(this is annie)

While writing a prescription on Wednesday, the podiatrist asked for my full name. After I told her, she said, "That's a beautiful name." It is, but it has always felt too regal for me. Besides, the meaning of Anne is grace, and I'm quite clumsy. If there were a name that meant "competent for the most part," my parents should have chosen that one. But they didn't.

Earlier this year, after going through considerable tumult, JC said that he didn't just want to get better; he wanted to reach a state of grace. For him, that quest has involved (among other things) devoting more time to painting and going on obscenely long runs along Lake Michigan. That made me think about the beauty of feeling completely present in a moment. When I played soccer in high school, there were times when I just knew the ball was going to come my way, and I was going to handle it beautifully. I could visualize it all before it happened. And when it did, it felt as though there'd been no other possibility. It all happened as naturally as breathing. My mind would clear, my fingertips would feel electric, and I would move fluidly — as though guided into a near future that was waiting for me to catch up to it.

That's what grace means to me: Not just knowing in your head, but having every nerve in your body feel that where you are is exactly where you need to be. Over the years, I have spent so much time struggling to change the immutable, or wallowing in pools of perceived helplessness. I look back and realize how much it would have helped to surrender. To shift my perspective and accept a given situation rather than try to produce an impossible alternative. Few regrets, but, you know, I was a dumbass from time to time.

Words fail me when I try to describe how difficult the past two months have been. (The autumn of my discontent?) In a surprising way, though, it all feels right. I mean, yes, I'd much rather be able to walk on two legs to my father and tell him stories about Spain. But that's impossible. This mourning has to happen, and it will hurt. I don't want to bury the pain; I don't want to run away from it or sneak around it. I want to walk straight into it to get through it. And I'll do all of this on crutches, because, to steal from Eleanor Roosevelt, you must do the thing you think you cannot do.

The Jayce wrote this to me yesterday:

Pain, unfortunately, is an excellent catalyst for growth and change, the same way fires are essential to the long-term health of the forest as a whole.

That, too, is grace. So it's time to try to live up to the name my parents gave me. Set the ground ablaze. Let flames lick every tree. Fall into the embers, inhale the ashes. And then wait for the first green shoot that will inevitably push its way through dirt to reach the sun.

Labels: emo spice