#i wonder how many stories with my hometown i can share before someone can pinpoint where i was born within a few hundred meters

[s-lycopersicum]

I was mindlessly watching the news one day, then the coverage of an art exhibition started being shown. I always felt a bit alienated about things like that, since opportunities to get up-close-and-personal to art only ever seem to happen very far from where I live. But this time, the sculptor's surname felt a bit familiar, so I tuned in a bit more.

In a huge, airy space with tall ornate columns, several large shapes are carefully displayed. They each are made of simple forms, solid plates in straight lines, allowing for the occasional curve, all with a very "geometrical" flavor to it, and everything very colorful. I imagine it would be very impressive to witness all of in person, instead of lounging in my sofa a meter or so from a small TV.

Then, as if reading my mind, the reporter describes how the artist wished to do away with the idea that art is a distant, untouchable thing, and wished to be where the people are. And I remembered why his name felt so familiar.

There was this park in my hometown, just this small grassy field. In the middle of it rested a large angular monument, a cuboid easily twice my height. Thick steel plates painted red, soldered to one another in right angles, resting impressively well on only three spots.

When we were kids, me and my friends would spend a lot of time on it, trying to climb to the very top, sliding of its gentle slopes, or simply resting on it as if was just a very weird bench. And on one of its plates, I remember noticing a name inscribed, distinctive enough to make an impression, but that I never looked into any further.

It was Weissmann. Franz Weissmann, the name of the sculptor shown on TV, being featured on a whole art exhibition in large city so far away.

The report goes on to say he wanted people to see his work from up close, to touch and feel them, instead of just looking from a distance. He is quoted as saying that "the ideal place for a sculpture is in people's memory". And I can say he achieved that, at least.

[poptod]

Baby, My Love is Yours (Kenny x Reader)

Description: His words make your heart ache, and you put the entirety of your trust in him.

Notes: Male coded/MLM. I’m a huge fan of gender neutral fics (as shown by my AO3) but, when it comes to gay characters, I don’t like taking that away from them. 

Words: 3.5k, sorry it’s so short

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086324

Based off this song (I wrote and sung it)

In all honesty you haven’t known him for very long - at most, a few months, though your grasp on how time works is rather weak. If only you could pinpoint the exact date when you met. Of course, when you first met him, there wasn’t exactly a spark, or a flame, between the two of you; not even within you alone. He spoke anxious but excited, every topic lighting an excitement in his eyes, but you didn’t notice. Not until your fifth meeting.

You’d moved back to your hometown after a long trip of moving around the world, and found yourself not fitting in at all like you had before. At the age of seven, close to every kid had the same interests - having fun, playing, simply burning away the energy till that joy couldn’t come so easily. Nearly ten years later you find yourself in a place you know so well but would never again understand. You were probably the only family in town that had left the state, and that difference cut a deep separation between you and your classmates. You saw the world, and every person in it as entirely different and wonderfully unique from yourself, while many others only knew the people they’d known all their life.

Luckily, there was one person who welcomed you back rather warmly - your old friend, one of your best friends: Larry Gold. An enthusiastic boy too deep in fiction to see that the world didn’t revolve around the stories he knew, but the best shot you had at having any sort of friendships in your old, unfamiliar town. Second day back at the school he came up to you, frowning somewhat.

“You look sorta… familiar. Did we - did - were you here a few years ago?” He asks, gesturing vaguely with his hands at the mostly empty classroom, the students having long gone with the ring of the bell. “Sorry, if not,” he adds. “I just can’t shake the feeling.”

“No, uh, yeah. I was here, like ten years ago? I dunno. I’m (Y/N), you’re…” you blank for a second, before remembering his name. “Larry, right?”

“Yeah! Wow, I… wow. It’s been a while. Where’d you go?”

You catch him up on the way to the lunchroom - Montana, then to Switzerland, then to Korea, to Scotland, before moving to Italy - then Germany, and finally back to the States.

“Holy shit,” he laughs, filling his tray up with the horrid looking lunch ‘meat’.

“It was a bit tough, to be honest. How do you fare?”

“Could be better, could be worse,” he admits with a shrug of his shoulders. “I got a best friend at least, he’s probably sitting over…” he looks over the crowd, before settling on a boy sitting alone in a  corner, “there. That’s Kenny.”

