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| Do not feed gators, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi. December 2011. Credit: Mzuriana. |
In the 12-step universe, one of the multiple translations of FEAR is Fuck Everything And Run.
This always makes me laugh for how graphic - and nakedly truthful - it is.
Geographic cures
And also in the 12-step universe, there is the idea of "geographic cures,"which come with two phrasal verbs:
- To pull a geographic
- To do a geographic
Pulling or doing a geographic = physically relocating oneself to a new location to escape an undesirable reality instead of acknowledging or responding to that reality in a healthy or responsible way.
It's that last clause that is key, of course, because sometimes the healthiest response to an undesirable reality is to physically remove oneself from same.
Living rootless - a function of fear?
It would be cowardly of me to avoid shining a light on what drove (or contributed to) my chosen rootlessness. A decade-long geographic cure?
There's no question that certain life-altering events presented me with a divergence of paths. All required a change in direction, as the Status Quo Trail ended right there.
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| A divergence of paths. Castlewood State Park, Missouri. April 2018. Credit: Mzuriana. |
In this moment, as I contemplate how to end this post, I sit in a tall, red office chair, swiveling left and then right and then left and then right, and I think about my long-ago decision to sell my house, divest myself of most of my belongings, and set out onto my slomadic path ...
How much of it was a function of fuck-everything-and-run and how much of it was a catalyst for facing fears?
And this makes me laugh a little because truth be told: The spark that ignited my rootlessness was simultaneously a run from pain and a fuck-you to that pain.
And this tall, red, swiveling office chair that I sit in at just this moment? It's at a friend's house in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I currently visit, who I met back when I lived in El Paso.
I have tendrils of delicate roots in many places now.
So sometimes fear takes us to good places, yes?
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