Edges Like Sea Glass

By Leah LaRocco

Thoughts On Life

Making Connections As An Introvert Is So Damn Hard

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One of my worst nightmares is being in a large group of people I don’t know. This happens regularly in work situations.  It happens in family situations.  It happens when I go on trips.  Basically, being out in the world is kind of tough for me sometimes.  I hate surface conversations and suck so bad at small talk it isn’t even funny.  Tell me about your life. What challenges have you been dealing with lately?  How is that relationship going? What kind of personal growth have you experienced recently? What made you cry in the last month?  Talk to me.  Wrestle through the deep longings of life and let’s bare our souls together.

I love being alone.  I love being with my husband.  My cats get me.  The garden is where I plow and weed the fields of my inner self.  Hiking alone used to be scary and now I can’t think of a more peaceful, invigorating experience.  I really love having dinner, coffee, or lunch with a friend and catching up on all the good stuff.  Reading alone at night with the TV off is one of life’s delights.  Sitting down and pouring out the present day’s angst in a journal revives my energy, enabling me to face another day. Walking near the sea with the salty breeze breathing life into my being helps me contemplate all the dreams still birthing themselves into existence within my spirit.  These are the things that characterize my introverted nature.  I used to consider this a weakness, a failure on my part to succeed socially, but the more I learn who I am and find freedom in that, the more I understand that this is how I was made and aspects of this perceived weakness are actually my greatest strengths.

I recently met someone who I thought I had a connection with.  She is a woman who has done incredible things with her life.  We talked about where we are in our careers, the “tug” people sometimes feel in their hearts toward new things, and how being brave and stepping into those things can reap great reward and fulfillment.  The conversation came at a time when I needed to hear that message and I felt that perhaps something divine had caused our paths to cross on that particular day.  We exchanged contact information and now I’m getting calls from this person, trying to sell me products from this company she works for, products I don’t need or want to spend money on.  She has used up two hours of my time over the phone that I will never get back and it’s my own fault because I don’t know how to say, “I don’t care what you’re selling, I just want to be your friend.”  The disappointment I feel at this interaction stems from my desire for connection from someone who may have just used me to make a sale.

There have been situations in my job where I’ve worked the room at an event, met someone who really seemed awesome, talked to them for a while, got the whole, “We should do lunch” line only to never hear from them again.  I hate these interactions so much because they are a waste of emotional currency.  I don’t enjoy making the exhausting effort that comes so easily to the extroverted only to have it end in a useless business card that takes up space in a drawer.  I’m not saying that networking isn’t important in professional situations, but the people who’ve actually followed through and made the lunch plans are the ones I still keep in touch with and would stick my neck out for if they ever needed a favor.

My husband’s family is huge. They are nice people who I couldn’t possibly differ more on when it comes to politics and religion, which often leaves us with little to say.  They enjoy gathering in boisterous groups and staying in one place together because they all love each other so much. It’s a beautiful thing to see, and it’s also one of the hardest circumstances for me to handle emotionally and mentally because I crave peace, quiet, and one-on-one connection above all else.  I don’t function well in these spaces and am aware that I come off as the rude in-law from New York.  I’ve made my peace with this because I’m ok with who I am and because I feel lucky to have married into a loving family that brings my husband so much joy.  But seriously, all I want to do is go have a drink with them one at a time so I can actually get to know them and maybe they’d get to know a little more of me too.

When I was in high school, I was painfully shy, awkward, very worried about what people thought, and piously evangelical.  I cringe at the things I said and how black and white the world was for me at that time of life.  But to this day, I still have a few close friends from high school who I adore so much.  We write letters to each other, travel together sometimes, and connect instantly like no time has passed whenever we are lucky enough to be in person together.  Our group was small.  We weren’t popular.  We were nerds.  But that small group of girls was my saving grace in years when I struggled with depression, loneliness, heartbreak, and so many AP tests.

