Do My Rose-Tinted Glasses Blind Me?
Living in a perpetual state of farewell has tinted my life in rose and gold. Does it obscure reality or add depth to my world?
Three summers ago, just weeks before my partner of over a decade and I separated, we spent a week in Oregon together. Before my adventurous spirit was free to roam more distant destinations, we traversed the beautiful places close to home together. We would find solace in wooded places surrounded by lakes and mountains at least once a year to break away from our rinse-and-repeat routine of work, toke and Netflix to wake, bake, and hike somewhere more peaceful.
I remember the smell of damp pine filling the car as we winded through the two-lane highways. The coastal roads in Northern California were our gateway to bliss. The landscape was a gradation of warmth as it transitioned from golden valleys and farmland to wooded canopies with light dappling through the infinitely tall redwoods. The crisp, coastal air and interplay of light and shadow were our portal to a quieter mind and more present eyes.
A change of environment has always been the answer to the chatter in my mind. I am at constant war with my thoughts—the neverending stream of worries, doubts, and unfulfilled ideas tangle together like a wool ball. One fleeting abstraction unravels into countless distractions. I pull at one chord of the knot and get pulled into the chaos of the intermingled bits. Yet, among the ancient trees or submerged in the flow of a cool river, if only momentarily, I stop tugging. The world around me becomes more vivid in those rare and precious moments. Nature serves as a conditioner to my tangles of thoughts, lubricating them until the knots slip out with ease.
During that last trip to Oregon, we took some mushrooms to open our field of vision a little further. Months before, in the dusty pink desert, they had unleashed a wave of awareness over me that made me bear witness to the secrets I had been keeping from myself. After years of hiding from my truths, I had a newfound level of intrigue and was eager to gaze further into the window I’d just begun to peek into.
I could write endlessly about what those two experiences awakened in me and the consequences and lessons that have continued to shape me in the years since, but the moment that my mind revisits is gilded in gold and rose.
I remember it distinctly. Sitting on the tabletop of a picnic bench in the riverside park in Bend, Oregon. I was in the afterglow of my mushroom trip. As soon as the substance had taken hold of me, I felt an intense need to be free from any physical structures or constraints, away from anyone – especially him. I walked for what felt like hours around the quiet and tree-lined streets, accepting the truth that I had been fighting for many months leading up to that week. It was time to move on.
When I accepted that the trip to Oregon would likely be the last of its kind, I found my way back to him, ready to enjoy what I knew was the beginning of the end. When the tears stopped flowing, and the doubt and fear morphed into hope and gratitude, I took him by the hand, and we walked to that bench. The sun was low, the sky glowed of gold and mauve, and its warmth reflected and shimmered on the river beside us.
His green-blue eyes were flecked and sparkling, and his skin was bronzed and warm from the western sun brushing against him. He never looked so beautiful to me as he did in that moment.
The park hummed with laughter and cricket chirping, and I watched the trees sway to the rhythm of the summer sounds. They glowed fiercely, backlit by the descending rays of the sun. He was also glowing. His green-blue eyes were flecked and sparkling, and his skin was bronzed and warm from the western sun brushing against him. He never looked so beautiful to me as he did in that moment.
Our lives together flashed before my eyes, and I imagined him as an old man. When we took our vows, even though I’ve never fully conformed to traditional beliefs about marriage, I trusted that we could navigate life's turbulence together. But that belief had since dissolved, and the darkness of the unknown had taken its place. I knew we were in our last weeks together and that everything in our lives would soon change.
Despite the fear of the murkiness ahead, I felt more present than ever with him. I saw him for what he was, for the lessons we had given each other and the wounds we had healed in our chapter together, and I was overwhelmed with gratitude that he had been my partner for so long. When the last golden beams disappeared behind the horizon, we returned to the cottage we stayed in, where we drank cheap wine and danced to Fleetwood Mac. He looked at me with the same green eyes that had known me for thirteen years, but his gaze was unfamiliar, filled with depth, sadness and love. I sensed that he knew it was time to set me free.
That was over three years ago, and in the months since that moment, I have been living in a perpetual state of endings. I am always living out the present with a tinge of preemptive nostalgia. It’s the last few pages of a novel you couldn’t put down – pausing to put all the pieces together, to understand the lesson, and accept that the story is nearly finished. It’s the last day of vacation when the sunset corals and fuchsias in the sky seem more saturated than any day before, and the beauty of it all feels overwhelming, and all the things that went wrong along the trip suddenly don’t seem to matter.
