It was a painful choice, and for a year after I arrived here I fell into deep moments of despair and grief, but never fully regret. I hid from my intentions in leaving and questioned my motives often. I wasn't ready to face myself, and I found convenient ways to avoid doing so. I felt so alone in those days. So exposed. I realized that the life I had built in Pittsburgh had only kept me from knowing who I truly was, and kept everyone else from knowing, too. And here people were waiting for me to be someone and, I didn't know how to be. I was starting from scratch and had not yet learned how to listen to myself, so when I fell in love for the first time, with someone who was willing and eager to tell me how to be, I listened and molded my life skillfully. I spent a long time with that love, trying to make myself fit into the life he created. It was the most painful experience of my life. And I don't blame him. I understand that the way we hurt takes different shapes, and his just looked like creating safety by making me safe for him. But, I entered into that relationship without even having come close to knowing who I was, so to find myself after I was buried under his definitions was a task that took quite some time. I loved him. There was never any doubt. And when I look back on myself in those days I feel immense respect and admiration for my heart's ability to love so deeply and willingly and tenderly. I'm glad I know that part of me exists. It took years and months of uncovering, of digging into the ground and hitting the red clay of my own resistance to truth, before I could see that I was not alive at all in that life. That I had chosen to leave myself the day I met him and that, certainly, I was crying out to be found. I remember when I heard the voice again, say to me that it was time to leave. I was astonished. I was dumbstruck. My rational mind could not believe that this was the answer I had received. But I listened, and I left. I left a houseful of things, said goodbye to the only man I had ever loved until then, abandoned a home that overlooked the ocean and was flooded with moonlight at night and sunlight by day, and let go of the dependable willingness of him to hold me and hear me and let me be as broken as I could have ever been. I took my car and my clothes and a few items in one box to a studio apartment with a twin-sized bed and I started again.
It's been two years and two weeks, exactly, since that day that I landed in that little apartment and began my search for myself. It's been two years of learning and growth and building and breaking and loving and letting go. Thinking back, I can't believe it's only been two years. It's felt like a lifetime.
I heard the voice again, recently, after I spoke to my twin brother about helping him move across the country. He had asked me if I would come along for the ride from Tucson to New York, and I readily agreed. I have always wanted to drive across the country. I've had visions of it a thousand times over the past six years I've lived here. I've fantasized about doing it in a truck full of my own belongings, heading back to my family. I've dreamt about it on the cusp of heartbreak and loss and failure. It has been my lifeline, holding on to that hope. And now I can do it with my brother just for the fun of it, I thought. But when I was walking later that day I heard that voice say, "Why don't you pack your stuff in that truck, too?" and there it was. The question was offered and I knew the answer. For two weeks I sat with that question. I spent days crying about the loss of this beautiful life I've created here. This life I built from scratch... from negative space, even, because I didn't start on neutral ground. I started at a loss. And finally here I am and my life is full and beautiful and thriving. And now I'm being asked to let go and start again. I cried and I prayed and I waited until I knew with certainty that it was time to go, and it was. I heard it again and again. I saw it in the life around me that had been falling away and making room naturally over the past several months. I saw it in myself and the peace I felt at knowing the answer. I felt and knew it in the swelling of my heart at the idea of being able to own my responsibility to love and honor my family, to show up for my niece and nephews and brothers and sisters (in-law and in heart). I felt the willingness to let go, to surrender to the absolute truth that everything changes. Death and rebirth and loss and rebuilding are the inescapable basis of the human experience. Everything I know today will be different some day sooner than I'd like. I am willing to let go and leap without looking. I am willing to do this because I know that I will land in a place full of people who are ready to love and learn with me. I know this because it's happened to me more than once in this strange city I grew to consider home.
I'm choosing to leave San Diego in September. I'm going to take a lot of stuff with me this time. I'm taking my couch and my bed, all the furniture that was gifted to me by the people who helped me land softly. I'm taking the art I've created and collected, the books with the words that became my companions, the blankets and lamps and things and things and things that become our lives and world. I'm taking them all. I'm taking so much more that can't be seen. I'm carrying with me the wisdom of having hurt deeply and healed, the warm embrace of friendships that waited and witnessed and accepted, the strength of forgiveness and compassion for myself and others, the weight of obligation to truth. I'm taking my love of language and words, and my dedication to pursue that love with the same tenacious and unfaltering desire I have to know and see myself clearly in this world. I'm taking a vulnerable and strong heart. I'm taking all of me. And gratitude, so much gratitude, but that's another post altogether.
No comments:
Post a Comment