I really felt the love this year on my birthday.

31~

When I was 18, I slammed my thumb in the car door. It happened while I was getting ready to drive back to school and my hands were full from packing the car. It was a Sunday night and the thought of staring down the barrel of an eight hour drive with nothing to consume my thoughts but the pulsing, building pressure in my thumb felt like a death sentence. It hurt like hell and I couldn’t escape it. I went to my neighbors house and they suggested I drill or make a small hole in my nail to relieve the pressure. In many cases, this provides immediate relief but you have a certain window in which you can do it, otherwise, it’s too late. In my case, I waited too long.

Life is funny that way sometimes. You don’t know you need help until you’re in the thick of it. Along the way, you could have opted to take the life raft but you try to stick it out. Why? You think if you can make it to a certain point, it will get better only to find it gets worse. Ultimately, I didn’t get in the car and sit for eight hours with that pain. I opted to stay home and do what I could to make myself as comfortable as I could.

I made the analogy recently that I wish I could drill a hole in my head to relieve the pressure. My head has felt so heavy—like it simply doesn’t have room for one more thought or problem. Similar to slamming my thumb in the car door, I wish I could simply relieve the pressure. There was a point where I could have, too. It would have been much simpler to take a few off ramps that wouldn’t have overloaded my brain to this extent yet here we are.

When I slammed my thumb in the car door, I called my grandmother (Omie). I was beside myself on the phone which sounds trivial, that something so minor could elicit that response. In-between my sobs, I was able to tell her the situation and explain what happened. Instead of making me feel like I was overreacting, she listened and comforted me. She empathized with me and told me she had done the same thing many years ago and knows that pain. The irony was that her story included slamming her thumb in the tanker truck during WWII which was taking her to safety during the air raids/bombings. I mean my God, way to put things into perspective (lol). BUT that wasn’t her intention nor was it ever.

Learning your tolerance for pain whether it be physical or emotional is essential for survival. Knowing when, or rather that it’s okay, to accept help is a sign of growth that I’m becoming more familiar and hopefully comfortable with.

I finally feel like I’ve relieved the pressure.

…to be continued!

i miss my dad

My brother Ryan asked me to watch a movie with him last night. It’s a movie that’s very important to him and one he’s asked me to watch on multiple occasions and despite his requests, I never have. This has been a recurring theme in my life and one I’ve tried to get to the root cause of so I can change this behavior.

We sat on the couch in the dark. I had my dog Russell to my left, Ryan’s cat Dante to my right and Ryan on the far end of the couch. As the movie began, it started with a voiceover of a poem being written in German.

The English translation:

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.
When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.
When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.
When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?
When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.
When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.
It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.
When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.
When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.
When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.
When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

I turned to see tears rolling down Ryan’s face and it became clear to me that this movie was very important to him and all these years he’s simply wanted to share it with me. I sat next to him and our animals for 127 minutes and observed one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen.

He said to me, “isn’t it surreal to watch a movie filmed in the city we live in?” and at first, I wasn’t sure. But as the movie unfolded and I heard the names of streets I’m now familiar with and saw buildings and landmarks that stand only a few blocks from where I live, it did feel surreal. This city, Berlin, has grown on me in a way that I was very resistant to initially—similar to watching movies recommended to me. I have no reason for this really, other than to push back without reason.

Berlin has such a beautiful, complicated history. The city is an ode to freedom, sacrifice and revolution. It’s endured a lot in its history and stands as an international melting pot with an underlying tenacity to all those who consider themselves to be “Berliners.” I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of that thought or the city itself but I hope I get the opportunity.

We watched Wings of Desire which is a classic Berlin film shot when the city was still divided by the wall. It explores deep meanings of life and suffering. It explores what it means to be human—the complexities, the hardships, the worries, the questions and uncertainty of it all. It explores the idea of angels watching over us and putting a hand on our shoulder when things get too tough.

