Gestures

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It was 360 days ago today that I sat in Fr. John Kavanaugh’s Philosophy of the Human Person class. Since that day I have been mulling over the subject of his lecture, always knowing that at the right moment I would write about it. That time has apparently come, so here goes!

I sat in the middle of the middle of the room – my favorite place to sit in nearly every class – listening to Fr. Kavanaugh start his lecture with a story of a boy and a girl. A natural storyteller and a wise man of 70 years or so, he drew us in to the tale of a pair of former students of his.

Unbeknownst to the other, both came to see Father to talk and get some advice within days of each other.

“Now this young man and woman had been seeing each other for a few months – and don’t think I don’t know what that entailed. I’ve worked on a college campus long enough and was young once, too. I know exactly how they were “seeing each other” and that’s just fine,” he explains as we all chuckle in our desks.

“Anyway, these two did everything together. They were friends outside of just seeing each other and they did what friends do: they went to lunch and dinner; they went to concerts and bars. Everything. This went on for months until the young man realized that he wasn’t doing this with any of his other friends that were girls and he didn’t want to. So, he came to me and told me what was going on, how he felt, and asked my advice.”

The young man didn’t want to be just friends anymore. He wanted to be her boyfriend, but also didn’t want to lose her as his friend by trying to change their dynamic. So, he kept his feelings to himself – against father’s advice – until one day, he couldn’t, anymore.

This was my favorite part of the story.

One day the two “friends” were walking and talking after class, the young man reaches over and grabs the young woman’s hand to hold.

She freezes, “What are you doing?”

“Holding your hand,” he replies.

“Why? You never hold my hand. We never act like this.”

She is freaking out because the dynamic of their relationship just changed, but why and how?

This is when she goes to Father to talk, asking what it means and what she should do. He tells her to take a look at why that one gesture was more intimate than anything else in the months they’d been “seeing each other,” and it’s also the point where the story and the lecture come together.

Gestures mean something. They can be misunderstood because no words accompany them to give an explanation. In the same vein, though, they can also give away our human intentionality. We speak all the time with only our bodies; from crossing our arms in anger or defense to holding one another’s hand or spontaneously  kissing someone – our emotions and intentions are revealed much more obviously than saying, “I’m mad” or “I like you.”

This is why the young woman was so freaked out by the man whom she’d been seeing, hanging out and doing everything that entails with grabbing her hand just to hold it on their way back from class.

It meant something.

This is something I’d known my entire life. A hand holding mine had never just been a hand. A kiss had never been just a kiss. And someone flipping me the bird had always conveyed more than words ever could. Yet, it wasn’t something I’d ever spent too much time examining – until this lecture. It was then that I realized I’d always guarded my own gestures for this very reason. A kiss meant, “I really like you.” Holding your hand meant, “I’m happy and comfortable with you and want to be close to you.” Flipping you the bird meant, “You’ve seriously ticked me off.”

And then came my wild year. My happiest year to date. The one where I sowed my wild oats…and then some. I was in the midst of that wonderful year when I sat, listening to Father talk about gestures and meaning and human intentionality, about how we can’t help but reveal how we are feeling in some way. And it’s true.

Even when I had the mindset of Avril Lavigne’s “What the Hell?" or Martin Solveig's “Hello,” 

I was still giving myself away through my actions and inside hoping that someone would come along like the young man in Father’s story who would give himself away by reaching out and holding my hand…or just grabbing me and kissing me soundly on the mouth to get me to see, “Hey, silly girl, I like you!”

After this lecture, I began paying even more attention to body language, gestures and interpersonal interaction. It’s been an interesting study and, although, I may have read more into some of these things than was there in some cases; I still found that the general statement held true.

Now as I’ve mentioned in my last post, my mindset has changed, my intentions are purer and my goals more wholesome. I’m no longer thinking “What the Hell?” (Okay, sometimes when I have a lot of pent up energy – flirtatious or otherwise – and am feeling a little reckless, but it’s fewer and farther between). Those profound and life-altering moments set me straight and now I’m back to a kiss being more than just a kiss, holding hands is more than a friendly, flirtatious way to stroll down the street and a look giving away the fact that I really like you.

So pay attention. You’ll know how I feel about you. I never have had much of a poker face.

Profound & Life-Altering Moments

It's been a long while since I put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard. I apologize both to you and to myself, but don't mistake the lack of writing for an inactive mind or life. In fact, take it as the exact opposite. I've spent the past six months in a state of deep introspection. I've done some serious soul-searching and what follows is some of my journey, some of my realizations and some of what will be written about next...

