This quarantine has gone on for 258 days. I suppose it has been a while since I last wrote. Life has gone on. The children have managed to adapt, as well as can be expected. I hope. They are working on school online, as is FGL. We have been living on one and a half incomes since April. It has been a challenge, but an opportunity to find ways to grow in confinement. To see if it is possible. If anything, it has forced me to take a good, hard look at myself and identify what I really can, and cannot, live without.
In addition to this remote-work-living-in-close-quarters situation, there has been the most ludicrous election of my lifetime so far, and the worst President in the history of the entire freaking Universe, probably. I’m proud to have hopefully stemmed that and helped to turn the tide. But I digress.
What this year has shown me has not been pretty. It has shown me how many people on my Facebook friends list are deceased.
It has shown me how many of my family members are no longer speaking to me because they finally understand – or refuse to understand – that my children are starkly different, and yet so much more like me than they care to face.
It has shown me how much my job needs me – and how much I need stability. My inability to adapt to change is a serious problem. It has shown me that there will just never be enough to go around, and I’m going to be the person that makes up for it, and that I can’t be satisfied otherwise.
It has shown me how much has changed in the place I called home for so long. For forever, even when it wasn’t. It has shown me that perhaps, you can’t change people who don’t want to change. Even if you love them more than they know how to love themselves. If you can’t see the same future, you’re never going to share the dream.
So, after some serious doubts and spiritual excavation, after several panic attacks over what my imaginary fans and followers would think, after gut-wrenching tears over the thought of abandonment, I’m breaking up with Bay City.
A new door has opened in a hallway I confess I haven’t visited in far too long. An opportunity to impact a community that has been the field of my family’s roots for generations, an offer I can’t refuse. Of all the titles I could ever hold, “Curator of the Family Home” has been the most prestigious in my eyes and I have been presented with the chance to have it. Frankly, the chance to continue the amazing work my grandfather has done and to uphold his good name is an honor.
More to come on that later, as we iron out details. This won’t be happening for a while. There are loose ends to tie up here. But it’s something to look forward to, knowing there is a bend in our road that will give us a new view.
This year has also shown me what happens when I step back and simply observe. I’ve muted conversations, I have refused a few calls. I have ghosted more than one person and blocked countless others. I’ve blocked some people I haven’t had the nerve to confront about it yet, but something tells me a missed Christmas might be the catalyst.
But here’s what really sparked this thought tonight: the friends I haven’t spoken to in a while. The friends I see all the time in my social media, but haven’t seen in years. The friends who forgot my birthday. The friends that never asked how things were going after my father died. The friends that read the cries for help and kept scrolling. The friends who LOL’d as I described a bullying incident…
Wait, dude. YOU were the bully. You still think that was funny? 20 years later and you think I’m still that kind of girl?
So AITA for thinking a good old fashioned manic purge might be in order? I have heard more music in the silence of the last 258 days than I’ve ever heard. I have cried my heart out as Phil Collins asks for it to rain down. I have cried in rage as Tupac tells me to keep my head up. I have cried in grief as Thad Fiscella has walked down a sunlit piano melody toward what I imagine to be the gates of Heaven where my good boy waits for me. I have lost so fucking much that I can’t help but feel like I can’t be put back together with so many pieces this time.
Start me over. Stop the ride, back it up. Start the track again, I want to enjoy it this time. No, you’re not invited. This one is for me. You wouldn’t like me anyway, I’m too spicy.
-xoxo
The Saturday Evening Poet 