Category Archives: Alone in Place

Mama, Pause.

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“Go where they can’t find you,” she charged, and I fled to the cover of pine forest. Head down, heart pounding, I parted from the others and passed groups of children–the buzz of their giggling mixing with the light rain. I looked up briefly to scan faces. My own girls were not present, thank God. That would have been the end of this experiment in solitude. “Mama!” they would call. “Mama!!” more insistent if I did not answer the first time. “Mama!!!!” and I would once again be swept up into my routines of responding, all the constant demands, the pressure, the noise.

10415878565_3e40478198_oTwenty minutes. I just needed twenty minutes away.

I scanned the edges of the path and saw a row of faded red cabins stationed along the tree line. Here? Or should I keep going? These were unfamiliar woods and I didn’t know where everyone else was headed. But what if there were people staying in these cabins? No, they looked empty, alone like I longed to be. I just needed to decide quickly–already I could hear the crunch of gravel, moving in my direction. Just decide. Decide.

Slipping off the path, I  jogged to the backside of a particularly abandoned-looking structure and crouched on the porch behind a low wall. Voices swept down the path I had just left, and I wondered if someone would make a turn for the woods and see me there, hiding. I pressed myself into the corner, back against the wall, and felt dampness seep through my jeans. Darnit. I was sitting in wet pine needles, but there was nowhere else to go. I closed my eyes, wishing them all away.

* * * * *

We were in the woods for a church retreat, the first retreat my small urban church has taken in the ten years I’ve been there. I was surprised by how many people signed up–when retreats had been proposed in the past they were quickly shot down with protests:

Nuh huh, I do not do spiders.

Do you really want to get eaten by some bear?

And my personal favorite:

Don’t you know there are crazy people in those woods? And no one, I mean No One, will even hear you scream.

But by some miracle there were seventy of us gathered for this weekend away. Granted, the hotel-like lodge and cottages represented the near-opposite of roughing it. The buildings were clean and new with sparkling bathrooms and spacious common areas.

The problem (for me) was that they were also full of people, and because the dorms were single-sex, I had the girls on my own. On the drive to camp, I had tried to explain my unease to my husband.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said, and he looked at me, confused. “Do what?” I stared hard at the highway, groping for the right words. “People,” I tried, “I can’t take this many people right now. Meals in the dining hall. Sleeping in dorms. Large group gatherings. Small group discussions. I, I… I just don’t want to be here. I’m not sure I can do this.”

It was mid-May, and the month had been full of marathons, figurative and literal. The school year was almost over, and every moment away from the kids was filled with summer preparations and other responsibilities. I was on overload–a lot had taken place, but I hadn’t had time to process it all. This combination is difficult for anyone, but murder for an introvert like me.

It’s like this: imagine my introverted brain as a water pipe building up internal layers of calcification. Any kind of stimulus–people, events, emotions–are the calcium deposits. As long as I have time to deal with them as they come–silence, journaling, walking, prayer–they don’t build up. But if I don’t, if they just keep coming, then the pipe gets clogged.

And when the pipe gets clogged I can’t think anymore. Or make good decisions. Or live with seventy other people and my kids in dorms, and discuss God or church or each other’s lives or whatever it was we were going to talk about all weekend.

However.

When you’re driving to camp with a trunk packed full of sleeping bags and two excited children jabbering away in the back seat, what you think you can do is no longer terribly relevant.

* * * * *

When our speaker introduced the weekend’s theme I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “This weekend,” she said, “we are going to talk about solitude.”

Pulling out a book by one of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, she defined solitude as being alone with God and hearing that you are loved. If we didn’t take this time, she warned, we would try to find affirmation in the shifting sands of human relationships. If we didn’t begin with solitude, we could never find authentic community because we would always be trying to find our identity in other people. You need to get away, she said, and listen to the voice that has been speaking to you all along.

“So go”, she said, “Twenty minutes of solitude. Go where they can’t find you.” And she released us into the woods.

There at my faded red cabin, back pressed up against the low wall, it took a long time for my heart to stop thump-thumping in my chest. It took longer for my breathing to slow, and it took longer still for my thoughts to settle. By now I was crying, all the emotion of the month pushing out of me slowly. My mind was churning, but I didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore. I just sat and stared into the woods.

After a long time I noticed the swamp cabbage lining the creek bed. The leaves looked over-sized, like a prehistoric display in a museum. Suddenly, a bird chittered ten feet above my head. I laughed with surprise. The smell of the wet pine needles lifted up on a small breeze, and I breathed in a deep draught of humid air.

1114159624_705676c9a9_oThe pipe was beginning to clear; there was room now to take it all in. There was room now to let some things go.

I remembered our speaker’s words: Solitude is being alone with God and hearing that you are loved. I grinned and spoke to the sky, “You have anything you want to say?”

There was no response, but that was okay. I already knew.

 

Photos by Ed Suominen and Sharon Mollerus

Alone in Central Park

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New York City has iconic buildings. Movies and television shows are set there. It’s a magnet for business and the arts and everything in between. Who wouldn’t want to live there?

