Human Things
Part 1: A Personal List About Being Human that I Wrote During a Sleepless 10-Hour-Middle-of-the-Night-Layover in the Fiji Airport
Written between August 7th and August 14th during my first week in Hanmer Springs
When I left for my holiday in Japan, I felt like something was ending and something was starting at the exact same time. When I boarded the plane leaving Christchurch, it was like there was a storm brewing in my brain. Japan was the final calm before it started in full force, and since returning to New Zealand I’ve (mentally) been in a million different places.
I’ve played out endless narratives and scenarios in my head about the way my life could go to the point where none of them felt real anymore. My emotions have been all over the place (I think I’ve felt almost everything in the span of a week — exhausting), I’m a little too viscerally aware of who I am, and the word lost keeps popping up; in my brain, in other people’s mouths, in signs that I pass on the road, in songs I’m listening to. Lost is how I’ve felt the majority of the past couple of weeks. I keep asking myself: what’s going on?
I wrote an essay for a class in October 2017 about a seasonal patterns in my life (if you want to read it, click here). In the essay I mentioned how the transitions from old seasons into new ones sometimes take a while, and that they may be messy and they’re hard to see in the moment. I realize now that I’m in a transition. I’m leaving behind the season that I suppose you could call the “first half of my time in New Zealand”. It’s been a social season, a season of new things and extraverted energy. A season of growing, but not reflecting on that growth until later. A season of fresh people in fresh places; it was everybody’s First Few Months in New Zealand.
It was a great season, but it had to finish so something else could start. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what the hell my problem was over the past couple weeks. But I get it now, I’m moving on to something new and different. It’s just an adjustment, that’s all.
I also feel like something within me got unblocked while I was in Japan. It’s hard to explain; I feel more in touch with myself than ever before. I feel like I’m getting better at communicating and showing up as myself, not as what I perceive the people around me would like me to show up as. That’s been one of my biggest challenges for as long as I can remember. I was pro at being a chameleon. It’s so good to feel authentic in the majority of my interactions.
It’s been a very hard, but very good (at the core), few weeks.
All that to say, I think the beginning of this was marked by a particularly vulnerable and down-the-rabbit-hole journal entry that I made on 1.5 hours of sleep during a layover in Fiji on the way to Japan. I think I wrote it at 7 am, but I’d been up for about 6 hours already, stumbling around and trying to find a good napping spot (I didn’t find one).
In my journal, I wrote about how the past few months of my life have been the happiest and most real-feeling that I’ve experienced in recent memory. The closest thing I had back home to this were the brief moments of what I called “happiness-clarity,” which you could also describe as a deep sense of peace and belonging, that would pop up when I was doing the most human things.
Then I just began to write down different times when I’ve felt that feeling. And that’s what I want to share here. This is not an exhaustive list; even as I transcribe them from my journal to here I can think of many more. This is just what my tired brain pulled out of my memory to comfort me at this particular time.
(Some names have been omitted bc I don’t need to expose everyone I’ve ever interacted with, even though these are all good things)
Some Truly Human Moments:
When Emily and Clare and I sat on their balcony talking.
When I would go on long walks alone in the countryside and reality would slip away for just a moment and I would feel like I could walk anywhere.
When Sam and I sat in his car in the snow behind his apartment for like an hour and talked about all kinds of life things.
When, in the middle of crazy turbulent emotions, I feel this deep sense of love and appreciation for myself, despite my imperfections; the same way I feel love for other people.
That entire conversation with ____ that I cannot remember at all, and our kiss and “you are a really good person.”
Laughing so much that everything is funny and I’m crying and I can’t even talk to save my life – Rachel and our Instagram feeds, Aumama and I in my apartment, that one Salt Fork game night, etc.
The way texts from Abbey make me feel.
Writing the speech for Aubrey’s wedding and really appreciating how important we are to each other and that we’ll always be friends and how happy that makes me.
The types of conversations I have with Victoria that I cannot have with anyone else.
A really, really good kiss with someone really, really cute.
Being a total unknown stranger and making eye contact with people and knowing that once I leave we’ll never see each other again.
Swimming in the fucking ocean.
That hug from Ben.
When I think about how most pain and struggle is universal – we’re all in the same boat and that is wildly powerful in a way.
Looking at new and stunningly beautiful landscapes.
When people tell me that they feel the same or that something I said resonated with them.
