I am a rock chick at heart. I worked in record stores when they were still called record stores. I worked for a music label. I once dated a guy because he looked like a cross between Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Every time I see or hear the number eleven, I think of This Is Spinal Tap. But, I have a huge confession to make. I cannot really cook.

Don’t misunderstand, I can boil an egg. I can even scramble it, if I’m feeling motivated. But, cooking a Thanksgiving meal? No way in hell. I’m not putting my hand up a raw, dead bird. Does this make me uncool? Am I getting old?

Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle intimidated me. Not only is she a brilliant author, but she farms her own land, bakes bread every day, stuffs her own sausage, and makes her own cheese. And while, I won’t pretend that I would ever want to know exactly what you have to kill to stuff a sausage,  I would like to be a little earthier now that I’m living in the country.

Aqua, the 82-story high-rise building where I lived in Chicago is LEED certified. With sustainable features like extensions to maximize solar shading, rainwater collection systems and energy-efficient lighting, recycling programs and the largest green roof in the city, I felt like I was treading a little lighter on the earth by living there.

Now that I live in the country, I have to drive everywhere. I can’t order healthy meals for delivery. I can’t walk to Yolk for weekend brunch. I don’t even have a microwave. But, when Omega reopens in the spring, I’ll have locally-grown organic, vegetarian meals available for free every day.

What’s happening on our planet is important to me. I understand that our fossil fuels are finite. I want to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. (One of the biggest reasons I chose to work at Omega.) I buy organic, I try to remember to bring my own grocery bags when I go to the store, I recycle. But, after reading this book, I want to do more.

I want to grow something with my own two hands. And if I’m not going to garden, I want to support the people in my community who are. I want to go to farmer’s markets and those little stands on the side of the road. I want to know what is in season when it’s in season and I want to know where it came from if it’s not when I see it in the grocery store.

First, I have to teach myself how to cook. I started making fresh, organic salads for work every day the past two weeks. (I know, it’s really more washing and chopping than cooking.) I made myself a smoothie for breakfast this morning with frozen berries, organic bananas and almond milk. (I’m using a blender!) I found a great slow cooker recipe for chicken and black beans. (I wore latex gloves so I didn’t have to touch the raw meat. Are those recyclable?) Now, I need to find the perfect music compilation to keep me inspired. Any suggestions?

Could you live an entire year eating locally or the food from your garden? Barbara Kingsolver transplanted her family from the deserts of Arizona to the mountains of Virginia for their endeavor. Join From Left to Write on February 21 as we discuss Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Illustration: Michael Hacker

I didn’t even know how much I needed it until it arrived. (Well, that’s not exactly true.) I was crossing my fingers and toes that I would get good news, but I was preparing myself for the worst just in case.

“Just in case” may feel like a denial of hope in a given situation. Save enough money to cover six months of expenses just in case you lose that job you love to hate so much. The security pee and no less than a quarter tank of gas in the car before the long drive. A stack of firewood, a 10 gallon container of water and plenty of matches just in case the power goes out–all of these scenarios are ways to prepare for something you don’t want to happen.

When you’re living with an autoimmune disease, your body seemingly does whatever it wants to do and you’re forced to live inside this out-of-control body. It’s easy to feel like a victim and to compensate for those feelings by trying to control the variables. I know where all the bathrooms are. I always sit in the aisle seat at the movies, shotgun if I’m not driving. I don’t eat anything with vinegar or anything spicy. I haven’t had a beer in over a decade. I take care of myself, but I also spend a lot of time living outside of myself. I’ve learned to do this as a coping mechanism in order to not feel the pain and anxiety of living inside my body.

Six months ago, my doctor found low-grade dysplasia in a few cell samples from my regularly scheduled colonoscopy. Dysplasia, for those of you who don’t know, means pre-cancerous cells. The diagnosis? Complete removal of the colon. She suggested I meet with a surgeon right away to discuss my options. I asked her if this seemed a little premature. Did she know if I would get cancer or when I might get cancer based on these results? She could not say with any certainty.

