Running from joy
And other things I am trying to stop doing.
Happy Monday Folks,
I had every intention of writing this post over the weekend, as well as catching up on all the other life tasks I need to do, so that it could hit your inbox early Monday morning, and I would, for once, not feel so behind in everything. I had also blocked out Saturday and Sunday to finally push over the 10K word threshold of this novel rewrite and really make some headway— all things that make me generally feel better about myself as a person. Then the weather was weird, and I got sick, and my house needed to be deep cleaned, and I needed groceries, and there were emails to be sent and errands to be run, and all this is to say that 1) it is very hard to do life alone sometimes and 2) something always has to give, whether that is me or the work. Sometimes, as I am learning here, it is both.
Today I want to talk about keeping busy as an act of avoidance, along with all the ways in which that has become normalized in urban life— and with that, the myth that life in rural spaces is a way to exit the “rat race” of capitalist production. How many stories have we seen of urbanites who abandon the city for a slower life, seeking rest, seeking presence? It is nearly every Hallmark movie; it is Walden; it is the homesteaders on Instagram, all of whom promote rural life as if it exists outside the boundaries of modernity, allowing one to find a true self that might evade them otherwise.
I’m interested in this not only because I myself bought into that myth for years, but also as someone deeply invested in Southern Studies, where the idea of the American South as an “agricultural paradise” that existed in opposition to the urban, industrialized North has allowed this region to overlook a variety of social abuses over the years. Rooting this place in the narrative of paradise allows it to become imbued with a deep sense of nostalgia— one that, in turn, allows many residents to forget about all the pain and bloodshed on this soil and instead look at it as an expanse ripe for growth. And sure, yes, there is renewal to be found, but it is almost impossible to sow new life in a place saturated with so much death, at least not without recognizing and acknowledging that past first.
I struggle often with the idealization of this place and this region; it is one I spent most of my life hating, and then, with distance, fantasizing, and now I find myself struggling to reconcile the two. It’s like I flip between two extremes: wanting nothing more than to be here and wanting only to be anywhere else. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the idea that home must inherently be someplace that lends comfort, that lends joy. In the last six years, I have lived in five countries, three states, six apartments, one cabin, and a variety of other people’s homes. I’ve found joy and pain and hopelessness and connection in all of them. I don’t know that I have ever found true home in any of them, at least not if we believe that home is a place that you are meant to feel instantly at ease in.
This led me to thinking about my broader home, which will always be the South, and the places I have felt comfortable here. If I have found ease, it has only been in strange places: the middle of forests, my car on an empty highway in the middle of the night; a friend’s backyard. It’s never explicitly been things tied to the place itself. Or, if it has, if comfort has come out of recognition, out of repetition, out of allowing myself to know and be known in a place— then it has become somewhere I have almost immediately left. Always I have gone in search of the new, of the discomfort, believing that in the right place I would know instantly that it was home. I would find the joy easily; it would settle into place, and myself with it.
It’s felt the last three weeks as though I have gone through a complete change as a person. The minute I felt comfortable with who I was, everything shifted again; there has never been a stable ground. Good. I’m learning how to find that ease within myself, that home in my own body, and furthermore, I am beginning to unpack all the ways in which I have resisted it. In which I have never allowed myself to need anyone, or to let others get close enough to truly need me. How I have never held myself to a place, have always kept leaving in my back pocket like an escape route. I’ve always held on to an idealization of somewhere else, because holding on to that meant I couldn’t get hurt by here. If I never truly loved anything, then nothing could ever be lost.
In my time in cities, I longed for the rural; I ached for trees and wide expanses, convincing myself those things would cancel out the gaping expanse within me that really only wanted community but was deeply afraid of being known in that way. That wanted community to find me, rather than having to put in the work to build it myself. I imagined that when I finally left the city I would have the same story as everyone else: surely, I thought, this was where I was meant to be. Surely I would find my people, finally, at last. It was the urban that was not for me— all of this sorrow was a solvable problem. But I have been as lonely in the midst of trees as I have in the midst of concrete. I have spent years and years running from joy everywhere I have gone because there is nothing more terrifying to me than putting down roots. Even here, even now, I find myself growing panicked when I think about how deeply I have tied my work to this region, how it feels I can never leave it behind, even if I have no true desire to.
Queer studies often talks about this feeling in relation to compulsory heterosexuality, and how, when you realize you don’t fit traditional relationship structures, there is a type of deep sorrow associated with that loss. It is the loss of all the myths and stories you have been told up until that point, all myths and stories we were told would make us happy. When you lose those, you face a widening expanse just waiting to be filled. It’s full of possibility as much as terror. Few of us truly want to rewrite the way we live, or, if we do, we have no idea where to begin. Nor do we want to do it alone. I feel similarly about rewriting my romantic relationships as I do about rewriting my relationship to place, and home. It’s a slow going, painful process. But the longer I run from it, the longer I try to evade, picturing my life in another city, another country, another place, the more I feel isolated from who I truly am— the more I run from joy, and keep it at arms reach in front of me. This process of avoidance has allowed me to become the most active participant in self-sabotage in my life. It has allowed me to exit when things get difficult or challenging or when people get too close. It has protected me at a cost that has made life isolating, lonely, and lacking of true depth.
Recently, this Rainer Maria Rilke quote from Letters to a Young Poet was shared with me, and I have been thinking about it since:
We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us. If there are dangers, we must try to love them, and only if we could arrange our lives in accordance with the principle that tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us to be alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races—the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you larger than any you’ve ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and everything that you do. You must realize that something has happened to you. Life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
What frightens me the most is what needs the greatest love. For me, these days, it is the possibility of joy— and the subsequent fear of losing it— that scares me the most. The only way around that is through, to love what might be lost harder than anything else in my life. It is to give myself over to this place and its people, to believe that loving it can lead to greater change. It is to stop running from the people who have demonstrated care towards me, the people who have proven they want to be in my life, and that they want me in theirs. It is to make amends to all the people I have hurt in the name of self-protection. It is to stop running from joy. Most of all, it is to stop believing that true joy is possible in isolation, that it can be found without the help of others along the way.
It also means to not shut out feeling, good and bad. That’s easier said than done, but if there is anything this project is teaching me, it’s that we need one another to survive, even when loving one another hurts. Even when it doesn’t go the way we want it to. Even when the future feels helpless and lost, we can’t look back; we can only love one another and look forward. That doesn’t mean living in fantasy; it simply means seeing things as they are, and choosing not to be afraid of them. We cannot make any real progress, whether individual or otherwise, if we refuse to recognize what lies before us— the beauty as well as the pain. We are all hurting. We are all healing. I don’t want to do any of this alone anymore. What might a life look like where I run towards joy, and to the people who bring me joy? What then?
I don’t yet have the answer to that question, but I’m certainly interested in finding out. I hope you’ll join me.
FIVE THINGS THAT BROUGHT ME JOY THIS WEEK
I’m back on my Indigo De Souza kick. This song is incredible:
Writing always, always, always brings me joy:
The incredible people this project has brought me in contact with, who keep me creatively inspired, and bring large amounts of joy, connection, and community to my life.
This Yo La Tengo song, which sounds like what I think leaning into joy feels like:
Do yourself a favor: go buy rainbow Christmas lights and then string them up all around your house. It’s hard to be sad when everything is lit up and colorful.
so, so beautiful. and my breath caught in my throat when i got to that Rilke excerpt - i have the exact one hanging over my workspace!
This essay really resonated with me. Thank you so much for sharing!