Meditations on Muskegon

As many of you may know, I was able to go back to Muskegon for New Years. It was a very nice trip. I was able to see most of my family and quite a few of my old friends. I also had the chance to come to terms with a very special girl. Overall it was a very beneficial trip.

When I first decided to go to Muskegon I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It was during the holidays and I was feeling especially lonely, seeing everyone with their family and friends. I had just finished up a successful term at school, and felt like I had proven a point to myself. That, yes, I was able to move anywhere and be successful. I was entertaining the thought of returning home, and possibly staying. I had envisioned the perfect life in Muskegon and could see myself being very happy. Well, as is all too often, reality had a different idea.

It isn’t my home anymore. It felt like a place that was oddly familiar. It felt as if I was visiting someone else’s life, a life that I used to know, the life that I ran from. I was only there for a few days, but even within that short amount of time, I could feel myself falling back into the old habits, situations, and routines that I had left behind. I’m still the same Lenny to everyone there, even though I have worked so hard to create someone new. I guess I am just not strong enough or confident enough to impose my new life on my past. That is why I really left to begin with; to not have a past, to be able to dictate who I was, and how I was going to interact with those around me. Instead, in Muskegon I have an inescapable persona, one that I am not exactly pleased with. As much as I tell people about how I have changed, about how differently I live my life now, I’m the same guy that they have always known. A very good friend of mine, and maybe more someday, summed it up perfectly, she said, “It feels like you never left”; as nice as that was to hear, it is exactly the problem.

It isn’t that Muskegon isn’t good enough for me; it is that I’m not ready for Muskegon. I can not impose my newly found life with its, values and necessities, on a life that already exists. The people that I care about the most are there, and it is unfortunate that I have to be away to be happy and to find myself. I guess I just can’t live with the unknown in my life; I never want to ask myself, “what if”. So for now, I have to get out there and see what happens, and I know Muskegon will be waiting with open arms if I ever decide to return. I don’t know how long I will be gone and I don’t know if I will ever come back. One thing I do know is that Muskegon will most likely be unchanged whenever I come back. I can see the lives of our parents that have lived their lives in Muskegon, and I can see their equivalent in my generation. Their lives will be our lives if we don’t do something different. I am not in any way taking away from those who can stay. In a way I’m jealous, I wish happiness was that easy for me. I just know that I need more.

So I return to Portland, reenergized and with a renewed motivation. I saw the life that I would have if I was there, and it scared me. Now I can see what I am working to get away from. I will be successful and I will be happy, that is all I really know. Maybe someday my feelings will change. Maybe someday I will realize that I have relationships there that are worth coming back to. I think eventually I will be able to shake the stigma of my previous life and return to start over. I can see myself coming back and having a family and being happy. I just have too much life to live, too many things to do and see, and too many goals to accomplish before I can return. I don’t know where life is going to take me, but I am going to follow with undoubting faith in myself and in my heart. “Que Sera, Sera”