I decided to send the slides out for a second opinion. I left in a daze, drove to a local restaurant for a bowl of soup, called my mom and cried. A homeless man listened to my phone conversation from the next table. He looked at me like I was worse off than him, he didn’t even ask me for money.

I told most of my friends and family about this over email. I couldn’t say it out loud. I walked by the lake and cried. I tried to read, but I cried. I fell asleep crying. On one particularly dark day, I contemplated stepping in front of a bus. Life is that precious and potentially that easy to end. But I’m not the kind of person who gives up on anything, least of all myself. I would find a way through this impossible situation.

Whenever I went inside myself to meditate, I heard my heart beat strong in my ear, my lungs deeply taking air in and breathing out. My mind, once quieted, let my body do the talking. So I asked my colon if it was ready to leave. The answer? A loud and clear, “No. We’re working for you.”

A mistake at the doctor’s office meant that my slides sat there for most of the summer. Perhaps, further evidence that my situation wasn’t as scary as my doctor had suggested? In the mean time, I moved to Rhinebeck, New York for a new job. Life was moving on.

On a rainy October morning two days before Halloween, my doctor called to tell me the slides revealed traces of high-grade dysplasia. There was no waiting. It was time to remove my colon. I was devastated. I decided it was time for a new doctor.

I told my new gastroenterologist everything that had happened so far. He seemed pragmatic and willing to work with me. We would do another colonoscopy. If the results proved the same, we would decide the best course of action for me.

I meditated every day, but I planned for the worst. I wanted to make sure I was ready. I wrote four pages of hard questions. I imagined my life post-surgery. I made peace with my scarred and overworked colon.

What if what you don’t want to happen doesn’t happen?

The doctor told me there were zero signs of dysplasia and zero signs of inflammation. A pathologist reviewing my slides would not even realize I had Crohn’s Disease. Only scar tissue visible to the eye during the procedure would have revealed evidence of my history. Based on these results, he could not agree with my previous diagnosis. He thinks with annual colonoscopies to track my progress, I can keep my colon. I wanted to hug him, I wanted to sing at the top of my lungs. I wanted to call my mom, my brothers, my sister, my cousin, my friends and coworkers. I wanted everyone to know I was back.

So why am I sharing this story with anyone who may stumble upon my blog? I didn’t even realize how big the dark cloud I was living under was until I walked out of that doctor’s office. All the little stressors I’d been holding onto meant nothing now. “Why me?’ turned to “I’m so glad I’m me.” All the sleepless nights and the secret self-blame, were choices I made as a way to continually beat myself up.

Regardless of any doctor’s advice, I’m the one who decides how I’m going to handle everything in my life. Do I want to see things through a lens of joy or fear? Give up or fight? I don’t have to have all the answers to make that decision, I just have to consciously decide what it’s going to be and focus on that state of being each step of the way. I’m going to die eventually, but it’s how I choose to show up while I’m alive and kicking that matters. I want to show up smiling.

I have 20/20 vision, but I have been blinded by love. I have turned a deaf ear. I have allowed other organs–not always my heart–to lead me astray.

Many years ago, I fell for Christian because of a dream. Beforehand I had not even considered him attractive. In the dream, he had approached me, pushed me up against the lockers at the bookstore where we worked and smelled me. Not a “let me get a whiff of you” kind of sniff, but a “let me take the scent of you in from the top of your hair to the bottom of your you-know-where.” When I woke up, I could not get him out of my head. The dream had seemed so real, a relationship seemed like an inevitability, something that would happen beyond all reason. And it did.

Within two weeks we were a couple. I wanted to be with him all the time, but I didn’t want any of my friends to know we were together. He was my secret born out of a dream. He was passionate and jealous, creative and thoughtful. He wrote me letters and short stories. I wrote him a poem while I watched him sleeping. He was a mystery to me. What made him tick, what he thought, why he did what he did. I was dazzled.

