I was thinking about how it is the third anniversary of the time the tip of my thumb was bitten off by a dog in Vermont, but reviewing the memories in my pictures also reminded me that I have now lived in Rhode Island for 5 years. Even a little more than 5 years ago, you would ask me if I’d ever leave Oregon, and I would have honestly told you no. When I was younger, I had aspirations to move to New York City, Spain, or even farther away, but I had become resigned to living the rest of my life in Oregon. Oregon birthed me, and Oregon will take me back.
I am now driving around the smallest state in the country without GPS navigation. I know some of the secret spots. I have accepted Rhode Island as my home. Not without some reservations or even without judgment, but Oregon has changed so much, and I miss it greatly all the time; it is not the Oregon I grew up in. I know everywhere is changing, and before we know it, we won’t even know it used to be different.
I’ll never know what used to be where something now is here in Rhode Island, and if you ask for directions here, the locals will use past landmarks that are no longer there as points in their turn-by-turn navigation. Some of these landmarks haven’t been around for 20 or more years, but the locals have a harder time with change than anyone I have ever met. The place will always be what it used to be to them.
I get asked all the time, especially since my wife and I have separated, why do I stay? Other than the fact that my wife and I share custody of our floppy doo-doos, Rufus, I have some other reasons I love Rhode Island. The number one reason is that when I moved here, I didn’t really know anyone. I knew a few people up in Boston and even less people down in New York, so I was walking into Providence without knowing a soul, and using the wisdom of what I had learned from all the assholes that moved to Portland and had a hard time fitting in, I put a lot of effort, energy, and sacrifice to create a group of friends here, and while I have a lot of friends and family back in Oregon, it is hard to keep up relationships far away.
I took what I might call my first grown-up job, where I am collecting retirement, covered by a livable wage (though the economy keeps making it harder and harder for that), and something I can grow in. Not a job of passion, but later this year, I will be turning 50, and I can’t be running around retail jobs and coffee shops and whatever other ‘cool’ jobs I might want for sociable reasons. It has provided me stability, though sometimes challenging and does take some swings at my mental health; I have less worry about my finances and benefits. Since I have gone from invincible to struggling medically, I need to make sure I am taken care of. Cancer still casts its long shadow across my life, as it did this past week. Giving up the job to move back when I wouldn’t guarantee to find something to take care of me there would be financially, medically, and emotionally risky, to say the least. One of the reasons my wife and I stay married is so she can also have health insurance.
And even without the social issues of being in a newer place and long enough away from the old place to become a stranger to it again, I have become really comfortable in my solitude. I have enjoyed my alone time more than ever before, and sometimes need to remind myself to go out to avoid going too long without company. I think that this isn’t just from aging, but from a lot of work in therapy and twelve-step work. Trying EMDR really helped my anxiety, PTSD, and even some of my depression. Taking myself out of the familiar moss-covered rainforests of Oregon and into the swampy coastal bays of Rhode Island really made me take a hard look at myself and realize I needed to make some internal changes, or I was in deep shit.
I also believe that I need to be in a place where I can swim in the ocean. While the beaches in Oregon are gorgeous with epic landscapes, the water in the briny Atlantic is warm enough to get in and stay in for a long period of time, and other than the occasional Great White shark, the sea here isn’t trying to kill us all the time as the Pacific does on the Oregon coast. I’m not ready to pull a real Rhode Island beach day where I come at sunup and slowly turn my chair with the sun till sundown and become a leathery old man, but I do love a few hours to dip myself in the water.
Providence as a city reminds me of Portland from about 20 years ago, where there were interesting restaurants, a thriving music and art scene, and some grit to keep the tech bros away, and I hope that it doesn’t get turned into what Portland became, a consumerist city of glass shoebox apartment buildings. There is a Trader Joe’s downtown, so there might not be too much more time left for Providence being frankly invisible. Boston is right up the road, but it’s unbearable and expensive. No one good is from Boston.
In fact, Boston is the worst place in all of New England, and I’m saying there is so much to discover in New England that isn’t Boston. From Maine to Connecticut, there are so many cute little hamlets and hidden places to discover that just aren’t found in any other part of the country. With the amount of shit talked about Connecticut, there are these adorable little villages that I want to move to every time I find one. Western Massachusetts is crunchy, and then when you go north to Vermont, it’s even more crunchy, which is what I like: hippies with guns.
I now have traditions here. I go to Vermont every year to the place where I lost a part of my thumb 3 years ago, to camp, swim in a quarry, and visit a cute bookstore. I go to the Newport Jazz Festival. I have places I go to for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have people’s homes that I am invited to. I have secret spots that Rufus and I go to, where we stare at trees. I am moving away from Providence to the other side of the bay to a cute little village on the water. I like living here. I like the snowy winters, even if it’s inconvenient (but hey, I’m remote, so that is why I don’t have issues). I’m not a fan of the hot, humid, sticky summers, but hey, I can jump into a nearby pond or the sea to cool off. Autumn in New England is unmatched anywhere else, and being a fall baby, I really respect the autumn game here with apple cider donuts and the seriousness Halloween is taken.
