Farrah

It’s been eight years. My bones have hardened here.

I was half-feral in the last trine of my twenties when I crossed the threshold of my first home in New Orleans. And I’d lie awake at night. What was I doing here? Where was home? What was my place? In this Unreal City…in the world at large. 

You can’t go home again, you know? Home was never where I came from. But was it here waiting to be found? I didn’t know. 

Uncertain footing on uncertain sidewalks, carrying the shame I carried since I was a small child. I knew my cards, but I thought I could swallow them. Deny and retreat. I pulled away from people who I should have never pulled away from. Not out of malice or disregard. I was painfully aware, but suspended by shame and self-doubt. Because I hated myself (and not for any good reason.) Now I know

That it is always wrong to let shame win. That there’s nothing like the permanence of death to have the last word. Loss…profound loss and the suffocating prisms of grief. You think you can anticipate what it will be like or how long it endures. But you don’t choose your out. 

Tunnel vision, changes, the in-between. Uptown, Marigny, Marigny Triangle, then the Quarter. I’ve weathered a major hurricane in the bones of a two-hundred-year-old house and subsequent displacement. Arrivals, departures. Pets, people, places. And constants, beautiful constants. 

Now I know what it is to have found my voice, my people, my family (both chosen and blood), my writing group, my instrument, a dog even!

To walk in a parade, to dance in the street, and play fumbly music for the live oaks and for my transient neighbors who stay at the hotel across the street.

The fullness of life…of love, in all its forms.

I stumble, but I flow. I know what it is to be on the receiving end of gentleness that comes from character rather than obligation. To be fiercely defended in my right to exist as my unmasked self, and protected from being coerced into discomfort to please someone else.

Thank you for that, New Orleans.

And for all that I’ve been given, by those who are here and those who are no longer here. None of it is lost on me. 

🎥 Krewe Bohème by @cristarockphoto