A profound conversation happened a couple of days ago, and it took me the following couple of days to work up my strength to dive into the feelings and concepts it brought up for me. As I sat having brunch with one of my dearest friends, we talked about the process of deciding our futures, of choosing the next steps in our life paths. To put the situation in context for you, let me explain that this friend--and her family--came into my life during my first year on the East Coast, at a time when I was feeling extremely lonely and lost in New York. Spending time in a house with a loving family helped heal my constantly rupturing relationship with New York City.
As I decide what is next after graduation, family is always in my mind. I have spent the last four years away from my family, constantly struggling with the tension between "doing me" and the understanding that being me is dependent on my relationship with my familia. I always say that family is the most important thing, but do my actions reflect that? How do I put family at the center of my lifestyle, while also being the most engaged and productive "me" in society?
Overwhelmed with guilt and pain spurred by the physical distance between us, I did what I always do when I'm feeling off: I called my mama. I told her about the conversation, and about my fears that something terrible will happen in my absence, or that amazingness is happening in my absence...the point being that I am absent. She listened patiently, then challenged my notions on being close. She doesn't feel that I am as far away as I am. I call several times a day, and do my best to keep in touch. Even if I were living in California, she says, I would be on my own tip, and most likely not home with the family as much as I am romanticizing in my mind.
I hung up the phone soothed. But every minute that I spend pondering my future, family lingers. Can I be truly happy so far from them? And if I am staying to engage in education work, or justice-based work, why not take my degree back home? No doubt that work is needed in the city that brought me up. Don't I owe it to Oakland? But then, what else do I owe to myself? There are tens of people in my life in New York who feel like my soul's family. Though we are not blood-bound, the thought of leaving them now breaks my heart a little, too. As I have traveled the country and the world, counting my blessings and bonding with new spirits, it has become harder and harder to leave each place, and harder and harder to know where--and when--to stay.
