Who I Am

When reality melts away in that transition from wakefulness to sleeping, particularly towards that glorious destination of a very much anticipated nap, there is a very special opportunity. Having happily surrendered conscious, rational, ordered thought, one may be lucky enough to hitch a ride on a mind given free rein to mosey and drift and sift through back burner thoughts on its way down to the Land of Nod. This is a very picturesque ride. Seriously. It’s a trip.

Today my trip detoured. 

Lights off, jammies on (it was a very serious nap), cool sheets, soft pillow… aaaahhhhhh… 

As I let go and allowed my mind to sift through the day (all the faster to get to the sleeping, I thought), these were some of my landmarks:

• Today, I sunburned in 10 minutes of being outside with SPF 70+
• Today, I was asked, yet again, to reach high things for those who can’t
• Today, I am… um… “welcoming” womanhood’s monthly blessing
• Today, I talked about following Jesus
• Today, I talked about being homechooled
• Today, I thought about being an INFJ
• Today, I thought about my body shape
• Today, I replayed yesterday’s conversation about highly sensitive people

And somewhere in this amorphous melange, a thread emerged. Many of these things are rare. Two percent of people are natural redheads (at the mercy of the slightest UV rays), two percent of women are 5’11”, 1-2% of people are INFJs, 1.6% of Americans were homeschooled when I was, and so on. The things that had and still have a very significant impact on how I physically, emotionally, and intellectually interact with the world are not common. Not by a long shot.

As much as I deeply desired sleep, my pesky left brain perked right up and scrounged for a pencil to start calculating. If the probability of randomly meeting another natural readhead is 2:100, and the probability of randomly meeting another 5’11” woman is 2:100, then the probability of randomly meeting another 5’11” natural redhead woman is [(0.02)(0.02)=0.0004] 4:10,000. What?? I guess that explains why I’ve never met one. 

In this vein, the probability that I will randomly run into a highly sensitive, INFJ, Protestant Christian, homeschooled, redhead girl with my height and body shape is… drumrollllllllllll… two in a BILLION. And that’s on a good day. Rounding up. It’s actually 1.9456 in a billion. But who’s counting. 

(Or, given the low end of the spectrum, 7 in 10 billion. But now we’re just splitting hairs.) 

Daaaaaaaaang.

This doesn’t take into account likes and interests, hobbies, favorite appetizers— just those significant factors that were decided for me by parents or genetics. Nor did I include IQ in my calculations, since it’s sometimes considered linked to INFJs, HSPs, and, to some extent, height (Weird, I know. I just learned that. See— for example— here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1130466). Everything else should be independent, except, probably, for Christianity and homeschooling— there must be a link there. Even so, that would knock me down only a couple orders of magnitide, still leaving me well in the ballpark of 2:millions. 

No WONDER I feel different!

I live and operate in a world unknown by my friends, relatives, and colleagues. It’s a sunburny world where “long” skirts are always too short, a world blaring with cacauphonic detail, a world with very little formative experience in peer relations. Granted, if I did, miraculously, happen to stumble upon this second needle in the human haystack, it would likely creep me the heck out. An Amanda from another dimension. So I am by no means looking for her. I am content to view the world alone through my unique Amand-o-Vision. But… the numbers, at least, help me to understand why alone can feel so… alone. 

This space is my chrysalis.

Anyone assessing this blog right now would not be blamed for dismissing it as a simple quote stream. This has been one of the yellow bricks on the road to Oz, where The Wizard shall grant me sanity.

The inception of this space lay in necessity, as my mind was seriously threatening to explode, spewing a mess of crazy over a rather large radius. Much work has brought the needle of the pressure guage closer, at least, to normal, but I’m not nearly there yet. With the energy it took to rein in my reeling mind, there was none left for cohesive, narrative thought. A few weeks of withdrawl and headwork allowed me to graduate to short bursts of pithy outside insight. A few weeks more and I am processing longer treatsies like Rilke’s letters. 

Apathy and despair have taken a few faltering steps back. A week or so of treatment gave me at least one good day recently. After 8 hours at work, I found myself coming home and doing 5 loads of laundry, changing the guest bed, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming the living room, steam cleaning the hall carpet, generally tidying the house… and I don’t remember what else. It was such a difference, feeling… able.

I also made a bird pillow. I consider it a good sign that I’m willing to create again. That I’m willing to pick up that part of my brain, to believe that I have a vision worth bringing to light, to make something that will make me happy, and then feeling empowered enough to actually do it. It’s small, but it’s a start.

I am weak. I am rebuilding strength. I am not taking it lightly. This is tremendously important, and I mean to do it correctly, learn the vitally important lessons, and live the rest of my life better for it. Here’s hoping it works.

Though an army besiege me, 
       my heart will not fear; 
       though war break out against me, 
       even then will I be confident…

 I am still confident of this: 
       I will see the goodness of the LORD 
       in the land of the living.

Wait for the LORD; 
       be strong and take heart 
       and wait for the LORD.

I have had this on my fridge for years: 

I beg you… to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Love the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…

                                        (Rainer Maria Rilke)

And that’s what I’ve been doing over the last month or so. Accepting this big current unknown, and hoping to figure it out and live my way into an answer. And today, Rilke himself has given me an answer:

You have had many and great sadnesses, which passed. And you say that this passing was hard for you and put you out of sorts. But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point in your being, undergone a change while you were sad? …Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outerworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown… I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because… we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there anymore— it is already in our blood. And we do not learn what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered. We cannot say who has come, perhaps we shall never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much the more unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much the more will it be our destiny…