Split in Thirds

My heart lives in Minnesota.

My soul lives in Nashville. 

My mind lives in New York. 

It's hard being split in three. 

I envision my body as a tree, it's roots stretched out across a map. 

The roots are the deepest in Minnesota. 

I grew up there. I built myself there. Brick by brick I pieced myself together, from a baby to a toddler, from a toddler to a child, from a child to a teenager, all in my little house in the big wood. All of the big things happened there. And with every big thing, I tended to my roots, and my roots tended to me and my roots shot down, deeper into the earth, as if in fear I would try to dig them up.

But I wouldn't dare, as within those roots my heart grew, it's little heart-self growing into every crevice and crack the roots would allow it into. 

My roots should have known the only way they would come out of the earth was by force.

As I grew taller I branched out. I left my heart behind in its little nest made of the roots of my life, and I gathered a few of my leaves and my twigs and I moved to Nashville. 

The roots are shallower, but they stretch the farthest in Nashville. 

I planted them there instantly and almost by mistake. I had no idea it was where I would live my best life and meet my best friends. But I did. I tended to my roots, and my roots tended to me, and they spread like wildfire. With every passing day they crept outwards from the little center of life where I had unintentionally dropped them on an early August morning in 2012. 

Every person I met, every place I discovered was soon tangled in my ever-stretching roots. And within the shallow, but wildly extensive web, I placed my soul. And my soul grew, and changed and entwined itself into every single crevice. I didn't mean to leave my soul behind. But by the time I left Nashville, I couldn't ever hope to untangle it without shattering it completely.

So when it was time to move on I left it there, it's little soul-self quietly thriving in the roots that are still there today. So as I had done once before, I collected the leaves and the twigs, the ones that fit in my carry-on, and went on my way. 

Those are the roots that are still settling themselves in New York. Still trying to attach themselves to something unmoving, swaying precariously every time the wind blows. 

My mind is the only thing holding them down. In the past I let my roots find themselves before I placed a part of myself into them, but here I am with my mind placed firmly on the concrete and my roots trailing behind it, afraid to get too close lest I change my mind again. But my mind is made up. This is where my roots will grow next. And whether they grow out or they grow deep I do not know. But I tend to them and they tend to me, as we always have and I can see them growing even though they can't feel it.

But I still know that though my mind is here, and though it intends to stay here, my little bundle of roots growing deeper and wider every day, there's a heart and theres a soul, sitting in their own little hollows made of my roots, waiting for me to come back to them. 

And I feel their absence. 

There are dark and empty spaces inside of me, that can only be filled by the shape those particular pieces. 

I don't think those pieces will ever leave their little root nests, though. 

I don't think I want them to.

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