Paper Rough Draft Part 2

One day at camp Gunner and I were walking in the woods when I decided that life sucked. My parents were fighting some of the time, and I was constantly scared that they would get a divorce and that I would have to choose one of them to live with. I could never make that choice! What would I do? Which parent would stay at camp and which would move elsewhere? Who would be my permanent guardian and who would I visit on weekends? Who would keep Gunner? All these questions replayed in my head and at fourteen I couldn’t figure out the answers. Looking down the embankment at the river I thought how easy it would be to let go of the tree I was holding onto and simply fall. At that age the drop looked severe, with trees and prickly bushes creating a dense ground cover. The railroad tracks rested at the bottom with the river just beyond. I could roll all the way down and bounce across the tracks to the water if I didn’t get hung up on tree. A broken neck seemed appealing to me instead of having to decide which parent to live with. I looked back at Gunner.

He sat staring at me; his large brown eyes met my smaller insecure ones. The confidence in his eyes told me that he believed in me and would support whatever decision I made. The secure faith and trust in those eyes told me that I had more to live for; my life wasn’t worth wasting on a whimsical suicide wish because it would eliminate me from the picture. His one look seemed to tell me that my thoughts regarding my death, so that my parents wouldn’t have a burden anymore and might stay married and happy, were ridiculous. He got up and walked away, the turning of his back to me signaling that the drama of the moment was over; he had portrayed what he wanted to and was positive that I would make the right choice. I did. I stepped away from the tree I had been holding onto and followed him. I ran crying down the trail for a ways and then fell exhausted against a tree like Pocahontas clinging to John Smith. I hugged the tree for all my worth and cried until I was out of breath. Eventually I calmed down and looked back at the trail. Gunner sat calmly watching the woods like a protective sibling as he let me recover from the self made trauma. After awhile we walked home and never mentioned the incident again.

When I was old enough my parents admitted that events at the camp ground had been disrupting their marriage and after five years they were ready to leave. They had always wanted to live in Maine so to save their marriage they left camp. In retrospect I am glad that they recognized what was happening and were able to make things work. I think that’s one of that factors that helped me overcome the loss of camp. When reading a book by Terry Tempest Williams, she states that "Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering." Later she concludes the chapter with: "Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does." My resistance to the move caused me unbearable suffering that stopped when I recognized that I needed to move on in life.

After graduating high school I changed my mind about never going to college and applied to Unity College, about forty five minutes up the road from the A frame. After two full years of seclusion the independence of living on my own with no parents was super exciting. I set up my dorm room and became friends with my roommate. I went to classes, and worked and ate in the cafeteria. I was responsible and mature. I got decent grades and discovered the wealth and hurt of relationships. Soon I forgot about camp and the A frame. I stopped going home on weekends and stared to hang out with my peers instead. I found who I truly was and was happy.

The summer of 2009 I went back to camp after three years. While there I visited with friends and family and went back to that spot in the woods. When I wasn’t visiting with people of working in the kitchen there I was secluded in the room I was staying in. I watched some movies I had brought with me and dreamed about how I could stay there for the rest of the season at least. But I couldn’t and I knew that. The last day of camp meeting week I left for Maine. With six hours to recover I cried for most of them. Loud, sloppy tears rolled down my cheeks and spit hit my steering wheel as I tried to focus on the road. By the time I got to the Maine border my breathing was normal and I was able to think clearly. I constantly repeated the mantra that “my life is in Maine now”. Over the next year I grew farther from my desire to go back to camp, but that next summer I was packing the car for the six hour drive.

As I drove something came over that seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. It suffocated me and caused my breaths to come in short gasps. Tears began to flow down my cheeks and I knew I needed to talk to someone fast. My hands began to sweat as they gripped the steering wheel of my friend’s car and my body shivered with goose bumps as it was attacked by waves of heat and cold. I dialed a close friend and told him I needed his help. I explained the situation as best I could, that I was supposed to be at camp to work in the kitchen again and that I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be with my fiancé in our apartment with our roommate’s cat who I hate. I didn’t want to make the drive to Connecticut to work for gas and toll money back, and to not have time to visit with anyone. I had been miserable there during my last visit and didn’t want to be again. I also didn’t want my happy memories of camp to be replaced with horrible ones. My friend gave me excellent advice saying simply that if “you don’t want to do it. Don’t.”

