Crossroads

by Lucy S.

I can't see the future stretching out very far anymore. I can't see where I'm going.  I only know what I will do this day or week or for the remainder of this year (and even that last part is hazy, even if some of it is neatly typed out on my syllabus).  Beyond the end of this year, everything seems blank. Will I teach; if so, where, if not, then what; what will the rest of my life look like in a year or five?

Is the feeling I have mostly happy excitement or is it sustained exhaustion thoroughly interlaced with anxiety? Will I do well at this first class, or will it be a disaster?  Or will I just be mediocre?  How do I learn to speak the way I so wish I spoke and think the way I so wish I thought?  How will I ever have sufficient knowledge to share with students?  Is it safe to feel that I can continue to teach where I will teach this semester?

Where do I  belong?

There is a part of me that turns towards people - many people - towards efforts to organize and build community with people in the work to make a more just society.  And there is a part of me that is so tired of trying to fit into situations where I have little or no history with people, and that longs to feel deeply at home as I go about my days.  Where is that home?  Is it here or in California?  Is it even a place?

For the past four years, I've changed myself and let myself be profoundly changed. What am I to do with this changed self now?

Here is one part of the shift. All of a sudden, after years of debating, after being brought up in a family that debated so vigorously - all of a sudden, I feel sick of it. I'm tired of the feeling I get in those discussions, and that baseless intensity - as if everything depended on winning over the other person to my position - when we are so often talking about issues in which we have little to no actual influence. Meanwhile, a poem goes unread or unwritten, and a painting goes unexamined or unpainted, and a story somewhat might share with me or I might share with them goes untold.  A garden goes neglected or un-begun.  A gentle conversation is never had that might have been. A walk with one of my kids isn't taken.  We displace our confusion and pain and aching care and hope for better onto these conversations that have no power, except the power to wear us out and drain our relationships of affection.

And also, I find myself sick of pity for myself and even for my most devastated loved ones. What did pity or anger ever do for us? What is there after pity and after even anger?  Maybe they are nothing but peeling layers of skin, and there is a healthy core under them, Maybe that core is the tendency to enjoy each other and ourselves while we can, not hedonistically and selfishly, but with smiling gratitude always accompanied by a barely perceptible wince at how fragile it all is, and painful, and resilient, and regenerative, and funny, and lovely.  And there is generosity, the way we might share our last pieces of summer fruit with someone, because this, more than hoarding them, keeps their taste lingering even through winter.

Tonight, my friend Jiji is flying to Australia from her liminal days in Vancouver, on her way to begin a new life in the morning. Not many days ago, a package came to me from her, with dates from her country, packed with cashews.  And a kind of almond paste, and chocolates for Sean and Ryan.

Tonight, I'm flying to a new age that I will land in by morning in freshly washed sheets to greet my new year. Today, so much shifted. How did  I live this last day?  I put an LED light bulb in the lamp next to my bed, a bulb that is supposed to last for 22 years.  Jonathan made me a mug of cinnamon rooibos tea not long ago. I talked with Shy, who is living with us now. I read the poem "Even Gods" by Mourid Barghouti to Sean and Ryan for a second time, and we talked about it more. I read more of My Antonia to them - the last chapter of book 3 and the first two in book 4.  I had a Facebook debate with a friend over an article I shared about the NYPD's stop and frisk policies and their racial profiling, and I decided that I will never have that kind of debate again. Justin sat in my room talking, and then we talked again later in the living room. Gloria called and said she'd been thinking the 28th instead of the 25th for some reason, and I said, in the way we always talk, "Man, get the dang information you have written all over the scraps of paper in your purse onto a calendar already."  She laughed, and then we both did. I knew she would.  I can see that kind of future.