Displace:
transitive verb- to remove from the usual or proper place; specifically : to expel or force to flee from home or homeland – displaced persons.

I have been displaced.  I AM DISPLACED.  It’s a passive state – I am not the displacer, I’m the displaced.  Sounds like I am a victim.  I am not.  Not really.  I had a part in the decision to move.  I am, however, the victim of the circumstances that forced the decision to be made. It was not an easy choice, not the popular choice. A necessary choice.  That’s life, isn’t it?  A series of choices made with the information available at the time of choosing.  A series of choices, strung together like Christmas tree lights, individually weak but together bright enough to light a path, attempting to create a pattern and a purpose.

I confess to this act of choosing as if confessing to a crime.  As is the case with every crime, it is not without consequences, actual or intended. However, unlike a crime the act of choosing or the choice itself cannot be deemed right or wrong beforehand.  That is a subjective determination which can only be made after the act, after the consequences are borne and the casualties tallied.  And so I admit to my part in the choice of moving.  In my defense I will say that there really wasn’t another viable option, that all things considered, this was the best choice we could have made.  And now I bear the consequences.

The consequences of displacement…

For the displaced, Fear and Anxiety lurk around every corner.  Fear of the unknown, of the unfamiliar.  It may include culture shock – it doesn’t matter if the move is from Syria to Germany or Brooklyn to Boston. This is not the place you’re from, not the place in which you belong or the place that belongs to you.  Add a side of Grief and Mourning for the home you left.

For the home left behind, the now empty space you once occupied gets filled by other things.  Someone else is living in your house, filling it with their own life and making it a home that is no longer yours, a home that doesn’t recognize you anymore. Such betrayal.

For the people you left behind, perhaps your place is reserved.  The memory of you is your placeholder, but you must be sure to maintain it.  You must keep reminding them.  Your physical presence is replaced by the memory of your physical presence, of the good times you had, of the tears wiped away, the warm hugs and the locked arms and the birthday toasts.  But there’s only so much room in a person’s life and in time, if you’re not careful, your place will be encroached upon by another – not because anyone wants it to happen but because that space will be needed for someone who is present and whose presence demands a place of his or her own.

We displaced are ships on an ocean.  We occupy a space and displace the fluid environment under us which keeps us afloat. When we are removed, that displaced environment rushes in to fill the space we held.  When in motion, a ship leaves behind a wake, a disturbance of sorts.  Likewise, we create a disturbance in our environment as we move through this life.  And like the wake of a ship, in due course that disturbance calms and smoothes until all signs of our having passed through this place are gone.

Exhausted from the time I wake up in the morning until night.  So so tired.  I just want to sleep.  Yet  I lie in this bed, my own bed, and struggle to stay awake. Struggle to keep my mind moving, to keep my thoughts flitting about like summer moths around a porch light, struggling so as not to settle on the one persistent pervasive thought that lingers just below the surface:  This is real;  these last months, these last 12 days really happened.

It has been said that fear is a great motivator.  I agree.  I am busy all day long, motivated by the fear that if I stop moving, even for a minute, I will sink into a quicksand pool of sadness and depression.  So I fill my days with busy work.  Unpacking, organizing.  Arranging and rearranging my environment to look like the home I left, someplace familiar.  It feels like I’m living in a hotel room that I furnished myself.  Like I’m a guest.  A temporary inhabitant.  Like this is where I stay, not where I live.

I sleep in my same bed, sit on my same couch, eat at my same table.  I dry my hands on my same towels, cook meals in my same pots and pans, water my same plants.  Still…Still, this doesn’t feel like my Home.  I’m not comfortable.  How can I be?  I sit on my couch but when I look out the window I don’t know where I am.  My car isn’t in the driveway, my dog isn’t chasing squirrels in the backyard, last year’s Christmas lights aren’t hanging in the tree out front.  And I know that I am not Home.  In my heart I know that I am not Home.

A pilgrim, although often having a religious connotation, is defined as “one who journeys to foreign lands.”  That is what I am.  A pilgrim.  I travelled on faith, hoping to find a sacred place: Home.

People of faith make pilgrimages to places deemed holy.  There is no holy place here.  I did not journey far from my Home to bow and kneel to my God in a new place. My God was at Home and He travelled with me.  Like any good pilgrimage, my journey was difficult.  I did not crawl on hands and knees, did not scale steep mountains or climb ten thousand steps.  But I may as well have.  Instead, I tossed and turned, I wrung my hands.  I cried ten thousand tears.

I haven’t come here to touch a rock, to kiss a wall, to have a vision.  Like the pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth Rock, I have come for a better life.  I have come on the promise that I will find it here.  I have come because I believe that, in answer to a prayer, God laid out this path for me.  And like those early colonists,  I know there will be hardships and heartaches.  There is much work to be done.

