Thank you

I recently met a girl who has inadvertently turned my life around. She was hired at my place of business just before the New Year because everyone and their mother wanted to take some vacation time. I wouldn’t say that we really hit it off right away; I mean, she’s a friendly girl with lots of questions about, oh, everything there is in the world, and I love to answer questions so I guess it was just natural for her to enjoy my company. But then when I saw her for what was maybe the third time just before January hit, she hugged me and said, “Chelsi, I’m so glad to have met you this year! You are such a good friend and I feel like we’ve known each other for a long time.” Whoa, right? I wanted to be flattered, I really did, but I’m so uncomfortable in situations like that. With the hugging and the appreciating. Who does that anymore? Anyway, I decided to pass it off as a foreign thing (she’s straight out of South America) and haven’t thought about it since.

Because we work the same position, I don’t see her unless I catch her at the tail end of her shift or vice versa, but even in those short five or six minute windows she’s always eager to play twenty questions or to set up a time when we can hang out outside of work. My schedule between two jobs and TRYING to find an internship is crazy, so I usually have to tell my friends that unless they book me two weeks ahead of time, I can’t hang out. But how do you repeatedly turn down someone who HUGGED you and thanked you for existing? Unless you have no soul, YOU CAN’T. So then yesterday, after sitting on my ass for a good four hours because we had a total of thirty three customers all morning, I decided to give Miss South America a call and ask her if she’d like to get together for some coffee or a movie after I got off. (Does this sound like it’s going to turn into a story of the lesbian variety? Because it isn’t. Sorry to disappoint!) Miss South America was a film student when she was in college, so she insisted that we see the movie Juno, which, by the way, is amazing.

While waiting for the movie to start we talked about how she got her dream job as a Mac Specialist at the Apple store downtown, but shortly after the confirmation she received an e-mail retracting the job offer because her work visa ends in March and they require a longer commitment. It made me think about where I regrettably stand in internship land (at the bottom of the septic tank) but that the opportunities surrounding me are vast. That if I don’t get the exact one I want, the chances of finding something else are still significant, whereas here is this girl who has flown all the way to California in order to immerse herself in a profession that she’s wanted to be a part of for the greater part of her entire life, was accepted into her dream world and then rejected because she’s not a citizen. That’s more than a no, you suck at interviewing, try again somewhere else; that’s a no, you can’t have a job here. Period. Ever. Unless you marry some American guy.

What’s worse is that that’s not even the part that humbled me. The part that made me want to start crying and hug her with my cold and unaffectionate American arms is when she told me that she suffers from a very debilitating disease, and because of that disease, was practically bedridden for two years of her life. When the doctor that had been monitoring her case from the beginning told her she couldn’t possibly do anything for her anymore, Miss South America decided that it was time to seize any opportunity to enjoy life that presented itself, and that’s what backed her decision to see her current holistic doctor and try her luck in the States. Now she drinks her holistic teas and works as often as she can, even though it takes her two to three days to fully recuperate after two five hour shifts, and it seems to be working out well for her so far. She told me the reason she confided in me about her condition was because she feels like we were meant to be friends, and she doesn’t want to lie to someone she thinks may be such a big part of her life in the long run.

Do you want to hug your monitor and cry yet? Because I do. Before this information, I felt like Miss South America’s optimism was really overwhelming. I mean, nobody in San Francisco is that optimistic. We have earthquakes and tons of homeless people and terrible weather and ridiculous living costs and no parking, so it’s a little hard to shoot rainbows out of our asses. A lot of tourists are surprised that we’re not the fun-loving, beach-dwelling, surfer, sunshiney, happy-go-lucky people that they had in mind (for that kind of experience you definitely want to go to Southern California), but Miss South America seems largely unaffected by this. Instead she says “goodmorning!” like sugar is dripping from her teeth and laughs about walking to work in the rain without an umbrella and acts like being sad is just so two years ago. And now that I know she is projecting this unexplainable niceness while constantly dealing with weakness, pain and unbearable fatigue on top of the scum-filled city, I feel like such a pile of trash for ever complaining about anything.

Before we did the whole hug thing again and said goodbye after our movie date, she said something that I think will probably stay with me for the rest of my life, and that is that pity and compassion are two very different things. She hates pity because to her it’s superficial. Someone can feel sorry for someone else’s situation, but it’s fleeting. Often there is no effort or desire to understand it. Compassion involves action, because compassionate people want to fix the situation because of how much they care, even if the only thing they can do to alleviate any stress for the person in question is to act as though nothing is wrong, though they’ll never forget what they know, and will somehow, someway, be forever changed by it. Miss South America says she feels very strongly that I am a compassionate person, and that that sort of detection is very rare for her.

I’m beyond thankful for this assumption, and am rendered almost speechless by it because so much of me feels like I don’t deserve it. I’ve been told repeatedly for the last two years by someone I care(d) for very deeply that I have serious issues. That I’m whiney and needy and annoying and crazy. My defense has always been that I’m just really passionate about the things that I love, and is that really such a bad thing? Isn’t it honest and raw and commendable? Howard Hughes said, “Passion will make you crazy, but is there any other way to live?” and I’ve surrendered myself to this quote and even, on occasion, used it to defend my actions because I simply can’t control the way that I am, the way that I think, the way so much of me is defined by my intense devotion to the things and people that I care for. And now someone I barely know has recognized that about me, and that recognition and approval almost justifies all of my uncontrollable passion-fueled actions and words that until now I’ve come so close to hating.

Funny how an almost complete stranger can right your way of thinking after someone you thought you knew inside and out managed to bend it all out of shape.