights were off and it was already dark outside; I worked well past five-’o-clock to avoid this exact moment. The floor was clean; I power cleaned last night, when I’m stressed or sad or need something I can control. It was as if, through last night’s fervid vacuuming and dusting, I could will any trace of him from this place.

He was the first guest in my home. He came to visit two weeks after I moved in, ten days after I started a new job.

“Is that going to be okay?” he asked, cautious and careful of providing space, allowing time to settle and be alone. 

“Of course,” I replied. “I want you here. I want you to be a part of this.”

He was the first to see my color-coordinated books on their shelves. He crouched over to read all of their spines before taking off his jacket, turning back to me to ask when I had gotten this one, how I had liked that one. He raised an eyebrow when he saw I owned “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard, found the spine of “Becoming Wise,” the book we had both been reading when we met. His one carry-on bag for the weekend, which I’d learn was typical of his minimalism-except-books lifestyle, was the first thing to sit in my mustard chair, spilling open with the four books he brought for the plane.

He was the first to sleep in my bed; it had been delivered just hours before he arrived, which was not the plan. It should have arrived a week or so before, but a mix-up with the IKEA order and the IKEA delivery company brought it to my apartment during my lunch hour on the day of his arrival. I scrambled to put on sheets and a comforter, pretending like I had not been sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor for two weeks. He crawled into this new bed even before I did, while I was washing my face at the sink and feeling self-conscious about my choice of sleeping attire, and my whole life he was witnessing.

We hadn’t seen each other since the beginning of June, and even then we hadn’t spent more than 80-some hours together. We had been far from our homes, across the country for a conference unrelated to our day jobs. We were pulled together in a sterile, fluorescent-lit classroom by an icebreaker, a meet-and-greet game where everyone in the room stands up, the facilitator asks a question, and you travel to either side of the room based on your answer. This side for Coca Cola, the other side for Pepsi. This side for waking up early, the other for staying up late.

The third or fourth question was, “Are you planning to go to seminary?”; this side for yes, that side for no.

Our answers led us to the middle of the room. We found ourselves in a circle with two other faces I will never remember because I only saw him. 

“I’m not sure,” I said. 

“Me neither,” he said. “Maybe.” 

I talked about why, he talked about why, and I tried to remember the last time I made such prolonged eye contact with someone. The next question was asked. I don’t remember it, but I know we moved to opposite sides of the room. 

But we were pulled together again and again. We were signed up for the same breakout sessions. We ended up in the same small group for discussion. We sat near each other during presentations and meals and – finally, on the last night of the conference – at a bar with the rest of our newly-made friends.

We walked there together, slightly behind everyone else, talking and asking questions and digging deeper into who the other was. He wrote; I did, too, but not with as much discipline as him. I went to school in the Midwest; so had he. We cared about books and coffee and our families, had a complicated relationship with the church and God, and searched for (and usually found) meaning everywhere and in everything.

We arrived at the bar. A drag queen was singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” and we took shots of whiskey. We danced to Whitney Houston and drank gins. We danced to every song in a circle with our larger group until, finally, we found each other face-to-face. The music was still blaring, the drag queens singing another song, but it went silent for me as we left the bar so we could talk without the strobe lights. We found a bench and talked for almost four hours. We kissed a bit, too, but mostly talked and talked and talked until it was five-’o-clock in the morning and breakfast was at 7:30. I snuck back to my hotel room, my conference roommate peacefully asleep, and willed myself to obey the drag queen’s lyrics as I tried to fall asleep: Hold on to that feeling...

We sat next to each other at the final session the next morning. I remember nothing of what was said, but I remember when our knees moved from three inches to one inch away from each others’. He bought me a coffee before we left for the airport and asked if he could write to me, if we could stay in touch through letters. We did. He sent me letters and poems and his favorite book. I wrote back.

He came to visit.

He quickly became a home for me, for my heart and soul after weary days. I loved him so quickly, so deeply, so fully. That’s how love happens sometimes. It sneaks up on you and hits you over the head with the best kind of frying pan — but one that spits out cartoon hearts and unicorns and, instead of giving you a bump on the head, fills it with the reality of your love for this other being and their love for you. His was the conversation I looked forward to each night. Our trips to see each other were the highlight of each month. It was the kind of love that felt like home, that made me want to stay in each present moment because it was so, so good, but that also made me want to fast forward to see where it would lead us.

But sometimes, a different kind of frying pan sneaks up on you -- heartbreak. We did not last past fall, after secrets surfaced and I learned new truths and had to come to terms with a different reality of our time together. We broke up over the phone; he offered to fly to me, to work on this in person, but I went dancing with friends instead. I had a plane ticket to visit him booked for later that month, purchased the day before but already past the 24-hour refund deadline. I went anyway, saw Hamilton, visited friends, and didn’t reach out to see him.

