back & forth

This fifth year, this in-between year of personal goals and time for self, has been a year of coming and going. Took a post-boards vacation in California, came back to living at the VA for my medicine subinternship, trekking cross country and living on a Navajo reservation for a month. Even having been back in New Haven for a couple weeks, the weekends have been spent elsewhere, in Boston then in Long Island/NYC. It was nice to dwell in bigger cities than New Haven, cities that are big parts of my past, and to share them with someone open to new sights and feelings. At the same time, because of the trips and because of the upcoming trip home for Christmas and because many friends are also coming and going and I see them in spurts of their being in New Haven, time in New Haven feels transitory, and the slight instability makes it hard to get down to the business of slowness. Instead of taking the time for what it is, it feels like filler until the next movement, when what I really do want is just to stay.

It's both helpful and frustrating to think of goals that stretch past these bumps in place. On the one hand, I find it really hard to work on things I know will have to be paused. On other hand, it's nice to have things to come back to, after an endeavor or a return home. Everything I want to do is a long-term pursuit, the pile of books to read and topics to read about, the work to run better after a setback from which I haven't recovered, maintaining friendships in the midst of a lot of transitions for all of us, being with him and exploring the newness of me and of my surroundings that he makes me feel, the list of stories I feel compelled to narrate. I want to give each of these things room, and it's hard when I keep moving around, but I'm trying not to so strongly associate internal and external spaces, to remember that what's best about these things and why I value them is their mobility.