February 12, 2011. Final blog.

I have a confession to make. I hate using cliches, but sometimes cliches become cliches for a reason: they sum up a situation so well that they are used time and time again, and people always know what you mean. So, when I say I have a confession to make, I'm using a cliche, but I'm using it willingly because it's the best way to express what I'm about to say.


I'm all out of writing aspirations. My ideas have vanished. To have such inspiration in my life, which is God, Ryan, my travel career (oh yeah, I never told you about that...), and the many details in my life that make me so blessed - it's surprising that I'm done saying whatever it is I set out to say years ago when I started this blog. I know this blog had a purpose - and that was to make epilepsy awareness a priority in my life, and to inspire others with the same vision. I started out just trying to understand the dramatic change in my life, and I used writing as my outlet to do that. But, I'm no John le Carre, nor do I pretend to be. I know true artists who give themselves fully over to their talent, so much so that it makes them crazy. Lately, I can't say that I've given myself over to anything with that sort of commitment. In many ways, I'm very lukewarm and cautious about what I give my heart to. But, there was one time in my life when God made me a writer, and it was for HIS plan, not mine. There's one thing that always stops me in my tracks, where the very mention of it lifts my spirits, and the familiar smell of it causes me to pause and forget where I am. Rwanda.


In 2005, I went to Rwanda. I met a woman about my age dying of AIDS. She was beautiful. Her eyes were swollen with tears but she didn't cry. We could only communicate with our eyes, and we could only share our lives by holding hands. I remember the moment so profoundly that it still tears my heart when I think about it. I remember walking over to her with such a sense of inadequacy - I had nothing to comfort her with. We were getting ready for a group picture, and I reached out my hand to shake hers'. She took my hand, but when I thought it was time to pull away, she wouldn't let go. You can still see it in the group picture - her and I are in the front row, crouching together, clasping hands. I remember feeling like it was all a movie playing out in front of me. How could a moment like this really be happening? It felt so completely surreal that my heart couldn't take it. I couldn't let her in immediately. I wasn't ready to feel her pain, or to cry with her, or to tell her story to anyone else. But I buried it somewhere in my soul, never really knowing when I'd be able to dig it out.


Then, there was the 12 year old boy, whose ambition for an education beckoned me to reach into my pockets and try to help him. After all, he had the courage and the vulnerability to ask me to sponsor him. His name is Ronald. He is approximately 18 years old now. And I don't know if he ever achieved the education he deserved. I was unable to provide what I said I would, and I've hated myself for it ever since. Yet, in spite of that, the sole reason why I chose to give money towards his education was because of the feeling I had about his character - his courage, his ambition, his strength - which all shined so brightly in his eyes and smile. God is bigger than the small college budget that I had when I made the decision to hand his future back to God and admit that I couldn't follow through. I'm a firm believer that if you cling to something that you are not equipped to do, you are standing in the way of God's plan of giving the job over to someone else who is equipped to do it. It's not cowardly, it's Godly, and I've forgiven myself. Yet, I still think about Ronald, who, in every way, represents the hope, beauty, and resilience that his country emulates.

My very first full day spent in Rwanda was dedicated to learning about the effects of the genocide of 1994. We visited a genocide memorial, mounted on one of Kigali's many hills. This was yet another moment when I couldn't give my heart over fully to the depths of pain that the hills were still echoing. I walked beside the mass grave underlying a beautiful marble slab. Here and there were bouquets of flowers, and small puddles from the rain that had fallen only recently. You see, we were in Rwanda during the rainy season, which, as it turns out, is very rainy. The smell of wet earth constantly filled my nostrils and awoke my senses to the purest fragrance of what this land is, despite it's shortcomings and violent history. We entered a building where pictures with captions told the story of how the genocide was allowed to take place. The Belgians, the favoritism of Tutsis over Hutus, the sloppy transfer of power that automatically set the stage for ethnic violence - it was all there, spelled out nicely for us foreigners to read. Then, we entered memorial rooms for the victims. Shoes of all sizes, heaped together in a glass case. ID cards with pictures, stamped with the fatal word, TUTSI, although some did say HUTU. It strikes me still that, soul-less personal property, which I always believed to be temporary and irrelevant at the end of life, actually outlived the person who owned it. Their shoes and ID cards were all that was left, besides cold, lifeless bones. But the bones didn't really move me. I had the chance to walk into a mass grave, and see bones all around me, but that isn't what broke my heart. What broke my heart was the final room of this first memorial - the room where clothes were hanging inside a lit glass case. Baby clothes, men's trousers with a shirt dangling above with arms bent at the elbows. The ghosts of Rwanda - staring at you through the glass. This was the most alive these people would ever be again. This was the moment that my heart could finally grasp the tragedy - and mourning could finally occur. My heart opened up to Rwanda, and Rwanda entered and made a home. There will never be anything more moving, or more important, that can fill the space that Rwanda has created.

