Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.
"In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost."
--Dante, The Inferno, Part I of The Divine Comedy
Canto I, lines 1-3
Today marks 11 years since I moved to Vermont. It is a remarkable place. The landscape is stunning; I live just yards from the lake, flanked by two spectacular mountain ranges. The political environment is progressive, and even the conservative Vermonters keep out of their neighbors' business. I came here having visited only once, for five hours, in transit to Quebec. I moved here several months later, leaving my beloved Hawaii behind forever, fleeing a devastating trauma. I felt I could be safe in Vermont, and I have been.
And yet I now find myself in a dark wood, feeling lost, in the middle of a journey that has been terribly hard. Unlike Dante, I have no Virgil to guide me. And I am so tired of wandering through the forest alone.
You--my fellow Kossacks--have been valuable companions...guides out there in the digital ether, pixels from afar helping to animate and energize my spirits when they have sagged over the past 16 months. And I thank you for that.
But perhaps making so many wonderful connections here has highlighted how few meaningful connections I have formed in 11--eleven--years here in Vermont. For the first few years, I admit, I was so shell-shocked that I recoiled from interacting with new people. I talked regularly only with my mother, my sister and my young nephews. Since they live elsewhere, my human contact was primarily over the phone. (My mom lives in Quebec during the summer, so I did see her then.)
My beloved sister had given me shelter for five months between Hawaii and Vermont, when I literally had no place else to turn. She and my four- and six-year-old nephews shared their tiny two-bedroom apartment with me in Texas. And they shared the simple routine of their daily lives: getting ready for school, doing homework, playing, going to soccer practice, fixing supper, getting ready for bed. I was a deeply wounded animal when I arrived on their doorstep. More than anything, those months living with them started to heal me.
But when I was ready to venture out into the world here in Vermont, and start trying to make friends, it just didn't seem to happen. My work as a writer is part of it, I'm sure. It is a solitary life, by definition. And when I do interact with people in my professional role, there is usually a power imbalance. My position as a journalist makes it inappropriate to form friendships--much less relationships--with people I cover.
My personality is accessible and seemingly extroverted. So what gives? Is it that most people in their 30s and 40s are already settled into relationships and circles of friends, and aren't interested in making room for someone new? Is a single woman in that age category somehow threatening?
I don't know the answers. I just know I can't go through life and figure out things and find answers alone anymore. My sister has her own family. My mom has hers--she's happily remarried now. Is it so wrong to want someone to share the rest of my journey with? Life has been a tricky hike through the woods so far. I was actually told in my mid-twenties: "Your journey ends here, girl." My defiance kicked in, and I fought. I fought so hard to survive. And I did survive.
And now I'm tired of doing it all alone. You--my pixelated Kossack friends--do help. But you're not here to hold my hand when I'm feeling weak. To dry my tears, when they won't stop falling. To hold me with strong arms. Because mine don't feel strong enough to hold myself up alone any longer.
For those of you who have indulged my self-indulgence and read this far, I offer this gift: a favorite Pablo Neruda poem.
There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,
and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,
to one drop of blue salt, falling.
O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,
magnetic transient whose death blooms
and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:
broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.
You and I, Love, together we ratify the silence,
while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,
collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:
because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,
galloping water, incessant sand,
we make the only permanent tenderness.
--IX, from 100 Love Sonnets, translated by Stephen Tapscott