Jump In Too Easily

As organic as the oppor­tu­nity for me to stay in Portland pre­sented itself, it’s hard for me to feel like the deci­sion grew out of me the same way. I guess what I’m try­ing to say is god damn, I hope I’m doing the right thing. I sup­pose I am, and I sup­pose I know in my gut what I should do. But does that make it any eas­ier? Hell no. Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard. How can a deci­sion to leave the most sup­port­ive, lov­ing peo­ple you know and trust on the whole entire earth be a gut feel­ing? I’ve been wrestling with this sweaty ques­tion for a while now and I still feel beat and only mid-match.

Recently a dear friend wrote to me, say­ing “do every­thing with your whole heart”. These words have made them­selves com­fort­able in my head and I would smile when I thought of the words and the voice of the words. They would revi­tal­ize my core and con­tin­u­ally refresh my spirit with burst of pos­i­tiv­ity and enlight­en­ment. They’re not out-of-the-ordinary but they turned into a solid mantra, capa­ble and uti­lized by any­one and every­one. But recently I’ve real­ized that because I’m so torn by my deci­sion, I feel the dead, lazy feel­ing of inca­pa­bil­ity, the inabil­ity, to do any­thing with my whole heart. And that is a dark place.

When I vis­ited my grand­par­ents on my return trip to Portland, my grand­mother was show­ing me around their small apart­ment in Ripon, CA and she opened up their bed­room. “And there’s grandpa sleep­ing, sound asleep,” she said. I looked over and he was lying still on his side, no real motion from any part of his body, eyes wide open. This is how he sleeps: eyes open. He is now legally blind, fight­ing skin cancer–amongst other things–from play­ing too much ten­nis when he was a kid in Denver. He is now close to the end of his road. I have a gut-feeling that I just saw him for the last time.

I’m not try­ing to for­mu­late a cor­re­la­tion between my grandpa dying and my friend­ships dying. I’m really try­ing, but how can I not? I under­stand that there most cer­tainly will be loss. But out of that loss will come gain. It’s like I’ve cut a tiny branch, fer­til­ized by the growth in my lush for­est of lovers and friends, and am now try­ing to regrow a huge tree from the lit­tle bits of sap that I have pre­served from the beau­ti­ful fer­men­ta­tion of mem­o­ries. It’s not unnat­ural, in fact most of nature encoun­ters it far more than I ever will, but it’s a new expe­ri­ence, for me, in doing it to your­self. A process I can relate only to my expe­ri­ence of going off to col­lege and leav­ing my high-school friends and fam­ily behind. Looking back, there’s only a few friends who I still talk to reg­u­larly and even those con­ver­sa­tions seem to be harder and harder to jump into easily.

I’ve always hopped into groups of friends quite quickly, immers­ing myself deeply and then leav­ing. This isn’t some­thing I do con­sciously, but it in hind­sight I’m very afraid to how it’s per­ceived by oth­ers. The worst part I imag­ine is not that I did it, but that I did it with­out express­ing my sin­cer­ity for the rela­tion­ships that I took part in.

During my deci­sion mak­ing process I broke down one night when I thought about what my future looked like, and more about what it lacked. I sat in my car and lis­tened to Privacy and remem­bered so many cher­ished mem­o­ries with the friends I was about to leave. It was a painstak­ingly wretched process that I, only after the pack­ing and the final good­byes and the drive and the set­tling in, am now finally unearthing the tin­gles in my belly, my gut, and my head.

Although my eyes still work, I imag­ine myself some­day at the point my grandpa is at now: eyes open, see­ing every cher­ished face and reliv­ing each mem­ory over and over again, sleep­ing with light and cry­ing beau­ti­fully, with­out shame, bask­ing in the pure grate­ful­ness he has for his life.

Thank you.