Community

You guys.

My hope for you, reading out there -- my Christmas wish, as it were -- is that you live among people as giving and generous and wonderful as the people I do. (Some of you? Are the people that this is about, so ... it's gonna get schmoopy up in here and I just need you to accept it.)

When I lived in North Carolina, I was lonely. I'd put myself in time out (it seemed reasonable) and I got some really good things out of that, like an amazing relationship with my parents which, as an adult, is kind of a big deal. You don't always get the chance to dive into your emotional closet, pull out the ugly and damaged bits, and mend them, but I did; as a result, I don't regret that time in any way. It was amazing and necessary.

But I didn't have a lot of friends, which was strange to me because I grew up with a community of people who were just ... there. Every time you turned around, there they were. All through preschool and elementary school and high school and in some cases? College! And grad school! You were never without your secondary family.  So suddenly finding myself without that was weird. Weird, and unbalancing.

Fortunately, there was Facebook. People who are all "social media is bad blah blah blah" don't know how much it can save you when you feel alone. I didn't have friends that I could go to dinner with, necessarily, but I had people I could talk to in an instant. I could feel like I was a part of things, even though I was nine hundred miles away.

Finally, I decided that I needed to come back to New England, and settle in my neck of New Hampshire. I felt like I belonged here.

And y'all -- you welcomed me. People I didn't KNOW welcomed me. The community embraced me. They didn't have to, but they did. Here, when someone knows someone who knows you? They offer you the shirt off their back.

So maybe I'm crying again (it's the first time today, though, so I'm winning), because ever since I said "Hey, I lost my job" the community here has been falling over themselves to help me. I've had offers of money, I've had people helping me to network, I've had suggestions and job applications and kindness and love and hugs pouring in from every direction that I look.  I anticipated sympathy. I did not anticipate this level of love and assistance and involvement.

I have the best life, job or no job. I have the best friends. And I have the best community, which is mostly right here but also? Spreads down to North Carolina and Florida and Texas. It goes up to Maine.  It extends to Japan.

I can't thank any of you enough for the love and help you have sent my way, so I will just promise to pay it forward.

Thank you, my beloved community.

Thank you.

Damn You, Hobby Lobby

"Have you ever been to a Hobby Lobby," my mom asked. "Is there even one near you?"

"There's one in Rochester," I said, "but you know I won't go there. I disagree with their politics."

My mom sighed. She knows that I will boycott like mad when provoked. Chill-fil-a? I love their sandwiches but I have amazing willpower when it comes to avoiding them. (Although, true story, I live in the frozen North now, so it's hardly difficult not to eat them when the nearest franchise is an hour away.) Wal-Mart? Not if I can help it.

"They have evvvvvverything, Yellie," she said. "Like, everything."

"Oh well," I said.

*****

Fast forward: I had a shopping trip planned with my best friend, but we didn't know where we wanted to go. Out of the blue, she asked: "Have you ever been to Hobby Lobby?"

She hadn't been either.

"No," I said, "but I hear they have everything."

Just like that, it was decided.

*****

Before you decide I'm a total asshole: I didn't buy anything. Before you decide I'm NOT a total asshole, I have to confess: I didn't buy anything because I was broke. I WANTED to buy things. I just couldn't.

*****

Hobby Lobby is like Disneyland (if Disneyland didn't have a lot of small children in it and instead was about four acres of stuff) in that it is magical, but also causes almost immediate sensory overload. The place is neatly organized, but you seriously need a map. They should hand those out. Also, there are SO many things in the store that your eyeballs don't know where to look. I felt like I'd had a triple shot of espresso: completely jittery and unhinged as I was confronted with aisle after aisle of really incredible (and sometimes outrageously tacky) things.  Additionally, the store wears down your resistance in much the same way Disneyland does. As an adult at Disneyland, you may suddenly find yourself wearing mouse ears and posing with an adult dressed like a cartoon character and smiling like a lunatic. As an adult at Hobby Lobby, you might find yourself standing in front of a giant metal octopus, nearly salivating over the idea of how amazing that would look in your bathroom and in complete denial of the fact that it weighs fifty pounds and is, in fact, wider than your bathroom door.

