Far from Home

I moved to Detroit a little over a year ago. The move was sort of drawn out, spreading itself out over almost two months of packing and organizing and trips to the dumpster and trips to various goodwill sites to drop off things that I no longer needed or was no longer willing to move. All of this activity culminated with the final move, on Valentine's Day, 2007—a day that saw six or seven inches of snow fall, from morning to night; a wet, heavy, relentless snow.

What I mean is that there was no respite. The weather was so fucking awful—snowy and windy and bitter cold—that as I was unloading the truck, a stray dog jumped into its cab and refused to get out. She just sat there shaking, in the passenger seat, a soft whine coming from somewhere high in her throat. She looked at me with these maniacally bright eyes, terror and desperation leaping from her sockets. There was ice hanging from her fur, and the pads of her paws were cut up from the frozen ground she had been trudging across, alone and far from home.

What I mean is that as I look back on it now, that day was filled with the sort of blatant symbolism that makes me groan when I see it in movies: “Smack us in the fucking face,” I usually mumble, or sometimes I just wave my hand in front of my face, in a slapping notion.

Slap, slap.

Still, it’s not like I can really sort the symbolism out, even now, with hindsight, and it’s not like I was wearing blinders or anything then, metaphorical or other(brownie)wise.

What I mean is that the months leading up to that snowy Valentine’s Day were marked by much rumination and many late-night panics. I questioned my motives, my ability to make healthy decisions, the commitment of my lover (into whose home I would be moving), and her ability to make healthy decisions.

What I mean is that I had not undertaken this move lightly. Still, much of my trepidation centered on thoughts of my relationship and the possibility of it not working and what I would do if that happened (having moved to Detroit and away from my friends and all that was familiar).

What I mean is that I assumed that if my relationship stayed healthy and blossomed in all of the ways that I expected it to, then I would settle comfortably into Detroit while my lover and I settled into each other.

So, you know, fourteen months later, here I am: forced by a cruelly comic universe into remembering the vast landscape that lies between a relationship working well and not working at all; forced, too, into acknowledging that even if it had been all sunshine and somersaults for me and my girl, I would still find myself agonizingly far from home.

Type and delete type and delete

I cannot find the words to describe how lost and unmoored I feel, how deeply alienated, how sharply marked: by the poverty that surrounds me, by the bleak and desolate landscapes that are everywhere, by the limping dogs and feral cats … by the desperation, by the gnawing lack of everything that is everywhere, by the level of want, of need, of disquiet.

I feel a crushing heaviness in my chest, not just whenever I venture out into the city, but when I look out my windows, when I sit on my porch, when I walk in my backyard. I feel guilt and shame for wanting, so desperately, to escape this place.

I hate that I hate it here. I hate that all those things that charm me about this city are just not enough to offset all those things that drain me. But I have no community here, no friends who are five minutes away, no familiar stores and restaurants and parks, and no sense of home.

Speaking of things that need homes, we let the dog stay in the basement for a few nights while we located a shelter that we knew would not euthanize her. Elizabeth and I had four cats between us, and we were already dealing with the fact that we had to keep *them* segregated, and with all the chaos of my just having moved in, the basement was the only option for shelter for the dog. She was so grateful, at first, to be inside and out of the elements, that she barely made a peep. As days went by, however, I think it started to grate on her—the unfamiliar place, the cement floor and concrete-block walls, the loneliness (we visited her and took her outside, of course, but, for the most part, I guess she was forced into listening to life going on above her, and, I suppose, missing whatever life she used to have).

So, you know, I am *not* trying to say that Tani:Dog as Detroit:Basement or whatever.

Not really.

But, looking back, I feel a connection with her that I didn't at first recognize. And now I do see that I have gone astray, that I am lost, adrift. I feel as if life is happening somewhere else, as if it is muted, as if I am on the fringes of everything.

What I mean is that I don’t think I can make it work here, and I want to come home to Ypsilanti. And rest assured that I am under no illusions about Ypsilanti: almost everything that grates against me here in Detroit is present in Ypsi--poverty, burned out houses, crime, desperation. But somehow, perhaps simply because of the smaller scale, there is a warmth in Ypsilanti that I cannot locate here in the D.

This city has cast an icy spell over me, and I need thawing. A nice cuppa hot chocolate from Bombadill's would do the trick...