Staying Through the Hurt

Last week was among my hardest weeks in many weeks. I’d said goodbye to two fantastic Couchsurfing guests, and I endured yet another week of training and work prep as my new organization continues to pass inspections and certifications and acquire total clearance for student admission. Even then, we will acquire students one at a time until we eventually hit our max capacity of 29.

It will take more than a while to get to 29.

It was a trying week that reminded me, oh, right, I’m here now. I have to connect days to weeks to months and eventually to a full year, at least, when my current housing lease is up. After that, who knows, but I need to devote my time and my talents and my passions and energies for at least a year, here, now, Asheville.

I need to stay, even though staying never comes easy for me.

It’s much sexier to go. My heart spurs at the mere thought of hopping in my car for yet another adventure, with no one to answer to and no rent check to fork over. A life with no groceries to haul in or laundry to put away. No furniture to arrange, no endless barrage of pictures to hang and then rehang because Command strips can be so finicky.

Just the road. Life feels so much simpler, so much more kinetic that way.

But despite all my fleeing tendencies, I do want to learn the art of staying. Maybe not forever. But for a year or two or three, at least. Maybe longer.

A chance to frequent the same coffee shops and share recognizing glances with the baristas.

A chance to try out the dozens of dining options in this fine city and treat my guests to the best eats in town.

A chance to offer hospitality when hospitality has so often and so gracefully and so seamlessly been shown me.

A chance to help a new nonprofit form its first heartbeats, working with the same staff and students from the classroom to the great outdoors.

A chance to stay means a chance to connect my life to the same other lives for a while and in so doing forge a new communal way of life for all of us.

I’ve tried staying before, and it did work for a little while. Until it fizzled out. Or I did. Or both.

Eventually staying got to me before I could get to it, and I’ll admit so much of me wants to get Asheville before Asheville can pull the rug out from under me.

Maybe this staying will be different than the last time. Maybe not.

But maybe so. I can’t ever know if I don’t learn the art of staying through the hurt.

Because the hurt of not-knowing if I left now or soon or within the year would be far more painful than this staying hurt I feel now.

Despite the staying failures of my past and yet another fresh future taunting me daily at my odometer, with everything in me I will stay and I will turn this staying into my next big adventure.