The next call I made was to my grandmother. I told her I was having car troubles and that I needed my boss to call me as soon as possible because I didn’t have his number. She told me she would go find him and give him the message and my cell phone number. I then called my mother. She was not happy. I told her my dilemma: that I just didn’t want to do it. I already knew that it wasn’t professional or responsible to give such short notice to my boss, to back out last minute on a promise. My mother reminded me of all this in a patronizing tone and tears continued spilling down my cheeks. I told her that maybe I was having car problems. She was stubborn, offering to meet me someplace on the highway and give me her car for the trip. I said no I would be fine and told her I would call her from Connecticut.

After we hung up, my phone rang I answered to my boss’s voice. I told him I was having car trouble and asked if he would be able to find somebody else to work. He assured me that he could find someone and that if I could not make it that was fine. I apologized profusely and we said goodbye. As soon as I hung up the phone I realized that I had burned a bridge in one of my work relationships. That was ok though. I never wanted to go back to camp to work again.

I got off the next exit and pulled into a commuter parking lot in Kennebunkport. I called my fiancé, telling him I was coming home. I got back on the highway heading north and cried loud, wet tears that soaked my face, spit flying out of my mouth as I tried to stay on the road. However, they had different meaning than the tears I had cried a year ago; it seemed as if a dull throb went away, leaving my head lighter, and quite literally, I felt something heavy leave my shoulders. I was able to sit up straighter and felt no physical weight.

Ten minutes later my phone rang again. I looked at the caller I.D. “Home”. Mom must have found out already. “Your grandfather just called me. He is not pleased with your actions.” I told her I already knew that. But I hadn’t. I had completely forgotten about my grandfather and his feelings. I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone or cut any ties with family and friends, I was simply making a decision that should have happened long ago. Like Buddha says, "Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does."

Paper Rough Draft Part 1

Over thanksgiving break I walked around Camp Bethel with my fiancé. I laughed and smiled as I told him what buildings were and their significance to me and the camp ground. I giggled over memories I spoke of as we walked up the eighty six stairs from the beach by the Connecticut River. When we reached the top of the stairs a voice greeted us. Kimberly Allen, a Camp Bethel member and friend of the family gave me a hug after she recognized me. I grew up playing with her three kids; kayaking, playing tag and attending the Young People’s Institute at the camp during the summer. The way camp works everybody watches everyone else grow up. The founding fathers of camp were the first generation, and now, I am the fifth generation of "Bethelites" in my family. There were about ten of us who varied in age but did everything together. Attending bible studies and getting into trouble with our elders as we matured and learned from our mistakes. Family and friends surrounded us at camp and prepared us for the world outside the Camp Bethel gates.

When I was sixteen my mother turned fifty. She had what is known in urban legends as a midlife crisis. She packed my father’s and my things in about 600 boxes and moved us in three fifty-two foot U-Hauls to Maine. A lot of smaller carloads were incorporated into a storage unit in the area where my father had found a job and we were house hunting. Walking though the ruins the realtor called prime farmhouses we saw caved in chimneys, crumbling staircases and mouse droppings the size of deer scat. My father teased me that everything in Maine is bigger. I was always quiet. Growing up next to a river with dense forest for most of my life I was used to a readily available water source and woodland to utilize for recreation. Most of the places we looked at stood alone in the middle of fields on top of miniature mountains and had no bodies of water.

During this time we left a mature Rottweiler in the care of family. Gunner was getting old and had lost some of youthful attitude and mobility. He was about fifteen and we wondered if he would be able to make the move with us. He was the unofficial mascot of camp and everybody loved him. We had been lucky enough to have Gunner for eight years, during which he became my best friend. He played dress up with me and was always a great bride, we wrestled over tennis balls stuffed in socks, and explored in the woods together. We also swam in the river, Gunner splashing as he attempted to swim and drink the river dry at the same time.

One day I came inside and discovered my mother and father huddled around the kitchen table on their hands and knees. Gunner was lying underneath and was unable to stand. We left him there over night hoping he would be able to get up on his own. None of us wanted to admit the truth to each other. The next day our pastor came over and helped my father slide Gunner onto a blanket and out from under the table. They lifted him into our station wagon and drove him to the vet’s office. When they came back Gunner wasn’t with them.