Yes, I miss Oregon, my family, and my friends. There are things about the Pacific Northwest that I won’t find here, and I will always be an outsider here. While Boston people talk like they’re from a big bad city, it has the same culture as the small town in Idaho I lived in, where the world doesn’t expand much further than the boundaries of New England – if they’re an open-minded person, smaller if they aren’t. I miss curious people. But nothing ever stays the same, and if I moved back to Portland now, I’d have a hard time adjusting to how things are.
A person I am dating and I were discussing Wes Anderson movies, and I mentioned that my personal favorite is The French Dispatch, his homage to print media, specifically the magazine. There is a conversation in the movie that makes me think a lot about moving out here and made me very sad the first time I saw the movie. It is between Roebuck Wright, the James Baldwin-inspired character, and a Japanese chef:
Roebuck Wright: I admire your bravery, lieutenant.
Nescaffier: I’m not brave. I just wasn’t in the mood to be a disappointment to everybody. I’m a foreigner you know.
Roebuck Wright: This city is full of us, isn’t it? I’m one myself.
Nescaffier: Seeking something missing. Missing something left behind.
If you have been a long-time reader of this blog, you would know that home is a definite recurring theme in my writings. Finding a place where I belong has long been a struggle for me. No matter how hard I try to be a part of groups of people, there is always this lingering longing to belong more, and that I just can’t. I don’t know that it’s ever going to be a place, because like they say, wherever you go, there you are. It becomes more that I be understood, because sometimes, and this is weird as someone who writes these dumb little blog posts, I don’t feel like I am understood.
To quote the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi, which wasn’t written by him and was written hundreds of years after his time, “to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love”. I can only understand and hope that I will be understood, but if I am not, then at least someone was understood—the same as for love. I’m going to love, and love fiercely, because fighting is all that is wrong with the world, and it’s time to surrender to taking care of each other thoughtfully and intentionally. If I bring one thing from Oregon, it is to be a steward of our environment and our community. I may never be fully understood, but I can take the little parts that come along when they do. I do wish people around here read more books. And it is in my misunderstood self that I find people drawn to me, so it can’t be that bad of a curse.
5 years in Rhode Island, and while sometimes I get really homesick for my parents and friends, or mountains, deserts, the Pacific, the canyons and the gorge, and the wildlife, the moss, the water dripping from the giant fir trees, the hot springs, and all my secret spots. I miss all the things that I loved that aren’t there anymore, and probably a new multi-use building is there instead. I miss knowing. Here in Rhode Island, I don’t know. A lot of the time, I’m not from here, so things still aren’t familiar, and that unfamiliarity is alienating, even with the most understanding perspective. I miss just knowing.
I think a lot about the universe and if there is any purpose; I cannot believe that I would come all the way to Rhode Island just to get separated and then go back to Oregon. I have a hard time believing our lives are dictated by any proposed path from a divine master, but I do believe that something must have gotten me out here to Rhode Island. I mean, the possibility that I am in Rhode Island by total chance is pretty good, and I can look for signs, but anything that can show me the truth is just as possible to be telling me a lie, so I can’t trust what I see, because I could just be looking for what I want to see. There is also a chance that I am here for a purpose, though, even if I have to make up that purpose, because we do better when we have purpose. I do feel like a lot of growth happened here that couldn’t have happened back in Oregon. We sometimes need to be out of our comfort zone to get through what ails us.
Maybe it is here where I will finally find home. It won’t be a place, but a state of mind where I feel understood, or I will finally be done trying to feel understood. A serenity that has eluded me. I don’t know if it will be a person, a group of people, or a connection that happens inside myself, but I keep seeking, for it will be when I give up that life will become unbearable to live. If there is one thing I have never understood, it is the idea that everything right now will always be good enough because life will never allow it. I need to stay curious, seek ways of being, and practice being. I need to learn more about being okay in solitude, but also about being okay in relation to others. In some ways, I excel at that, and in other ways, I have so much more to learn.
I’ve started dating someone I really like, and that is scary because of how many times I’ve started something with so much hope only to have it end in heartbreak. Opening up to someone with no guarantees is terrifying. What I know is that I have done a lot of work on myself and who I am to be able to show up my best self, and hopefully enjoy the experience of getting to know someone. I can get in my head about not being good enough, good looking enough, or just enough, and even get in my head about the differences, all the ways that will make it not work, and look for ways to self-sabatoge a good thing, but that is why I have put so much investment into my mental health, to be able to think those things and not act on them.
I remember the first Fourth of July here in Rhode Island, perched on rocks on Jamestown Island overlooking the bay. A lighthouse haunted us from the left, and lightning bugs were all around in the long grass. We could see fireworks across the bay, and they were reflected in the water, and it was hot, not as hot as this year, but it was a heavy, humid heat where it never cools down no matter how late it is, and sitting there I knew that I had made the right decision to move here.
I watched the Bristol, RI Fourth of July parade earlier today, and they pride themselves as the longest continuous Fourth of July celebration. My friend and her family were hosting me, and they just accepted me as part of the family. While I suffer from a lack of patriotism, it wasn’t hard to enjoy the parade as it went by. Then we went swimming—a very Americana Fourth of July with hot dogs, burgers, and potato salad.
So I have made Rhode Island my home, and while it confuses the locals why I stay, and I confuse the people back home on why I don’t come back, I am happy here, and for now, I will keep standing with th ocean to my right instead of to my left. I can’t keep seeking something missing and missing something left behind forever.