brady /

There’s a strange vacuum between where you think you should be and where you are. And before you got to where you are now, you were somewhere else, thinking that if you could just get farther ahead, you would be happier. You would be less of a disappointment. Your life would feel different. 

Then you got there, and realized it wasn’t true. The vacuum still exists. The gulf is just as wide as it was before. You’re just looking at it from a new angle now.

What is the story that you tell yourself as you walk around the edge of this thing, water lapping at your toes? What do you say when you watch the sun set on another seemingly pointless day? When your feet brush the floor next to your bed in the morning, what do you say? 

Do you think you are a disappointment? A failure? Do you think you should be somewhere else? 

Let me assure you: You are not a failure. You have not missed the train to a better life somewhere else. Whatever disappointments plague you are held by you and you alone. The world still floats on in spite of your fears. The clock still burns through its hours and days with zero judgment of your actions. 

It’s unfair to look at people across the gulf and wish you were over there with them. Because they’re looking right back at you, thinking the same thing. 

My mom was talking about it a couple of years ago and she said, You know, looking back on that day I think we should have taken you to go get stitches.

When a person learns to ride a bike, they know that falling off is part of the deal. There’s no getting around it. Hell, you’ll probably find a way to knock yourself over when you’re riding around with those rickety, borrowed-from-your-uncle training wheels. 

But as your dad takes out his little wrench and the training wheels drop off, there’s no going back. You’re either a kid that rides a bike or a kid that doesn’t ride a bike. There’s no half-assing this. 

I got on my Huffy Thunder Road 7 with its sturdy banana seat and walked the bike out to the grass. We didn’t have any pavement or sidewalks on our farm, so the lawn was about the most even ground a kid could find. I think I pedaled and pushed myself around for a while, trying to remember what my parents and my brother taught me. 

Do you remember how pedaling with both legs to gain speed was the hardest part? Then you would swing your handlebars back and forth, thinking that moving the front tire would give you more stability. For a moment you think about putting the training wheels back on.

I rode a few feet and fell to the grass. I got back on, rode a few more feet, and fell back to the grass. After a few more tries, I began to get the hang of things and felt comfortable riding around the lawn. 

Next up: The driveway. The long, rocky path that led to the mailbox and the place that Erna, our school bus driver would stop and wait for my brother and I. Our golden lab, Hank, would follow us and chase the bus after we got on. 

I decided to take the bike out onto the driveway and see what I could do. The rocks were pressed into the earth in the places my parents drove the car, which was manageable. When I had to turn around, I probably had to get off my bike. I don’t remember too well. 

What I remember is coming back down the driveway, past the house, through the yard and back to the barn where my dad kept his tools. The rock there was new and fresh. It was some sort of white rock with a chalky dust that stuck to it after it was poured out of the back of the dump truck. 

When my little Huffy hit the big, new stones, I knew I was in trouble. The front tire bounced around a lot, and in my panicked state, I pedaled faster. 

I don’t know what I hit, but I remember the uncomfortable weight of the bike on my bare leg as I laid on the ground. My hands were scraped up and my leg was throbbing. I had high socks that were pulled up to my calf, and as I stood up, I noticed one of them was soaking up blood.

I had a two-inch cut running across my left kneecap, and blood was flowing freely. So I did what any six-year-old would do. I screamed. I ran. I found my mom. I cried. There was a big brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and lots of little white bubbles, accompanied by a burn that only cleansing can give. 

Fat, hot tears gave way to sniffles and a band-aid. The blood on my sock was brown now. 

The knee slowly healed. I got back on the bike. When Erna picked me up for school, the other boys would compare scars and tell the story of how they got them. 

My friend Jared pointed to the mark on his eyebrow where no hair was growing. He was jumping from bed to bed and hit his head on the corner. There was lots of blood.

My friend Scott held out his arm and pointing to a long, thin line. He moved to Kansas from Philadelphia and told us he was playing hockey and a kid skated over his arm. There was lots of blood.

