home is where one starts from

finding presence through escape

this morning i woke up and sat with my coffee looking out the window for a good hour, listening to music, watching autumn, talking to God, daydreaming. last night i went to bed before i was tired because i was craving time to tell God things in silence. these days i'm discovering my times of solitude are full of presence--they fill me up, renew my perspective, make me feel known.
like a lot of things lately, this is completely new for me. i used to escape to solitude and feel alone in it, rather than embrace solitude and dwell in it.
my sophomore year of college was the most difficult year i've lived through, and not because of events, i've been through much harder circumstances, but because of my internal hopelessness. i constantly felt the desire to escape but there was no place i wanted to be, so i tuned out in my mind. i went to bed early and pretended to sleep so i could be alone. all i felt was pressure and no relief.
i have grown up in instant community, always surrounded by people. it's made my life pretty easy considering i'm a quiet, often shy person. it wasn't until high school that i experienced having to actually make friends from ground zero. i was born into a most massive family. i grew up in the same neighborhood as my church and school, the latter i attended from pre-school through tenth grade. when i was seventeen my family moved to north carolina to a camp i'd gone to since i was four. it was my second home, all the people there were my second family. i went away to college with a dear friend and we became a part of another instant community.
while my life has been swarming with precious people since birth, i've often felt lonely--alone inside myself. my number one criteria for my future husband for many years was simply that he know me, understand me, get what no body seemed to get. my greatest longing has always been to be known, which is interesting, since i rarely extended myself in sharing my deep things. i expected people to understand me without explaining myself. since this obviously could only leave me disappointed, i learned early on to shut off and let myself feel lonely. there have been a beautiful few whom i naturally unraveled for, but even they couldn't make me feel entirely known.
one day of my seventeenth year on a thirty-five minute drive back from high school i sat in a car packed with four other siblings. my brother jeremy called my name from the front seat maybe five times, and when i didn't so much as blink he said: "you are such a space cadet!" my brain has an extremely selective memory, so the only reason i remember his words today is that they hurt my feelings greatly. sure, there are a million worse things a brother can say to his younger sister, but those ones happened to be an obnoxious truth in my life. so they cut me. he was right--i couldn't stop spacing out. i was always off in my own world. it was painful to try and be present. that year was my first year in a public high school and i knew not a soul (save my own siblings). that year was painful in every way...and no one understood me. it might have helped if i had told someone.
as a child i loved the song from the secret garden where mary sings:

"i need a place where i can go,
where i can whisper what i know,
where i can whisper who i like
and where i go to see them.

i need a place where i can hide,
where no one sees my life inside,
where i can make my plans, and write them down
so i can read them.

a place where i can bid my heart be still
and it will mind me.
a place where i can go when i am lost,
and there i'll find me.

i need a place to spend the day,
where no one says to go or stay,
where i can take my pen and draw
the girl i mean to be."

i actually went on lots of walks alone in the woods looking for a place worthy of letting my secret self come out in. i never found one. my desire to escape has always battled my desire to be known, and they've never helped each other out until recently. in college i realized my problem of running away. i saw that i rarely offered my full presence to others, and it saddened me, but i couldn't fix it. i didn't know then that i would be given the time for an actual physical escape, that i'd be given a secret place to find my presence in.
i keep saying things about this year..for one, because i am still in it, and also because daily i'm struck by the change it's bringing to myself. this is the first time i've been remote from community. granted, i'm living with family, i've visited and been visited by lots more family, i keep in touch with friends as best i can, i see people every once in a while, but for the most part i spend a lot of time alone in the countryside. my house can't see another house from it's hill. i can walk alone in the woods and feel the comfort of knowing i am completely alone. i've never had this. when i lived at a camp, there was always the prospect of meeting someone on my walks. when i was in college it wasn't a prospect, i always ran into someone on my walks. this aggravates me greatly when i am trying to be alone.
but i have true solitude here. it can make me very uncomfortable at times. in the beginning, i was all discomfort in the center of such silence. i immediately wanted out, wanted to move away...but i believe God kept pulling me back into this secret place. the more i am embrace it, the more i find His presence in it. the more i know true solitude, the less alone i feel. i'm changing. i appreciate people now more than i ever have before, and i'm different when i am with them. i enjoy their presence more, and i actually offer a more present self to them.
i find it amazing today that God is healing me through the escapism i've always felt guilty over. i find it amazing that he's calling my heart to embody one of the things i've lacked my whole life---a full presence.