I just got back from spending two weeks in the Pacific Northwest. The trip started with a day & a half in Portland with my parents, followed by three days on the Oregon coast with the rest of my immediate family, & three days back in Portland before Evan & I took a long weekend to go up through Astoria, Olympic National Park, Forks, & eventually Seattle. It’s all part of an annual excursion that my family takes.
You see, every year my parents put together a family vacation/reunion of sorts that includes both my parents, Evan & myself, my sister & her family, & my cousin Jackie & her family. This tradition started at Table Rock Lake about fiver years ago, but has since migrated around the continental US. We did San Diego, California one year, Winter Park, Colorado another, & then this year we decided was going to be for Portland, Oregon.
If you were unaware, Portland, Oregon is actually the place of my birth. My parents had moved up to Portland from Kansas City a couple of years prior to my birth with my already birthed sister & lived there until just before my fourth birthday. My dad eventually took a job in Eugene for a while & I spent a portion of the summer with him there. Additionally, we used to frequent Portland & I even spent a couple of summers in Seaside with my friend Carson’s extended family in high school. This trip made me fully come to the realization that, for whatever reason, the Pacific Northwest (PNW) has always felt more like home than Kansas, even though I grew up there. I didn’t fully understand why that was until these last couple of weeks or so & I think, after some time decompressing upon arrival back home coupled with some deep introspection, pattern recognition, & meditation, I am starting to understand why.
I think it is worth noting that I am definitely the black sheep of my family, as this is what a lot of this blog will center around. That dissonance. I’m the artist, the one that lives in another state, the world traveller, the queer one, the leftist, the activist, the deconstructed, the one who is a bit “woo woo,” the one who has actually gone to therapy, the progressive, the adventurous, the diagnosed neurodivergent, the fact checker, the empathetic, the reader, etc. etc. etc., you get the picture I’m painting. So for all intents & purposes, I feel that I seldom fit in with my family. I feel like I am the odd man out & that was really hard for me for a very long time.
If I’m being real, I would argue that it’s still hard for me. I see my family & we’re typically courteous enough, but I never feel like I fully fit in. Maybe that’s partially my fault, maybe I don’t try hard enough to do so, but I have gotten to the point where I don’t think I feel like trying much anymore. It’s far too draining to try & pretend to be someone I’m not, especially if that’s the made up version of me that ends up winning their affections. I tried for years & years to change that, extending myself in all sorts of different ways, but every time I did I was met with either resistance, short comings, or outright rejection. It has been a rough, mostly one sided battle.
I promise you that this isn’t just a blog meant to rag on my family, or give you a picture of myself to sympathize with. All of this has a point, as does the introductory paragraphs regarding The PNW. I just needed to set two separate scenes for you all before I tried to show you the intersectionality between them.
As I stated above, I was born in Portland, in the heart of Cascadia. I am the only member of my family to be born in the Pacific Northwest.
I can hear it no, the ‘yeah? So what?’ of it all. Patience young padawan, we’re getting there. I am quite literally of a different land from them.
I know, I know, hold on. We’ll dive deeper, I promise.
When it comes to the argument of nature vs nurture, it seems that in the end, most of the research ends up pointing to the answer of the question actually ending up somewhere in the middle. It is both nature & nurture that contribute to who a person is & who they will become. The nature of genetics & environment aside, you also have to understand that nature is woven into our DNA.
My family lived in Portland for several years prior to my birth & all through my gestation period into my birth. This means that all, or most of, especially in the early 90s, of the food consumed by both of my parents, all of the water, the air, etc. was that of the Pacific Northwest. The molecules that construct my physical body; my brain, my endocrine system, all of it, originated, or at least spent a good deal of time, in the Pacific Northwest. It is literally in my bones.
Now, I’m sure that one could argue that we are constantly becoming infused with our environments. Our cells reproduce & heal using vitamins & minerals gathered from the things we consume, from the regions that we live in. Yes, but the root code, the stem cells that went to work 3D printing a human being, those originate from somewhere very specific. A very specific time & place, & I am the only member of my family who has that specific material at the center of my mechanism.
So, while my family was built of the plains, built of dirt & grass, sun, wind, dust, flint, agriculture, farms, red meat, wheat, corn, dramatic seasonal cycles, & earth, I am built of the mist, the mystery, the smoke, the endless trees, & the tides. I am stitched together with berries & fish, salt, driftwood, cold water, volcanic ash, moss, & basalt. I am, for all intents & purposes, an entirely foreign land to them, one that they like to visit from time to time, but that they tend to migrate towards the familiar within, clinging to farm land & orchards in place of hazy beaches or deep abyssal forests. I do not fit in or align with them in my entirely because I am not of them. I am not of the plains, I am of the coastal rainforest.
I don’t mean for all of this to further alienate me from them, or to justify that alienation. It was just like something clicked for me that I’d never thought about & at the end of the day, it could be entirely farcical. I honestly just found it to be an interesting angle to explore. Maybe I’m simply searching for meaning or pulling threads that lead nowhere, but I’m genuinely curious if there are other people out there who would fall into this same framing. Are you a black sheep of your family? If so, are you of a different place than them or is there something else entirely different at play here? I don’t know, nor do I have the answers, it was just an epiphany that I had that sent me down a rabbit hole of thought to the above listed outcome.
At any rate, I hope you all have yourself a lovely weekend. It’s interesting to think of the people in our lives this way; those who embody the characteristics of the places they were made. Again, maybe I’m insane, it’s more likely than not, I just felt something click with this idea & I wanted to share to see if any of you felt the same or have a similar lived experience. Anywho…
As always, much love to you all,
-C