I feel like I could have or should have been able to predict my afternoon slide into a slump. A slump that has, somewhat intentionally, stretched into an evening slump with a glass of wine. I wish I could describe the feeling better. It’s a bit of a hollow feeling and at times a desire to disappear – like take on a new name and identity type of disappear. Writing about it is the opposite of disappearing. Trying to write about it is uncomfortable and makes me fidget. I keep picking up my phone hoping for a suitable distraction or a different way to connect and I keep finding nothing – which is like wanting to be seen, but only by strangers – which is also not exactly disappearing. It’s all felt a little weird and heavy.
I think I know the rabbit hole that did me in. The day started of well enough. I listened to a podcast about finding awe in the world. The researcher, a professor from Berkeley, talked about the many benefits of finding awe and discussed what he calls the 8 wonders of life: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual art, spirituality, mortality, and epiphanies. I love this type of stuff – though it sometimes leads me to reflect on times in my life when I wasn’t paying attention to awe. The discussion of awe wasn’t the downer or the rabbit hole – if anything I was feeling mildly inspired by it. But then, during lunch, I decided to look up rental units out west. They’re expensive. I looked in a slightly cheaper neighborhood. Then, because they were cheaper, I looked at crime statistics (google things related to safe neighborhoods and you might walk away thinking it’s not safe to leave your house). Some sites would have you believe every neighborhood is a menace. As a point of reference, I started looking at Memphis. Then I looked at rentals and houses in Memphis. I looked to see if someone I knew there had sold her house. This was the start of the slide. I started to miss hanging out there and with her. I saw the familiar street names and remembered exploring the city or driving over to her place. Then I looked up my old house in Yardley. There weren’t many pictures of it and it felt odd to think I spent so much time there and now I don’t have anything to show for it. Then I looked up the house in Philly. Again, I missed the neighborhood, the restaurants and bars, the walks. It was sold again maybe two years ago – the interior looked nothing like the place I spent time in. What is it about maps and memories that can gut us so quickly?
Sitting here tonight, I’ve been trying to pinpoint why the hollow feeling is accompanied by a feeling of wanting to disappear. The best I can come up with is that those places, and the people who made them special or made them feel like home, are no longer around. The places are no longer mine to claim, and the people in them are off living other lives. In recognizing this, it feels as though significant parts of my past have been erased, as if the memories die when the people you made them with aren’t around to relive them. And with those erasures is a sense of grief (people, places, experiences). Who are we if we have no history?
And maybe it’s the prospect of moving again that has me a little ill at ease. Or the prospect of starting over (and perhaps over several more times after that) that doesn’t sit well. I would swear that when I was younger, I learned in history class that invading civilizations and tribes would often destroy temples and places of worship only to build new ones in the same locations. It was a way of subordinating the old to the new. In some ways, I think we do this on a personal level with places, relationships, trauma, and a whole host of complex human emotions and behaviors. I think sometimes we have to revisit old haunts to either make peace, tear them down, or reclaim and build anew. I can remember going to San Diego and the person I was with saying that it was nice to make good, new memories there. I know I’ve had songs and/or bands that started out as experiences associated with one person and I needed to re-appropriate them to someone else (or else give them up). I might one day have to move back to the Philly area or Memphis (or at least do a long visit with someone new) to reclaim those spaces.
I didn’t really expect to go down that rabbit hole during lunch… but to be honest it’s been building for a while. I could sense the feels as I wrote about Philly or wrote my love letter to Memphis. I could sense the wave coming as I finished the bell hooks book about love and tried to assess how deeply and honestly I’ve given it or received it. Even in listening to the podcast on awe, I was reminded of times when I felt most fully alive and how I saw the world differently when I was in a state of awe. As “down” as all of this sounds, it really isn’t. These contemplations are the more pleasant side of grief.
I was sharing with a colleague my “smile while cutting carrots” philosophy (try to find awe in the everyday) when I shared the story of how I used to hate grocery shopping until I started going shopping with a woman who taught me to see it differently. Suddenly, choosing a nice loaf of bread or picking out a protein for dinner or walking down the aromatic coffee aisle felt different, more alive. It was pleasurable and not a pain in the ass. To this day, I smile almost every time I walk down the coffee aisle or pass by the fresh flowers because I remind myself to slow down. I remind myself that there’s a different way to walk.