Shedding skin

It's been just over a year since I moved into this place. An overstuffed backpack of a year, with shoes stuffed awkwardly into side pockets and not-quite-dry jackets bungied onto the back. If I string together the runs I've done over the year, I patch together a trek through the humid, ominous suburbs of Houston, a "river" trail in albuquerque where I discovered the bizarre practice of fishing in a completely created pond in the middle of the desert, a loop around the dusty old market centre of Santa Fe (where I face-planted on a loose cobble), the verdant river of central Portland, the raging open beach of the Oregon coast, the civilized sunny beach trail in Santa Barbara, the rocky beach of Monterey, the stiff suburbs of Penfield, the damp concrete of Toronto. Not as much mileage in actual *running* as many other years, but so many different touchdown points, such a map of desire and yearning and experience.

Last year at this time I was an open wound, really, still. I had moments of connection and smoothness with people, and half-formed ideas of what I wanted next, and a lot of yearning -- but a lot of blind fumbling and bouts of bleakness. Today? Lucrative, involving paid work and good collaborators. A much more focused sense of my academic work, life's work. A lover I'm passionate about and see a future with. A warm friendship with my ex. Tight bonds with other core friends.

One of the most sharp-edged effects of that year is about that emergence of "core friends" -- and a lot of chafing shedding that's gone along with that. Many factors in this -- on the surface, time, and at another level, a transmogrify of self and arenas people who can be part of this sometimes very navel-gazey shape-shifting. I've had incidental losses of friends -- people who fell off the map when B and I were not longer coupled and the connection patterns disappeared -- and I've had more wincing losses, where people bluntly told me that they didn't really like the person I am now. I can make easy meaning of this -- I *am* more self-absorbed -- simple time and also trying to focus on some pretty massive things I'm doing -- but it still stings.

It's a kind of... consolidation process. A collecting of the critical mass of people who are my compatriorts through the different gateposts, who have lust for an resilience and acceptance about continual self-creation. My tribe, as it emerges and shifts.

There are people I wish I simply had more time to hang out with, more space to let in -- because they're fascinating, lovely, warm and amazing people. And I've also found new...deep clicks. One completely new friend who is a loving co-conspirator as we each go through our different self-authoring... and two people in my academic world I am always more tightly wound to. A colleague I am partnered and balanced with as never before. F, of course -- so much possibility, so much now.

The people who've fallen away... skin shedding is the right metaphor. They were part of me, they helped shape who I was, they wrapped around me. And, as I grew, as I went through new seasons... the cells were no longer vibrant and alive. The hollow, dried husk of skin left behind is reminder, is poignant, is something I'm grateful for... and I feel twinges of regret and guilt for not being the person they could have stayed connected to. But I'm not unhappy with my vibrant, wriggling self, scooting forward, more aware of what I'm doing in my relationships, how we're making each other.