Repost: "Lessons from the 'Chench' "

I have been looking through a much older (, messier, less public) blog, and I've found a few things that inform my Kansas adventure, so I thought I'd share them. They will be labeled "repost" for convenience.

This one is actually from December 20th, 2007, just after I got home from Italy, and reconsidered all that I had learned in that great growing experience. The lessons were considered specifically from the different people I got to know at the Centro, the place itself lovingly nicknamed "the Chench."

Life lessons learned at Centro. And beyond.

Biz’s contribution:
It doesn’t make you a less reliable, serious, or studious person to party. Biz got me out of the Chench, out of my shell. She called me the life of the party, and whether or not it was the truth, it meant something to hear it. Biz’s contribution was a vision of more than just ‘the smart kid,’ and that’s a very valuable contribution indeed. She saw a spark of vivacity that cannot be contained just in the classroom. She saw ridiculously bad dancing, and laughter at the clink of glasses. She knew the value of party time and brought me along.

Brookie’s contribution:
You can master the universe. But you have to do it every day. Brookie also taught me the value of trying, as in, to look good. I have a tendency to not care very much how I look on normal days, and only try on days when something important is going on. But Brookie was classy, and she looked good all the time. Accessories and her own style, and I learned the value of putting in a little effort myself, and how it feels to be a little prettier on a normal day. She was her own master, unpredictable, but never outside of who she is. She smoked sometimes, but wasn’t addicted. She did the things she wanted to do, because she wanted them. But she was real, too. You can never master yourself (or the universe) once and for all. It’s an ongoing process that you have to keep up all the time. And, sometimes you won’t, but if you can keep your record pretty high, that’s all you really need.

Hannah’s contribution:
Both Hannahs, here. It’s okay to have a lot of feelings. We joked about it all the time, but the truth is, if you are it, you’ve got to own it, and if you do that, then it’s not a problem. I won’t ever forget when Flashface came back from her trip to Germany and told me she’d really missed me; again, regardless of how deeply true or not it may have been, it meant a lot to hear it. And telling Hanner random things about how I felt, just because she was my roommate and she was around.

Brookie’s other contribution:
We’re nerds. Neerrrrrrrds! But again, we are it, so we own it, and it’s all good.

G-Unit’s contribution:
It’s okay to want things that the general populous around you thinks is lame. Just because you are told you have to achieve, doesn’t mean you should give up your real dreams of what you really want to do and be. G-Unit just wants to get married and have kids. She doesn’t want to clamber to the top of her field. You can make your decisions for your own reasons.

Linda’s contribution:
Always look on the bright side of life. You don’t have to prove anything here. Life is about how you look at it. And people are really all the same, wonderful creatures inside. She said I’m a good person, and she believes I will go far.

Will’s contribution:
Never settle for less than you deserve, especially if you happen to deserve the best. Most especially if you know where the best can be found, and it isn’t outside your reach. Never back down when you know you can win.

Captain Cook’s contribution:
Uniqueness is a virtue, and she’s seen it in me. Some rare combination of deep-full-of-feelings caring dude. And, that people can be good people, but that doesn’t make them good mates. People have to figure things out in their own time. I can’t force that, no matter how much I want it.

Mr. Meyer’s contribution:
A recognition of good intentions. A laughing dismissal of explanation, and the observation that I have always been the optimist.

Kirsten ("the Manimal")’s contribution:
A lack of understanding at the failure of the badass; the belief in toughness and standing up for myself. Kirsten wore the look of total disbelief and near disgust twice for me. When she said “Don’t let creepy old men touch you on the bus,” and “Well you obviously can’t be best friends.” And, fanfiction. My own realization that I speak openly about what others tend to hide or pass over.

Raya’s contribution:
An example of everything I’m not, or everything I think I’m not. She was proper, rich, and wanted things just so. Thought almost exclusively of herself and could only manage one point of view. In her I saw my opposite, and was glad. I may not be proper, and I may not care about what is socially considered appropriate all the time (hence my nickname of 'The Creeper'), but I do care about what’s important, and possible, and how things truly affect people.

