Displaced Dorothy
Do you know why it has been over three months since my last post?
It’s not that I don’t have time. It’s not writer’s block. I didn’t forget this existed. I have plenty of material.
I just sometimes lack the courage it takes to face what’s happening in my life, to gather my thoughts, reflect on them, understand them enough to be able to make sense of it all and then throw it back up on the page.
Sometime around February my parents called my brother and I from a rest-stop on their drive from Chicago, Illinois to Dallas, Texas. “Hey kids! We’re just filling up gas. We’re driving to Dallas - I think we’re going to move there, actually we ARE going to move there, most of our stuff is in the backseat. Hope you’re having fun doing whatever it is that you’re doing at the moment…bye!!”
Uhh…
4 months later and my parents are now comfortably contracted into their new, semi-permanent and pretty bangin’ apartment, lounging in the afternoon Dallas heat. Back in Chicago our furniture has been sold, our belongings cleared out and renters moved in. My house of 16 years - the place where I’ve grown up and taken for granted too many luxuries to mull upon here - is no longer mine.
It hits me in different ways at different times: “Hey, I need to send you a wedding invitation - what’s your address?”; “Please send us your address so we can update our records”; The Georgia DMV says I can acquire a GA driver’s license upon turning in my old Illinois one; I’m couch surfing in a city that I was born and bred in for 24 years. Being a Chicagoan - not just an American, but a Chicagoan - is something I identify with more strongly than almost any other marker, and yet feel as though I’m being iced out rapidly and surely.
As I sit here typing away in the bubble tea shop thats been the setting for a good number of (albeit recent) memories, all I can think about it is how ready I am to go back to the comfort of my bed, my possessions, my home…in London. And yet in just six weeks, I will have left that behind as well. Tell me that’s not effed up.
Where is home??? Chicago? London? Dallas? Atlanta? How do you know/what criteria do you use?
And while it all sounds/feels a bit heartbreaking, I can’t bring myself to feel sad - as my new friend LHM learned, sad is not in my emotional vocabulary. There are too many positive things about my life right now to justify entertaining sad - my parents are healthy, happy and in a place that is better for them, my brother is accomplished, I am moving to a new city that I’m absolutely thrilled about, my best friend is married.
Life is changing, yes and in the best ways possible. I am too full of thanks to doubt that these changes are anything but doors to new memories.