I had been to the city a few times. I had ridden the subway, wandered through FAO Schwartz, and even watched from along the route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So, I was comfortable with New York or at least felt confident I would be sooner rather than later.

I waved good-bye to my brother as he drove back to Philadelphia. I was in my new home, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Yes, it was actually a dormitory, and it was for graduate school, but I was living there. It was my new place.

The weather that first Sunday in September was storybook perfect. Blue skies, light breezes, and deep greens. I wanted to be in Central Park. I packed some reading material, found the subway stop and hopped the ‘B’ train. As the train rumbled along, my stomach churned with anticipation. Each subway stop was destination to be studied and stored in my memory. The reading material would have to wait.

Finally, Central Park.

NYC-Central-Park-from-abovIt oozed vitality. Baseball games, picnics, concerts, and walking tours. Each step further into the park revealed more. Where would the next winding path leave me off?

While more an observer than a participant in this exotic landscape, it was part of my home. And I was determined to know all I could about my new home.

A huge line of people was formed. Curious, I struck up a conversation with a girl with a pretty smile, “What are you waiting for?”

“For Shakespeare tickets.”

“Oh.”

“Shakespeare in the Park tickets.”

“All these people are here for that?”

“Tonight’s the last night, and it’s supposed to be great.”

“Which play?”

“The Tempest with Patrick Stewart. You haven’t heard about it?”

“I’m not from around here.”

We talked a while. She was cute and friendly. Her boyfriend seemed to like her too. “Hey, do you mind saving our spot for a little while? We’ve been here awhile and want to go for a walk.”

“I don’t mind.” And I didn’t. Waiting in line for Shakespeare tickets – did it get any more New York? With the couple gone, I took out my book and read the Fitzgerald novel I had in my bag while I noshed on my bagel. I couldn’t focus. The humanity overwhelmed me.

But I knew no one. And no one knew me.

When the couple came back twenty minutes later, I was happy to see them. Their arrival meant my departure. After a, “sure, no problem,” I walked away and left the park.

A few days later, school began. Despite my desire to go back to Central Park, I was too busy settling into my classes and all the responsibilities that entailed.

Then one night, news came of a woman attacked in Central Park. The woman had been jogging on East Drive near the Lasker Rink at 103d Street. Police had a number of details: dragged down a 20-foot embankment, killer apparently tried to rape her, violent struggle, and body found sprawled by stream under a stone bridge.

She had been dead three hours when another jogger found her. Despite all the details, police could not identify the victim, and they asked for help. Finally, her identity was discovered. She was from Brazil and was described as living a solitary life. The murder dominated headlines for weeks. The police were stumped.

Had I been there? Was this where I was walking just a few weeks back? Was I in a dangerous place? Should I have been more careful? Did the woman jog past me on an earlier run?

I was fascinated over her and the story. How could someone live in such a big city and have so few connections? How could someone be murdered in this city of constant activity, and no one see the gruesome act?

On a trip back home, my parents asked, “So, what do you think about living in New York?”

My answer wasn’t simple. The same thing that I love about New York was the thing I hated about it. I could go anywhere and know no one. The ability to be anonymous was freeing and exciting. Trappings of expectations were gone. However, despite being surrounded by hordes of people wherever I went, I was alone. All I saw was a faceless throng.

And I wondered, “Did anyone see me?”

ME (1)Larry Bernstein is a freelance writer, blogger, and educator. He and his family live in North Jersey. He writes about education and religion as well as business profiles. Really, he just likes to tell stories – both his and others. He blogs at http://larrydbernstein.com/me-myself-and-kids/ and is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Writings.of.Larry.Bernstein.

 

To see what I could see

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I had travelled more than a thousand miles to be surrounded by people, yet there I was, alone on a hard red-dirt trail in the Santa Fe National Forest.

To be clear, I was “alone on purpose,” as Nicole Morgan so deftly phrased it in her recent guest post. But following through on this intentional aloneness had taken great willpower. By choosing to set off solo on a hike that afternoon I was voluntarily leaving behind the potential of great conversations and new friendships—the very experiences I had in mind when I devoted a week of time and a sum of money to attend a Glen West writing workshop.

Many people at the Glen arrive in search of space and time to think and write, but as a full-time solitary writer who longs throughout the year for “colleagues,” I went to the Glen to fill that space and time with people. I needed a break from being alone with my thoughts and words, and during my first three days there I had accomplished just that. The mornings’ inspiring conversations in my non-fiction writing workshop transitioned into lunch hours sitting with authors I’ve long admired. Afternoons spent around courtyard tables, hearing about writing projects others were working on, gave way to more conversations over dinner, followed by engaging author and artist talks. Each night found me fighting the need for sleep as the extroverts and night owls gathered for more talk and laughter over whisky or wine, late into the night.

By that Thursday afternoon I had reached a state of “satisfyingly full” and knew some solitude (beyond the fast-asleep kind) would be good for me. It was one of those moments of awareness that separates childhood from adulthood: when you know that something—maybe eating those greens or getting up early to exercise—is important for your wellbeing, so you do it even though you don’t really want to.

