New Slate

J and I are heading off to Portland for vacation next Thursday. Prior to our honeymoon in California, J had never been to the west coast; this will be his first time in the Pacific Northwest. I haven't been back since I graduated. I think I made a mistake with college. The Northwest, while beautiful at times, never really agreed with me. I don't know quite how to explain it, except that locations can feel right and wrong the same way relationships or clothes can. And Washington was always a little passive aggressive and had a tag that itched. Seeing as how the school I chose was crazy expensive and I'm still making payments on an education I don't feel particularly fondly about, I can't really tell you why I stayed there. I think it was a mixture of laziness and a general optimism that things would get better, or that they weren't that bad.

It was a weird time for me. I tried too hard to fit in with some people and didn't try hard enough to relate to others. I wrote really bad poetry. I went on snowy winter backpacking trips. I went to frat parties. I worked in the coffee shop. I tried to audit a philosophy class. I wrote a bunch of incoherent nonsense about Ulysses for my senior thesis (though I thought it was brilliant at the time). Colorado born and bred, the constant cloudiness and rain there felt overly oppressive. I felt miserable most of the time, though it was punctuated by moments of happiness. I only have a couple friends I still keep in touch with from there.

Every so often, I'd hop in the car and head down to Portland to visit Willow, where I'd get to absorb her own, very different, college experience. No less angsty, but much more hippy.

The whole experience was in stark contrast to my time on the east coast, where I immediately felt in place. I spent the hardest years of my life so far there between 9-11 and trying to find a good job while living off pennies, yet it somehow immediately resonated differently with me. And Denver, well, Denver's home.

I'm looking forward to starting fresh with the Northwest, washing it free of all the bad connotations from the past and seeing it again with new eyes. Everything is different now anyway. No one's in college, Willow has her own home and job and friends there. I'll be visiting to share in something happy and already established instead of running away from something uncomfortable.

Plus, we're being taken to Voodoo Doughnuts. Things tend to turn out okay when there are human-head sized donuts around.