Two months later we finally found a house. My father was busy with work so my mother and I looked at the house with the realtor. The family living there had to move out west within eight weeks and then the house would be on the market. We were pleasantly surprised. It was an A frame with wooden siding, a red metal roof that allowed for the softest falling snowflakes to be heard, six acres and deer antlers for door handles. Even I liked the house as it had an aura of Christmas surrounding it. My mother commented that she felt like Snow White living with the seven dwarfs. When my father was able to see it he fell in love with the stout wooden beams and the concept of a wood stove for heat in the winter. During the winters I was there I learned how to stack even the crappiest cut of wood and enjoyed those times when the hard labor was equal to a jig saw puzzle.

The nights there were hard though. I would sit on my bed with the door shut and cry as I looked at the picture of Gunner sitting on the grass at camp tacked to my wall. I would scream inside my head “why me?” over and over again. The tears streamed down my face as I silently sat in my own hell consisting if goose bumps and a loud throbbing in my head. I thought I would go insane enough to be taken to a crazy asylum. No such luck. I would still have to check my eyes in the mirror for redness and sticky lashes before going downstairs for dinner or desert. My parents never knew. That was fine by me. Looking back know I see a spoiled brat who just wanted to go back to the plush life in Connecticut where she didn’t have to haul wood, wear Chippewa boots or listen to chickens suffer as they procreated breakfast.

While my friends three hundred miles away were hanging out in the high school, I was suffering through three hours each day of home school. My dad always worked and my mother was too busy being proud. She wouldn’t let me help her unpack or organize, she insisted on doing it herself. So I had to be content with attempting to train my new puppy and sitting on the couch familiarizing myself with black and white movies from the local library. I read a ton of dime store novels and even started to write my own. I became a pro at Pharaoh, the only computer game I owned and taught myself about the inner workings of the windows computer system.

Somehow my mother still managed to find time to be religious what with the unpacking, cooking and dealing with puppy messes. Her unshakable faith buoyed her through frustrating times and she always tried to teach me the written word. I had learned a lot of it at camp since it was an Advent Christian Campground, but now I wanted none of it. The way I saw it, God had abandoned me when I had pleaded for him to change my parent’s minds about the move. I had become a secluded badass. I tested the waters in the covert crevice that was my bedroom listening to death metal and rap on the radio. When I talked to myself I would swear in good humor practicing for the time I might have to tell my parents off about something. Wouldn’t they be surprised that their little girl was so worldly for not having left the house of her own accord?

It’s a good thing that during those two years I spent sequestered in the A frame no event like that ever came up. I still went to church with my parents just so that I could get out of the house once a week. I even started going to the local Curves with my mother trying to get rid of the pent up energy that wouldn’t allow me to sleep at night. As the puppy got bigger I was able to take him for long walks in the woods during which I would swear in my conversations with the trees and squirrels. The puppy didn’t pay any attention, he just kept his nose to the ground in the event a good smell might appear. During these walks a sad memory always replayed in my head.

Workshop

So I rewrote my entire paper in two hours Sunday night! I got back from break, unpacked and sat down at 5:30 and didn't get up until eight pages later at 7:30! I thought it was a GREAT attempt, but again the class doesn't approve.

Anyway, the next day the class's workshops began. My paper was posted on our student portal along with three other student's work for the folks in the workshop to read, and then we spent about 15 minutes on each of the four pieces.

The 15 minutes that was spent on my paper was utilized well. I didn't have much to say and feel like when asked a question about the paper I didn't answer it well or fully. For some reason this paper is not necessarily confusing to me, but unclear/undefined. Its like I can't make a decision. I feel that I have a salient point now, but I can't define it. Its all quite frustrating.

Anywho, the feedback I received from the group was good and useful. Instead of a braided essay my paper now reads more like a regular personal narrative. I need to decide if I want to develop it like this or try to recapture the braided aspect. Some of my transitions need help. I think they are fine, but my audience doesn't see a smooth flow. My concluding paragraph needs clarification, along with my dates throughout the paper. Unfortunately this is the hardest part because I don't remember dates at all!!

I also seem to introduce a "new puppy" out of the blue, so I have to decide to introduce it earlier with more detail or to cut it out completely. When I asked if I needed more or less detail in places, the group told me that the overall paper should be longer with more emotion and info about camp such as description of place, he people there and my connection to it. I can do this through use of metaphor, simile or personification. In the introduction I need to add a self discovery angle because that is the theme of the message. Some of the other ways I could start the paper would be to tell of my earliest memory about camp, or introduce the suicide earlier by tying the importance of it and camp together. Some areas need to be more blunt I heard.