“This hill though high I covent ascend;

The difficulty will not me offend;

For I perceive the way of life lies here.

Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.”

–Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan 1678

 Still unpacking boxes, trying to “find a home” for our stuff.  Home.  I am wondering if this will ever be Home.

What makes a place Home?  Does physical custody and containment of my stuff in this apartment make this Home?  I think not.  I would say that this is where I am staying (some people actually use the phrase “I stay in X town” when asked where they live).  It doesn’t feel permanent. Doesn’t feel stable.  It’s like the air around a hot grill – wavy and watery, as if everything you see through it is not quite real and could disappear at any moment.

Our culture has many sayings about Home.  “Home is where the heart is.”  “Home is where you make it.”  So far, I haven’t made a home here (I think that takes more than two days), nor is it where my heart is (I think that might take forever).

To me, Home is a concept, an idea.  Like Love, it is impossible to adequately define; words cannot capture its truth.  Home is your history, your memories. It’s a sense of connectedness. It’s a thing you build in a place you choose, a place where you feel grounded, safe, and untouchable. Like in baseball, home plate is what you run for, the point of the game.  Even in the kid’s game of “tag,” there is the notion of “home:”  You run away, but not too far because you need to get back there to be safe;  you run, but you don’t ever want to lose sight of it.  That’s what Home is.  It isn’t so much a “where;”  it’s a “what.”  My Mom always said “You can’t go home again.”  As a child I didn’t understand what this meant.  But I learned.  It means that when you leave a home, you leave Home.  And that Home as you know it, that concept, that essence leaves with you, as a soul leaves a body when the life inside it ends.

By leaving my Home,  I burst the bubble.  I broke the spell.  I can return to that physical place, but it won’t be the same because it is already changed simply by the act of my leaving.  And that act has changed me,  too.  It has taken my breath away. It has numbed my soul.   It has stopped my heart beating.

Moving truck arrived on Saturday morning.  Two days early.  ‘Cause let’s just hurry up and get on with this.  ‘Cause who wouldn’t want to do that ASAP?

So into a little apartment come all of those boxes so carefully packed at home.  With every trip up the stairs comes a piece of our puzzle. Like the squares of a Rubik’s cube that we try to manipulate into order.

We cannot fit our life into this new space!  It’s too big for here.  No number of Tetris-like maneuvers is going to make this work.  All of these things that are part of our everyday life.  These are not long-forgotten relics from the dark recesses of an unreachable shelf.  My mother’s big griddle for the five dozen chocolate chip pancakes I made after every sleepover after every middle school dance.  The Corningware I sent home with leftovers for my brother.  The birdhouse that hung on the front porch.  Accessories  for rooms we don’t have anymore.  Where do these things fit in now?

These boxes don’t contain mere things.  They hold memories. Thousands, millions, an infinity of memories.  Each one fragile, each one as delicate as a spiderweb and just as intricate.  Individually wrapped,  as if they are separate things, as if thin sheets of paper can create boundaries between them, can keep them from returning to the jumbled mess that is/was our life.

I open the boxes as if they are gifts.  With great care I remove each item and hold it lovingly, still wrapped, in my hands, as if it was a swaddled new born baby.  I consider it’s shape, it’s weight, and try to guess what it might be.  Then with anticipation I peel away the paper.  And there is that thing!  That beautiful familiar thing.  That thing I used to do that thing I loved to.  That thing I loved to look at.  That thing I passed by everyday on my way from that room to that room.  That thing made by someone dear to me. That thing that reminds me of someone I love.  That thing that always made me smile.  With each box I grow more homesick.  Every layer of paper I peel away seems to seal my fate.  I am not going home.

Woke up in a sweat this morning, afraid to open my eyes. Afraid that I would wake up in the same place I laid down last night and know that this hasn’t been a long random dream.

If it was all a dream I would search for meaning. I’d wonder if it was a foreshadowing. Then I’d settle on the conclusion that it was meant to show me how much I love my home, as it was. That it was confirmation of my priorities, constant my whole life: family, friends, Home (this coda imbedded in my very genes).

I opened my eyes and wasn’t quite sure where I was, then I recognized these hotel room curtains and the blinking smoke detector over my head and I knew that none of it was a dream. This shit is real. Thirty is the new forty, orange is the new black, and this is the new norm. WTF? Here is the truth: Things are what they are. Forty is not thirty, orange is not black, and this is not “normal.”

We arrived at our destination last night. Unfamiliar everything. Unfamiliar highways to other unfamiliar highways. Unfamiliar streets with unfamiliar names. Unfamiliar faces, places, trees, birds. All under a big wide blanket of unfamiliar sky. I hate it. Probably wouldn’t if I was just passing through, but today I hate it all. Every unfamiliar blade of grass.

