It's a beautiful Sunday in Durham, one I'm soaking in like the sun as it's one of my last in this small town city I've started to call home.
On the way to my shaded writing spot, two blocks from our downtown oasis of an apartment, I passed the site of what used to be a towering building. It was something straight out of a 70s or 80s movie; a corporate office with carpet that probably resembled old upholstery and clunky black desk phones that used to have a place in the
center console of cars.
I take walks around our neighborhood often, and one day I noticed a metal gate go up around the building. It was like this for weeks, blocking my normal walking path; so much that I had to cross the street with a groan and continue my walks in front of the Irish pub instead.
Clearly, something was coming. There were no signs signifying what was happening, but the gate was a signal in and of itself. Over the next few weeks, we watched on as the building was ripped open and beams of metal as heavy as elephants were thrown twenty stories to the ground. I'd never seen anything like it. I'd go outside during lunch and watch water get sprayed onto the burning building, and other times, I'd watch the passersby watching on.
Businessmen in suits and women walking their dogs would stand in the square across from the building — and even sit on a bench for their entire lunch hour — looking on in awe. There would be five or ten of us, looking up quietly, witnessing it all together. What mesmerized me, more than the destruction of this building, was the way people stopped everything they were doing to watch it. Or, I guess, the way the wreckage stopped them.
I can't really explain it, except that it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, watching it that closely; like seeing a solar eclipse or a shooting star. Except you could sit there for hours, watching the layers of walls being pulled apart or the intricacy of the building's DNA, composed of concrete and steel and stone, unraveling in the air. It was … satisfying.
Months later, I still find myself thinking about it. What was it about this that was so captivating to us? It finally dawned on me: We love destruction that is controlled.
I've started referring to the past two years as
That. Because, quite frankly, who the fuck has the language to even capture what the fuck just happened? The thought that there's been so destruction that could have been controlled. The idea that now we're left with the rubble.
I've slowly begun to accept this fact: I'm a very different person than who I was two years ago. How could I not be? We've watched on as the layers of our world got pulled apart; as the intricacy of our own beliefs and understandings unraveled. I've sat in the painful undoing of deeply personal parts of my own life. So what happens now?
When we're left with the bare bones of ourselves, with a deformed frame that's been all bent up, there's nothing left to do but to sit with it. I'm a very different person than who I was two years ago, and I'm not sure if it makes me happy or sad yet. I know it just is.
I've always said the best way to overcome anything is to get excited about it. I don't know who I am after all of … That. But I am ready to sit with her and find out.
I'll keep walking circles around myself; crossing the street and groaning. Standing from different perspectives each day. Resting each eve, just to dig it up the next day. It doesn't quite feel as satisfying as watching a building go down. But I will make something of the rubble.
We can't always control the destruction. But we can control what we rebuild.
Thank you for reading and sharing in this life with me. I am loving reconnecting with so many of you through your emails back to me (including a former teacher's letter back to me about growing older, in response to my
last letter). It truly is a bright spot in my day to have pen pals again! See you next time.
