Sometimes, if the oscillating fan in my room shifts and squares and rusts a little and sends wind into my face like the Caribbean air, I can time travel. When the light is perfect. When I leave the window in my shower open and close my eyes and use a very specific shampoo, I can hear outdated dryers clanging, staining someone's clothes with rust, and I can hear friends collecting the recycling from Swoop. I stay there as long as I can.
I try to start from the top. From the road behind my tent and the gate that leads down into the neighborhood of treehouses that still feels like home even though it's no longer standing. I step flat-footed and cautious, knowing as all of us did that boardwalks are either splintered or slippery and nothing in between, and one must walk like an elephant to avoid injury. I let my front door slam behind me. I was one of the fortunate few who had a door which would actually close on its own, and so the slam feels a bit like privilege. I walk [flat-footed] down my own staircase, saying a quiet hello to the doorknob that had been bolted to our front railing by a ghost of Maho past, probably long before I had ever even heard of the magical place. The 802 is to my left, and a boardwalk the leads to Bonnie's tent which was Joe Junk's tent, which was who knows tent before that is to my right. If it's a little rainy on my time-trip, the Swoop showers are running, housing someone who is willing to risk a special terror for a chance at hot water.
Once, I got stuck in a swoop shower with a hummingbird. Another time, with a tarantula. Another time still, with an unidentifiable slime slicking the floor. Against all odds, the hummingbird was the scariest.
If it's rainy or if it's not, the washers and dryers are running, the library is packed with books that no one will read, the closet is packed with clothes that someone will end up wearing as a costume some tipsy boat trip afternoon, and there is a shelf which holds up a past staff member's decor as if it might make sense to anyone else, asking to be placed in another random space in another random tent until season ends, and it lands back here.
Through Swoop, I am back on uncovered boardwalk with the Fishbowl to my left, and the Bamboo to my right. Someone is watching a TV, wasting a perfect day because you forget that the days are perfect and you occasionally wish instead for them to just be normal. There is a trail which follows some line or another down to Circuit City, which is really just Jared's tent. The living room of the Fishbowl is to my right, open for the world to see, earning its name even in the daylight. Further to the right is Where the Sidewalk Ends, which is really Marty's tent. I walk and walk along the long, central boardwalk in staff. Under the shoe tree. Watching ahead through the gate that leads to E-section, where you don't go, where only guests and 4-hours go, where you are proud to not belong. I try to walk slowly here. This boardwalk is the resting place of a number of heavy conversations, and it deserves the respect of time taken.
Eventually, the Kingdom is to my left.
(I have to stop for a moment, sweet reader, as I realize that I have gotten lost in Staff section. The Quite Please is farther up, but I cannot recall how to get there. Flanked by Skull and Bones and the Compound, it was twice a home of mine. For reasons I won't share here, I think my memory is probably doing me a favor by blurring that path, and so I suppose I will leave it where it is)
I lived in the Kingdom. I painted its floor from black and white to green and lived in its tiniest room and loved its dining table and the year and roommate I had there. I knew its occupants before more, and I knew its occupants after and I will love that fallen tent forever.
Down a few stairs, and the Barefoot Mansion, which has always been the Barefoot Mansion is on my right. Bits and Pieces is on my left, another tent I called home, another floor I painted, another life I lived. I survived my first heartbreak inside those screened walls, and learned who I could be when I thought I was gone.
A tent called Betty Ford is a bit down and to the right. The last of Staff. It's actually Karen and Mike's tent to me, and though it certainly deserved reinvention, I'm not sure that Betty Ford was fair or just.
If I've planned this poorly, I let that latticed staff gate close behind me and find myself nose to nose with the Donkey room. I smell humid trash and bacon. I smell crappy coffee that I'll dress with the cream that they let me steal from the kitchen. I drink it from a blue cup as I check out the breakfast specials drawn on a whiteboard, and the friend whom I sell wine and Panna water and pretzels to will take my order.
