In lieu of what my Dad calls my "expository weirdness", I decided to provide some thoughts and images from my six months to describe what is currently feels like to be "southbound".
Along the path to thirty, I had younger women say to me, "it doesn't really matter", "you're making such a big deal out of being thirty". After traveling for six months, I say to you all with pride, it is a really HUGE, beautiful, BIG deal to be a thirty year old woman.
While lounging at a recent 4 hour Greyslug bus layover in Charlotte, NC, I compared notes with an 18 year old from Burlington. Raging hormones? Check. Feel you need all the space in the world because you're at the height of your power? Check. Confused at what comes next? Check. Revolution comes around again at thirty.
Why is thirty so damn special? And why is my body and heart in such revolt? Why haven't I been granted the comfy couch of my young adulthood? Movies on Friday evening with the sweetie of my dreams...Hmmm, nah. All of a sudden people talk more about what "sign" you are, and start throwing terms at you like "saturn return". I feel like I crashed into thirty and am still sorting out what hit me. I wonder, could I have prepared myself for this?
(<- Your heroine, forced to sit in the middle aisle of an Atlanta-bound Greyhound)
At the latter end of my teens, I was filled with a sense of my own freedom, yet intimidated by the change my life was in for. My body and heart were in two different places. Now is no different. Out on the farm I dream of cultivating my own family, while my heart holds on to places, people, summer nights spent dreaming, two feet stretching out alone.
Except that at thirty, and alone, I am a spiritual being, and all along this journey I bare witness to evidence of this in other women. I started my own experience of this wisdom by moving to Providence, where I sought out Mary, running her own home and business. Laurie and I created living art in her kitchen in Washington, DC. I met Siyade, from Philly, confronting racism in her work and relationships, and making sense of new growth in her approach. And finally, in Tennessee, I meet a woman like myself, with a handful of songs and a few good chords on guitar, creating projects around a new identity. And me, halfway to or from home, and I've had my hands in the dirt, trying to unearth the creator, the mother in me. There's just something so special about thirty.
My grandmother recently told my mom she had heard I was in love. My mother, of course, corrected her, stating that she thought I had not met anyone. But I am so in love, Grandma! I'm in love with this new person I see in myself, the one who lets herself see the stars, nap in the heat of the afternoon, makes really good sweet potatoes. This one who speaks so many languages and dances. This one! She is just beginning to surface. I just met another woman turning thirty that came to Knoxville to get space from the end of a relationship. She described herself to me as "ridiculously happy". (<- Knoxville nightlife)
As I travel and meet people, my idea of love only expands. What are the elements of a good love story? Passion, compassion, fury and fire, release. What am I missing?
I used to think love is like the cities I visit. Places you can get lost in and be ready to investigate or be done with. They captivate, pursue and purchase your heart and interest.
Lovers leave you wandering and wanting and exhausted, tripping home up 6 flights of stairs. Intoxicated, you breathe them in and the possibilities liberate and loosen you until they convince you that you can ride on their backs for awhile until you lose yourself in their winding streets. Looking up, the world is endless. Looking down, dirty and used. Days when you feel lost in all their scraped skies. Days with hidden treasures, like coffee in a darling bookstore and you melt into yourself. People and cities are this untouchable and this beloved.
In Durham, I learned that I had more privilege to choose.
The women I met there are having children on their own, and creating wonderful relationships around their choices. Knowing I have more ability to choose gives me more freedom to fall in love. The community I discovered felt powered by women.
Knoxville, TN has rekindled so much of my passion and ability to let go. The farmland and mountains stirred my desires in ways I thought impossible in that stagnant heat. I awoke to be surprised again and again.
I looked at a job online the other day and had the courage to not even think about applying. I know I need more of the stars and the thick heat and this revolution.
My mom and I have been talking about "home" being an acronym. I have roots so thick I feel them sprouting underneath my toenails, but sometimes the lessons are little homes too. I am living in this lesson right now. You're welcome to knock on my door and visit, but don't ask me to move...not now. This house is not on the market.
My girl Alana called it right before I left. She explained my depression as a shrinking of my world, prescribing my remedy as a need to amplify my perspective. Maybe it is a privilege to think this way, but I would not have been able to heal my depression any other way. Anything else is a load in the dryer. Spin, spin, spin.
Southbound is no longer just a geographical concept to me. I left Maine that way, but I have changed my perspective. Y'all know when we refer to our body parts "going south", but what about our hearts melting into age and time until we are perfected beings? The south warms, thickens, exposes skin. I have always gone south to feel young and liberated. At thirty, I am documenting this awakening as I am documenting so many other types of revolution. It's only fair.
I welcome many more southbound nights of melting heat and lightning bugs in my lifetime.
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