I am shaving my mustache tonight. It won’t be as dramatic as being in the shower at the stroke of midnight, but I mark it as a symbolic farewell to 2009. And that I’m opening a new chapter. Starting fresh with a fresh-shaven face. I’ve had it for the past 16 months, which is amazing when I think about it. It grew from my laziness to shave it one morning, through my I-want-a-beard stage, and 2009. It’s been with me through a lot.
I’m reluctant to let it go not because of 2009 or that I’m just being whimsical. I fear what will happen when I look at myself in the mirror without something to pet as I contemplate the world and wish I hadn’t done that. And I’ll be too impatient to wait the six weeks for it to be the way it was. I’m a sentimentalist in that regard – it’s hard for me to let go of things that represent something much more than I realize. Which, I think, is why, subconsciously, I’m unable to move away from DC.
DC has lost the luster it once had in the mind of an impressionable 18-year-old. When I came to DC more than 8 years ago (you read that right), I couldn’t think of a better place to live (well, I could think of a few, but this was at the only realistic option). I’m a lot less impressionable than I was back then. I may have come to DC not knowing anyone – and those I do know have largely left and moved on to the next chapters of their lives – but it scares me more now to move to a new, unfamiliar (yet exciting) place and having to start all over. Which is why I’m being pulled to the next place of familiarity. Which is why I’m scared of what would happen and what people would think as I move to be closer to home. A place I was running from and swore I would never run back to. A place I then thought, well, maybe I could retire there.
And that scares me because I’m supposed to be in my prime live-where-ever-and-do-whatever years. I’m not tied down to anything, but the fear to truly let go of the past. I need to slay the dragons keeping me prisoner in my tower of stagnancy. But I look around at my weapons and realize I’m not MacGuyver. I can’t make a bow-and-arrow out of a paper clip and roll of toilet paper.
But 2010 brings with it the opportunity to at least try. But first the mustache needs to go. It’s itchy.
