The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

another letter

I've been meaning to write to you for ages. It's been over 4 years since I have seen you, since we have spoken. I don't know if you have gotten any of my letters. I suppose most of them are verbal now, anyway.

There's so much I have been wanting to tell you, to explain to you... I've been reading through our old emails, blog posts and online chat records, at times laughing, at times crying, and at times cringing... I knew at the time you were crazy, but did you know I was that unbalanced (because really, you could have said something)? I'm trying to pinpoint when it was that I pulled my head out of my ass, but apparently it was such a long and slow process that I didn't notice anything dramatic until well after the official dislodging. I guess we were both really young. We thought we were invincible - you always more so than me. But I thought you were unbreakable, unstoppable. A celebrity, superhero status-type thing.

I really want to show you a hoop video I am making. It's for you, though not complete. It's hard for me to ever feel like things are good enough to give to you. It has to be perfect. Because you were perfect. Full of imperfections - and hell, you basically broke my heart - but perfect nonetheless.

Truth, you really pissed me off sometimes. One minute you were so impenetrable and the next unusually sensitive... it used to shock me when I'd realize you could be hurt. By me. It was just a really rocky time - I wasn't myself and was really overly sensitive about things. I needed so much sleep. I'm sorry for not being more patient with you. More understanding. More giving. Again - I guess I was young. And sick. Whatever. Does it even matter anymore? Why do I still feel the need to apologize or atone for something? It just was. We just were.

But mostly everything was good, once emotions were aligned... I could have flown with you beside me. So much energy. Before you it had been years since I had met someone that I could laugh with that much. I used to come home after seeing you with my stomach muscles actually hurting from the laughter. You could also make me angrier than anyone... you just had this ability to hit every single nerve in me, good ones and not so good ones, in a direct manner. Maybe I wasn't ready for it.

I've grown in 4 years. A lot of it is your fault.

I moved your picture to a new space in my house. I put candles by you that I light in the evenings. There's also a teapot next to the picture that I really love, just in case. Not really knowing when you'll be around again, I just sort of wait now, eyes and heart open. I used to notice a lot more.

Sometimes I think I see you on the metro or in NW near my office. It always takes me by total surprise and I believe for a split second it could be you, knowing full well in some other part of my logical brain that it's not possible. Time slows down. My heart does that flippy floppy stall thing anyway, my spine gets straighter, my eyes sharpen and my hearing gets sort of fuzzed out - all in an instant, and then it passes again. Time resumes and the sound comes back on. Sometimes I kick myself, and other times I just let it go.

I remember getting the call about you. I was at work at that job I hated (ok, at one of the jobs I've had and hated). I thought it was a joke. I had just gotten your letter and I was writing back to you, trying to weigh my words and say the right things. The problem is I can't just send a one page letter - it has to be this epically long memento of doodles with different pens and the envelope has to be just so and decorated appropriately. It takes me so much time because I always write in spurts, and I am also forgetful... but I wasn't finished with it. I remember thinking it was too whiny at times, so there was a whole chunk I was getting rid of. I didn't want to bore you.

But the phone rang.

That was my job at the time, to answer the phones. I was a receptionist that did as little work as possible, which may or may not have contributed to my getting fired a few months later. But on this day I was actually working, because I remember being totally focused on the data entry I was doing, and I was just about to get up to copy some checks that had come in the mail for our membership fees.

But the phone rang. So I put the checks back down and answered.

The last time I saw you we swung on the swing set near your house. Everything was relaxed and easy. For the first time in months I wasn't mad at you anymore, you were not having to walk on egg shells and weigh your words, afraid I would twist them into something else. It wasn't awkward and it wasn't overly dramatic or even rushed. I knew you were leaving. You knew you were leaving. I will never, ever forget the way you looked at me and how that felt. It is because of you that I believe in the possibility of the perseverance of love. Beneath all of the residual bitterness, beneath the history of bickering, behind the days of avoiding phone calls and ranty email exchanges "explaining things"... under all of that was a communal understanding. We moved, we loved, without a need for words. When I drove home that night I remember thinking that I would probably never see you again. I figured you were bigger than this place now... but I always assumed I would talk to you. At least at some point in the 2 years we'd talk, right? And who looks past 2 years when you are 22 years old?

That stupid phone call. Like a nuclear mushroom cloud right in the middle of everything. Boom.

Nothing was the same after that phone call. My life and everything it it came to a giant fork in the road. Suddenly there wasn't enough air in the room. I didn't have any words to respond with. I don't even remember if I said anything or asked any questions. That was the second time my heart broke while knowing you.

It was a short phone call. I put the phone back in its cradle, picked up the checks I had to copy, and walked into our back room in the office. My hands were shaking but I had not cried yet. My coworker took one look at me and asked what was wrong, and it was telling her in one short sentence that made the flood gates open. My boss sent me home. I was walking up 18th to the metro when I got out my cell phone and started hitting buttons. I called my sisters. I called my best friend. I don't even know if I was consciously choosing names in my address book.

"He's dead. He died."

Over and over, the same words, the same shocked responses, the same disbelief, the same sympathy. Because what can you say? What else is there to say?

It was even sort of nice outside that day, as I was walking. The sun was shining and seemed too bright. People were scooting about with briefcases and heels and suits on their lunch breaks. Everything was so normal and everyone was acting like nothing had happened. It felt like the sort of day where bad things are not supposed to happen, where phone calls at your desk phone should only be about work, where trivial things you were so concerned about an hour ago should still be front and center in that self-absorbed microcosm-ish way. I started calling people because I had no idea what else to do. I was trapped in this alternate world where everything and nothing was as it should be.

People came over to my house that night. It was the first and only time in my almost 4 years of living there that I've ever had that many people in my living room. We made tacos. I spent the better part of an hour shredding a block of cheese into tiny pieces with a knife, carefully, slowly. Tiny little cheese pieces. I didn't know what else to do with myself.

The phone rang and I lost my center completely.

Do you know I still feel that way? If I think about you too much now I don't know what to do with myself. I miss you so much - that light you had, your laughter, your odd sense of humor. You were so smart. I want the world that has you in it. We're all better for it. What happened to that?

I miss you, Wyatt Dean. Not because I think you are suffering... on the contrary I know you are just fine where you are. More than that - you are love, peace, bliss... But I miss you especially because the rest of us have gaping holes in our hearts without you here. I miss you selfishly because I want to see what you would be up to right now - what jobs you would have had, if you were married, where you'd decide to live. 4 years has felt like an eternity.

I just miss you.

Preface to Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"

"This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

despise riches,

give alms to every one that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy,

devote your income and labor to others,

hate tyrants,

argue not concerning God,

have patience and indulgence toward the people,

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,

go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,

read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."