Why Don't You Move Along?
Reflecting on 6 months in a new city at my big age.
Rebuilding sounds cathartic, an action worthy of high praise. Especially planting roots in a romanticized jungle where dreams become reality by any means necessary. But it’s the intermediate moments, the discomfort of the liminal, where you may realize that the life you had lived before was not one of resilience but of platitude. You may realize that the you you believed in was illustrated by the expectations, the applause, the rallies, and the relation to a learned ecosystem. There’s a sinking moment of grief in loving memory of you and the people who knew you before, and the people who couldn’t care less to find out who you are now. How do you deal with the burial? How do you deal when your inbox is flooded with congratulations and I’m proud of you’s but you are wrestling with the same 2 pair of jeans because you sold most of your possesions to journey 12 hours across the country with your two best friends, or when your back hurts because your air mattress deflates in the dark of night after your cat pierced a hole in a mysterious location? How do you deal with surviving while you catch your footing? How do you deal when you thought the eyes would last longer? How do you deal with the discomfort of prayed for change when it’s at your door, dressed like hard work, and is accompanied by the disorientation of capturing intimacy in a concrete bush?
Rebuilding in the fastest place I’ve ever seen is introducing myself to myself in an unfamiliar context, every day. Not transforming into an untried creature all at once, not transforming in a single act of revival, but becoming in a steady state of observation and adjustment. And that’s the aching part. When I remember that I’ve never really been here this long, and I remember how I understood the minutiae of who I was before I ripped myself away to opt out of regret. And I realize that the who I thought I was is not the who I have to be. There is no magical immersion into the rhythm of the city.
Disjointed on some days and hopeful on the next, a fresh start is a constant juxtaposition of fearful freedom. Some days the sun shines bright on me and I see my goals achieved, and some days navigating the road disarms my mental stability, and I am hostage to despair, assaulted by rumination. Some days I wonder how I gave up all I knew for what I don’t understand, wishing the pace becomes second nature soon. Nothing to do lists can handle, no matter how much I try to will it so.
Rebuilding is becoming a stranger at the center of Earth, undefined by the past.
They say wherever you go, there you are. And they are right, here I am. Existing as the someone I’ve always wanted to be. The piece of me dreamed on paper is real. It’s true what they say, it’s only possible to be who you want to be if you be who you are. And that’s the thing about starting again, about rebuilding your life on the road untraveled: you are who you are, not who people know you to be.
Indistinguishable, though, I am emancipated. Finally, I can spread my wings beyond the narrow expectations set for me by me. No longer plagued by perception, I can be who I am, who I’ve always wanted to be. Formidable, curious, sexy, attractive, free, and breathing fresh air. I wake up and go, or I wake up and cry, either way, I am me, a person touching her emotions with a clear mind after years of subconscious crushing. I continue one step at a time, relishing in the confidence I’ve worked hard to create, and I can say it’s my confidence. Not confidence in my name, or my work, or my perceived personality. It’s me, it’s mine. Some days, that confidence dances across my brow, down my cheek, rests on my clavicle, and curves down my thigh, and some days it stays in bed while I make my way out in the world. But it’s here and it’s all I have in this moment.
For so long, my identity rested on familiar faces and routine places. I became a projection of myself, falling into a pattern of self-sabotage. Anxiously kidding myself, drawing away, turning insular. And here in newness, I just be. I be the passing stranger on the train, the random person standing in line for a coffee rather than the figure I had built myself to be. No longer the person easily recognized and sometimes fawned over. I be who I am. A person who is alive, headed somewhere.
Who I was does not matter. And I can cry a tear as I journal her into her coffin, and give praise that I am not bound by the ideas of who I thought I needed to be to be who I am. I can just be who I am.
Consider this a requiem for my former identity. The one who needed a level of psychedelic support to make it through the day, the one who was satisfied with just enough, the one who defined herself by rounds of praise, the one thoroughly embarrased by existing, the one who shaped herself by her portfolio, the one deathly afraid of visibility, the one seen and maybe not understood, the one who couldn’t be understood because she refused to understand. And as I rebuild, I can lay that to rest, give it to glory. Because I only need to be who I am.
Rebuilding is a journey, not a cinematic swipe into a fairytale. Rebuilding is a messy funeral filled with yodeled cries and tantrums. Rebuilding is a painful birth rewarded by small victories in between the wails of maturation. Rebuilding is becoming not who you think you should be, but the you you are.