Life-altering events have a way of putting our lives into perspective, of making us take a look at who and where we are, how we got there and then asking ourselves if we're satisfied with our answers. Some life-changing moments happen decades apart and form who we're going to be for the next chapter of our lives: mine happened in the same week. In fact, they were 5 days apart and then a few months later.

Profound, life-altering moment #1: The Birth of Little Miss Sawyer Lynn.

People say that the birth of a baby changes you.  The assumption behind this statement is that said baby is your child. Well, you know what they say happens when you assume…Despite the fact that Sawyer is not my daughter, but my niece it did not stop my world from shifting the night she was born. What this precious bundle brought into the world by my sister and brother-in-law could never know upon her birth that she was forever changing her aunt’s life. No, I can’t just say changing. Sawyer set my life back on the track it was meant to be on. She saved me from myself and set my world to rights again. From the moment my sister told me she was pregnant to the first ultrasound picture to the day she blessed the world with her presence, I felt something in me begin to shift. Then came that text at 2:34 am – the one I missed because I’d passed out reading four hours earlier – and the phone call I answered while still asleep at just around 5 o’clock. She was coming! Finally, we were going to meet the newest member of our growing family!

What I didn’t know was that four the next 19 hours I would be having a revelation that started with the question, “What the hell am I doing with my life!” and ended with, “Nothing as important as this” shortly after I saw my sister and her husband held the first addition to their own little family.

I walked out of that hospital a changed woman.

And for the next few days all I could do was think about my life, where it was, where it was heading, and where I wanted it to go. All the while, I was packing up my campus apartment where I’d lived for the past year and a half (the first 12 months of which were the happiest to date). And here is where my second revelation came.

Profound, life-altering moment #2: Graduation

Also known as, “Holy Crap! I’m not ready to be an adult! How did this happen? I still don’t know what I want to do with my life! ….or at least that was what was going through my mind before, during, and after the big ceremony. I graduated from Saint Louis University in 3 ½ years, partially by accident, partially by design. Surprise, surprise to me the day I discovered I’d actually pulled it off.

So, hey big world here I come. Please be nice to me. And so far, it has been. I have a good paying job, a place to stay (rent free), a loving and supportive family, friends who ask me to visit with an open invitation to come and go as I please when I need to get outta dodge. I am blessed to say the least.

Blessed, yes. A saint, no. I am deeply human and all that entails. I want things to happen in my life. Big, splashy (to me, at least), exciting things like getting a great job I love, finding the man of my dreams, settling down, having lots of babies, getting published and becoming a world renowned, best-selling author.

Are these things happening, I asked myself as Fr. Biondi talked about our bright, successful futures as SLU alumni (because it is stated, not implied, that we will be nothing by successful as a result of our fine, well-rounded Jesuit education. Failure is not an option.). I answer myself no as I sit next to two people I’ve never seen on campus in my 2 ½ years at SLU. They aren’t happening because I don’t know what I want. At all. From anything or anyone. Especially myself.

Fast forward to months down the road. Yes, months. I am a slow brooder. My thoughts and feelings needed to brew and simmer for a while, that while equals months. Anyway, months later while sitting at lunch with my Dad in Royal International Buffet I crack open my fortune cookie – we have long ago accepted that I should live my life by the writing found between this sweet cookie-cracker – and I read, “No one can walk backwards into the future.” WOWIE!

Profound, life-altering moment #3: Is this like Freaky Friday when the wise Asian woman picks the perfect fortune for her customers or is the universe trying to tell me something?

I went with the universe. It seemed more plausible. In other words, it was trying to tell me, “Forget all the stupid crap you’ve done in the past 22 years, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take what you’ve learned and use it to make your future look the way you want it to, Kaylin.” Like that picture of my sister’s family in the hospital, except it will be mine. Like Biondi’s graduation speech, except it will be fact, not hope or wishful thinking.

In light of these 3 profound, life-altering moments of clarity, I’ve decided:

1)     Family is the most important thing to me.

2)     I’m going to get my master’s and PhD then become a college professor whose class everyone wants to take.

3)     Love will come when it comes, but I am and I will be ready for it, even though I know it will probably knock me on my sweet little patootie.

In short, the world is my oyster.

Bring it on because I’m going to fill it with love and babies and books!

