Anthony and I discussed the initial high I've been on now that I'm in the city. He didn't experience it, he says, because he was running from something when he got here. Lord knows I am too, but just because you're escaping doesn't mean you're not also achieving. It's a funny list of things that brought me here, and I remember a vow I once had that 2010 would be my last year in North Carolina. The Promise of te open road seemed to delay that change, and of course some heartology factored in as well. I feel like I got off of the bus a very changed person. I feel like I have a new habitat, a new direction, and honestly, I think I'm standing straighter. Mother's everywhere will take better posture as a good sign, so why shouldn't I?
A conversation with one of Anthony's roommates touched on being a different person between 13 and sixteen, and my oldest friend and I agreed, having shared those years, that neither of us really changed that much. Now, 16 to 20, and 20 to 25 saw great metamorphosis in each of us. And while I've for a while now hated, hated, all mention of the quarter-life crisis; I have to hang up my pride and admit I'm having one now. You wake up one morning and realize you've got scant two and a half months to be in your late twenties, and you're really not ready. Self-identity struggles are always buried pretty deep, and I swing in and out of that well pretty frequently, but I really believe I'm easing comfortably enough into a new iteration. maybe it's the city, maybe it's that awful mix of heartbreak and bewilderment, maybe I'm just in a bitter down swing. But try not to see this as a testament of darkness or Gothic tendencies when I say the hummingbird is now a Crow. I think one can grow in and out of Animal Totems, sure. I feel less like flitting about these days, and appreciate more than ever the description of one particular hero of mine after his own passage through something-
He was described as, if I remember correctly, "laughing less often but more loudly" (I poured over websites and both of the books I suspected it to be in, to come up lacking. It's very difficult to find).
That, my friends, is the good word on one Gandalf StormCrow.
Genus Corvus need not represent all things dark and deadly. It's just a feeling that I get. I don't know how to make this work, but I'm doing it. Home, Job? What to do, where to go, when off the road? I don't know. I will find the cheapest place to live in the city, I will do whatever works. Is this a new me? Who can say. Will all of this wear off? No reason to suspect it won't, these transformations and plans and changes have worn off before. I've never had a plan come together, I'm the king of dead ends, but damn it somethings got to work- why not the new, weightless, positive, me? I'm not looking to abandon the old life I led- I've been down that road. But there are things of which I will not speak and corridors I will not revisit. I want to be improved.
This sounds like a good and healthy self promoting change. If that sounds as awkward to you as it does to me blame my exhausted state [Ande and I drove from IL to PA today and it's almost 2am].
ReplyDeleteIn the past year I've gone through very similar changes ad introspection. So far things have gone really well for me and opportunities arise to keep me afloat. I wish you the same luck!