Myself as Roots

The first thing I did when COVID restrictions hit was rebel. My best friend Andy and I went out to Taos Ale House. There were musicians playing that night - March 13, 2020 - before lockdowns. I remember thinking, if this place is normal, we’ll be fine.

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In January 2020, I’d decided to quit my job and move to California. Then, in the face of COVID, should I stay, change my timing, change my plan? Ultimately, I changed my timing, leaving Taos a full five months later than I’d planned. In retrospect, I feel enormous nostalgia for those quarantine months in 2020, with my cat in our yard, both of us basking in the sunshine, unemployed, and happy.

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In California, I almost threw myself into the sea for a guy named Chad. Decided against it. To my surprise, one could be heartbroken in The Golden State. One could feel underwhelmed by all the bigness there. One could be ghosted there.

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Those months in California, I found my way to Santa Cruz, Lake Tahoe, Bodega Bay (where I did not throw myself from a cliff, thank you very much). I lived in Davis, near Sacramento, and did my best to explain to people why I was there.

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The truth is, Ethan, the original ghost, the ur-ghost, had loved northern California. When I was unmoored by his cutting ties with me, in 2019, I thought it would help to go somewhere he loved. It did not. For starters, I hate fog. I felt an irrational anger toward it every time it rolled in. The summers are oppressive; the humidity there felt downright moist after over a decade in the high desert. And on the spectrum of things one can be, I am about as far from a farmer as they come.

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Ethan was a farmer. Is? I got a job out there with a nonprofit helping to grow new farmers. I thought I’d started a new chapter, only to find I was running an old one on repeat. He’d blamed everything on me as he was leaving me, like so many other people in my life, so I’d felt the need to do some kind of penance. The moment I finished with my self-mortification, I started packing to head back to New Mexico.

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My time in California, during the pandemic, ended up being a ten-month road trip (with my cat). The trick is, in New Mexico, I’ve had a devil of a time as well.

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I moved to a city that’s new for me, Santa Fe. I love it here. But I’ll tell you what I do. I try to grow my roots using…. men. I move to a new place, over and over again, and each time, I try to establish my new home on the foundation of what some man has decided to do with his life. It was this way with both of my husbands, and it’s been this way with every man I’ve dated between my marriages and since my second divorce, in 2018.

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There’s someone now, someone established here, someone I love. It’s hard to tell how he feels about me - I’ve asked - but love is not the word for it. I keep hoping that seeing him will help me feel more grounded here. It does not. I feel more unmoored than ever.

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For the first time in my adult life, I’m thinking about buying a place. Stay, rent again, buy a place, keep moving. These are the options that I mull over on repeat. I build these new chapters, new iterations of my adult life, in new places with new jobs and new partners. None of it sticks. Pandemic times seem to flood any castles I build on sand.

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The part that’s harder to admit is that I don’t know where I belong. That’s why I keep moving around. And deciding to put down roots has repeatedly not worked for me. I fear I may not be built that way - you know, like one of those humans who settles in one place. And why should that be the norm anyway? We descend from nomads, no?

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I guess that’s unusual. I suppose people normally enjoy having a mortgage. They seem to. And if a house just seems to me like a very expensive, long-term storage unit for one’s stuff - or worse: a trap, a coffin, a death bed - then I guess I’m being cynical.

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I’ve enjoyed the freedom I’ve had - that I have - to get up and move (or travel) to many places at any time because I feel like it. But I am getting tired.

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And at this point, I AM cynical.

You can try to put down roots, the inner Cynic chides, but it’s not going to work.

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Still, I do wish to belong somewhere. I think part of the problem is, I try to choose the place first. Place as panacea, if I can just find the right one. Ha! I find my jobs after I move, as though vocation were an afterthought. I have been called to places, not moved there through my calling. And then, almost immediately after arriving in a place, I have tried to ground myself through connecting with a man. I feel like pandemic time has shown me, purpose must be primary for me, though I have no idea what that means yet.

How do I let purpose, and only purpose, guide me on my way?

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Only now, only slowly, only begrudgingly, am I finally growing my roots using myself. It’s fucking hard. The first thing I want to do is use a man as my roots, same old habit. The second thing I want to do is run. The third thing, the thing I don’t want to do and only do if forced to, is sit still like a tree and be grateful for this one place - and only this one place - where I make my home. The very thought of it makes me want to fly to space.

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I’ve become part of the Great Resignation three times now in three years. I thought of quitting my new job this week. I’m all wriggly, and I’m not (yet) sure why.

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So, what if my roots are not linked to the place quite yet, but grow from my body?

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Perhaps my roots can grow like those in a hydroponic garden: in water. Like the roots in The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, my roots seem to dangle from my coccyx, mid-air, nourished by hopefulness. I water them. I try to be patient. Then I push and push til even the sun tells me to back off.

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The water, I suppose, is in my low belly. I keep finding my way back to my second chakra, that water bowl. I tend to the small, fledgling plants there with gentleness. That’s it, you’re safe; it’s okay; you can try growing a bit now if you’d like to.

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After all that, this is what I have: growing my roots in space, whispering to them purpose, purpose, purpose. Hoping one day they find ground, a place to belong, a people to belong among.

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