Everything in its Right Place?
As my sister's graduation approaches, I am faced with the possibility of encountering people I have put out of my life forever. I'm not one of those people who violently hated high school and blames the public education for ruining my life, nor am I the type who had the time of her life in high school and considers everything since then an afterthought. It's only been three short years- three long, transcendent years- in which I've gone from a person who lived largely through others to a person who knows her own heart. I have shorter hair and my face has aged the slightest bit, but no one is going to have any trouble recognizing me. Invariably, when buying groceries or picking up a sibling in north Raleigh somewhere, I get asked something about whether I'm that girl who was in _Anne Frank_ three years ago. It's so easy to fall into old habits, though, old ways of speaking or reacting to people.
I've learned since then that love is more than coincidences. It's more than having the same favorite Yeats poem or needing the same CD in order to fall asleep. In fact, it's more than two people being in the same place at the same time. Yes, those things are nice. But they aren't enough. It's a connection that I can't express in words, an understanding that bypasses ordinary interaction. (You know when I am lying, even when I don't.) A part of me wants to stay here forever, falling in love with this town and all of its idiosyncrasies- be that girl who knows everyone and has seen everything. The sentimentality is won over by (as usual) wanderlust. As Katherine Brooke says, "I want to know- not just believe- that the world is round." I think I could love a million different places at once and call them all my home.
I used to say that the love of my life would be my work. I still hold to that, with amendments. My work is my constant companion, and my lovers are the places I leave behind.
I've learned since then that love is more than coincidences. It's more than having the same favorite Yeats poem or needing the same CD in order to fall asleep. In fact, it's more than two people being in the same place at the same time. Yes, those things are nice. But they aren't enough. It's a connection that I can't express in words, an understanding that bypasses ordinary interaction. (You know when I am lying, even when I don't.) A part of me wants to stay here forever, falling in love with this town and all of its idiosyncrasies- be that girl who knows everyone and has seen everything. The sentimentality is won over by (as usual) wanderlust. As Katherine Brooke says, "I want to know- not just believe- that the world is round." I think I could love a million different places at once and call them all my home.
I used to say that the love of my life would be my work. I still hold to that, with amendments. My work is my constant companion, and my lovers are the places I leave behind.