We were out one night for drinks–a place we had been before–and the bartender was mildly flirtatious. Christopher grabbed a wine screw and threatened him. I was shocked and appalled, but a part of me wondered if maybe this was just something guys did. I went blind that day. I didn’t want to see how impossibly uncomfortable it made him to be with me in a group of people. I didn’t want to see how rude he was to my friends or how much he drank. How poorly he treated me.

A year later, my sight came back after a terrible fight that ended with him getting arrested. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and saw two distinct hand imprints around my neck. In that moment, I realized I wanted to be loved so badly, I had allowed someone to treat me badly. And if I didn’t want to ever be treated this way again, I would have to heal this place inside that was so broken, I no longer knew the difference between love and pain. If I didn’t want anyone to ever hurt me again, I had to stop treating myself like I was a lost cause.

So, I took up a cause. I started volunteering at the library for the blind by reading books and magazines on tape. Every week, I would sit in a little booth in front of a microphone while the wonderful woman who ran the program recorded me reading hunting and fishing magazines, personal essays from the Pacific Northwest’s literati, and fictionalized accounts of western heroes. While I would read I would imagine the listener–cut off from something they didn’t quite understand–swept up by their imaginations and no longer hindered by their physical handicap.

In truth, I was imagining me no longer handicapped by me. I wanted to be free of myself long enough to find a new way to inhabit my heart. I read out loud until I could hear what it was trying to say. Until I no longer took myself for granted. Until I was no longer afraid to be seen.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker is a beautifully, tender love story about a young woman’s search for her missing father. When she travels to Burma, she discovers much more than she expected. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.” -Anais Nin

While sitting alone in a little restaurant in Tivoli to finish reading Susan Cain’s book about introverts, my quiet afternoon was interrupted by a group of young Bard students in for a late brunch after a night of partying. The young girls loudly complained about their current hair color and what color to dye it next. They complained about how rude it was for friends to text them while they were busy eating. The most outspoken of the bunch confessed in an unhushed tone that she had puked in a little garbage bag in her dorm room three nights in a row before passing out drunk and stoned. Not a single friend mentioned she might want to avoid either the wine or marijuana for just one evening, instead they all shared their worst vomit stories. My black bean chili went cold and untouched.

Their conversation, while amusing and a little gross, reminded me how introverted I can be. I need quiet now. In order to fall asleep, I wear earplugs to drown out the silence of living in the country. Maybe it’s aging, but my ears have become super sonic microphones that pick up the faintest thump of a ladybug landing on a pillow, a mouse scraping at the inside of the wall or the rustle of the wind against my window. I don’t want to hear a thing.

My days, on the other hand, are filled with conversation. Meetings, casual banter, conference calls, emails, lunches, dinners, drinks. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I feel alive in a room where everyone is expressing their points of view–with or without conflict–and everyone is heard and agreement is reached. But after a day filled with creative brainstorms and strategic speculation, followed by a conversation with my mom or catch-up call with a good friend, I need to reflect. I need time to myself, to unwind, to be with my thoughts.

When I was young, I looked for attention. I was the girl doing cartwheels through the school parking lot at recess. I hung upside down on the centipede jungle gym in my birthday party dress. I was unafraid to raise my hand, confident of the correct answer. I loved to read out loud to the entire class. I was the cheerleading captain. I won first place in a city-wide speech contest at twelve years old. I was also highly-reactive to the emotions of everyone around me. If my best friend was mad at her mom, I was mad at mine. If dad was angry, I was angry at him. A shell magnetized to the emotions of everyone around me, I didn’t know what to think of me unless it was in relation to someone else.

Then, I got sick. I was hospitalized with Crohn’s Disease. My mom gave me a Judy Blume diary and a copy of the New Yorker. I started writing. I saw a psychologist to help me manage the anxiety, humiliation and fear at what was happening inside my body. Introspection and writing, gave me a place to land. Outside of the judgment of my peers, away from the chaos of my family, creativity was a way to tap into who I really am.

