Loss

Posted July 10th, 2004 by Michelle

I just finished reading my brother Ian’s blog from yesterday, and all the comments from all the brilliant people who can’t help but read his words every day. I’ve been sitting here, listening to the birds and looking out my window at the early Northern California Saturday and feeling something that I only just now can put into words: I feel as though I totally copped out, that I tucked my tail between my legs and ran from the only place that has ever made me feel at home. My life is so incredible here, so rich, and full, but also so incredibly damn easy. I just don’t know how good that is. And while my friends are wonderful, the things that are most important to me aren’t necessarily the most important to them. I tell you right now that I would give up my job and my home if somehow it would mean that Bush was defeated this November. If I had to give up all of my comforts, and it would make a difference, I’d do it. I’d move somewhere else and start over again and I would survive. I freak people out here with the vehemence of my politics. I mean, I don’t even know how many people I know will actually vote because it’s hard to imagine that the mountains around us care who is president.

And the people here know a different me. Months ago I asked one of my best friends here what her gut feeling was about me going to Peace Corps in Africa. “Honestly?” she said, “I don’t think you can do it. I don’t think you can physically do it.” I was shocked. There is not one person in New York, friend or foe, who doubted my ability to do ANYTHING. But then I look at myself, and I know that I have become soft, as soft as possible in nine months. I also know that I’ve been recharging, that I have been loving myself as well as allowing myself to be loved, which is huge, but I’ve reached a point where I’m ready to start really working again. Working on my body, and my writing, that much I know, but the rest remains fuzzy. I’m a New Yorker, and I need edges to my life, and challenges, and people who will make me think. I want to believe that those things exist here because I am certainly not ready to leave.

I miss the farmhouse. I miss waking up in the morning with two other people sleeping in the same room with pillows over their heads because the sun is so bright. I miss breakfast around the table, I even miss not being sure if I belonged there because sometimes I didn’t know of the policies being discussed over coffee and Berkshire Blue cheese. I miss hearing the basketball pounding away on the top floor of the barn, I miss the hill, I miss Tessa and Jordana so much sometimes it knocks me over. To say that I miss the company of my brothers is to redefine the meaning of the word “miss”. I miss all the good people that came to my brothers and sisters- the Jons and Buds and Macs and Scotts and Lauries and Kellys and Chips- who are infinitely smart and funny and also a damn good time. Even when I was terribly lonely and unhappy, I loved being at the farmhouse.

I guess that’s the thing, though. I was often terribly lonely and unhappy in New York, and I am very rarely so here. But at the risk of sounding trite or silly, I was also so terribly ALIVE in New York. I wonder what the trade-off is. If I could move my friends and my job back to New York, as well as move the mountains… well, no. My friends are perfect here. Both perfect, and perfect here. Ultimately it’s about me, obviously, and not where I happen to be.