DANCING. ALONE. Preferably in my kitchen.
Whenever I see the Monkees live.
How I felt when ____ and I slow-danced at that party.
The absolute beauty of and connection I feel to the television shows Avatar: The Last Airbender and Lost.
Old school Owl City after a long time not listening to him.
I closed my entry with this:
I haven’t had wifi for about nine hours now – this airport only lets you have one free hour and I’m here for…ten hours.
I was wondering what to do – what did people do when they were alone and traveling before wifi? I guess they think things like this. They worked through things.
We talk about how our lifestyle of extreme connection with everything at all times has led to a disconnect with ourselves. I think that’s at definitely at least 70% true. I’m thankful for phones and facebook because without them being away from my friends and family would be a lot more difficult for me. At the same time though, this always-knowing-what-everyone-else-is-doing state of existence makes it easy to think deeply about everything and everyone but ourselves. This list might not have manifested the way it did if I’d had wifi at that airport, and it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written in my journal. So, keep in touch with yourself, write down the Human moments. We have a lot going on inside our heads. Each of us has a whole world in there. Recognize it as often as you can, because that’s kind of the whole point of all of this “being alive” thing.
Part 2: Thinking About My Grandma
August 14th was the two-year anniversary of my grandma’s death. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, and I remembered that the day after she died I wrote a eulogy for her that I had wanted to read at her funeral. I ended up not reading it, because I didn’t think I could get through it without crying in front of everyone. But now I’m ready to revisit it.
When I sat down to write what I wanted to say today, I wasn’t sure how to start. I wanted to be sure I covered everything and that I communicated how much my grandma’s life impacted mine. Our lives only overlapped for 22 years, but for me that was the entirety of the time I’ve been alive, I’ve only known a life with her in it.
Grandma was one of the few people who I felt really understood me. I’ve often felt misunderstood, from my childhood even into adulthood, but whenever I would voice things to Grandma, she would look at me and really listen. The way she took the time to get to know me for who I was, and not what I could be or what I should be, was something that I have had a difficult time finding in other people.
Grandma and I were basically complete opposites, I’ve done things that she would never do, but I never doubted for one moment that she was my number one supporter. No matter my choices, Grandma never responded in a way that made me doubt my self-worth, and she never made me feel bad about myself. In fact, it was the opposite. She always had something to say that made me feel good about myself, even if my choice would not have been hers. That’s something I can see more clearly stepping back now and looking at the brief time our lives intersected.
Grandma was one of the most open-minded people I’ve ever known. She was the embodiment of unconditional love and acceptance, while also holding onto the beliefs that were important to her. She never judged anybody, she never said anything hurtful or unkind that I can remember, and I’ve always thought of her as an authentic example of what it means to be a Christian person who lives life with a focus on love.
Our conversations often turned into serious or deep subjects, especially if Sam was participating in the conversation too, and Grandma always kept up. She was very quick – nothing got past her. When I was talking, she never brushed off my ideas or changed the subject. She was a great conversationalist and had a knack for being able to include everyone in one way or another. She would share perspectives that I hadn’t thought of. She brought new ways of thinking out of me, and I am so grateful for them. That openness and curiosity that she continued to show her whole life is the way that I hope to be, always.
I could keep going, because there was so much more to her than what I can stand up here and say, and there was a lot that I didn’t get the chance to know. It’s hard to think that I’ll continue to live my life without her tracking my flight and texting me the moment I land somewhere, and that I won’t feel the multiple hugs at each visit with her. But I do know that if I live my life the way that she did –an admirable life of love and kindness, she will continue to be with me and with all of you.
After reading this again I still have a bit more to say.
I really, really miss my grandma. I can still hear her laugh. She would always squeeze me so tight when she hugged me that sometimes I still think that I can feel the hugs, too. She loved watches; she had so many of them. She loved that turquoise/teal blue color. She always wore super sparkly earrings and dark pink lipstick. Every year or so she’d get a new frame for her glasses, and they were usually a shiny blue. She didn’t dress like an “old lady,” she often wore purple skinny jeans and brightly colored t-shirts.
