#6: A Sort of Grieving

If you’re wondering what Heaven looks like, I think it’s being surrounded by Irish people, actual Irish people; singing songs for the pure joy of it, dancing, offering you the extra beer they were holding just because and literally lifting you up off the ground in cheers after you surprisingly won at a friendly, albeit long and interesting pool game as if you you had just won the World Cup.

This weekend I experienced all this and more as my friend Ellen’s plus one at a Summer Camp wedding in upstate New York. She’s from Australia and I went mainly to spend time with her since the last time we saw each other was five years ago. We’ve been keeping in touch with each other over Instagram ever since, both agreeing that if we didn’t live on opposite sides of the planet we would be bosom friends. Luckily, she came to the states for the wedding of her two friends and we finally got to spend some time together, catching up where we last left off in person. It was absolutley too short, and it’s hard to think about. She’s extremely cool and adventurous and we’re very alike. After just three days together we hugged goodbye with teary eyes, and as I arrived home after a 20 minute shuttle bus, a two hour Metro North ride and a one hour subway ride on a 90+ degree day I broke down crying from both physical and emotional exhaustion.

The wedding weekend was unforgettable, and very quickly I went from not knowing anyone to feeling like I was right at home. In addition to Ireland there were people from all over; Scotland, the Netherlands, England, Australia… At the campfire I guided many of these people on how to make s’mores and watched them delight in eating one for the first time. People would ask me where I was from and it felt so lame compared to them. Whenever an Irish person asked I wanted to say, “Where you’re from! I’m one of you, can’t you tell?” But even when your name is extremely Irish there’s no hiding you were born and raised in America and are ultimately an American. Instead I stumbled through my words with replies like, “Um, Florida, and New York sort of? But I come from a largely Irish background!!”

Everyone was very kind though, and it made me wonder once again if this is what I’ve been looking for...

In a previous post I had mentioned that for a long moment I was wondering if I had outgrown New York City. This past winter was hard. I wasn’t working on music. I didn’t feel like I was a part of the NY comedy scene anymore, a community I had spent 10 years cultivating relationships and memories with. I was, and still am, in a great relationship and we are at the point where, while we still love doing anything with each other, we feel we can also go out and do things alone with our friends, but I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know who I was. The way I used to see my friends was through our shared interest of improv and then hanging out afterwards, and while I have great friends who I love and who see each other as often as we possibly can, I’d lost that larger sense of community. I isolated a lot.

Back in June I went to LA for a couple of weeks, originally for a reason but also to change pace and find out if there was something I was missing. I wanted to be in the sun and drive and do LA shit like go to Erewhon. For so long I’d heard that people get lonely in LA, but from what I saw it seemed like the total opposite. The idea of having a home with a little backyard where people just drive over, have a potluck or play games seemed more attainable. Who knows, maybe I just happened to be around groups of people that were fortunate to have found each other and stuck together, but I took it all in. How do I have that? Can it be created?

When I got back from the wedding weekend, sobbing like I hadn’t in a long time, apologizing to Daniel for talking so much, he said “It’s okay, you were doing important research,” and I laughed. Because it’s true. I’m just trying to find out what I want home and community to feel like, and I think every time I return from somewhere, I am ultimately happy to be back in New York and back in my apartment. The shiny new things that make me question my life begin to fade a bit, just sparkling in the background for me to look at and appreciate and maybe use as inspiration for here, and I do think I’ve been successful at that lately. I’ve embraced not being as active in comedy and have connected with other people so there is much to look forward to and feel less alone with. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still fantasize about living a different kind of life every time I went upstate or to another country, but I do love this city. I think at my core I just know I can’t live everywhere and be everything in a single lifetime and that I’ll drive myself crazy questioning it too much. So, I don’t know… maybe in these moments what I’m really feeling is a sort of grieving? An ongoing grief for all my unlived lives.