Carlyle’s contribution:
An expression of the power of distance and growing, but also a recognition of the difference a positive attitude and unwillingness to judge others poorly can make. I loved her, but she seemed so bent on believing the worst of others, which I never want to do.

(L’s contribution:
If people don’t love me for who I am, they can suck it.)

(Kitchen’s contribution:
When the time comes, you’ll know. You needn’t worry that it will never come, because if something is inevitable, it is.)

The Manimal is totally real. And now, so is the EmLem.*

The truth is, I always am what I always was, which has nothing to do with, all to do with them. They were able to bring out a lot of what was always there, what needed to be rearranged for a more comfortable, happy existence. I’m not someone else, even if I have changed. I’m just more myself, or a better version of me. Still awkward, still laughing about it. I feel, more now than before, safe in my own skin, and like this is who I’ve always, always been.. and I was just hiding it.

There will be someone, or maybe even more than one, who will love me for who I really am. Several people at the chench did. And knowing that I’m not too terribly hard to love for who I really am, all of me, makes it easier to tell those who can’t hack it to take their judgment elsewhere. Because the sad little girl that needed them is gone. The girl now on fire needs allies of her own. Don’t get me wrong, I still need people, I still need my friends. I still want to keep my friends from before. But I, like anyone, do not need to spend time with someone who will be undermining me, whether on purpose or inadvertently, who will be cutting me down for their own purposes or ‘for my own good.’

I recognize the danger in the tendency of my heart to get wasted and spend its time loving and longing what is essentially its poison.

every person has a poison
that they
will
take

And this, like so many other things, is something I both love and hate about it. For my own good I must stop, but that is not my only concern. But, it should be my first one. For my own good I must stop, but I don’t want to be ‘that guy’ who stops. Stops longing, in case against all odds it matters, in case it helps someone.

But it’s destroying me. I know that I must rise above it and yet am, at the last, regretful. I never knew how to let a good thing go. I never knew how to let go of anything that had any good aspect, or potential good aspect. I did best when I was forced. I do better in a relative dearth of choice.

This morning, I threw away another pair of underwear. Because they were stupid and uncomfortable, and weren’t serving well the purpose to which I’d assigned them. Maybe being forced to scale down is having good effects. Maybe gathering ‘just the essentials’ is showing me what is actually essential. And how stupid it is to hold on to things and pretend they serve some purpose when it’s suddenly so clear that they serve very little at all.

I’m good to others because it pleases me to do so. But, it should please me to be good to myself, and true to what I really am.

My mother has an orchid in the den that’s been blooming since she got it, months ago. Orchids are hard to care for, as far as I know. I used to think it was because they were wimpy plants that would die in the wild for sure, since they die so often under the diligent care of owners (so I hear, anyway.. they were not common in our house). But then I found out that the reason they do so badly in homes is probably because of their usual situation in the wild. They grow clinging to the sides of trees in the rainforest, and there they bloom. It is, merely, difficult to simulate such an environment in a pot in a house. They are, merely, built for a different kind of struggle.

At the Chench, we all made fun of one another for our foibles and tendencies. But we didn’t love each other any less. We knew we were the same, and that, I think, is most important. We knew that we had the potential to be any of the others under some other circumstance. We saw what we had in common and took it for granted to create the solid ground necessary to stand and duel playfully.

In the end, I was channeling “Ian.” In the end, I chose to emulate the young man I admired, whom I created. Maybe I created him because I wanted to be him, and knew I had something of what it took. Not carefree, but able to have fun. Judging, but not so harshly that he would ever cease to love. Believing, because he didn’t know how not to.

But isn’t that every one of us? People can isolate themselves from the universality of the human condition, but it will not stop being true of them. Perhaps Linda’s lesson is the furthest reaching. No matter where you go, people are people.

*Editorial note: Early in the program, I insisted to them that the "EmLem" was a figment of their collective imagination. They bestowed the nickname upon me and I was certain that they had simultaneously created this picture of me that was not, in fact, true. I later recanted with joy that "The EmLem is totally real."