Leaving, Part 2

Leaving is not the adrenaline rush that I expected. I’ve been waiting for my leaving to fill some holes in myself, and I’ve discovered that it has only caused me to realize the holes more often. What are the holes? I don’t even know. They’re just there, like black holes. Almost an anomaly. But what I do know is that I’m always trying to fill them with things that are unknown.
Like leaving.

Things are always better when they are unknown. The unknown is glamorous. It doesn’t have flaws, it isn’t boring. So, the idea of leaving will always be more enticing than actually leaving. I think leaving can become an addiction. It wouldn’t be that hard for me to get to a place where I always needed the feeling of a fresh start, a new place, that dangerous notion that the next thing will fix all the holes existing from the last. The problem is that if you always leave, you’ll never accomplish anything. Same goes for if you always stay.

Either way, I figured out that I can’t fix my holes by leaving or staying. I think that I need to learn to live with them. No feeling is forever. I’ll always have the holes, but I can learn to let them make me better, and so can you. We can learn not to run from things, to stay when we need to stay, but to finish well when we need to go.

My friend Matt said. “We don’t need a place called home, what we need is to be known.” I think that pursuing being known will come closer to filling the holes than anything else. If there’s one thing that I believe in for sure, it’s that being known is worth it, and not enough people let themselves go there.

Grandpa

Pass the sweet and low,
sweet pink one,
pass the pink one,
sweetheart.
The sweet and low,
sweetheart.

Navy blue born and bred.
Naval born,
twenty-three years,
born twenty-three years
before the Navy.
The blue dress suit,
the mirror shined shoes.
The sweet tide,
low tide,
high water glass,
too full and spilling over.
The sweetheart in your
pocket photo.
The stacks of plates.
After forty years,
he still eats
navy blue.
He steers, at 4 knots,
breakneck,
through plates.

Navy born, Navy bred,
only ten minutes,
to eat your navy bread,
and he still knows,
that's the only right way,
for a sailor.

Pass the sweet and low,
sweetheart.
Navy heart,
sweet blue,
Navy born and bred.