jeez, louise

Sorry for no updates, I’ve been suspended in cartoon green Jell-O, jiggling through it all.

I’ve got bronchitis or something, I don’t know. My throat is upstate, my accent morphed into some taut-rubber band-twang. I’m drinking little pieces of God in the form of medicated cough syrup.

I’m leaving my job, moving further east and away from everything familiar. It’s odd to leave a place I hardly know, but that’s its own flavor of melancholy. Maybe lost opportunity, or like I didn’t give it enough of a chance? That’s the closest I can get, that perhaps I’m being too hasty because this new life I’m looking for just hasn’t come about yet. Part of me thinks that maybe it is all setting, all environment, and that I’ll shuffle and scoot until I fit right in from day one. I know that’s not the case and that I have very good reason for leaving, but still, it feels premature.

I had to let my kids know I’m leaving yesterday. We had a carnival of sorts beforehand for staff appreciation and I had my face done up like a sad clown because I thought it would be a hoot. And it was. But then I went to our staff meeting after, white face and painfully red lips still accompanying, and broke the news. They thought I was joking, which y’know, fair play, because I was doing the whole clown thing. But then they realized I was serious and they got quiet. Some left right after the meeting, some stayed behind to talk to me about it. I don’t like being the one to leave and I don’t like disappointing anyone. I really really like my kids, they’re all great and varied and have been the highlight of my time here. But it just doesn’t make sense to stay, career-wise at least.

When did I become the kind of moron that makes decisions based on his career? Where’d my spirit go?

But it was sad. And I’m not sure if it’s my advancing age or my solitary lifestyle or it’s just the emotion du jour, but everything is kind of sad recently. I guess more so, I see a lot of different ways things can go and get sad for the alternatives. I think about staying in Knoxville, giving my kids another five months, and going again. That would make them happier, but I chose the alternative. I know this is a super played out thought, it’s basically the titular quote from The Bell Jar.

But I’m just a little skewed towards sentimentality recently, which is new to me. Or maybe it’s old and just recently unearthed. Who knows.

I cried buying things off my friend’s registry. It was a weird feeling, the mundanity and spiritual emptiness of scrolling through an Amazon wish list intertwining with the idea that in one of the alternatives, I would have had an Amazon wish list, and on it would’ve been…. what? What would we have put on it? How did that conversation go? Was it a scheduled out sit down, was it a running list of things prompted by “Oh, that’d be nice to have.”? I don’t know, and I don’t particularly love thinking about it, but that was what was happening.

I’m not saying I wish the alternative was the case. I am glad I am not married, I am aware now more than ever that whatever the stuff is that constitutes a good husband is beyond me, reachable but not digestible. But sometimes, I look around at where I am and how I got here and where I could’ve been and where I’m going and I see each different present Me, who made different choices or took different jobs or studied different things, I see each of them sitting in their own little snow globe on my shelf, variations on a theme. And in each, I’m happy. That tells me enough about why I think about it – I’m sure you’ve picked up on that, too.

So when I think about leaving Knoxville, I can already see the Ryans I’ll look back at in a year. The one who stayed and the one who left, hoping that the one who leaves reflects on the one who remained and doesn’t envy his position.

I think it’ll be alright. Leaving is getting easier.