Heavy Baggage

I arrived in New York, like many before me, with just two cheap suitcases and a heart full of hope and expectation. I thought I was traveling light.

Well, it turns out I brought a lot more baggage with me than I’d intended. Namely myself. If you are a crazy, confused, lunatic in Oakland, CA are you going to be a crazy, confused lunatic in New York, NY?!!! Not surprisingly, the answer is YES.

Dammit!!!

My mom always told me that that AA people had a term for when someone up and moved when the going got tough – they called it ‘pulling a geographic’. Though the logic of this frustrated me - especially all those times I longed to run away from everything - intellectually it made sense. However, I’d never tested it out myself. I’d stayed mired in the same place, dealing with relatively the same issues for over a decade. I didn’t have the courage to run too far from anything.

Now that I’m here over 3,000 miles away from ‘home’ (whatever, wherever that is anymore - that word seems sort of meaningless to me right now) I’m confronted with the less than thrilling reality that I’m still ME. I’m not some fearless, exotic new creature, suddenly popular, focused and ambitious. Nor is there a slough of lovely and charming men prostrating themselves in my path.

Still its good. I’m forced to take a long, honest look at myself, my thoughts and behavior patterns. Some things I’m seeing aren’t so pretty. Old ways of being that may once have served me well, or at the very least protected me, are no longer of use. It may be high time to change more than just my address...