Save Yourselves

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald-

People who know me have described me as loyal and patient, independent and daring. At various times I have seen shades of these qualities within myself, but they are not always so positively displayed; every virtue has a corresponding vice. From a distance, my autonomy is sometimes interpreted as disinterest. In reality, my tendency toward loyalty and patience can create a reluctance to draw personal boundaries. And, while “daring” is often equivalent to “courageous”, when the outcome is poor I am more accurately labeled “reckless”. In the past, I have wished I could be a different sort of person, not fully realizing that my weaknesses were just the shadows of my virtues.

One quality that I resented in particular was my idealistic nature. It seemed more appropriately labeled “naïve optimism”, because life had not demonstrated to me that there was any truth or value contained in the ideals I believed in. I am still idealistic, but I no longer believe that the world is fair or that love conquers all. Against convention, I believe that we are each made perfectly, and require no great change. We simply need to harness the qualities we already posses and use those to strengthen ourselves. In doing this, we become our own best hero in an unavoidable fight against a very potent and very personal enemy: ourselves.

Last spring, in my third and final semester at Kapi’olani Community College, I took a writing course focused on the hero archetype. My original goal at KCC was to fulfill the prerequisites for nursing school. I was at the point of accomplishing that, but I needed an additional three-credits to maintain my full-time status. At the time, I was already pushing the limits of my sanity with an overload of academic and personal responsibilities. I chose a writing course, expecting it to be a lighter alternative to the science and humanity courses I had been knocking out. That class was more challenging, and more rewarding, than any other I have taken. By the end of it, I had a solid belief in a new philosophy which freed me from a lot of grief.

Growing up, I had a romantic sort of fascination over tragic heroes, and I chose that particular course as a sentimental nod toward a friend at the center of my life at that time. Over the previous months, I had become caught up in his personal story, and devoted excessive amounts of emotion and energy to his battles. I was certain he would shine with just a bit of polish, but previously unseen elements erupted before the first month of the semester. The fallout revealed that I was suffering from a dangerous level of self-deception. I made a bitter separation from my friend and the fight I had invested myself in.

Influenced by these circumstances, my early hero papers were strange and cynical, written from the position that there are no heroes. Later papers were nonexistent. I was failing the course mid-semester, and considered risking my full-time status and dropping it to preserve my GPA. I only hesitated because the writing class had become an odd sort of therapy for me. The professor had an engaging way of presenting the material, and the few papers I had actually finished were well received. I decided to risk my GPA, and stay to continue exploring my newly jaded, no-hero philosophy.

In this process, I realized that I was the one with the hero complex, but it was not my friend who I had been trying so desperately to save. I had found in him something I thought I had lost in myself. I still do not know what motivated him to attach himself to me, but most likely the reason was similar. Unfortunately, at some point he chose to preserve for himself qualities that were at odds with whatever he found in me. To preserve myself, I had refused to bend in his direction.

I began to consider other times I had unwittingly played the hero part, and was faced with the fact that I had failed miserably every time. I had failed to save my marriage and was in the process of abandoning it; I failed to save several friends and friendships; I was failing my children, not being the parent I knew I should be. But, I felt that my most tragic incapacity was a failure to save my father from himself. Years earlier, he had lost against his personal enemy. We all lost. I did not know the details of this until it was too late, but, prior to that revelation, I had an instinct and pushed it aside.

All of this was plaguing my conscience when that last semester drew to a close. We were given several options for the final paper, and I chose the topic of self-examination. The purpose of the assignment was to outline our own characteristics, and explore ways we might be more heroic. I felt compelled to write it, but was at a loss on how to approach it, convinced that the only person I was capable of saving was myself. That sort of salvation seemed to amount to nothing more than an impulse for survival.

I opened that last paper in much the same way that I opened this post. I revealed the details of my inadvertent heroism, and the poor results of those efforts. But, when I began to examine my own self-preservation, I remembered a compelling remark I had heard, and this altered my perspective.

A military officer once commented that he only needs two words to convince a group of soldiers to risk their lives in battle: “Follow me”.

I know that the deepest abyss in my life is my father's failure to save himself. We all bear permanent scars from his personal destruction. From this perspective, I concluded that the most heroic thing I can do is triumph over my own demons. This is more than self-preservation; it is not enough to survive.