I quickly rolled up my pant leg and pointed to my knee. My scar wasn’t as long as Scott’s, but it was thicker. And I got it by falling off of my bike.  A few of the other kids offered their pointer fingers and rubbed it. 

Can you feel anything when I touch it?

Nope. Dead as a door nail.

Cool. Was there lots of blood?

I know. I’ve heard. 

In fact, almost anytime I travel somewhere and the topic of weather comes up, I hear someone say this phrase. The person that says it is usually trying to make the point that their weather is worse than mine. They want me to know they endure the most drastic temperature swings, the humidity is worse, the snow is colder, the wind blows harder. But it’s not a complaint, is it? It’s worn like a badge of honor. We live in a tough place and we can handle it.

The first time I heard the phrase, I had just moved to Western Colorado to pursue an internship with a small nonprofit. Pretty much all of my belongings stayed with my parents in Kansas. My clothes and a pillow drove out in an old Ford Taurus to the Rocky Mountains in search of a future in the high desert. 

Before making the trip, I arranged on craigslist to buy a bike in Denver, which was about the halfway-point of my trip. I pulled into a Starbucks parking lot near Arvada and drank a hot chocolate and nervously checked my phone. I saw a man get out of his hatchback Subaru (Denver, right?) and pull out a phone and type a text. My phone vibrated. This was my guy.

It felt strange to hand over an envelope full of cash to a stranger in a parking lot, but he seemed nice enough. He told me that he was a bike mechanic, and he and his fiancee had just split up. He was selling off some of the many bikes they had accumulated together. It had been going well, he said, but things just change, you know?

I know.

The first few months of living in Colorado, I lived in my boss’s parents’ RV. The most time I’d ever spent in an RV before then was at the Kansas State Fair in high school. After the band played for the music contest, we made a beeline for the RV’s -- the only quiet, air-conditioned places on the fairgrounds. We would usually get kicked out after an hour or so, but it felt good -- righteous, even -- for us to take a 60-minute bite out of the life of someone with enough money to buy a vehicle with a kitchen in it.

After a few nights in the RV, I was bored. The internet connection from the nearby house was pretty weak, so I made a trip to Barnes and Noble to buy a book. Trail of Blood by Lisa Black. A murder mystery. I tore through it in 2 nights. I bought another. Elegy for April by Benjamin Black. A week. I would read in the dim light until two in the morning, jumping at the sound of possums waddling by my window when I came to a particularly suspenseful chapter.

I began to fear that I was becoming an introvert, so I tried plugging in at a local church and working longer hours at my internship, but every time I pushed open the thin door to the RV and slumped down on the bed, I was relieved to be alone. 

A few months later, I was living in a single room my boss’s basement. The pitter-patter of his two kids’ footsteps always accompanied the morning routine, and I found myself smiling when I heard them. A 4-year-old and a 6-year-old. They fought and laughed and played and were always wanting to sit on my shoulders. They wanted to hold my hand. 

I had never thought about having children before. I mean, in all honesty, the thought had never crossed my mind. Not once. I was a bachelor, right? I didn’t have an income or a girlfriend or any semblance of a plan for what my life was supposed to look like. What was I supposed to do? Why were these kids so interested in me, anyway? Is fatherhood something I could do? Would I dare bring a child into a world as insane as this one?

I eventually moved in with a friend from church. He worked in construction for an oil company. Mainly helping build the wells and structures before the fracking crews set up their equipment. He told me he used to work on a fracking crew. Good money, he said. One day they began fracking in a location somewhere in the mountains, and as they began pumping the water and other fluids down into the ground, he asked his boss what’s in this stuff we’re pumping down there anyway? I can’t tell you and you don’t wanna know, he said. 

My roommate had a Jeep that he liked to take out into the desert and drive around. He would take me camping, or we would go out to the shooting range and shoot his rifle. We took his Jeep up on a path through the mountains one afternoon. Just beautiful, you know? Green scrub and red flowers, far as the eye could see. Sand and birds. Old, grey stones jutting up, raising their hands, demanding attention. 