My less and less tiny daughter has just woken up. Nothing wakes you from the past like a baby crying in the present, and so here I go. The staff will eat breakfast without me. The rest of that boardwalk will wait there for another daydream.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Dear Clara
Dear Clara,
I just put you down for a nap. You had already been asleep for a little while, but you woke up early as you are wont to do, and I needed to sit in your overpriced nursery rocker and push your hair back so I could kiss your forehead until you fell back in. You like my breath on your forehead. You like to hold my finger in your hands. You don't particularly like to rock, ironically, but you seem to like how the arm of that chair cradles you on one side so I can cradle you on the other. You fell asleep fairly quickly, and so I stayed longer than I needed to. I stared at your face and marveled at your little mouth and your little nose and your little ears. I don't usually do this, I'm afraid. Part of staying home with you is the home bit, and I've got things to do while you sleep. But sometimes, I allow myself the respite of looking at you. You've got soul-healing properties, I swear. They tell you that you've never known love until you've had a baby. They say that you never understand what it is to stop mattering to yourself and to know that that's actually ok. They tell you about the chaos, the sleeplessness, the baby-proofing, the diaper pails, the overwhelming sense that you will forever be overwhelmed. They tell you so much, but come to think of it, I don't recall hearing about the calm of holding a heart that you made. The peace that comes with loving someone more than you love yourself. More than that, I don't remember actually feeling the calm until recently.
As I held you just now, kissing your tiny forehead, I cried. You just turned one this last Saturday, and I cried for how all of this felt a year ago and the calm I didn't feel. A year ago, I held you much the same way. I cradled you to my chest and touched my lips to your forehead and all I felt, aside from terror that any movement I made would wake you, was like I was under water. Not drowning, but not breathing. Floating some, sinking a little, hoping that filling my lungs with air would bring me to the surface that I could see clearly, but somehow not quite reach. I was supposed to know you, and I didn't. It was all so fast and so strange, and it felt like I knew you better when you were still a physical part of me. Before I could see your face or watch you sleep. One six-inch incision, and nine months of learning you was slashed like a tire. I was deflated. The sense that you were supposed to be my oxygen was there, but that hardly seemed like a fair thing to expect from someone so new. I loved you deeply, but I did not understand you and I did not understand myself as your mother. Wasn't something supposed to change? Wasn't I supposed to close my eyes one moment and wake up the next and feel different? I felt as inept as ever, counting the rises and falls of your chest, hoping that I was good enough, feeling like you were too perfect to have chosen me as your mom and that someone somewhere made a huge mistake.
There are so many things in life that you don't realize you are learning until you look back at where you were. A year later, the calm is here. The magnitude of the chaos is, as well, and I still feel inept more often than not. But a year later, I hold you and cry because I needed you to be my oxygen and you were. You are. We save each other every day. A year later, I understand that face. A year later, you smile and you hug back and I know that any movement I make is just fine even if it does wake you because you like my breath on your forehead, and my finger in your hand, and the way the chair cradles your right side.
Dear Clara,
Thank you being so patient with me. A year from now, I will write you again, certainly shocked by how little I knew and how far we've come, and still the luckiest person alive because I get to be your mom.
I just put you down for a nap. You had already been asleep for a little while, but you woke up early as you are wont to do, and I needed to sit in your overpriced nursery rocker and push your hair back so I could kiss your forehead until you fell back in. You like my breath on your forehead. You like to hold my finger in your hands. You don't particularly like to rock, ironically, but you seem to like how the arm of that chair cradles you on one side so I can cradle you on the other. You fell asleep fairly quickly, and so I stayed longer than I needed to. I stared at your face and marveled at your little mouth and your little nose and your little ears. I don't usually do this, I'm afraid. Part of staying home with you is the home bit, and I've got things to do while you sleep. But sometimes, I allow myself the respite of looking at you. You've got soul-healing properties, I swear. They tell you that you've never known love until you've had a baby. They say that you never understand what it is to stop mattering to yourself and to know that that's actually ok. They tell you about the chaos, the sleeplessness, the baby-proofing, the diaper pails, the overwhelming sense that you will forever be overwhelmed. They tell you so much, but come to think of it, I don't recall hearing about the calm of holding a heart that you made. The peace that comes with loving someone more than you love yourself. More than that, I don't remember actually feeling the calm until recently.
