A long year has just passed.
We uprooted ourselves with great difficulty from New York. It’s hard to leave the place and people you love for the unknown, those friendless places. The four of us gathered close to each other, fenced in by our 17 parcels of possessions, and have tried to accustom ourselves with this part of the earth.
I can’t say I’ve done well or that I know what this lingering year has meant to me and my family relationships. Have I grown the way I should? How do I compute the self-discovery regularly accompanied by self-loathing? The dreamy and provincial alongside subtexts of the lonely and nightmarish; the simplicity that has absorbed our lives and bloated it with hollowness and boredom? I look at all this and wonder if I am to understand that this reduced place – without imagination, without ambition – is what happens when I do not have people around me in abundance. People that I can exchange life and air and words with.
But still, all this time we’ve spent here and I have not settled in on what to think about it, what the ruling will be. I can’t completely evaluate it, I suppose, while still in the middle and muddle of it. I do hope, really hope, that the soft tongue of memory and distance will in the end produce a pearl, which will be luminous and valuable to me.
5 comments:
Amen sista. I'm with you on all of the above. Sometimes I wonder if I'm progressing or regressing. I think I'm progressing though. At least, I hope I am!!! =]
That was beautifully written, lovely Heather. While I haven't spent time in a dreary foreign land under your living conditions, I have had periods of dreariness in my life where I've wondered the same thing... "hmmm, I thought I would be growing and learning from this experience, but I'm a complete mess so how can this be an improvement?"
Sorry, not much help but I just wanted to say I get where you're coming from... and from my perspective you're doing great.
I think it might be one of those experiences that you don't realize what impact or change it had on your life until you leave. Or maybe a few months or years down the road. I often think back to my experiences from Tonga, Africa and Zürich and realize that those cherished adventures have helped mold me into who I am today.
Oh how we seek always for meaning making. I think it is part of our humanness. I am sure there are changes in process you can't yet see. I hope they are luminous pearls too!
Love you friend.
Post a Comment