How’s your autumn treating you? Mine has been tumultuous.
My partner and I split up. I quit my job. Obama actually won the election. I moved from Asheville to Carrboro. And I got a new job. In that order.
Each of those sentences is probably worth its own post but I’m not interested in writing about the first two, and the rest are just ridiculous. My mom always asks, when I tell her about whatever recent preposterousness I’ve created for myself, if I am happy. She expects a yes or no answer but I don’t know why. Hasn’t she known me long enough to know I am incapable of answering any question with anything but “It depends.”
When I first moved to Asheville for college, it was a revelation. My hometown was quiet, small, and asleep. My community was conservative. Fresh out of adolescence, I saw my family from a perspective still raw from the wounds of growing up. College was my first chance to escape the unbearable pressure of living up to expectations I did not understand. Some people drink. Some escape themselves with drugs. I went to college and I never came back.
Asheville is about as far as you can get, idealogically, from the place where I grew up. I love the mountains, the trees, the unbridled enthusiasm of its young residents. The easy truce between the free spirits and the retirees reminds me not to give up on finding common ground with my family and with those I am even less compatible. There is an abundance of joy, love, and activism that spreads far beyound the college itself that keeps me in balance when my reflex is to resist change, resist interaction with other people, or accept disappointment. Asheville is an optimistic town.
I called it home for almost a decade. Like many residents I fought tooth and nail to stay, despite a dismal job market and very little money. I even sojourned to graduate school in a city to gain more ammunition–a master’s degree–in my battle to stay. Every time I thought of leaving, I worried that I’d never be able to come back. So many friends had gone away and tried to return, only to be rebuffed by the town’s mercurial whims. I worried that, should I leave the only place that’s ever felt like home, I would be homeless anywhere else I lived.
Maybe it’s the first step toward the conservatism that comes with growing up, but the fight to stay in Asheville became exhausting. My job had become a series of compromises that left me with no energy to enjoy my life outside of work. The fear of losing the job paralyzed me, and there weren’t many other places to work that would be any more stimulating. I started thinking about leaving.
Friends who still lived in Asheville and those who’d been forced to move all thought I was nuts. How could I, who had so often and so vocally exalted the mountains, contemplate leaving? I had no answer. I still don’t. I needed to leave. I miss it already. My compass points to Asheville. I may never be able to go home again but I by god will always be able to find my way there.
I live in the woods now in Carrboro. It’s fall here just like it is in Asheville. From my balcony I can reach out and touch oak leaves that are the deepest red when backlit by the sun. There are more dogs than I can count in my apartment complex. I am rediscovering the peace and joy that comes with solitary living. My cat seems more like himself–curious and talkative–than he has in years. The spirit of this town reminds me a lot of Asheville.
I feel like I’m riding the limitless possibility of Obama’s coattails. I start my new job on Monday. I’ve been congratulated and welcomed by pizza delivery people, gas station attendants, and parents of residents in my apartment complex. I’m getting a dog. I am making this place my own.
