Semicolons: an overshare

This post might be an overshare, but what the hey. Full story after the jump, so's you can skip it if you're not feeling it…

This trip had a few points of origin. Primarily, I knew I had to take a trip of somewhat substantial duration to do archival research in Vienna for my dissertation. Then, as I’ve mentioned before, in hunting for an AirBnB apartment for that trip, I realized that Vienna was almost half as cheap as Boston in terms of living expenses. But the major thing that brought this trip to life was that, the first week of 2016, my wife left me.

That story is not public-blog-worthy, and far more complicated than you’d want to read anyhow. Suffice to say, I was barely a human being for the first couple of months of the year – at first desperately trying to convince her to stay and work on our relationship, and then dealing with the reality of our impending divorce. It took me a long time to share the burden with friends, who took incredibly good care of me, and I very meaningfully owe my new lease on life to the family and friends who rallied to be there for me during the worst period of my entire life.

During those months, I was desperate for something good to hang on to as everything I cared about fell apart, and once I realized the financial picture made sense – more sense than Boston, to say nothing of the trip’s emotional sense – I took the leap, found replacement tenants for our old apartment, and made plans.

I’m glad I did, and it’s already become clear that this was the right choice, however incoherently and impulsively it initially came into being. But of course, given that origin, it’s been complicated too. There are days that are tremendously sad, and many more moments that I find myself struggling with sadness or anger for brief flashes of time. I know myself and the grieving process well enough to let these wash over me, to embrace them in the moment, and accept that they’re both real and impermanent. But it’s an odd thing, to be on this literally once-in-a-lifetime trip and find myself wrestling with events that I can’t change.

In moments like these I’ve reflected lately on a piece of text that my excellent cousin Wayne sent me as I was on my way to the airport. As a piece of inspiration for the trip, and for this chapter in my life, Wayne passed along a quote from Lewis Thomas that is, well…. read it:

 I have grown fond of semicolons in recent years. The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added… It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer.

Lewis Thomas, Notes on Punctuation

That’s where I am on this trip, really: doing my best to turn this period into a semicolon. Some days are better than others. But I’m chipping away at it. It feels right. And I’m finding my way back to a kind of constant gratitude, which is where I like to live my life. So: onward! Let’s see what today has in store;