Creativity also led me to express myself in a myriad of ways. In high school, I spiked my bleach-blonde hair and painted anarchy symbols on my navy blue uniform skirt. I danced wild and free to Bauhaus, Depeche Mode and The Cure. I sang Throwing Muses at the top of my lungs driving around in my car. In college, I painted Dali’s mustache, open doors, brick walls and drunk friends. Not too long ago, I got up onstage and made people laugh. But always I would return to the written word, a quiet walk, or a solitary spot by the lake to be alone.

Whenever I lean too much on the extrovert, I get exhausted. Whenever, I lean too far towards the introvert, I get antsy. My dear friend Victor described us as “intimacy junkies.” He said we were creatures who could only tolerate dwelling on the surface for a little while, then we had to go deep. Like deep-sea divers plunging into the lives of people we love, we had to know them from the inside out or not at all. We swam in their vulnerabilities and held them sacred, even if only through a knowing glance or a thoughtful moment, we were present, aware and always there.

I think it’s limiting to label myself or anyone else as exclusively introverted or extroverted. Everyone inhabits both qualities in varying degrees. I think it’s dangerous to cultivate a society convinced it should only be one way without the other. I’m bewildered at how quickly people leap to judge a politician or other high-profile person for making complicated decisions from a thoughtful, reflective place of compromise and willingness. The media seems quick to demand action by stating an unswayable left or right position then holding someone to it regardless of constantly changing situations. But, so much of life is about the sway. And, to me, that’s the power of being quiet. When you go inside and see yourself and the world around you for all of its vastness, all of its beauty and all of its flaws, it’s easier to bend towards the gentler side of vision, leadership, hope and peace. Sometimes quiet speaks with such power, you have to sit upright to hear the wisdom in the whisper.

Author Susan Cain explores how introverts can be powerful in a world where being an extrovert is highly valued in her new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Join From Left to Write for a live chat with Susan Cain at 9PM Eastern on January 26. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

You have filled my home

With meows and yowls,

And the patter of paws

Running up and down the stairs.

Shadow at my feet,

In two short months,

You have changed my life.

Seven pounds purring on my shoulder,

nibbling at my nose

And licking my chin.

Your signal to hug my neck

Full-bodied charcoal grey and white

When the alarm clocks sounds.

Then attack the cardboard toilet paper roll

as if it were a mouse, fly or spider.

My reason to go home

After a long day away.

You wait at the door

So silent and still.

You roll at my feet

Then run at full-speed

leaping through the air

Over the back of the couch

Landing perfectly,

Tail high, eyes wide and clear

Next to the empty bowl.

As timeless as time,

Cliched as a daily cartoon,

This dance of cat and woman.

We are spirit and soft,

Warm and tough,

Frantic and calm.

You scratch the post, the chair, the bed,

My shoulders and chest, my hands and legs

All marked with red lines.

We are blood sisters now.

A tetanus shot is in my future,

A nail trim is in yours.

to receive willingly <accept a gift>
to give admittance or approval to <accept as one of a group>
to endure without protest or reaction <accept poor living conditions>
to recognize as true: believe <refused to accept the explanation>
to make a favorable response to <accept an offer>
to agree to undertake (a responsibility) <accept a job>

Receive, approve, endure, regard, believe, agree. I’m not sure I apply any of these verbs to myself on a regular basis. Like so many other people, I’m hard on myself. I don’t give myself a lot of slack. I don’t let things just be what they are.

Why do you brush your teeth before you eat breakfast? Who are you trying to impress with all that makeup? Get off your ass and stop writing this. And you wonder why you’re alone. We all have this voice–the critic, the judge, the monster inside–the ego. This voice is loud and direct, so many people think it’s true, but it’s usually not. It shows up as sarcasm, a stinging remark, a defensive stance, a roll of the eyes, the snicker, the gossip.

