Going Wild in the Age of Worry
Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what ya got til' its gone...
I hate to quote two songs before I even say what I’ve got to say— but here I am in the throes of an intentional life upturning and these words (specifically the Yebba cover of Age of Worry and the Counting Crows cover of Big Yellow Taxi) echo in my mind as I’m living alone for the first time (and an ocean away from all I’ve ever known.)
Someone important in my life always speaks of the jarring “power of jet engines to completely rip apart families and love and all we’ve ever known.” This sounds gloomier than the state of complete delight I spent the last days in South Carolina in. The closure I wasn’t able to find post-graduation (think piece on the trauma and grief caused by exploitation from your academic institution to come on another day) was a gift in the form of sweet goodbyes and well-wishes from the people who’d meant so much to me over the past few years.
The typical strange motley of excitement for the unknown and grief for what I was leaving behind came soon after. My mom definitely has an album’s worth of photos of me red and puffy-eyed as I said goodbye to her. But even with an ache for my family and the familiarity of home, it is strange to finally be where you’ve imagined yourself for so long and to feel like it is right— and funnier to look back and recognize the feelings of dread that made you procrastinate as hints of landing exactly where you were meant to be all along. This time last year, I was working with my advisors to prepare an application for the only post-grad opportunity I’d end up applying for: the scholarship that would land me exactly where I am. I’d meant to apply to PhD programs and just see where I landed, but a nagging feeling kept me letting the clock drain, and somehow I advanced through the interview stages of the Mitchell until it was November and I got a call saying I would be at Queen’s in Belfast in the fall.
It’s now been two weeks of waking up in the middle of the night and almost thinking I were right back in my room in my dad’s house in South Carolina only to realize I am, in fact, an ocean away. I am unsure that the reality has truly sunk in. I have spent most days figuring out where to buy basic living necessities and then walking home with my Baggu’s digging into my shoulders or hands too much from the weight. Some days I have felt adventurous and energetic enough to run around the city scoping out the different parks as I’m base-building for 20 fast approaching weeks of marathon training. I love the way people occupy green space here— alone or with friends, park patrons splay out in the grass like its sand on the beach. Some bring books or card games or nothing at all, but it is the one space that I rarely see a phone. In the evenings, I cook myself some attempt at a real-adult-meal (TM) and watch Abbott Elementary on a VPN.
My days have a lot of space for solitude, which I find more healing than lonesome after living in a space where social interaction was constant. The reoccuring lesson of my young adulthood, which I have struggled to truly grasp, has been all about balance, in its many and varied forms (work and rest; simplicity and complexity; solitude and socialization, etc.) I am learning how to listen to the needs of my mind and body and grant myself the space to do what I need and want versus contorting myself to fit external ideas about how someone my age should spend their time and energy. But overall, as my first day of class creeps closer (the whole queen dying thing has left my first day of class cancelled and summer feeling a bit too long), I feel a bit more settled with each day.
This past weekend, I got the chance to go down to Dublin for a Mitchell gathering. It feels good to feel anchored in a community of people sharing a similar experience, even if you are all geographically spread across a country. We spent the few days in Dublin walking to museums and fancy dinners and got to see a preview of Joyce’s Women with the writer, Edna O’Brien a few rows away in the audience.
On our last morning before training back up to Belfast, my friend, Sarah and I walked to St. Stephens Green to sit in the sun and read. Our warm-ish sunny days are numbered, so we make dateless plans to pull together our new friends in Belfast for at least a few picnics before it is cold, dark, and rainy every day. This morning stroll and quiet bench sitting morning with Sarah might’ve been my favorite activity since arriving on the island.
Surrounded by people enjoying the same moment in the sun that I was in one of the most romanticized cities in the world, I thought about home. As much as I struggle to feel a sense of (safe and true) community with my fellow southerners and feel a constant knot of dread in my belly when I think about the world I am inheriting, along with the toll it will take to be a community leader one day… I also find myself appreciating all the things that make me say, “Yes, I’m a Southerner.” I suddenly love the accidental twang in some of my words, my command of the word ‘y’all’ in any and all contexts, the history of resistance by the marginalized, and even the long way we still have to go…
I called originally called this experience my “Black Sabbatical” as a joke, but that’s actually what I hope this year is able to be. There is a tradition of Black thinkers who go abroad briefly, often as a retreat from the ails of racism and white supremacy which is so deeply embedded in our society.1 My desire to get out of the South is for exactly that reason too.
But I don’t really want to leave the South forever. I do not subscribe to the rhetoric that anyone with anything of value to the world must leave their hometown, and specifically should get out of the South. I’ve heard this straight out of the mouths of other Southerners (often ones who were able to be educated at elite universities outside of the South on someone else’s dime) and I understand where it comes from and the insecurities attached to it. But I’m also weary about what happens to our communities when we all retreat for some other paradise where we still have to fight the same fights only with different ugly heads.
Maybe now I am romanticizing and idealizing the South, but at the end of the day, I think it’s still worth fighting for. Douglass, Baldwin, others— in the end, they always come back. But for now, I am appreciating my home from afar— I am alive, smiling, going wild, and singing in the age of worry. One day, I’m sure I will be back. Afterall, I do agree with my t-shirt that says, “If you can’t see Paris Mountain, you’re too far from home.”
I also recognize and acknowledge the immense privilege I have in occupying this space & perspective.