You nod, not really seeing who exactly he’s looking at till he’s leading you over, and you sit across from him and Kenny.

“Hi, I’m (Y/N),” you start out with - simple enough. “I used to live here.”

Kenny doesn’t seem much for words, sitting straight up and stock still, before Larry nudges him with his elbow and whispers something indistinguishable above the raucous crowd. Stuttering he offers his hand, which you shake with a smile.

“Nice to meet you,” you say.

“I’m - Kenny.”

Lunch runs smoothly, and when it finishes Larry pulls you to the side of the rushing students.

“He’s usually not like that. But he is a weird guy, just a heads up.”

Chuckling you nod, not taking his advice. Weird never bothered you, as long as it didn’t harm anybody. In fact, it’d probably do you good - befriending someone unlike the other teenagers around you. Even if you weren’t ‘new,’ you still stick out like a plant amongst rubble, or a snowstorm in summer. Abnormally tall, with clothes too expensive for the school you attend and a very clear ‘Pridefully Gay’ patch on your jacket. Doesn’t bother Larry, that or he can’t see past the end of his nose; you went with the latter.

Kenny ended up being a joy to have around once he actually gained the nerve to start talking. The two of you bonded, rather unsurprisingly for you. A ‘gaydar’ wasn’t something you put much stock in, but there were obvious signs when someone was gay, and Kenny emitted near every sign of a boy so deep in the closet he’d find shoes from 1987. You didn’t bring it up, though, ever one for chivalry. If he wanted to come out, he could do it on his own time, and you certainly didn’t feel the need to talk to Larry about it - he’d asked about your patch, and expressed a decent amount of discomfort about homosexuality.

“I get it if you don’t want to be friends anymore, but that’s a dick move,” you told him, to which he quickly agreed.

“It’s not that I don’t want to be friends, it’s just… you aren’t gonna get, like, a crush on me or anything… right?”

“No. I only like attractive men,” you told him, sparking a snort from Kenny, whom you hadn’t realized was listening.

It wasn’t until the fifth time the three of you had decided to hang out outside of school that you suddenly fell under a charm you’d previously believed didn’t exist. Sitting in the middle of Larry’s living room (your house was too far away, and Kenny’s house was apparently too strict), you were simply doing homework, you working on English, Kenny on math, and Larry on history. Fiddling with his pencil, Kenny sits next to you, and across from the both of you sits Larry.

“Why do we have to write a poem for English? Isn’t it enough that we have to do presentations on friggin’ Jane Eyre?” You grumble, running your hands through your hair.

“Having trouble?” Kenny asks, leaning to look over your shoulder.

“Everything I write sounds stupid,” you mumble, your head falling from the grip of your hands and landing with a dull thud on the table.

“Then just write something stupid,” Larry adds, helpfully, but still engrossed in his own homework.

“Here, I, uh,” he looks at you, blushing (as usual; you’d gotten used to it) before digging into his backpack and pulling out a journal. “You can use one of mine.”

“What? No. That’s cheating,” you insist, turning back to your empty paper. Kenny and Larry share a glance, but his attention comes quickly back to you.

“At least take one of my ideas? They’re on the back page,” he says softly, pushing the notebook into your line of sight, giggling slightly as it comes to cover up the entirety of your own blank journal. With a sigh and a chuckle, you relent.

“Fine, but I owe you,” you mutter, looking over the ideas. Kenny just shrugs, and turns back to his math. You’re horrid at math, and the equations he’s completing in his head send you for a whirl. If you ever start failing that class, you know exactly who’d be the best tutor.

Notes made mostly of scribbles and vague definitions litter the back page - “Made of glass,” one corner says, but it’s missing the last s. ‘Mold and melt ‘neath such wretched hands,’ ‘searching for endless trivialities,’ ‘raised on masochism.’ It’s all rather dark, and when you’re sure Kenny is fully absorbed in his work, you flip through the pages to his poems. Not to steal them, that goes against your moral code; just to read. The poems are in an even messier fashion than the jotted notes - they’re put into blocks, numbered and unnamed. Arrows point to which part connects to which, and some have notes to the side, brackets combining them, and pencil scratches blurring out the wrong words. On a few pages he clearly attempted to write about women. There are scribbles about their beauty, but it’s so vague it could be about anything. Some of the fragments are simply fragments - unconnected lines of poetry.

