Retrospective

It has been five years since I last saw Kathleen. Five years! Five years since we started this blog. Five years since we, having left our protective cocoon, discovered and found new protective cocoons – each different from North Carolina, each different from each other. To celebrate this development, I have been going through the first year's entries, when each of us spent lots of time marveling at the quirks of Brooklyn and Denver.

Because I am me, and because I can see my words and remember what I felt like no other can, I look at the things I wrote four and five years ago (especially this one) and I just want to give myself a great big hug.

I so resisted falling in love with Denver. Why? I had always felt like an outsider in my home state, though I tried so hard the last few years to assimilate, to want what I thought I was supposed to want. The truth is, I tried so hard to want what my mother wanted for me, ignoring the fact that they were not one and the same. She wanted for me what she had for herself, which was wonderful for her but ill-suited for me. When I left, I missed my family terribly, and I worried about my mother. She loved her grandchildren so much – what right did I have to take them away? Anxiety dogged me for so much of that first year, even though as I look back, I made some of the best friends I've ever had. (One is featured prominently here, another here.) Truth is, my relationship with Denver changed the minute I saw this house. It was as if, in a swirling instant, so much about my life made sense, much as it did when I met the Denver friend to whom I refer in the same post. I had never been sure of my destiny until that moment – hell, I hadn't even believed in destiny. Suddenly, my whole belief system and outlook on life changed. My roots grew deep, in an instant.
When my mother became sick, and then died, I found my refuge in the relationships I developed in Denver. I never would have thought that, after only a couple of years, these friends would be the ones to nurture me and support me. But I found myself feeling like a wrung-out visitor in my longtime home, and when I was there, I longed to run toward support and comfort.

Recently, the kids and I were in Denver. It felt as if we had never left. Where immediately I felt like a visitor in North Carolina, I felt like I had come home. And I didn't want to leave. Little more to say than that.

What news can I bring you from outside the deep? I feel as if I got everything I once thought I wanted – the manicured house, the subdivision – long after I had ceased to want it, and found that I was right: This is not for me. I have no regrets, only a burning desire to get back what I had. (I am grateful, at least, that I knew while I had it that it was exactly what I wanted.) My God, how I wish this could be me right now. Maybe it will be two years on, if I make it here two years. (Robin to God: Please, no. No, no, no. Get me out of here.)
I have found little that entrances me, little that has moved me to wonder and joy (the excitement and adventuresomeness of a new and very different home is what drove many of those early writings, even though you never could have gotten me to admit it). Mostly, I find I want to sit inside and look deep, deep within, looking for answers, looking for a way home -- looking, in desperation, to make myself an island. I wish I had better news.

If there is one thing that has saved my life here, it's the library. That's my second home. I read compulsively. I look for answers to all my questions. I resolve that this will be my ashram period, that I will find joy in the internal. It's happening. I hope I will be able to look back on this period and find that I am a better person, more in tune with myself and more grounded, feeling more rooted to the world and all its creatures. I read about voice exercises. I will return to Denver a better singer – this I know, because I already am. I can jump off performing cliffs now and sing in front of thousands, because I really don't care what they think about me. Having released this attachment from what anyone thinks of me, ever, anywhere – sometimes even assuming that I will be disliked -- is liberating in a kind of oddball way. And yet, because it reminds me so much of my childhood home, I kind of feel like I'm in high school again, and who wants to repeat that?

A few nights ago, for the first time since my childhood, I dreamt about The House. Happy times with family and friends, spent here. This house means something to me. Is it my past? Is it my future? Will I ever know? Does it matter? After this dream, I took a leap and told a Denver realtor friend about it, asked him to keep an eye on it for me, tell me what he can find out about it. "If you can help me get this house," I told him, "you have no idea how grateful I will be. This is my lifetime house." May it be so.