Self-Administered Therapy

Lately, I’ve had a lot of things on my mind and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking (and pretending not to think by means of distraction). I have spent this time taking stock of my life. From the things I have accomplished and the things I have done and seen and experienced to the people I have met, been friends with, learned to hate, and those I left in a trail of dust in the past.

I think it’s yet another one of those phases of life (one of the first and, undoubtedly, not the last) where I stand at a crossroads looking down all these different avenues I could start down and not having a clue in the world as to which is the right one or even what one is even remotely appealing…Hence, the stock taking.

It seems as though everyone I know is either,

a) finding the person of their dreams/getting engaged or married,

b) having a baby, or

c) already has a job/just found out they got a job.

Every time I log onto Facebook or talk to someone it’s, “Oh did you hear about so-and-so’s (fill in great life achievement here)?”

Me (even if I haven’t): “Yes, yes I did. Good for them.”

Me (what I’m really thinking):  I hate them on an elemental level for the next five seconds to fifteen minutes for getting something I want in life.

Nonetheless, what I’m ultimately trying to get at is this: I have been struggling.

Now, I am a relatively proud person so this doesn’t exactly taste good to admit, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

This is my confession:

I look around me and I see my friends and family happy, safe, healthy, and getting their just desserts. I look around me and I see people whom I love and admire accomplishing HUGE feats in their lives after overcoming immense obstacles and are better for it.

I look around me and I think, What in the hell have I been doing with my life? Partying? Wasting time thinking about boys who don’t matter and never will? Sleeping? Watching TV? Nothing?

I look around me and…I’m jealous. And I hate myself for it because I have prayed every night before I fall asleep that these things would happen for the people I love and care about. I pray that they would be “happy, safe and healthy. That they get everything they want, desire, need, deserve and so much more. That they meet and keep the person who is going to love, honor, respect, cherish, protect, defend, support, encourage, and balance them out” in the best possible ways.

God has answered my prayers. So what is my problem?

The answer: I’m human and I want more. I’m selfish and I can’t help but think, What about ME? What about all the good, great, grand, fabulous things that are supposed to happen to me and the person who will walk into my life and do that? Haven’t I hurdled enough obstacles yet to get just one of these things?

My response to myself: “Get over yourself because you have a good life, good friends and good family. You have your health, a great education, a part-time job and people who love and support you no matter what.”

And yet…I’m still not satisfied. Even with all these wonderful things in my life I still feel…less than.

On two occasions, I have attempted to express my thoughts and feelings on this subject to someone else: once to my mom on the drive back to the school I’ll be graduating from in exactly five weeks and once drunkenly to Nicki after one of my “distractions”...worked well, huh?

And here is the true confession:

I don’t feel as if I have accomplished as much in my life thus far as much as those around me or as I thought I would/could have. I have not had any flashy internships with a big corporation or a big name celebrity. I have not been published at the age of 18 like S.E. Hinton. I have not, in essence, done much – or at least that’s how I feel however accurate or inaccurate that may be.

The truth is I sell myself a bit short. I have come a long way from Little Rock, Arkansas where I was born or from Decatur, Illinois where I was raised. I have held a job(s) every year/summer/break since the summer before I turned 15. I have gotten good grades, taken honors, AP and higher level courses than were meant for my age, held multiple leadership positions and participated in sports throughout the majority of my education. I have maintained deep, meaningful, loving relationships with the people who matter to me most and add some new ones to that list. I have, also, managed to graduate college in three and a half years with a Bachelor’s degree, a minor and a certificate.

All of this and I’m still not satisfied. All of this and I don’t know how to fix the way I feel. I don’t know what to do and not knowing (anything) has always been hard for me. I like to know. I like to have a direction and a purpose. I like to know my place in the world and feeling like that place is somewhere doing something good for me and those around me. I like to know who I think I am and what I stand for and how that can help me know the things I’ve listed before them.

I have been struggling. I have been struggling because I don’t know any of these things.

I’m standing at a crossroads. And I’m thinking. I’m listening. I’m watching. I’m waiting for some sign as I go through the motions of “making things happen” for myself (as much as any of us can)…

And then it comes. I’m sitting in class, listening to a writing of Rift Fornier, a friend of my teacher, being read aloud about David Milch’s Problems of the Spirit, a lecture series of five giving advice to writers about living, writing, and living as a writer.

BAM!! Like a ton of bricks, it hits me square in the chest. It warms my heart and makes me feel comforted in a way that no one I know has managed to in the past few months, possibly years.