‘I was love, helpless love,’ you read in your head. ‘And though I do care for you, I cannot put my shame on you, and I’ve lost all that matters.’ Helplessly you search for a clean poem, something you don’t need to piece together like a million letter puzzle. Continuing your search for an idea, an inspiration, or perhaps a glimpse into the elusive personality of your new friend, you find a poem that’s definitely about boys, and it’s more loving than any other that you’d read so far. In the first part of it, he describes the boy he pines for, but it’s not incredibly specific - it mentions hair color, eye color, some skin imperfections, but not enough to pinpoint who it’s about. Then, it gets dark.

‘How bold of me to dream, to wonder. I beg you to let me waste your time, and let me burn away in your light -‘ there’s a scribbled out part - ‘I thought by know’ (it’s misspelled) ‘I might hold you, like endless apologies of existence - feel my heat as your own. But as the sky descends in heaps of empty meanings, I found I said nothing to you at all.’ The last bit is hard to read - it either says ‘empty meanings’ and ‘I found,’ or ‘endless apologies,’ and ‘I fear.’ Either way, you’d seen enough - enough to make your heart race when he looks back up at you with a smile softer than anything you’d ever known, even in the entirety of all you’d travelled through. Your mind stutters, continuing to blank even as Kenny turns away. Had you just wandered through his soul? It felt a very private notebook. Turning back to the last page, you chose a random idea, ending up with, ‘I pray to thee, sweet love’s a parasite.’

From that moment on, your life continues on as normal, with one massive disruption - you’ve got a hideously thumping crush on one of your best friends.  That brings us to the present; he’s sitting far too close to you, emotionally ripe from getting kicked out of his house that afternoon, and he’s practically begging you for solace. Not with his words, thank God, but every movement he makes is needy and his chest weighs heavily against your own as he breathes softly. He’s barely touching you, but his heat manages to reach you, crowding your space without allowing himself the comfort of your touch. Larry’s mom had called you, rather late that evening, and explained the situation to you.

“I think he’s crying. I don’t want Larry helping him, I don’t think he’d help that much. Can I trust you?” She asked, and you agreed, taking your father’s pickup truck and driving it down from the mountains and into town. Once you made it to the basement, you saw the extent of his ruin.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, his eyes red and blotchy, matching his flushed cheeks. He’s still leaning over you on the basement couch.

“Just keep breathing,” you tell him, though you really don’t know what to do either. Your parents weren’t thrilled when you came out, but they certainly didn’t kick you out of the house. “Live day by day, hour by hour… minute by minute, if you have to.”

“They’re gonna take me back, right?” He says, practically pleading with you, as though you have any pull on what happens.

“I think they will,” you murmur, your eyes flickering down to his lips before meeting his eyes again. Truth wouldn’t help either of you in this situation, so you decide your soft lie would work best.

“Maybe I was wrong,” his head hangs low between his shoulders, “maybe I’m straight. I don’t wanna be gay. I - it’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Kenny…” did you really have to come out to him? You had made no effort to hide it. Maybe he’d forgotten? “I’m gay, remember?”

“You’re not wrong, though, like I am,” his words start to come out choked, and he strains to keep talking through the tears burning his thoughts away. “Your parents still love you. Mine - I don’t want to… I don’t…” He doesn’t blink, hoping desperately that the gathering tears will recede but they fall nonetheless, one from each eye till he’s sniffing, cheeks burning as he tries to stop crying in front of you.

“Your parents still love you. Give them time,” you settle on. It’s a precarious situation, and you can’t tell what’s the right thing to say, or if saying anything at all will help.

At last he collapses, the strength of his arms giving out as he falls into you. Burying his face in the crook of your neck he hides away from the world, from his self-hating thoughts, from everything besides you. In a moment you’re all that exists to him, your arms wrapping around his waist and pulling him up so he doesn’t slide away. His warmth burns you, electrifying every nerve you have but you ignore it. There’s more important things to tend to. His breathing is uneven, so you slow your own breathing, instructing him to follow you. Half shivering he attempts to follow your lead, slowly calming from sobbing to napping away the mental exhaustion of the evening.

As he sleeps on top of you, you kiss his temple, running your hands through his hair in a fashion you hope is comforting. When your freezing fingers touch the back of his neck he shivers, so you try to keep away from his bare skin, till you fall asleep. the weight of his body lulling you into a doze.

