What Emotional Armor Looks Like

My armor showed up this morning as I got ready to meet a new friend, Lori, at a cafe.

In the months since we had met, Lori and I had only known a student-teacher relationship (I’m the student) — until today. I was a bit nervous when I reached out to Lori yesterday, suggesting that we spend time together in a different way: coffee or tea, maybe? And some discussion?

So today, when she replied with “are you free now?”, I hurried to pack my things. As I grabbed my pencil case off of my desk, my gaze fell on a bracelet that I had made recently. It was a bracelet with beautiful matte white stones, and it always reminded me of Lori when I wore it. What if I brought it with me today and gave it to her? I began to reach for the bracelet, but paused as the internal objections showed up:

“That would be weird. You’re meeting to hang out for the first time, you don’t want to seem too eager. What if you scare her away?” 

and 

“What if it’s awkward? I mean, you don’t have any real reason to give it to her. It’s not like there’s any occasion. This would be too much.”

 and
 
“What if you make her feel bad because she hasn’t brought you anything?”

To the credit of my wiser self, it did show up for a brief word, and began to make a good case for my bringing the bracelet. But just as I began to reach for it … the memories came up.

_____

Child Patti was skinny, with big front teeth and a severe, helmet-shaped haircut crafted lovingly by her mother’s kitchen scissors. Patti’s most treasured possessions were: 1. her rock collection, 2. tree sap collection, and 3. Legos.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that her rock collection was her life. Patti spent countless hours examining her rocks, and made sure to treat every single guest that visited their house to a tour of her most prized possessions. She would haul the massive, heavy plastic tub out from under her bed and pry open the lid, pointing out each of her favorite rocks with pride, too excited to notice that the awe and reverence she felt as she considered her collection was rarely ever shared by the polite guest.

In school, Patti didn’t do very well. She was a slow learner, something that did not go unnoticed or unremarked by her teachers and peers. She had a terribly hard time paying attention, and it was assumed that she had a learning disorder.

At a very tender age, kid Patti learned what it felt like to be ostracized by her peers. She had a hard time understanding why most of the girls in her class didn’t want to come over to play.

As adult me reached for the bracelet, the memory flashed forward of the time that my mother, after watching for weeks as her daughter gave away her favorite stones and crystals to friends that would come over, in earnest, innocent bids for connection and friendship, finally sat her daughter down and tried to help her understand:

"Honey, giving away your favorite rocks to these girls doesn’t mean that they’ll want to come over more often", she gently explained. She tried to tell her daughter that if she kept this up, she would give away all of her favorite rocks, and that it was OK to keep some of her favorite rocks to herself.

Years passed, and this pattern of giving away valued things in hopes for connection and validation rolled right on over into puberty, through adolescence and straight into adulthood. But instead of rocks, crystals and tree sap, I started giving other things of value away; things like trust, or time, physical and emotional labor, boundaries, and, eventually, my body. Sometimes, these were given to people that cared for and respected them; other times, those earnest and misguided attempts at earning others’ validation and approval ended in exploitation of what began to seem like naive generosity.

Somewhere along the line — likely in the aftermath of those painful occasions — between the thoughts of “How did I not see that coming?” and “I will never let that happen again”, a part of me decided that it might just be safer to hide her heart away, somewhere where it couldn’t be hurt. And each time that I let my heart out of its cage to offer it to someone, only to have it burned in return, I would tuck it back into that cage, add a couple of extra locks and nailed a few more thick, sturdy boards to it.

Even after years of therapy and healing, it felt like the echoes of those painful times that drew my hand back to my chest, and it felt like the hands of that little girl that tucked my heart safely back into its place that morning, a place that wasn’t so out in the open, so exposed, so drafty.

My heart still wasn’t comfortable in the breeze.

I continued to zip up my bag, grabbed my water bottle and keys, and kissed my husband good-bye. As I headed out for the day, I walked right past the small box on my windowsill that held my modern-day rock collection without a backward glance.

_____

By the time I reached the cafe, I had forgotten about all of this. When Lori arrived, we gave each other a Covid-age, socially-distant air hug, sat down, and then dove right in. She asked me about my business ideas, and I got to hear about the big trip she had planned next week, an opportunity to help out an organization a few states away. She explained that this opportunity came up very suddenly, it seemed, and that she didn’t have as much time as she would have liked to prepare, but she was really hustling this week to get it all done.

I acknowledged this by thanking her for making the time to meet with so much else going on. She looked at me and said, “You know, Patti, this actually felt pretty aligned.” Not following, I asked her what she meant.

She went on to explain that, a few months ago, she had purchased something for herself. When she tried to use it, she said, she couldn’t help but feel that it just wasn’t … for her, somehow. She went on to tell me that, after sitting with it for awhile, she felt certain that this thing, this gift she had bought herself, was in fact supposed to be … mine.

Now, this was all very surprising to me. Outside of our classroom setting, Lori and I had only connected sparingly over the months. She has a whole host of people that learn from her and with her, and there was literally no occasion that would — by objective measures — warrant her gifting me anything.

So, when she reached behind her back and pulled out this gift (which I will spare the details of, given how personal, and perfect, it was), and gently laid it on the table in front of me, I felt my bottom lip trembling and my eyes filling up with tears as I tried not to lose it right there in the middle of that busy, crowded cafe.

The tears that did squeeze their way out came straight from the place that had blown open as my heart eased itself back into the open to meet the heart of my new friend, to share that moment, to be seen, to dance in that beautiful space that is reserved specially for things like love and gratitude.

And in that moment, as I thought back to that white bracelet, still sitting on my desk at home, I recalled the lesson that my heart has learned over the years, a lesson that, even now, I still have to fight to remember:

My heart doesn’t like being hidden; that was never its job. Sure, its job is to keep me, by all scientific measures, alive, which it does very well, and I am thankful for — but after that, then what?

I know that I want to love. I know that I want to feel love, give love freely and without condition, and be able to receive love when it’s offered. I think back to my twenties, when I had boarded up and nailed shut my heart for years as my lifestyle decisions and relationship choices played out like a bad mix tape stuck on repeat, perpetuating cycles of pain. I think about how much time and effort and work it’s taken to pry out all of those rusty nails, to shed those boards and locks one by one so that I could feel anything again. Even now, with a few years’ distance between myself and that thoroughly guarded existence, I am still finding old nails.

As I sat there, overcome by these large emotions and understandings and feelings, all I could do was inhale through my nose, exhale through parted lips and meet her eyes as I said:

“Thank you.”