I didn’t really want to be alone, but I knew it would be good for me, so I set out on the nearby Atalaya Trail to see what gift Aloneness might have for me in the midst of so much togetherness.

photo (9)The hard-packed ground was dry and gravelly, a shade of burnt, orangey-red that might as well be called New Mexico Red. I passed by Juniper and piñon, cacti, yuccas, and sagebrush, breathing in a heavenly-yet-foreign blend of scents that added a new layer to my aloneness: I was alone in an unfamiliar land.

As I continued walking, I began to wonder what range of unfamiliar creatures might call this arid region home (rattlesnakes? scorpions?). Then I recalled the coyotes whose sparring the night before had awoken me in my narrow dorm room bed, the windows open to the cool night air. Suddenly, alone took on multiple layers of meaning: I was not only by myself, far from others, but I was 7,000 feet above sea level in a foreign land, surrounded by potential dangers. The cell phone in my pocket didn’t even have service. I began anxiously singing, for company:

The bear went over the mountain,
the bear went over the mountain,
the bear went over the mountain—
to see what it could see.

I couldn’t remember what the bear saw, so I stopped singing and walking to just breathe—to calm the tinge of fear I felt and focus my mind on the quiet and the beauty that was all around me.

After walking a bit further, I reached a trio of wooden plank steps that carried the trail up and over a gravel road. Turning around, I lowered myself onto one of the steps, opening my water bottle and taking in the view below, the path I had just walked. The college campus, where all of those conversations and friendships had taken root the days before, looked small, but there it was, waiting.

I pulled my journal out of my backpack, turning to a page where I had taken a few notes while the poet Scott Cairns had read to us an evening or two before. A line from his poem “Draw Near” had especially captivated me:

For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered far to find.

I had traveled all the way to New Mexico to be with other writers and artists—I needed new conversations and different perspectives to help reframe the story within me. Then I had traveled up this mountain for time and space alone, in a land so different from the one I know that I couldn’t help but be aware, notice, and respond—not intellectually but viscerally. And all of those miles, all of that wandering both with others and alone, had helped me meet what is very near, in my heart.

photo (8)

Somewhere Else

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The red numbers on the digital clock switched to 4:55 as I entered through the bank of glass doors, stepping from fading daylight into a fluorescent glow. A few yards down the hallway, I found an empty space of wall to lean against. I tried to exude an air of contentment and assurance as I avoided the eyes of others trying to do the same.

The heavy drone of exhaust fans and clanking of dishes rose above the silence. The aromas of greasy pizza, chicken nuggets, and french fries were already permeating my clothes and hair.

As the minutes ticked by we slowly converged to form a line at the register. Coming together, but all still alone, like beads strung on a necklace.

When the clock finally read 5:00, my nonchalance turned to hustle. It was easier to eat before the cafeteria got busy.

It hurts more to be lonely in a crowd.

After swiping my card, I strode as fast as I could to pick up my silverware and tray, all the while scanning for which food line would be the shortest.

Salad again.

Once my plate was heaped with greens I walked swiftly toward an out of the way table—three from the back next to the windows overlooking the softball field. The table I chose everyday.

The table where I hid—hoping no one would notice me, praying someone would see me.

The three empty chairs at my four-person table formed a fortress between me and everyone else. I could restaurant-690951_640watch them—filling their plates, joining friends in laughter, or trying to hide behind their books—from my rectangular island of neutral laminate.

We were all students at the same college. We were there for a similar purpose and supposedly held similar values.

But I didn’t belong.

As I quickly ate my spinach leaves, the clamor continued to rise. The line at the register had shifted from sporadic individuals arriving early to avoid the crowds to the crowds themselves—chatting groups of friends, sports teams, entire dorm floors.

The tables started filling up, my sign to get going. I rushed to finish my meal before the groups looking for somewhere to sit started looking my way, eyeing me reproachfully for occupying a space for four.

I resented everything about the cafeteria. The cacophony of laughter and conversations highlighted the connection I was missing, while the greasy food smells clung to me as a reminder. The people went about their lives as if I wasn’t even there.

I blamed them for my loneliness.

And I blamed myself for not being acceptable. For not being lovable.

Everyday I sat at that table counting down the days until I could be somewhere else. A place where people were kinder. A place where I was worthy of love and belonging. A place where I could be the person I wanted to be.

I sat and watched my peers, but I didn’t really see them. I was so focused on being somewhere else that I didn’t see where I was.

College had promised a fresh start somewhere new.  But instead, I found myself biding my time until I could graduate and move on. Even after I had the diploma in my hand, I carried with me the expectation my next job, home, or friend would bring contentment. No matter where I was, I looked ahead to the next place.

A decade later, a simple phrase in a sermon challenged my perspective.

Invest where you are.

As God told the Israelites when they were exiled in Babylon, don’t hold yourself aloof waiting to be rescued. Don’t while away your time believing you’ll soon be somewhere that really matters. Don’t just survive the place where you find yourself. Invest in the place of your exile and build a home where you can flourish and help others thrive. Whether you’re here for a moment or a lifetime, this time and place matter. These people matter. You matter.