He wakes up around 4AM, which you only know because when he wakes he jostles you, stuttering and mumbling to himself as he crawls off of you. With a deep breath you open your eyes, looking up at him, still sitting in your lap, but clearly embarrassed.

“Oh jeez. I’m, uh, really sorry for, um.. sleeping on top of you. Oh god,” he grumbles, switching between covering the lower and upper halves of his face.

“I don’t mind,” you mumble, still drowsy with sleep. Unsure of what exactly you’re doing you reach for him, grasping his wrist and pulling him close as you sit up. “How are you feeling?”

“Alright, I guess,” he says, just as soft as you, his expression falling. “I’m… glad you’re here. Less lonely.”

“’S what I’m here for. Did I tell you Valerius called me? She thought you liked me more than Larry,” you chuckled, the words escaping your mind before you gave them any thought.

“Who’s Valerius?”

“Larry’s mom.”

“You mean Victoria?”

“Mm… yeah.”

“I like both of you plenty,” he says, indignantly, a slight frown on his face that you can’t help but find adorable. It shows on your face, too, a smile too wide cracking open. He notices, and it only furthers his confusion. “What? I’m telling the truth.”

“I know. You’re just so adorable,” you admit, and when his eyes widen and he pales, you come back into yourself, and realize what you’d just said. “Oh, uh, you know what I, uh, mean. You know?” You stutter a lame excuse.

“I’m not adorable,” he whispers, staring straight into your eyes.

“No, handsome,” you correct yourself, making the situation infinitely worse.

“Handsome?” He practically wheezes out, losing his words and coherent thought.

You keep a firm hold on his wrist, making sure he doesn’t go anywhere. Instead he wraps his fingers round yours, and, staring at where you meet, he holds your hand. As enthralling as it is for you it soothes him, breath instantly slowing as the pressure of his fingers trills against the back of your hand. For the moment, you put away your anxieties, and let him relish in a comfort unknown. It wasn’t illogical to assume he’d never held hands, never kissed anyone, and certainly not a boy. You had experience with this - Europe was pretty gay, and Italy awarded you your first kiss. Yet somehow, your roles had reversed; the experienced a blushing mess, as the virgin held the others’ hand in a warm composure.

His eyes close slowly as he leans in, heading for a kiss you knew would be heart wrenchingly beautiful, but you pull away.

“You’re - no. I adore you but… I can’t complicate your life. Not now,” you murmur, pressing your hand against his chest and pushing him from you. In an instant, he thinks he’s entirely at fault, and he unwinds himself till the two of you sit on opposite ends of the couch, neither of you touching the other in any way.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, and you can tell he’s about to cry again.

“It’s not your fault,” you rush out, scooting closer to him, but he curls into himself, and you relent. “Kenny…”

He hides his face in his hands, and he’s definitely crying now. You wait a moment before you continue, waiting for the worst of it to be over, but seeing him in any kind of pain twists your gut.

“Kenny…” you slowly move his hands away from his face, and with a soft touch, you direct him to look at you. “I just don’t want to hurt you. You understand that… right?” He nods, and looks away. “There’s so much going on in your life. I don’t want to add to that.”

“But you make everything better,” he mumbles, crossing his arms over his knees raised to his chest, hiding his face again.

“I’m flattered you think that,” you reply quietly, at a loss for words. “I… how about.. I sit here, and you can do what you want, or make me do anything you want. For tonight.”

“What?” He sniffs, and looks back up at you.

“I’ll do anything you want. Anytime you ask. Starting tonight, my love is yours in any way you want it,” you tell him, eyes darting nervously around his face for any sign of agreement or disgust.

“Anything?”

“Yeah. Anytime.”

You’re trusting him with a lot, you both know that - but truly you do trust him, more than you trust yourself. He graces your cheek with his fingers, trailing across your imperfections as you close your eyes, melting into his touch. Shifting, he moves closer, till he’s once more sat in your lap, and you can feel his hot breath against your skin, electrifying you in the same way you keep ignoring. It’s about him, don’t ruin this with your anxiety, you tell yourself, but it gets harder to listen to that voice in your head when he begins to kiss at your bare neck. Your hands shoot up, grasping at his waist as he does this, dotting your skin, up to your jawline until he lands a peck at the side of your lips, so loving, as though you give him the only reason to breathe. At this time, he pulls away, and you open your eyes.