As I held you just now, kissing your tiny forehead, I cried. You just turned one this last Saturday, and I cried for how all of this felt a year ago and the calm I didn't feel. A year ago, I held you much the same way. I cradled you to my chest and touched my lips to your forehead and all I felt, aside from terror that any movement I made would wake you, was like I was under water. Not drowning, but not breathing. Floating some, sinking a little, hoping that filling my lungs with air would bring me to the surface that I could see clearly, but somehow not quite reach. I was supposed to know you, and I didn't. It was all so fast and so strange, and it felt like I knew you better when you were still a physical part of me. Before I could see your face or watch you sleep. One six-inch incision, and nine months of learning you was slashed like a tire. I was deflated. The sense that you were supposed to be my oxygen was there, but that hardly seemed like a fair thing to expect from someone so new. I loved you deeply, but I did not understand you and I did not understand myself as your mother. Wasn't something supposed to change? Wasn't I supposed to close my eyes one moment and wake up the next and feel different? I felt as inept as ever, counting the rises and falls of your chest, hoping that I was good enough, feeling like you were too perfect to have chosen me as your mom and that someone somewhere made a huge mistake.
There are so many things in life that you don't realize you are learning until you look back at where you were. A year later, the calm is here. The magnitude of the chaos is, as well, and I still feel inept more often than not. But a year later, I hold you and cry because I needed you to be my oxygen and you were. You are. We save each other every day. A year later, I understand that face. A year later, you smile and you hug back and I know that any movement I make is just fine even if it does wake you because you like my breath on your forehead, and my finger in your hand, and the way the chair cradles your right side.
Dear Clara,
Thank you being so patient with me. A year from now, I will write you again, certainly shocked by how little I knew and how far we've come, and still the luckiest person alive because I get to be your mom.
Monday, January 21, 2019
Right Now
To be fair, I'm sure that no one really knows how to do this, especially the first time. You would have to understand time enough to split a moment open and peer inside. You would have to have already wrangled your wild self. Broken it in. Made it soft and pliable and you would have to have armor enough to guard against every breeze that threatened to harden it back to feral.
There are women who have wanted this forever. This thing that I have. This thing that I am. But the universe has a sense of humor, and though I fancied myself a great number of things, I never did think that housewife would be among them. It's not among them. Despite the fact that this is what I'm doing, this is not who I am. And if I take the narcissism out of it, I would have to assume that this isn't who most of us really are.
How do we hold onto ourselves? How, when we don't own a single one of our own minutes, do we find the time to look in a mirror and remember why we have scars?
When you're a stay at home mom, it can be quite easy to stop existing entirely. If you're not careful, you melt into whatever wall you're next to, or whatever chair you're sitting in. You match the hum of the refrigerator like breath and you become what you are doing and lose track of what size jeans you wear, and the city you loved grows like tall grass and you get lost where you once felt at home. Home becomes a life that would have bewildered you not even that long ago.
It is a cliche to say that none of it matters, but I don't need to qualify any of this. I understand my privilege here. I won't cave to the itch at the base of my skull telling me to gush and scream and flood that I love my daughter and I am lucky to have this life (though I suppose I just did, didn't I?). No. I need for this to be mine. Something has to be mine without the nearly Catholic guilt that accompanies being a mother and still, shamefully, being a human being.
