strange holiday // sunny solitude

thirteen years later, here i am--all alone on this strange holiday. alone, for now. this is what solitude looks like: it's reflective, conscious, and healthy. i'm sweeping my bedroom floor, doing laundry, and thinking about the future--all while remaining contemplative, focused on the present, on the gift of this sun-filled november day. this is refuge from the daily cycle of over-stimulation, work, and consumption. i am awake and alive. my mind is clear.

i think about all those years i drove to plymouth to march on cole's hill, against systemic amnesia and legacies of genocide and erasure. today i am not merely complacent to bask in the mediocrity of two paid vacation days, brain turned off in obedience to a four-day weekend granted by our corporate overlords. but it is nice. you could even say i'm thankful. i guess i'm somewhere in between those two points. after all, it was the militant labor movements of last century that produced such opportunities...for some.

*

this is a strange moment. i find myself retracing all these life decisions, many of which i now see as unhealthy and destructive, like revisiting the ghosts from christmas past. i'm confronted by the revelation/reminder that i was never immune to the patriarchal conditioning of the dominant culture--the ways in which boys are empowered from the very beginning with the lure of endless possibilities while girls are instructed to wear pink or suffer the consequences. how we are all disciplined to never deviate from those rigid paths assigned to us, or else. and none of this is new for me, it's just that i have become viscerally aware of the ways in which i have perpetuated these structures and how my own desires continue to be colonized by rape culture and gender oppression. oof. but i'm not paralyzed by this despite its dark heaviness. i feel committed to further challenging myself and others in my life, together.

*

and i also need to find a new home soon. as i approach my 9th anniversary in phladelphia i remain open to moving away, starting over somewhere else. i could move a few blocks down the street in west philly or completely reinvent my world. either way, i want to try to live my best life and be more conscious of what that means to me as i get older.

this is what i'm thinking about on this strange holiday, with this sunny solitude.