He’s examining you - just as you had done to him, waiting for any sign of renunciation of your promise. But you just sit there, gazing into his eyes like they hold the universe, every answer to be asked for swirling in the gold round his pupil. So he leans in, and at first it’s just a touch; you’re pressing your lips together, still and quiet. The time passes so slowly it might’ve not been passing at all, till he leans in, and you feel the pressure so intensely that a fire could be raging around you and you wouldn’t’ve noticed. You copy the feel of his adoration with just as much tenderness, and a tiny whimper escapes him. He pulls away blushing, leaving you with a dumbstruck smile on your face.

He does a lot more to you that night, and in every second of it you swear you’re in heaven. The memory of it trails you, constantly at the forefront of your thoughts at any given moment. When you meet in school again, he holds your hand like a comfort in a world of pain, and to him it is. You exist, and that’s enough to soothe the ache of rejection, but it doesn’t fully heal, not until his parents finally take him back.

On that day, he asks, “Are… is… are you.. still mine?” He worries, needlessly, if your trust was only to comfort him in a hard time.

“I’ll be yours as long as you want me,” you tell him, and it ends up being a lot longer than you ever would have anticipated. You’re not that stupid, you know the statistics for high school relationships, but your love persists so long there’s no other word for your relationship other than soulmates. Life deals softer blows by his side, and love adores each of your imperfections till the days die away.

Baby, my love is yours

longer than words we adore -

So trust the tremor in my touch

Cause baby, my love is yours.

[readysetgaikokujin]

Quick thingum about Office Relationships!

HAHA it’s not quick because I don’t know how to police my own writing. But here we go anyway! Under the cut is my opinion about ALTs fitting into the sea of coworkers they’re dashed from straight off the plane and beyond. I include a helpful list, a bit of side-eye, and my own experience. Read on!

I see a lot of ALTs who complain about office interpersonal stuff. It ranges from a very general “meh”-ness to a very real, culture-shock-like hatred of the Japan they’re in. The reasons why are varied and mostly just... people things, imo. For example....

Their coworkers ask them the same questions over and over. Their coworkers don’t talk to them at all. Their coworkers don’t seem to like them. Their coworkers go to lunch without them, or didn’t tell them about a meeting, or wanted to reschedule their welcome party until a month later, or laugh nervously too often for their tastes.

And honestly, I have to wonder how much of that is the coworkers’ fault, and how much is the ALT in question just... waiting to be liked. For no reason. While they continue to be unlikable.

Now I get it, sometimes you try super hard and it still sucks. I am NOT saying that does not happen, BECAUSE IT DOES. It’s a risk with all human relationships that we take.

That is the worst case scenario, I think, yeah? You put in all the effort, you make the cookies, you answer the questions, you pose the small talk, you try and smile and try and smile and they still don’t really like or include you.

But I’m not talking about that. I think if you’re conscious of trying, you’re most likely someone who has tried and done been trying. And I respect that. And you.

I’m pinpointing the people who complain about their coworkers and how “mindless” or “meaningless” it all is, but then wonder why they’re not talked to at the drinking party. I’m side-eyeing the people who post about how they deliberately tell their coworkers lies about small talk questions because they hate answering them. I’m talking about the people who just sit there silently seething (AT ALT-ONLY EVENTS TOO) and then wonder why a) nobody wanted to talk to them and b) why they are unhappy.

I don’t want to talk to a wet blanket, and we share a language. You have to got to acknowledge that it’s not “Japanese people don’t know how to small talk”, it’s more “I MYSELF AM WET BLANKET”.

I firmly believe that you get love back from the universe that you input into it. It takes time, and effort, and it’s sometimes scary or backfires or is stupid. That’s fine! Do it anyway!

“But Sami,” you say. “I don’t know how to.”

“It’s okay, friendo,” I tell you. “I STILL don’t know what I’m doing, because we’re all just adults bouncing about trying to be good at what we do!”

Seriously.

