Before I fly to Maine, I spend the night at my father’s house for the first time in more than nine years. We toast at dinner to the end of a very difficult chapter and I listen to his wife speak about how, after some time, thinking about her own first marriage started to feel like watching a movie that she wasn’t sure even happened. I wonder if I’ll ever get there, but I’m proud of myself now. On my good days, I even feel a little bit courageous and a little bit brave. The thing they don’t tell you about courage is how lonely it is. I resolve to start taking up more space. So it goes.
I’m headed east to see one of my oldest friends and her husband and three children. Maine is a place that I’ve carried in my heart for a long time. The stunning natural beauty of the trees, the mountains and the sea — the calm and eternal landscape that demands respect — the things that make you stop, that make you pay attention, that make you listen. I think ahead a few days, about how these trees and these mountains and the sea will surely bring me back to life. I think I know what I need, but I have no idea.
September was lived hard and fast. And so was August. And July, June, and May. When I stop to think about it, I realize that there has not been one single month in my life in the past two years where some hugely difficult thing did not color everything. When was the last time I was able to just be? And would I ever be able to, really?
Because of this, I’m anxious: I’m carrying with me to Maine an eight day old divorce, the naïve hope that someone new might suddenly make me feel better, the fatigue of doing the work, the curiosity of what is to come — and the hurt and the hunger. The hunger growing louder inside of me every day and more and more of the hurt coming to light as I get more distance from my marriage. These are very old wounds that are still very fresh. I spend twenty-five dollars on some mediocre tacos and a beer at Midway Airport and plug in my noise cancelling headphones and let Wilco take me away for a while.
I think about the last time I was in this airport, and how much has changed since then. I try to remember how to be alone. I wonder what I always wonder in airports — if everyone is really just asleep. How thin is the line between what is real and what is imagined? My music dulls the sounds of reunions, departures, and stresses and I briefly consider maxing out my credit card and getting on a flight to Paris instead – denying my conscientious nature and living my life like a choose your own adventure book. Another time, perhaps. I board the flight, find a window seat, and prepare to spend the next 2.5 hours with my anxiety. I wonder who to text to let them know that I’m now safely secured in the gravity defying silver bullet that will somehow catapult us all through the air over mountains and rivers and deliver us unshaken and unharmed to a different landscape entirely. I wonder if I’ll ever belong to someone again. I wonder if I really even want to.
As we climb higher and Chicago becomes smaller, the light shines through the clouds at such a precisely right angle that suddenly I’m no longer afraid. I am able to breathe a little bit. I’m greeted with an actual rainbow over the Atlantic Ocean and a thousand islands as I land in Portland, and soon after that, a hug. I’m showered in kid love – a new feeling! – and reminded of why I came. We eat pizza and drink whiskey in my friends’ basement bar. My shoulders are able to relax some. I suddenly feel very single. So it goes.
I cannot stop staring at the natural beauty that surrounds my friends’ property. I see the wild nature in their beautiful children and consider my own rewilding. I feel something rising and getting louder in my chest that I don’t recognize. Heartbreak? Desire? Freedom?Will I carry this loud rising whatever it is feeling in my chest forever? Is it homesickness? Melancholy? How can I feel homesick when I don’t know where home is? I am overwhelmed. I slip upstairs to catch my breath.
But soon I’m sitting on the ground holding my friend’s sleeping baby girl at her brother’s first grade soccer game and staring at the clouds that are moving so much faster than clouds should ever move. The sun is warm and there is a chill in the air and I am able to just sit – to just be. I try to remember the last time that I had this luxury. My appreciation for my hosts grows deeper – their quiet, their steadiness, the ease with which they embrace me. I recognize this feeling and name it: the breathing room of old friends. They might not fully know you now, but they knew you then, and sometimes, that is better. I write live the questions now on a chalkboard in a bathroom at a coffee shop in downtown Bath, Maine.
We go hiking. I find myself at the top of a stone cliff much higher and steeper than I have ever climbed before. I see parts of myself in the sea. I watch it swell and decay and consider the natural progress of things. I am weary. I am weary of making things happen for myself but know now that that’s how all good things happen. I see a couple who have climbed this same cliff who seem content to just sit and stare at the water and not say a word. I long for this kind of stillness and peace. I wonder if I’ll ever fall in love again. I wonder if I’ll ever get married again. I wonder if anyone will ever love me the way that I want to be loved.
I’m in Maine but I can’t stop thinking about Rochester. I want to cry as the feeling swells up inside me. Whatever it is, it has to get out. It needs to be shared. I need it to be known. And I long for someone to look at all of my brokenness, at all of my anger, at all of my hurt and sadness and fear and tell me that it’s okay. That I am not broken and that I am more than my anger and more than my grief and more than my hurt and my hunger. And that maybe, just maybe, there is something else out there for me.
My old friend can probably see it. I realize then that I can still love with all of my hurt and all of my heart. Is this emptiness or just immense fullness that I am feeling? What is this longing? This hunger? When will it go away? How can I trust any of this when I can’t even see straight? Maybe we’ve all turned down a little mercy rings in my ears. It occurs to me that this is the end of knowing – the end of the things that I know. Everything is new. Everything is exacerbated. Everything is raw.
I take my big feelings home with me and resolve to feel them and stop thinking them. My heart is full and tangled but at least it is open. My legs are fatigued from playing soccer with my friend’s oldest son. My lungs are rejuvenated from the much fresher air. I wonder how many pieces my heart will be in the next time that I fly east, and who I will carry in my heart at that time. Will I see him everywhere, or will I see me everywhere? Is this just, in fact, a choice?
Can I choose to see me everywhere? Can I choose my own adventure? Is that the great lesson of this year?
small magic 
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