What I want in a husband

This is not a matrimonial profile in any sense of the term; it is simply a record of...what I want.

• He should be willing to to walk with me on whatever journeys I choose to take.  Brownie points if he initiates new journeys, or if he gives me the courage to begin the journeys that I've always been too fearful to begin.
• He should love and respect my family.  And where/when he falls short (because I am a realist and I know that it will happen), he should want to work to create those bonds or repair the damage.
• He should have the honesty and humility of a child.  This means simultaneously being sensitive to my needs (holding my hand and offering a shoulder when necessary) and being driven to help me grow through him (doling out constructive criticism and offering tough love when necessary).  And just as I will be open to suggestion and growth through him, he should be open to suggestion and growth through me.
• He should love me.  Future Husband, this is the requirement on which all of the others rest.  If you love me, everything else will naturally follow.  As the creator of this list, I promise you that.  But you should be aware that loving me doesn't just mean romance, although that is definitely a crucial part of the deal.  It means that you see the same me, whether I'm wearing my wedding dress or my nightgown.  It means that you want me, whether it feels like the most natural thing in the world or like everything is tumbling down around us.  It means that the thought of hurting me will hurt you...so you will not be able to dream of hurting me.  On the contrary, just to reiterate: you will love me.

P.S. I did not include the obvious qualities that any girl with half a mind for practical foresight would include (financial stability, wanting children, being musical, faithfulness, virginity, and wanting to watch "Grey's Anatomy" with me) because this post is more about emotional requirements.  But Future Husband, know this: those practical requirements are just that - requirements.  They are not optional.  Especially the last one.

Questions about friendship

When I studied psychology in high school, I learned about the concept that the more you share with another person, the closer to you that person tends to feel.  This sat quite well with me at first.  After all, it makes sense that bonds like friendship and romantic relationships can only be strengthened by the sharing of information.  It made intuitive sense to me, yes...until my teacher stated that this closeness is artificial.  How, then, I wondered, is it possible for anyone to have a real relationship?  If there is no such thing as true closeness, then how can anyone have a friendship, a romantic relationship, or any kind of bond, for that matter?

In retrospect, I think my teacher neglected to specify (or perhaps my class notes were not as complete as they should have been) that this closeness is artificial only if the information-sharing is one-sided.  That is, it seems more reasonable to me that both parties must share freely and openly with each other in order to cultivate a genuine closeness that could be labeled as a relationship.  Whew, I sigh to myself now.  Thank goodness; it's possible for real relationships to exist, after all.

Or is it?  For what is friendship, really?  Can it be defined by such information-sharing, and if so, to what extent?

I have been grappling with such questions for years.  As a high school student, I never felt any particular urgency to search for their answers since back then, I had no friends (in school).  At best, I had a few acquaintances.  I knew plenty of people, but I did not - in fact, I refused to - consider any of them friends.  Why?  A large part of it was that my high school environment was too much of an academic and social pressure cooker for me to feel like I could make any real friends.  Perhaps my expectations were too high, but then, I have never considered a half-baked friendship built on competition worth cultivating.  In addition, I always reasoned that we were all going to go our separate ways after graduation anyway, so why bother?  Lastly, for particular personal reasons, I had absolutely no intention of preserving any ties with my high school and anyone I associated with it.  In a nutshell, that's why I can say I had no friends in high school without fearing that I might sound whiny or pitiful.

Given all of this, it is understandable that when I began at Union last year, I was ready.  I nursed a fierce hunger for a fresh start.  I craved a new beginning with new faces and, hopefully, new friendships.  I was cautious, but open to any potential friends who might present themselves to me as, together, we explored our new lives as college students.  And present themselves they did, thank goodness.  But this welcome development also meant that with each passing day, each new friend, each flourishing friendship, I only grew more eager to explore my world and my mind so that I might answer the above questions for myself.

How much information-sharing has to happen, and what kind of information has to be shared, so that one can label a relationship a friendship?  Is this information-sharing the only major factor which contributes to the creation and development of a friendship?  And if all you have in the end is family, why bother with friendship in the first place?

A last thought: in his novel Life of the Beloved, Henri J.M. Nouwen writes of friendship and brokenness as part of a letter to his dear friend:

"...our brokenness reveals something about who we are.  Our sufferings and pains...touch us in our uniqueness and our most intimate individuality.  The way I am broken tells you something unique about me.  The way you are broken tells me something unique about you.  That is the reason for my feeling very privileged when you freely share some of your deep pain with me, and that is why it is an expression of my trust in you when I disclose to you something of my vulnerable side" (87).

