The Next Bold Move – Me Vs. The World

Monica’s on Park – San Diego, Ca

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
-Khalil Gibran

Chapters of my life are not marked by the passing of time, they are marked by the movement of it. No, that’s not right. Time doesn’t move, I move. Chapters of my life are marked by the movement of me. Yes, that’s it. My movement through space and time. The final scene is always me driving down an empty highway. Alone. Leaving someone or somewhere. I’ve gotten damn good at leaving. Too good. Anymore it seems that I only stand still long enough to catch my breath. It seems like I am leaving more often then I’m coming.

I’m addicted to leaving like people are addicted to alcohol, gambling, prescription drugs, cigarettes. All the vices that we somehow justify to ourselves. It’s ok to never settle. this is the life I choose. I like being on the road. I like leaving. The deceiving part of this addiction is that every time I leave I tell myself I’ll be back. I know this is a lie. The day I left Aberdeen I knew I would not be back, there is too much to see in the world to go back to where I’ve been. When I left Lima I knew that was it, but I didn’t say goodbye to my friends because I secretly hoped I would go back – will go back – someday, maybe. No, I won’t. I know this and yet I never say goodbye so I will believe I am coming back. I lie to myself to make it easier. I lie to myself so it won’t hurt to drive away.

I can’t remember when I became addicted to leaving. I guess that’s how it is with addictions. One day you wake up and realize that it’s more than just something you do. It’s something you can’t live without it.

I wasn’t raised moving around like this. I grew up in the same house for 18 years. We had secret floorboards that we lifted to hide our most private possessions, Tarzan trees where we lived during the long summer days, apple trees that were base when we played tag, the great hole to China, and the ‘piggy houses’ scattered along the woods behind our house. I remember wanting to leave as a kid. I remember wanting to know what it was like to live somewhere else. What it felt like to start over and be the ‘new kid’ at school. They were exotic and exciting to me when they walked into my class. Yet, as bad as I wanted to leave I now long for that old brick house, down the long lane by the barn where Marvin and his farmers used to work from early spring until the first frost of winter. That was “home” for 18 years and now it sits empty. Nobody moved in after we left. Nobody kept it up and now the foundation erodes and the weeds grow out of the cracks and corners like hairs sprouting out of an old man’s nose and ears. It sits empty, but not alone. It is haunted by the ghosts of my childhood as I wander homeless and alone.

When I left at 18 I thought, “this is still home, this will always be home.” I was wrong. That was never home again. I moved and never really moved back again. The year after I left, my parents built a new house on the family farm, the next county over. I lost my room in the move. From that point on I was demoted to a ‘guest’ in their house and my leftover childhood memorabilia was moved to the a corner in the new basement. My mom holds onto it waiting, hoping I will someday move it into my own home. That was 10 years ago and of all of the apartments, houses, hostels and homes I have lived in, none will ever be home to me. Maybe in another 10 years I will accept that it’s the idea of home that I long for not the physical place. Perhaps it will take another 10 years after that to realize I carry home in my heart and in the memories of summer nights spent singing with the cicadas and katydids through the giant screen windows in our living room.

I can’t seem to move far from the ocean nowadays. I take comfort in the endless sea the way I once took comfort in the endless rows of corn and soybeans that enveloped our house. Even now the ocean can’t comfort me in the fall when I get nostalgic for the day when harvest seems to begin and end all in one day. That day when the air is so dry you can bite it and it tastes like the apple crisp pie baking in every kitchen. The day when you leave for work or school and the fields are full of yellowed corn stalks, and then on the way home they are barren waiting for the first, white winter snow. I will miss that day every year no matter where I live. I will miss the magic of how the farmers did all that work in one day, when in reality I just missed them working long days the prior weeks. I will miss that defining mark in time. Nature’s surrender to winter. Life’s surrender to change.

I leave San Diego tomorrow. I have been here off and on for 3 years now. That’s a long time for me. I have come and gone from my neighborhood on Adams Ave twice already. Everyone expects this will be the same. I’ll be back soon and it will be like I never left. I’d like to think it will be the same, but I know in my heart it’s not. I’m leaving and I might visit, but it’s time to move on. It is the life I choose. The addiction I have to feed.

I haven’t said goodbye. Told some folks I’m heading out, but with the good intentions of coming home. Tomorrow I will ride the adrenaline of not knowing what’s next, the joy of starting over somewhere new, the daydreams of riding back home a hero from another adventure – even when I know I will never come back. I have mastered the art of quietly exiting the bar, the school, the wherever unnoticed. This way nobody is sad, nobody misses me right away, nobody is aware that life is always changing just as the earth rotates. They can just keep living life in this one happy moment. We can all live in denial that nothing ever lasts. The art of leaving is to go unnoticed so they keep expecting you to walk through the swing door of the pub any minute. Maybe on a slow, rainy afternoon, maybe on a busy karaoke Saturday night. I know I won’t. I will become a ghost haunting the Sod, like I haunt the Old House, my old campus, my office in Iraq, my old running trails. A ghost in the memories of those who were or are still there. A ghost of the life I used to live.

Someone recently asked me what I’m running from and I didn’t know how to answer. I got upset and claimed I wasn’t running. Now, I realize I am. He is right and he is wrong. I am running, but not away. I’m running towards. Towards life. Towards adventure. Towards the unknown future. Towards the life of a vagabond.

Yet, I always want to stay, I never want to say goodbye, I don’t even like change, but I love last days.

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