i’ve become one of those people who’s moved all over the place in their adult life. midwest, west coast, east coast, back to the west coast, the southwest, back east, return to the midwest and, now, east again.
i’m good at getting a vision in my head and going forward with a plan. i’m good at packing. and i’m adept at driving a moving truck with a trailer hauling my car behind it. i’ve got all sorts of strategies and ways to entertain myself while covering thousands of miles on the road. i’m seasoned for it – that taking off and putting myself somewhere new.
there was a time when i enjoyed it. i was once so good at leaving. it once was like nothing. easy. moving on. whatever.
but lately even the thought of any of it feels impossible. i sit with my dog under an apple tree, kissed by the breeze off the lake. pollen drifts this way and that. the birds chatter in their ancient, brilliant song. flowers are in bloom. it’s perfect. everything is perfect. leaving this could only be betrayal. then again, staying is much the same. right?
what does a person do when they’re conflicted like this? consult close friends and colleagues. book a tarot reading. get a lymphatic drainage massage in attempt to move their chi. drink a gallon of water before noon? i’m not sure anymore. this is a situation of my own creation and yet i’m having such a hard time facing it head on. the big city feels like a monster waiting around the corner, ready to eat me alive. duluth to new york. i’ve done it before. i know what’s waiting for me. still, trepidation reigns throughout my body. i guess i underestimated how connected i’d become to this breeze, these birds, the sand under my feet.
“i feel so precious lately,” i said to my therapist this week. “so tender and vulnerable.”
“yeah,” she said. “you’re really porous right now.”
she reminds me i came here knowing i’d leave. she said she thinks somewhere along the way i tricked myself into thinking i might stay. she said this was a safety measure, that i needed to create stability.
“you had to tell yourself a lie in order to feel settled,” she said. “you needed the comfort of a feeling of being home, but now you’re having to shift into the truth, which leaves the lie exposed. you feel like you’ve betrayed yourself and it’s painful, but it’s all part of the process. you did what you needed to do”
“if it was a mistake, i hope i learn from it,” i said.
“you will,” she said, jotting something down on her notepad.
porous. i linger on the word. like i’m a sponge or something. susceptible to anything and everything i touch. what i see and hear, too. sensitive to the quality of light everywhere i go. unable to put my finger on a feeling. just floating.
let the day turn to dust, i’ve been saying to myself. just let it all fade away.
i focus on my breath. i close my eyes and listen for how many different sounds i can hear. i tell myself this discontent is temporary. i will a sense of peace, of grace, of acceptance, moving through each day as it’s own, individual experience, separate from the whole. i don’t think too far ahead. i’m “being present in the moment,” some self-help guru on the internet would call it. i’d say it’s more of a being ignorant to the future type of thing.
but somewhere in my mind there’s a to-do list. things that need to be addressed for a move. i duck and dodge from it – do anything to avoid it’s constant low hum. i go to the coffee shop in the morning and get a decaf. i walk my dog for hours multiple times a day. lay on the beach and read an 800-word book. take a bike ride. sleep next to the man i love with such fragility. dance in his void. feel our time together slipping through my fingers. worry about him betraying me again. try to let it go. bury my feelings somewhere deep then get frustrated. fuck. make up. feel better. repeat. i wonder how i’d feel about this transition if he wasn’t a factor. i wonder how many times a heart can break.
my birthday is next week. it’s going to be hot. it’s always hot on my birthday. i came into the world high summer, i wrote last year.
“i’m in my season,” i said to a girlfriend earlier this week. and i guess that’s what i’ve been leaning on. it’s the reason i’ve been keeping. that my heart is drifting away somewhere in it’s heavenly shell. a pearl, really. or a horse out to roam. knowing it’ll return to the home of my body and when it does this empty feeling will fade once again. that the birdsong of the morning will reverberate through me and i’ll go on the wind of time that propelled me here, to this divine place, knowing that it’ll do it again and again, that the day will fade to dust but there will be another and it, too, regardless of where i am, can be perfect.
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