“Our eyes see change, inside, we're the same as we ever were.”
-The Kinks, Living on a Thin Line
As of tomorrow, I will have lived in D.C. for four months(College Park MD if you must, but being part of the metropolitan area I'm going to call it D.C.). It's been a half-odyssey of mixed blessings. That being said, I'm happier than I've been in years. Previously I lived in southern West Virginia for six years and the Pittsburgh area before that. Lengthy excursions to Columbus OH and Los Angeles were mixed in there somewhere. As many people from back wherever are asking how I like it here, I figured I would put it to summation here, now that I've been here long enough to really assess my new environment.
For all I expected and did not expect, this relocation has prompted far more than I ever anticipated it would. Parts of me which I previously hid are coming out, and parts of me I was previously praised for go largely unnoted. There is a sensation of trying to find my feet that accompanies these changes, but though I still stumble occasionally, I am increasingly confident that I am making this adjustment with as much grace as can be expected.
It's hard to really compartmentalize the pros and cons—the world has essentially been turned inside out and while there has been an awakening akin to what I expected, it goes far beyond what I thought would be the case in almost every way. Life never ceases to confront me with new challenges, and offer previously-unconsidered rewards.
When I was at Marshall University in Huntington, WV, I felt largely like I could never really be myself. There was almost a culture of non-expression which permeated the place. I always felt I was pushing the borders of what was acceptable ambition but regarded by some as naive aspiration.
On one hand, a person was supposed to create an identity which was unique and enticing to others, but it was all supposed to be within a specific set of cultural guidelines. Being smart and accomplishing things was good, but it was all supposed to be plotted along carefully-drawn, preexisting trajectories: finishing school and working was good, realizing you're in the asshole of the world filled with problems no one is interested in actually fixing was bad. Opposing Mountaintop Removal meant you were a concerned, progressive citizen—understanding and being passionate about Israeli-Palestinian relations was met with silence and half-remembered punditry. “Do all you can, young man, but do it here, and seek not to concern thyself with what occurs beyond these borders.” Love it, but don't leave it, even in thought.
That sentiment may be the antithesis of who I believe I am.
I love D.C., I love being surrounded by people who don't admonish me for thinking too much or trying too hard to accomplish things. I love hearing a dozen languages in the streets when I walk around. I love living in a place where I need never see the same faces if I don't wish to. I love feeling surrounded by people who always want more out of the precious, brief life they are given. Before I felt only stagnation, here I feel only the great thrum of humanity, threatening to rattle itself apart before each day begins.
In Huntington I was told something like “Here is your sandbox, build the most elaborate castle you can. Make it fine and call all within earshot to come see your grand work, nevermind that the beach is nearby where people build (and destroy) things larger and grander than the sandbox every day. Those beach-people have no interest in our sandbox. Nevermind the sand in the box is caked with shit no one seems interested in cleaning up because that would be being untrue to the spirit of Appalachia, whatever that means. Celebrated ignorance, celebrating the defeat of a stereotype but not actively seeking to dispel it.
That being said, I do miss things about Appalachia.
As stifled as I felt in West Virginia, there was a place for honesty there, and remembering and acting in the pursuit of nothing more than a good evening. I miss it being completely okay to spend a day wanting nothing more than to enjoy the company of others. There was a rawness to socialization there, a warmth in seeing the same people and having relatively little to discuss in the way of new developments. I miss meeting strangers and never discussing what we did by day, only what we wanted to accomplish in the short-term of the evening where we met. As alien as I felt in my six years in Appalachia, there was a comfort there that I grew accustomed to.
As much as I love meeting beautiful, brilliant, witty people here, I do miss people I had far less in common with—people I would never connect with on an existential level, but people who I could remain in the company of for an evening and feel we were friends, not colleagues or allies. It seems everywhere I go I am relegated to describing my interactions with others to tapping on glass. People in Appalachia didn't connect with my mind, but people here don't connect with my heart. Perhaps all feel this way in times of great change.
That being said, I much prefer my current surroundings. I also look forward to the day when this inane prefacing can give way to more humorous entries.
What is it like here socially? It's a lot like meeting people for the first time again and again. In comparison, we speak more of what we do rather than what we want to make manifest. We exist largely in constructed discourses of interaction. Previously, we lived largely in discourses of non-action.
I don't doubt that I will eventually fully adjust to life here (check back in 3 months), but right now this transition is giving me time to really explore my best laid plans. I feel I'm coming across as lamenting the reality of the situation, where I feel I'm actually transitioning (not painlessly) to a reality which suits my character far better than the previous one.
An old friend of mine recently moved here as well. She's admittedly experiencing extreme culture shock—I feel I kind of bypassed that stage, but at the same time I can empathize with the larger, more ambiguous realities she's only beginning to catch the edges of. She's unlearning old reactions, where I was ready to and willing and grateful to abandon them but am unsure what to put in their place.
My roommate is also new to the area, and experiencing similar feelings. He and I are very different, but experiencing a conceptually similar ordeal (which is probably not clearly defined to the people reading this). He's a native northern Virginian who spent his past five years in California. We're alike in demeanor and unlike in our ambitions. Like me, he's finding it shockingly hard how difficult it is to build a social circle here—we're both generally likable, reasonably funny, well-adjusted modern people who are finding trouble carving where we expected the clay to yield with ease. Many Thursdays, when the week is finished, we sit at our kitchen table and drink ourselves into oblivion (or at least sub-oblivion) until the thin hours of the morning. Once we even sat up (drinking) til 8am the following day (thank god Carlo Rossi jugs last a long time). While we both feel temporarily alienated here, I'm having the time of my life as he sinks into depression. There is camaraderie in the things we feel, but our reactions to it are opposed. I'm basking in the transitions here where he is lamenting them. I can't say much more on what he feels, but it is comforting having another person recognize the metamorphosis we are both caught in.
I wish he shared my optimism, but I recognize we are coming from previous circumstances which are as distant from each other conceptually as they places we've come from are geographically. Perhaps this is more a reflection on our previous satisfaction (or lack there of, in my case) more than anything. That, after all, is where we differed most.
Stagnation has long been among the things I loathed most, and finally being free of it I recognize that the world beyond that yolk expands continuously, it does not shift into a shape that welcomes. We have to make it such.
Ultimately, there is no “right” place. There are no ideal circumstances which allow us to flourish into a readily-discernible portrait of our idealized self. We have to get by on fortune of occurrence; the heavy moments come no matter where we may be, and when they come we have to seize them, but apart from that we need grace as well. We need the simple luck of saying the right things when it's warranted to make connections which are meaningful. Whether it be hillbilly entrenchment or infinite passing identity which lies before us, we need that alchemy of initiative and fortune to bring about meaningful connections with human beings. These moments are rare, but bear infinite potential (that dangerous word).
The older we get the more we grow, and the more difficult it is to share ourselves and connect with another human being. I think we largely become caricatures, shouting the basest of our being on others without being able to provide the context to make it appreciable. Whether we're in West Virginia or what may be the most international, intellectual city in the world, our range of personal interaction is ultimately very small. While different places may provide different opportunities and color different mindsets, in the end we are all the same in that way.
I've always believed the world was too large for any one person. We have to carve our own tiny niche where things can be as we'd love them. Sometimes we can share the space with a person or two, but finding where to carve it and whether or not to share it is the hardest part, and it's beyond all of us to simply will into existence. We mustn't be slaves to some future, never-realized reality. We have to look around us and treat every season of life as if it is the crescendo. It is only by doing this that we may guarantee our continued, steady, stumbling rise.
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