When I look back at this time in my life, it will shimmer like soap bubbles. It is magic, all of it. I will remember the first time I heard her giggle. I will remember what it was like the moment we found out she was ticklish, and the moment I made the grave, trust-crushing mistake of giving her spinach. I will remember crying when we began giving her formula, and crying as I packed up the clothes that she managed to outgrow in what felt like a day, and crying when she got a bump on her head because I turned my back for thirty seconds. I've got videos and pictures of these events just in case my memory ever takes on sepia tones. I will not forget her. But there is only space for so much there, and the bare truth is that when I look back on this time in my life, I will only remember being her mother. Right now, I am only her mother.
There are women who have wanted this forever. This thing that I have. This thing that I am. But the universe has a sense of humor, and though I fancied myself a great number of things, I never did think that housewife would be among them. It's not among them. Despite the fact that this is what I'm doing, this is not who I am. And if I take the narcissism out of it, I would have to assume that this isn't who most of us really are.
How do we hold onto ourselves? How, when we don't own a single one of our own minutes, do we find the time to look in a mirror and remember why we have scars?
When you're a stay at home mom, it can be quite easy to stop existing entirely. If you're not careful, you melt into whatever wall you're next to, or whatever chair you're sitting in. You match the hum of the refrigerator like breath and you become what you are doing and lose track of what size jeans you wear, and the city you loved grows like tall grass and you get lost where you once felt at home. Home becomes a life that would have bewildered you not even that long ago.
It is a cliche to say that none of it matters, but I don't need to qualify any of this. I understand my privilege here. I won't cave to the itch at the base of my skull telling me to gush and scream and flood that I love my daughter and I am lucky to have this life (though I suppose I just did, didn't I?). No. I need for this to be mine. Something has to be mine without the nearly Catholic guilt that accompanies being a mother and still, shamefully, being a human being.
When I look back at this time in my life, it will shimmer like soap bubbles. It is magic, all of it. I will remember the first time I heard her giggle. I will remember what it was like the moment we found out she was ticklish, and the moment I made the grave, trust-crushing mistake of giving her spinach. I will remember crying when we began giving her formula, and crying as I packed up the clothes that she managed to outgrow in what felt like a day, and crying when she got a bump on her head because I turned my back for thirty seconds. I've got videos and pictures of these events just in case my memory ever takes on sepia tones. I will not forget her. But there is only space for so much there, and the bare truth is that when I look back on this time in my life, I will only remember being her mother. Right now, I am only her mother.
Friday, September 14, 2018
The First Motherhood One (is barely about motherhood)
It's September 10th. Clara, my beautiful, perfect speck of a daughter is sleeping now, though God only knows how long that will last. In eight days, she will be 4 months old. Babies are time machine magicians, somehow turning your longest days into your shortest weeks. I'll have to ask her when she's older how she manages to do that.
I am in Denver now, house and dog sitting for a friend until we close on our own house. The sun is out today, and it means business. An early September heat wave is here, taking its toll on the green bits still holding onto their Spring youth.
Yeah, well, me, too. Not much to be helped there, I'm afraid.
I've given myself permission to sit in the sun until she wakes up. It's been a long time since I've sat in the sun. That would be unusual for pre-baby Jamie, but seems to be par for the course now. Some things in life change every other thing.
I miss the sun- that has not changed. But nothing puts into perspective how reckless we are with our own bodies like being tasked with the well-being of someone else's brand new one. I check my blind spot twice now, and chasing those tan lines is far less important than making sure she doesn't have any.
Motherhood, man. You lose yourself if you're careful and if you're not.
A few years ago, I wrote about ambition. I'd have to read it again to get the details straight, but if I was being truthful, I probably outlined how little ambition I actually had. I had been climbing the ladder but pining for the ground, and didn't know what that could amount to, really. How do you win a rat race that you'd be happier losing? Regardless, there I was. Successful by most people's definitions. Even by my own, though I felt lost in it. All the while, wondering if the top had a good view of the versions of myself that I had loved better.
And now.
