April 20, 2015
Westfield, IN

It was the way the fire warmed my back as I dug my feet into the cold, wet sand. The sounds of crashing waves mixing with laughter and bouncing off the night sky above me, formless and unending…It was the way the cold air felt as she slowly slipped into my arms for the first time. The smell of rain and pines, and the warmth of her beating heart…It was the way my friend’s eyes teared up as I said bye to her for what may have been the last time. Her old hands holding both of mine and her voice echoing through my head, “You’re a good boy Chris So, I know you’re going to do good things”…

A good friend of mine once told me that loss was good for a person as long as they could extrapolate the lesson from the pain. He also told me that too much loss could destroy a person. This past year has had a number of hard losses for me. I lost my cousin Junior last February to a drunk driving accident, Laurie and I parted ways in January, my sister lost baby Harper and I came close to losing my Grandpa to a complicated, diabetic mess. I felt like a lost soul and got dangerously close to being lost to a greater darkness. What saved me was not just learning the lessons the pain had to offer, it was also embracing love wherever I found it. Losing Junior showed me just how much my family meant to me. It’s horrible to think that it took losing my cousin to open my eyes but I have not looked at people in my life the same since. Right away I applied a greater sense of closeness and appreciation to them and my friends but it wasn’t until Laurie and I split up that I truly woke up. It was like my chest had been cut open and all of my love, confidence, strength and security had been drained from me only to be replaced by sadness, anxiety, abandonment and fear. It was like I was wearing a pair of glasses that I didn’t know about, filtering my perceptions to feed my blind idealism. As they fell away I started to see life much more for what it was. Suddenly my sun and my stars had disappeared and I had been left to wander the vast empty darkness of space. Then Ivy lost baby Harper. Witnessing so much hope and promise suddenly end turned me inside out. The sheer amount of emotional and physical progress one makes during life was cut short for Harper, extinguished and never given a chance. It broke apart anything I had left mentally and I became an exposed nerve to the full gamut of human emotions.

I opened my head and my heart to those around me. People who had been a part of my everyday life suddenly became the worlds that filled my empty space. My coworkers at REI became my friends and then, before I knew it, became my family. Once my eyes had been opened it was easy to see just how much another person was going through, how much they had to offer. Be it positively, negatively or unclear - we are all going through something. And I learned that if a person was willing to share a part of them, even just a sentence with you - you had become part of their world. Be brave enough to share yourself with someone else and it is limitless what can happen. My Smithsonian family and my NoVa family became even closer to my heart than they were before. Amplified by the reality that I was literally packing my life into my truck and driving to Oregon, I became hyper aware of the changes we had all gone through. It was the little differences. The new haircuts, the new hobbies, the nose rings that made me aware of the changes. For the last month my schedule has been filled with breakfasts, lunches, dinners, beers after work, day hikes and coffees that never had the chance to happen. For the first time I was listening and talking to my friends with a clear and open mind, receiving each word, each idea, each story with the levity and weight of last words. I realized just how far away I was going to be from them, just how bad of a friend I have been these past years and just how much I loved them. Above all I realized that I wished that I spent more time with these people in my life.

For my family I felt a level of understanding and love I hadn’t felt before. As my departure grew closer I found myself talking to them as old friends, as equals. It was amazing to feel like I had caught up mentally with my mother and father and aunts and uncles. We talked about work, life, love and next steps and damn it - as hard as it is to believe they are pretty cool people. They have been through it all. 39 years ago yesterday my father was being forced from his home in Phnom Penh my the Khmer Rouge forces. He lost his home, his town and his entire way of life. At my age he was just getting to the U.S. Having survived the war he was working multiple jobs to put his siblings through school because he knew that this was their second chance at a good life.

