Wherein Adam says his good-bye

My time in New York is coming to a close. Ten years ago, if you had told me this day was coming, I wouldn't have believed you. I wouldn't have imagined a day that I would willingly leave, and now I'm ready to go and have been for the last year or two. And despite the love affair turned bitter-marriage-kept-together-for-the-kids, I'm having a hard time leaving New York now that the time to go is right before me. 

I didn't have a Toto
to bring with me though.

When I came here, this place was my haven and refuge. At seventeen years old and out of high school for a little under a month, I came here to begin my adult life. To begin forgetting and healing from the childhood I still prefer to forget rather than remember. This place helped me learn that all the things that made me feel so disjointed with where I grew up were something that other people would find fascinating and worth encouraging. It let me forget parts of who I was, so I could start to become who I wanted to be. It protected me. It pushed me by always threatening to break me but never really made good on those threats. It made me tough. And by making me tough, it taught me how to be compassionate. It showed me all sorts of wonderful people and things. It made me feel alive. It helped me to stop being afraid. Of everything. I learned how to think on my feet and turn my mistakes into their own solutions. It endowed me with a sense of self that will be my beacon and guide for the rest of my life, despite my self being far from a static entity.

And as I go and remember all the things I loved about New York while seeing all the reasons it's no longer working out, I can't help but feel jealousy when I see other people here in New York, continuing on with their lives, some of them living the life I wish I had found. Or once had but grew tired of. I'm still not sure which. I became disillusioned at some point, and I'm not sure if I'm going to bounce back from that lack of faith without time away. Wishing and jealousy won't change that. Jealousy, by the way, is a new thing for me. That doesn't happen often, which makes it harder to deal with, and of course, makes me feel crazy. But as we established last week, I'm not really feeling myself these days. Whatever that means.

^^New personal mantra^^

Unlike the last time I went abroad, going to Colombia isn't just a break in my life to do something new and then return home. When I come back to the United States, there's not much to come back to. There are my family and friends, and I don't mean to downplay their importance to me, but I feel a bit homeless again. Indiana is only my hometown in name, and New York has always felt like home but now it's a home that no longer fits with me. I guess maybe that's why nomadism has started to appeal to me: to find a new home, wherever in the entire world that may be.

Something that I'm learning is that no matter what kind of time you have and no matter how you planned it, there are always loose ends when you leave a place. There's people you wish you had gotten to know better, there's places you wish you had visited, and things you wish you had done. Good-byes you wish you had said or somehow sadistically wanted to feel grander, bigger, more emotional, and not as if you were going to see each other the next day because it's hard to imagine you're not going to. One last run in Central Park, one last visit to the Bourgeois Pig, one more trip to Jones Beach, one more day to... But time ticks by, things end, they change, and they have been changing. Kate's Joint closes, you resign from running a theatre company you built out of nothing with one of your best friends, the monthly metro card raises another twenty dollars. And you have to say good-bye and you have to let go because you risk ruining everything you once had.

So... Good bye, New York. It's been real. It's been beautiful. I hope we can meet again someday when we're both ready.

Wanderlust: Am I running away from something?

Because I can't take you seriously
with all that Kool-Aid on yo' face...

Hey, people. We're gonna get a little heavy this week. Just a little. We're going to talk about wanderlust and its psychological underpinnings. I mean, I have to at some point: It's the namesake of this blog's URL.

Let's start by quoting some interesting stuff I read on Wikipedia's "wanderlust" article:

Wanderlust may be driven by the desire to escape and leave behind depressive feelings of guilt, and has been linked to bipolar disorder in the periodicity of the attacks. Or it may reflect an intense urge for self-development by experiencing the unknown, confronting unforeseen challenges, getting to know unfamiliar cultures, ways of life and behaviours.
In adolescence, dissatisfaction with the restrictions of home and locality may also fuel the desire to travel.

Interesting, right? And as one of the affected, I have to wonder: Does this apply to me? Let's start with the easy part. Yes, in my adolescence I was dissatisfied with my home and locality. This is no secret. As a gay, liberal, Pagan in Indiana, it doesn't take much to explain how out of sync I was with so many people around me. I also think that if I weren't so dissatisfied, I wouldn't have moved to New York at the tender age of seventeen. Considering I left my adolescence behind ten years ago and I'm pretty much as over it as I can get, I'm not sure that applies to me beyond mere coincidence. Besides, what person wouldn't say they were dissatisfied with their "home and locality" in their childhood? I'm not sure it's that unique.

Being chased by the "depressive feelings of guilt" monster?

Now, what I do find interesting is this: It's both possibly an attempt to run away from "depressive feelings of guilt" but also "reflects an intense urge of self-development." I've had a few people in life who I trust and whose opinions I value posit that perhaps I am running away from something. And maybe they're right. The only problem is I can't think of what that would be really. Perhaps it's the hard city life of living in one of the most expensive lands in all the land, New York City? If that's it, sure, I'm doing that, but once the shine wears off from living here, which it will do after ten years, why stay? Unless you're making theatre or a lot of money (I'm doing neither), there's not really any point for the needless struggle. I don't really think this is what they're talking about though.

