Searing Change
Leaving options open is perhaps the great flaw of my life. I never expect to have my bridges burned behind me, but all too often that seems to be what happens. Time is the great healer, it seems, but not until the faded land has passed from view.
Losing Nate is the hardest, most significant thing that has happened to me, perhaps both of us in the last four years. It burned me (us?) both so severely that I think I lost all desire to return home, ever. Certainly the places that were home are that no longer. Home has infused itself into new places, into new pathways that grow increasingly foreign the more time not spent wandering them.
The more time I spend here, however, the more I realize that in order to fight for the kind of change I want to make in the world, I need to go where my voice has power, and where I am not isolated in an island of muteness, nor stripped of a voice by the system.
We have dreams to achieve. We have new battles to fight. New fires to temper in.
And here is where it gets interesting. Death burned the bridge back to where we come from, and now life will make it new again.
posted by 景都 @ 10:51 午後
4 comments
4 Comments:
Wow. This hits on so many issues that I think a real responce would easily fill many times over the length of the original post. I'll try to be semi-consise at the risk of sounding a bit dry.
- There's a tough balance between not committing and burning bridges on your own. That's one that I've struggled with for a while. While I'd hardly consider it comprehensive (and completely ignores emotional issues) the concept of "staying upwind" from Paul Graham's essay, What You'll Wish You'd Known has seemed instructive.
- Nate's death was processed in a really weird way for me. It happened about 5 weeks after I'd come back to Germany for good -- before I had an apartment or a phone. It was strange because I knew what had happened, but it was virtually impossible for me to talk to anyone about it.
I also think you guys might have not seen some of the other really screwed up stuff under the surface of our little community -- just from our Beta 3 floor, three of the folks did significant cutting, were hospitalized for various psychological issues and there was one instance where the stuff was so bad that I had to rush one of our old roommies to the emergency room for surgery because he'd slit his wrist so deeply that he'd sliced through the tendons. As much as it pains me, I think I'd become somewhat desensitized to destructive behavior. It was terrible on so many levels, but didn't leave as strong of a lasting effect in my case.
On the other hand, when I was back in GR for a few days at the beginning of the year, it was nice that among those few of the old crowd that I saw that we could speak freely of Nate -- and not have mentions of him be veiled illusions to his death.
(I could go on on this one for pages, but I'll stop for now.)
- The issue of a "voice" in the society that I live in has been another really hard issue. I left, among other reasons, because I was very frustrated with my own country. But of course, from here I can't do much to change that. How long is it still "my" country? Is "Germany" now also my country? If I take citizenship here someday what will that change? Does it make sense to get involved in local politics?
I'm 19 months away from permanent residence, my German is finally decent, the US feels less like home every time I return. But as an ex-pat you get caught in this sort of paralyzing me / not-me debate.
Ugh. I did it. I wrote something longer than the original comment. Ok, so shutting up for now.
-Scott
Scott, I am a crappy friend. I owe you a real email (rather than putting it up all here like some sort of strange contextless melodrama ;p) Expect one soon.
I miss you all soo much. School sucks and rules all at the same time...very wearing.
Scott, I noticed some of the stuff in Beta when I was there (including things going on with Jenna's roommates), but there is a weird paralysis that emerges. I would say things to other people in order to get help in approaching people, but it did no good.
I would approach people and talk to them over coffee but would always get, "Well, yeah, I did that, but that was then. I'm doing better."
If we can't form connections and trust in a situation that should be as close as that, then what hope is there.
On a side note, I am really still VERY angry with the adminstration people at Calvin who I had talked to about a number of these problems who blew me off. Is that wrong? I know that I tend to carry anger for a long time, and it is not healthy. STill...
Well, Scott is no doubt wondering what on earth inspired that kind of email (hormones, hormones, hormones!)
But Steve, I think you are right in being angry.
For me, I have real difficulty getting involved anymore, when I sense someone knows a friend or who is his or herself suicidally depressed. I get very vehement about getting professional help.
But then again, I think I have witnessed in myself a long period where allowing friends close has been difficult. When you have attachment to someone, it creates a mutual obligation and responsibility to one another.
Then again, I have never made the kind of friends you all were. Nothing even remotely touches that kind of friendship. Maybe it is environmental. Maybe philosophical. Not to say we always got along. Or that we were "bestest, bestest friends" all of us continually... but it pains me to realize that we are only as involved in one anothers' lives as revolves around latest landmarks, or weddings, or funerals.
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