For Good/Bones
I left Philadelphia a month ago. I cried bitterly. Today I finally made it to my apartment, the final destination where I will be spending the next 10 months. I do not think I will cry bitterly today, but maybe later this week.
I have a song and a poem stuck in my head. The song is “For Good” from Wicked. I was thinking about what my former boss said when I told him about this opportunity. He told me that I would not come back the same person. I know that this is true, that this is a period of growth and that I cannot possibly come back the same person.
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better.
It’s not that I think I will come out of this worse or better or anything with a value assigned to it. I don’t usually take notes on life from hit musicals, although there is something to be said for living by the law of Legally Blonde. Truthfully, it is that I cannot imagine how I could be different. I will be an unknown different, not one that I have already identified and made into a goal like so many different versions of myself born of therapy and self-reflection. These thoughts are an undercurrent right now, as I try to adjust to the fact that I moved 7,500 miles away from the city I have come to call my home and now live on the 26th floor.
The poem is a well-known one: “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith. I don’t know any NPR fan who doesn’t know it or any mentally-ill college student who hasn’t printed it out. In my head, I keep repeating the last line, a line my brain has completely divorced from the context of the poem.
This place could be beautiful, right?
You could make this place beautiful.
I am having a very literal relationship to it. I must make this apartment beautiful. If it is not clean and beautiful and neat and well-investigated, I will not be comfortable. In the midst of so much uncertainty—in myself, in my new position, in my social circle, my ability to absorb any Mandarin—I need a bedroom that looks at least a little bit like me. Right now it needs a Magic Eraser and my belts are hanging on the wall by a hook with two cats on it. Not very much like me.
In some ways, I am trying to pretend that this situation will be over soon. Not because I am unhappy, but because in the short-term, coping mechanisms are needed. I do not think I will always feel this way, but right now it all feels just a little too daunting to face head-on. I feel ashamed about my overwhelm. I think that I should be taking it all in stride, moving forward with no fears or doubts. I should be intrepidly hopping on the metro and memorizing Chinese vocabulary and becoming everyone’s best friend. This shame comes back to haunt me in Eating Disorder World. I have been avoiding looking in mirrors for days.
I know that these feelings will pass and be replaced by new ones. I write about them not because I feel distressed or need help, but because I want to document them. In forty years there will be words and images that remain from this trip that won’t encapsulate the real highs and lows. They will be a blurry average of the things that stuck with me. But sitting in my brand new bedroom at 11 PM on the very first night, one month after I left my house and my cat and my city, I am feeling a little disoriented. And I would like to remember this part too.
