when in community

adventures in the heat of summer, on 35mm film

I got my hair trimmed from someone new today.

My husband gets his hair cut from her and while my trips up north used to be more frequent, allowing me time to pop into the city to see my favorite hairdresser, circumstances have changed, making the usual visits to the small Island where I grew up (and the family and friends on it) less frequent.

And so, I looked at my husband’s hair and decided yes, I like that, and then I booked in with his barbershop. 

With long hair, getting a haircut was something I only thought about every couple years, but as I kept going shorter and shorter, eventually making my way into a trim little pixie cut, I (naively) realized just how much maintenance (and money) go into the upkeep of short hair.

And because my husband has been going to her for over 5-years, I realized just how much we knew about each other by proxy of that relationship. I knew about her recent surgery and how hard recovery has been. She knew I wrote and had said she had read my posts on Instagram, and due to my now 3-year absence from the platform, I quickly realized that she was referring to the community that I ran until 2019.

A community centered around storytelling and connection and redefining what it means to live with a chronic illness (specifically Lyme Disease, though certainly not limited to).

While this community is no longer, connections like this remind me of the impact it continues to have, which is helpful in mending my own relationship with being-well and why I ultimately decided to close that door and open another—one that wasn’t so inexplicably tied to my health diagnoses and how I choose to take care of myself, especially as it relates to outside opinions and the choices I make for my body.

To this day, I believe that shutting down the community was the best choice I could have made for myself and those I had been building my life alongside. However, despite it being the something I knew I wanted to let go of (and in many ways, needed to let go of), it felt strange and wrong to turn my back on something I had put so much of myself into.

But, I also knew that the efforts behind it all (from my family, friends, and other members of the community), are inextricably linked to where I am now, my own well-being, and the relationships I continue to build.

I say this because I think that the things that we, for one reason or another, end up saying no to (or yes to!) keep nudging toward the things we were always curious about. To see how it feels to say, because I no longer like the way this fits, I’m going to donate it to someone else and try on these pink overalls instead.

And let me be clear: I do not say any of this from a western-woo-woo stand point, this is much more tangible than that. This is something you can hold with your hands and go yes, together we can shape this into something beautiful.

Being in community feels like not deflecting a compliment that your hairdresser gives you on your writing from almost 10-years ago (writing and sentiments that came from an entirely different version of you).

Being in community feels like the smile that spreads across your face as you said thank you, that means so much and I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you, too (and to mean it—all of it!).

Being in community is the role you didn’t know you played in someone else’s life (and vice versa) until they started an easy conversation over the buzzing of clippers.

While community used to be something I nurtured in public, it’s now something I tend to in the shadows of my day-to-day (between appointments, after work, before I sit down with my coffee, while fussing over my rosebushes, or over long weekends).

And while I am no longer on social media, I am aware that without it, the community that 23-year-old me was so determined to build, would not have come to take the shape that it did (a shape I continue to be very grateful for).

So, while this version of me (the me that types this to you now) has made the choice to not be as public facing when it comes to community building, I believe that social media and the community that was built from it, was exactly what I was looking for 10-years ago (playing a leading role in shaping the community I have today).

And as with everything that I have talked about in this library so far, I believe that community is something that will change as you change. That will continue to ask you to let go of someone, to scoot over to make more space for someone (or something) you haven’t been introduced to yet, or to be the one that bids farewell. 

I also believe that how you relate to community will forever be evolving: I already know that while I have spent the past 5-years tending to my inward, immediate, and personal community (and have plans to keep doing so!), I have no doubt that my more outward facing wants and desires will get louder and louder, asking me to, why not change (your mind) and learn and adapt in ways you never have before?

The importance of community is known to most, so while I will not touch on more widespread examples today, I’ll bet you have plenty of examples of your own (examples entirely unique to you): your best friend that lives across the country, the person that always remembers you when you go to pick up your prescriptions at Walgreens, your beloved gynecologist, your immediate family, your elderly neighbors, the makeshift family you have built, your hairdresser with the kind eyes, the place that you volunteer, work, or spend time in.

(and on the list goes…)

Expanding and contracting as you wake up each day, feeling however you’re feeling, doing whatever you have to do, and being there for yourself and those you love in the ways that feel possible to you right now.

Anyways, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about as of late. An area of interest that I always hope to be bettering myself in.

Something that’s so impossibly big and so impossibly small I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around the importance of it. But maybe that’s not the point.

Bye for now,
Chloe

Everything shared within this library is for entertainment purposes only. Please be sure to visit the bottom of the Library’s main page for a detailed disclaimer.