I’ve decided not to speak to my family for at least a year after I leave Fairbanks in May. I spoke of my intentions one night during dinner. My sister was not at the table, I think she’s still unaware. My mother’s forlornness was communicated to me by her silence and avoidance of eye contact. My father was fine with it. He reminisced about what his own family relations had been like when he was my age. His situation was a little different. By the time he was 24, he had spent some years at various locations far from home, and so had long been separated from the familiar individuals who had populated his childhood. Also, his father had died in front of him many years prior.

I love them, my decision is not borne of hatred. Many families, I think, consider themselves abnormal and dysfunctional in comparison to how they imagine other families are. But, really, wouldn’t lightly using the term ‘dysfunctional’ be fitting to describe the norm? Too often, people measure the inner workings of their own family against an incomparable variable: the outward appearance another family projects onto the public. Yes, we have a healthy share of stress-inducing character conflicts, these issues exacerbated as a consequence of living in such close quarters, but it’s precisely the existence of these seldom discussed grievances and frustrations that lead me to believe my family is, on the whole, unremarkable, and I love them all the more for it.

So, why the isolation from them? Mostly, I don’t want to hear their voices on the phone. Hearing their voices will pull me from wherever I happen to physically be and set me back inside this house in my mind. Written communication would do the same to a lesser degree, but a lesser degree is no better. The associations I create between the people I know and the geographic locations I pair them with are very strong. Part of this might have to do with the first time I tripped on mushrooms. I remember being keenly aware of how distinctly different the handful of environments we explored were, and how the boundaries between each space were so well defined. There was the ground floor of the cabin, the loft, and the outdoors. Even a particular small corner area in a room had its own unique ambiance. Pardon the forthcoming metaphor, but I lack the skill to express what I mean any other way. Wherever I move to will be the start of a new chapter in my life, and I won’t tolerate cross-chapter contamination in my book.