Butch Cassidy and the Comeback Kid

 Hello. My name is Jenna, and I am terrible at making decisions.

If you squint your eyes, it might appear to be tied up in stubbornness: not an entirely desirable quality in itself, but at least indicative of some level of integrity. Stubbornness suggests a firmness of stance that says, "I'm refusing to pick a side because I FEEL LIKE IT."

Indecision, however, is a wet noodle. It says, "I can't honestly choose between N*Sync and Backstreet Boys." It makes it hard to turn left when right is also an option. It presents sincere bewilderment in video stores, cereal aisles, and when propped in front of a restaurant menu; it leads others to reach across the table, having listened to me toy with the option of splitting or modifying every breakfast food, and announce to the waitress that "She'll have the pancakes." And I will. I'll have the pancakes, every single time.

There must have been a starting point. I hardly think that I came rushing into this world, was held to my mother, and made a pro-con list of whether to attach to her chest. However, a few short years later, I stood in the aisles of Lazy Acres "listening" to inanimate objects and trying to locate a gut feeling over different brands of toothpaste; to this day, I couldn't tell you which flavor of Tom's of Maine is my favorite. I only know that when I picked Strawberry-Banana, part of me wondered all the way home whether I'd hurt the feelings of Orange. (Insert psychoanalysis here.) And okay, I turned six and got over that one... but a tiny voice still squats in my head that pipes up when it's time to pick a color, time to get my act together and CHOOSE. Some find it bearable, if not endearing: it says, "I care so very much about your happiness that I am going to rely on you to make every decision to suit your pleasure from here on out." Others have grown wise to the fact that it usually comes with an asterisk, an inevitable "...but I reserve the right to be disappointed with what you end up choosing, even though I was unable to voice my own opinion." The rest bypass the scenario altogether by removing the crossroads. On Christmas Eve, upon observing my genuine struggle over whether to buy Inception or Mulan II, Orin took the DVDS out of my hands and we ended up leaving with both.

My time in Asia thus far has been an exercise in decisiveness. Travel, in general, is that blessing: it forces even the flibbertigibbetiest of us to pick ONE hostel on Agoda.com, even when there are thirty that look appealing, and it lights an improvisational dance under our feet as they march in and out of oceans, bookshops, and people. A month ago, I could have delivered a sermon on my newfound ability to trust my instinct and follow That Destiny Feeling. Remember? And it was all well and good, until the end of January rolled around and threw a spoon into my blender of good feelings. I had to choose how long I was going to stay in Bali, and try as I might to locate the right answer, I realized there wasn't one. I had a destiny feeling all right, but I had it about both sides. Right and left. N*Sync and Backstreet Boys. I was stuck.

What a terrible problem to have, right? I am fully aware that most human beings would look at this dilemma, roll their eyes, and tell me quite irritably that it was a win-win scenario: leave Bali in March with my mom, saving money and allowing me get my act together in the U.S, or drain every cent I have in order to work a mysterious internship at Jiwa Damai 'til April. Win, win. The thing is, for someone who searches for gut feelings like a blind hobo in a room full of cake, telling me that I "couldn't go wrong" only intensified my superstition surrounding the situation; agonizing over the decision, I began looking for signs. The visa consultant wasn't picking up the phone? I was going to go. Three of my friends from Scripps might come visit? Clearly, I've got to stay. On a daily basis, I managed to wholeheartedly convince myself of both sides... until suddenly, in lack of sleep and general sanity, my freak flag began to fly. If it started raining, I was going to stay. If my nose itched, I was going to go. I tried the trick Orin had shown Sofi about using your birthday to search a book--you ask a question, flip to the page that lines up with your birth year, the month for the paragraph, and use the date to pinpoint a word. I asked Steinbeck and Austen, Michael Singer and Pema Chodron; but without fail, always ended up with stupid words like "bean" or "cable." It would appear that there are limits on what even the most starving of souls can squeeze meaning out of, and "bean" is one of them.

