Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Brief Moments of Clarity

 

As I drove home from the hospital, my heart felt a bit heavy and my frustration spilled over. My good friend Sarah has been fighting for over a year to get rid of a colon infection that has repeatedly had her in the hospital, the most recent episode starting during her visit with me in Durham. I drove up with her to Washington, DC, which was already part of the plan, but the night we arrived, we checked her into the emergency room.

It’s so heart breaking and frustrating for me to see her in pain, exhausted but still so patient and positive. I’ve spent the last few days sitting in her hospital room, robed and gloved, chatting and trying to just be a distraction from her situation. I’ve delayed my bus to New York City until Friday, when her parents will get back into town. I’ve brought magazines and a silly matching game, a stuffed animal from her apartment and some other treats; but it’s just so inadequate! Today she received the news that the doctors will try something new tomorrow, but she won’t be able to go home for another two days at least.

Last night, as I drove to her apartment after a day spent at the hospital, I felt myself coming to a realization. Actually, two realizations. First: now’s the time to have the courage to do what I ultimately decide I really want to do. That might seem silly, but lately decision procrastination has been the name of my game, as if the moment I make a decision about what to do next, I’ll regret it. It’s ridiculous! We can never know when some random colon issue will pop up, or some other health or personal or family issue for that matter. So instead of being afraid to make the wrong decision, it dawned on me that it’s time to have courage to be all right with making a decision.

Not that I’m in a hurry to make a decision, but at least delaying it should be deliberate instead of out of fear.

The second realization is somewhat unrelated. As I puttered on my computer at the hospital, I chatted briefly with a friend and found out that she’s just become pregnant. She’s a few years younger than me, married two years ago now. That has sort of been a trend amongst my friends. I guess I’m at the age where that’s what generally happens. For some reason, after finishing my chat with this now-pregnant friend, I felt completely deflated and unhappy. I’m not married and have no prospects for it. Sure, I think about the possibility of getting pregnant and having a kid by myself, but that’s not really my preferred plan.

As I drove home, the second realization hit mid-rant to myself: “…always different from my peer group, and never seem to follow any of the normal paths… oh.” And there it was. No, I’ve never exactly seen myself as the same as everyone else, with the same aspirations or goals. And no, I haven’t exactly followed the expected route in my life thus far. At times these facts make me proud and at others they make me feel so… apart. Last night, driving, I had the briefest moment of clarity: just because society raises us to expect and strive towards certain ‘life benchmarks’ doesn’t mean those are MY life benchmarks! And that’s ok!

All right, that’s pretty cliché, but for that briefest of moments, I actually believed it. And that belief, that certainty that it truly is ok to follow a completely different route, lifted the curtain of self-doubt for a bright-eyed peek of what life might be.

This morning, the curtain was lowered again and I squinted through the gauze of fear and uncertainty and the ‘get a steady job, find a husband, have a family’ mentality we’re all trained to embrace.

If I can only grab that certain feeling and hold it close, know it and not just lip-synch the words with no conviction, perhaps decision making about my future will feel less scary, less intense. It’s going to take a courage that’s hard to dig up, though.

--Z

Sunday, December 18, 2011

As I Went Walking

 

IMG_8637She looked calm. She looked proud. And somehow, she looked furious. The American flag she held rippled in the wind. When one policeman yanked on her arm to try to get her onto the sidewalk, her expression barely changed as she easily stepped back to her spot on the street.

From my spot on the sidewalk, I watched the chaos ensue with eyes wide and heart pounding. I understood perfectly that for the first time in my life, I was witnessing civil disobedience, raw, live. It wasn’t the positive exciting experience, nor the negative terrifying experience, that I once imagined it might be. It was, simply put, gut-churning.

I’d started the day meeting Frank, from Occupy Durham, and driving out to meet the Walkupy marchers on the road. Last night I went a bit overboard at Food Lion on my way home from a day of driving packs and feeding the marchers. When you meet these guys, it’s not storybook. It’s not inherently awe-inspiring. It’s… real. It’s here and now and real. And so when I realized that the one way I could help them on the road was to feed them, well… I went overboard. Pop tarts. Granola bars. All the makings for twelve full-sized sub sandwiches.