In college, I was still awkward, but a change began to take place.  There was a deepening of my faith in a way that provided more seats at the table, a will and strength that defied professors who said I wasn’t good enough to make it, and friendships so strong that no time or distance has been able to break them.  These relationships were forged in lonely practice room hallways in the music building, lengthy road trips to Fort Myers for Easter, a small artist colony on Martha’s Vineyard where we had nothing but ourselves and a recording studio.  College was where dreams started to become reality before we were all spit out into the world, landing in cities where we gasped for air until we found the spaces where we could breathe.

As an adult, I’ve learned that forming friendships is not as easy as it once was.  People have their families, careers, and priorities that don’t always leave room for new emotional investments.  Sometimes you make the effort to meet someone new for coffee, tentatively testing the waters of compatibility.  Do we like the same things? But more importantly, does this person’s heart recognize something familiar in my own? It’s rare when true relationship is found, which perhaps makes us more grateful for it.  I’d be lying if I said I don’t envy the extroverts of the world.  They make it look so easy with their effortless banter to strangers, the way they flit around a room like fireflies, striking up conversation with the dullest of individuals and making it seem interesting.  I want that!  But I also want to be true to who I am. Being genuine sometimes requires revealing that a day is shitty instead of saying everything is fine.  Life is too short to waste precious effort on people who don’t see you.  Be you, do you, live you to the very fullest, even if it means spending Saturday night with the cats.  After all, they get you…

Falling Apart & Climbing Mountains: The Strength & Frailty of the Human Condition

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Back around Thanksgiving when I was visiting family and half the people there were sick, I managed to catch a cold.  A cold that turned into a sinus infection, that turned into an ear infection, that turned into sudden hearing loss, that turned into one of the most painful illnesses I’ve had to deal with as an adult to date.  I was in and out of doctors’ offices, taking multiple rounds of antibiotics, painkillers, and steroids…yet the hearing in my left ear stubbornly refused to return.  After finally being referred to an ENT at Vanderbilt, I got a steroid shot through my eardrum, took some more antibiotics, and at last had an MRI which revealed I have mastoiditis.  The short version of that is I have a chronic infection in the bone behind my ear which is responsible for conductive hearing.  Due to shoddy medical care at the walk in clinics I went to and poor decision making on the part of the first ENT I saw, I now am dealing with a condition where I have nerve damage and still have not regained, and may never regain full hearing in my left ear.  The latest round of antibiotics hasn’t seemed to help, so the next step is another temporary hole in my eardrum that will enable me to deliver antibiotic drops to the inner ear.  The saga continues in a couple of weeks at my next visit.

During this time, I have also been dealing with some issues that resulted from the antibiotics I had to take.  Lady issues that I won’t go into here.  I’ve been to an excellent women’s clinic here in Nashville that specializes in delicate issues and found out I have two other conditions which have made my private life as a woman rather difficult over the past several years.  Except these are issues women don’t talk about because we’re too embarrassed or ashamed to admit that we deal with them.  These issues have resulted in feelings of shame, brokenness, self loathing, and utter despondency that I struggle with in my marriage and as a woman in general.  They are directly related to my scoliosis, which was discovered when I was 12.  After the embarrassment of wearing a back brace for 2 years, that effort failed, resulting in a doctor callously telling me I needed a surgery to fuse the vertebrae in my spine.  I could not be more grateful that I never went through with that surgery.  I have struggled with chronic pain for years, my hips and shoulders are a bit crooked, and my muscles spasm in all the right places after I’ve done a good day’s work in the yard, but I still have mobility and am filled with gratitude for the things I can still handle.

