$30 and Four Days Later, I Resurface

Who are we without community?

I mean, really, without community we advance in our lives, grow in our habits, and revel in our own created moments without the peril of rejection, the poetics of others, the responsibility of scaffolds, and the rising up of collected voice?

Without community, life slims to a linguine thin escapade with whom we have no one to share. Friends go out. Community comes in. Strangers may care. Community heals. Where others drop off, community flies.

This weekend I dropped $30 to board a bus, I departed from my beloved Adonis to go relax away from Boston. Bumping along the highway, I contemplated three of my closest friends waiting for my arrival in a small town called New York City. It wasn't about getting away from a city, it was about moving toward the women who know me better than the kangaroos in my workplace.

I needed to be known. Even if just for 3 days. I needed it to be womyn who saw me receive my first D in seventh grade science and then bawl my eyes out in the coat closet. (I really don't know if I ever recovered from that test.) I needed to be with souls who helped me prank call my crush at 14, or with whom I had spent hours on the phone while casually shrugging off time zones across the coasts.

These are the lives that hold some of the very best parts of myself, as well. These are buckets which I have poured myself into. Attending their performances in which I laughed from the second row, their graduations in which I have wept like it was my own, and their broken hearts in which I have laid my own head in despair.

They are my loves, my community, my sisters.

Where else would I be able to contemplate the life of English Bulldogs and the psychological trauma of childhood divorce in one conversation? Who else wants to know details of my reproductive organs and my new black boots?

One element of true love communities is that nothing more than the basic necessities of life are needed for rejuventation. As long as there is food, air, water, and shelter, the rest takes care of itself. And after a beautiful, connective experience with three of the most loving humans I know, I see the change in myself.

I return to Adonis more beautiful and radiant, a wellness shining from deep within. Heavier dreams, thicker rain, and golden leaves accompany me. From my skin to my pillow, drops of spirituality drip from me like an overfilled honey hive.

I return with the Truth that I had so quickly forgotten. A community of people who love you can rebuild you, polish you, refuel you and remind you of the most sacred blessings of life: love, laughter, sleep, warm food, and eye contact conversations that unfold and exist outside the human-made measurement we call time.