But, let's pretend I am running away from some sort of emotional issue. I think this might be the symptom and the cure all at once. Why? Well, the second part, of course! Could these intense urges for self-development be the kind of thing that someone running away from their feelings might need? If you're having trouble accepting something about yourself, going through the trials by fire collectively known as "culture shock" might be just the thing to help you figure out what to like about yourself, to develop a positive sense of self that can help you face the things about yourself that you feel unable to face. The challenges of culture shock are really internal challenges of adaptation and flexibility masked as external challenges. It's about becoming a more flexible, open, and accepting person, and guess what: That applies to your own self just as much as to anything else!. It's interesting that if you're doing it for the right reasons, then this can be the thing that helps you through the problem that causes it to begin with.

I, however, like to believe that I'm not running away, but it's undeniable that I have an intense urge for self-development. Hell, I have an intense urge for career development. There's a lot of solid reasons why I'm leaving the country and taking this amazing opportunity, but I wouldn't be so motivated if I didn't think that the world didn't have a lot to show me, to show all of us who are willing to go see it. It's only by leaving your comfort zone that you really see who you are as a person. It's then that your mettle is tested, and tests--the kind that aren't graded--can be some of the best learning experiences. Like I talked in my previous post, I don't expect it to be easy, but it will undoubtedly be rewarding.

By the way, you should check out the Wikipedia article about wanderlust for more interesting tidbits about the phenomenon from the etymology of the term to how its view in sociology. It's a short but nice read!

Yes, I'm nervous, but that's okay.

When I tell them I'm going away, people, of course, ask all sorts of questions, but one always comes up no matter how well or little the person knows me: Are you nervous? My stock response is, "I'm more excited than anything," and it seems people write it off as me being naive because, despite these dark circles under my eyes and my pitch black sense of humor, I somehow still manage to come off as a sweet, innocent, optimistic sort of person. Go figure. But let me share a little secret with you, dear readers:

Yes, I'm nervous. I'm nervous as hell.

I think normally people ask this in the context of Colombia's reputation for not being the safest country to travel to, and in that respect, I am not nervous. I have full confidence that the Fulbright people in Colombia as well as the ones here in the States have our safety at the forefront of their minds and will not let anything happen to us. We have to follow some basic rules such as informing them of any travel and, for the most part, avoiding any sort of ground travel in favor of going by air, but I'm really glad to have what I see as a resource for traveling within the country. Who knows, maybe they can also give me tips on how to find cheap airfare while they're at it?

What am I nervous about? For starters, trying to make friends, which can be tough when you don't know a single person. Then there's not having danced salsa since high school and only looking good doing so because of Luisanna Rodriguez telling me what to do all the time, which wouldn't normally matters two bits except for Santiago de Cali is the self-styled "salsa capital of the world." To a lesser degree, trying to find an apartment, though I truthfully can't imagine it being any worse than New York where you have to give a deposit; first, last, and sometimes second or more month's rent; pass a credit check; have a guarantor and then sign away your first born male child to secure an apartment. But above everything else, I'm nervous about adjusting to the little daily things that can really add up.

If Ryan Gosling and Ellen came out with their
own "¡you can learn salsa, gringo!" video series,
I would soooooo buy it.

If you were around when I was still making videos from Spain, you might recall a certain little moment of frustration and hopelessness in a giant park that I couldn't find my way out of and eventually missed two classes that day as a result. It was no good. Then there was the frustration with what I perceived as needlessly complicated procedures for securing a monthly Metro pass or the maze like streets of the city that I never fully understood, or the need to journey to the one Corte Inglés that carried seitan in all of Madrid to have some sort of significant vegetarian protein intake. Those little daily life frustrations can add up, especially when you make one fatal mistake: you try to live the lifestyle you had in one location when you're in another one. It was only in my last months there that I decided to let go of the lifestyle I had become accustomed to in New York in favor for something that was a bit more madrileño, and I regret how late in the process I allowed myself to grow into my new home.

One thing that has recently caused me to be more nervous is the end of my relationship with my boyfriend, who had originally planned to go with me. It became obvious after a while that it would put more stress on us that wouldn't be good for him or me. I won't mince words and say that knowing he would be with me was a great comfort, and now that things have changed, I'm a bit more nervous than I was before. But the fact of the matter is that my desire to go and do this, to see the world, to gain experience in an upper level academic environment, to improve my Spanish, and learn about Colombian culture all conspire together to overpower that fear. It's there, asking to be heard, but in a chorus of so many voices, it can't focus on it for long. None the less, it's hard not to feel like I'll be leaving a bit of myself back here. When I think about him, that he's no

Le Petit Prince et Le Renard

longer part of my life, that we won't be able to share these experiences together, I feel something strange, like an amputee feeling limbs they no longer have. He was my partner in crime, and now, having to pull a solo heist in a foreign land, I feel a bit daunted. He was and always will be one of my favorite people in the world, and I hope we'll stay in contact even after I go, and I'll bring him news of what's happening in the southern hemisphere. It reminds me of the TV series adaptation of the Little Prince and his rose, writing letters back to his home planet to share all the things he saw and did. As the fox said to Le Petit Prince, "Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé." ("You will always be responsible for that which you have tamed.") And in that way, we'll always be connected to each other, as two hearts that, in some way, tamed each other.