My cafeteria table didn’t have to be a place of exile.

I can’t go back and change my experience, but I can invest where I am today. When I feel unnoticed I try to remember to look around for others praying to be seen and invite them to the table.

I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow, but today I want to pull up a chair, grab a slice of pizza, and join the conversation right here.

Will you join me?


JohannaSchram (1)Johanna Schram feels most comfortable in places that are cozy and most alive in places that are spacious. Though the city changes, Wisconsin has always been the state she calls home. Johanna is learning to value wrestling with the questions over having all the answers. She craves community and believes in the connecting power of story. Johanna writes to help others know themselves and find freedom from the “shoulds” keeping them from a joyful, fulfilling life at joRuth. She can be found on Twitter @joRuthS.

Island, Dharma, Cup

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“It was a bad breakup that brought me to the dharma,” a teacher once told me. The dharma — and whether or not I’ve been brought to it — is an open question yet. But it was surely a bad breakup that brought me to the island. And the island that made me whole — not just once but twice, so far. It’s good knowing there’s a place that heals heartbreak, because life can be generous with the heartbreak sometimes.

I first found the island in the pages of a catalog. I was just twenty years old, stuck in a humid, landlocked city and itching to get free of a relationship that was hurting. I felt bound to my lover by the delicacy of her mental health; if I went for a long walk to look at the magnolias, I might come home to find her in the bathtub, bloody from a half-hearted suicide attempt. I couldn’t even get to the “bad breakup” stage until I got her some Prozac or something, but that was easier said than done. Going away to college seemed like it might let her down gently. So I looked for the furthest college I could find and found it: a bare refuge of a school, small, out of the way, on the northern ocean’s edge. A place I could start again.

When I told my lover what I hoped to do, she applied and got accepted herself. So my triumphant ride to freedom was on a Greyhound, half the country over with a woman who, by the end, would barely speak to me. That was a pretty bad breakup.

Halfway UpWe went such different ways that few would believe we’d ever known one another. Free, finally, to take long walks without having to worry what sadness might be waiting for me on my return, I fell hard in love with that island. I got a bike and rode it off roads and on, deep into woods bringing nothing with me but my thirst; and I drank from dripping rocks and soaked moss and boughs laced with fog. I would throw my bike into the brush at the base of a mountain trail and climb over red rocks up into a sky that fell over ocean and pine. Until I was finally strong enough to leave.

And it would be there, to that island, that I would drive almost 20 years later, having learned that marriage can be a multiplier of loneliness. That your heart can break with longing for love, despite the ring on your finger and the child you created together out of your two bodies.

I found myself, once again, climbing those rocks up into the sky, this time with a daredevil child in tow and an old dog that preferred the gentler trails. We climbed higher than the vultures and watched their finger-wings glide below us. We’d walk out like dancers on bits of board into a swamp and sit quiet to hear the peepers. I carried my daughter on my back when she got weary, pulled ticks off the dog and I woke early, to see the sun purple the nearest hillside before anyone stirred. And my heart knit itself back together in the astonishing, delicious aloneness.

I wasn’t lonely there, until a few years passed and brought me into love again — unexpected, unsought — and yet there it came, just as thunderous as heartbreak, just as undeniable as the ocean. And I mourned to leave the island, but love rendered it the wrong place to be; if I stayed, I stayed alone, with my love far from me. So I followed love, back to the mainland and away. It nearly broke my heart to do.

It’s been five years now and I haven’t been back since. And I haven’t really needed to.

There’s a story about a teacher who describes the dharma by holding up his teacup. “This is my favorite cup,” he says, “I love it in every way. And I consider it broken already.”

I like tea and I like teacups and I first heard this story as a caution against getting too attached to things. I could also hear it fatalistically: nothing lasts forever, so be ready. But the first part of the story is essential, I think, the part about loving something in every way. Because one of the ways things can be is broken — and hurt, diseased, suffering. What kind of love encompasses even what our hearts rebel against?

On the island, I can be alone and whole, not aching for any place but where I am. But I’m not from there, I’m from away. From the places where I’m broken already, and learning to love, with this heart I have, in every way.

*   *   *   *   *

Alison on a rock“Island, Dharma, Cup” is by Alison Coluccio. Alison lives with her partner and teenaged daughter in Ithaca, New York, in an urban eco-village, where she loves gardening to build bird habitat and fun food. In her not-spare time, she studies plant genetics at Cornell in a USDA lab. She’s worked with people and plants in Togo, West Africa and Irapuato, Mexico, and her writing on seeds and spirituality has appeared in Parabola. (Landscape vista photo, above, taken by Caitlin Regan.)

 

Alone in the City Again

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In one of the final moments my Chicago community gathered together, I knelt on a swiveling armchair and squeezed my shoulders in next to Caitlyn and Ben’s.  We peered out the window in the boys’ Logan Square apartment; its angle pointed to the intersection of Kedzie and Schubert Ave where rain fell on the aftermath of a car crash.