In short, there are days when I feel like my body is falling apart.  I am in my 30s and there are moments when I feel frail and vulnerable as a feather in the breeze.  At the same time all of this is happening, I have never felt physically stronger in my life.  To say that nature is a healing force would be a gross understatement.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve transitioned from writing a lot about the remodeling of our home and gardens to the trails I’ve hiked and the trips we’ve taken.  Much of this sharing is an effort to expose people to beautiful places in the hope that they too might want to travel and see them, that other women might be brave enough to get out there, even if it means going alone.  As glorious as these places are on the outside: alpine forests layered in moss, frozen lakes that turn azure in the summer, golden aspens flung across mountainsides, and trails that go for miles through wilderness where the only sounds are those of chirping birds and winds caressing branches.  I wish I could adequately describe what these places have done for my heart and my body.

This past weekend, I strapped on my new backpacking pack, loaded up with 17 pounds of gear, and headed to a local trail.  I had just done this trail a couple of days before with a friend.  We saw 3 barred owls and watched two of them call back and forth to each other before silently taking flight through the trees to meet on adjoining branches.  It was a moment frozen in time that left me in wonder.  On the way home from the trail, a brown coyote loped sneakily across an expansive front yard in a wealthy neighborhood.  Not even the rich are safe from those that prowl at dusk.  As I hoisted the pack onto my back two days later, my muscles were tired, my legs, hips, and shoulders were still sorely recovering from the prior exertion.  I put my headphones in and struggled over those 4.8 miles, feeling like that trail would never end.  The hills seemed so much bigger. The 1700 feet of ups and downs that I can normally handle without a problem felt like it was going to break me.  17 extra pounds felt like 50.  I have no idea how thru-hikers do it!

The reason I’m training with my pack is because Rob and I are planning to hike Rocky Top in Great Smoky Mountains National Park with some friends in May.  It’s one of the hardest climbs in the park and we are backpacking a few miles up to a back country campsite, then hiking the rest of the way to the summit.  In June we’re going to Yosemite and I want to hike as much as I possibly can and see a few places I didn’t have time to see last year.  At elevation, those hikes are a challenge even for people who are in good shape.  In September, we’re going to Vermont for a friend’s wedding and would like to attempt to hike Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state.  The last time we hiked in VT, the trail seemed to just go straight up into the sky over boulders and tree roots, so this time I want to be more prepared.  As a person who is clumsy at best, and not the least bit athletic, these endeavors may seem silly, even downright stupid, but they have been paths to healing for me.  The pain in my back has lessened dramatically as my legs and hips have strengthened from repeated ascents and descents in the hills and mountains of Tennessee.  Emotionally and mentally, being outside has brought focus, purpose, and meaning to my life where the church left a giant painful void years ago.  If you want to find me in church, I’ll be out in the woods, where the hiking community is welcoming, caring and judgment free, and God’s creation is so painstakingly evident in every tiny flower, leaf, mushroom, birdsong, feather, millipede, mountain view, rainbow trout, and black bear paw print.  Surround me with forest and I am in the arms of God.

In the moments of weakness when I feel like I can barely make it up the next incline, those are also the moments where I discover a strength I didn’t realize I had inside of me.  All of us have something.  Maybe it’s the betrayal of our own bodies falling to pieces on us no matter how healthy we try to eat or how cautious we try to be.  Several people we know are dealing with the devastation of their marriages falling apart, having to piece themselves together to function for their children, or figure out how the hell to keep their lives from disintegrating miserably to pieces as they lose everything they once held dear.  There’s addiction, loneliness, grief, loss, depression, the ugly little lies we tell ourselves….there is so much to overcome.  But there is beauty at the top of these internal mountains after the shitty parts are over.  The tears and sweat bring you to a place where you can look back from where you came and finally release the weight you’ve been carrying.  A climb can bring a person to a clearer perspective…and all before you is beauty.  We can choose to see beauty or we can choose to see pain.  A dear friend who lost her son said she makes that choice every single day.

