I was sad today.

I was sad, and I wanted to be alone. Being around people felt like the biggest, most monumental task and I just couldn’t muster the energy for it.

But I did see my best friend for about five seconds, mostly because I left my whole life at her house last night, as I always do. And in that five seconds, as she always does, she managed to astonish me again with what a genuinely good person she is – one of the best and most exceptional people I know wrapped up in the smallest, blondest package.

I was tired and reticent and dully depressed, trudging out the door in pajamas and last night’s Halloween makeup. And instead of wondering what was wrong with me or why I couldn’t just get it together, or why I couldn’t just be fun, she very simply and unassumingly offered up her house as a place to be sad. “You know you can always do that, right?” she said. “You know our house is always, always open to you?” Continue reading →

The president visited my little mountain town last week.

He didn’t do much. He picked up some Halloween candy, grabbed lunch at my favorite sandwich place, and – bizarrely enough – stopped into this crazy little consignment store that makes you dance for a discount. Then he made his way down the mountain to Wilkesboro, to make a speech about the Jobs Bill against the backdrop of the dying North Carolina furniture industry.

It was, however, a huge deal for us. My Twitter timeline and Facebook feed both exploded. I had reporters and photographers running around acting like presidential correspondents. People talked about it for days – did you meet him? Did you see him passing through? Continue reading →

Lately, all I know how to do is miss.

Somehow, it hit me today that I’m graduating sooner rather than later. I’m probably leaving Boone in a couple of months, and even if not…I’m leaving The Appalachian. I’m leaving tons of people I love. I’m leaving school. I’m leaving a life I’ve completely fallen in love with, whether or not I’m leaving the mountains where I found that life.

So I’m missing things and people in advance. At any given moment, I miss every single friend I’m not with. I walk by the old BeansTalk building and miss pancake lattes and tattered couches, and I realize that in a year I’ll miss pumpkin muffins and obnoxiously loud open mics at Crossroads. All these lasts are coming up and eventually, things are going to end. There will be a last editing night and a last full staff meeting and a last ed board meeting and a last production. There will be a last undergraduate class. There will be a last library atrium all-nighter. Continue reading →

I’ve always been sort of afraid to love people.

This is not a post about romantic relationships. That’s the last thing I care about at this point in my life. I mean friendships. Family. People I interact with on a daily basis. People I meet on the street. I have always been afraid to love those people, to care about them, to invest in them. I don’t mean love in the abstract – I think I’ve always had that.

But when you really love people – when you talk to them, when you spend your days with them, when you give them pieces of yourself by giving them your thoughts and your time – they usually hurt you.

That sounds irrational, but they do. Some people hurt you intentionally, and those are the type I’ll never understand. Some people hurt you accidentally, usually when you love them more than they love you. And the vast majority of people hurt you when life moves on, the way it does, and for whatever reason you still love them but you can’t call them “friend” anymore.

But in the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking about the difference between awake and alive.

You can be alive and make it through without attachments and do the easy things. You can eat and sleep and walk without joy and avoid everything that scares you.

But if you’re going to be awake you have to love people. You have to really love with them, open your heart to them and explain all the reasons you adore them. You have to live every day wrapped up in the knowledge that yes, these people are going to hurt you or leave you someday. And you have to be okay with that, reconciled with that.

When you stop avoiding the truth that you’re going to die someday, you affirm life. And when you stop avoiding the truth that people are going to fail you, you affirm love.