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April 20, 2005
my mom often speaks of how she pictured a dream life in america, watching american movies and television. as a young girl in a huge city surrounded by mountains, the images of being a housewife on some clean and well-appointed estate in the country were idyllic to her.
for me, with my early years in apartments and later isolated in the country, everything from newhart to the mary tyler moore show pointed me to the city, to where everything was a short walk or bike ride away, to the local diner or coffee shop with friends, to a de-lux apartment in the sky.
when i was in the seventh grade, my family finally moved to the suburbs. after leaving home, i lived in a series of locations that were nice, but never quite lived up to the sense of nearness and activity that i had always wanted.
in late july 2003, the collapse that had begun months before with a lay-off continued. i left a major relationship, and found myself without a job, without many of the friends i had pulled away from during that relationship, without my health or a decent self-image (at nearly 240 lbs), and now, without a home.
mom suggested a new apartment complex a couple of miles from my parents' house, a good 15 miles out of town, out on a scenic but somewhat lonely road, at the highest point in the city limits. i balked, continued my search, but one day, i got a voicemail from my stepfather suggesting that i needed to move home until i get everything straightened out. that afternoon, i signed a lease at that remote complex.
over the next two years, i spent a lot of time alone, but slowly, began to rebuild. i found a job, reconnected with friends, lost weight, started playing basketball on a regular basis again, started meeting people, dating again, started writing again.
carl jung spoke a lot about the persistent archetype in human myth and fiction of individuals becoming lost, and retreating by choice or chance back to the margins of society. whether it's 40 days in the desert or the forest in a midsummer night's dream, it's out there, freer of the distractions and denials of civilized and profane life, out there in the reality of nature and isolation that characters learn and transform into more whole individuals, eventually returning to the mandalic center of society better prepared to take on it's demands.
for me, the apartment on 2222 was my margin, my hermitage, the medium in which i healed and grew again. but eventually, characters have to make a choice, and i decided it was time to return.
early monday morning, i grabbed the last items from the apartment, and looked around. i remembered how it was once before that empty, as empty as my life when i first moved there. i remembered moving in, how daryl and chris helped me move in, brought me a bag full of food, how for the next couple of years, they made the long trip to my house, where we'd watch movies and eat pizza and illegally cookout on the patio.
i remembered how the gatherings grew - parties and movie nights, a room full of friends laughing together.
so in those last moments there, i spoke to walls and doors, thanked them for sheltering a weakened soul, for absorbing yells and cries and silence and the occasional impacts of flying objects.
this morning, i woke up in my new home. i left for work on my bike at 8:16am. i coasted down congress avenue, past jo's coffee shop, past freebirds, ego's, the statesman building, across riverside, across barton springs and past the giant windvane bat. i passed walkers and runners, pedaled slowly across the bridge over town lake, the pink granite capitol building growing slowly larger ahead of me. i looked out over the still water, felt the wind easy in my face, heard peter gabriel in my headphones, and i felt alright. maybe not all that self-actualized, not without my problems but... yeah, i told myself - you're going to make it, after all.
Posted by Rob at April 20, 2005 08:40 AM
Comments
Sounds really cool :)
Posted by: Sheila at April 21, 2005 10:47 PM
That's nice. I hope I feel like that someday, throw my hat in the air and spin around. I hope I'm not fixing to move into the hermitage. Although a museum wouldn't be half bad.
Posted by: amy at June 20, 2007 11:15 PM