You Are Here
Notes on place.
Hello Folks,
A few months ago I took myself to a live taping for the Oxford American Points South podcast, held in downtown Durham, which at the time I had just moved to. I remember sitting in the room, listening to the conversation between artist Clarence Heyward and musician Jenn Wasner, feeling as though, finally, I had found the right place for me. I had spent all this time looking for home, thinking it would appear to me suddenly, and that when it did, I would recognize and know it as a place of my own. More than that, I was sure this mythical place would unlock a sense of home in my own body, allowing me to finally feel at ease within it. In the right place, I could become the version of myself I had always been meant to; I just had to find where that place was.
The podcast taping was held in Durham’s 21C hotel, and after the recording, guests were invited to browse the art galleries that also take residence there. Somewhere on one of the floors, I turned a corner and came across a painting on the wall. You Are Here, it read, the here in a small star as if a point on a map. Looking at it, alone in this city where I knew no one, I thought to myself, Yes. I am here.
Later, I would post the photo to Instagram alongside a series of photos I had taken of my life: a sunrise over the beach, the light through my window, green trees and green rivers and the reflections of my friends within their surface. I am here. It felt like a mantra, a reminder to be alive, to be a person in the world, something I am starting to think I have always been deeply afraid of. I’ve lived a whole life in transience. If I refuse to put down roots, to depend on people and places and allow them to depend on me, then I have no escape route. I can’t up and leave at any moment, which I have always kept in the back of my mind as a coping mechanism. Until recently, I hadn’t processed the consequences of this internal need for abandonment, or rather the fear of permanence, though I think it has been with me all my life, revealing itself in my anxiety about relationships, my avoidance of therapy, my need to move cities every year. If I stay in motion, then I can never be pinned down; if I can never be pinned down, I can never be hurt.
This is no way to live a life. I think often of my family, many of whom have stayed in the same place for generations. It is unimaginable to me to live this way, and yet, I wonder if it is all I want, to have this kind of home to return to. I was born on the opposite coast of where I was raised, my parents split across the country; I have never known which home to claim as my own. I wrote recently about my relationship to home, and the ways in which I have run from it all my life, while also wanting nothing more than for it to reveal itself to me. These days I find myself worried about leaning too much into home, wondering if I have tied myself to a place forever, wondering how I could ever leave it, and being afraid of that type of permanence. It feels lasting; it has roots. I am so afraid sometimes that those roots will suffocate me as much as they will ground me in place.
In the wake of the Club Q shooting last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about home and safety. My relationship to the South has meant that it’s always been home, but not one that necessarily wants to be my home. How do you call a place home knowing that so many of the people within it want you gone? I have no close friends from growing up here; I have cut ties with everyone who knew me. This feels like protection, the same way it makes me wonder if there was ever a place for me here, if I am forcing myself into a space. I love this land; it has raised me in good and bad ways. But there are some here who do not want to share a home with people like me. Home does not always provide safety. It can hurt as much as it can heal.
As I write this, I am sitting in a coffee shop in the city where I lived as a teenager. I am looking out the window at the palm trees swaying in the wind, afraid that any moment someone I know is going to walk through the door. Every time I return here I feel like I am twelve years old again, walking through the door of my new school, wanting to be loved. I’m looking at the grey sky and the bright purple paint of the building across the street and I am thinking how I cannot wait to return to the trees and trails of the state I have called home for both the last few years and the first half of my life. I am thinking how that place has given me roots to stand on and the ability to uncover myself anew, to make myself in a place that did not have awareness of me before. There’s freedom in that; there’s a reason American narratives of rugged individualism almost always take place in the woods. The landscape doesn’t judge. The trees won’t hurt me, at least not in the same ways other people might.
Sometimes, I find myself thinking about leaving this place. I fear I’ve grown too attached to it, that this attachment will hurt me somehow. That I cannot love somewhere like this and hold on to it. I end up on Zillow, looking at homes in places far away. I dream of a fresh start in a place where my existence here would not feel like such a fight. Then I think of all the changes that have happened here because of those who made the decision to stay, who did not turn their back when things got difficult. Nothing about life on this earth is ever necessarily easy, no matter where you go. Home is not a place but a feeling you have to cultivate and carry around within you. I do not want to walk away from what I love because of the fear that it might not love me back. I will not.
When I get like this, I find myself repeating those same words: You Are Here. You are here, and it is beautiful. You are here, and it is terrible. You are here, and it hurts and it heals and it makes you feel everything and nothing all at once. You are here, and in this moment, there is no one who can take that away. I cannot tell you what the next moment holds. I cannot tell you where we go, what we do. But for now— even if just for right now— we are here.
The world will change. It will go on, with or without us. Isn’t there a kind of comfort in that? We are here for only a moment in time. But we are still here. I don’t want to take that for granted any longer.
I’ll leave you with the words of Octavia Butler: “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”
Prompt Of The Week:
Choose one spot from which to observe the world. This could be inside a cafe, in your backyard, on a university campus, etc. Bring a notebook and set a timer for thirty minutes. Observe the world as it moves around you. What changes? What stays the same? Remind yourself that though you are the silent observer in this moment, you deserve to hold space in the world.
Five Things That Brought Me Joy This Week:
I sent this poem to everyone I know last week:
This one too, by Saeed Jones. Absolutely beautiful: Just a look at the crowd, / all dressed up and swaying outside, made people / want to yell the truth about themselves to anyone / who’d listen, but no one heard.
I think this is one of the greatest love songs of all time:
I added 20K words to the novel draft in the last ten days, and I’m slightly in shock, but also very excited. This is my 6th year participating in National Novel Writing Month, and it was brought to my attention that I have written nearly 400,000 words for this challenge since I was fifteen. Pretty cool.
Good Folk is now on Instagram, after I refused for over a year to join. I can’t say I’m thrilled about it, but our graphics do look quite pretty, to be honest. Follow us here, who knows what we’ll get up to…
I'm so glad to find another person as obsessed about place as I am. This was fun to read. Thank you.