No home for the holidays...

That's a little dramatic, but I've been feeling a little dramatic about this weird ending.

Housekeeping!

I wanted to take a quick minute to say a huge thank you to everyone who listened/watched my first podcast episode, and especially to those who wrote me the sweetest of notes. I want to consensually kiss you on the mouth, because I was really spinning out after trying a new medium. As I mentioned, there will be a learning curve, but I am truly grateful that you’re still here and willing to entertain my creative endeavors.

Second thing I want to address is that, according to the new schedule set by *checks notes* yours truly, this newsletter was supposed to go out almost two weeks ago. When you run your own Substack, and you get sick (I did), or life inconveniences you (that happened too), there’s no one to step in while you’re down for the count. So just know, I’m always doing my best to stick to my schedule, but if I’m not hitting it exactly, it’s likely because life, in one way or another, is happening on my end, and you’ll hear from me A.S.A.P.. I can assure you I will never ghost this email list.

Thank you for being here. Let’s get into it…

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Lately, I’ve been longing to cut off my nose.

Not to spite my face, or anything like that. But holiday season produces so many smells, smells that remind me of home, and that’s a problem. Sure, I have my own apartment—but when I think of “home,” there’s only one place that comes to mind, and I can’t go there anymore.

In June of 2022, my parents sold my childhood home to move somewhere more low maintenance (a.k.a., right around the corner from me, their maintenance man).

Now that there’s been space and time since the move, and I’ve spent a good portion of that considering what saying goodbye to “home” means for me, I’ve realized it’s not just the house, or the town, or my childhood, or the nostalgia. It’s a deeper understanding that life will never be the same.

It was a given that I’d miss the tangible aspects, like my cloud-themed bedroom I dreamed up in 6^th grade, or the kitchen window that featured some of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen.

I knew I’d long for the feeling of pulling up to the house and seeing my dad’s home office light glowing, like finding the North Star in the sky. I could count on my mom sitting in the kitchen with a handful of popcorn scattered before her, a glass of white wine to her right, the TV roaring with sitcom laughter. Stepping through those doors was a sigh of relief.

I knew I’d miss the town, too, despite complaining about it for the entirety of my youth. It was lush and beautiful, but also a strange little place, with only about 8,500 people living there when my family settled in. There was tons of wealth but many kids opted for worn down Birkenstocks and drug rugs from a shop in the mall called Native Art. We spent our time in the woods listening to The Grateful Dead and Phish, passing poorly rolled joints and insisting that we couldn’t wait to leave. The day couldn’t come soon enough.

We’ve all heard in one way or another, enjoy your youth! It’s over before you know it! And we rolled our eyes, right? We get it, I remember thinking, annoyed at the suggestion that they really knew that much better than we did.

Well, let me be the first to admit that we were absolute twats, because every last cliché about fleeting youth—the ones I heartily laughed off—has snapped back at me like an elastic: the “beginning” of my life is over, and the implications of my choices are greater than ever. I understand that now.

As I drove away from the house for the last time, that phrase came in like a drum beat: I understand what they tried to tell us. I understand that it all moves achingly slow until it doesn’t—and then it’s too quick to catch it. We caught on, but it’s already fleeting.

With one forceful push, in saying goodbye to my North Star, I was confronted with this lesson of impermanence: while so much of life is gaining—education, money, jobs, family members, experience—there are supreme losses waiting too, in the very same categories.

It’s not that challenging things didn’t happen during my adolescence—loved ones passed away, I survived sexual assault, I crashed a car, I got arrested (stories for another day)—but in hindsight, it appears as some magical era where mistakes were always fixable and time was infinite.

Perhaps this is why they tried to warn us; one day the hourglass flips, and we must watch it run, while simultaneously grieving what once was.

But as Nora McInerny said in a recent episode of her podcast, “grief and gratitude are not in competition with one another. They do not cancel each other out.” And in these months since I last left home, it’s proven true, as grief and gratitude grow together in my untethered heart.

It’s not that everything happens for a reason—I don’t believe it does. But we are meant to be changed by the things that happen to us. We are not meant to be the same person on the other side.

There will be many endings—some painful, some a relief, some we won’t even notice. No matter how it ends, it’s an opportunity to gather up the lessons learned, the leftover love, the striking memories, and decide where we want to go from here.

And gratitude is not the answer, but it helps. I’m grateful to have my own home, even if it doesn’t invoke the same feelings as the original. And I’m grateful for the unwritten future, as intimidating as that can be, because it’s a chance to make it my own.

I am making peace with the “beginning” of my life being over, because we’re meant to begin again, in big and small ways, over and over, for the rest of our lives.

Beginnings are everywhere.

I understand now.