The tragedy of this life is that we are incapable of saving anyone, no matter what they mean to us. The glory of it is that we do not have to; we have to save ourselves. If we face our true enemy, we can direct our personal qualities in such a way that they become assets rather than afflictions. It is from this position of strength that we are able to shine a light another’s path and say, “Follow me”. This innate ability is within each of us; this responsibility is the beautiful burden we all bear.

One More Time, With Feeling....

“…death does not always wait for the heart to stop beating. Often, the soul draws its last saving breath before the body draws its last breath of air.” -(a quote from my English term paper, spring 2010)-

In the spring of 2010, I lived on an Army base on Oahu, near the foot of the Waianae Mountain range. A quiet, wooded road cuts across the base, and over the mountain, through Kolekole pass. Over the course of a year, the 4 mile incline from my house to the top of the pass became a weekly refuge for me; a hike through a bit of rainforest where I could find some calm, and think clearly about ways to navigate a life that was steadily eroding underneath my feet. Near twilight at the end of a sunny day last April, I ended those hikes when the chaos of my life breached the boundaries of my sanctuary.

When I started on that last hike, my head was a storm raging with all the things I could not get control over. It built inside me until, halfway up the mountain, I drew a breath that would not reach my lungs. I remember sucking desperately at the air and only feeling it not go in. I was suddenly failing at the most basic function of life: breathing. That had never happened to me before. Of all the things I had ever let slip through my fingers, I had never failed to get that one thing right. I drenched my head with drinking water and stomped in circles. The constriction in my chest eased up. I caught my breath again. I briefly evaluated my options: there was only one. I turned and continued on.

Death comes in many forms, and it is not the death of the body that concerns me the most. Life is lost, suddenly or gradually, when we stop living it from within. When everything we do is a response to the world, and we stop being true to ourselves. Fighting the world is not living. Hiding away from it is not living. Surrendering your autonomy and allowing the world to wipe its ugly boot on your backside is not living. Somewhere on the edges there is vitality and substance, but for me it has been a difficult balance to maintain.

For most of my life, I have wasted my energy trying to please or pacify the people around me, always trying to feel acceptable. In September 2008, I took stock of the sum total of my lifetime efforts, and this is what I was faced with: An emotionally barren marriage that, to an outsider, looked like a sweetheart’s romance; A disparate family that looked like a functional unit; The creeping realization that I was already dead.

I had created an illusion of life through constant animation. I was actively involved in my church, in my kid’s activities, in trying to motivate my husband to help me fix our marriage and our family, in a series of attempts to lose weight. And I was numb; nothing reached me. I had been trying to find my spirit, fix my marriage, raise acceptable kids, and lose weight since becoming a wife and mother at age seventeen. In 2008 I was thirty-two, and I had rolled my stone up the hill so many times that I didn’t believe in life anymore.

Suicide comes in many forms. I had never given more than a passing consideration to the literal kind: I have always been too curious, waiting on the next thing coming around the bend, even if it might crush me. But, when I searched my situation, and myself, I realized that I had been taking part in a form of passive suicide. I evaluated my options. The safe thing was to continue pretending this was acceptable; answering to myself meant doing everything that looked wrong. There was only one option I could live with: I quit trying to fix my marriage. I quit volunteering to lead activities. I stopped running the show, jumped into college full time, and started taking care of myself.

When you make drastic changes, not everyone will thank you or consider the situation improved. Stagnation is foul, but it’s comfortable and some people adjust to the smell to the point that they can’t tolerate anything else. As I made changes, my life became divided. I estranged myself from friends I love to avoid unanswerable questions. My marriage ended. Last May, I left Hawaii and came back home; a place you can never go back to. In the short space between the epiphany and the epitaph of my previous existence, I earned 38 college credits, lost nearly 150lbs, and found myself. Or, at least I can see myself now, just below the surface. I won’t try, in a single blog entry, to account for all the events of the past two years. Here and now, in February 2011, I’m still sorting through left over pieces, and learning how to breathe.

I’m taking up this blog for that purpose. I still have a list of things I need to answer for, to myself. One of those is silence. I’m very comfortable in the seclusion of my own thoughts. It’s easy to retreat there and sort through the chaos on my own. This gives the appearance of peace, which seems to be acceptable, but I’ve found that keeping it to myself means never letting go.

The most important lesson that I have tested, and found truth in, is that stagnation is death. Life persists in risk and progress. If you have a storm raging about you, it will always find your refuge. The only place you can really survive is at the center: the calm, focused eye of a hurricane. If you have a storm raging within you, it’s the same. This is life, in the midst of chaos, and it’s a difficult position to maintain.