If you lead your life guided only by the voice, you’ll start to feel depressed, let down, uneasy and, worst of all, hopeless and bleak, because you’re viewing yourself and the world around you through one finite lens. The lens of never enough, so why bother. Even if there is some truth to what you’re thinking or feeling, it’s only one half of the story. There’s another side to every person, including you.

A willingness to accept yourself and the situation as it is will open up the way to changing your heart. This is different than resignation for the way things are. “Fine, if that’s the way it has to be.” Resignation carries resistance in it’s pocket, the standby of the passive-aggressive. You can smell the spark of an argument. “This sucks, but there’s nothing I can do. So I won’t,” is hidden in the tone.

Acceptance is a catalyst for freedom. Freedom from your own bullshit. It opens the door to a new way of seeing yourself. And once you see yourself differently, you’ll see everyone around you for who they are, a human being with their own internal struggles, their hopes and dreams, and the same deep desire to be loved, to be seen, to be heard.

Sometimes, it’s easy to make a life-changing decision.

In my early twenties, I sold everything I owned and moved to Boise, Idaho with a typewriter, two laundry baskets full of clothes, a box of toiletries, a pile of CDs, my favorite books, a journal and a sleeping bag. The world was the open road welcoming me and inviting me to be a shiny, brave part of it. I drove across the country in a used Geo Prism named Luna Blue.

The decision to move was not a difficult one. I left it to fate. At the time I worked for Borders Books & Music. They were hiring for two new stores–one was opening in Boise, the other in Austin, Texas. I interviewed for both positions. I decided whoever offered me the job first would be the one I would say yes to. During the second interview, when the general manager for the Boise store found out I had talked to the Austin manager the day before, he offered me the job on the spot. That was that.

Sometimes, saying no becomes a habit.

My last serious relationship ended awhile ago. He turned out to be nothing like the guy I knew him to be and I spent the last few months of our relationship on the verge of brokenness until one Fourth of July when I knew it was done. I made a decision that night under the full moon that I would not be in this position again. And I haven’t for any other reason than I always say no before things get too serious, before things get too close, before things get too real. I have said no to love.

No one was good enough, interesting enough, smart enough, funny enough, ambitious enough for me. And when nothing is ever enough, it means I’m not enough either. I could never be pretty enough, sexy enough, smart enough, thin enough, lovable enough. So I said no to every idea of me ever being a part of an us.

Sometimes, saying no is easily the worst decision.

The decision to say no not only let me believe I wasn’t worth anyone’s effort, it made me think no guy was worth the effort. So every not-worth-the-effort guy showed up. They proved me right, or so it seemed. I didn’t have to give them a chance. They let me off the hook. I got to blame them for all the bullshit I didn’t want to face in myself because I didn’t think I was capable of making a good decision. I made no my only option.

At the same time, I started doing improv comedy. On the first night of class, I sat in a room and learned the first rule of improv: To always say yes. Yes to my partner, yes to the scene, yes to the moment. So I said yes on stage, but no in my life. I said yes to my scene partner and no to the guys who wanted to date me. I said yes to working late and no to the group of people going out afterwards. I said yes to moving to Chicago and no to having any fun while I lived there. I said yes to working late hours and no to everything else. I said yes to work and no to me.

We live in a society that doesn’t want to take no for an answer. Get the iPad, you deserve it. Work harder, or we’ll replace you with someone else who will. Eat the cupcake, you earned it. Buy pajama jeans, you’ll feel more comfortable. In any given moment, someone may try to get you to do something you don’t want to do by convincing you of something you do want to do instead.

Luckily we have a built-in mechanism for determining what we should or shouldn’t do. Call it intuition, guts, instinct, or knowing. If you go inside for the answers rather than relying on the outside perspective or opinions of others, you’ll always find your way.  And I’m positive it will never tell you to buy pajama jeans.