I will see him in my kitchen, standing at my counter and making a pour over for me; standing at my bookshelf, quietly brushing over each title; reading in my bed, lying on “his” side. He was here, had been here, and will always be a part of this time of my life, this home. But, slowly by slowly, I’ve been removing the traces of him: the photo of us taken at the bar pulled off the wall; the postcard he sent from a trip removed from the nightstand; the last of the coffee he brought for me gone. Those memories and traces have been pulled into a folder and tucked away in a corner of a closet.

And tonight, with the lights off and the quiet and few traces left of him, I could catch a glimpse of how this could be okay. How I will be okay, how my home will be my home, even without him. After I turned the lights on, and the reality reemerged – he is not here – I whispered:

But I still am.

the answer was yes.

When I flew to Fargo-Moorhead to interview for my job that wasn’t mine at the time, I snuck away to young blood. I had extended my trip past the typical 36-hours-across-the-country-and-back schedule that’s typical in Residence Life to make a long weekend out of it — the “it” not being the interview, but the being home. I was in the *tHicK* of it then: my last term of grad school, my last months in my job, balancing being present for my education and my students’ education, their lives and my own life, while white-knuckling the looming figure-out-a-job-and-geographical-location decision.

So I was home, but I had articles to read and reports to respond to and, beyond that, a deeper question: Could I live here? Could I make this town home again, all on my own? So I went to Young Blood on a Saturday afternoon, just me. Not I-grew-up-in-Fargo me or I-went-to-college-here me, but I-might-move-here-as-a-27-year-old me. I bought a cup of coffee and a refill and perched myself at the window seat. Between sending GIFs of reassurance to my RAs after a hard duty night and underlining a source for my COMPS, I let the question wander around my brain and my heart: Could I live here? Could I find a church and a coffee shop and a community here? Could I make this place home again? I imagined coming to this coffee shop on a different Saturday in a different month, with a different job and responsibilities, maybe to read. or to write or blog, or to make friends with the baristas or smile at a handsome man from across the room (hey, a gal can dream). I imagined having coffee dates with old and new friends, what it might feel like to be a regular somewhere, to belong here.

There’s much more to say but this caption is already long so the answer was yes. Yes, I could. A complicated yes at times, and not to all the questions I asked back then, but still yes. This is home. Where I read and write and have coffee dates, where I order my first cup for here, my refill to go. This photo was taken this morning, looking out that same window.

heart-filling times.

A handful of weeks ago, in the midst of some heart turmoil times, I thought of an essay in “Tiny Beautiful Things.” I specifically thought of one particular line that I needed to read to have the courage to carry on through said heart turmoil times; the words I believed would grant me permission to do the thing I had to do.

When I went to pluck my copy off the shelf to locate these words, it was gone! Not totally surprising, since I think I have owned at least six copies of this book and have gleefully given each one of them away. So I did the thing anyway and survived without the line and ordered a new copy for myself.

And now I’ve been rereading. I haven’t read this book cover to cover since I was 22 and unemployed and sleeping in the trundle bed I lugged across the country to Portland. I am going slow, underlining words and folding in corners of pages and sitting for awhile with the ‘Yours, Sugar’ at the end of every piece.

The last few weeks, I’ve been sitting in some heart-filling times — a snap-of-the-fingers shift from the turmoil, just like that. Karaoke singing and nature walks and bookstore adventuring, big belly laughs and big questions and big conversations that get right to the good stuff. In one essay, Sugar writes, “The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see what made us.”

These heart-filling times have only been so because they’ve been filled with some of my heart-people, in Fargo and Minnesota and across the country: the ones who see me, all of me, when I’m at my fullest and when I’m at my turmoiliest. And who let me sit with them, too.

This wasn’t the line I was looking for when I started, but it was the reminder I needed all along.

arrows.

When I was 24, I got two tattoos: a list of latitude and longitude coordinates on my right shoulder blade and an arrow on my right arm. It’s always easy to explain the first one; they are tangible numbers that translate into a spot on a map, tied to time periods in my life when I called that place home. I like answering questions about that one — it’s concrete, specific, and makes sense even to people who don’t like or understand tattoos. There’s not much wondering or meaning-making you have to do to get its purpose on my body.

The arrow though? That one’s always hard to explain, and my answer changes every time someone asks about it. Sometimes I got it because you have to pull an arrow back before letting it go. Sometimes I got it because I heard that Kasey Musgraves song where she told us to follow our arrows, and I thought it was cheesy but in a good, true way.