Alone in the City AgainThe crash had thrown a cooler from the back of a truck, and now, the contents of a summer picnic spilled on the pavement. The doors of the truck remained open, the driver long since run away.

As sirens bent around buildings toward the scene, the sky opened to sheets of water and timpani thunder. Spectators hurried inside, looking back over their shoulders, hoping to catch a last glimpse of the action. Maybe like me, they found it easier to look on the wreckage of someone else’s life than to face their own.

Lord, I don’t want to be alone in the city again.

There were eight of us, expatriates of our college suburb in some stopgap Alone in the City Again 2time between college and the rest of life: six boys who lived together in Logan Square, their around the block neighbor Caitlyn, and myself.

My first year in Chicago, I fell into the trap of urban loneliness; it is easy to remain anonymous in a city—wake up, go to work, return to your little compartment, and shut the door behind you, waiting for an invitation to join the bustle. I was a first year teacher, falling asleep to episodes of “Mad Men” at 7:30 p.m., clinging to perceptions that I could not “fit in” with the cool kids.

By my second year in the city, my unhappiness persuaded me to try something different; I resolved to fashion Chicago into a home. I began to invite people over, rationalizing that perhaps others wanted someone to organize togetherness as much as I did.

With fluttering heart beats and shallow breath, I pushed all the chairs in my apartment into the living room and rigged up a digital antenna to broadcast the 2012 summer Olympics. Amidst my good intentions were less noble feelings of desperation: “like me,” “love me,” “stay with me.”

Talking myself into courage, I clung to a Field Of Dreams like promise that if I built the parties, meals, and traditions, the community would gather. And it did.

In summer, friends propped themselves on pillows that leaned against the rails of the back porch. We watched movies on a wobbly projector screen, and I served bowls filled with stove-popped popcorn drizzled with browned butter and rosemary. The boys came over to my apartment with ravenous appetites and cases of PBR. They recited compliments and “mmmms” around the table, sons of polite mothers.

We lived a sitcom city life, but I soon realized I had built a foundation of cement for a shantytown. The others talked about leaving, about futures beyond the walls of the city. I began to panic. What was wrong with Chicago? What was wrong with me?

On one afternoon, we draped a picnic blanket over the boys’ front steps. I sliced Brie and apples, arranging them on a plate to eat with a baguette and glasses of red wine. The conversation drifted towards careers and futures. Tim mentioned moving to Denver and my heart lurched.

Caitlyn suggested an exodus to her home state of California. Ben proposed working in his cousin’s bookstore in Portland. I tried not to scream, “Why not here?” Instead, I cried on the car ride home.

I felt like a little girl begging her parents not to leave her with a babysitter; if I could have clung to their legs as they tried to drag their feet out of the city, I would have.

At one of our three 1920s parties, I hung my head back, warm with gin, and listened to the lullaby of our conversation. Marty argued with another friend about the Meyers Briggs of Jesus, and Caitlyn and Andrew made the floor moan and creak with their dancing. I knew that we had become something together. With such bounty, maybe no one would ever leave.

Please God, let no one ever leave.

But tonight with the news that Tim had an interview in Washington D.C., I finally gave myself permission to take inventory of our dwindling social circle. Tonight we were together for Caitlyn’s farewell. Andrew left in May for another continent, and Ben would leave by the end of the month for Grand Rapids. Others cast their lines towards new horizons, waiting for any tug towards something different. Already there had been garage sales and exchanges of items that couldn’t fit in moving trucks.

I strung my problems together, making them into one giant demon that tormented me with questions and fears. Suddenly the boys leaving meant I shouldn’t take risks, that all my prospects for marriage would be over, that I could not discern the whispers of God’s will, that I had proved unworthy of love and ended up a failure. I grafted each of these things to the paths my friends took away from the city, away from me.

Daniel played Beethoven’s seventh symphony as two tow trucks pulled the wreckage of the crash away in different directions. The thunderstorm, the car crash, and then a silent ride home with Tim—signs and wonders denoting the end. I wanted the city to swallow me into its dark belly.

I forgot how lonely the city could feel at night.

*****

Meredith Bazzoli“Alone in the City Again” was written by Meredith Bazzoli. Meredith has spent her whole life orbiting around Chicago and its suburbs. She currently resides just west of the city with her husband Drew, who grew up a hoosier. She never thought she could marry one of those. Meredith writes, performs improv comedy, and teaches in West Garfield Park (all stories for another day). She seeks to start conversations about the life we stuff under the bed and keep off our Instagram feeds.

You can connect with her at www.veryrevealing.com

Black and white photos from the night in the essay by Daniel Saunders.

Physically Alone, Digitally Connected

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I replaced my favorite clock within the first year after the move. The ticking was driving me mad.

Life after college was quiet.

Except for the ticking.

