Can it be true that I haven’t posted since the ballet? Oh, shameful, shameful. To tell you the truth, I post here often, in my head, anyway. No, seriously, I often think of things to write about, form lovely phrases in my head, make insightful and witty comments. The only problem is that I very seldom seem to actually put pen to paper as it were. Alas, alas. And wouldn’t you know that whenever I do manage to get around to writing stuff down, I can’t remember a blessed word that I meant to put down. Ah, the wicked mistress of writing. I am truly cursed.
But I digress. There is so much on a day to day basis that I would like to share that I think I am choked by the volume. I would love to talk about my reclamation of devotional life through the Book of Common Prayer, my acquisition of my very first honest-to-goodness icon and learning by doing, my contemplations on the gleaning of spiritual wisdom from many sources, particularly Judaism these days, or even just my anguished struggle over the additions I have just made to our landscaping and my fight to keep my tender little plants alive in this ridiculously stifling Texas heat. But generally what I find necessary is to just try to keep everyone on the same page as to my geographic vagaries and daily activities, as in this phase of my life these seem to be in constant flux. So, here is the bread and butter of my life at the moment.
Biggest news is, I am taking the plunge and moving up to Buffalo. I have realized of late how many of my decisions may look wildly spontaneous to folks on the outside when in reality they are carefully considered for months before I make up my mind, but I don’t really include anyone in the deliberations, so then when I just come out with the decision, it looks like I just randomly, on the spot, chose to do this. Not so. And this is the case with the big move. I have been thinking about doing this, really, in a whimsical way, ever since graduation, knowing that I have a big community of friends up there. But now that I have secured for myself a job up there, the decision is final. The job that I’ll be doing is with our good friends at Americorps, namely an organization called Compass House which is a resource for homeless and runaway youth. So it makes me very happy to have the prospect of meaningful work and work that I think would actually challenge me. And I’m very, very happy to be back with some college peeps again, which is honestly a huge factor in my decision. I have realized more and more and more and more in the past few months how very much I need a community around me. Not a transient community, not a community of people I admire who refuse to connect with me, not any of this Lone Ranger, American rugged individualism bullshit, just people: people who I love a whole lot and who I hope to be able to believe love me too. People who are actually willing to take care of me the same way I am willing to take care of them. People who can talk about problems and real issues and honest emotions and who aren’t just hiding from each other. I need it, I need it like oxygen, and I’m not going to continue to cheat myself out of it to pursue some kind of ascetic ideal or misguided notion of the will of God.
All the same, I have to admit to having some mixed feelings, still!, about going up to Buffalo. For one thing, I begin to wonder if it might have been a mistake to invite my family to drive up with me. My family, oh, they’re lovely people, but they have this bad habit of saying, “We’ll do this for you because we love you, but don’t expect us to be happy about it, and please don’t object when we bitch about it for hours on end, till you’re ready to beat your brains out just to escape the crushing guilt of forcing us to do what we volunteered for out of love for you.” (In case you haven’t picked up on it, things have been a tad bit tense around the old homestead these days.)
I love road trips and I’m excited because I’ve planned our route through what looks like some really beautiful country that I’ve never been through before. I think my sister is excited about this, especially as she has just recently gotten her license (yay her!) and is finally able to help out with the driving. My mom, unfortunately, hates to drive and can only seem to talk about how long the trip is going to be. And God help me, I will pack her in the trunk if it gets to be too much over the three days we’ll be traveling.
And then there is the fact that, in spite of everything, part of me wants to be in Houston. Part of me is wondering like crazy why I ever felt like it was the will of God for me to come back and be with my family when this whole time it has seemed like the worst idea ever conceived. Was I just wrong? Was God wrong? Did God know it was going to suck and be pretty much pointless and still tell me to do it anyway? I don’t know if I’ll ever find out. But it is hard to get away from a lingering sense of failure, that I felt like I was asked to do something that I was simply unable to fulfill. And the reason that I was unable to fulfill it was because of my own fragility, something that I have an almost Spartan distaste for. So I can’t help but feel like I’m leaving with a sense of regret for duties left undone, for commissions unfulfilled. And I don’t even know where I went wrong.
Then there is the unavoidable sense of frustration that comes from being in such a weird place in my life which is so continually confusing and uncertain and not knowing where I’ll be in the future and feeling so far away from achieving the kind of life I want to build for myself. A great part of me just wants to get a Sheltie puppy, buy a ranch with lots of land around it, and marry some guy just for the sake of being able to settle down in my own place and stay there. The same great part wants to pack up every piece of everything I’ve accumulated in the last 23 years and take it all out of my mother’s house so I know that I won’t ever, ever be coming back except as a visitor. And yet even in the midst of the frustration, I know that the same circumstances that are causing the frustration now are going to be the ones that the lack of which will cause me frustration in the future. The uncertainty, the mystery, the sense of infinite possibility. I’m sure my future self would feel tied down by house and hub and just want to run away for the romantic instability of not knowing where I’ll be in six months. Well, I say screw you future self, because I think this really sucks!
This is the other reason that I don’t post more frequently, to give you all plenty of time to read the previous post before I burden you with another one. And because apparently there is so much unspoken bile in my life that I am reluctant to spill on strangers. Ah, screw it. I trust myself to the great, wide anonymity of the internet! At least now, you can’t complain that you’re not in the know.
No comments:
Post a Comment