This is why I can't pass over a new book written about Rwanda. This is why I've never been able to really write passionately about anything else. When I said earlier that God made me a writer for His purpose, here's what I mean. I've only written one complete novel, and it was years after I visited the AIDS home and my heart couldn't absorb the intensity of my new friend who was dying before my eyes. One day, I had to do a creative project and submit it in order to graduate with honors. I knew I would write about Rwanda. This was my first literary endeavor, and I thought it would be about Ronald. After all, I thought that was what impacted me the most. However, when I started trying to write a story about the parentless, homeless children in Rwanda, it just wasn't working. It wasn't raw and vulnerable like I determined my novel would be. It felt cliche, it felt staged. And I thought I was failing. But then, my mom inspired me to consider writing about my dying friend who clung to my hand as though her life depended on it. I thought I'd give it a try, and before I knew it, I had one full page written. Then I had three. And in a matter of three months, I had a short novel about Grace and her daughter, Patience (this was the name I gave my lovely inspiration, because I don't actually know her real name, nor if she had children). This is the only time I've ever been a true artist and writer - because I gave myself over to it so much that it almost drove me crazy.

Moments like that are rare and God inspired. I'm coming to terms with the fact that, for some reason, He doesn't want me to be a writer right now. I've spent months writing blogs about epilepsy, and then I tried to take it a new direction, which led to borderline narcissistic ramblings, and eventually, to a general complaint about Facebook. I'm ready to say that this blog is done. Perhaps another time I'll be inspired by God. I hope that when that time comes, you'll be here to join me in it. For the time being, I just wanted to write about the one topic that's easiest for me, because shockingly, I've never blogged about Rwanda. After six years, though, I guess you can see that it's never too late.

So, farewell, my four followers. This blog is done.

The State of Removal.

It's time for an honest and open dialogue about Facebook and it's function in our lives. Let's say that a rigorous FB user to be unnamed has 203 friends. That's a lot of friends to be had. However, on a seemingly normal day, this committed Face-bookie logs in and notices that she now has 202 friends. 202. The Face-bookie breaks into a cold sweat - and feels the embarassment in her gut as she starts frantically wondering, who? why? She opens her list of friends and starts scrolling down. Who's the missing link? She can't seem to find anyone missing. Then, she remembers - that guy she met in Bioethics class who was obsessed with Josef Mengele and his "experiments." Her feelings were hurt - even though Heinrich was weird - what did she do wrong to lose his FB friendship?

She reviews every detail of their "friendship." Where did she go wrong? Surely it wasn't because she was rude to him - that's definitely not it. She listened to his rants about Mengele with attentive politeness. It couldn't have been because she got married and changed her last name - although that would be convenient if he didn't remember who she was based on her profile - but the day of her wedding, he wrote in huge block letters, "CONGRATULATIONS for giving in to eternally blissful slavery" on her wall! Was it because he was doing some housecleaning and as a result adopted the "less is more" theory? But if so, why her?? Why this nice Face-bookie who ate lunch with him two times and picked up his pen when he dropped it on the floor that one time in class? It just didn't make sense.

On November 17, 2010, National Unfriend Day happened. Jimmy Kimmel promoted it. I miraculously survived mostly unscathed that day - and I didn't partake in the unfriending. It seemed like such a logical, marvelous idea - but there are consequences to unfriending somebody. There's really no turning back. Face-bookies like the loyal user above are running rampant with these misconceptions that FB is more than what it actually is, as Kimmel pointed out. It's not a substitution for friendship, because friending someone on FB means virtually nothing. It's simply "social networking," right?

Obviously not, because then people wouldn't remove friends out of a sense of superiority or revenge, which often happens. I removed a rather nice guy two years ago because he didn't invite me to his wedding. Granted, he invited my parents, and I grew up with him - so it's really not so undeserved - but I regret it anyway. When Facebook is the lowest form of friendship you can have with somebody, and still, someone would remove you, it's equivalent to them telling you, "I want absolutely nothing to do with you - no photos, no updates, no statuses about your sick dog - get out of my life!" Isn't it? Personally, I'd rather not run the risk of making someone believe that I feel that way about them (unless I do...). Of course, there are valid reasons to remove a person from your FB pool...for example, if you meet each other's eyes in the school lunchroom and there is no friendly exchange whatsoever - just cold staring - that deserves unfriend action. However, frequently the reasons are less than deserving.

I had one person defriend me last year because I didn't get her a bachelorette party gift as quickly as she wanted me to (or at least, that's my theory). It's amusing how this social networking site, in it's cold aloofness that makes it safe to be friends with people you hardly know, still has the capacity to cause pain. Or rather, just plain annoyance and stress. It hardly seems worth it to chase somebody down and ask them, "Tell me why you removed me from your Facebook! Why??", because, if they did, they're not really your friend and probably won't have a satisfying answer because of the elementary nature of the social networking site. You can hide certain sections of information from people. You can talk behind their back in a message and then write "Have a great day!" on their wall. You can block them, unblock them, and block them again. You can browse their pictures, hate their choice of outfit, and then click "Like" when they are posing with Santa Claus. Basically, Facebook is high school again. We dismiss good manners and revert.

Is it really so authentic? Do we really need to have 400 friends we don't talk to? No. But I'd rather not disappear from 400 people's pages leaving them with the cold embarassment that accompanies it. Spread love. Don't reject people for petty reasons.


Be more authentic by being less authentic. Show your character in your Facebook etiquette. That's all I have to say today.