The climb

A friend said recently that perhaps I’m on the part of the ride where you’re going up the roller coaster. That all the work that we’re both doing, as she’s too doing A LOT, that this is the cranking up of the ride. That it’s hard because we are fighting against gravity, and we are scared because you can’t see over the crest of the ride – but even though it’s a mildly alarming metaphor, it’s nice to know that I’m at least on a track of some sort.

My brother asked me recently what I was planning to do after graduation. If I was planning on coming back to the East Coast now, or not. I told him a few sort of vague deflective-y things, and then finally, in the end, I said, I have no idea.

Likely, as graduation is in a month – holy lord, have christy mercy. It literally is a month away…! May 12^th … isn’t that the Mayan Doomsday? Maybe I won’t have to worry about any of this then in the end anyway!! HA! as in, please lord, let the universe not explode or implode on that day – I have a roller coaster ride to attend to.

But, as that is only a month away, and I’m still in the formative throes of trying to cobble together a sustainable living and habits and patterns that support that living, likely not. Not immediately at least. My brother said that others were asking him, which is normal – and I don’t have to take on their pressure, as it’s not pressure, it’s curiosity, normal and kind. But, not yet. When? I don’t know.

My brother’s girlfriend just got placed in a post-graduate internship at Johns Hopkins in Delaware – and my brother said his company has another branch he could easily transfer to in Baltimore, MD, so, they’ll likely do that sometime not too distant. (She’s wonderful, by the way – I hope and think it’s a long haul kind of relationship) :) Point being, Mom in Manhattan. Brother on the mid-seaboard. Dad in Florida. Seems like if I want to be anywhere near my family, I’ll have to go back to that coast at some point.

And the truth is, I want to. I don’t want to live with any of them(!), but, within 3 hours driving distance is what I’ve labeled as close enough, but not too close. I’d especially like to live nearby to my brother.

It took a long time for us to come to the place in our evolving relationship that we are. There were the awful, physically and emotionally violent toward each other years of our early childhood. Then there were the let’s get messed up together years. Then there have been the reparation years from the fallout of all of that as we’ve both gotten older and more sane by degrees.

We’re somewhere on that part of our journey now, and the truth is that we are closer now than ever, even though that just looks like a phone call every month or so, and random texts to each other with quotes from Bill & Ted or Back to the Future. This is our bonding. And I/we dig it.

So, I’d like to be able to be near to him, to continue forming a relationship with the people who we are today. Trauma and addiction don’t really allow for intimacy, and we’re just getting there, slowly, over these few years. Reaching out, being honest. Laughing. I care more for him than I’d ever let myself admit before, and the older we get, and the closer we are – even though we’re not butt buddies, and I don’t know if or think we need to be – well, I just get teary sometimes thinking about how much I love him. Which is something I couldn’t have predicted, and am beyond grateful for.

It’s another way in which I’m shown that I have no idea what’s over the rise of the ride. But the clinking and clunking sound as the cart hoists itself up the hill is the sound of the work we’ve each done to get to this place of commonality and connection.

So, not today, but soon perhaps, I’ll be in driving distance of my brother, his wife, and their children.