Losing North: A Journal Entry
When I lived in Paris, I took a class called Expatriate Writers in Paris. Hemingway and Nabokov aside, one of the assigned readings was Nancy Huston’s Losing North. Canadian émigré Nancy Huston used the term to describe how she felt after moving to Paris, experiencing cultural exile. As an expat myself, I have felt culturally, linguistically, and at times even spiritually displaced from something I have never even come to know as my North.
I will have a moment like the one I had today on the uptown C train, amid a heat wave, no battery on my phone, and my thoughts alone—every now and then; a quote, a word, a saying will come to mind, almost demanding to be used and explored, begging to start something for which I know no ending.
Today, it was Losing North.
I am twenty-one, recently graduated from college, single, and living in complete limbo.
I look back at myself four years ago and find that girl naive, yet in some ways, wiser than I am now. I would’ve been moving to New York by myself in two months, full of ambition, a desire to learn, complete and utter confidence in my creativity, a tenacity that would destroy me, and a heart untouched.
It is very strange, the way New York called me. One day, I woke up in my home in Honduras and just knew I had to get out. Something was waiting for me—maybe it was a poem to be written, a book to be read, a lover to be held, or a grief to inhabit me—but I knew it would happen in New York.
I don’t recognize that girl. She feels so far away from who I am now. I long for her, but I also understand how much she knew had to do with just how little she had lived.
My current freedom imprisons me with choice. The one thing I know, the only “North” I may have, is that I want to live a life of truth, love, and authenticity. That is my only mission, my only goal for now, because everything else feels tormentous.
During a conversation with my sister—whose ambition reignites mine–I confessed that I am truly terrified that all my ambition was wasted on what I’ve already achieved. That becoming a scholar, learning all that I know, was all I had in me.
A part of me knows that this is normal. I think? It is quite remarkable, though, how difficult this feels. No book prepared me enough for the “wings cut” metaphor. It’s usually the ability to get places that’s the problem—but for me, it’s how directionless I feel that surprises me.
I met someone this week who ignited a great wave of insecurity in me. They are successful, smart, and as far as I could tell, their North was chosen for them since birth. It was a strange encounter—one that has left me faltering, defeated. I was staring straight at something that could never understand me. And yet, why?
I went against the only North I have. I was not authentically myself. I did not tell my story. And it pains me that, this far into the life I’ve chosen, I haven’t outgrown some of the hardest parts of myself. The road to understanding is communication, and I abstained.
I’ve come to understand that I’m a person whose life comes to her by living it. I used to build things—and to some degree, I still do—but I’ve developed a kind of trust in a plan I don’t yet know. I sense that my life is out there looking for me, and my only job is to find it, not make it.
I am writing this because I have lost my North many times in my life, but especially now. And while I want to sit and pretend I am not suffering from a loss of identity and purpose, my philosophy and vulnerable exhibitionist drive urge me to go against the status quo and say:
“Holy shit, I am scared.”
From now on, North becomes a mirage— something almost unattainable.
I am the daughter of two immigrants. I am first-generation educated. I came to this country on a full-ride scholarship—to write poetry and to decolonize my mind. That was my North. And I completed it.
The world is falling apart—what now?
Two years ago, I started writing a poem. The line “I am the architect of the lives I have lost” was the only thing that came from it. Today, it all came together—because I’m sure that line was a prophetic vision of what was to come, the starting point for me to write this, right now, amid global and individual uncertainty about our North.
ARCHITECT OF THE LIVES I HAVE LOST
He says everything
Is leading to something. The bee dies
After stinging. Embedded in its body is its fate.
I am self-destructive. Only love will do. Forty-five
Is a long time when you know what comes
After. The bee could not help it, and neither
Could I? I am scared.
I am the architect of the lives I have lost.
It is not desire, but survival, to cling
Onto the very ideas that end me. So
What is more time, when everything
Is a pattern? How long to be unconfined
To our fate or to push
Our instincts away?