So. Let's imagine for a moment that this course of events were played as time-lapse photography, all the images blurring into one another until each event is indecipherable from the last. As I was losing sleep trying to isolate my 'true' reasons for staying or going, I realized why it seemed so impossible for me--me, and not someone else in my position. I, Jenna Tico, in addition to being terrible at making decisions, have issues letting go. Take every parent who has ever dropped their firstborn off at Kindergarden and multiply it by three, and you have how I feel at goodbyes. I'm like velcro. I tend to hold on too tightly to the things I love. For all that I believe about living in the moment, and for all improvisation that I crave in my art and in my life, my blue streak runs deep; or as Mr. Sandrich put it in the eleventh grade, I am 'prematurely nostalgic.' Junior year wasn't even over and I was already planning what melancholy song I was going to listen to on the last day of high school. When something ends, I mourn the loss of the loved experience like an elephant returning to a gravesite year after year; retracing steps, reliving memories. Programmed, permeable.

For this reason, I knew I couldn't make a decision about Bali without first doing a double take at non-attachment. That's right. Since I've been gone, I've felt profoundly nonattached in a way that has allowed me to breathe space into areas of my life that were clogged: I've found peace in certain sunsets and in moments spent alone. On the other hand, in recent months, I've also gotten chummy with another sentiment: casualness. And here's the thing about casualness. For many, it's a positive quality that allows them to make acquaintances without wondering what they're going to buy them for their next twenty birthdays; for me, however, it's often inseparable from aloofness and nonchalance. On an intellectual level, I believe in being casual--who doesn't like casual Friday?--but when it comes down to it, every time I try to 'play it cool,' I feel more like a kid marching out of the kitchen with ten packets of cookies stuffed under her shirt than a person in command of their emotions. "Where are you going with those cookies?" Pause, shuffle shuffle. Crumbs drop out of corner of mouth. "Nowhere."

For someone like me, it can be difficult to navigate the line between casual and callous. It takes a lot of energy for me to pretend not to be infatuated; and casual relationships, while great in principle, usually end up being the equivalent of one gigantic attempt at not letting the other person hear me while I pee. It's exhausting. Yes, dating conventions might dictate that it is better not to share bodily processes with another until you've known them long enough, blah, blah, blah. Yes, it's probably socially inappropriate to say, "I love your smell." But I said it anyways. When you're spending all your time with someone, regardless of whether it has been deemed 'casual' by that almighty force which grants significance to some relationships and not to others, it's challenging to keep certain secrets to yourself. When you say things to one another in private that make it hard not to touch elbows at the dinner table, it's even harder to engage in the small talk that the Laws of Casualness make clear. What do you say? "Hey, I'm really glad we decided to shower together. Wanna get some mac n' cheese?" Maybe some people are good at it, but I'm not one of them.

And when neither side is good at it, neither one fully invested in their right to remain silent, something's gotta give. It's only a matter of time before they become casualties of their own casualness. That, or the nonchalance is replaced by something else, something--dare I say it--intentional? Unfortunately, though, that's a different story on another stage. We're still in the time-lapse section. Bali is flying by, the colors are running into each other, and someone is telling me that he's "sorry if he hurt my feelings": and suddenly I'm in the moment, that moment that everyone knows, when the brain takes a snapshot and the volume gets turned up on every miniscule sound, smell, and sweet nothingness. The pain comes later.

When that moment first arrived, I believed I had found my sign. I thought that the dissolution of a relationship, a tether to a state of mind more than anything else, was reason enough to leave the geography surrounding it. I would go home. I would leave Bali because I had been given a cosmic signal that my time had expired.

Then, just like that, everything changed.

It's true that I found the sign I had been looking for, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Sitting in that minute where every fiber of my being was telling me to run away, I realized something incredible: I don't want to run away. For the first time in my life, I am being given the opportunity to sit in a moment of discomfort--because it is only that, a moment--in order to surpass a situation that has always, always gotten the better of me. When I'm burned romantically, I tend to flee the scene of the crime. The velcro in me, the one who won't let go, isn't strong enough to walk down memory-ridden streets; I play the Greatest Hits on repeat until someone else comes along and changes the CD. And that's the way it's always been, folks. When I realized this, the gigantic effort of nonchalance fell away from my shoulders, and I felt a new kind of power well up. Whether or not he meant to, this person had just given me an incredible gift: he let me decide. The easy option, the choice to leave, rose to the surface and I picked a different route. I made the decision to stay in Bali because I love Bali, and Bali loves me back. I made it because it was the more difficult one, the one that will give me the opportunity to learn a lesson that I am in desperate need of learning--how to listen to myself, to believe in myself exactly as I am, separate from how much others can or cannot be with me. He let me order my own pancakes.