But if you asked me right now I would say I have this tattoo as a reminder. (Aren’t they all?) I want to remember (and believe) that I can point myself in a direction and go. Not just point myself to new places to travel or to new jobs or new hobbies; those tangible things that show up in our calendars or our camera rolls or, sometimes, on our bodies as tattoos. I want to remind myself that I can bravely move toward the indefinable things that make up the parts of each day — the relationships and vocations and goals and the things I journal about, the hopes I whisper to my closest circle, the swirly truths I know but can’t always say.

I want to remind myself that when I want or need or deeply feel something, I can thrust myself fully toward that hard, wild, brave thing. And that I can trust that I will land where I need to.

Ask me tomorrow, maybe it’ll be different. For now, my tattoo is like me in this picture: looking ahead, courage coming breath by breath.

MOORHEAD

I was just trying to update my Instagram bio.

“Just moved back to the Fargo-MOORHEAD area.”

I didn’t intend for Moorhead to come out as MOORHEAD. I clicked back to MOORHEAD and tried typing it again, but before I could click the X that stops your phone’s autocorrect suggestion, it changed itself back. MOORHEAD.

And since I read into everything in my life, I started to wonder about MOORHEAD. When had I typed MOORHEAD instead of Moorhead? Why was it defaulting to this all-caps, seems-like-you’re-screaming version of my new city? Why did seeing MOORHEAD make me want to giggle but also burst into tears? It’s like my phone was trying to tell me, “Hello! Why yes, you are in MOORHEAD. Yes, not only in Minnesota, but MOORHEAD! MOORHEAD. You live nowhere else in the world but MOORHEAD.”

When seemingly insignificant things like this happen (again, I was just trying to update my Instagram bio with where I live and a few new emojis) and cause me to pause (I spent about 10 minutes staring at MOORHEAD, before I decided I should sit down and write something about it ), I often take them as signs to look more closely at something. To pay attention, to dig deeper, to search for meaning. I can take a sentence I overhear, or a 30-second conversation with a barista, or a photo of feet amongst leaves and make it into a reflection on my Enneagram type or love life or vocational life -- sometimes all of those, at the same time.

I took my iPhone’s autocorrected capitalization as an invitation. An invitation to think about the fact that I do, in fact, live in Moorhead. Not Portland, Oregon; a location that I chose, that shaped me, that became a defining part of my identity for five years. A location that became home and that, from the very beginning, a location I wanted to shout from the rooftops in capital letters. PORTLAND! I’m moving to PORTLAND! Even before jumping in a U-Haul without cruise control to make the 1500-mile drive, even before arriving at that first apartment, even before walking to the Starbucks down the street to upload that first blog post, I adopted an identity of Moving to Portland. It was part of my family’s Christmas letters to acquaintances. It was my Current City on Facebook. It was a place on a map that transformed into home, that transformed my life.

Now, I’m navigating a whole new set of life circumstances not in Portland. In July, I hopped in my car and drove across the country and now -- I’m living in Moorhead. It’s been a big-yet-calm shake-up over the last six months. And I haven’t written a thing about it, except maybe an Instagram post in August. A lot of life has happened in these six months and I’ve kept some of it at an arm’s length. My excuse has been because this transition is still happening. It’s not like you move to a place and then the adjustment and feelings and challenges are done the moment the last box is unpacked. The complicated mourning and the bittersweet celebrating don’t find their own places in a drawer as your kitchen knives do. The feelings of, “What the hell did I just do?!” don’t leave your heart at the same time you recycle your last cardboard box. A transition is ongoing and constant and very, very present. Even with all the goodness in it, navigating it can be overwhelming. And lonely.

I started this blog when I lived in Portland. I’ve been a scattered writer over the last four-ish years, letting other good things (friends and love and work and school) and not-as-good things (Netflix and depression and doubt and loneliness) get in the way of tending to this space. This space of writing, reflecting, sharing, repeating the process. And yet these posts, though rare, have made me feel more connected; to myself, to my own life, and to others, somehow. They’ve made me feel less alone in the navigation of difficult change and huge hurts, and in the celebration of small wonders and huge awe.

And so, here I am. And here’s a reintroduction of this little space on the Internet -- with a new look, a new location, a new-yet-same author.

I’m going to accept the little invitations that come my way to remember Portland, through texts and songs and middle-of-the-night memories, to think about Portland, to write the countless stories about the life I lived there. And I’m going to listen for the call to think about and reflect on and wrestle with my life now -- right here in MOORHEAD. Because these invitations are everywhere, if we want them to be -- even in our Instagram bios. They’re in conversations with strangers and friends, street signs and radio commercials, all that we see and hear and feel, if we open ourselves to them.

Here’s to accepting the invitations of our lives. Thanks for accompanying me as I open mine.