This is what I hear:

“When you are not writing, you’re going to be sad. You are going to feel inadequate. You are going to feel untalented. You are going to feel incompetent. It’s crucially important to understand that the impulse to write is a reaching out to God.

Words are symbols of reality, but they are symbols that partake of the reality they represent. That paradoxical doubleness is the explanation of how writing is a reaching out to our fellow human beings but also a reaching out to a larger spirit.”`

***

“But the first thing to take away with you is the absolute certainty that nothing you have ever thought about your capacities as an artist is true. This is a fresh beginning.”

Comfort from a stranger who seems to know me from the inside out, who reaches down to my very core to pull out my deepest, darkest feelings that I’ve been feeling for too long. Hope that I will not always feel this way nor am I the only one who does or ever has. You mean I’m not the only person in the world to ever 

feel this way? No, get over yourself.

This is God’s honest truth. When I don’t write, I am sad; I do feel inadequate; I do feel untalented; I do feel incompetent. Just as when I don’t go to church or pray or have some sort of connection with God in whatever means it takes to get through the wires to Him, I do not do well.

Writing is my prayer. Writing is my therapy. Writing is my release, my sanctuary, and my passion.

When I have stepped away for too long to “get things done” and “be productive”  and “do what needs to be done”, I neglect a huge part of myself. I shut out the part of myself that makes me feel good about myself, that makes me happy and satisfied, that makes me me.

It is my happy place. Whenever, wherever. It is home. It is the place where I know.  It is the avenue that gives me direction and purpose. It is my place in the world and the feeling that what I’ve created is something good for me and those around me. It is the way in which I know who I am and what I stand for.

This post, as long as it is, was the exercise I needed to do to reach this conclusion. It is part of the process that points me in the right direction and gives me an avenue to look toward going down as I stand at this crossroads. So really, this was more for me than for you. I honestly just needed the self-administered therapy. Although, I hope you enjoyed it in some way.

Big Stomach, Small Body

In the past 6 months, I have been seriously underestimated. On three separate occasions, the same sequence of events has occurred. And each time to the amazement of those who have underestimated me I have proven them wrong. 

The first time, I went to The Cheesecake Factory with my parents. The second time, I was with my parents again at Tucker’s Place in Soulard. And the third, I went with some friends to The Fountain on Locust.  

Each time I ordered something different, something big like 1) the Burrito Grande, 2) an 20 oz. Porterhouse steak with a baked potato aaand a salad that came out first, 3) and pesto chicken on some sort of bread, a side salad and a giant ice cream sundae called the Bearcat, respectively.

In other words…something that apparently the male waiters did not think I would ever in a million years be able to finish. 

So what did they do?

They listen to my order with a smirk on their face. They serve me my food and say, “Good luck!” as if they don’t believe I’ll actually eat the amount of food put in front of me. One guy even added a little something extra to his “kind wishes” and said, “I can’t wait to see this.”

I look to my Dad who knows what I am capable of and also has a grin of his own because on these occasions I have eaten more than him.  And each time I reply, “Well then, watch this.”

And I proceed to eat every last bite of food on my plate and still have room for dessert.

Note to male waiters: do not underestimate the power of my stomach to hold food. I may be smaller than you; I may look like a girl who would order a salad and only eat half of it before announcing “I’m so full.” But if you think these things based on my physique, you will be wrong. I will order something large from the menu if I am hungry; I wouldn’t order something that big just to waste it. I will eat it all. And you, sir, will feel simultaneously like an ass and impressed. 

Oh yes and the guy who said he couldn't wait to see this and wished me luck came back to clear my empty plate from the table and said, "I’m impressed, I didn’t think you could do it. I like a girl who can eat.”

Well, sir, then I’m your kind of girl.

Nakey Time

It has come to my attention over the past few years, especially after having moved out of my parents’ house and away to school, that some people just aren’t comfortable with their own body, especially when that body is naked.

I was raised in such a way that taught me that being naked was a natural thing – not something to be embarrassed about. You’re born naked, people, so why be embarrassed of being naked later in life? Everyone has the same parts as you (given their respective sex, still….everyone has a butt). 

Anyway, I have always been comfortable in my own skin. In fact, even as a child I was extremely confident in the way I looked, at ease with my body and enjoyed being free from the constraints of clothes. 

Perhaps, I was an eccentric child. Indeed, I was. That’s a fact. My fashion choices were unique, if questionable, but no one could accuse me of not having my own style or personality. 