To say that I had an attitude would be an understatement. My guard was up before people walked in the door. I ruthlessly judged myself and everyone else before they could judge me. I don’t think I looked at myself in the mirror without rolling my eyes or snarling at myself. I would have given Billy Idol a run for his money.

It’s not that I wasn’t kind, I just wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. Attitude gave me confidence to do things I might not have otherwise done, like read my poetry in front of strangers or tell that guy with the ocean blue eyes how beautiful I thought he was. But it also stopped me from discovering the world outside of my own limited perception. It’s hard to imagine why I should have said I would go out with that man in the record store who asked me out when I had already decided he was lame for buying the Cocktail soundtrack. (True story.) He could have been the greatest guy ever, but I will never know. (Probably not, since he liked that movie so much he bought the soundtrack.)

How does what we like and what we don’t like determine who we love and how we love?

When I was young, all of my relationships choices were based on a pretty basic criteria. Is he cool? Do I think he’s cute? Is he smart enough to carry a conversation? Is he friends with any of my friends? This limited most of my choices to financially and emotionally struggling musicians or writers.

While passionate and exciting, these relationships were usually filled with drama. I will admit I was occasionally to blame. I would withhold affection from the people I liked the most as if to punish them for liking me. I would be cold when I wanted to be warm. I would go out with them and ignore them completely when we got where we were going. I would praise them when we were alone and criticize them in front of their friends.

Ultimately, all of these shenanigans were ways of hurting myself. I sabotaged my own chances for happiness before any could come my way. That’s the way attitude works. While other people may have a lower opinion of you for snickering at them, the biggest wedge is the one you create between you and yourself.

The other side of attitude is discernment. I have learned not only to have an opinion, but why I had that particular opinion. I came to understand the power of my choices, the impact these choices have on my life and how to take responsibility for every decision I make. I take risks. Some of them have really paid off. Some of them haven’t. Life doesn’t happen to me, it happens because of me. I am never choice-less.

Opportunity does present itself in the city, frequently in the form of commerce. Brunch, lunch, dinner, parking, movie, concert, improv show, parking, tea, shopping, cupcake, museum, parking. I couldn’t go anywhere without paying to get there and paying for something once I got there. It’s the price of obligation and the cost of convenience. So much of what I thought my life should look like, should be like, was there. Except it wasn’t.

When you live in a city, you spend a lot of time alone. Working the kind of hours I did, it was easy to justify. I spent so much time around people all day, I needed the quiet to recover at night. I was so exhausted by the weekend, I didn’t want the pressure of feeling like I had to entertain anyone other than myself. For someone so self-satisfied, I was pretty unsatisfied with the way things were.

The decision to leave Chicago wasn’t an easy one to make. I didn’t want to leave this image of what I had always imagined my life to be–living in a eco-friendly, 70-story high rise overlooking Lake Michigan and Millennium Park, fabulous friends at every stage of life, a job that made me feel overworked but self-important, and my hilarious and kind brother who knew just how to keep me grounded when my health failed, or my heart was broken, when the guy we wanted to win actually did, or Steve Martin’s bluegrass band came to town.

So I stalled. I took the summer off. It was the first time since I was thirteen that I didn’t have a job. I went to my brother’s house and he made me waffles. I took early morning walks by the lake with Jenn and her newborn son, Sam. I said goodbye to Caroline before she left on her South Pacific sojourn.I had lunch with Mercedes, brunch with Robyn and Bella, watched the fireworks from the sundeck with Chris. I read under a cabana by the outdoor pool in my building surrounded by skyscrapers. I went to the movies with Angela, reconnected by phone with my cousin, Colleen, and laughed with Jen at IO Chicago.

I discovered the other side of myself on an extended vacation in the home I knew I would be leaving by the fall. Not the part motivated by doing, doing, doing, but the part that flourished by being, being, being. I had forgotten the difference for awhile. I was so wrapped up in what I thought my life was supposed to look like, I forgot exactly how great it could be. That’s the part of Chicago I miss the most. The part that helped me figure this out.

