Today is my first “official” post-LVC day. I’m still not sure what that means.
I’ve had weeks, months… a year, really, to prepare for today, but I just don’t feel post-anything. Part of it is that this trip home to Oregon feels like another vacation, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll be back to our house in Oakland in a few weeks, that there’s a pile of crumbs on the counter and some housemate drama waiting for me there. But it’s no longer “our” house and “us” now exists only exists in terms of what we make of it.
I’m simultaneously relieved, excited, and terrified about the prospect of a life without 6 other people who are contractually obligated to care about my shit. It’s not as if my house functioned like the Brady Bunch – there’s plenty of things I won’t miss. But I can’t pretend I just didn’t bust out of the happy little lets-talk-about-your-feelings cocoon that is communal life in an LVC house. I will now have to beg, borrow or earn the privilege of leaning on other people when I falter. I will only have one other person’s worth of dishes and detritus to make a stink about, and that person will be perfectly able to tell me to hit the road if I turn out to be a complete pain in the ass.
I’m not exactly mourning the loss of something I’ll never have again… I’m moving on to some pretty exciting things. And I’m confident that I’m moving forward with some solid, friends-for-life-even-when-I-secretly-am-so-annoyed-at-you-I-could-scream kinds of relationships. There will be lots of visits back to the Bay Area, I’ve got long letters to write to a certain Fulbright Fellow in Indonesia, coffee dates to have with a deeply gracious and spiritual seminary student, skype chats with a sister sojourner and fellow outdoor enthusiast, and I know there will be texts and calls exchanged with St. Louis, Boston, San Francisco, and D.C. Even if we are never all in the same room again, we changed each other this year, and that’s just not something you forget easily.
Maria made us all a playlist, and I think one of the songs she picks is perhaps the best way to process this transition. It’s been stuck in my head for a week now.
There’s no such thing as perfect,
and if there is we’ll find it when we’re good and dead
Trust me I’ve been looking
but tonight I think I’ll go and take a bath instead
And then maybe I’ll walk a while
and feel the earth beneath me
They say if you stop looking
it doesn’t matter if you find it
And whose to say that even if I did
it’s what I’m really looking for
It’s a long and rugged road
and we don’t now where it’s headed
But we know it’s going to get us where we’re going
And when we find what we’re looking for
we’ll drop these bags and search no more
‘Cuz it’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home
It’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home
