Be a Dragon and Love Cats

This is a story about a dragon and a cat…Actually it is a story about vulnerability and learning to be our true selves around others. And it isn’t even one story; it is two; one about a dragon, and one about a cat. The first story (the dragon story) happened during Sabbath Saturday, an annual one-day retreat that the church, that I’ve been recently attending, hosts. If you can’t tell by my hinting on this blog, and posts on Facebook, I have really been able to connect to the young adult group, City Lights, through the church (but I don't think anybody really calls it City Lights.)

The main reason I went to Sabbath Saturday was to connect even more to those fabulous people, as well as make my face more present within the congregation. (I really want to apart of a church this year where I am not just a spectator.) Sabbath Saturday, without a doubt, was the highlight of my weekend. Hiking, sketching, rock wall climbing, and deepening friendships. There were a couple moments that stood out me as the highlight of my day, mainly rock climbing with the guys (or attempting), but one conversation that stood out to me was talking to Will when I should him a couple of my sketches.

Needless to say, Will, is involved in the young adult group that I hope to deepen a friendship with throughout the year. We have actually had the chance to bond over cats. Yes, I found another person that loves cats just as much as I do (I didn't know that was possible.) While I was showing Will some of my sketches, of a dragon sketch in particular, he commented about how much he liked. We spent several minutes just talking about dragons. During those minutes I explained to him why dragons have such a symbolic meaning to me. I believe that we all have a dragon inside us. We all have a demon or insecurity that we are constantly fighting against, and that’s ok, it is part of human nature. However, we should not focus on the ugliness of the monster, instead we should focus on what the demon or monster we are fighting has to teach us. To me, the beauty of the demons we face is illustrated in a dragon. A dragon is a dangerous beast and has an unpredictable nature. Yet at the same time a dragon is mysterious, beautiful and inspirational. These are all aspects that our inner demons and insecurities have, if we have the courage and wisdom to seek them.

I also told Will that to me, part of being human means being able to be vulnerable with one another. Vulnerability means different things to different people, but to me it means having the courage and respect for human life to be able to be open about our dragons to other people. (Will saw a little bit of the Brene Brown side of me that day.) I continued to tell him that I even thought about getting a little dragon tattoo on my right wrist to symbolize that we have to be vulnerable with one another about our dragons and be able to “wear our dragons on our sleeve.” Will told me that he thought that was pretty cool, but don't worry mom I’m not totally convinced I’m going to get it. Now I didn't tell Will about my insecurities, I didn't want to scare the poor boy, but I was definitely honest and vulnerable with him that day. I’m not going to blog about any conversations that day in detail (out of respect for others) but I will say that I was surprised at how vulnerable I was with him. Why am I being so open with a guy I just meet? True, I was open and honest with some people I just meet at orientation, but we were all YAVs. Will isn’t a YAV or a Dweller so we don't have that connection. What connection do we have? We both live in LA (although I may or may not be temporally), we are followers of Christ and we both love cats.

Some drawings I did about two summers ago. I included them to illustrate the point of how much I love dragons, and how inspirational I find them to be.

Those are pretty good reasons to be open with a person but for someone who used to struggle, and I MEAN STRUGGLE, with trust issues, it was really hard for me to open up to people. To me, I usually needed more connections with a person before I was comfortable opening up to that person. That is, that was the old me. The new me is in a transition of being vulnerable. I don’t consider the “new” me completely comfortable with opening up to everyone, I have to learn who is worthy of listening to the secrets of my inner heart, but I am not as stingy as the “old” me by not letting anybody be worthy of listening to my heart. So if I’m in the middle of learning how to be vulnerable then the question goes back to why did I decide to be vulnerable with Will. What connection did we have that made me feel like I can be open and honest with him? The connection is simple; we are both human. We both breathe the same air, we both smile, we both cry and we both bleed the same color blood. Will, and other people like Will, deserve to hear my stories and beliefs because they are human, but as me being a human myself, I deserve the right to choose who gets to hear my story. I was not opening exposing too much of my heart to Will, but I had enough wisdom and confidence to say to myself, “this guy seems pretty cool. I think he is worth hearing my story.”

So that is the dragon story about vulnerability but what about the cat story about being our selves? Well part of the reason why I was and am still able to be myself around Will is because of our connection with cats, but he is not the only one who I was able to be myself because of cats. I was able to connect to several of the neighborhood kids because of Salem, aka Luna. The neighborhood that we, the Dwellers, live in has several stray cats (I’m in Heaven!) Several of these stray cats just leave us alone, but there is this one stray cat that LOVES attention. She will come up to whomever and beg for attention. I call her Salem because she is all black like Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and I don't think stray is even the right word to describe her. She is more like the neighborhood cat that will occasionally visit us; in fact several of the neighbors will set out cat food for her. Just like the house we are living in is the community house, Salem is the community cat. Several of the past dwellers tell me that she has been here for years and that each year she gets a new name. As well as her name changing, there will usually be at least one person each year who ADORES Salem. I’m the dweller who adores Salem this DOOR year.

Since Salem lives in this community, several of the kids are also familiar with Salem and love her as well. They call her Luna, but I will only call her Luna when the neighborhood kids are around, to me she will always be Salem. I actually had the chance to bond with some of the kids by talking about Luna. We talked about different names the cat has, where we think she might go during the day, etc. I feel like I was able to be myself around the kids because of our common love for Salem. I even saw some of the walls the kids had come down when I started to talk to them about Luna. Now my cat story is not as story oriented as my dragon story with Will, to be honest I just wanted to write about Salem because of the therapeutic value she has had on me over the last couple of weeks. (Plus I was able to write more about Will because I had his permission.) However, the moral of the cat story is that cats are awesome and they bring people together. The moral of both stories is that commonality brings people together and we don't have to look far to find something in common. The first common thing we share with anybody is that we are all people.