I'll spare the details of this progression, though it should be noted that plenty details exist. But give me two years in the Pacific, and I'll show you how to turn into someone no one recognizes. What a magic trick to place a round-peg girl into a square-hole life and see upon her removal how her shape has changed.
There is more to be said, here. Pages to be written about the abrupt loss of freedom- financial and otherwise- that accompanies a quick-change into the privileged title of “Stay at home mom.” Pages about the struggle of holding onto yourself when your world is no longer about you. Pages about how I have been under-qualified for every job I've ever had, this one included (maybe most of all). And, to be obvious, there are chapters and volumes and libraries to be written about motherhood. What it is. What it isn't. How it changes you, and how it doesn't. The mind bend of knowing what's coming, and still being entirely unprepared. The gravity of being this in love with someone, even if she is biologically obligated to love me back.
But today, the best way to end this aimless ramble might be just the way I started it. It is now September 14th. My beautiful, perfect speck of a daughter is asleep upstairs. In four days, she will be four months old. And I am in the sun.
I am in Denver now, house and dog sitting for a friend until we close on our own house. The sun is out today, and it means business. An early September heat wave is here, taking its toll on the green bits still holding onto their Spring youth.
Yeah, well, me, too. Not much to be helped there, I'm afraid.
I've given myself permission to sit in the sun until she wakes up. It's been a long time since I've sat in the sun. That would be unusual for pre-baby Jamie, but seems to be par for the course now. Some things in life change every other thing.
I miss the sun- that has not changed. But nothing puts into perspective how reckless we are with our own bodies like being tasked with the well-being of someone else's brand new one. I check my blind spot twice now, and chasing those tan lines is far less important than making sure she doesn't have any.
Motherhood, man. You lose yourself if you're careful and if you're not.
A few years ago, I wrote about ambition. I'd have to read it again to get the details straight, but if I was being truthful, I probably outlined how little ambition I actually had. I had been climbing the ladder but pining for the ground, and didn't know what that could amount to, really. How do you win a rat race that you'd be happier losing? Regardless, there I was. Successful by most people's definitions. Even by my own, though I felt lost in it. All the while, wondering if the top had a good view of the versions of myself that I had loved better.
And now.
I'll spare the details of this progression, though it should be noted that plenty details exist. But give me two years in the Pacific, and I'll show you how to turn into someone no one recognizes. What a magic trick to place a round-peg girl into a square-hole life and see upon her removal how her shape has changed.
There is more to be said, here. Pages to be written about the abrupt loss of freedom- financial and otherwise- that accompanies a quick-change into the privileged title of “Stay at home mom.” Pages about the struggle of holding onto yourself when your world is no longer about you. Pages about how I have been under-qualified for every job I've ever had, this one included (maybe most of all). And, to be obvious, there are chapters and volumes and libraries to be written about motherhood. What it is. What it isn't. How it changes you, and how it doesn't. The mind bend of knowing what's coming, and still being entirely unprepared. The gravity of being this in love with someone, even if she is biologically obligated to love me back.
But today, the best way to end this aimless ramble might be just the way I started it. It is now September 14th. My beautiful, perfect speck of a daughter is asleep upstairs. In four days, she will be four months old. And I am in the sun.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
i listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.
I can close my eyes here and breathe until everything disappears into itself. So deceptive, the softness of sea foam. As if the ocean didn´t have the power of everything this Earth has ever been pulsing with each swell. It is no wonder that the sirens are island creatures- the sea itself is a siren and a liar, its flower petal shore break making promises it doesn't even know it can't keep. We know not to turn our backs, but do we really want to see?
I've never had a God, really. I've never prayed to anything but The Universe, and even that has always been born more of hope than belief that anything was listening. I suppose I could be convinced, though, sitting here like this, the dragon whisper of the Pacific breaking me down until I am as granular as the sand. Not convinced that there is a God, exactly. To be honest, I do not think I could find value in one diety who decided the then and will decide the next and who chooses the now. I've never been one to worship, and I can't imagine breaking that rule for such a control freak. Nor do I think that our souls and spirits will be carried on the wind into whatever our perception of heaven is, where we are greeted by long lost grandparents and family pets, where ice cream doesn't have calories and we are forgiven our every earthly misstep.
