I write this from an old cookhouse in a tiny village outside of Ashland, Oregon.
I've been here for a week now, but it feels like an entire month. This week has slogged by. It has been a tough week for me to say the least. I have never been this far from home, and it's disorienting to think about at times. If I think about the distance too much, I get teary-eyed more than I would like to admit. I had no idea that I would feel this way to tell you the truth. I felt like I needed a break from my old life, and all the things that I had gotten so used to, but it's hard to let go of things that give me a sense of security and structure. It feels vulnerable and scary. It likes shedding this layer of fear I wear like armor to protect me from potential problems. I've taken for granted being so close to home, and I know as much as I say I resent that I didn't go to school farther away, I know a part of the reason I decided to stay closer is that I didn't feel like I could handle it at the time. There was comfort in the fact I could call someone to pick me up, or that I could come home quickly to get a sweater I forgot, or if there was a crisis, I was capable of coming to the rescue. I know I have this belief that my presence makes a difference, or at least I feel like it does. The difference between feeling and knowing is something that I have a hard time delineating, and it gets harder when life feels so confusing like right now. I felt like I had to examine what exactly I feel like I am proving to myself while I'm here. I'm still not sure. Some parts of me ask if losing my sense of security (and at times it feels like sanity) is worth it. I don't know yet. I guess we can assess in a few months.
On a similar but separate note, I climbed a mountain. Or at least most of a mountain. Mt. McLoughlin is a volcano here in Oregon. It's almost 10,000 feet tall, and all the signs warned me that I probably shouldn't do it. Everywhere I looked, signs were saying "DIFFICULT" or "FOR EXPERIENCED HIKERS ONLY." With both of those things in mind, I'm surprised I'm alive to tell the tale. Luckily, I came out mostly unscathed besides a sun-scorched back and really sore feet. It was easily the hardest hike I have ever done, and potentially one of the scariest things I have ever done. I tried at first to stay in the front with the fastest group.
I've felt emptiness grow inside me for a while now, and the seduction of safety has always kept me stuck in places where the sun doesn't seem to shine, and so I'm trying my very best to unfurl myself into this new beginning. This is a new chapter that I get to write away from the noise, "and the "gray promises." I think it was divine intervention that she read that poem on the day I needed to hear it most.
I hope by the end of this semester that I have a better sense of the world that awaits me, but I guess we just have to wait and see.
See you soon,
VG