A Tender New Year

The day after Christmas, I returned to Farnsworth where I lived for the first 9 years. I’ve read that nostalgia is the most poisonous form of comparison; probably because it’s easy to reframe or exaggerate the past. The haunting of nostalgia is like the deep longing for the divine. The addictive and inexhaustible painful yearn they both possess lead us to pursue them in search of something, or someone.

I have always felt like I live in between places; an existential liminal space. Trying to find my place in spiritual buildings only to be let down by consumer spirituality or thwarted by my stubborn resistance to its desired uniformity, and a postmodern world that is content with the first half of life things. Life has seemed to be one long quest seeking this ineffable place to which I belong.

Entering the neglected building, I was hit with memories I had long forgotten: the sink that I threw up in when I was sick with the flu, the mud room where I was spanked for winning a BB gun duel against the suburban window, the dining room where I danced to Elvis for my mom, the railroad tie enclosed grass field where we played football with my dad, and the computer room where I played ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’.

And then there was my room. The tiny room I shared with one of my brothers. I stared at the side of the room where my bed used to rest, took a deep breath and re-entered that mysterious night when the shining and faceless Trinity visited me. I wished I had stayed in the moment a little longer. As this run-down structure holds my earliest memories, my aging body holds memories of my earliest tenderness; messengers that are trying to lead me somewhere. I’ve been mistaken in thinking this place is indefinable; it only seems that way because it is not easily accessible, much like this decaying building, its front door obstructed by years of abandoned neglect.

This place is called home, and I am slowly crawling my way back to a place that existed before I dressed myself with all the armor and determination to keep myself safe from all the fear and pain; crawling back to myself.

Goodbye 2024. Here's to a new year and saying yes to continue to become tender again.