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Saturday, 19 November 05 ::
my trip back east.
here's what i wrote about my trip, while on it and at the end of it..
day 1. gollee those flights were easy. i didn't expect that, but fatigue helps out a lot. fatigue, wireless in pdx, a corny movie headed towards chicago, a good book, and, oh yeah, a bit of that handy dandy benzodiazapine -- ativan. gotta love that stuff. makes the turbulence go from 'oh my goddess, jeezus fuck, the plane is going down' to 'whoo wee, wasn't that fun?!? lets do it again!' dad picked me up and on the way home got a good lecture on campaign finance reform (i'm currently in one of the other 5 states without it, and headed to a third.. i sense a pattern here...).
day 2. its really beautiful here. really. these mountains. i'm glad i grew up here.. but goddess, they really are... aren't they smaller than the foothills of the cascades?? okay, i got it, the appalachains, are tiny. but beautiful. what else? oh yeah, if you are going to go back to see your folks, and you do 'dancing on the edge' less than a week before you see them i highly recommend having gone through, and practiced, 'heart of now: the communications workshop.' its great for all those misunderstandings that arise as all those old triggers are enhanced by the major surgery you recently had done on your soul. seriously, it was terribly effective and for the first time in 32 years my pop and i realized we've never spoken the same language, that we've spent my lifetime completely misunderstanding the charged things that come out of the other's mouth.
day 3. i'm in athens. my first reaction is -- what the fuck? am i doing here???? and properly get lost. find my way to the hotel, pull in and see an oregon license plate.. "OREGON!" and i proceed to park next too it, in hopes that i'll run into the owners and that they will be someone i know.. ha! a girl *can* hope, eh? i never did run into them, but during a trip to the local food mart, i happened upon the yogurt aisle and proceeded to do a double take.. hot damn, nancy's yogurt here in athens, georgia. after finding the nancy's, i did spend sometime *hoping* to find some toby's as well, but that never did happen. needless to say, i'm terribly homesick. what i've realized is that, while the southeast has a familiar feel to it, it doesn't feel like home. i enjoyed the drive down, for the most part, but the views were lacking the glimpses of the cascades we get driving along i-5. besides that, i have truly become a pacific northwesterner, and from now on any other place will feel like something other than home. what i'm hoping will come from tommorrow are 3 things -- confidence that i will be accepted to this program, an excitement about what this program can offer to me and what i can offer to it, and a feeling that i will be able to come to athens to find a temporary community while exploring exciting new concepts about how we can better make this world more habitable for all of us.
day 4. what the fuck?? am i doing here??? ended up being .. oh yeah! this is why i'm here. when i drove out of athens, ga 7.5 years ago i swore i'd never go back.. unless it was to study with dr. rb. i never thought that could ever happen. i said it as something i didn't think would happen. and now.. now it could actually happen. i had an absolultely lovely time all day in and around aderhold hall. the 6th floor is as i remember it, only better.. better because of seeing it through the lens of the ph.d. program. while leaving my home in oregon is going to be hard, if i can go to georgia, or a program with the same feeling of community as georgia, it will be worth it.. for a few years. i now know what i want in a ph.d. program and it will be up to the rest to prove to me that they can do that. and it will be up to me to make my final proof to georgia that i should go there.
all and all this has been a good trip. i've done a lot of crying, felt raw, seen depths that i expected because of my recent experience at dote, but, overall, i'm grateful. seeing my life in blacksburg through a lens that is healing is much easier than seeing it through a damaged lens who's healing hasn't begun. i still have triggers, i still have misperceptions, i still have damage, but i can now see it through having a better idea of what i want from my life, my relationships, and myself. i can better communicate what i want, and need, and when my communication is mispercieved, i have better ways of getting rid of those mis's and moving into perceptions.
posted by brooke at November 19, 2005 06:54 AM