The first half of the paper when I talk about the A frame and camp, I make the A frame more vivid and descriptive, but I don't do this when talking about camp. The group decided that maybe I should compare and contrast the two, or change the way I describe the A frame to be less descriptive and make the way I write about camp more descriptive.

The mention of generations at camp should also be embellished. This would help the reader understand the importance of camp and also why mom would be so mad about my decision. The group said that her being mad was confusing because she was the one who decided to move away from camp. However, this is going to be difficult to explain because I feel like I am being to obvious. It's not my fault that people don't understand professional obligation or respect. I do agree that explaining this will create a better of understanding of camp's importance, but just because my mother had us leave camp doesn't mean that she doesn't care for it anymore. At this point I feel like my paper would change focus and be on a topic of manners and being responsible. I feel that I made it clear that leaving camp saved my parent's marriage and that my suicide attempt was because of the fear they would be divorced.

Right now you can tell I am frustrated with this project because a) the class simply doesn't care for my paper or chosen topic b) because while their negative advice is helpful, I am really confused as to what the heck I am attempting to do. It seems like there are too many factors for this paper and focusing on only a few of them isn't an option, but I have to only choose a few because it would be too much to focus on them all! However, I have to mention all of them to a certain extent so that my paper makes sense. AM I THE ONLY ONE CONFUSED HERE?

Also, I need to choose a publication. The group seems to think that the Chicken Noodle Soup books would be good. I don't know I haven't read one before.

P.S. I know this blog isn't meant for venting, but it really helps!

I Gave My Presentation...

And..... I got eaten alive. The class hated my essay and I don't think that they were to pleased with my presentation. So yeah. Looks like I need to rewrite my paper. I do agree with the class however, the paper needs a lot of work, transitions, organization... I honestly am not happy with the way it is now, I knew that going into the presentation. I just think somewhere along the line I lost the desire to write it. "What is your salient point?" "Um.... I honestly don't know. I isn't real clear to me either." WOW. I'm amazing.

I was not happy with the presentation myself, I went through it way to fast and had a hard time making eye contact with the class. Plus there wasn't enough time for the activity I had planned, which is probably good because the feedback I got was something along the lines of "this can't be pieced together. You can't take four different stories and put them together to make one." etc etc etc.

Strand 4: Struggle

I was taught that there is an almighty being or God who controls all things. As I have matured through the years, I have flirted with knowing a God and pretending he doesn’t exist. My bible and I would have strong love affairs for several days, one even lasting for a week, before my brain forgot about the promise I made to myself and God. To read your bible for a certain amount of time everyday was said to create a better understanding of God and Christ. What a load of malarkey. The more I read my bible, the more questions I had and more confused I got.

My mother is religious about reading her bible every day. She has been doing it for years and has exhausted several study bibles. Whenever she told us she was going to go study, it meant she was going to spend some time with God through the written word. One time I asked if I could give her a list of questions. I told her that I wanted to know the answers to them all. She agreed to see what she could do and tucked them into her bible. It’s been several years now, I haven’t seen that list since. I don’t remember any of the questions I wrote, but I am sure if I were to pick up my bible and start reading again the same ones would be exposed.

Currently I am reading Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge. Terry writes a personal narrative in braided form and tells of her struggle with family, cancer and religion. While reading I came across something very interesting: "Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering." Later she concludes the chapter with this: "Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does." To me those words struck home and caused a realization about my connection to camp.
“Buddhi” means to wake up, while “Buddha” means the enlightened one. This makes sense as the goals of Buddhism are to teach purity, enlightenment and proper viewpoints, while focusing on suffering as a way to better oneself. The foundation of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths which teach a) knowing the importance of suffering b) knowing the cause of suffering c) knowing how to put an end to suffering and d) knowing the path that can end the suffering.

The word suffer comes from the French word “ferre” which means “to bear”. To bear an emotional or physical weight is to suffer. The Sanskrit word for suffering is “dukkha”, meaning incompleteness, imperfection, discontent, dissatisfaction and pain. My discontentment and dissatisfaction was not being able to have the liberty of living at camp anymore. What was once so readily available to me, that all I had to do was step out my front door, is now separated from my by three hundred miles, six hours, a lot of gas and tolls, and three states. Buddha categorizes suffering in two ways, mental and physical. Birth, aging, sickness and death comprise the physical sufferings. The mental sufferings are more in depth as follows: suffering of separation of loved ones, suffering of contact with hated ones, suffering of frustrated and non-practical desire, suffering of the illness of Five Skandhas.