She loved country music. She also loved this Italian boy band called Il Volo. She had a rose garden. She wasn’t a big cook, but she always made cheesy potatoes during the holidays, and homemade ice cream. She always hid a $100 bill somewhere in her house for us to find on Christmas, and sometimes it was a straight up scavenger hunt to try and find it. She taught me how to read music and how to play the piano and sing. Her nickname for me was “Rosebud,” and nobody has called me that since she passed away. She was a constant from my earliest memories. It’s comforting to remember these facts about her, I think it’s important to keep the little details that make up a person in our minds after they’re gone.
I remember about a month before she died, when she was still living at her house but couldn’t really talk well anymore because of her brain tumor, I went to visit her. She just hugged me, for a really long time. I knew what she was trying to say in that hug, it was all of the things I was trying to say to her, but I couldn’t get the words out either; how thankful I was for her, how much I enjoyed our time together and how much I loved her.
That was probably the last time I looked into her eyes and felt that full connection with her, because after that she deteriorated quickly. Watching someone you knew as such a vibrant and alive and independent person fade so fast is devastating. I (maybe selfishly) wondered what I would do and how I could keep going on without her being someone I would call or visit a couple times a week. I regretted all the times I hadn’t gone to see her when I could have.
I loved her, and still do. Two years later, it’s still difficult sometimes. I used to find myself at family holidays thinking that I should go find Grandma and say hello, before I remembered that she wasn’t around the corner in the next room. I don’t do that anymore. I’m not sure if that makes me sadder or not.
It was a privilege to know Virginia Kay (Berry) Schumacher (what a name). An even bigger privilege to be her only granddaughter. I’ll hold onto the memories of her as long as they continue to be a guide for me to be like her, and I’m certain that they always will.
Part 3: The Same Girl?
This picture of me. Let’s talk about it.
I don’t really have memories of being this young. I have this pseudo-memory on my 4th birthday of me running around and yelling “I’M FOUR,” but sometimes I wonder if I just made that up.
I think it’s kind of a cool picture. It’s very Story.
I have a short haircut with bangs. My hair used to be these beautiful golden strands that shone like the sun, until I got older and it turned really dark. I love my hair lately, but I’m always lowkey wishing for the pure gold that it used it be.
I’m in front of a very aesthetic brick wall and I’m coyly looking down, away from the camera. I have a cheeky smile on my face —a smirk, you could call it. I’m wearing an absolutely insane dress. What is that, denim, with a velvet and lace collar? When was the last time I owned a piece of clothing with velvet and lace?
It’s a bold look that I 100% pull off, because when you’re a little kid you don’t care about your clothes. You already know the secret to pulling anything off is just not really caring how you look as long as you’re comfortable.
I’m holding my sippy cup, and I think it really completes the whole thing. Just a touch of an accessory. I have no idea where it was taken. I just love everything about it.
As a kid I know that I was shy and bossy and imaginative. Those were the three words I remember my parents and others saying about me. My mom called me “Bossy Boots,” I remember that so vividly. It’s fascinating to think about how personalities form in young children and how those personalities manifest when they become adults. Also, what a dichotomy to be both shy and bossy? I think I was only bossy to people I was close to.
Now I want to talk about this picture.
I think both this one and the one of me as a child are eerily similar both in style and in energy.
For one, I happen to have almost the exact same haircut, although my hair is a dark brown now and the bangs are just a bit shorter. I’ve gone through a lot of hair phases, so I found it really funny and coincidental that my current style was the same as the one I had all those years ago.
I’m in front of the ocean, on a beach. Very aesthetic once again.
And my face! I’m also not fully facing the camera. I’m looking at it this time, but that coy smile is almost the same. Not showing my teeth in either picture. Looking like I have this thing in the back of my mind that nobody else knows but me. Same same.
I’m also wearing a ridiculous and questionable outfit. Denim overalls and a loud as fuck shirt. But I pull it off, once again. Because, like that little girl, I don’t care. The years between her and me held a lot of times when I did care, and now it’s nice to see that that smile reflects a much more confident person. I was confident when I didn’t know much and confident now that I know a lot more. I still like wearing denim and I still don’t have much of a fashion sense, but I have fun.
My accessories this time are my glasses and earrings. Just enough to bring it all together.
Three words to describe me now? I’m not sure what other people would say. My mom says I’m introspective and stubborn. And I would say I’m earnest. A wild combination that I think come together to make a person who always tries their best. Sometimes I miss the mark or get a bit too stuck on one thing, but I only want to be better for myself and everyone else at the end of the day.
Why did I write this? I just felt like doing something lightheartedly-human after all of this heavy stuff.