There's No Place Like...

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

- M. Scott Peck

The month of July begins to come to an end and August knocks on summer’s door. Time passes as it always has, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, propelling me forward into a future that seems undeniably uncertain. I struggle with my transition, missing the Second City with each beat of my heart, silently counting down the days until I can once again call Chicago home. I wander through the city of Atlanta and feel like a visitor, a trespassing city boy stuck in a smorgasbord of rural molasses. I absentmindedly search for love in the acquisition of things but find that the black hole inside of me has yet to get any smaller.

Evidently Mercedes doesn’t make band aids.

So in the early morning hours as the airport begins to awaken, I sit and think and type. I yearn for an emotional revelation, a sudden calming of my animated subconscious. I hope and pray that with each click of my Japanese keyboard I might somehow find myself closer to the solace that seems to have been lost in my move. I reread things I’ve written about rehab and the early days of sobriety, words that helped soothe the pain that radical change brings with it. I read the struggle I went through and can still feel the tenacity I used to keep my feet shuffling forward.

Still though, I am deeply uncomfortable.

Because even though long ago I vowed to never, ever live a life of mediocrity, the sacrifice of comfort that comes with the pursuit of happiness can sometimes be all too painful. Change can be all too painful.

In Atlanta, things move more slowly, time moves more slowly. I constantly think about where I am and where I want to be and come to the conclusion that I need to work harder, to work faster, to work longer. Because there are really only two fundamental choices in life: choosing to accept the way things are, or choosing to change them.

So I choose to change them. I choose to not give up, to not grow complacent, to accept change and antagonize it when I can.

Marylyn Ferguson once wrote that “It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear… It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.”

Right now Linus’s blanket dries and I contemplate spending the nickel and asking Lucy for some advice. I don’t know the next move and the uncertainty of which direction I should lean has me catching a few punches on the chin. I’m discontented with where I am. I’m hungry. I’m restless. I feel the growl of the pitbull inside me and my veins pulse with oxygenated blood. I attack the gym with a ferocity that had lately been dormant and hit the heavy bag until my knuckles bleed and my arms shake with exhaustion. I push myself through the pain, through the walls that stand before me, hoping, praying, wishing that I could fast forward to the time when I’ve grasped all that I’ve reached for. But I know that this thing, this life that has me laughing and crying and wondering isn’t a destination, it’s a journey, a long walk down an unpredictable road.

These last two and half years have gone by in the blink of my sometimes black eye. I’ve been chasing my childhood around, never quite catching it, but chasing it nevertheless. I chase it because I miss it, because like so many others around me, I didn’t know how good it was until it was gone, I didn’t know how much it meant until it transitioned into a distant memory.

Change is hard and when I think about it, I know it always will be. There’s comfort in habits, in familiarity, in the commonality found in friends. There’s a part of me, of everyone, that know that when Dorothy clicked her heels three times and spoke those infamous words, that she was absolutely right. There’s no place like home.

Even when it’s changed.