Historicity

There has been so much constant and significant change in my life for so many months and years now. Moving from place to place, job to job, space to space, house to house.  Wrestling with so much uncertainty and restlessness and fighting to define self and home and place.

I have now lived in Dallas longer than any place since 2009. In these last eight years and 4 months, I’ve moved 10 times. I’ve had amazing opportunities and met wonderful people and discovered so much about this life and about myself. But I’ve also yearned for a sense of belonging and place. I know where I’m from, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore. I know where home is, but it is not where I am from.

I’ve thought a lot about historicity lately. Mainly my own. Being jealous of people who can go “home” and have ties with people and places from their earliest of memories. Being in a place now that I am not from and have not lived within its history. Being at home with my parents and not knowing their friends and peers and having no knowledge of the place they now live. Not living close to or speaking frequently to many people who I deeply cherish, yet who I do not live life with anymore. Living life with people I have no history with. Understanding that so much of our surroundings define who we are, how we see ourselves, what our culture is. Understanding that I define so much of myself by past people and places. Feeling foreign in my present.

Only time can build historicity.

I am aware and proud of the things I have accomplished in my 37 years on this earth. But I am also surprised and confused at times by the things I have not accomplished. I am not married. In truth, I have no interest in being married. I have no children. I will always deeply grieve not having children and never meeting that baby I’ve seen in so many dreams. I live alone in a house much too big for one person.  I am burdened by this.

I am good at my job. The younger me would be in awe of the current me. I am confident and strong and commanding. I can come across as intimidating and mean. I am responsible for lives. I meet that responsibility with intensity. I wonder sometimes though how working such an intense and stressful job has affected all the other areas of my life. I wonder how it has changed me. I wonder who I would be if I had chosen a different vocation.

I remember very few of the thousands of patients I have cared for. I wonder what they remember.  I suppose in some ways my historicity is found in them. Funny to invest oneself in a venue that does not have the ability to invest back in you.

A recruiter has been calling me lately, there have been multiple e-mails and phone calls and discussions. I told him I wasn’t interested. But over time I bit and we scheduled a time to interview. But as the time approached I canceled the appointment.

 I don’t feel so restless anymore.