This relationship between Nouwen and his friend, as described in the book, is exceptionally strong.  In light of this, I wonder: do the strongest of friendships originate from two people sharing more of their "sufferings and pains" with each other, or is it more fortifying to share moments of joy?  I suspect that the answer is "both", but then I wonder which is more useful in cultivating the strongest possible relationship.

(Any and all thoughts, opinions, stories, experiences, discussions, and so on - about any of these questions - are welcome!)

"A Shadow of You"

I told your mother I'd help you with school, and I did

Said nothing about how your voice sends me straight to the stars

This practical girl was amazed people like you exist

And against my own logic, I wanna be wherever you are

I fell for the way you said my name

And for a little while I was so sure you could only see me and you

Tonight, there is no use for blame

Not when you had no idea I lived in our future too soon

I fell for a shadow of you

My name's on your wall but I think you've forgotten it's there

By the time I looked back, I was already light-years ahead

Every color was brighter and I smiled at nothing at all, all day

That night I hung on for dear life to all that you said

Oh, I fell for the way you said my name

And for a little while I was so sure you could only see me and you

Tonight, there is no use for blame

Not when you had no idea I lived in our future too soon

I fell for a shadow of you

My thoughts were pure and all my friends

Were being chased

While I ran free

When all I wanted was to know that

Maybe one day

You'd chase me

I fell for the way you said my name

And for a little while I was so sure you could only see me and you

Tonight, there is no use for blame

Not when you had no idea I lived in our future too soon

I fell for a shadow of you

I told your mother I'd help you with school and I did

I said nothing about how your voice sends me straight to the stars

Where is the music today?

There is a mass of white noise - other music by other people, the usual worries, anger that I've been trying to tamp down all evening, sleepiness - that has been wrapped around me all day.  I remember that when I was younger, I would occasionally press one too many digits on the television remote, accidentally calling for a channel that we didn't have.  The confused television would then respond with "snow"...and that sound.  That sound scared the living daylights out of me.  I used to run to the next room until my mum, bless her, corrected the problem, hitting the right buttons to quiet the awful noise and bring back my precious cartoons.  To this day, I am unusually careful with the remote.  (This is not to say that I watch that much television anymore; one of those things no one tells you when you're preparing for college life is that you will become very familiar with online television sites.)

Anyway.  White noise.  And there's a song hiding in it, tucked away somewhere in the middle of the snow.  If I could just write it, I think I would have some sense of being finished with this.  But it doesn't look like that will happen anytime tonight.  Tonight, my organic chemistry textbook is waiting for me in my room upstairs, but whenever I'm there, all I can see is my guitar and a long list of things I thought I would want to remember forever.

Snatches of peace

With a heavy heart, he hammers away at the keyboard until the veins in his hands are blue-green in the glow of the LED.  His hair is mussed.  His sweatshirt probably needs washing.  A half-eaten oatmeal raisin cookie lies at the bottom of a bowl beside him, forgotten.  It has been too long since something tasted sweet.

This time, he managed to catch the lethargy.  This time.  It had been circling the periphery of his consciousness, closing in like so many vultures, and so he hurried to wind his words around a trellis of half-baked thoughts.  The words were meant to clear the fog, to organize his story into a beginning, a middle, and an end.  But as always, all they do is give him a soundproof room, an escape.  A tear splatters on his right thumbnail.  No one notices.  No one hears.  No one wakes.  A moment of frustration, a moment of peace.  He is used to this room, this cop-out.  It is a comfortable alternative to reflection.  He understands this, smiles wryly at the simplicity of it all.  It is far easier to lounge in this room than it is to make sense of the world.  He will risk all of the frustration life may hurl at him, just for those snatches of peace.

Sometimes, however, the light scrambles through the gaps in the trellis.  Brilliant jets bend down, down, down, gently, gracefully, to his temples.  They warm him.  They stroke his hair like his mother used to so he would fall asleep, even when these monsters were around.

Exhaling softly, he opens his eyes.  He studies his nail, and wipes it clean against his left sleeve.  He crosses and uncrosses his legs, noting with a sigh that his joints complain.  Although he feels old, his body has a long way to go.  As he pads upstairs to bed, his mother hears him.  She is still awake and yes, she hears him.  But he will never know.  Her mind drifts to a memory of his reassuring smile.  She wearily pulls the covers closer to her chin on this frosty night.  Perhaps he will remember how to smile in the morning.