on feeling human again
It is getting quite late and I am squeezed into a van in a rush to get home. Allow me to share what is currently moving me.
I am on the cusp of freedom, which is to say that I am not yet free—the cusp has its own time zone. It has its own weather. Wedged between strangers, the countryside sliding past the window in streaks of oranges. I am neither where I was, nor where I am going, and right now it is the most stable position I've held in years. It is terrifying, and paradoxically, it is one of my most clarifying experiences.
We spend a lot of energy insulating ourselves from this feeling. Notifications, entertainment, even course schedules and syllabi. In many ways, it is all to soothe an unease. Lately, I've been finding myself in want of exposure. Walking into the night with barely a streetlight to guide my way, taking the long way back in search of anything that could delay my return. Feeling the hairs on my arm rise when I hear the sound of something rustling in the dark.
That edge of fear is the body remembering what it is. Beneath the layers of society and civilization, there lies an animal that evolved only by staying alert. When you step outside and realize how far you are from anything familiar—it makes you feel alive again.
There is also something deeply humbling about outdoor fear. The anxiety that we have manufactured indoors tends to be recursive and self-referential. But the unease of being outside points toward something larger than ourselves. The stars in the sky do not care about your deadlines. The ocean has no interest in your self-image. That indifference is strangely relieving. You become a small creature in a large world, and for a moment, that is enough.
And freedom, as I am learning, does not announce itself cleanly. It does not arrive the way you imagined it would, with a clear sky to breathe in and a perfect song to match it. It arrives like this—a little uncomfortable, a little later than planned, pressed on all sides, the destination still some miles out. Yet something in the chest lifts anyway. Something knows.
I am almost home. I am almost somewhere entirely new. Impossibly, these are the same thing.