Calling My Name

I haven't been in Chicago in the Summer in years. I went back this past weekend for a family gathering. The weather was warmer than I'm used to and a bit more humid than I'm used to, but very pleasant for Chicago. I stayed with my brother and sister-in-law and was able to bring the dogs with me. I saw aunts, an uncle and cousins I haven't seen in a long, long while.

Sunday afternoon I wandered around Andersonville with my good friend, Carolyn. Joggers, bikers and skaters were everywhere (i.e., lot of eye candy). Folks were hanging out in coffee houses, cafes, and bars. It was all very seductive. My tendency to imagine a new life in a new place started to kick in and the city was quietly calling my name.

For the first time I wasn't overly anxious to hit the road to come home. I think I could have stayed another few days and fallen even deeper under this spell. Thankfully, as I crossed the Menominee River and came home to the Upper Peninsula, my motivation for living here snapped back front and center.

I started to think about affirmation though, and it continued even until I drifted off to sleep back in my own bed last night. I think we all seek affirmation in the lives we have chosen for ourselves. We are always tempted by the other roads we might have taken, by the other choices are families would have made for us if given the power, how green is the grass on the other side? Perhaps this is the insecurity from which my vacation musings spring from.

I think one of the best and certainly most memorable affirmations I received came from an old friend who came to visit me here in the U.P. He told me how much he admired what I had done. I really didn't quite grasp what he meant and asked him to clarify. He said that he admired that I had the courage to completely uproot my life and move to a new local - to follow my heart and take that chance. Until that moment I hadn't really thought about my decision in quite that way. Most of the feedback I had received questioned my decision to relocate to such a dramatically different place.

Lately I've been in a difficult emotional place. Nothing seems to fit comfortably these days - my home, my job, my relationships, my body. The opportunities for genuine affirmation are very few and far between. Perhaps it's wrong to expect it from our loved ones. Perhaps they don't affirm where we are in our lives, perhaps they don't understand and are left baffled and bewildered by the choices we have made. Even so, I think we still need to hear words like my father's from the day we had our big discussion about my "lifestyle choice." He said, "I don't understand it, but I love you, you're my son." Maybe that's really all we need to hear from our loved ones.

(apparent non sequitur warning!)

I am the representative payee for a developmentally delayed, schizophrenic woman. Unfortunately my image/voice is also one of her regular hallucinations. This becomes problematic because she communicates with the hallucination and I am left out of the loop, as it were. Yet she thinks that the communication channel is working just fine.

I think that this blog creates a similar circumstance. For example, as I have struggled with my new diabetes diagnosis, I have regularly blogged about it here. Folks have kept up with me by reading this blog, yet their interest and concern are invisible to me. It's as if they've connected with the hallucination, not with me.

It's got me wondering about what other areas of our lives, what other faulty means of communication leave us thinking that we've communicated the message: "I don't understand, but I love you," when in fact the message never arrives to the actual person. It's puzzling, isn't it? In this age of widening communication opportunities, real connection seem harder and harder to come by.

Peace all.