If you get here, and you’re nervous, here is a small list of ways to ingratiate:

1. go to the party if you can make it 2. MINGLE AT THE PARTY, this doesn’t mean drink! Just talk to people! If you haven’t noticed, they are all ASKING EACH OTHER the same bullshit small talk questions, because humans use a script until they get comfortable with each other, or until someone confident enough breaks the mold. And that is okay!! 3. give little presents. Not necessarily expensive ones, but my crew is STILL talking about when I got apple pie moonshine for them, even though I DIDN’T EVEN ATTEND THAT PARTY. 4. bake or make something, if you can do a hometown recipe they’re gonna love having an excuse to talk to you about something other than the seasons, your Japanese level, or the weather. Trust me. Give them more options on the dialogue wheel!!! 5. smile. This is harder when you have a default face that isn’t a nervous smile, I know. My anxious ass smiles all the time =_=;; Just try it out when you give the otsukaresamadesu in passing. I even throw in waves and winks. Someone’s gonna have a stroke someday, I’m sure, but it works. I’ve got a hoard of dudebros who wave back. 6. be patient. With them, with yourself, but mostly with them. You have no idea what kind of ALTs they worked with before you, and some of them might’ve left a bad taste in their mouths. They might have been made fun of for pronunciation in English. They might have been told off for trying to help them look at the schedule. They might feel like all foreigners are prickly, just like you might worry all Japanese people are quiet. Wrong. Give it time and patience. 7. get you some cheddar off of somewhere and make Red Lobster style biscuits 8. involve your JTEs in your self-intro games, so you can learn about THEM too 9. invite teachers to observe your lessons if they seem into English 10. when you get here, see if someone wants to go grab a power lunch with you, cuz it’ll be summer vacay for crying out loud!! If your supervisor doesn’t do that with you, I will drive there myself and take you to kaitenzushi omfggggg

Ten things. Ten things to try.

But the most important thing to remember is this: You are not coming here as the protagonist of your solo story, you affect everyone’s stories you come into contact with. For better, worse, or absolutely neutral. Once you stop thinking of people as accessories to your life, and people with their own thoughts and actions, the world will be your oyster. Nom nom.

It shouldn’t be that hard. But in talking with military friends, non-JET ALTs, and just expatriates living in Japan... the struggle with immediate and unfounded entitlement is REAL, fam. And it gets old for your coworkers as well as your ALTs in the prefecture. Which is why fifth years like me have gummy old jaws where we used to have toothy ones, because we got tired of gnawing down the same bone of “just stop expecting everything to be about you and how great you are omfggggggg just be nice to people”. This dog too old for that now.

Also, anecdote time, because my office is so hot that if I stop typing I will fall the hell asleep:

I came here with NO Japanese. I was memorizing “osaki ni shitsureishimasu” on the freaking airplane. I didn’t know what yakisoba was, or how to eat ramen, or even how to read most katakana yet. Imagine trying to make coworker relationships when you have to both resort to gestures and helpless looks and all that effort on both sides?? It must have been a pain in the ass for my coworkers cuz I know at times it really was for me!

So I started to take the initiative. I would bake a ton, give out some sweets every month or two, and copy the katakana from an online dictionary to say what the ingredients were. I’d ask coworkers to translate ceremony titles for me, then look up words to listen out for in the ceremony itself. I’d go to all the nomikais and nijikais even if I wasn’t drinking, and I would try to sit with new people every time at the after-party! Even if we didn’t understand each other haha. I would smile every time I got nervous, and I tried my best to absorb as much Japanese as I could in my own way.

Fast forward five years. I can speak okay now. I can listen even better. My coworkers, I feel, know who I am, and not just a “that’s Sami” knowing. But they know my hobbies, my drives, my teasing, and how I like to be teased back. They interact with me easily because I put myself out there to be interacted with, in English or Japanese, doesn’t freaking matter. They’re people looking to reach out. I can understand most everything that comes my way because most things that come my way are things I’ve experienced and beaten, like mini-bosses in my Japan RPG adventure. I can make small talk but the beautiful times are when I don’t have to anymore.

Yes I was here five years. Yes you might have shorter time than that. Yes it is still doable.

So like.... you can totally be a part of whatever school you’re going to be placed in. I say this because I hear of so many ALTs saying shit like “coming here without knowing a bit of Japanese means you’re just a burden” and “you will never be accepted as Japanese no matter what you do”. And to that I just say “well you’re right, but also thhhbbbbbbbpt.”