I wondered aloud what would happen if we got caught in the rain. Oh, we’ll just wait five minutes, and the weather will change.

A year later, I was on a plane to San Diego. Three months after that, I came back to Kansas. Then back to San Diego. And back to Kansas again. 

In Kansas, I looked for jobs for a whole year. No, I take that back. I looked for jobs for 363 days before I was hired. That’s a real number: 363. Hundreds of applications were sent out with a grand total of three interviews in that year of job-hunting. I was so resistant to the idea of working in Kansas that I intentionally didn’t apply for any jobs within 200 miles of my home. I just didn’t want to be the guy that grew up in a small town and never left, and I railed against the idea that the rest of my life was going to be lived within walking distance of where I took my first shit.

Two of the three job interviews I had were for organizations that were headquartered fifteen minutes from my house. After 363 days of looking for work, I accepted a job. I go to my home church every Sunday and see my parents. They invite me over for lunch every week, and sometimes I take them up on it.

So here I sit. In the place I told myself I would never be. Working at a place I tried so hard to avoid. In a business I never would have chosen. I don’t know if I like it. I don’t know if I’ve failed myself or my dreams, whatever that means.

It's okay if you're in one of your moods tonight.

It's okay if the wind on your cheeks brings tears to your eyes and you cry that the yellow warmth of summer is slipping away.

It's okay if you don't see the purpose of your pain, and it's okay if you don't think that there is a purpose to it. Maybe you're right. Maybe there isn't.

It's okay if you don't want to run in the morning. It's okay if you didn't answer the phone when a family member called you.

It's okay if you don't feel good. I mean that if you feel that there isn't much good about you, you certainly shouldn't feel ashamed.

Just remember something tonight. Or tomorrow. Or whenever you're feeling deep and dark and sad.

You're here. You made it this far.

You're here and I'm here and we're here together. There are 7 billion of us here right now.

7 billion! Have you ever seen 7 billion of anything? Does that number mean anything to you? I have a hard time imagining it. 7 billion people. It's hard to fathom.

There isn't a single person out of the lot of us that asked to be here. We all just showed up one day. And in 200 years, none of us will be walking around. We'll all be somewhere underground or spread around or drifting around in space and there will be a new group that is walking around, maybe in the exact spot you're sitting right now.

But right now, in this moment, we're here. And as long as there is a here to be present in, I have to do my best to be there.

I've spent too much of my life wishing that I were somewhere else. I've spent too much of my life feeling sorry for where I've been or what I've done.

I want to write. So dammit, I'm going to write.

I want to be a great friend. So dammit, I'm going to be a great friend.

I want to have a home. So dammit, I'm going to learn what that means.

I want to learn about God and meaning. So dammit, I'm going to do that.

I want to do something with my life that makes the world better. So dammit, I'm going to make the world better.

There are going to be days when I don't do these things, and I forgive myself in advance for those days. There are days when I'm going to mess up so terribly that I'll have to start over. I extend grace and love to myself in advance for those days.

I didn't want to go to school I hated every single rule. And so I took my picture-book And went beside the meadow-brook. I sat myself beneath a tree And spread my book upon my knee, But then I could not see, you know, Because the sunbeams flickered so. And casting my two eyes around, I saw the ants upon the ground All making nests within the sand Oh, such a merry, busy band. There wasn't one who stopped to play, They worked and worked and worked away. And this is what I heard them say, "Fi, naughty child to run away For time is ever on the wing It doesn't stop for anything." I was ashamed that I, who knew much better Didn't try. And so I closed my picture-book And left the lovely meadow-brook. With all its sunshine, all its birds I went to school to study words. I read my lessons o'er and o'er Much better than I had before, Until the letters seemed to dance And then they looked like little ants And this is what I heard them say,  "Ah my scholar, work away, For time is ever on the wing It doesn't stop for anything."

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