Anyway, Frank and I drove out in separate cars, stopping at a Hardee’s to pick up their packs and Turtle, a marcher who volunteered to ride forward to Raleigh to watch the packs and pave the way for the arrival of the marchers to North Carolina’s capital city. On the way to Raleigh we fed the marchers, who thanked us, grabbed what they could and kept walking. They had covered eighteen miles and had eight more to go. The mood seemed upbeat, positive, determined.

Fast forward. The marchers reached Raleigh’s Mordecai Park. A crowd of Occupy Raleigh and Occupy Chapel Hill folks met them with cheers and hugs and excitement. After some mingling, the crowd moved forward as one, ready to march through downtown Raleigh. As I walked along, marched even, in time to the various chants, I blinked and looked around me. What am I doing? I thought. Where am I?

“We. Are. The ninety-nine percent! We. Are. The ninety-nine percent!”

“Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! Show me what revolution looks like! This is what a revolution looks like!”

“Whose streets? OUR streets!”

I was questioning what I believed. I haven’t got that conviction, yet. That heartfelt knowledge that I was involved in something worth getting in trouble for. It’s the feeling I’ve been looking for for a long time: the feeling of knowing something, for absolute certain. I’m fascinated by the Occupy movement and agree wholeheartedly with some of the things they’ve done or said. Not everything, though, and not with that absolute certainty.

As these questions coursed through me, these doubts and fears, I passed the first cop car. The chant changed immediately. “The police! Are! The ninety-nine percent!” The cop inside gave us a dirty look as he muttered into his radio. At the next intersection, a cop car blocked the cross walk. Like a stream, we flowed gently by, chanting, singing, and nervously getting cameras ready, unsure of what might happen. Within a few blocks, there were two, then three, then four police cars driving alongside the crowd. The majority of the crowd was in a single lane of the two-lane, one-way city street. Cars had previously been passing IMG_8648by, honking in solidarity or in annoyance, but flowing freely as we purposely kept to just one lane. With the police cars there, the entire street was blocked.

Sarah, holding the marcher’s American flag, stood alone in a sea of people, a look of intensity and steadfastness, of frustration, in her eyes.

Or maybe that’s just how I felt.

When the policemen couldn’t make her move, they tore the flag from her hands and tossed it to the ground. They deftly turned her arm behind her, cuffed her and dragged her between them over to a squad car. Her shoulders, bones shifting under the skin, worked as she grimaced and said, loud enough to be heard over the shouting, angry crowd, “Ow, ow, ow!”

IMG_8653Suddenly my arms were full of backpacks, phones and items the Walkupiers didn’t want “lost.” I consolidated all the gear and then watched as one after another, the brothers followed their sister into the street. Chants of “Shame, shame,” and “The whole world is watching!” continued as the police worked at eradicating the threat of marchers spreading the Occupy message. The prisoner’s van swallowed one after another of them, until six of the eleven marchers were gone.

The next six hours raced by, with Occupy Raleigh rallying, calling their lawyers, collecting bail money and gathering in front of the magistrate’s office. Coffee and donuts, chants and mic checks, the continuously dropping temperatures, all blended into the reactions of the five remaining marcher in my mind: Owen, turned inward and focusing on something in his hands, asking me quietly to keep him updated; Kid, hysterical and every inch his name, alternately ranting on his phone and stalking around aimlessly; Cologino, watching and chatty; Nathan, positive, level-headed and smiling as always; and Ronnie, morose but sweet and holding tight to the flag he’d rescued from the street. I answered the phones Garth and Bo had left with me, tweeting the events and doing my best to organize bail. Somehow, I’d turned into a point person for the marchers. I felt like a fraud until it dawned on me that I was continuing my role of march supporter.

Six individuals volunteered to sign the bail bondsmen. They were from Occupy Raleigh and Occupy Chapel Hill. One was a wanderer recently returned from a trip in Mexico and touring the country’s occupations. And one was from Occupy Durham. I felt no doubt as I signed the paperwork in the bail bondsman’s office.

No doubt whatsoever.