(I can neither confirm nor deny the octopus thing.)

(Also, as I mentioned, I didn't buy anything. Especially not a giant metal, super cool octopus.)

(At least, not yet.)

*****

I have not returned to the Hobby Lobby. Not because I don't want to, but because I do. SO BADLY. I want to go there when I'm not broke and buy all of the really nifty things that I saw ... the octopus! The shelves made out of industrial pipe that will look amazing in my (converted mill building, slightly industrial) apartment! The blown glass cuttlefish! THE THINGS AND THE STUFF!

Unfortunately, I also really REALLY want to hold on to my principles. I need those. They're important.

I just don't know if they're more important than a metal octopus.

Rewind: Love. Story.

This originally posted on 7/25/14, and it's one of my favorite things of everything I've ever written. I just love that Fella. 

The first time I fell in love, I was fifteen. There was a boy -- a lovely, amazing boy -- that I went to high school with who stole my heart.

He had no idea this was the case. He thought we were friends.

We were friends, but I loved him. I loved him in a way that I had never loved anyone before or since; it was wholly unselfish. I just wanted him to be happy. If I had learned that in order for him to be happy I would have to step in front of a moving vehicle, I would have done it. I simply loved him.

To this day, if you said this boy's name to my mom, she'd say, "Oh Yellie. You loved him," and everyone in the room would nod as if to say, it was so sweet and so ... not happening.

Because as it turns out? Life is not a love story.

Except, of course, for when it is.

*****

The good thing about being fifteen (and anyone who's dealt with fifteen year olds on a regular basis will probably agree with me here) is that it's temporary. You grow out of it and move on to other, moderately obnoxious ages like eighteen and twenty-one and thirty.

The better thing about being fifteen -- and every age before or after -- is  that you carry pieces of that self with you. Sometimes those pieces are large and become major portions of your character. Sometimes they're little slivers and mementos that you take out of your pocket and run your thumb over. Either way, you have them.

As we all do, I outgrew being fifteen, but my sliver -- my lovely memento -- was the memory of loving that boy. I went on, of course, to fall in love with other people because that's what you do. Relationships. Breakups. Love, with all of its different faces. It's a thing.

If I occasionally took the time to remember that boy and my fifteen year old self, it was with a sense of amazement, that I had ever thought that love could be that simple, and the wish that maybe somehow? It could be that simple.

And then? I'd throw myself into the next thing.

*****

That lovely boy and I became friends as adults. Twenty years had passed. Things had happened -- marriages, children, relocations, careers. Twenty years is a long time. He was actually more delightful than I had remembered him being -- funnier, more thoughtful.

This annoyed me a bit, to be honest, because it seemed that my fifteen year old self had more discernment than my adult self when it came to people.

Well, I thought, he's changed some. So have you.

So. Friends. Friends from afar, mostly, via the internet because -- you know, all of the life stuff and busy-ness that comes with it. We saw each other now and again, the way you do, but not often.

The thing was, though, that when I did see him, fifteen year old Yellie would tap me on my no-longer fifteen year old shoulder. "You totally love him," she'd say, flipping back her overly permed hair.

"Of course I love him, stupid. He's my friend."

"Yeah right," she'd smirk.

I'd think, I really can't do this again. Who does this?

Until the day that he told me that he was sorry, this might screw up our friendship, but he was in love with me.

Which, to be honest, made me want to punch him. That only lasted about three seconds, before I confessed to the same, but still.

*****

The last time I fell in love, I was thirty-eight. In an unlikely chain of events, the first person I loved turned out to be the best, most amazing person I've ever loved.

Of course -- and don't think that I don't point this out regularly -- I figured it out when I was fifteen. It just took him some time to catch up.

Life is a story.

Sometimes, it's a love story.