Lie to me. I promise, I’ll believe.

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

In the fall I began making a list of lies I believe—things that keep me from accepting grace, mercy, truth. It was really freeing, and probably something I should continue doing as I recognize these things. Somehow, acknowledging a false belief and calling myself out on it seems to be a significant step toward healing.

 

But today I’m voluntarily telling myself another lie, a white lie if you will. It’s gray outside and the temperature is supposed to drop as the day goes on. The calendar insists that we’re still in February (and the early part, at that). But in my mind? It’s spring, and nothing you can tell me is going to change that. I’m ready for blue skies, mild days, daffodils and tulips, renewal. And if wearing my summer perfume in February is a little weird, well, you’ll get over it. Today I choose to be fiercely optimistic.

I was born in a state of grace

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

One of the (many) ways I know Birmingham’s home:

It doesn’t matter where I’ve been or why. I’ve been to West Texas for a job interview and fought the urge to kiss the red clay dirt when I returned. I’ve spent a week vacationing in New York and longed for Southern accents. I’ve lounged around Florida with my parents and siblings and wondered if that’s really where I was raised.

Every time I return, I am so glad to see my sweet home, Alabama.

The names are changed but the constellations are still fallin’

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

More from September… or, a peek into my disjointed mind

Personality “muscles” I haven’t flexed in a while:

  • Latin dancing: Intimacy with strangers, risk, the ice queen at work
  • Dating: I want a boyfriend, but I don’t want an insta-boyfriend. Slow is the only speed I move at, at least right now.
  • Dancing: I forgot how shy I used to be. I’ve always said that cheerleading, and then dancing, drew me out. I guess it’s true.

… 

I’m sore today. My lower back is tense. I used both hands to grip the railing of the circular staircase at work, easing myself down into the lobby or up into the breakroom. I went to a dance class last night, and it feels like the first time I’ve used those particular muscles in years.

I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about myself lately. I’ve never been 26 before, but it seems like the way to spend this year. I’m always growing up, I know that, but 26 seems so adult. I’m on the brink of my late twenties,

… 

Two years ago I started “talking”* to Fly Boy just before his 29th birthday. Thirty still lurked a year away, but he was looking forward to it. Your twenties are a time for confusion, for struggling to figure out who you are and what you do in life. But your thirties are a time to embrace the resolution of those questions, he hypothesized. It’s a time to become established.

I was only 24 at the time, but suddenly 30 sounded pretty good. (A friend in his thirties later told me that Fly Boy was full of it.)

*Speaking of talking—isn’t it funny that everyone has different definitions of these terms? A friend and I were trying to pin a label on a relationship recently. I suggested dating, except this couple had actually only gone on one date. She proposed talking, but immediately tabled the idea. Talking, she said, involved making out at least once. Funny—I thought it simply meant talking, with a degree of interest implied.

 

…now, back to 2008…

It’s OK when there’s nothing more to say to me

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I’ve got to make a confession. Instead of writing (or rather, writing when someone isn’t paying me to do so), I’ve been cooking and watching CNN. This election stuff has its hooks in me.

So now, old notes from September 2007. I carried these around on scrap paper for months, trying to mold them into something cohesive, but it never happened.

I don’t need a man to rescue me. I’m not a damsel in distress, or a trophy wife in waiting. I’m self-sufficient (or at least, that’s what I tell myself). I can manage on my own.

But I want a white knight to save me—or if not to save me, exactly, to root me on, to be my “easy silence.”

… 

There are so many conflicting ideas of who a 26-year-old woman should be. Lately I’ve been hyper-aware of other people’s expectations of me—or what I think their expectations are—and have quietly become more determined to grow more and more into who I am.

I guess I’m in a very psycho-analytical place right now.

…more to come…

O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches?

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

This is a double cheap shot–a no longer seasonally-appropriate story copied from an email. But I’ve brought this tale up in conversation even as Christmas fades in the rear view mirror. It’s too fun–and too illustrative of what happens when you put me and Jamie together–to keep from you.

——————————————————————-

My friend Jamie was going to get her Christmas tree several days ago, but another friend pointed out that she probably couldn’t carry it up three very steep flights of stairs by herself. So while we were at (yet another) Christmas party yesterday, Jamie asked if I would help her. Being the loyal, kind-hearted, good person I am, I said yes.
 
(She also agreed to buy me coffee in exchange for my services.)
 
So we run back to her apartment and she gives me a coat to wear over my outfit, because I was dressed up. I also borrowed a pair of flops because I was wearing four inch heels, which are not good for carrying trees up stairs. At this point I look like a hobo. And we’re off to buy a tree!
 