We all have the potential to be burdens or not, and it ain’t got much to do with language ability Sharon. And my appreciation for how Japan does things doesn’t exactly ingratiate me with Americans neither! So have a stick of gum and calm down.

There you have it. Go forth, be merry, and don’t go around expecting people to love you for being a surly, quiet, asshole who doesn’t share any of their personality with their coworkers. I get it. I had a MySpace once, it’s edgy to not care about what people think of you. But it’s fun to have relationships with people and care about what they think, even if this job is temporary.

[traemallari]

[ finally answering the call ]

My lavender candle burning, my Breathe oil diffusing, Sari’s rhythmic breathing and Mosaic radio on Spotify make for a relaxing environment to read Jesus Calling and do my Operation Solid Life readings.  Been having some adventurous and active days here as of late, but sometimes you just need a whole morning to journal with Jesus.

Traveling, especially for work and my art, is an absolute blessing.  But for this Catholic raised kid who enjoyed going to mass and visiting my home church, I miss that part of worship.  Having left my hometown almost a decade ago now, I haven’t had a community to call my own.  I always love visiting my little home church whenever I would find myself back home, but those visits have been as little as once a year.  And the community has grown and changed and although some familiar faces are still there, my connection is not.

Before I left Fullerton last December to join this Wicked life, I asked my love if we could go to a service at The Rock church.  It was a Christian church that was just down the street from where I had been living for a year and a half but had never noticed. 

To be honest, I didn’t see it because that wasn’t what I was initially looking for.  Even when I was in Las Vegas, I always looked for the nearest Catholic Church and would go to Sunday Mass.  As the years went on, I stopped going to mass.  I love the tradition and religious ways of a Catholic mass, but that is nostalgia, something familiar from my past.  But my spirit wasn’t being ignited and I felt more disconnected than ever.  God has never left me and He has been the driving force behind every decision I have ever made and clearly Jesus took the wheel on this crazy journey I’ve been on and let me tell you, He is a fearless driver!  And although God speaks to me everyday, I knew I was still missing a lot from our relationship and I didn’t know how to make it grow and progress.

So, when I met Josh, he told me his family went to The Rock.  He never invited me there or pushed me towards it.  I actually wondered why he never did.  Did I come off as someone who wouldn’t understand or accept or believe?  But now I know it was God’s timing.  It was I who would make the conscious decision to take a step towards Christ.

So Josh took me to a service before I left for Wicked.  And I knew it was what I had been looking for.  I was overwhelmed.  And although I left fulfilled I was also left wanting more! 

When I started Wicked, it in itself was pretty overwhelming.  That first month, I tried to start my Operation Solid Life readings, but I was tired and stressed and homesick and feeling very alone having joined an already established family during the holiday season.  Instead of finding solace in the Bible, I found more frustration.  I didn’t understand how to use the Bible and I didn’t understand what to do with this new knowledge.  I was just using a Bible application on my Surface Pro and I don’t like reading off a screen in the first place, and it had ads and it wasn’t the NIV (New International Version) which, without help, is hard to understand.

Therefore by the time the new year came around and we were in a new city, I had stepped away from my readings to focus more on integrating better into the show and the cast and crew and trying to make a community for myself with this new family.

A couple months later and we returned to upstate New York.  I started to feel a stirring in my soul.  It was hard to pinpoint.  So, as the scorpio that I am, I took to deductive reasoning while testing out all roads.  At first I thought that maybe the redundant lifestyle, even given the new cities, was starting to wear on me.  I don’t like feeling like I’m on a hamster wheel.  Finally comfortable in the show, I started to find different choices to make each show be different and enjoyable.  And as I started to strengthen friendships and find different ways to experience each city uniquely, I ruled that out as the source of my unease. 

I let Josh know that I didn’t feel right and maybe it was that I didn’t feel we were growing as a couple.  My love language is quality time and seeing as we only saw each other once a month, sometimes for only 24 hours, I felt constricted by time to fill each second with being able to do things we couldn’t do apart.  I like going with the flow and I like sometimes just sitting and taking our time and talking, but every second was always filled with some part of the new city that I wanted to share with him or if I was home, it was to basically just eat all the things I missed and catch up with others, which I never actually had time to properly do...I would just see my friends as I ate my food.  Also, the time difference was hard for us to have much time at the end of the day to catch up.  He is my absolute best friend in the entire world and we could go on and on delving deep into topics, talking about our day, things we’d been mulling over in our minds, random theories, what have you.  But when you don’t have much time, I started to feel like I needed to edit what I wanted to share to only the main points, which isn’t why we talk in the first place.  So we agreed we would make better time for each other regarding the time differences and he would put more effort into taking the reins when I would visit home so that I felt that my coming home was as important and needed to him as it was for me.  After we adjusted that part of our communication, there was still something missing.

