My Heart In A Suitcase

“The heart is where the home is.”

“My home is not a place, it’s people.”

My life is lived in a suitcase. My heart however, has been in once place, with one person, even when I didn’t realize it.  But its beautiful white home with a wrap-around porch and butterfly garden and tire swing hanging from a giant oak tree has been infested with termites that are eating it from the inside out. My heart loves its home, with its entirety, but termites are nasty and will eventually eat its gorgeous home from the inside out until it caves in. So I picked my heart back up and put it in the bottom of my suitcase, zippers locked and safe from sleazy pick pocketers. 

Now my heart is here in Waynesburg, with me. I have no one here, or anywhere, who I would dare to trust it with, so it’s mine again for the first time in ages. It’s a very strange lifestyle—being independent, running my own life without it directly affecting anyone, deciding my own schedule, socializing with whoever I please until whenever I please. Or go to Slingin Ink downtown and having this dude put metal through my stomach.  I went with a friend who was getting her trachea pierced, and I was debating on getting a belly button piercing on the way there. I watched him put on gloves, sterilize his utensils, and give her thorough instructions on how to clean it (“don’t talk on the phone on this ear, or sleep on dirty pillow cases, or let boys lick your ears, or girls, or cats”) as I held her hand.  Then he told me to lift up my shirt. Then he put yellow goop all over my stomach. Then he told me to lay down. Then he stuck a metal clamp on either side of my naval. Then he stuck something very sharp that wasn’t a needle or a gun, through my skin and down my flesh. My fingers instinctively slid towards the pain and he said “do you want your fingers pierced too, while I’m at it?” I gave them to my friend to hold instead. I asked if it was bleeding. ‘Yea man! Can’t you feel that warm liquid running down your side?” 

“It’s not bleeding at all! Stop trying to scare her!” said my friend to the joking man with the sharp things in my gut. 

I looked down and faintly said “Dude! There’s metal in my stomach.…” 

“Yeah! How about that?!” He laughed.

All this nonsense sounds freeing, especially after having someone in the passenger’s seat with me for so long, but it’s a lonely road with just me and my heart in a suitcase. There is no one to argue over what music to listen to or what road to take or where we should stop to eat. There’s no one to greet me when I get off the bus…because I don’t have a destination anymore. 

Now, every part of me is packed in my handy little black suitcase, and ready to hit the open road.

I don’t even need my suitcase. I don’t need this baggage and this heavy heart that adds another ten pounds to the price of luggage at the airport! Really, it’s just me and God’s direction as my travel guide, His word as my travel reading, and His Spirit as my travelling companion. 

“Not all those who wander are lost.”-Gandalf.

My life in a suitcase consists of going wherever God tells me to go next on His creation. 

They'll Either Hate Me Or Love Me

Last week, I observed special education classes at my old high school. Some students were obviously cognitively challenged, but some were just obnoxious. They may have had mild learning disabilities, but they were there of their own choice. They had ghetto attitudes and talked like anything worth learning had to be learned on the streets. Math and vocabulary weren't worth their time and their teachers were getting paid to babysit.
I remember thinking that. In ninth grade, I was determined to drop out as soon as possible. I started with straight A's, which steadily declined the rest of the year. Learning was pointless and teachers were stupid. I hated being treated like a child and being pent up within concrete walls all day. Who does?
Obviously, I changed my mind.

My dad told me that when kids return home as college students, they're different people. They've lived months on their own, have managed their own lives, taken care of themselves or have nursed their own selves back to health if they haven't, and have worked to get their own rewards in the form of grades (and possibly paychecks for us desperate students) without their mothers' nagging.

Daddy, I've grown up.

In my freshmen year, I've taken on a full schedule of 18 credits each semester and kept two jobs, totaling about 20 hours of work each week.
I've gotten seriously sick with viruses/flues/head colds 8 times so far (I know Donna, the health office nurse, on a first name basis). Those were the times I actually missed my mother's mothering.
I've experimented with every legal form of energy supplement (some of which didn't end so well) but haven't gone a single night without sleep, honestly! Two hours is my record least amount.
I've burned childhood memories in exchange for biology terms.
I've learned to focus on homework when there's a monster in the back of my mind, trying its hardest to eat my concentration.
I've learned what my priorities are and that only God comes before homework and sleep.


But I am more content with my life than I ever have been. I've met professors who have inspired me and have gotten and actual education. I've met people who I wish I knew existed years ago, and know that there are boys who date girls for who they are, not for their bodies (congrats, WU boys!) I am more confident than I ever thought possible because I've discovered things in myself worth admiring. I feel a sense of contentment because I'm in college-a place people aspire to be-achieving degrees that will take me places. I'm on my way.

Those kids are still at home fighting with their parents, who just sent them up to their rooms as if they can be toys put back in a box. They're looking out their prison's window that's too high to jump out of, dreading going to their other prison tomorrow morning, where they think they're wasting their time.
I wish I could kidnap them. I wish I could take them away like a nicer version of the ghost of Christmas Future, and show them what they can do with their lives. I want to show them their potential that is there but hasn't been provoked by the right people; because those people can't be found in Ringgold High School. I went there, I know. It's found in other, better places, that haven’t been seen by their sheltered eyes yet.

What's ironic is that I'm in a better place achieving something so valuable, so I can go back to the hellhole I came from. I'm paying loads of money and working my butt off to go back to the prisons. I'm getting my teacher's certificate so I can teach these pitiable little Hellions who hit on me and threw paper balls at me, so I can show them that they don't have to live in hopelessness. If I achieved decent grades with a small amount of motivation and little interest in what I was learning, then so can they. They need to obey their government’s stupid laws and learn pointless algebra, so they can get a stupid piece of paper that gives them permission to start a life, because they've all got something inside them worth admiring and the capability to change the world.
And I’ll tell them so.