The passage of time is unconditional. It affects us all equally. This was my first adult relationship, my first goodbyes, my first time driving this far alone and my first time this far from home. To say that I am terrified would be an understatement. But I know that taking the leap into the unknown is exactly what I need to do. I have learned so much from so many that I need to finally take the next step and get out there into the crazy wide world. The world is smaller than we may think, but it is also big. Our grandest gestures can hardly make a mark but our day to day decisions can make huge differences in the people around us. Everyone is doing their part to fulfill their life and their aspirations and the fact that we are all existing right now and are feeling and thinking and living together right now is something to be at awe about.

Something that I realized as Essie held my hands and said goodbye to me in the dimly lit, front desk of the SMSC resident hall was that there are moments in life so much greater than ourselves. She is the nightshift security at SCBI that would run into me every once in awhile as I sat in my truck staring at the Smithsonian logo on commissary tower late at night. It was usually a night where I couldn’t sleep and wanted to be alone with my thoughts. Over time we became good friends talking about our families, our lives, our hopes and dreams and our realities. She became a kind, grandmotherly figure to me and I looked forward to seeing her security truck turning the corner and I would walk with her as she would make her rounds. On one of my last days at the facility I saw her entering the school as I turned the corner. I hadn’t seen here in 3 months, I couldn’t believe my luck and I ran out of my truck to see her. She said, “Hun, where’ve you been?”, and I told her that my job with NEON had ended and that I was going to Oregon now. She ushered me into the building so she could write down her email for me and I began to cry. Because I realized that I wouldn’t be sitting in front of the commissary anymore. I realized I wouldn’t be walking with her to check on the leopards and I wouldn’t be there to talk about her dog and her husband. I realized that I had no idea at all what was going to happen to me. To me, this was very possibly the last time I saw my old friend. The simple and pure connection we had as she held my hands as she said goodbye meant more than anything I had ever felt before. To me, the simple fact that two totally different lives can, for a moment, intersect and become close enough to make parting so painful was so much bigger than my own existence. It was like every problem, stress, thought that I had at that moment had melted away and I became part of something grater than the both of us. We can reach out and at anytime be a part of someone else’s life. Their attention. Their world.

It is this feeling that has made saying goodbye so hard for me. Every kind gesture a friend or family has shown me this past month has nearly brought me to tears. I found strength in reasons, place and people I didn’t expect to find it.

My good friend Sean Lacey helped me realize that there are always two sides to everything,

“See beyond your circumstances. These hard goodbyes are a testament to your character”.

Erik Larson, a man who I want to very much hold onto in my life, told me this about keeping people in your life,

“I think that’s what’s beautiful about life. We can’t really control the timing of things, when we will meet someone, when we will do something. It’s almost awe-inspiring to see the people in my life working on themselves…Humility and Passion has taught me to hold onto people more. To see progress you learn from people you stay connected to and hope that they can learn from you…Focus less on how you feel and more on who you want to be”.

And I learned from my beloved brother, reasons to be brave,

“Just know that you’ll always have a support system in Fairfax, VA. In fact you have support systems around the States and the world. Never feel alone. You’ve always acclimated ridiculously quickly to new situations. So there is no doubt in my mind that you’ll take Happy Camp by the twigs (horns) and eventually become the top person there. In no circumstance will this transition to the west be easy. I think you’ve just got to tough it out until you can get out of here. The distance will do wonders, the road trip will clear your mind and the work will keep you moving forward personally and professionally. People get up and move to other cities and never look back under circumstances far worse than yours - think abusive/unsupportive parents. Just know that all your family is healthy and *relatively* happy. You’re setting such an example for all the younger cousins to not be afraid to pursue your passion especially in a foreign place. For these reasons and more you must be strong when we’re with them.”

More than ever before I can see how time and life carries on. Life is long, but it is also short. All we can do is hold onto people and be good to them while they are in our lives. As I embark on this trip to the west I will carry on my back not the weight of goodbyes, heartache and fear but the weight of the love and support all of my friends and family have given me and I will blaze a path for myself fueled by the belief that, there is nothing in this world as beautiful as courage.  

Let’s run into each other again some day,

Chris