maple to macklem.

About half a mile down Maple Avenue, the house on the right side of the street with the gravel driveway was relatively quiet. That is, until the grandchildren of the couple who lived there came to visit–myself being one of them. Maple was the place I learned to ride a bike. The gravel driveway was not friendly to the training wheels, but the grass sufficed until my grandfather would finish up with the little jobs around the house that my grandmother would ask him to take care of. He would walk out to the front yard, then we would set off up Maple, across Elm, and down Ash to the old bank or to the Post Office. 

He walked, clad in his blue jeans and denim buttondown, a Canadian tuxedo before either of us knew the phrase. His blue collar reflected the sturdiness of his shirt and the calluses on his hands from years of sheet metal work. He retired sometime in the first year or two of my life, so he was there to watch me learn to ride a bike–pink with tassels coming out of the handlebars–and to take me fishing.

One of his old denim work shirts that hangs in my closet is a tangible reminder of scabbed knees from bike rides, fishing rods in the back of his truck, and of early morning cartoons. 

As I finish up the first week of my last semester of undergrad, I’ve been trying to remember the days of scraped knees and tasseled handlebars. In some full-circle, reflective, passage-of-time-infecting train of thought, my brain has been feeling extremely nostalgic this week. One of my classes is a Creative Nonfiction class, in which I wrote the first few paragraphs of this post during a writing exercise. Moving through the first few classes for that course, I’ve been pushed to think about some of my memories. In turn, that has tripped my brain into spiraling about the changes in my life. 

Another part of this week that’s been pushing the spiraling process was Wednesday, the 15th. I wrote not too long (maybe a few months) ago about one of my friends who passed away in August. His birthday was the 15th, and it was a pretty rough day, to be honest. I went through classes and work and socializing like it was any other day, trying to squash the grieving part of myself with normalcy. I ended up going to see Nosferatu again, this time at the Kentucky Theater, which was a good opportunity for me to not think about it. As many who have experienced grief know, not thinking about it doesn’t help. 

We got back to the apartment that night, and I had this moment where I was like, wow I really need to journal. So I did. I’ll spare the details, but my eyes were leaking tears like they hadn’t in months. I got into bed, thinking once again I could ignore the sad feelings washing over me. Once again, I was wrong. I turned to my roommate and just asked for help, which she gave. This whole thing has taught me to ask for a hug during breakdowns, not to just squeeze my eyes shut and pretend tears are not making my frog from Build–A-Bear damp (though Mr. Kiwi has been there for me through thick and thin). 

I know this is a bit of a downer, so I apologize for that. This blog has seen many moments of my life, but most of them have been happy memories or sharing something a little deeper and moving on. I think that now, I am at the stage where I just want to share. Not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that I know other people experience moments of grief and doubt and feeling like they’ll combust. I feel like our culture has done a great job of opening up about the mental health conversation, but at the same time, it feels like grief rarely has a seat at that table. 

I have no answers for how to get past it. Or if it’s possible to fully move on when someone you love dies. But what I do know is that we can’t traverse through that alone. We need a roommate (or three) to talk to. Or maybe a mentor, a boss, a classmate. I’m not saying we should just go around dumping all of our emotions on people, but finding someone trustworthy to talk to changes the game. 

So now that I’ve gone against my own advice and dumped to many people on the internet (hopefully all friends), here is a little week recap and life update!

I mentioned that I am in my last semester of undergrad. It’s sobering, but SO exciting at the same time. My brain keeps switching between panic mode, that in four months I’ll have to have something lined up; excitement, that in four months I will be a college graduate; sad, that I won’t live with my close friends anymore; and like a thousand other emotions. 

A lot of the time, I have to remember that I’ve made my way through seven semesters, which was no easy feat at times. In the same vein as my last paragraph, it’s been really hard at times but it also provided some of my best memories, friendships, and life changes. I have grown a great deal over the past four years–some of which in ways that made me more headstrong, made me more compassionate, brought me closer to God. 

That’s something I don’t often share on the internet–my faith in God. I don’t know how to write about it, because like most (if not all) people, I’ve dealt with a lot of doubt and struggled through what Christian faith looks like to me. I mean, it's relatively recent (past year and a half or so) that I've even been in a good place with him consistently. I won’t go into too much detail, but over the past week, I’ve found myself turning to God in random moments more often than normal. When I was growing up, and even when I’m home during breaks, my mom always reminds me to pray before bed. I try to squeeze out a quick prayer in bed, as my eyes are closed and yearning for sleep, and my mind is not at its best for coherently talking to God. 

Even a quick “Praise God” when I witness something good, like random fellow students on the green laughing at something, or a really cool-looking cloud, becomes a moment where I connect to him in some way. During a couple classes, I’d find my brain zoning out and I would just say a quick prayer, then lock back in to the lecture. 

I’m not quite sure why I’m sharing about my faith now. I feel like I may have made small nods to it before in other posts, but as for now, I don’t know why I wrote all of that. I know that it will alienate some people, because reading something like that would have made me turn up my nose at a post just a couple years ago. Heck, I fight that urge nowadays. Regardless, my faith is slowly climbing its way back up my hierarchy of priorities, and I thought I would share.

More might come about that in the future, but we’ll see. 

Okay, but back to this week. I am taking a really good set of classes, even for some that are required for all students and I don’t find the most enjoyable. I’m taking Rise of the Novel (a course where we explore the evolution of novels, beginning in the 1600s), a public speaking class, Creative Nonfiction (which I already mentioned), film history, and an online theology class. I’m also starting an independent advanced study of Milton next week, which I’m a bit nervous for. However, tons of other people have made it through Milton, and I took a class on him last semester, so it'll be fine. 

I’m going to try to be more consistent with my writing this semester, but I’m writing/editing for our school paper again and I’ll be doing a ton of writing for most of my classes, so I make no promises. 

I’m also realizing that this blog post is a thousand pages long (give or take), so I’m going to abruptly end so I can get back to the homework I’ve been taking a break from. 

Thank you for reading, as always. I love to talk to you all, even if you don’t love to listen (read?). Have a good long weekend! Talk to you next time.