Rollercoaster

I don’t know what I was expecting.  I didn’t think I really had expectations, but it’s usually not until you’re disappointed that you realize, yes, you were expecting something else.

Valdez is mythical in its beauty.  Like a misty Avalon – the veiled emerald isle, it rests in the nook of Prince William Sound studded with mountains and bejeweled waters.  Clouds and glaciers and splendor that even film can’t capture accurately – and yet… today I feel heartsick.

This magic that is nature, the raw power of the wild and the tiny town that exists in an uneasy truce does not belong to me anymore.  Maybe it never did, I don’t know.  But that sense of safety, the security of coming home is gone.  Faces are familiar.  Smiles are friendly.  But I don’t belong here anymore. 

I think in the last year, I’ve lost a lot of baby fat.  A great deal of my cushion that I’d carried in optimism, naiveté and inexperience.  It’s been melted away and what remains is a sense of dislocation.  I feel emotionally thin and exposed. 

Perhaps I was looking forward to the reunion because I’ve lost so much that’s been dear to me.  Perhaps I’d hoped to cling to some of my childhood happiness, and stew in nostalgia thereby conveniently forgetting the current predicament I find myself in; homeless, aimless and in search of something that I can’t even name.  I think there was more than a little desperation in my homecoming that subconsciously I’d hoped to cling to something that couldn’t be taken away again. 

But I see now, that I’d be clinging to something that doesn’t really belong to me.  It would be illusion, and a theft – a terrible betrayal to myself and my search for Bliss. 

I’ll be honest with myself and say I came at a very vulnerable time.  I don’t often like to think of myself as a vulnerable individual -  and coming to Valdez when my life is in the state of flux it’s in, leaves me open to all sorts of hopes for happiness that would be both human and understandable to search for in a place I know it already once existed.

The people in my class are great.  Their families are beautiful.  Their lives interesting.  I thought I’d feel left out being divorced, and childless, but mostly I’m relieved.  If I were still married to Reggie, and unfortunate enough to have had children with him – I can pretty much guarantee I’d feel worse.

The current emotional rollercoaster and over-caffeination is helping me feel a little schizophrenic and neurotic.  Yet I know I just need to hang in there for a few more days.  This is a gift, a belated goodbye – a last crack at memory lane before my evolution spins me off in a new direction.  There are closures to be had, forgiveness to be granted and gratitude to be absorbed.  This is not easy for me, but it IS necessary.  My wholeness depends on these pieces being actively put into place.  Then I will have collected more parts for LaLoba to sing together.  That’s a song that’s been years in the making, and I can endure this to get to it.  I’m sorry if this is vague.  I still haven’t had the solitude to think it over and sort it out.  When I have more I’ll write again, until then – call someone you’ve been missing just to say hello, or hug someone who looks like they need it.