Almost an entire year has gone by since I last wrote anything I put here. I don't think that means anything other than I haven't done any writing here, but I do find it interesting that it's been close to a year.
It's difficult to sum up one year in anything that can be concise, clear or complete. Sufficed to say there have been ups, and there have been downs, and there has been a whole lot in between. That's quite vague, and I recognize that. Perhaps the most remarkable thing that has happened in the last year is my move. Physically. Twelve years ago on August 20th I moved everything I had in my life, which fit in my Toyota pickup and the smallest U-haul pull-behind available, from Evansville to Chicago. In all actuality I moved from Carbondale to Chicago via Evansville, staying only long enough to catch my breath, get some help to move and leave. This last move was so eerily reminiscent of the first one it almost defies logic, except for the one tiny line of similarity running through my entire life; me. I moved to Chicago utterly alone. I knew one person who lived there. One. Shortly after my move there she and I moved into a habit of seeing each other once or twice a year, another thread common with all of my relationships you could follow back probably all of the way to my birth.
When I left Chicago I was still, utterly alone. Sure, I knew people, sure I could hang out with people, but being as practiced as I am in the art of being alone among a crowd of people, even being among people meant I was still alone. Not through any fault of anyone, it was just a fact of the matter of me. I am alone, I am always alone and I will always be alone, regardless of whether or not I am surrounded by people. Again, I don’t fault anyone, even myself (shocker there), because there is no fault, there is no blame and I feel no need to put any on anyone.
What has become blaringly obvious, and something that I can, will and do blame on myself is that instead of being the move “forward” I thought this move would be it has turned into a “sideways” movement of sorts. Even sideways movement is movement, on that we can academically agree; however sideways does not FEEL like a movement that is movement, more like stagnation. The fact is I am still alone, I will always be alone, no matter what my situation is, where my location is, and no matter what I do to change it. And I’m not so sure that it’s a bad thing.