Blind inFlight

Hi Internet! I promised a summer hiatus, and despite the fact that Seattle is in a “heat wave” right now with dry, warm days on end, everyone is starting to talk about fall, so here we are and here I am.

I said Seattle, and you may not be surprised to know that I moved back here at the beginning of August. My return to Minneapolis never really took. I struggled with unbelonging, unemployment, and an unease that I could stuff down for a little while but never left me in peace entirely. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, I explained it to people as a feeling of being “haunted” by the past life I’d lived there. I came back in 2016 expecting everything to be like 2014. I was ready to pick up where I left, but everyone and everything had moved on, which is one of the most obvious things about this situation that I completely, willfully missed. It simply reached the point where there seemed to be no reason to stay. I’m definitely grateful for the friendships I rekindled and the new friends I made in my year back there, but feel I can still maintain them even if we are not in the same physical location.

So, at the end of July I trekked back West. I’m currently staying in a house with a lavender jungle in the front yard, shady trees and a hammock around back, a deck that gets full sun midmorning, and a nearly bottomless coffee pot gurgling in the kitchen. I have a lot to do this fall. I’m currently working on the first of two grad school theses, and I need to find a permanent place to live. There’s also still that unemployment thing. And there are self-care things to square away, like exercise and social time and time for jamming and pickling and music and walking.

It feels a bit overwhelming most days, to be honest. Still, sometimes I walk outside and run my hands through the lavender stretching towards me on my way down the stairs, and I have to stop and remind myself that this is mine again. This city that’s green all winter, whose steep hills and winding water make me feel inexplicably alive, I am here to stay now. Maybe not forever, maybe only for years, not decades. Who knows? I know that I am inherently restless, that my contentment now does not mean my contentment forever. But instead of that knowledge feeling scary, as it often does, I feel thankful to be here for now, right now. I am where I want to be.

I’m doing well. I hope you are, too.