I hate that I have to try to like it. I hate even more that I have to pretend to like it, have to pretend to be excited, have to work on my attitude. I’m fucking tired. That’s what I am. I don’t have any energy reserved to pretend or do emotional gymnastics. I will rally for my child’s sake but other than that, today I honestly don’t care.  I’m just fucking tired and I want to go home. Apparently 54 is the new 5.

——————————————-

“And you may ask yourself                                       What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say yourself, “My God! What have I done?”

On the road. In one hour, our house will no longer be ours. Not our home any more.

Home was packed up and driven away in one truck. Seven men, two days. Three lives, one life, in boxes. Fourteenthousandfourhundredandtwenty pounds. Big messy life in neat, quiet boxes. Just so much cardboard and tape holding us together, containing us all.  So many memories flooding back as I walked from room to empty room. We took deep breaths. Many deep breaths. Wiped away our tears. Then we closed the door behind us.

The farther we drive from that place that was our home for so many years, the harder it hurts. The stronger the tug back. These tears cannot be held back. These tears are bitter, stinging tears. Tears of loss as powerful as death.

———————————–

I don’t know what is waiting at the end of this highway.  At this moment I can’t see forward, only what is now behind.

I trust in a Divine plan and have faith that God has put us on a path to good, to happy, to better. I don’t know why I have to go so far away and give up so much. Maybe it’s a test of faith. Maybe the reward for faithfulness is at the end of this drive. A rainbow to a pot of gold. Or maybe I’ve misread the signs and this is one fucking huge mistake, one erroneous human decision.  Odds are I’ll never know why my path has taken this turn, but I’m on it now. Too far to turn back, too heartbroken to look forward.

Pray that I find peace when I arrive at my destination. Pray that I can let go of regret and self-doubt. Pray that I find home in my heart so that I can make a home for my child.

I pray to see my family and dear friends very soon. I pray that they don’t forget me as my absence grows longer. I pray for some happy twist of fate that will take us Home again.

V is for very…

As a follow-up to my last post,  I offer you a brief yet serious commentary on the subject of beauty, in a culture obsessed with physical “perfection.”

We’ve heard so many “quotes” to temper our gullibility, to warn against judgement based on physical appearance. For example:

Beauty is only skin deep

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Handsome is as handsome does

We allegedly get it, on an intellectual level.  Still we expend so much energy working to achieve some (one’s) ideal of physical beauty.  Young women and men trying to meet the standards of the moment…Such pressure to put on oneself.  [“If only I had straight hair/flawless skin/perfect teeth. Then everyone would like me; then someone would love me.”]  And for those who feel that they’re failing?  Where does it leave them?  Scarier still, where does is lead them?

Here are my own words of wisdom. Feel free to quote me:

Beauty doesn’t require perfection.

Perfect doesn’t mean beautiful

You can have all the “right” physical qualities, but if you are ugly on the inside, it will show on the outside.

Imperfect does not mean unloveable.

And you know those things you hate about the way you look, those things that, when you look in the mirror, are all you see?  Guess what?  No one sees them the way you do!  When others look at you, they don’t see your  too-thin upper lip, your crooked nose, or that crease between your brows.  No, they don’t.  They look in your eyes and see the goodness in you, the spark that makes you who you are.  And they see that you are beautiful.  And when you look in the mirror, so should you.

Madwoman Yoda has spoken.

[cue music Beautiful by Carole King.  I know, it’s kinda hokey.  Tough on you.  I love this song]

…Well, life’s not fair and the sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be…

We all know this by now.  Unfair in so many ways, on so many levels.

Today I’m thinking about how life is unfair to women.  I don’t want to talk about it in the political sense – this is not the forum for that, is it?  You don’t need to be reminded about glass ceilings, disproportionate pay, genital mutilation, criminal injustices, etc.  You are well aware of it all and, while I want you to remain incensed by these things (and more), I want to focus on a different perspective:  The disparate standards of physical “beauty” between men and women.  Count on me to take it to an elevated level.

Now, I’ve always been aware that in our society women take on more of a burden to look good, but something recently put me over the edge on this one:  The “dad bod” phenomenon.  Really, little girl who wrote the note heard round the world??? You have now just sealed the deal.  While women are running, spinning, and crunching (and not just in the gym), men can now be comfortable to let it all hang out (or over, as the case may be.  as in “over their waistbands”).  While women are eating child-size portions of salad and tofu, men are snarfing buckets of fried chicken and washing them down with six packs of beer.  Is that fair?  I ask you!

