Gregor Samsa

I woke up today thinking about Gregor Samsa...who woke up one day and discovered that he was an insect. (Gregor - Kafka - The Metamorphasis) Twenty seven years after reading that in the God-Awful freshman humanities class (hi Jen) it dawned on me what had happened... I know what happened to Gregor, because it happened to me.


I woke up, one day, and no longer recognized myself. Everything familiar --- gone. I didn't know who I was anymore. I didn't know what I liked, what I liked to do, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go...I gave up on my dreams, I gave up on all of my goals...Each day, every day, I got up, got dressed, and got through the day. Nothing more. When did it happen? How did I get there. And I say "there" because it was "there" and I am no longer "there". But I was. It was, I realized, a slow burn. An eroding of the soul. Each grain. Each small piece that didn't make a statement of it's own. I don't know how it started or why I had been so willing to give up things that made me happy, or brought me peace or just simply were fulfilling in some indescribable way. But, one day, all of those small grains, collectively known as "self" were simply gone. Washed away. As if they were never there in the first place.


Which makes me ask the bigger question...the question that has been haunting me for weeks as a distant echo, but now rings clear...Why, oh why, was I willing to give up so much for so little? And I don't have the answer yet, nor do I know if I ever, really will. What I do know, is that one day, as the last grain of self was quickly disappearing, I grabbed it. I held on to it. I was not going to let go. And I made an instant decision...never again would I be so willing to surrender that which I held dear. There would never be an other opportunity to erode my soul without knowing full well that I was voluntarily letting it go. The most remarkable thing happened. As I held on tightly to the final grain of soul, like a magnet, I was able to reclaim others that I was so willing to let go before. And so the journey begins...the journey to rebuild...I bought new hiking boots...can't wait to see where they take me.

If you don't know who Gregor is...Kafka...the Metamorphasis -- maybe nostalgia brought me back to Gregor...I walked yesterday at UCSD. The place where I first met Gregor nearly 30 years ago.