Taking a walk along the sprawling, strangely busy throughway beside my apartment, I found myself eaten by bugs, and eaten with thoughts, as though my mind found peace enough to speak to me once again. It’s been a long while, but my brain seems there for the first time in a long while.
I’m strangely proud of myself that I was able to convert 40 degrees Celsius to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, applying a touch of 5-th grade arithmetic. In other news, it’s 104 DEGREES IN INDIA. Granted, the 91 here isn’t so temperate.
* * *
My main thought on my walk tonight is how much I *don’t* feel out of place in Georgetown. Or Louisville, for that matter. I grew up in a backwater, and for years, I carried the alternation of shame and pride, of awkwardness and defiance, like a mantle. Whitney’s known both sides of that particular inferiority/superiority complex, and it’s no doubt become tiresome.
As with most things, I saw this change in myself by viewing another soul awash in the same dichotomy: A girl at work is marrying a boy from Cincinnati, and proclaims her family hates her “because of where she’s from”. Likely, they do, if only because they know the sort of baggage that entails. I’ve been there; I’ve second-guessed every step, decried every slight, and nurtured every grudge I could against people I didn’t understand.
The one I didn’t understand, of course, was myself. And neither does she. It’s a self-perpetuating disease, this insecurity, this out-of-placeness: The more one moves the the periphery, the faster and more certain that flight becomes. Jokes become barbs; secrets turn to conspiracy; and genuine concern becomes petty obstacle.
I am no longer that person, and I praise God for that.