As our problems gain significance and gravity and weight, we are no longer confident that our friends can bear their burden, no longer confident that they’ll be able to see us through the wreckage of our flaws. Maybe that’s why, when we find someone who does see us and loves us still…maybe that’s why we hold so tight?
Friendship offers a purity that is complicated only by the fact that there is nothing legally binding you to one another. Nothing to say, “if you leave you’ve got to give me a house or a boat or half of your grandmother’s jewelry.” Just this love that lingers in space, vulnerable, subject to the whims of men.
The value I found in this version of myself shifted over time. She was, undoubtedly, more fun than everyday-me (free from the plagues of anxiety, depression, paranoia, self-doubt). But pulling her up, and keeping her there, seemed to become harder over time. The disparity between who she was and who I wanted to be, who I thought I was, seemed to grow further and further apart…the transition away from her, back to me, increasingly more chaotic.
But the beauty in this moment, if there is any to be found, is that we’re beginning to accept that mental health isn’t just something to be addressed within the stark walls of our therapist’s office. We’re beginning to look to more than the typical health care provider to carry us through. We’re beginning to see that, maybe, there is healing to be found elsewhere? Maybe there are solutions and connections and answers in our everyday lives? Maybe music is here to save us, after all.
Sometimes I think back to the mash-up of issues I was facing as a perfectly concocted soup. (But less like a regular, hearty soup, set to warm your soul on a cold night…and more like one of those soups they’d serve cold in a school cafeteria: thick and mysterious and generally unpalatable.)
Waking up in Joshua Tree was waking up in another world. Had I even seen the sun rise before? Had the light ever touched anything with such intention?? It hit me fairly quickly what people find appealing about this place. In the light of day, the landscape feels less like a barren wasteland and more like a waiting canvas, a palpable feeling of possibility filling the limitless space.
Entering the play space was like entering another world; a world where quality design meets functionality, a world where the color palette doesn’t send your eyes darting back and forth seeking reprieve, a world where kids slide happily down hills with nothing more than pirate hats, books and one another to entertain them.