I moved to Alabama four years ago, several states away from all I knew and loved. For the first time in my life, I truly lived alone. I went entire weekends without speaking. I flipped television channels for something, anything, to capture my attention. To take away the gnawing emptiness. The longer I went without a phone call, a chance visit, a video chat hangout, the sicker I felt. As if all the energy in me had been sucked out by the great, hovering loneliness.

This is when I discovered I was an extrovert, thanks to online personality tests.

Physically Alone, Digitally ConnectedA year later, I found bloggers who wrote about their anxiety. It rocked me to the core how well I could relate. How much their advice helped. How it changed everything to know I wasn’t what I thought I was: Alone.

I’m only half-joking when I say the internet saved my sanity.

We can rant about technology all we like, the evils, the privacy violations, the addiction. But I know I owe my ability to live this pioneer girl life to the digital age. It’s true that I’m still often alone, but I’m no longer so lonely. I have learned peace and coping strategies, hope and communication skills, joy in the moment and accepting me. Just me. Without having anyone to entertain or impress. From that freedom, I can connect with an open heart.

Facebook is known for causing comparison and envy, but for me it’s a lifeline. Twitter is more than “what I had for breakfast” and news updates. It’s how I find other bloggers to exchange “me too”s with. Through Pinterest, my fellow bridesmaids and I help plan our friends and families’ weddings. Skype connects me to my friend in China. Through texts, I am with my sister whenever she needs a smile or encouragement. Our family dreams of vacations through our wanderlust-filled emails. Sometimes my friends and I phone in for a minute; some nights it’s three hours. Through Instagram, I have a window into the lives of my mom-friends, busy with the lives of their small ones. Through Tumblr, I find other fangirls, and we share about how much we love characters, how storylines should have gone, how to improve our own writing, how a line of dialog hit home… and how we have survived our own real-life battles.

Four years later, I have my “Alabama family” here around me physically, but I am also surrounded by a digital family – some my blood relations, some friends from past lives, some I will never meet.

When I move on to a new place, a new apartment that is quiet enough to hear the clock tick, I will take these people with me. My digital family grows every day. It makes the fear smaller, the hope bigger and uncertainty exciting.

Perhaps it is ironic that the very technological development the media decries as causing the isolation and loneliness in our society is the very thing that made all the difference for a girl living so very alone in a foreign state, in a quiet apartment, scared in the dark as the clock ticks too loud, but I always know, no matter where I am in the world, my digital family is there for me in one form or another. Everyone moves on with their lives, of course, but that is what is beautiful about it. Far from feeling left out or hurt, I smile to see photos of college friends having new adventures, their weddings and babies, their path pulled further from mine. Because I know, thanks to the digital age, they are only a comment away, an email, a chat or a text.

And I know, here in the digital age, I am not alone.

*****

Jenna“Physically Alone, Digitally Connected” was written by Jenna DeWitt. Jenna is the managing editor of MORF Magazine, a resource for youth ministers, mentors and parents of teenagers. She has a bachelor’s in journalism from Baylor University, where she edited a bunch of student publications, became a fan of C.S. Lewis and drank Dr Pepper floats with Blue Bell ice cream like a true Texan. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she has been adopted-in-spirit by a lovely group of folks whom she calls her “Alabama family.” You can find her on Twitter @jenna_dewitt and on her website at http://jennadewitt.com.

Alone in an Unlikely Place

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

Driving would be faster. It will be a long walk from the Metro station to the coffee shop in the post-snowstorm cold. But I jump at any chance to take public transportation into a city – alone.

Maybe it is because I grew up in suburban Ohio, where light rails and city buses were a rare sight.  Maybe it is because I have never lived in a city.  But there is something irresistible about being transported to the urban hustle in a train full of…everyone.

And that’s exactly what it is:  everyone.  Light rails, city buses and trains don’t filter out the haves and the have nots, they don’t care if your collar is white or blue or nonexistent, they don’t turn away the underprivileged or celebrate the accomplished.

On the train, we are all the same.  We are all trying to leave something behind.  We are all going somewhere.  We are all looking for the next stop.

It is in this convergence of everyone that I feel free to be alone.  And it is not a lonely, dark alone, but a healthy, inspiring alone.

Steven Pressfield writes, “We know what the clan is; we know how to fit in the band and the tribe.  What we don’t know is how to be alone.  We don’t know how to be free individuals.”

Perhaps it is this tribal wiring that, paradoxically, nurtures healthy solitude in such an unlikely place: a crowded train of strangers.

You Are HereIn the train’s tribe, it is how I am the same that propels me into aloneness, not how I am different. Titles are irrelevant, responsibilities suspended, control of the steering wheel surrendered, and upholding of images put on hold.  I am, simply, going somewhere.  And I am not in control.

Off the train, I try so hard to stand out.   I craft the Facebook posts, go for the promotion, bow down to the gods of children’s sports, and buy the stuff in hopes of attention and achievement.  On the train, I don’t want or need to stand out.  Closer to humanity’s equality, I can stop trying so hard.  There is space to find the things that lie deep within me, the ones that are trying so hard to get my attention and that make me the free individual I was intended to be:  my uncensored dreams and true desires.