I was starting to feel undone.

And like most things that happen in my life, I ran into the wall that was blocking me, and I ran into it hard.  It broke a few things I had built unnecessarily and it hurt.  It hurt enough to cry.  For days.

It is an extremely personal thing that happened to me and I feel uncomfortable sharing the details here.  The main thing is that my path towards Christ suddenly overlapped with Josh’s and knowing that made me feel motivated.  Still shaking from impact, I was on my feet and started walking.

I turned back to The Rock and found their website and started to watch the taped services.  I was trying to find their podcasts, which, let me just say, someone needs to streamline their website a bit.  It is not user friendly and missing a lot of vital information that newcomers, like myself, are looking for.  However!  I did stumble upon a video that explained the Operation Solid Life readings.  The reason why I was so confused back in December is because it was just a reading plan that was given to me by Josh’s sweet mother.  With the best intentions, she just included me in a family group text that just had the list of readings attached, but nothing else.  There were directions that I did not know, and it was not at all her fault for assuming I knew what to do with the Bible.

Speaking of the Bible, I could not stand reading off the screen anymore and really did not like this Bible application on my computer.  Thankfully, one of the ensemble girls, Nyla, gave a few of us new beautiful Bibles as her goodbye gift.  It is a New International Version meaning it’s easier for me to read the stories and follow along.  Plus, the cover of it is this super soft rubber that I love!  I love tactile things.  The cover matches my Jesus Calling book as well.  Little things that make me happy!

I have always wanted to read the Bible to better understand it now as an adult.  When I was younger, we weren’t focused too much on the Bible and I wasn’t taught how to use such a powerful communication tool.  When I was living in LA during what I now refer to as my own spiritual winter season, I kept having that thought at the back of my mind, but it just wasn’t the right time.  Wait.  Let me correct that.  I wasn’t at the right time.  God’s time is always right all the time.  And I needed to come to Him when I was ready.

Since then, I have realized my stirring wasn’t a hole asking to be filled.  Not at all.  God was already in there.  That stirring was a calling.  Like a phone ringing, waiting for me to pick up the receiver.  The ringing was muffled, lost under a cluttered mess of experience and pain.  It took the great shaking to dislodge a few things in order for me to hear where the ringing was coming from.

I answered.  And unlike most of my internet in every different hotel, the connection was loud and clear.

I have also found that with my studies, I can feel as if I am able to express my gratitude for this life.  Not this life in general, but the one right now, every moment, the specific present.

God has answered so many different prayers in just my recent months, and almost all of them with my joining the tour.  When I first joined, my Glinda, the incomparable Amanda Jane Cooper, gave me a Giving Key with the word Faith on it.  She would ask newcomers to pick a word from a list that reached out to them or something they wished to work on while they were here.  When I picked the word, it was subconscious.  It was the first one that jumped out to me and I was able to justify it at the time.  But hindsight is 20/20.  And I did not know how prophetic that small gesture would become.

I am still yearning for community, but I know that is something I just have to be patient with.  I found that there is a satellite church in Michigan and I will be able to go to service with Josh when I’m there for two weeks with the show.  And I’m hoping I’ll be able to visit the home church around my birthday.  It’s hard that my days off are Monday and Tuesday when I visit home and there isn’t worship on those days. 

But I know God is setting things into motion and building takes time. 

And that’s it.  That’s my spiritual journey as of late.  I actually didn’t mean to write or document any of this save for in my physical journal.  But I guess I’m supposed to share a little of mu journey because the Holy Spirit really let it rip!

Thank you to whomever has made it this far into this entry!  I don’t share to boast or to find validation.  I share because maybe others won’t feel so alone.  Or maybe they wouldn’t know just by looking at me what it is I’m experiencing. 

So if this has shed any light for you in any way, small or large, feel free to strike up a conversation with me.  We are alone on our journeys, but we don’t have to be lonely.

lovelovelove

Tifa