Rather, in a very literal sense, I think we are the wind. We were the wind before birth, and we will be the wind after death. We speak of life cycles as if they are archways, with a beginning and an end through which we might be able to spy the shine of something bigger. Something with more purpose than we could possess on our own. I'm not sure why we don't give ourselves more credit. The nature of a cycle is circular. Beginnings and endings fade into one another just as we can close our eyes and feel that maybe the ocean is a part of us. Like we belong to it. Truly, it is, and we do. We are made of the same things, rearranged. We are the same thing.
When my grandfather died, I did not know what to pray to. His God? The God of my childhood? The God my friends know, and speak to, and love, and trust? Even on the off chance that those are all three the same, I wouldn't know that God's face if he was staring straight at me.
Instead, I went to the beach. I sat facing a little North and a lot east, towards the last place where our feet were firmly on the same ground, his and mine, and I said goodbye. And then I said hello as the sea lied about its gentleness the same way hearts do, and as the wind played with my hair the way it does the wild grass and the wild waves.
I've never had a God, really. I've never prayed to anything but The Universe, and even that has always been born more of hope than belief that anything was listening. I suppose I could be convinced, though, sitting here like this, the dragon whisper of the Pacific breaking me down until I am as granular as the sand. Not convinced that there is a God, exactly. To be honest, I do not think I could find value in one diety who decided the then and will decide the next and who chooses the now. I've never been one to worship, and I can't imagine breaking that rule for such a control freak. Nor do I think that our souls and spirits will be carried on the wind into whatever our perception of heaven is, where we are greeted by long lost grandparents and family pets, where ice cream doesn't have calories and we are forgiven our every earthly misstep.
Rather, in a very literal sense, I think we are the wind. We were the wind before birth, and we will be the wind after death. We speak of life cycles as if they are archways, with a beginning and an end through which we might be able to spy the shine of something bigger. Something with more purpose than we could possess on our own. I'm not sure why we don't give ourselves more credit. The nature of a cycle is circular. Beginnings and endings fade into one another just as we can close our eyes and feel that maybe the ocean is a part of us. Like we belong to it. Truly, it is, and we do. We are made of the same things, rearranged. We are the same thing.
When my grandfather died, I did not know what to pray to. His God? The God of my childhood? The God my friends know, and speak to, and love, and trust? Even on the off chance that those are all three the same, I wouldn't know that God's face if he was staring straight at me.
Instead, I went to the beach. I sat facing a little North and a lot east, towards the last place where our feet were firmly on the same ground, his and mine, and I said goodbye. And then I said hello as the sea lied about its gentleness the same way hearts do, and as the wind played with my hair the way it does the wild grass and the wild waves.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
The Trouble with Plants
I can't really keep plants alive. I bring them into my home with the promise of light and water, cool from the faucet, and an easy place to shine. I have visions of green geranium leaves crawling like sunbeams, and cushiony aloes, plump with medicine, and red pots teeming with herbs whose aromas battle one another for space in the air.
But I can't really keep plants alive.
I smother them at first. A helicopter mom, hovering and feeding and anxious. I fear they will suffer thirst, and so I make them drink. I am proud because they don't have to ask. It works for the cats- they love me most in the moments before they feel a meow might be necessary. But if anything is more fickle than a cat, it's cilantro, and I can't really keep plants alive.
I move from over-attention to near neglect, wounded from rejection. I avert my eyes when I walk by them. They have asked me for space. But if there is anything more fickle than a cat, it is cilantro, and they are wounded as well. Like a girl who just broke up with a boy so he might care more, their heads hang low and moping. Their fingers curl into delicate fists, for sadness and not for fighting. I bet they'd weep if they had water enough for tears.
