5 things on coming home/letting go

1. I saw at least 3 other people in or seemingly near tears: one flight attendant. One person with a beard. One I don't remember what they looked like—their tenderness was what caught my attention. Accidental eye contact was made with one of them, bi-directional recognition and a wingbeat of shared tenderness.

2. There's a message my life has been trying to get through to my famously stubborn, slow-learner(*) self—it has to do with change, and endings, and letting go. I thought choosing the ending in advance was progress (and it was/is) but I also embraced the chance to keep one hand in and then gripped hard onto what I'd wanted for so long and maybe can't have until I learn to hold it less tightly. The signal has been unmistakably clear - from my body and every other possible avenue—nervous system overload to a degree I haven't experienced in years, little oracles, my startlingly omniscient astrology of the moment(**), and events (god, events.) Really, I get it, ok? Enough already. I'm opening my fist as much as it keeps breaking my heart. Thinking I'd got better at completions isn't being good at them and there's no winning at endings actually. They don't have to feel good. That's not the goal really is it? To be able to let go - ready or not - without digging in, doubling down, clinging and sighing—I'd like to be better at that.

3. I probably could have kept on gripping - in part because of the muscles built through every challenge what I'm trying to release has brought so far. But that's if I wasn't already planning to transition (had not already chosen it in advance), and if my physical and mental health hadn't already taken a substantial hit this year. Synchronous forces? The fatigue and depression fog and god, the constant migraines (which abated just in time for emergency mode, wow, thanks estrogen)? No. I don't believe so much of all this terrible timing is designed, and there's still a dark, painful magic to what they make. I'm not fighting any more.

4. Usually returning to Durham after being away feels like a relief, an exhale. This place has been a home to me in new-to-me ways and so even though my partner and I have been on a slow turn toward a more rural life, it has been sad and overwhelming feeling into what might be next. But on this most recent return home, my body rebelled in a similar way to 26 years ago returning to New Hampshire from a late winter weekend visit to budding North Carolina That and the intensity of overwhelm in the first week of being back was just additional confirmation. And, in more dark(***) magic, this is all allowing me to finally feel into a future state in a way I couldn’t before.

5. There's still time though (here in Durham, I mean), the irony of me being such a slow mover. And a variety of unfinished business to attend to. And there is also more clarity, more freedom, an ability to see a little further out ahead of me. And relief. There is relief in the letting go.

(*) This isn't a criticism. When I finally get something it's not at all theoretical, it lives in my lungs and limbs.

(**) Example - I am not even kidding: “There’s a change of leadership that is meant to happen in our lives as well. We’re not supposed to hold onto the same roles and identities. We’re supposed to change. That’s what aging is about. If we get the privilege of aging, we move through different stages of life, and that brings with it different roles, different responsibilities. And we should have moments where we let go of our roles, and we don’t quite know what’s coming next…” Chani Nicholas I howled internally, like the clinger I am.

(***) I don’t in any way mean that all pain has meaning, sometimes it’s just pain. I mean dark like earth. Compost. Humus(*). Wendell Berry died while I was away on this trip—he was my doorway to an adult love of poetry. I remember where I was and what I was doing, but couldn’t call up the exact line that left me deeply still in a whole new way, except that geese were flying. When I go to find it, I find it too is an oracle, a part of the dark blessing:

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

(*) Yes, I’m going to footnote my footnote, because it’s Wendell Berry. From Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

    Put your faith in the two inches of humus
    that will build under the trees
    every thousand years.
‍ ‍Listen to carrion – put your ear
    close, and hear the faint chattering
    of the songs that are to come.
    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
    though you have considered all the facts.