here i am.

I am distracted easily and often. I am prone to stop talking mid-sentence because something else has caught my eye. When telling a joke or a story, it takes everything in me to focus on finishing what I’ve started.

This is an awful quality. And, believe it or not, it probably annoys me more than the people to whom I am talking.

However, because of this terrible terrible characteristic, I have become an excellent escape artist. I have mastered the art of being fully present, and fully absent simultaneously. (Not in some weird, New-Age spiritual sense– that would probably take a lot more time and focus.)

You see, my tendency to be easily distracted can go both ways. It can sneak up on me when I least expect it, and least desire it. Or I can invite it, welcome it with open arms, and allow it to be my escape. The latter has started to happen a lot more frequently in the past ten months.

I can escape to anywhere I’d like. I can escape to a different time, a different place, a different feeling.

Here, today, right now, May 28th, 2010, I can escape to any time I’d like. I can be there for quite a while too, until reality snatches me from Nostalgiatopia.

When I am at home, I can escape to anywhere I’d like. I can take my pick from any of the places I’ve been throughout the span of my lifetime. Sometimes it’s back to Memphis, sometimes to South Carolina. Once I went to Canada; they have a nice butterfly conservatory there.

When I am sad, I can escape to happiness, or boredom, even anger—there is a vast array of emotions to choose from.

I have survived the past several months by escaping. Every time I am somewhere I do not want to be, I “go away.”

I read a book about a girl who needed to go from this valley she lived in up to the Mountains. She was given, as her guides, Sorrow and Suffering. And she had to hold their hands. And they take her to all these awful places– the Desert, and Shore of Loneliness, the Valley of Loss, etc. And she lets go sometimes. And she grabs onto other people, like Bitterness, or Resentment, or Pride because they seem more appealing.

And I’m not so different from her. Because in the midst of my companions, Sorrow and Suffering, I escape to a place where I can be with whatever seems more appealing at the moment. Because Sorrow and Suffering pull me to these places that seem like a contradiction to the Mountains I’ve been promised so many times.

Being intentionally present throughout every moment of life isn’t easy. Especially when you’re great at escaping. Grief is the last thing I want to be present for. Sorrow is the last thing I want to be present for. Suffering is the last thing I would think to cling to.

Anne Lamott wrote in her book Traveling Mercies that you have to expose yourself to grief in order to heal from it. That we must become enveloped in it before we can experience peace.

“…The bad news is that whatever you use to keep that pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you. A fixation can keep you nicely defined and give you the illusion that your life as not fallen apart. But since your life may indeed have fallen apart, the illusion won’t hold up forever, and if you are lucky and brave you will be willing to bear disillusion. You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.”

At the end of the book with the girl who is going to the Mountains, her Companions are transformed into Joy and Peace. That always seemed a little hokey to me; almost too beautiful to be true. Maybe it’s because right now I’m still trying to get the heck away from Sorrow and Suffering (I never asked for them, after all), because what I really asked for from the start was Joy and Peace. The thought of being present in my grief makes me sick to my stomach. The thought of intentionally living my life and facing the things that I want so badly to escape from scares me to death.

But I will be present. I will be intentional. I will refrain from escaping. I will practice acceptance. I will grieve, I will hurt, I will wait for healing, and I will look for the tiny flecks of gold exactly where I am.

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