Tough love does not work for plants, however. And I can't really keep plants alive.
But I can't really keep plants alive.
I smother them at first. A helicopter mom, hovering and feeding and anxious. I fear they will suffer thirst, and so I make them drink. I am proud because they don't have to ask. It works for the cats- they love me most in the moments before they feel a meow might be necessary. But if anything is more fickle than a cat, it's cilantro, and I can't really keep plants alive.
I move from over-attention to near neglect, wounded from rejection. I avert my eyes when I walk by them. They have asked me for space. But if there is anything more fickle than a cat, it is cilantro, and they are wounded as well. Like a girl who just broke up with a boy so he might care more, their heads hang low and moping. Their fingers curl into delicate fists, for sadness and not for fighting. I bet they'd weep if they had water enough for tears.
Tough love does not work for plants, however. And I can't really keep plants alive.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
When I Left
On May 24th, 2005, I left everything for everything. I did not do it responsibly, or with kindness. I left a wake. I told everyone I knew and loved that I would see them in August, and then boarded a big plane to a tiny island. I didn´t know it was a lie at the time, but I think I´d hoped it was. August came and went, humid and on fire. It would be November, and November would be a round trip back to the islands. I had been on the ground in Colorado for just long enough to pack a Goodwill suitcase with all the home I thought I would need, and that was not even enough to fill it.
My sister moved me out of my college house. It was up to my roommates to find a replacement. I would not see my friends and a family until the following August- a full year later than I had promised. Even then, I would never really return.
I traipsed around the Caribbean, carefree and tanned, and my friends graduated. And my friends got married. And my friends had children. And my mother missed me the whole time.
It wasn't romantic, what I did. Nor daring, nor brave, nor particularly interesting at its core. It wasn´t about being a wild girl who needed to chase the wind, and it wasn´t about some Eat Pray Love journey to self discovery. It was selfish, and reckless, and cruel. With no regard for the hearts I left behind, it was abandonment.
I needed to leave. That became obvious the second I realized I could. But the callousness with which I left has plagued me in the decade since, skewing my perception of home, hitting a reset button on many of the people and places that had been sacred.
The first time I ever checked to see if the grass was greener, it was. I´m not sure you can ever recover from that. Instead, you wonder and wander, only recognizing anything that felt like home after you´ve left it, constantly imagining that it might be better somewhere else.
Being on the Narnia side of the wardrobe has served me well for the most part. I stretched my arms to fit the whole wide world inside, and they were almost big enough. I have found wanderlust to be a dressed up way to assume that the best part of that wide world is the part you have not yet seen.
And I´m not sure that´s true.
My sister moved me out of my college house. It was up to my roommates to find a replacement. I would not see my friends and a family until the following August- a full year later than I had promised. Even then, I would never really return.
I traipsed around the Caribbean, carefree and tanned, and my friends graduated. And my friends got married. And my friends had children. And my mother missed me the whole time.
It wasn't romantic, what I did. Nor daring, nor brave, nor particularly interesting at its core. It wasn´t about being a wild girl who needed to chase the wind, and it wasn´t about some Eat Pray Love journey to self discovery. It was selfish, and reckless, and cruel. With no regard for the hearts I left behind, it was abandonment.
I needed to leave. That became obvious the second I realized I could. But the callousness with which I left has plagued me in the decade since, skewing my perception of home, hitting a reset button on many of the people and places that had been sacred.
The first time I ever checked to see if the grass was greener, it was. I´m not sure you can ever recover from that. Instead, you wonder and wander, only recognizing anything that felt like home after you´ve left it, constantly imagining that it might be better somewhere else.
Being on the Narnia side of the wardrobe has served me well for the most part. I stretched my arms to fit the whole wide world inside, and they were almost big enough. I have found wanderlust to be a dressed up way to assume that the best part of that wide world is the part you have not yet seen.
And I´m not sure that´s true.
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