As time passed and I grew older, my confidence stayed with me. I don’t recall a time when I felt awkward or as if my body was out of my control. There were no gangly or disproportioned limbs. 

The only time I ever felt out of sorts was when I hit a growth spurt and my feet grew a few sizes over a short period and I tripped a little bit more than usual but even that only lasted a few months, nothing too traumatic. Then there was the time when I realized that my boobs were coming in – helloooooo puberty – and I asked my sister what was happening….She told me I had cancer (her only big sister laugh at my expense). Thanks, Tay. 

But even those few frenzied, panicked moments were just that – moments. I didn’t have cancer and my boobs are perfectly fine. 

So beside these two occasions and the few fleeting insecurities I’ve entertained over the years, I like my body. It’s a good body. It’s mine. I’m comfortable with it.

Yet as time passed and I grew older, I discovered that not everyone felt the same. I accepted this fact quickly as I could see that some people always felt too chubby, too skinny, too short, too tall, too freckly or too pale. The theme = too something. It made sense, at least.

Then I hit high school and gym class came. Locker rooms. Changing in front of 20 other girls. Some girls were shy. I get it. Not everyone wants to change in front of a girl or a bunch of girls who they think have a better body or will judge them (the latter does happen, it seems inevitable with any more than one girl in a room). 

High school is over (huge thanks to God for letting it only last four years) and I move away to school my sophomore year.  Now, it wasn’t until my junior year that I realized something else: some people just are not comfortable with being naked. Ever. Even in the shower. By themselves. 

Me: WHAT?! Not even in the shower or by yourself in your room?! 

Friend: I’d wear a bathing suit in the shower if I could.

It’s true. Apparently, not everyone was raised the way I was or was born with the natural inclination for nudity that I was. Instead, they are like Rachel, who in the following clip had never realized how liberating it was to – Just. Be. Naked. – even by herself. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqn_lpsrNEA&feature=related

As you have probably gathered, I don’t nor have I ever had this problem with nudity. It’s true.

 I have always been the one who would change in the car before any athletic practice when there wasn’t time to run all over ducking for cover; the one who stripped her shirt off after soccer games to leave in only a sports bra; the one who walks around the house in little to no clothes; the one who would change in front of all her friends without being shy and turning around in a motion that says, “if I can’t see you, you can’t see me.” False. Everyone can still see you  and you just look like a giant goober for thinking turning your back makes you any less naked. 

My friends freshman year of high school voted in a poll while talking amongst ourselves about where we really saw each other in ten years after completing our prophecies in school that week that I would be the “most likely to become a nudist”. Thanks guys. 

Therefore, it was a little difficult for me to understand why being naked while alone or in the shower would be a problem for anyone. I mean, if you can’t be naked alone, where can you? What happens when your friend’s brother walks in on you changing when you sleep over? What happens when you get married or have sex for the first time…or any time after that?

 It seems to me that nudity is normal. It’s natural. It’s how we were born and were intended to be naked according to Genesis, that is, before Adam and Eve just totally messed that one up. 

But before you stop reading, thinking that I’m some nudist freak. What I’m really attempting to get you to grapple with is that – it’s not about being naked. 

It’s about being comfortable with yourself, with how you look, with being even slightly exposed for the world to see because the power of your mind, your attitude and your feelings toward yourself and your body and your self-concept are all intricately intertwined. 

So when your thoughts sound something like, “I’m ugly. I’m too fat. I’m too freckly. I’m too this or too that. I hate my body. I hate the way I look. Why can’t I be/look more like (your envy’s name here)?” then your body will reflect those things and so will the mirror, and the scale, and other people’s perception of you.

But when your thoughts are more like this: “I’m attractive. I like my body. My body is beautiful in its own unique way and I like that it isn’t shaped exactly like the next person. I feel pretty/hot/handsome/attractive today” then your body will reflect those things and so will the mirror, and the scale, and other people’s perception of you. 

There is very little that is more attractive than a confident person. The better you feel about yourself, the more attractive you become to yourself and those around you. 

This is one reason I don’t have a problem changing in front of people or being naked. I like my body. It’s mine. I take care of it the best I can. And if you don’t like it, well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.

So be happy with your body. Be comfortable being naked, even if it’s only in the shower or changing in your room by yourself. Or go crazy like Rachel; embrace your newfound liberation by singing into your hairbrush naked in the comfort of your own home.

I know I do because for this girl – alone time = nakey time.