Endings and Beginnings
We’re driving down the road on a glum, overcast day. My dad has snapped off the radio so it’s quiet, just the two of us on an errand. These are my last hours here, and like watching sand slip through an hourglass, I can feel them ebbing away from me faster than I can enjoy them. That’s always the case. Endings for me always come subtlety, and steal pieces of my joy until only the memories remain.
“It’s been a quiet week this year,” he observes from the driver seat. We haven’t pulled out the kayaks or driven the back roads looking for deer. We’ve been caught up in catching up on a year’s worth of tasks that we haven’t gotten to just be here. That means when we are present, we just want to sit and not do anything. A vicious trade.
I watch the scenery passing by. Cottages, houses, little wooden bears and firemen waving from empty flower beds. It’s fall here, the leaves are changing and it’s a rainy September day. Another year gone, another season over. How many times did I drive this road believing I’d live here? Believing that my life was destined to be lived out in one of those cottages?
The compass of my life pointed elsewhere, to bigger and better and wilder.
We drive for a bit longer in silence and I try to remember how it felt to do this when I was 14. It’s not hard, I always feel like I’ve reverted to a teenager around him. What would I think of my life now?
I know that answer, I’d think I’d have gone mad. Why would I ever leave this place, these people, or this life? How would I ever be that brave to leave behind everything I’ve ever known for a giant mystery?
There came a point once, at the very end of my first marriage. I stood here, on this beach and looked out over the water. Two hundred miles away, men were trading my unconsensual naked pictures and the rumor mill was rife with cruel words. I couldn’t go to bars or public events without someone walking up and saying they’ve seen me naked or asking if it’s true that Jason ditched me on the side of the road for being a whore.
I had nothing but a feeling that whatever I was meant for, it wasn’t this. In that one moment, that once singular, clear moment, I chose myself. I would rather eat, sleep and die alone than ever feel beholden to living this nightmare. I felt the pull of a future I could shape, in places I couldn’t even imagine because I believed in my own strength to do it. Anything, literally *any* thing would be better than this. And then I followed through on a path that lead me away.
When chances looped around, I took them. When joy presented itself, I lept. When life held out a hand and dangled promises, I jumped for them. I fell, I failed, I hit my knees a few times. I got banged up and bruised up along the way and my heart got broken. But each time I knew I had chosen this, I had believed in myself enough to do this, and so I picked myself up and tried again.
This is the first year I’ve felt like finally I’ve found what I’d been running towards all this time. The same feeling I had when I saw Matt, when I boarded a Greyhound with nothing but a duffel bag and hopes, when I accepted a proposal in this very cabin.
I know it’s foolish to say that I felt all of this when I saw him, or that I had any idea it would all lead here or beyond. I just know that somewhere in my gut, in my soul, my compass stopped spinning for the third time in my whole life and pointed straight and true.
He breaks through the cloud of thoughts. “I hope I get to meet them.” As if reading my silence, he knows where my mind is.
***
Ending are hard, but it’s easier when I think maybe this is all just a new beginning. Who knows what I’ll bring with me next year. Who knows where all this is leading. All I can do right now is feel, and my feelings are all in tune for once. I am whole today because I chose myself. It took a long time, but I can finally feel it.
“It’s been a quiet week this year,” he observes from the driver seat. We haven’t pulled out the kayaks or driven the back roads looking for deer. We’ve been caught up in catching up on a year’s worth of tasks that we haven’t gotten to just be here. That means when we are present, we just want to sit and not do anything. A vicious trade.
I watch the scenery passing by. Cottages, houses, little wooden bears and firemen waving from empty flower beds. It’s fall here, the leaves are changing and it’s a rainy September day. Another year gone, another season over. How many times did I drive this road believing I’d live here? Believing that my life was destined to be lived out in one of those cottages?
The compass of my life pointed elsewhere, to bigger and better and wilder.
We drive for a bit longer in silence and I try to remember how it felt to do this when I was 14. It’s not hard, I always feel like I’ve reverted to a teenager around him. What would I think of my life now?
I know that answer, I’d think I’d have gone mad. Why would I ever leave this place, these people, or this life? How would I ever be that brave to leave behind everything I’ve ever known for a giant mystery?
There came a point once, at the very end of my first marriage. I stood here, on this beach and looked out over the water. Two hundred miles away, men were trading my unconsensual naked pictures and the rumor mill was rife with cruel words. I couldn’t go to bars or public events without someone walking up and saying they’ve seen me naked or asking if it’s true that Jason ditched me on the side of the road for being a whore.
I had nothing but a feeling that whatever I was meant for, it wasn’t this. In that one moment, that once singular, clear moment, I chose myself. I would rather eat, sleep and die alone than ever feel beholden to living this nightmare. I felt the pull of a future I could shape, in places I couldn’t even imagine because I believed in my own strength to do it. Anything, literally *any* thing would be better than this. And then I followed through on a path that lead me away.
When chances looped around, I took them. When joy presented itself, I lept. When life held out a hand and dangled promises, I jumped for them. I fell, I failed, I hit my knees a few times. I got banged up and bruised up along the way and my heart got broken. But each time I knew I had chosen this, I had believed in myself enough to do this, and so I picked myself up and tried again.
This is the first year I’ve felt like finally I’ve found what I’d been running towards all this time. The same feeling I had when I saw Matt, when I boarded a Greyhound with nothing but a duffel bag and hopes, when I accepted a proposal in this very cabin.
I know it’s foolish to say that I felt all of this when I saw him, or that I had any idea it would all lead here or beyond. I just know that somewhere in my gut, in my soul, my compass stopped spinning for the third time in my whole life and pointed straight and true.
He breaks through the cloud of thoughts. “I hope I get to meet them.” As if reading my silence, he knows where my mind is.
***
Ending are hard, but it’s easier when I think maybe this is all just a new beginning. Who knows what I’ll bring with me next year. Who knows where all this is leading. All I can do right now is feel, and my feelings are all in tune for once. I am whole today because I chose myself. It took a long time, but I can finally feel it.
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