In the years since that evening in Oregon, I haven’t been anywhere for more than five or six months at a time. I’ve lived every day since through the lens of someone leaving, enveloped by the bittersweet feeling that accompanies farewells. As a result, I have felt every emotion, every connection, and every fleeting moment with a level of intensity that has become my new normal.
The last few years have felt like those moments on the swings –distant enough from the reality beneath and flowing from one high to the other.
As a child, I was quite introverted, and my place on the playground was always on the swing set. I loved kicking my legs back and forth, building momentum and defying the wind and gravity. I’d swing forward and backward with the same momentum of a pendulum’s bob, and from each new height, I’d observe the world around me like a bird in flight. The last few years have felt like those moments on the swings –distant enough from the reality beneath and flowing from one high to the other. And just like when I was a child I’ve let my fear get in the way of jumping off and landing with two feet on the ground.
In the sky, you’re untouchable, and maybe that's where I feel my safest. When I’m in a place for a short window of time, the glow of my rose-tinted glasses radiates outward. Friends I otherwise may have had to convince to go out are willing to use their reserve of social battery on me. I can skirt the moments of loneliness and count on the company I often long for when it’s unavailable. Lovers who may have otherwise lost interest are enamored with me, confident that they’ll be the one to convince me to stay.
When the dizziness from the swing outweighs the thrill and I land on two feet, it takes a moment for the dust to settle. I find myself asking questions like, “Am I only lovable when I’m on my way out?” The quiet moments in between leave space for me to fall back into patterns of self-doubt, leaving me feeling more disconnected than when I was watching from a safe distance above. It’s as though the rose-tinted glasses I’ve hidden behind have blinded me from seeing what is truly there.
I’ve always had an affinity for melancholia. Throughout my life, I’ve found comfort in the somber melody of a song or the pang in the stomach of a farewell. It gives life substance and my story depth, and I cling to the low moments with the same white knuckles as the highs. After spending my twenties in a stable, often boring, relationship, I’ve chased the edges of the emotional spectrum and clung to them for the last several years – terrified of returning to what some would consider a stable life – to me; it's brutally mundane.
When I moved from California, I left at a peak moment in my life, making the filter of those memories incredibly dreamy. Like the creamy Portra film I used to document the best and final months leading up to my departure, they have a pearlescent, subdued, and dreamlike quality. I’ve spent the last few years determining if my life in Barcelona is everything I hoped it would be. I have, and continue to, have my reservations about this city. Every return visit to California has left me with a profound sense of doubt, and my most recent visit in June was no different.
While still stateside, I thought I had found my balance. I had accepted that no one place would probably ever live up to my expectations and needs and that the polyamorous relationship I had chosen with the Golden State and the Mediterranean was the closest thing I would get to feeling fulfilled. But in moments of loneliness and instability, I question this approach. Have I traded the warmth that fills me with a deep sense of sustained connection and stability when I’m home in California for the rose filter I’ve been living through?
I still cry every time I take that transatlantic flight. My own bed still feels foreign whenever I crawl back into it and listen to the city pulsate below. It takes weeks or longer for my nervous system to recalibrate. Still, when it finally adjusts, it's like falling in love all over again, and I remember why I tolerate the heaviness that overtakes me with each transition.
I hate the notion that those of us who make drastic moves or live nomadic or unconventional lives are seeking to escape something. I may or may not be running from something or even from myself. It’s that feeling that I’m chasing – an infinite golden hour.
For now, I’ll keep my rose-tinted glasses. It may be a different reality than many choose to live in, but it’s mine. Just like that evening in Oregon, it instills a deep sense of gratitude for the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve encountered along the way—some who will endure the flickering quality of my existence in their lives and others who pass through the rosey and golden beams to teach me something or to simply bask in the glow.
Currently Listening to….
A peaceful and deeply nostalgic instrumental playlist with melancholic undertones that I listen to while writing, creating and in moments of reverie.
Tarot Card of the Moment:
The Wheel of Fortune
“The same forces that govern the changing of the seasons, or the rising and setting of the sun is also the master of luck and the fate of individuals. Where it lands is as random as chance - you may find yourself at either the top or bottom, but remember that no matter what the outcome it may not last for very long, for the wheel always turns.
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