Oh Maya

I am curious to know if I am the only one who feels the burden of writing weighing down on their shoulders every time they take pen to paper or finger to key pad. Since arriving in Cambodia, every time I have faced a blank word document or empty page in my journal I have felt a devastating amount of stress in trying to get all of my thoughts down because it feelings as if I have a million and fourteen thoughts in once second. Then when I go to write, I am preoccupied trying to get everything down, I go to miss the empowering sense of reflecting and fulfillment within the words I am writing down.

Anyway, tonight I am doing something that I would never be doing at home. I am sitting on my front porch (which probably makes me sound super weird or uncool- what can I say, I like my reflections to happen while snuggled in bed watching Grey’s Anatomy reruns).  I don’t know. My time here in South East Asia is limited to a plane ticket marked for August 3^rd and I don’t want to regret spending more time inside than I did outside I guess.

I just found out a couple hours ago that Maya Angelou passed away. As a human being who shared the world as her I am affected. As someone who studies English I am affected. As a woman I am affected. But as a young girl, who first sought comfort in her words at the ripe age of fourteen I am devastated.

When I found out I stopped feeling and thinking everything that occupied my mind. After reading those words, “Maya Angelou Dies at Age 86,” I felt every cell in my body tremble. My heart started pounding and my knees became weak. How could it be true that Maya Angelou dies? She was my hero and heroes aren’t supposed to die.

I didn’t even know her and I right now all I want to do is hide under blankets and feel safe, because right now the world doesn’t feel safe, because now I feel alone. And this all sounds ridiculous because I didn’t know her but she had such a profound impact on me. Not only as a writer but as a woman and more importantly as a human being.

I remember I was 16 years old when I read her quote, “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” And it was stupid, my high school boyfriend and I had just broken up (for good this time, maybe not, I can never remember anymore) and I was pretty sure it was the end of the world as I laid in bed for four days, having my mother worry about me because I couldn’t bare to even eat a meal. Now I have come to realize that it wasn’t the end of the world. And those words made me realize that even if it wasn’t with Josh E. the god of Silver Valley during the time that one day my heart would be open again.

I find it ironic that that quote has resurfaced a number of times tonight as many pay tribute to her life because earlier today I opened up a word document, that contained a piece that I have been writing for over a year now. I haven’t touched the story in about seven months and harder than a freight training going 60 MPH I opened it up and the first page was the dedication that read: “For Nic, When it comes to love, you should love as if you are on borrowed time,” and that just goes back to Maya’s quote that pierced my heart so many years ago. Here I was at 18 years old falling flat on my face in love again just like I did when I was 14 and naïve enough to share my life with someone for three years thinking love could be measurable. And here I am not almost 21 years old thinking I am out of love just because I don’t have a boyfriend. Instead I am in this third world country and I keep raving about how I am in this love affair with this country and not a man and how liberating it is.

And I just wonder about a boy back at home because I wonder if being in love is  wanting to share every moment and reflection compulsively like a drug addict. Because if that’s true, if that is what love is maybe I am in love. And maybe I had to live half way across the world to know that.

That upsets me though because it goes against what I want and why I want to be here because I told everyone, “I will not be in love for a year,” after I broke up with my last boyfriend. Which is challenging during the summer season because even as a younger girl I always dreamt of this grand summer romance and admittedly I have always looked for it. Call it fools lucky but I would say that the past three summers I found it within Matt and then Nic twice and it was just sweeter and more refreshing than any amount of southern sweet iced tea. I was almost sad coming here because I knew this summer I wouldn’t be able to fall in love, like the previous years. And I just wonder tonight as I sit on my front porch if I would have had the courage to open myself up to love if it wasn’t for Maya Angelou. And now that I have, I cannot help but think how amazing it is. And I am hungry to 

keep exploring love no matter how difficult it gets.

Love is almost like traveling the world. There is such innocence about both. When it comes to traveling and love nothing about the two are easy and nothing about them should be easy because if they were easy we would all be doing it. Just like love, love isn’t supposed to be easy because it turns your heart upside down and inside out just to make you feel these butterflies at the pit of your stomach that are the size of King Kong himself. And you begin to discover, just like an archaeologist who has been working tirelessly in the direct sunlight for hours and hours that you have all of these walls and valleys and magnificent trenches within your hear that are all capable of things I could never begin to write about.

If everyone was in love at the same moment, there wouldn’t be war or disagreements. Without the war and disagreements we wouldn’t have any compassion or happiness because it is only when we are in the absence of compassion and happiness that we then appreciate them so much more than when we have it.

I guess tonight I am just in awe of the rifts and waves that Maya Angelou has been able to fold within my heart, my soul, my life. While at the same time be terribly sad that we lost Maya Angelou.

I wonder if it is selfish to ask that she can somehow find me down here on Earth while she is in Heaven so she can continue to shine her light within me and make me strong and courageous in the face of adversity and always open to love.

I think tonight I am just going to sit on my front porch and reflect on the three questions I packed with me from the very beginning of my journey:  What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? How do I want to love?