Gentlemen:  The women you love are in the gym, trying desperately to stave off the upper arm batwings, to rid ourselves of every physical scar of having borne YOUR CHILDREN while you guys are out there ordering pizza AND a side of  garlic knots (you freakin’ gluttons!).   And you still feel ok to jog with no shirts on and bare your beer guts at the beach – sans shame!  HEY!  I DIDN’T BUY A TICKET TO THAT SHOW!  And what do women do? We hide!  Geez, a special swimsuit was even created – the tankini – so that we could hide our little bellies from your critical eyes!  Or worse yet, we avoid the situation altogether.  [speaking of swimsuits…nearly every woman out there will tell you how much she dreads swimsuit shopping, and swimsuit wearing. It’s no wonder – have you seen the choices? just check out the Land’s End summer catalogue: the bikini for the perfect bodies. and the one piece.  then we have the high waisted bikini bottoms to keep the meat neatly tucked in. then there’s the swim short, the swim “mini” and at the popular tankini (basically a bikini bottom with a tank top).  so many options for various degrees of exposure, so many ways to hide].

Oh, this isn’t only about swimsuits.  Think about it.  Women pluck and tweeze, wax, shave, or chemically burn off all unwanted hair from their bodies.  Most men only shave their faces.  SOME go farther and do some manscaping, but the idea hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm.  We spend a fortune on skin care, on make up.  We have toxins injected into our foreheads, silicone injected into our lips, some other crap injected into every other line on our faces.  Men do as well, you say?  Yes, of course some do.  But face it (pardon the pun), those procedures are mostly undertaken by and marketed to women (check out the advertisements).  Most women dye their hair.  Going grey is not the popular option – women look old (heaven forbid we look our age!) and haggard.  Going grey makes a man look…what?  oh, yes:  Distinguished.  Hair loss in women?  OMG!  Not acceptable!  We have supplements, elixirs, tonics, serums, etc.  Yes, men suffer the same fate, however, we accept that men will likely begin the balding process at some point.  We accept the male-pattern baldness, the receding hairlines.  But here’s the diff:  Women are ok with that.  Men can just go ahead and shave the whole damn head and we’re ok with that!  (Just do us women a favor.  When the hair that stops growing on your scalp starts growing out of your ears, please do something about it.  PLEASE).  And if we let it all go – LIKE MEN DO – we look like we “just don’t care. ”   [really, guys? maybe we just don’t have time for ourselves after WORKING and cooking YOUR dinner and doing YOUR laundry and cleaning YOUR houses and taking care of YOUR kids.  HMMM? or MAYBE some women don’t believe in the chemicals, don’t want to subject their bodies to unnatural and unhealthy, and potentially dangerous processes.  do they get kudos for that?  perhaps…but do they get dates?  just askin’]

And how about the extreme of plastic surgery?  Who do you think signs up more often?  My guess is women.  Face lifts, brow lifts, neck lifts.  Boob jobs – because we are a breast-obsessed culture.  If a woman is small-breasted she needs to be at least average or (what the hell) big. If a woman is naturally big she wants to be bigger. And who invented the breast implant?  A man, of course.  Who perfected it?  Other men (SURPRISE!)  What is the most popular form of plastic surgery?  Yep, you guessed it.  Breast augmentation.  Why aren’t as many men lining up for penile implants?  Plenty of you guys are running around with substandard penises.  Am I right, ladies?

Now here’s the kick in the head question:  Who did this?  Can we honestly put this all on the male of the species?  Or did women do this to themselves? I mean, who really set the standard here?  Women have adorned themselves for thousands of years, and in some civilizations so have men.  Was our idea to enhance ourselves so that we’d be more attractive to men?  Does this really all distill down to competition? Women competing for men’s affections?  Doing what WE think men would find attractive?  That’s a very plausible theory, I think.

MAYBE it really went like this:  Men paid more attention to certain women.  The “beautiful” ones (the ones with long eyelashes, the ones with full lips, the ones with large breasts).  Thus was created a standard of beauty. In response to this, women – the ones who didn’t have the lashes, lips, large breasts – really wished they could do something about it. And VIOLA!  It was done!  Man said:  Your wish is our command.  We shall do this for you, Woman. (The only time a man actually gave a woman what she asked for).  Yeah that’s a little hard to believe…OK, so MAYBE it went like this:  Men really dug women with certain physical attributes.  Man said:  “Hey, let’s figure out a way to make them ALL look like this!  Wouldn’t that be freakin’ awesome for US?!”  And we bought it, ladies.

And the rest, as they say, is history.  Or, more accurately, HERstory.

I say “We must throw off the yoke of oppression…Revolt! Revolt!…Comes the revolution…We’ll all eat strawberries and cream!”  Make it extra heavy cream for me.