Moving Home
Do you ever look back at something you made and think, Damn, what was I thinking? Or maybe it’s not What was I thinking? because that seems to connote a sense of jovial, retrospective jest: a wiser nod from the world of real-time, fondly remembering, Ha ha, I was so silly then.
But I’m talking about those deeply intimate and honest and earnest and vulnerable things you create and release into the world. The ones that kind of make you feel like you’ve elected to open your legs and have a pap smear in the public square. It could be a drawing or an outfit or a piece of writing or a video -- the medium doesn’t matter, but the thing is, in some way, an embodied reflection of you.
Recently, I looked at a story I wrote in May that never got published. I wouldn’t have said this then, but I’m glad it didn’t see the light of day.
The piece was about moving from one neighborhood to another, but really, it was about returning to the neighborhood where you grew up — about moving home.
That didn’t seem clear when I read it again last week. The language was mangled, the tone slightly deaf and the point was buried under fluffy fragments that I often defend as a stylistic choice even though mostly, those fragments surface when I’m emotional and confused but trying to pretend that I’m not. One time I said that I’m not sensitive. I don’t think this is true.
The parts of the piece that were tone-deaf mostly revolved around my reluctance to acknowledge in plain English that I was moving from one safe and expensive neighborhood in Manhattan to another one and that the move wasn’t lateral, it was an upgrade. When I read it again, I wondered what I was trying to hide. Then I realized that it was my own guilt and fear -- that somewhere along the way, I’d genuinely inherited the belief that when you are lucky (which is different from getting lucky, or making luck), the way to retain such luck is to make yourself believe that it’s actually not luck at all. On the contrary, it is a distraction on the way to misfortune. A distraction so dangerous that it actually causes your misfortune.
I probably got to think this way because of who raised me -- both of my parents are from the Middle East. One of them (my mom) lived in and left three different countries before landing in America, and I am beginning to realize that I don’t actually know, from a tactical perspective, what her upbringing was like. I know how it felt -- she has relayed that many times over, as fact and a sort of cautionary tale, but I don’t actually know what it was like. I’m not sure she does either! We’re exploring it together.
What I do know is that her experience is her own, not mine — and that, yeah, maybe both of my parents’ perspectives painted mine but I can’t blame them for who I am? I’m 31 now and have two kids and I’m sentient. I am also admitting that I didn’t understand until — I’m not kidding you — two weeks ago that just because I have always believed something (my privilege is not a privilege at all, it is a roadblock on the way to disaster) does not mean I have to believe it forever.
So I’m trying this new thing where I say it like it is: I am, and have been, very lucky. I earned some of this luck, but I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the luck that I just got because of how I came here.
I would go on, but I’m not really sure what there is yet. I’m at that point now where I’m standing over the kitchen counter, looking at some of the peeled-back onion layers with equal parts dread and doubt — tempted to chop those fleshy fuckers and fry them dead because, on some days, I’m disappointed that I’m only now seeing some of this shit. I look back at the leg of my career that encapsulated the past decade with a tight chest that makes my heart beat so fast, I need to take a deep breath. How many opportunities were put on my path to rise! How many times did I lower my head, turn my back, and shrink myself into a wordy spiral, explaining why I wasn’t worth the chance.
On other days, I’m empowered and motivated and eager to MAKE! NEW! FIRE! I won’t fuck it up this time, I say, I’ll rise for the chances! Then I put on metallic basketball shorts and satin mules and I tell the mirror: I have arrived.
Until I realize
There is no arrival.
There is only process.
And, see, that’s really the thing about moving home. I came back to this neighborhood by my own will — because I said that I want to. As a result, I think I expected it to represent the finish line. A declaration of my indelible me-hood! And when I got past the finish line, I was disappointed to find that I was not ready to be finished. That I wasn’t finished at all.
I don’t think I ever will be.
Becoming indelible is not my goal.
I’m not a coat of cement.
But I am in process.
At home
In process.