I really haven't written for myself in years. And over those years, my phone number has changed three times and my address roughly as many. My hair grew out all the way, but it was an accident, I swear—I just stopped noticing or I didn't have time to take care of it? Which is really what happened to my writing as well.
Right now I'm sitting in the kitchen of somewhere so, so close to the home that raised me. I've been gone so long, and still I am looking for myself in vintage mugs at thrift stores. As if having the right radio station fundraiser cup from the '90s will be the piece of home that will finally close this chapter. When I drove home across town an hour ago, it was twilight, and the clouds were striking, and something about the section of the road between downtown and where it dips by Westchester Lagoon almost made me cry from knowing that you've lost your hometown to the onward march of growing up, and surely, it can't still be this sad.
I am learning how to be myself again, after years of learning to give myself up. In Haifa, I spent so much time trying to be the fountain, continually offering herself. When you serve the Universal House of Justice, there is no room for anything else, just the purest love. Now, I am trying to find my way in this world again, and the last version of myself I have to remember (in love with Fairbanks, writing her heart on cafe napkins, filling her summer with foraging) is so far from the version I am headed towards (where there is so much more space in my heart to fill with this new, new life). Not to mention—I'm married now, and everyone I knew has also hurtled far along their own paths. But this is what it feels like to stand at the big junctures of your life, and among the things I'm carrying forward are several old Alaska mugs—small patches to fix a large tear.
Right now I'm sitting in the kitchen of somewhere so, so close to the home that raised me. I've been gone so long, and still I am looking for myself in vintage mugs at thrift stores. As if having the right radio station fundraiser cup from the '90s will be the piece of home that will finally close this chapter. When I drove home across town an hour ago, it was twilight, and the clouds were striking, and something about the section of the road between downtown and where it dips by Westchester Lagoon almost made me cry from knowing that you've lost your hometown to the onward march of growing up, and surely, it can't still be this sad.
I am learning how to be myself again, after years of learning to give myself up. In Haifa, I spent so much time trying to be the fountain, continually offering herself. When you serve the Universal House of Justice, there is no room for anything else, just the purest love. Now, I am trying to find my way in this world again, and the last version of myself I have to remember (in love with Fairbanks, writing her heart on cafe napkins, filling her summer with foraging) is so far from the version I am headed towards (where there is so much more space in my heart to fill with this new, new life). Not to mention—I'm married now, and everyone I knew has also hurtled far along their own paths. But this is what it feels like to stand at the big junctures of your life, and among the things I'm carrying forward are several old Alaska mugs—small patches to fix a large tear.
