Last week, my best friend, Andy, and I visited Olympic National Park.
We spent three days there, cradled amongst nature’s beauty, rocked by the hand of God. We climbed piles of driftwood and traipsed through wet, unyielding sand. We listened to the ocean’s roaring shush, the rocks clinking as the waves returned to the sea. We worshipped moss, peeling off our gloves to rub it between our fingers; we pressed our bodies against the rough bark of silent, stoic trees.
On our last day, elk crossed the road in front of us. Their heads turned toward us, their warm breath coalescing with the early morning mist. We scrambled to film them, to click our tongues in greeting, to give way to awe. In only moments, they were gone, reabsorbed into the dense forest, their snowy hoof prints the only evidence of their presence, their immensity, their godliness. Later, in the Hoh Rainforest, our hot tears of wonderment dripped amongst the scintillating snow.
During a quiet moment of the trip, Andy read aloud a thought exercise from a newsletter she’d received:
Are you someone who looks back at your own life as one long, slowly unfolding, interconnected novel, recognizing the ‘you’ of now as the ‘you’ of then? Or, do you consider life to be structured in chapters, essentially a la carte vignettes that exist independently of one another? You may carry pieces of these former lives with you, but you and the old ‘you’ might as well have a different set of fingerprints.
“The first one,” I answered almost immediately. While I’ve grown and shifted and changed in a multitude of ways, I find it impossible to separate my current self from the many versions of “me” that once existed.
Conveniently, the newsletter had a follow-up question:
What has remained a consistent throughline in your own perception of yourself? Stake a claim in something that is, infallibly, you. Maybe it’s stubbornness, or dogged optimism, or road rage, a disdain for olives, a love for nectarines. Cite a specific.
A week after returning from Olympic, I’m still thinking about it. The question feels especially pertinent because I turn thirty on May 30th—my golden birthday. So, what makes me unequivocally “me”? Well…
Indelibly and eternally…
I am a reader. A person who becomes so deeply absorbed in a story that she can no longer hear the call of her name. Someone raised by books; mothered by books; soothed by text on a page. I am nurtured by the cadence of unchanging story; the feeling of paper between my fingertips; the quiet stir of a newly flipped page.
I am a writer. I dance amongst semi-colons and em-dashes; process experience through words; wake in the night with prose slick against my tongue. I am someone who remembers moments by describing them again and again. I suck on words, contemplating their sweetness, shifting them from cheek to cheek like a piece of hard candy. Writing is my solace and my freedom.
I am unabashedly silly. I speak in different voices for emphasis. I quip. I laugh throughout the day and into the night. I enter rooms already grinning, a belly laugh at the ready. I like to jump and skip and play. I exclaim “Wow!” at the smallest of wonders. I tease and kid, razz, and banter. I am joyfully joyous; a cheerful hymn.
I carry a sadness that I have never been able to put down. It ebbs and flows, but remains steadfast. It belongs to me—is a part of me—in a way that is painful to witness, and so I have spent my life hiding it. Fighting it tooth and nail. It is not an “old friend” nor a mortal enemy. I learn painful lessons from its sharp edges. I crack it open and it pours into me. I struggle to surface, though I have never been a strong swimmer.
I enjoy it when the juice of a ripe peach drips down my chin. I like pressing my nose against their fuzz, inhaling deeply, and anticipating the first bite. I like when my fingers are sticky and I have to suck the pulp from their tips. I like piling my peaches together in a bowl so that I can absentmindedly pick one up as I pass, roll it in my fingers, inhale, bite down, and savor the burst.
I am insatiably curious. I want to touch, taste, see, and feel everything. I frequently grieve the idea that I will not be able to read every book, live in every country, master every language, and love every person. When Zadie Smith said her greatest regret is “Not being able to live two completely different lives simultaneously,” I felt it so deeply that I inhaled sharply, unthinkingly touching my hand to my heart. Often, I feel that I am a multitude of feelings and dreams and desires. I am always willing to pour myself into something new.
And more, and more, and more…
Now it’s your turn. Are you the same person you’ve always been? What about you has never changed?
xx