It is in the rare moments of glimpsing the equality of humanity that I can learn how to be a “free individual.”

Comforted by our sameness and my anonymity, I look out the windows of the train and see space for my dreams.  I listen to the engine’s hum and to the voice that grants permission for desire.  On the train, I respond, although incompletely and imperfectly, to the question “Who are we?”  And it helps me move on to “Who am I?”

I get off at the Columbia Heights station.  Lifted by the escalator into the morning light, I emerge humbled by who we are, inspired by who I can become.

I see business suits walking swiftly with purpose.  I see faded jeans meandering slowly with regret.   And I see snow hiding in the sidewalk’s shadows, too stubborn to melt.

I see me.

* * * * *

H1Holly Pennington is a writer in the other Washington, but she loves to visit family and friends in D.C.  At home in the Seattle area, she jumps at the chance to take the ferry.  She blogs about vulnerability, faith and freedom at www.dreadlocksandgoldilocks.com and would love to connect with you on Instagram, Facebookand Twitter.

Refuge

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

As a nine-year old recent refugee I often felt lonely. The kids at school, taking their queue from ubiquitous images of famine-stricken Ethiopian children with protruding stomachs and flies milling around their eyes, referred to me as Starving Ethy—Ethy being short for Ethiopian. The school often isolated me, with other aliens, in a special class they called English as a Second Language. When not at school, I spent most of my time alone, roaming the neighborhood, scavenging for odds and ends, finding the occasional Garbage Pail Kids trading card or a broken Transformers figurine.

Yet my family and I were not alone. Like many other refugees before them, Eritreans in the U.S. had begun to conform to an old pattern. The first group arrived in a specific city by design. They resettled there as part of a grand scheme cooked up in the mind of civil servants sitting in a conference room somewhere. These special refugee programs preselected some location in the U.S. that they thought made sense for the refugees. And these displaced people didn’t know any better. Des Moines is San Diego. San Diego is Des Moines. It’s all the same to those simply trying to escape calamity.

But once the trauma of transition abates and with the gift of time, these immigrants grow familiar with their new homeland. They also grow restless. They long to be with people like them. They are drawn to DC by an old friend from the refugee camps in Sudan, to Seattle by a neighbor from the village back home, to San Diego by a former fellow rebel-fighter. Mostly though, they are simply glad to cluster their lives around other Eritreans. These people, in their search for more than refuge, shift and move; drawn to each other to dull the bite of loneliness.

It is through this familiar road that a growing number of Eritreans made their way to Atlanta. It is why a room full of Eritreans greeted my mom and me during one of our routine visits to one of these Eritrean families on one sunny and beautiful afternoon. The home, a unit at one of the local public housing properties, was overflowing with strangers, old friends, and cousins of cousins.

After the customary cheek-to-cheek greetings, my mom joined the other adults who were dutifully occupied by a coffee tradition that must date back to the beginning of time. All the guests sat together outside on the porch in a semi-circle with the hostess at the juncture and a brazier at her side.

5543145597_017e65feb6_zLike the old priests and their censers, the hostess filled the air with the scent of roasting coffee, giving each guest the occasion to waft and savor the aroma rising from the roasting pan. She ground the beans and carefully poured them into the jebena, a special kettle made of clay. After adding a cup or so of water, she placed the jebena on the brazier to work its heat as the ancient taste brewed with slow serenity. When it was time, she slowly filled each finjal, small ceramic drinking cups decorated with beautiful patterns in different colors, moving continuously from cup to cup until the circle was complete.

It was a well-choreographed ritual wrapped in a thick blanket of gossip, debate and gloating, each adult trying to outflank the other with their better tales and more exciting news. They moved from topic to topic, sometimes with rambunctious energy and sometimes with solemn prayer depending on the mood of each issue — all of this they consumed with wide open hearts, as they sipped their scrupulously prepared coffee. While the adults sat on the porch consumed by their disputations, I joined the kids playing out in the field an earshot away.

In many ways these interactions are perfectly symbolic of the solitude we all felt in that place. A white American friend once described a moment she’d experienced in Shanghai, China. After living there for years, she ran into a black man, the first speckle of diversity she’d seen in a long time, while strolling along at some shopping district. As soon as she spotted him, she ran over and asked if she could give him a hug, explaining that he reminded her of home. The stranger obliged.

*   *   *   *   *

Biniam“Refuge” was written by Biniam Gebre. Biniam is a former refugee from Eritrea, a beautiful and young country in East Africa. He is also the former acting Commissioner of the the Federal Housing Administration. Both in his professional life and personal struggles, he is in constant search to understand the meaning of place. He currently lives in Washington D.C. Biniam blogs at Choices and Values and can be found on Twitter @biniamgebre.

Photo of the jebena, above, is by Canned Muffins.

A brief personal history of an extrovert, alone

Posted on by under Alone in Place

I am nine, and I’m standing at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes, utterly alone.

The dishes are my job every other evening, which means every other evening I feel a sense of abandonment and despair—the most acute embodiment of “woe is me” that a middle class American child can experience.

