An Open Letter to Those Whose Heart is in Question

As I sit and feel the air move around me with the rich smell of fertilizer wafting in from the open window, I am thinking about the wealth of organic life about me. I am disconnected from the life I had, but reconnecting with the feel of the earth I knew a long time ago.

I am happy here in so many ways. The guys I live with are like a little tribe unto themselves. They are local and do not dream of moving far away. They busy themselves with projects and complete a lot of them. When they lose interest or change direction, the old projects are dismantled and serve as parts for the new thing. It is a form of recycling that is the same as it always used to be in the city-states that populate the history of civilization.

I just got back from a trip to the big city. Burlington is a college town on the shores of Lake Champlain, and today as I walked along the mall that is Church Street, I was reminded of the place I used to live. But it was never the urban life that thrilled me. Rather it was the people that I adored that wanted to live there that held me in the city for so long.

Now far away from them, and far away from the upbeat tempo of urbanity, I have slowed down enough to think and feel. When I arrived, the trees were bare and the wind moved through the valleys with little resistance, but over time and at a rate that was never surprising or overwhelming, the merest buds have opened out into full, rich leaf, and every view is one of green and is a balm to the restless eye.

And I have it easy. If it was only me in this world, I would think this a paradise, as the men I live with do. I might never want to leave. But years ago I looked for and found a family way that I used to want to mold in the patterns I have in my mind from growing up. I had children and was married and was plugged into a dream that America wants of me.

And it was miserable. Not the kids or the endless wrestling match of conflicting schedules, but the underlying pressure I felt from trying to match what I understood to be the right course for a good American family with the artist and creator that wants me to flourish in unexpected ways. I wanted trust without knowing what the outcome would be, and there was no way to express this. I should say that I could not express it in understandable ways: there were plenty of ways it came out. My wife and I were of the same mind in this, but never on the same page.

A deep unhappiness pervaded our short marriage, and while we recognized its appearance with us, we could not find within ourselves the strength to confront it in any way that would offer any hope. We dreamed of different and important ways to be, but ultimately our restlessness meant shifting from place to place on the map. We were ever more inconsolable as each new place we moved to had the same pervading sense of the desperate unhappiness our inner conflicts created.

So we broke down like so many of us now do. In this world of beautiful television pictures and easy access to every new idea on the internet, it is easier than ever to be dissatisfied with what you have. We came together in the spirit of a small primitive tribe, but divided as the world kept presenting new features we didn't have.

But something in me could never let go of the family. I couldn't lose another child to distance and continuous mis-communication, so I hung around, always under the cloud of partly feeling trapped by circumstance. I became what I never wanted to be: a weekend dad. But it was what I had and I called it enough. I struggled along as best I could and presented a brave face for my new life to those to whom I had promised in the most sacred act I would always be there for.

I write poetry. I study poetry. I see poetry now wherever I look. I took in my unhappiness and translated it as best I could into beauty. I used to think that if I got to where I am now in an art, I would be content. Then I was heartbroken further to find that words are no redress for the loss of touch. I took a lover. I took another and still there was no connection that was as dear to me as the one I had lost. The word "betrayal" took up residence in my being and reminded me in every new tryst what I did not have, and although I could see beauty in the flesh rise before my eyes, I could not maintain any connection with it.

We are funny creatures. We lose ourselves so easily to the pressures of other people's ideals. We want matches to who we believe ourselves to be, but when we reach out and touch the space where we appeared just moments before, we are dismayed that there is a different reality at work. Our desperation increases as we give up the parts of ourselves that mean the most to who we have always been, for an idea of who we should be in the eyes of the world.

I had the strange fortune of finding myself, through persistent nearness to my chosen family, able to move in again with them, this time not as a lover, but as a roommate, with an easiness that was entirely unexpected and contrary to what those in my confidence though was good for me.

By this act, I established myself as above the advice of those not within my own skin. I remember saying to myself that this was a mistake I was going to make in the name of trust. Everything in me wanted to make an honest attempt at re-establishing the connections that meant the most to me, and no amount of "good advise" was going to change what I believed in.

I believe that two people can move together as individuals and find their ways unique to them while maintaining the intimate ties that make life mean something. I believe that there are promises made in this world that are as unmovable as the mountains. I believe there are reasons for the inscrutable that higher forms of meaning know and can only whisper to us when we are in unguarded moments. I believe that choosing love over everything else, no matter what course it takes us in, will never steer us wrong.

But this does not change anything else but what is inside of us. In the end, we only have our own soul, and while this sounds and can feel lonely, my heart beats with all those I have ever loved as fiercely as if I were with them. Circumstance has brought me here, to Vermont, alone, but the same forces that pressure us to be unsatisfied with our lives also contain the seeds of our renewal. I came here bare and lifeless. I felt defeated and resigned, but as the leaves unfurled, I slowly realized that I was breathing the very blood of my rebirth.

This is who I am. I came into this world alone. I struggled through the years of my education. I found love, lost it. I made decisions that did not stand the test of years. I found love again and lost it again. I built houses of wood and stone only to watch them fall in on themselves. Love found me yet again, and again, and again. Each time I made mistakes that cost me what I wanted so badly to possess. Each time the price seemed steeper than I could afford. And here I am alone again.

Here is the difference: all I have to do to feel my love as a force beyond my or anyone's control is lift my face up to the sun, and press my beating heart with my hand to my chest. You are always here. And I will always be here, too. This is who I am.