21 March, 2022
Two years ago today, I was moving into a new house and putting many of my belongings into an off-island storage space. Two years ago today, as I moved, I stomped rage into every step I took up and down the stairs of my former home and my new home. Two years ago, for the first time in months, I breathed in a truly deep and relaxing breath after I shut the door behind me that night and sat in bed letting the silence and isolation flood the room completely.
I spent a lot of nights in that little house on Thunder Road, feeling that same level of peace. I spent a lot of nights there, staring at the ceiling and worrying.
I’ve said it here; I get anxious being in one place too long these days.
I leave this place tomorrow and move east. I had intended to be in the new spot for about a month. I erred and didn’t get my reservations soon enough and can’t be there for more than a few days. I’ll go north for a while instead and that may upset some plans for others. I’m not happy with myself for the error.
I wonder, however, if I didn’t sabotage myself subconsciously. I wonder if I didn’t know my dawdling would put me in this situation to a degree (though perhaps not this badly). The original plan to stay a month was weighing on me the more I thought about it. It felt as stifling as that house I had shared with my ex-husband. I could see myself stuck. When you say you’re going to rent a space for a month, you pay for a month. You stay. A month in one spot makes me just a little nuts. I’m finding two weeks in most of these places to be pushing my limits. I’ve been in this current park since March 10th (eleven days) and I’m getting antsy and uncomfortable. I don’t know how to fully convey the feeling. It is a bit like being at a party to which you weren’t invited; it’s pleasant but you know you don’t belong. That feeling has nothing to do with the people around me; I’ve experienced this same sensation in a nearly deserted park.
I was speaking to a friend about relationships and loneliness and he said, “You’ll find someone whenever you stay put for a while.” (paraphrasing because—beer) I didn’t argue. I didn’t agree. The discussion moved on to other things.
However—
I wanted to say, “Well, that is exactly why I don’t want to stay put.”
I wanted to say, “My heart is tangled up right now. I don’t need to incorporate more threads.”
I wanted to say, “I want to come home.”
I am growing homesick, but I know it is not because I actually miss my house or the beach or the birds or the people I barely knew.
I am growing homesick because home was predictable.
Home was always going to be the ex down the street and occasional run-ins with his family. It was always going to be worthwhile but low-paying work that didn’t demand much of me mentally but often much of me physically and sometimes emotionally. It was always going to be that one guy who floated in and out of my life like a Portuguese Man-of-War. It was always going to be pretending to be nice to the ex when the grands came to visit even though every interaction was distressful for both of us. It was always going to be me giving time to the rescues (that I adored) and getting nothing in return except more wear and tear on my truck and loss of funds.
It was always going to be.
It was always going to be really good seafood and beautiful sunrises and gorgeous storms and mesmerizing foghorns and pelicans in huge squadrons flying up and down the beach ahead of a front.
Predictable is safe. Predictable is calming. Predictable makes other decisions easier. Predictable was all I’d known for twenty-nine years.
Predictable allows (even encourages) you to give up on your careers (yes, both) and then regret it for the rest of your life because you have lost your skills. Predictable makes you bend to another’s will instead of standing up for yourself and saying, “I deserve the respect of personal autonomy!” Predictable leaves you in a marriage at least eight years longer than you should have stayed. Predictable keeps you in family dynamics that hurt.
Perhaps I fear lighting in any one spot for all these reasons. Perhaps I fear that I will once again have my autonomy subsumed by the comfort of predictability. Even my friend floats in and out on his own whims such that I can’t assign much predictability to him and that feels oddly safe to me.
When I was married, I knew I’d be married until my death. I knew I’d die at a fairly ripe age and probably sometime after my spouse. I knew I’d die in or about the home we shared. I knew all this because that is what the predictable day-to-day existence made me believe. Nothing ever changes when the person you are with and the person you have become both conspire to keep things predictable indefinitely.
I feel, every day, the unpredictability of my life now. I awaken not knowing if I will find the strength to go on; if I will find work that allows me to stay with Sam who is getting more and more dependent on me; if I will just have to run out of my savings and be done; if I will choose to shorten my stay in my current spot or lose the money and just pick up and go boondocking; if I will have a car wreck on the highway; if Blanche will have a blowout; if I will get COVID-19 and become too sick to travel and have to talk my hosts into some kind of act of kindness; if a tornado will blow through and upend all of us; or if I will simply have a stroke or myocardial infarct and die quietly inside Blanche to be found when my campsite is supposed to be taken by someone else. None of this is known.
I could be bothered by that and, in my former marriage, no doubt I would have been. I was taught, no, conditioned, to be bothered by such.
But predictability literally almost killed me in October of 2019. If unpredictability kills me by virtue of accident or ill health, then at least it did so while I was doing something with my life rather than sitting in a house waiting to die. I cannot imagine ever going back to predictable. I cannot imagine, ever again, being someone’s belonging that waits to be put in storage.
Last Updated on March 20, 2023 by Lee Ellis