It is fall and getting dark earlier, so when I stare mournfully out the kitchen window toward the backyard, hoping for a bit of beauty or distraction, only the vague silhouettes of bare trees and my own sad reflection are there to keep me company.

I’ve finished washing the glasses and silverware, but the piles of tomato-sauce-glazed plates and—worst of all—pots and pans still loom large. In the next room I hear my dad complain about a referee call in the game he’s watching on TV. I hear my mom cheerfully greet Sasha, our dog, as she lets her in from the back yard. My brother passes through purposefully on his way to get a schoolbook from his bedroom. And I am alone with these dishes.

Of course, I’m not really alone. The rest of my family is within reach, but they seem emotionally out of touch. So from an early age this becomes my definition of alone. And I hate it.

*   *   *   *

I am 16 and in the backyard reading Pride and Prejudice for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s spring break. My boyfriend is off on a trip to North Carolina with his best friend, and all of my closest girl friends are somewhere warm with their families. But surprisingly I don’t feel sorry for myself for being stuck at home with nothing to do. Instead, I’m getting a start on my tan, enjoying the rare early-April warmth and indulging in a week of reading books, old and new.

Suddenly it’s easy to remember why reading had been my favorite pastime as a younger child, before it had gotten lost in the mix of boyfriends, tennis practice, school clubs, and a part-time job. On this April day, I’m happily reacquainting myself with my love for books, and also with the warmth of the sun after a long Michigan winter.

I am completely alone but it doesn’t occur to me that I’m alone, because I am completely content.

*   *   *   *

I am 20, a junior in college, and I am falling in love with someone who seems, in at least one important way, to be not like me: I am falling in love with someone who loves to be alone.

He shares an apartment with a group of guys across the hall from where I live with my friends, and an open door policy has been established. As his roommates watch TV before dinner, I watch him take a cup of tea and a book out to the hammock he strung up on the balcony. As my friends and I talk and goof around before bed, I see him walking home alone after several hours in his painting studio.

Suddenly I am certain that “alone” is something I’m not good at, and I see that as a flaw—the result of insecurity and a sign of shallowness. It has not occurred to me that my love for being surrounded by people—for being in the thick of conversation and debates, silliness and laughter—is a product of who I am, how I’m wired.

Likewise, as I’m falling in love with him I see his ability to be alone as something admirable, deep, and brave—not as a product of who he is, how he’s wired.

I’m hopeful I can learn from him.

 *   *   *   *

I am 30 and married to the painter—for eight years already. Our toddler and infant are both tucked in their beds for the night, and I am sitting alone on the loveseat in my cozy sunroom, an issue of The New Yorker open on my lap.

As an exhausted young mother, this moment should feel more delicious than it does. The house is quiet, and within the realm of these walls I have the freedom to do whatever I want. But what I want most is companionship, conversation. A look of recognition and understanding, a dose of empathy for whatever small trials the day brought. Someone to help me laugh.

I flip to the magazine’s table of contents, hoping to find something with the right mix of intellect and heart—the sort of piece that engages both my mind and emotions the way a good conversation might.

It is fall, and mostly dark outside the row of tall windows to my right. But in the back corner of our yard a bright square of light shines from the old one-car garage, now a wood shop and studio where my husband works each night on an art project he is preparing for an upcoming show. After this show is installed, there will be another show to prepare.

A lover of logic, I turn to it, hoping to find comfort: My husband teaches all day and needs every hour he can spare to create the art that drives his career. I get that.

My head is able to reason out my aloneness, but that doesn’t make it feel OK anywhere else.

*   *   *   *

I am 34, and I am alone.

My two busy daughters, now four and six, are in bed for the night, their questions and negotiations, stories and songs silenced by sleep.

photo (4)I brew a cup of tea then sink gratefully into the sofa to work on a sweater I’m knitting. Remnants of the busy day are scattered here and there throughout the house—a Playmobil scene carefully arranged on the coffee table, too many pairs of shoes and rain boots by the front door, a small stack of dinner dishes in the kitchen sink. But it’s OK, I’ll get to them later.

Since my divorce, I’ve been able to let go of the unhelpful sense that it’s someone’s job to keep me company. I’ve also been able to quiet the inner nag insisting that it’s my job to keep the house clean. When you’re alone, the consequences of waking up to a messy kitchen are also yours alone. Maybe it’s time to teach the girls how to wash the dishes, I think, as I pick up my knitting.

For now, I’m just sitting on my sofa, alone, and it is good. It’s good because I’ve finally learned that alone and lonely are two different things. I’ve learned that being someone who derives energy and ideas from interactions with others is a part of me to embrace and nurture, not to fight. And I’ve learned that savoring time alone allows me to process and express all that I’ve soaked in from being with others.

Now I can see that “alone” has always been important to me, and I’ve even been good at it, in my own way. Finally I’m able to call it what it is—just “alone,” apart from lonely—and embrace it for what it is: a gift of respite and reflection, and nothing to fear.

*   *   *   *

Q&Sdishes

 (No one should ever do dishes alone.)