Drunk on my newfound power, I watched as he rode away. I wanted to scream. I AM REAL. I AM WILD AND BRILLIANT AND LONELY AND SOMETIMES I LISTEN TO PETER GABRIEL ON PURPOSE. I AM PURE AND MESSY AND PERFECT AND TERRIFYING AND I AM LOVE, I am love, see me, see me, see me. I heard my own voice, and I felt my own hands gripping the side of the stone wall that looks over the rice field. It took me a little while, but eventually I realized that the person I was talking to was myself.


You see, I have been there for every romantic sunset. I've been there for every perfect meal, every dance, every hilarious stranger, and every rainstorm. For as long as I can remember, I've gypped myself out of experiences by thinking they'd be more meaningful if someone else were there to share them with me--and sure, sometimes they would be. None of us is an island, even if we happen to be spending all our time on one. However, in this age of social media and constantly being DIALED IN, where an experience is only as good as the number of 'Likes' it gets on Facebook, I have a newfound appreciation for the moments that I can't describe. No one was there to see them, and as far as they're concerned, the beauty may not even have existed. But I saw it. I went on a romantic bicycle ride with myself, and I saw it. I held my hand through the moments that felt like hell, and others where freedom felt so pure and so complete that I soaked it up like water into a sponge. This is the journey I was meant to take, and I was the person I was meant to take it with. No one else.

So there you have it. That was my golden moment, looking out over the rice field, holding a strong decision with my heart cracked open as the sky. I'll never forget it. In the time that has followed, I've learned a few things: One, that there are perks to casualness. Sometimes, it's nothing more than the feeling of rolling with the punches, being relaxed, letting things land in your palm without closing your hand. Not every romance needs to be a Whitney Houston song in order to be colorful, or in order to be real. Two: there are perks to being open. You get more hurt, that is true. But there is a strength to openness, a steeliness in vulnerability that is at once an enormous challenge and an enormous gift. To feel things strongly, to give fully regardless of whether it makes sense on paper, has long term advantages that 'playing it cool' can only begin to unearth.

I'm learning to find middle ground. Sure, if there was an Indecisive Anonymous, I'd be a regular attendee. I'd probably be the Attendee of the Month, my photo displayed on a brass plaque in the lobby of many carpet colors (because God forbid we'd have to choose one), and the person in charge of the bake sale. However, I'm also learning the benefits of being resilient, of trusting myself to make the choices that are right for me. I don't throw salt over my shoulder and I'm no longer the kid who sat in the corner of the playground, singing the Labyrinth soundtrack under her breath because no one would play with her; but I remember that girl, and I feel unbelievable tenderness toward her. That is what this trip has been about. That is the lesson I was supposed to learn. And you know what else I learned? That I can always, always come back. I can walk down familiar streets and not be haunted by the ghost of the last time I walked them. I'm back at Slukat Learning Centre, back where this whole adventure started, and I don't feel the same. I remember the experiences that I had before--good and bad--but I've stopped getting my feet caught in the quicksand of those memories. I can return to familiar sites without holding the present to the cutout that the past has left behind... and God, what a RELIEF. Maybe you get it already, but for me, that's been revolutionary. For the first time ever, I know that I can come back. I've come back, knowing I'll never really come back, but forward: I'll come back, I'll come forward, and I'll come back again.

I keep thinking of the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where they're crouched against the wall, and Butch reveals his plans to go to Australia. Sundance looks at him like he's crazy, and they get up to go outside... guessing, of course, what waits for them on the other side. There's that great line--"for a moment there, I thought we were in trouble." And then they look at each other, two friends, and forge an unspoken agreement: that they'd rather risk trouble and go down swinging than play it cool with their backs against a stone wall. Sure, they'll probably get hurt. But in the moment before it fades to sepia, they both know it's better to run out into the unknown--guns blazing--than to sit in a room, always planning for Australia, never knowing what they might have missed.