I have concluded that what I am experiencing is the truth of the cause of suffering (second Noble Truth) in the mental sense of suffering of frustrated and non-practical desire. By knowing what causes the suffering I can end or solve the problem of suffering. Buddha says that people crave pleasant experiences, material things, and eternal life or death. The desire to acquire the material things has three major sufferings: a) the problem of getting it b) the problem of protecting it and c) the problem or suffering of losing it.

If you were to ask me today if there is a God, I would say that it depends on what a person believes. Just about everything these days is driven by a person’s personal preference. If you were to change the question to ask if I believed there is a God, I would answer truthfully that I don’t know. I have not devoted myself to finding out. I only know that when I need someone or something to talk to or yell at, and nothing is around that qualifies as good yelling material, I will talk to the air, aka God. He doesn’t talk back which is ok with me, so all the unanswered questions that have scary truths stay unanswered.

It’s like owning a damn it doll. When you are frustrated or confused, you can grab it and beat it, strangle it, throw it, kick it and no harm is done to anything important. You feel better and the doll has served its purpose. Nothing was solved but it that doesn’t matter anymore until the next time. "To acknowledge that which we cannot see, to give definition to that which we do not know, to create divine order out of chaos, is the religious dance” states author Terry Tempest Williams. Religion is a confusing thing, a bunch of philosophies that regulate our lives if we choose to let them, and if you’re knew to dancing, it’s hard to know where to put your feet.

Learning about Buddhism has proved to me that I still have a lot to discover about everything regarding religion. The conclusions I drew from my research was that the problem or suffering I am having is the loss of camp and not being able to be there now. If I had known this when I first moved to Maine, I wouldn’t have put myself through any of the pain and torture of missing camp. I understand the Four Noble Truths because I have suffered, have realized my suffering and have ended it.

Strand 3: Gunner

When I was eight years old, my parents bought a four year old rottweiler. When we went to pick the dog up, the owner let me hold the leash. The rotty never tried to pull me or runaway; he was the gentlest animal my young being had ever come into contact with. Gunner was trained by his owner to be extremely obedient, he would sit, lie down, and stay for however long you told him too. He let me dress him up in a wedding veil one time and would gently wrestle with me. You were also able to walk him with no leash and he would never leave your side.

I remember the last days Gunner spent with us. How it eventually came to be that the one hundred and fifteen pound Rottweiler got stuck under the kitchen table because he could not stand. Our pastor Dave came over and helped my father lift Gunner onto a blanket and carry him out to the car. The same car I drive today, a green Ford Mercury Sable. I watched them drive away as I ran to the stairs that led to the Connecticut River. I made it to the forty third step out of eighty-six stairs before the shock wore off and tears began to stream down my face.

I knew they were taking him to the vet to put him down. To put an end to his uncomfortable body and suffering eyes. As I walked along the beach, the stench of low tide filled my nose. I remembered how I would bring Gunner to swim with me; he didn't swim all that well and never left the shallow water. His version of swimming was to slap his paws on the surface of the water, splashing it everywhere as he clumsily tried to gulp all the water out of the air. His goal was to drink the river dry; we had to leave him tied to the deck of the house he had to pee so often.

There would be no one to wear my crazy costumes or to wrestle with over a tennis ball stuffed in a sock on my bedroom floor. My parents and I would have to walk around the grounds in the evenings alone, but it wouldn't be the same. There would be no snuffling of leaves or long pauses to sit and look at the stars. Who would chase me on my sled in the winter as I sped down the hill behind the dining hall? I realized that there would be no one to talk to, or cry with, being able to bury my face in his furry neck. I knew that there would be no one to save my life if I was walking alone in the woods like he had done before, giving me nightmares. That was when the panic attacks started. When those big, brown, knowing eyes had stared me down and brought me back from the edge of an easily broken neck.

I wish I knew where Gunner's ashes are. We had him cremated and in the move to Maine he was transferred to a box. I don't know where he is now. I wish I could have him with me but it would be unfair to all those who knew him. Everyone who knew Gunner misses him terribly. He was the best dog we ever had. It might have been because he was the best trained or the sweetest. But I think it is because of those eyes of his. They seemed able to see straight through you, down to your soul. And he accepted you for who and what you were. He didn't try to change you, he just loved you.