Regret can be your worst enemy or your best friend. You get to decide which.

I live my life with the intention to always grow and evolve, but there have been many times I’ve failed. I am human, after all. I prefer not to dwell in the space of regret, but a few exceptions continually nudge me. Gently reminding me that life doesn’t always work out exactly the way I want it to, even if I try to make it better.

A few years ago, I lost my best friend. No, she didn’t die, the friendship did. We’ve always been very different people, but the glue that held us together was the fact that we loved each other for all those differences.

She has balls and an iron will. I can be fickle and stubborn. She’s gorgeous and can cook the most amazing meal you could ever imagine and she won’t even complain about it. I’m not very good in the kitchen, but I’ve got a good smile. When she doesn’t like someone or something, she has no qualms telling the person. I don’t like hurting anyone’s feelings intentionally. She’s no muss, no fuss. I’m honest, but prefer to avoid conflict. She’s also a bit of a control freak. I like to go with the flow. She always has to be right which can be rather intimidating. On this, we are very similar. She’s one of the strongest people I know and she doesn’t take any shit from anybody…including me.

We both have our sides to this story. Here’s mine.

She had come for our annual girls’ weekend at my house in Chicago. Everything was going pretty well until the last day. Since I had not been feeling well, she agreed to let me drop her at the train that would take her to the airport. I didn’t want her to leave, I could feel the sadness welling up already. I parked the car and walked her to the train so I could spend every last second with her before we had to say goodbye. I cried walking back to the car. I felt so alone.

She called me frantic from the airport. The train was miserable, construction issues created the need for bus detours, she felt a little motion-sickness and now she wasn’t going to get on the standby flight she wanted. She was furious. There were lots of things said, but the thing that stuck out in my mind was, “I f’ing hate Chicago. I’m never coming back.”

I took it personally. I was so hurt I couldn’t even think straight. I was at home going through my closet trying not to feel so sad and she was pissed and seemingly taking it out on me. I had tried so hard to make the visit fun. I felt like I had let her down. I looked up alternate means of transportation. I told her I would pay for a bus ticket if she needed to get home and couldn’t get a flight. When we hung up, all that sorrow was quickly replaced by anger. I felt like she had left me to resolve her problem and it wasn’t really that big of a problem. Everyone deals with traffic delays of one kind or another in Chicago. No one ever gets out on time on a flight out of O’Hare. What was the big deal? Why did that have to mean she was never coming to visit me again? How could she say that to me? Did she even thank me for trying to help her? I don’t think so.

A few weeks went by and I was sucked up into the inevitable life cycle of work, sleep, repeat. My health was finally starting to improve. I would think of our last conversation often and was surprised she didn’t want to apologize for the phone freak out. But she didn’t. I was still hurt and I didn’t know how to tell her. I kept thinking it would go away on its own. I would get over myself, it was no big deal. But the more I tried to imagine how I would tell her she hurt my feelings, the more I realized, I couldn’t tell her how I was feeling because she would get mad at me rather than hear me out. I didn’t want to fight. So I said nothing. I pulled back. Then I told her in an email. She called me something a little harsher than a chicken. I didn’t disagree.

She was furious. She wanted me to fight. But I didn’t want to fight because I don’t like conflict. I wanted to be heard. She wrote me a letter saying she didn’t think she could be my friend anymore. I was devastated. I told her I was sorry she felt that way. That pissed her off even more. She’s never spoken to me since. I guess she doesn’t see the point. I’ve tried to reach out. I’ve tried to connect. I told her she would always be my friend even if she never spoke to me again.

Relationships can be so fragile. Even the ones you think will last forever. I regret not finding a way to say something sooner. I regret that we aren’t able to talk on the phone and share where our lives have taken us. I regret that I won’t really get to know my godchild. I regret that we won’t get old together. But I don’t really think I was wrong. I knew she would get angry and she did. I just didn’t realize she would never get over it enough to want to be my friend again. I was really wrong about that.