I got an 85 on my philosophy of mind midterm!
Wasn’t expecting that. I’ve been failing that class this whole semester, mostly because I’ve not been turning anything in.
Whole class just got our grades back. Pretty sure there was a steep curve.
I might just pass this class, after all.
Damn.
If I pass, that means I’ll finally have a Bachelors degree. This scares the everliving daylights out of me.
Once I have a Bachelors degree, that means I’m free to go.
(I’ve always been free to go, but getting to the end of this degree was a somewhat arbitrary promise I made to myself a long time ago, so I’ve tried to honor that promise. It’s a promise that has given me a reason to keep going, over and over again, when I didn’t want to. Also – staying in academia is a lovely way to meet devastatingly cool people to be around, and to justify not working in stupidly horrible environments that make my nervous system feel like it’s going to explode. Self preservation & the cautious pursuit of joy).
A chapter of my life will come to an end.
Again.
One after the other.
If I don’t want to have to do homework for the rest of my life, after this,
then technically – I don’t have to.
No papers to throw myself into writing perfectly, or to try to pull together from nothing at the last minute, no deadlines to run from but never truly escape from because I care too much, no classes where none of my classmates show up, or worse, they show up with nothing to say. None of that.
It’ll be just – me, the deep roots I keep sending down into the earth that keep me grounded, and the gypsie soul that wants to wander to the edges of the world. I am pulled in two opposite directions at the exact same time.
I could leave everything behind and go on an adventure.
I could run away.
I could go anywhere.
What else is out there?
I am curious.
At the exact same time, for the second or third time in a handful of years, I don’t want to leave this god damned little town in the middle of anywhere.
I’ve grown fond of this place. I didn’t mean for that to happen – last time leaving hurt like hell – but it did happen, and now I’m stuck with the consequences.
It’s not really the town, is it – places do have sentimental value, for me, but the people here are so much more important.
I don’t know why.
Most of them are the absolute worst.
Something T.R. said, earlier – it’s remarkable that one of the greatest triumphs of the human experience is our ability to change, and grow, and adapt to almost any set of surroundings, anywhere, and we’re so amazingly good at this, and also we hate change more than anything else in the world. We dig our heels in. We don’t want to go. We like things as they are.
Which is why – I have absolutely thought about failing this philosophy class on purpose, so that I don’t have to leave.
Maybe if life is a book, the next chapter can’t begin until the last one’s come to a close. Maybe there are other people, other places, other ideas, other experiences that I need to have before I run out of time. I can’t shake the feeling that this is true. It’s been true before.
Still – if my life is a book, then the people I’ve met in this place are some of my favorite characters. I’m not sure if I want to keep reading if they’re not going to be there in the pages that follow. And the thing about life is that I can’t go back and re-read the story, and even if we come together again, much later on – it’ll never be precisely the same.
I have to remember this part of the story for longer than I lived it, and that’s hard for me.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with staying where I am. Because, when you get right down to it, I can probably find ways to be content anywhere.
Nothing ever stays the same, anyway.
When you stay in one place for a long time, you get to experience the way it changes. The people who come and go, or the way that the people who’ve stayed change and grow and become, and you can keep getting to know them as they’re changing, and continue to be amazed every day.
Maybe I’ve always thought of separation inside out and backwards.
There’s an old Jewish saying, for when somebody dies:
“May their memory be a blessing.”
Maybe everyone you’ve ever known, and everywhere you’ve ever been, and everything you’ve ever lived through becomes a part of who you are. It becomes the footprint you leave on the world. It’s the shape of your legacy, the shape of the time you spent living. Beads on a necklace.
Maybe when you leave you take them with you, in a way.
And maybe – god damn it, this is the hardest part.
Maybe it’s possible to leave somewhere, and to wander all the way to the ends of the earth, and to know that there’ll still be one or two people to come home to, over and over again. Even after all that time.
If you stay long enough to get to know people, then you have to love them even when they aren’t the perfect version of themselves they were in your head before you knew them.
If there’s hope that you aren’t going to lose everyone, hope that you’ll have the honor of creating a bond that isn’t as fleeting and superficial as some of the others…
that means there’s work to do, and it’s going to be difficult.
You have to show up for the people when they persist in being flawed. You have to watch them change, not be the same anymore, watch them make mistakes and look foolish and learn from that, watch them love people who aren’t you, watch them be there for you, watch them not be there for you when you need them, watch them have stupidly bad days when they can’t find the answer even when the answer is right fucking there, watch them fall apart and pull themselves together again.
(and feel so fucking proud, when they do. Every time.)
If there’s hope – there is also the unbearable knowledge that they’re watching you, too. You have to trust them not to let you down, and accept that they’re absolutely going to let you down, over and over again, and you still have to believe in them.
If there’s hope then it’s safe to say there will be joy, and laughter, and so many fucking lovely memories, and the more of those you allow yourself to have the worse it’s going to hurt in the end.
Because, one day, one of you is going to die first. And you might be the one standing over a grave saying the kind of goodbye that you can’t ever come back from. You might be the last one left to carry all the memories, alone, with nowhere to send all the love that you used to be able to send back to them.
And that’s a privilege
Because it means they won’t have to go on in a world without the both of you in it.
So I’m thinking there’s no way to win. Whether I stay home or leave and go exploring, things will still change. There’ll still be no way to go back to the ways things were.
Whether I pass this last class in philosophy or fail it on purpose, everything is still going to end.
And there’s no point in giving up now.
