And now we’re all aflutter - Would we really move? Would we sell our house? Would we leave our families - COULD we? Would we plan to STAY in Pueblo? What about if/when we have kids?
Gee.
Handsome and I like some restaurants in Pueblo. We enjoy the Colorado State Fair. There are some lovely residential districts.
But it’s an acknowledged fact that part of what we enjoy about Pueblo is the drive down and back. I am always glad to come home.
Pueblo.
Unthinkable to certain Past Crystals. A full range of versions of me would have dismissed the idea out of hand. And even now, an alarmed inner voice is asking, What about arts & culture? What about Black people? What about choice in health care? Do they have any of that in Pueblo?
Handsome and I tend to like the people we meet in Denver who come from Pueblo. Chaco is from Pueblo. We could totally reinvent ourselves in Pueblo.
But how can we even be considering leaving our friends? My dear Mae? Our sweet-ass neighbors? Soup Group? How did leaving town get put on the table?
Well, it’s on the table because this town is starting to feel like a cage to me. Denver is such a known quantity at this point. I grew up here, feeling stifled and wanting different. My nuclear family lives here, my extended family lives here, Joe’s family lives here. My whole professional career has been conducted here. There’s so much duty and obligation and decorum -- and I am somebody who loves duty and obligation and decorum. I am a firm believer in duty and obligation and decorum.
But sometimes I just want to scream. I want to be somebody completely different than I am today and have everybody believe it. Or I want to be left entirely alone and have nobody feel slighted. I want to believe that life will be more tomorrow than it was yesterday, and that I’ll be able to achieve at least some of my dreams that look so distant and unlikely right now.
I feel like if we stay in Denver now, things will just remain the same, forever maybe, and that would suck, in a word. I’m craving major change. Change has been sounding like liberation to me for some time now. And I don’t want to cut off all my hair again.
(I might start wearing wigs, though. And while Denver might would have an opinion about that, nobody in Pueblo gives a shit about me! I could so rock the panoply of wigs in Pueblo!)
This feels a little childish, a little adolescent. Maybe that's because the last time I thought Denver was my problem, I was an adolescent. Maybe it's because I think wigs are part of the solution.
Ugh. If Denver was my husband, it would be time for us to have a heart-to-heart and try to rediscover that spark we once had. Because this relationship is on the rocks.
And it’s just that I’m taking Denver for granted is all, really. I just called it “a known quantity”, for goodness sake. I’m Denver’s dissatisfied wife with a wandering eye, but that’s not poor Denver’s fault. Denver is wishing we’d take salsa lessons together, or start a volunteer project, or vacation in the mountains, get to know one another again. Me and my reclusive ways have barely scratched the surface of what Denver has to offer, but I know enough to have a sense of some of the cool shit I’m not doing. It’s a great city, a peerless city, and so much better-suited to my wants and needs than the small-town version I grew up in. I’m being an asshole.
I’m just going through some things.
It’s not you, Denver. It’s me.
But here’s how Denver isn't like a husband: I can leave and come back.
Denver and I maybe need to go on a break.
Can we DO that?
Pueblo.
At the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, 2009
Photo credit: The Handsome Man
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