I have a lot to say about this film but it still hasn’t fully worked its way through my thoughts yet. I’ll need to watch it again at the cinema in Berlin as it’s shown on a weekly basis. I want to watch it again and appreciate the sentiment and what Ryan was trying to show me. This applies to a lot of areas of my life… the unfounded resistance of advice or counsel when I really need it. When the words, the films or support would in fact teach me something but my stubbornness to go at it alone makes it worse. As reflected in the film through the thoughts of Berliners, it’s scary and consuming to go at it alone.

I was walking Russell the other day when I met an Italian woman who also had a golden retriever. I was gripping the leash with everything I had in hopes to gain control over Russ so he wouldn’t make the other dog uncomfortable. She told me to let go of the leash and to trust her because she was a dog trainer and studied animal behavior. So I did, and she was right. We talked for a few minutes and she explained how a dog can feel your anxiety through the leash and they respond to that. I’ve thought about this for days now…

As we continued talking she asked what my name was. When I responded “Kendall” she said “Candle? Like candle in the wind?”

I always laugh when people, especially Italians, hear my name as candle. It makes sense, but the connection they draw is always poetic and somewhat funny to me. My good friend Jari’s parents had the same reaction when they learned my name. Instead his mom said “Candle? Like the thing that brings light?” Well shit, that does sound like poetry! I’ll take it.

a Sunday well spent

I’ve had my fair share of dreams over the past few months. Ones I’ve tried to make sense of and ones I realized made no sense at all. I’ve always been able to remember my dreams quite vividly, which similar to having a good memory is both a blessing and a curse in its own regard. When I wake up from a not so obvious dream, I usually poke around and try to see what the general psychology behind said dream is.

Last night, or rather this morning, I had a dream that I was in the lobby of a big building with my dog, Russell. He and I were trying to go up to the 11th floor. I waited and waited for an elevator to come and as I did, the line behind me continued to grow of people queueing. Finally, an elevator appeared and I stepped on with Russ. He was scared and unsure so I crouched down and embraced him during the initial take-off. Because I had Russ and there were multiple people in the elevator, I asked the man standing by the buttons to hit floor 11. He attempted to hit the button and nothing happened. I asked him to try again and so he did. Nothing happened. Everybody else had their floor illuminated and I started to panic.

As people got off the elevator, I tried pressing 11 for myself to see if I had the magic touch. Again, nothing happened. The last person got off the elevator and I watched the doors close. Now, I couldn’t press any of the buttons. I was trapped. The elevator seemed to be stuck on this floor due to its lack of direction (how I can relate to this) and I didn’t know what to do. Then, the elevator started to plummet downwards very quickly and all at once. It created that feeling in your stomach when you were a kid and someone would go very fast over a hill in a car, or just before the rollercoaster dropped. I, again, knelt down to comfort and brace Russ and finally, it came to a stop. The door opened and dinged—alerting us that we were back at the lobby.

I looked up the meaning of this dream and I’m sure the undertones are glaringly obvious. Anxiety, feeling a loss of control, things are coming to a head, etc. Although, dream interpreters did put an interesting emphasis on the number floor you were trying to reach in the dream. In my case, it was the number 11. They said to take note of its significance and what role that number plays in your life. Of course, 11 is a special number to me for many reasons.

I’ve always identified 15 as my “lucky” number with no real evidence to support the claim. One day when I was a kid, I became obsessed with the number 15 and still consider this my number. There is no significance to the number other than I like it. But in reality, my real lucky number is 11. I was born on August 11 at 9:11. It’s the first repdigit in the entire numeral system! My name has two l’s that resemble the number 11. (Fun fact: In all three of my names, I have repeating double letters! ll, ee, tt including my initials which are kll) It might sound silly but the number has followed me around in many ways for most of my life.

The dream interpreters (lol) insist there’s something to this number in this particular dream. Is it because my birthday is coming up? Is it because 1+1 = 2? Who knows. But I do know that my life as of late has felt like being trapped on an elevator while attempting to press the floor I need to get off on only to be denied that right…Then subsequently plummeting at an accelerated/uncontrollable speed with my dog to an unknown fate.

So it goes!