At first I thought I was the problem. Everything here felt slightly off colored or perhaps off center. It hung on me like badly fitted shirt. I could feel how everyone and everything was off, how I felt physically off and could not understand what was happening. Then I did. It wasn’t me. It is this place. Phoenix. USA. It is these people and how differently they were brought up and what lives in their minds and conscience. Nothing about it is what I want to be or experience. I’ve moved on.
Reading The Dark Tower series is giving me the words and the perspective to understand what I experience every time the Lady Talis and I return from a stay abroad. We don’t belong here. Short of being present for my kids and their football seasons, we have no real place here. There is work, but there is work everywhere. There are fewer and fewer opportunities to work within our degree in the places we hope to inhabit, but we still hope to inhabit those places and find our own way. As for the question of children, I want to be able to show these boys a different way of life. I want them to be able to escape the grind and darkness of these states and find a path towards something better. Something that isn’t this constant anger and negative energy.
It was never just coming from the home. It comes from all around us and we are both sensitive to it.