At some point in this process, I realize that we are buying a tree and transporting it in a convertible. Awesome.
 
We went to Lowe’s and quickly began lifting trees and evaluating their attributes. An employee said, “You know I can pick those up for you,” apparently amused by the site of two very enthusiastic, tiny women lifting six to seven foot trees. (They’re not heavy!) So he picked up trees and tried not to roll his eyes at our proclamations. “He’s so cute!” “Oh, he’s so short and fat!” “Look at him! He’s so tall and thin and elegant!”
 
(“Is this how you pick out men?” the guy asked us.)
 
After settling on a tree, Jamie convinced the guy to go ahead and put the tree on a stand for her, so she wouldn’t have to struggle with it when she returned home. This took probably another 20 minutes, and while we waited we continued a commentary on every other tree that was walked past us. (“Oh, he’s cute too! But yours is so much cuter.”) (The latter was, of course, uttered in a hushed voice so as not to upset the other tree’s purchaser.)
 
At last, we pay and are told to bring the car around so they can load the tree for us. We plotted taking back roads back to her house–we certainly weren’t going to drive on I-65 with a tree in the back seat! Surprisingly, the Lowe’s employees were undaunted when we pulled up in a convertible. “We loaded a red one earlier!”
 
So they pulled out a sheet of plastic, laid it in the backseat, and then gently (lovingly) eased the tree in. (We did not buckle it up.) They then tied the plastic around it so that her car wouldn’t be covered with pine needles and so the plastic wouldn’t flap in the wind too much as we drove back to the Southside.
 
Do you know how hard it is to check blind spots with a tree in your back seat?
 
We stopped at my coffee shop to pick up my reward coffee and ran into a friend of Jamie’s from undergrad. (I knew we would see someone we knew with my get-up being what it was.) Hooray! We told him what we were up to, and bingo! We have man-help to escort the tree up the stairs. 
 
He effortlessly carried the tree, all by himself, up to Jamie’s attic-level apartment. And our adventure was a success.
 
Plus, I got coffee.

Let go of the worry, there’s so much nobody understands

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

“We are all shipwrecked. All castaways… One day we all wake on the beach, our heads caked with sand, sea-foam stinging our eyes, fiddler crabs picking at our roses and the taste of salt caked on our lips. … And, like it or not, it is there that we realize we are all in need of Friday to come rescue us off this island, because we don’t speak the language and we can’t read the messages in the bottle.” –Charles Martin, When Crickets Cry

Something I read this afternoon reminded me of this quote. Although my mom loved this book, I was really dissatisfied with it… all of it, but this one passage. Something about this paragraph resonates…

Now, I’m going to listen to some Ryan Adams.

A heart divided

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Some of the best things come at the end of September.

Two years ago, that was my favorite football team triumphing over my next-to-least favorite team. I was in Bryant-Denny Stadium on Oct. 1, 2005, when Alabama defeated Florida, 31-3. I joined in proudly as members of the student section began the tomahawk chop. A girl nearby asked, “Why are we doing this? We’re not Seminoles!” A friend of mine replied (with pride), “Some of us are.”

Florida is the foe of my other favorite team, Florida State. In four years of picking college football games, I always pick according to loyalty. I think it’s morally wrong to derive some benefit from your team’s loss. That’s why in four years of competing in my college football pick ’em, I have yet to pick against either Alabama or Florida State. Until this week, that philosophy has served me well.

Today, that all changes.

My two alma maters meet tonight for their first contest in 33 years–and they’re doing it in my hometown. When the game was announced two years ago, my first thought was that I HAD to find tickets. My second was that I had to choose sides.

It’s a lose/lose or win/win situation, depending on your outlook. I could easily cheer for my undergrad team. Some people think that’s the only way to go! That was the school where I grew up, where I met some of my very closest friends, where I once danced on the 50 yard line. On my first visit to Florida State, back in 1993, I was impressed by the campus bowling alley and the fact that I could buy a Seminole keychain with my name on it. When I enrolled six years later, the campus captured my heart.

But my heart wasn’t free for the taking. I had promised it to Alabama football before I even knew what a first down was. I grew up wearing crimson. After Florida-Alabama games, we would run to the front yard and yell “Roooooooooooooooll tide! Roll!” in our loudest voices, taunting our neighbors with their Gator flag. When my dad began explaining the concept of first and 10, I was hooked. I remember watching a game while my sisters were supposed to be upstairs cleaning. “Why doesn’t she have to help?” they whined. “Because she’s watching football with me.”

