July 12, 2007. Josh and I drove east on 90/94 and beheld the skyline that would represent our new home exactly one year ago today. Like vagabonds, we carried few personal items and sat in traffic trembling with the reality that this overwhelming, clattering gem of a city would be a place we call "home." If that was even possible. All we knew was California, the Golden State. It was safe. It was comfortable. It was easy. It was our entire world.
And we left it all behind.
As I sit at the computer trying to recall the emotions and feelings I was going through exactly 365 days ago, I am coming up short. I can't even remember that sort of anxiety Chicago brought me back then. It seems like a lifetime ago.
Lifetime. People use that phrase all the time, but what does that really mean? Usually we interpret it as an entire period when you were a "different person." When you had a completely different set of familiarities and responsibilities and perspectives. We have this inkling that you must be born and then die to be reincarnated into your next life, in your next lifetime.
Hmmm... maybe in my last life I was a spandex-laden, cactus green coiffed, scratchy-toned 80's rock singer at the height of my career only to cut it short in a freak performance accident where I was convinced a flock of Sharp-shinned hawks could carry me over the crowd while I displayed dazzling acrobatics, only to realize too late that hawks do not travel in flocks... oops! I guess that might explain my obsession with the 80's and my fearful yet curious aversion to fowl.
When i googled "80's rock star" to find a pic that would illustrate my former self, this guy came up. hahahaha i can't stop laughing! I mean, poor Doofus McScragglyface has to put this in his modeling portfolio! hahahaha. If i were his friend I would just email this to him every few days just to remind him of this glorious moment when he answered a misleading ad:
"Model needed. 80's glamor rock. Please wear awkward flannel."
And of course, Doofus, who loves my silly ideas and ridiculous obsessions but must constantly deal with my raggedly inappropriate sense of humor and painfully jabbing insults, would roll his eyes at me like he always does and respond,
"C'mon Shan, let it rest. That was a lifetime ago!"
Lifetime. Maybe it's not really that long afterall. Maybe a lifetime isn't what we think of as the traditional cycle of birth than death of the physical body. Maybe it is, in fact, when we had a completely different set of familiarities and responsibilities and perspectives, but within our current human experience. It is the major changes we make that propel us into this next lifetime, an era that we are willing to learn a completely different set of values and ideas. A time when we realize our former self is gone, and we are new and fresh and reborn.
Yes, I think it's coming back to me now. I know exactly what I was in my last life. I was a terrified, naive, newlywed, sunshiny Californian trading in one lifetime for another. It was a cool July evening with the sunsetting behind twinkling office buildings instead of over the vast ocean. And my old life was gone, I was never filled with more hope.
6 comments:
amazing.inspiring.motivational
Well, I remember what you were feeling before you left. I remember you crying in the parking lot of the kareoke joint when you realized you really were leaving. And I remember crying with you like a pansy because I knew that the one group of people in my life whom I ever truly felt I belonged with and was accepted by, were all going their separate ways. There was nothing naive or terrified about you. I like to think you and Josh are on a wild adventure and some day you will parachute over SD, land in our driveway and say "we're ba-ack!!" :) I know sappy, take it easy!
first off, I love how serious that guy is in the pic;
"Dude, this is soooo going to get me laid"
secondly I always recommend moving to Chicago in the summer, that way the city can lull you into a state of comfort before it bitch slaps you with winter....
It is so odd how enormous and overwhelming those changes seem in the moments you are making them, but a year later, it is just your life, simple as that.
I am a little besotted with Chicago at the moment, so it seems like a brilliant choice to me.
your beautiful and inspiring writing brings tears to my eyes.
It's so neat that you and your husband took such an amazing journey together into a new lifetime together -- guess its pretty dang symbolic that you would take this important step at the beginning of your marriage, your new life for the two of you. You're so brave! Ha- I love how you have that mullet man in this post too. heee.
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