I think it’s important to remember that we can be weak and strong at the same time.  That it’s ok to admit our frailty and still be emboldened by our strength.  It’s one of those weird puzzles in life that I will forever be trying to make sense of.  In the meantime, I may ask you to repeat what you said a little louder.  I may ask you to help me carry something that feels a bit too heavy.  And I will definitely ask you if you want to come hiking with me…

 

 

Processing All The Feelings: Living In The South & The Women’s March On Washington

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I needed some time to process, to fully think about what the Women’s March on Washington meant to me. The experience opened up something inside of me that I had shut down and closed off. Living in the South has always been a challenge for me even though I made the choices that brought me here. I wanted to work in the music industry. I have a wonderful job that has led me to stay here and make a life in an area with reasonable living expenses, a husband who I love, and the ability to travel, but none of these things has made it easier for me to be here in a culture where I always feel on the outside or as a friend put it so aptly, “other.” I had never fully experienced what it felt like to be an outsider until I moved to the South and people called me a Yankee and constantly asked me where I was from. When I would reply that I was from New York, they would ask me what country I was from due to my ethnic ambiguity. This still happens to me today and I can only attribute this to the fact that the people asking are not well traveled, maybe not well educated, or just plain rude. Because what else would prompt a stranger to ask someone who looks different from them where you are from and then call you a name? In effect it says, “You’re not from around here, you don’t look like us, and you don’t belong here.”

And you know what? This is a feeling that black people in America feel all the time. So while I am Italian and considered “white” in this country, I can empathize with what it feels like to be judged by appearance.  That’s where it ends. I cannot relate to having people in my family tree who were once enslaved, beaten, bought and sold. I cannot relate to watching people from my race shot by police officers, or pulled over and arrested because of their skin color. I cannot relate to the psychological weight that comes from being part of an oppressed people. And yet, I hear many conservative folks talk about how black people are working the system, using their welfare to buy fancy cars, cheating the government, not willing to work hard…waves of judgment stemming from generations of privilege that goes unacknowledged because of the lack of ability to put oneself in another’s place.

I live in the South surrounded by neighbors who own guns and openly discuss the automatic rifles that sit in their closets. This does not make me feel safe. It does not make me feel safe when family members talk about handguns newly purchased or bring out the latest addition to a collection of weapons that serve no other purpose than to kill or maim. I live in the South where a proposition was voted on last year that says abortion in a case where the life of the mother is at stake is prohibited. I still see the stickers on cars all over town of people who think the life of a woman takes second place to the fetus she carries. I see stickers that say “Trump that Bitch,” “Hillary for Prison,” “I have guns and I’m not afraid to use them,” and on and on the list of one-sided offenses goes, spewing hate from the backs of vehicles all over the town where I live. Sometimes these stickers sit next to an ichthus, the symbol of a fish which is used to represent Christianity and declare to everyone on the road that you are a Christian…but that you also think “Bitch” is an appropriate thing to call the most qualified woman ever to run for President. The puzzling thing about the evangelical culture that exists here is I don’t see it representing Christ in a way that those outside of the culture would desire to be drawn to him. As someone who grew up in the church, went to a Christian university, and is familiar with the teachings of the Bible, I am repulsed by the culture of church that I am surrounded by. I have not lost my faith. I have not lost my love for God. And yet because I do not go to church, there have been several occasions where I have been witnessed to in an attempt to be converted…to something I already believe, but apparently not in a way that is satisfactory for an evangelical in the South.

So I live in the South, but have never felt a true sense of belonging here because, to put it bluntly, these are not my people. There are oases of friends who live here, face the same struggles, are like minded, and provide outlets of genuine conversation that is raw and honest and real in every way. I work with some of them and have dinners or go for hikes with others. Those are the people I cling to in this culture where I feel “other.” So, last week when I went to Boston, then to New York, and finally on to Washington, I was given a reprieve of this feeling and felt an instant relief at not having to defend or explain why I am who I am. As I stood in a crowd of people on a subway platform in DC getting ready to march for women’s rights, a cheer broke out and I felt chills go up and down my spine. A friend in our group who had traveled to the march looked at me and laughed, saying, “Leah, do you feel like you’re with your people now?” And yes, hell yes, I did.

