Welcome to Oregon. (Thoughts on homesickness)

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.

As much as I tried, I felt like I couldn't keep their swift and experienced pace, and found myself always quite a few feet behind them. No matter how hard I tried, I felt like I truly couldn't catch up. It felt like a metaphor for how I've felt in new social situations. I feel like everyone is so ahead, so close together, and no matter how badly I want to belong, my strides fall short. I couldn't help but think that while I walked this trail mostly by myself, looking out across the horizon, feeling alone and microscope "in the family of things," to quote Mary Oliver. I accepted my pace eventually. I was able to take some time alone, and just think which is one of my specialties. For a little while though, I wasn't thinking about anything, and that was also nice. It was almost better to only afford thinking about the view or my next step, being slowly forced into the present. I tried my very best to summit this mountain, and physically, I think I could. Like most of my challenges, it started in my head. I got too afraid of falling, and not trusting my shaking legs (from fear) to keep me steady as I stood too close to the ridge. Through my anxiety, it looked like I would just fall forever. I let some people pass me, and from there, I sat on this rock as I quietly cried to myself. Some of the tears were from fear, some from homesickness/loneliness, and some because I heard two men discussing how people die from falling off the ridge that I felt like I was sitting uncomfortably close to. I felt frozen. I felt like I was going to have to helicopter my way down because I was going to pass out from anxiety. Luckily, a classmate of mine was kind enough to assist me and attempted to comfort me in my panic as we came down together. We may have made it harder on ourselves by going down the wrong way, but we're better for it. I think, (or at least I tell myself). It was definitely one of the scariest things I had ever done. Truthfully, this week has been full of big scary things. Moving away from all the things I find security in while trying so badly to be the best version of myself. I think this version is still in beta, but we are getting somewhere. I've tried to save face, and I think I've done a mostly good job, but that doesn't deny the few nights I've cried silently in my tiny bedroom, feeling small and scared. One of the professors here read this poem, "From a New Beginning." (please please read.)

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