Checking in

 I love catching up with Justine.

It doesn't happen that often--not nearly often enough--as she lives in Brooklyn and works in finance for an international arts organization, and I live in St. Louis and work in communications for an international professional services organization. We both have two children in varying stages of late teenagerdom / early adulthood, dogs, husbands who were also college classmates, siblings, nieces, and mostly non-overlapping friend groups. But when we do have an opportunity to talk, I relish every minute. 

The first funny hat that
I ever saw Justine wear

Justine and I have known each other since we were 18 and assigned to live together in a first-year quad at our alma mater. We found out after moving in that, by square footage, ours was the smallest quad in our residential college. She was a polyglot from Toronto with one of the best senses of humor I had ever encountered. I was a debutante from South Carolina with evangelical tendencies. She befriended me anyway. We bonded over Strange Brew and convinced a classmate from Dallas that she had gone to high school every day on a dog sled, which was difficult because dogs are color blind and could not tell whether the traffic lights were red or green. She taught me about the Barenaked Ladies, and I taught her about grits. Her first experience tasting them went something like this:

"It doesn't really taste like anything."
"Crumble some bacon in it and try again."
"Oh, OK. Now it tastes like... bacon."

I think it's her honesty that I appreciate the most. 

Justine knew me before I learned I could give myself permission to be someone other than who I was taught to be my parents, teachers, church, geography, and gender norms. More than thirty years later, while my sense of self has changed, my appreciation for our friendship has not. This morning she called to chat about some volunteer work for our upcoming college reunion. The obligatory part of the conversation took about 10 minutes, and then we stayed on the phone for another 45, during which we both began multiple sentences with phrases like "I wouldn't tell a lot of people this..." and "Just between you and me..." She is a person I trust completely with the whole truth of me. Or at least as much of it as I know thus far.

Now when we get together,
we wear lots of orange
and new funny hats

I have been fortunate in my life to have several friends, like Justine, to whom I can turn when I need to exhale, lower all my defenses, or not put on any kind of show. These friendships are sealed in moments of authenticity. We've let each other vent, cry, and ask taboo questions. We've sat in silence and doubled over in laughter. We've held each others' hair and rubbed each others' backs--both when drunk and when painfully sober. We've watched relationships come and go. We've moved around the country and around the world. We've struggled through kids, from non-sleeping, puking infants to non-sleeping, puking young adults. We've burned brightly and burned out. 

Thanks to these friends, I have found relief from always feeling like I have to keep up appearances, read the room, meet or exceed others' expectations, and derive my sense of worth from (a very American, capitalist understanding of) productivity and achievement. While I feel obligated to show much of the world how many items I can check off my to-do list, these friends show incredible patience, support, and love as I continue to figure out what's on my to-be list.

I recently started a practice, recommended by my therapist, of trying to check in with myself in the same way that I would check in with my friends or they would check in with me. This means that at certain moments during the day--yes, I set an alarm--I pause, take a few deep breaths, and ask, "How are you feeling?" Feeling, in this sense, could mean physical (shallow breathing, tight shoulders, butterflies) or emotional (nervous, tired, content). My friend Margaret even encouraged me to take it a step further by putting a hand over my heart and adding a term of endearment: "How are you feeling today, sweet pea?"

The goal is to get into the habit of actually noticing and acknowledging when there is a change in how I am feeling without the alarm. I guess this is why they call it a practice. 

Checking in is not a new, difficult, or even particularly deep idea, but it is radical for someone like me who prefers to stay busy, let her thoughts dominate her choices, and--to co-opt a phrase from another southern debutante--feel about that tomorrow. And here's the kicker... I don't even have to do anything about what I learn when I check in. I don't have to change or fix anything. There's a good chance there's not even anything to fix. I can just be feeling what I'm feeling. It's a moment to discern what I'm tasting and accept it--the bare naked, inside out, true grits of me. No bacon required.