In the weeks leading up to the march, the reactions to the announcement I was going were mixed. My husband was supportive and proud of my involvement. Some friends immediately wanted to know if they could come too. And others reacted with an awkward “Okaaaay…” or just tried to change the subject, wholly disapproving of my reasons for going, but not wanting to offend. My main reason for attending the Women’s March on Washington was to stand in solidarity with other women who wanted to make the statement that sexism, sexual assault, and discrimination against women is not acceptable in any way. I also wanted to be one of thousands sending a message to the incoming president that I find his actions toward women to be deplorable, disgusting, and completely inappropriate for someone who is meant to be a leader of integrity and an example for young people in our country to aspire to. In addition to this, I wanted to march for all the women who could not be there in person, who feel marginalized in some way, who have been abused, who are poor, who have been discriminated against because they are women, who have been denied access to routine preventative healthcare, who have been forced to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy because their life or the life of their unborn baby was in danger. I ache and I weep for these women.   Aside from donating to organizations that support them, I wanted to physically do something to show support, I wanted to be counted among those who stood up.

The march was uncomfortable. We stood for hours, crammed in with thousands of people, personal space nonexistent. Some cheered, some clapped, others chanted, and the energy was palpable. We stood waiting for the march to begin, not being able to hear the rally which ran 45 minutes over time. Finally when it was time for us to march and for the barrier at the end of our street to be removed, the word started to get back to us that the march had been cancelled due to the number of people who had shown up. The initial feeling was one of disappointment, but then we turned around and walked up the mall toward the Washington Monument. There was an explosion of people into every street, down every avenue as women and men standing for a cause literally swamped DC with their presence. Seeing people on the steps of the monument made me think of images I’ve seen from protests in the 60s and 70s. We walked down Constitution Avenue, saw the White House, and took pictures of what we were witnessing around us. Exhausted and worn out, we continued walking to find some food and try to mull over what had happened during the day. Consensus was that even though the march wasn’t what we expected it to be, we were glad that we had taken part and made the effort to be there. Later that night as we sat looking at pictures from marches around the country and around the world, the enormity of this peaceful protest sunk in. We had made history. Women had spoken. We are here. We are listening. We matter.

As this week has passed and I’ve read the news, I have felt like I’m going to get an ulcer. My body is responding physically to the stress of watching people lose their freedoms, watching refugees in desperate situations be turned away, watching Muslims fear for their safety, watching the people of neighboring Mexico be degraded and despised by our President, watching the National Park Service be silenced and then rise up and fight to distribute facts about the state of our environment to the public, watching a freeze on federal hiring, worrying about the security of my dad’s job and the important scientific work he does, worrying about the many millions of people who could lose health coverage, worrying about the concept of putting our country first without regard to how it could harm or hurt other nations, worrying so much about so many things, feeling powerless to change any of them. I cannot quell the need to stay informed because I think that in a time like this, having eyes that are open to the truth of what is happening around us is an absolute necessity. As rampant lies spew from the mouth of our leader, reminding oneself of what is true and rooted in fact is imperative.

Going to the march, seeing thousands of women, each with their own unique story, stand up for the continuation and expansion of their rights was a spiritual experience I will never forget. It also made me feel free. I had the realization that because of where I live, I have a subconscious defense mechanism that is always on, humming in the background, leaving me emotionally exhausted from feeling like I am constantly having to defend who I am and why I believe what I do in small ways all the time. Being surrounded by women who felt the same urgent struggle toward a cause gave me the freedom to be myself in ways I cannot on a daily basis.

There are a couple of friendships in my life that have palpably changed because of this election. For me, there has been an exposure of those for whom sexual assault, racism, and bigotry were not deal breakers in the vote for President. There are some in my life who support this man unashamedly, and I am in an honest struggle to not villainize these friends and family members and to still see them as good people. It is a struggle I am unashamed to admit because I know that many of us feel this. That people on both sides are looking across the divide and trying to figure out how to build a bridge.

