A Transition; Estuary
Within the dull, anesthetized haze of a morning hangover after poker night, I was hit with a feeling of finality. Most of the ensemble from the previous night were sitting down together for breakfast to detox and I was swept up in the infectious joy being passed around between ourselves. I found myself growing silent and experiencing a partially-realized thought wash into my consciousness. It felt empty. In a second my attention was snapped back to the topic at hand, and the feeling subsided into the fuzziness that was engulfing my head.

Later, I recalled that I had sensed this in myself before: when Cameron left for Seattle. There were too many feelings about that incident to be able to identify them all adequately, but the ethereal sensation of loss was memorable enough to remain. It was a transition that I had not only dealt with, but, I think, turned around what could have been crippling listlessness and turned it into a time in my short life that I fused into a lively, beautiful and productive time. The friendships forged, the hardships endured and the life I lived since then have elicited changes and fortifications in my character that, now, I could not live without. These are results of the contributions of SO many friends and acquaintances who either knowingly or not, helped carry me through that expansive emotional chasm over which I was walking.

I wish I could say that all of the experiences were positive and progressive, and also that I had not behaved in childish and regrettable ways. The biggest regret of all seemed to be that I didn't have enough time to fulfill my responsibilities to those around me to my satisfaction. It, at once, seems merely a work in progress; left expectantly waiting like the blinking cursor. There is some (little) comfort that my northern migration does not mean the termination of these relationships, but instead just another inevitable change that permeates everything in life.

When I'm feeling particularly depressed about this, I try to look back at my family for the first model of this phenomenon. Even though there are seemingly vast deserts of time between visits to my family, it seems as of late, that I (and my family) have been making more attempts to commune and interact with one another. The unfulfilled wish to be able to visit on a more frequent basis seems to burn less knowing that I can still communicate to them that I still care and that they can reciprocate the same.

No more is this more pronounced than the other part of my family: the red-headed massagist. I could never convey how fortunate the bond that Cameron and I have that allows us to exist relatively free of distress because of our parting. The scattered handfulls of visits we've been able to scrounge up over the past year or so have all been wonderfully euphoric and bittersweet. And every successive visit kept reminding me that the ineffable life-sustaining nectar that Cameron's affection gives me would need to arrive sooner. I took strength from imagining that every day that I spent down here, working, playing, living, would better prepare me to rejoin Cameron and return to our partnership with new vigor and a fresh appreciation for what I am so fortunate to possess.

Right now I feel much like a salmon, waiting in that pool where you can taste both the freshwater and saltwater washing around me, with the indeniable, overpowering instinct to swim upstream growing stronger by the day.

I think I'm just about ready, so give me a little room.  ¶ 3/04/2006 07:45:00 PM