On one level, my heart breaks at having to choose one team over another. But in truth, I’ve had my No. 1 team all along. You can’t turn your back on your roots, on your family, on a way of life you’ve known longer than memory serves. Which is why tonight, I’ll stand proudly in my crimson and white, screaming loudly for the Tide.

“There are two major theories of fandom, as far as I can tell: the Childhood Theory and the Undergrad Theory. Some people would argue that you lock yourself into a team for life when you decide to go to school there, no matter who you liked before.

“But these people also wouldn’t understand why a child who was not quite 8 could learn the meaning of despondence by watching an undefeated football team lose to its rival, or why, even decades later, you would still get a chill up your spine every time you see Jay Barker lead a comeback against Georgia, or why watching George Teague strip the ball from a Miami wide receiver still ranks among the Top 5 best moments in life.

“The Undergrad Theorists surely are good people, and no doubt they mean well. But they don’t understand football, because they don’t understand Alabama football.“Roll Damn Tide.”

–My friend Chris, in an e-mail to me, after I sent him my picks for the week

Soon this will change just like the seasons

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I know become especially obnoxious as July approaches each year. But birthdays are a big deal to me. My first memory is of my fourth birthday (when my parents gave me the Care Bear movie stoundtrack). I remember planning my birthday parties in elementary school so the maximum number of friends would be able to attend. (Anyone whose birthday falls near or on a holiday can relate to that, I’m sure.) As I drove across town this week, I got to thinking about my favorite birthdays. I’ll just share two, both from recent years.

I celebrated my 23rd birthday with 45 people I’d known for only four weeks, plus my best friend who was briefly visitng the town I worked in that summer. Because no one knew me all that well at that point, I organized my own small birthday shindig. Probably 15 or 20 people came to a cook out by my apartment, and my sweet roommates gave me a jewelry box I still use and cards I’ve still saved.

A canoe trip I’d planned for after the cook out fell through. Instead I played volleyball, went swimming and got ice cream with a smaller group (which is generally my preference anyway). We were laid-back, without the noise of a large crowd or the stress of detailed plans. We simply enjoyed each other, and that’s one of the best gifts I could receive.

Last year was, unexpectedly, one of my favorite birthdays. I had been “dumped” (for lack of a more specific descriptor) a week before, and my original plan had been to spend the weekend in Florida with him.

Instead, I spent the night of my birthday at a concert where the singer dedicated the best song to me. (“I’m the icing on the cake/I’m the secret ingredient you’re missing”) My sister and several of my girl friends rallied around me.

Since my weekend plans had been destroyed, one of my best guy friends insisted on arranging a small gathering instead. Without me even needing to ask if she would come, a new girl friend insisted on driving an hour to join in (even though she had already celebrated my birthday once). We went with a handful of friends to dinner and out for a drink afterward. It was a low-key birthday, and one of few times I felt that someone cared enough and got me enough to make me feel cared for on my birthday.

Here’s to another year (and to one that doesn’t utilize a song about a break up for as its theme!).

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

On an ordinary day, I’m the friendliest person on the city streets. I smile at everyone and frequently say hello, even to people who scare me a little bit. (Perhaps especially to people who scare me.)

But some days I prefer isolation. Today is one of those days.

You never really know what’s going on inside someone. I feel like I’m shaking, though not visibly, from my hands to my intestines. After a quick lunch in the break room, I turned on my iPod and left for a walk through downtown. With Ryan Adams surrounding me aurally, I somehow feel it’s acceptable to stare at the ground instead of at the city moving around me.

I walked through the park, past the art museum and back to the library, where I feel safe in my anonymity. I don’t need any more books—Lord knows my to read list is long enough already, and I actually have a day-past-due book laying on my car’s passenger seat right now. But whether I’m sitting at this table with a yellow legal pad and pen or I’m hiding among the books, inhaling scents from their borrowed homes, here I can be ignored.

Sometimes, that’s exactly what I want.

There’s nothing you can do or say

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

2007 is going to be different. I know that’s easy to say, but that’s what I’ve decided. It’s going to be different. It needs to be different.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately (but today in particular) about how what you think you want isn’t always what you want – or even what you think it is. It’s easy to say that out loud. (Or, OK, it’s not. But it’s possible.) But it’s a lot harder to accept it and move on.

That’s where we’re at. And I do mean we. It’s not easy, it’s not what you want to hear. But it’s right. And it’s best. And we’re in this together.