I've been pretty down lately ... that's the bottom line. Though I only moved three hours from home, from comfort, from all of the roots I had set down -- I'm just fully feeling the emotional impact of all of it.
I'm trying as best as I can to affirm to myself that feeling every ounce of the pain and dealing with it and even letting it show are not emblems of weakness but strength.
Going out on my own smacked me full in the face in a way I wasn't entirely prepared for. I made every piece of my life in Annville comfortable and safe and protected -- and loved it -- but ignored any thought of the place I wished to occupy in the world when I got out. Now I'm trying my best to live in the moment and even plan for the future (because I know I owe myself that)... but a part of me is having so much trouble letting go of all that "past."
If there's one comfort I've had, through the struggle that has been these past few months, it's that a piece of me can't stop being tugged toward recognition of the beauty beneath, breathing life into, some of the mundane acts and "background" environmental things that are around me everyday. And this underlying spirit makes being where I am, being here in this apartment in N. VA, take on a semblance of sense. Ties it into the memories from before ... gives the present weight and clarity because the seasons have changed like this before, and fall, despite the darkness closing in, will always be my unrivaled favorite.
Underneath my loneliness when I'm walking around Rosslyn, kicking up fallen leaves on the way home from the store, there's a remembrance of what it felt like to do that 15 and 10 and five years ago ... and last year ... and a twinge of the same simple awe, and a steady stream of memories from those times.
Underneath the thudding sound of my heels on the sidewalk during a run through Clarendon, there's a recollection of the streets of Ardmore, the town where I grew up, and swell of love for the mix of smokey smells and fenced yards and cracked sidewalks that elicited the memory.
Underneath the monotony of my commute to work in the morning, there's ALWAYS a a stitch of wonder at the HUGE passenger jets flying so close overhead -- their flight path to Dulles directly above my apartment. Remember that sight before your eyes became accustomed? Remember being amazed by what's now commonplace? I do, and a part of me deep down still is. I love that part.
And, oddly enough, the thing that has brought the biggest smile to my face lately -- the thing that has made me grin and soak in the childish fun of it all -- was digging my fingers into the goo and guts of a pumpkin last Thursday, carving out a zany nose, giving it a gaping, laughing mouth, and standing in the dark on my porch to stare at its features glowing in the blackness.
My roommate threw a pumpkin carving party, and everybody there sat cross-legged on the floor, their rapt attention held in the simple fun of creation.
Maybe, as long as I can get lost in the simple fun of creation whenever I'm feeling down -- I can grow up in such a way that it'll come out from underneath the oppression of monotony and lonliness and really shine.
