Not Fade Away

I often don’t know what strengths are inside me until they’ve already broken free from my shell and bottle-rocketed themselves into the sky.

I am growing a family. One seed, planted with minimal hope on CraigsList, has flowered beyond any and all expectation. Last night over 30 like-minded people came together and became new friends and collaborators. It’s the start of what I hope will become a tribe, family/clan to finally belong to. I’m still reeling from last night and the magic bourn of a simple reaching out of a hand into the world, and the astonishing response that came.

Scrolling back to the "whys" of this effort:
I have some dear and long-standing friends here in the Boston area (the old JP Loop); friends who once shared many interests and activities. In the last year, however, I have sensed our tides rolling in opposite directions. In short, the majority of them have begun to take a lifestyle turn into middle-age. The exploratory, energetic activities we once shared no longer appeal to them. They are turning inward to the domestic now, a quiet and slower existence. They are changing. I am not.

You can’t know how lonely that feels until you’ve been there.

I am also from an extremely small biological family that is not really bonded by anything aside from shared blood. I envy friends who have big, close-knit families that share more than genetics. I can stare at those old formal Sicilian family portraits for hours and daydream about the plethora of intricate intra-relationships and the turbulent love that binds them through thick and thin. The sense of belonging to a Whole has been my chief deficit throughout my entire life. Perpetually feeling stray, feral.

Here’s what I decided to do about it:

Using CraigsList’s “Activity Partners” forum as an outreach tool, I posted an open invitation to people possessed of creative, artistic interests who are feeling a similar sense of loss as their friend’s lifestyles are changing and slowing. People of all creative bents, gay or straight, coupled or single, who wish for like-minded friends to enjoy live music, theatre, creative collaboration, and cultural events of all types with. People who, like me, can not and will not follow their friends into the lane of TV on Saturday nights and deadening social apathy.

On the very first day I got over 20 responses. I was staggered by the number of people experiencing the same thing. The messages said things like “You just spoke my mind!” and “Thank you SO much for doing this!”

Last week 7 of us met at Diesel to test the waters. Two others were attempting to form similar groups, and we merged our lists into one. Last night, over 30 respondents aggregated at The People’s Republik of Cambridge. Ideas flew for things we’d like to do, creative projects were shared, new friendships begun. There are visual artists, actors, photographers, a caricaturist, a tarot reader/astrologist, musicians, a web designer, creative entities of every stripe-- even a fellow former-Rochesterian -- all of whom long to be among kindred souls. And we were, and are. That’s as far as the story goes, to date. The rest is in the future.

This gradual build of family actually began last winter, with the friendships I made in Theatre@First. I want to include those friends in the things this group does, invite them to anything they want to join in on – build my family in layers.

I’ll have more people to invite to the one-acts, too.

So many times I’ve been plagued with the despairing fear that my existence has never truly touched a life, that I am in a tube outside of humanity and have never made a positive difference in someone’s life. But seeing these formerly isolated souls laughing and chatting together like old friends, I can’t deny the feeling that I’ve done something good. I’ve brought people to each other, and to me.

I am not a feral dog.

I can give, reach out and be reached for. I do belong.

God is a verb.