For fear of muddying my own colors, I cannot seem to pass this as something to let roll off my shoulders. In the arrangements of who I am here, now, versus who I am relying solely on where I come from, it is distinguishable only by how I feel in both places; although surrounded by people who only see me in one place or another, I seem no different. To have to sit and think on this any longer is incomprehensible. The amount of time I have spent wondering why it is so preposterous to only feel like a separate being in these designated places can easily be compared to moments I spend alone, moments I have a tagline I must write down in the middle of my shift - whether on a stray piece of paper, on the curve of my hand, or typed quickly in text - and my drive to work in between songs that pull me closer to one side of the bridge or the other depending on what song I happen to be listening to.
Perhaps the issue lies within the idea that I am almost positive that everyone who has lived in one place and moved to another has left a piece of their personality in the former to eventually be found again, buried in the soil. Kicking through dirt that is packed in by tractors only to be thrown back at you by a car going 100 miles an hour around a curve is far different from covering my black shoes in mud from the yard when it rains, where the dirt is less dirt and more clay and far more copper than it is brown, and to find in turn, being kicked by the same feet happens to truthfully not be the same at all. I consider this situational conflict.
I spend most of my time spinning in conflict otherwise, but to find only my frustration kicking up when I cannot crack something even with the most blunt of objects is personal situational conflict. To put it blatantly: there is a level of vulnerability in this comparison that I am not entirely sure I can share on the level I always intend to share. Whether it is to be honest with myself or honest with you is a feat that, once it is decided where the needle falls on the wheel of fortune, I am still not certain I would be transparent with you, as the reader. There has always been a part of me that thrives on the idea that we always like to know more. It is what leaves me wanting to hide the stripped back version of me, always pulling for words in the dark without shining too much light on the corners. Hoping that I do not have to offer this information at free will for someone to keep asking questions, only to find everything interesting about me is what I have already told them. It leads me to question if eventually someone will feel like I am not being one hundred percent honest with them, not being able to see the two sides at once.
I have never felt anything like living two lives. While I am still not positive that is the case, it is hard for me to ignore the stark differences between where I was born and raised, and where I was moved to and grew into adulthood. Compared to finding myself covered in clay, a copper colored dirt that the crops have grown accustomed to flourishing in, sweating up a hill overlooking enough tree for as far as the eye can see, and it is only in that moment that the parallels shows themselves, but only so long as I don't see the interstate cutting through the uninterrupted mirage of plain, where eventually the trees will meet the blue of the day, and behind the smog the Charlotte skyline stands like you can hold the whole of uptown and downtown on the side of your finger. I blinked and found myself dusted with brown dirt, covered head to toe; contacts to ear lobes to the bottoms of my feet contrary to wearing sneakers that I tied tighter than necessary for the sake of not having to stop and re-tie them over and over and over again, sweating not enough to distinguish my own sweat from the humidity.
It is late, but rarely feels like it. The talk spreads of my parents and uncles and their friends and refusing to hang out at the high school on the weekends because that was not at all the point, but found themselves drifting in old cars around corners that are now paved for walkers and have medians that grow flowers, and sitting around saying whatever comes to mind, not being concerned if it will, in turn, effect how your neighbor perceives you and your humor and who you are as a person. How I talk, how I treat people, how I have let my unwavering curiosity build waiting for it to bubble over, is all a result of where I come from but something I rarely put into action when I am where I come from, more so finding that ability to be accommodating and willing to listen in a place that I get interrupted before I finish asking how their day has gone.
Only this year did I find it possible to ask my grandfather questions. I planned to continue for conversation until he was getting a tinge to his voice; it runs in the family. He freely answered questions and offered more stories and commentary than I could have ever asked for and it was only then that I thought my curiosity did not get the better of me, but was better for me. I sat behind him on bleachers and took photos as he watched young guys race in the manner he once did, sat across from him as we ate dinner, shoving burgers and chicken and fries in our mouths, and again, never was once concerned that I was eating too much meat or not enough protein or not spending enough time with if I did enough squats with my backpack in my hands nursing empty time in the hotel room. This is where my conflict became apparent, only in retrospect.
Only in that state of reexamination, not here nor there but looking back, is it like a game of heads or tails that has begun to go awry. I have yet to make sense of why that is, but it feels like truth, and it still feels preposterous, but in a way that I am able to separate myself from her or him or whomever else my presence may be compared to, whether my lights are shone in the corners or not. And although this feigns counter to my typical way of finishing this type of narrative, there's nothing more I wish of this kind of life than to be left unresolved, as it may always remain.