"Bloom where you're planted."

“Troubled little angel…. Inconsistent, flying high……. Most of the time…..”
-Chaka Khan

There’s been no shortage of things to talk about – people have died, awards shows have aired and we re’d up on the presidency, just to name a few. That doesn’t even take into consideration the smorgasbord of bullshit I encounter on the regular in my own daily life. But honestly, I really just haven’t been much in the mood to talk (or write, rather) about anything. The couple of times I did sit down and start to type out how I was feeling or what I was thinking, I’d go back, read it and end up deleting it. Some of the thoughts were all over the place and others were things that just needed to be done and not necessarily discussed.

I have had so many things on my mind the last couple of weeks I just didn’t know where to start. Then Chaka came on and… well…here I am.

I recently realized that I am once again trying to occupy two spaces, rendering myself unable to be whole in either one. Before it was an age thing – needing to embrace my getting older and leaving behind the activities and mindset of my younger self, allowing those whose time it was to have it. Now it’s a location thing. I am beginning to see that a big part of my inability to gel to life in Jersey is the fact that I haven’t completely stopped living the one in the Roc… only the Roc now seems to be the parents that moved my shit to the basement and turned my old room into an office.

In rare form, I talked with a friend about it and she passed on to me something that had been imparted on her years ago. “Bloom where you’re planted.”

Man... That hit home on so many levels. The simplest words always seem to have the greatest impact. I cried.

For starters, what I viewed as an effort to have my relocation have as little impact as possible on both myself and the people I was leaving behind turns out to really have just been an effort to stay relevant in a place I no longer am. That's really hard to admit to yourself, let alone say out loud. That’s not to say that I am not genuinely missed, but I’m not…..I don’t know… needed… I guess? I’m not sure if that’s the right word but it feels like the closest thing to right. Life there, as I would expect, has gone on without me, but it’s gone on in “change” which is hard to “fall in” to when you’re tethered to what was.

And after some thought, I’ve found that seemingly true in other spaces as well. Actually, it didn’t take much thought at all. I’ve always had difficulty letting go of things, people, spaces. Hell, I’m afraid to throw away mail I haven’t even opened, afraid that it might be something I need later. I still have business cards from three jobs ago, like I’ll one day have a need to impersonate a Frontier account manager….smh. That little discount at Enterprise is not that serious. I’ve had the same phone number since I first got a cell phone in 1999 and the same damn cell phone I’ve had since 2007. Who, but me, keeps a phone that long? Not many people, I’ll tell you that. And you know what else? I look around my house sometimes and it’s like I live in a really nice hotel. Most of the things I own that make a house a home are still packed up in the attic of my girlfriend’s house Upstate. Completely subconsciously, but it’s like as long as it’s there, I still have a foothold. Obsoletion is a striking blow to the ego, but a truth, nonetheless and I have never felt more than I do now, on an island – disconnected.

It’s funny – I started planning what would be my final birthday party Upstate and as I struggled with a guest list that didn’t consist of the usual cookout crew, I found that a lot of the people who no longer live there also no longer go back for holidays. In fact, many of them never go back. One friend in particular asked, “Why are you going all the way up there to have a party? It’s your birthday; shouldn’t people be coming to you?” He clearly didn’t understand the concept of how much easier it is for one person to make a trip than for 30 people to make one, but it did make me ask myself how many of those 30 would actually come? Maybe 5. The wind kinda left my sails and it made me wonder why it was so important for me to even have this party. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t even really want one. It’s just something I have always done. In retrospect, it’s also something I always think back on afterwards as an unappreciated waste of good money, even though it’s usually a pretty good time. I did it as much out of obligation as some people seemed to come year after year out of obligation. I can’t feel good about that. I guess I say all that to say the party is canceled. I am still going up to spend Christmas with my family, but I will bring in my birthday in the city in which I reside, in a conscious effort to begin the process of “blooming where I am planted.” A new year, a new beginning – for me and for those whose 2011 strides entitle them to celebrate it in whatever way they really want to. There. Dilemma conquered.

Now don’t let my rambling about this particular issue lead you to believe it’s been the only thing I’ve been mulling over, its just a fucken rabbit hole. I think it has been driving a lot of the other issues and the ones independent of it are things I don’t really want to get into. Like I said in the beginning, they just need to be dealt with, not discussed.

I think things will fall in line like they should if I just let them. I have lived the past two years as if Jersey is a place I am just passing through, and that may very well be, but it’s where I am NOW. I can’t keep being a visitor in my own life. I mean, before you know it, it’ll be over...