I am so thankful for this experience. I am thankful for every single person who was willing to travel to DC or march in their own city in solidarity. I am thankful for the group of people I was able to experience this with on that day. I am thankful for the strong women in my life who have been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. I am thankful for those of you who took the time to read this, knowing that some will agree and some will not. We are all in this together, trying as best we can to make a better world for those who come after us….

Valentine’s Day Still Makes Me Want To Barf

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I hate Valentine’s Day.  Some people might think I just need to get over it because I’m married and live with a man, but that hasn’t diminished my abhorrence for the “holiday.”  I vividly remember too many February 14ths when I was depressed, lonely, crying into a semi-melted trough of Ben & Jerry’s because I was single and didn’t feel like I would ever be good enough to be loved.

Each year I mail notes to some of my girlfriends because I know that one of them is inevitably going to feel like shit on Valentine’s Day because some man, or non-existent man, didn’t fulfill some unrealistic ideal of what romance is supposed to be.  I want these women in my life to know I love them and am thinking of them on a day that seems to put a blinding spotlight on those who crave companionship, like a big scarlet letter advertising loneliness.  I’m pretty sure that if it weren’t for the women in my life, I might as well just drop dead right here on the floor because there isn’t one of them who hasn’t kept me afloat on a day when I desperately needed it and most of them have no idea they’ve ever done this for me.  If anyone wants to see examples of true love, they need to look no further than their female friends.

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So I send a note, even to the independent ones and the married ones who seem like they have it so together, because deep down no matter how intact we seem, there is always a broken piece that still needs to be loved.  For all my kicking and screaming when it comes to not wanting to depend on a man for anything, I still want my husband to do something romantic, to buy me something that tangibly demonstrates his love for me.  It’s the stupidest thing I could ever ask him to do because he demonstrates his love for me everyday by many intangible things that would go unnoticed by someone not familiar enough to recognize them.  This year I’ll be out of town on Valentine’s Day, spending the day with two cousins I adore, and the pressure to set up some weirdly unromantic dinner in a crowded restaurant is officially off.  My husband and I won’t have to do some awkward dance on Sunday morning when we open some vomit inducing card and pretend to be excited about a gift that was incited by nothing more than tradition, consumerism, and greed.  We’ll probably do that on Friday night before I leave…because as much as I’d like to say we’re above all that, we still cave under pressure.

Every year I think about Saint Valentine, a man who was martyred for refusing to deny his faith.  There are many stories surrounding his life.  According to Catholic Online, “…St. Valentine was imprisoned for marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Both acts were considered serious crimes…other depictions of St. Valentine’s arrests tell that he secretly married couples so husbands wouldn’t have to go to war. Another variation of the legend of St. Valentine says he refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, was imprisoned and while imprisoned he healed the jailer’s blind daughter. On the day of his execution, he left the girl a note signed, ‘Your Valentine.'”

Image of St. Valentine

The nature of the man for whom this holiday was named has been lost on us.  As opposed to honoring a person who gave his life for the love of his faith, who was imprisoned for marrying couples before they were separated by war, we cheapen the concepts of devotion and fidelity with gifts devoid of depth or meaning.

Love does not contain the perfection found in a freshly picked long stem rose.  Love is sometimes an ugly business, parading around in sweatpants that have holes and stains, lying like a beached whale on the couch, watching an endless marathon of Golden Girls reruns.  Love has moments of decadence like a finely handcrafted chocolate.  But most of the time resembles something mushy pulled out of the freezer and thrown in the microwave with a sigh and a prayer.  Sometimes love soars, intoxicating the lungs with blissful vitality.  Other times it crawls along in the dirt, gasping for the next shaky breath.  Sometimes love is present.  Other times its absence feels like a gaping hole of need.

Whichever phase you find yourself in at this point in time, I hope you remember that you are loved as you are in this moment.  You are perfectly you, exactly as you are meant to be, with or without someone else.