#21 Anchors

July 2023 | West Chester, Pennsylvania

A boy I liked very much is leaving forever. Too dramatic? Something close to forever, then. A very long time, let’s say. 

He is not the first to feel important to me, and it seems he won’t be the last. He represents a future.

Represented a future, I should say.

And that’s just as well, because how could it have gone anywhere really when it had my own indecisiveness with which to contend? For the upholding of my stubborn independence. A need for freedom. One so central to my very being that I had it tattooed onto my wrist as a reminder - ազատ. 

Shame on me, really. For feeling feelings too strongly. For holding onto people so tightly that my nerves go white like tensed knuckles. For carrying on like it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, and I don’t need you, when all that I feel screams the opposite. Shame on me for allowing the two of us to bond as quickly as we did. Shame on me every single time I’ve done it.

A Greek and an Armenian bonded in a shared history bearing the brunt of Ottoman oppression. Too dramatic, again. Bonded in culture, then. In song and dance and hospitality, bonded in the love we hold for our lands.

I bonded myself to a person I will have to let go, again. Lately it feels that this is what always happens. Lately I wonder why let myself swim like this, unfettered, unafraid of losing sight of the shore until I’ve already lost sight of it. Unbothered by the level of the depths to which I’ve descended. Why can’t I hover at the surface? Dip my toes and pull them back? Why must I dive headfirst like this? 

I taste the bitter irony of it all and laugh to myself. Because I only just made my way back to America, to where he was. Because he has decided to leave for Greece. Because for the first two months I spent back in this country, I said almost nothing. Kept myself confined to the house of my childhood as I mourned the loss of the life I had just left in Yerevan. Wasting time.

Or was I saving time? I saw the outline of a shared future with somebody else begin to take shape, but where is it now? If I must give it up, then why did I bother entertaining the idea? That’s what is – an idea. A fancy. A daydream. A waste of time. 

There was me, who found my home in the country of my ancestors. And there was him, who was dreaming, planning to make a home in the country of his. Me who made the tough decision to come back, defeated. Him who made the easy decision to go to Greece, elated. 

And I am so very happy for him, because now he will get to live the life I myself have had the privilege and good fortune to live for so long. But I am so very sad. Because for all the parallels and perpendiculars between us, there is one key difference. He and his family – mother, father, brother, dog – are planning to move together to Greece. That becomes their home, and there is nothing left tying him to this place. If I choose to move back to Armenia, I do so alone. Armenia is my home, but it is not my parents’ home. And that is the beauty and the downside of the Diaspora, of a house of many cultures, of my parents’ roots in different Soviet countries. We are spread out. 

They move as a family, a unit. I am just one piece. 

I will never be able to fully forfeit America. Because so long as my family is here, I will come back. My heart will shepherd me across the globe, my own personal Charon. They are my anchor. They stand along the banks of the shore.

And as much as I wish I could hold weight, I myself am not an anchor – I am not his anchor to America. And I certainly don’t wish to become his deadweight. I am a paper boat floating along the surface of the water, launched this way and that until all I do is drift with the current. Until I myself become heavy with water. Heavy, and then unbearably light. Bits of paper on an ocean scattered with the tide.

I allowed myself to warm to the thought of support, of companionship. But I am alone. I am on my own path. And I will not hold anyone back from theirs. Independent, like I wanted to be. Isn’t that what I wanted to be?

This is why I should not trust the words of others. They hold no guarantees. They turn your head with sweetness so that you don’t see it coming when, unknowingly, wield your own feelings like a weapon and strike. This is not the first boy to do this. But this is the worst it’s hurt to date.

If either of us were smart, we’d leave this be. Tuck it away, even. Snuff out that small, flickering flame. Don’t give it any oxygen, don’t let it breathe. For the time that we are both in the same place, let it fall to the wayside.

But despite it all, I am prepared to give it the sky. Let it grow, become a fire. 

If you’d like to go back and read my past musings and meltdowns, hit this link.