Moving On

Note: I haven't posted here in long time and probably won't for a long time after this. The past three seasons have been wearisome and grad school takes up far too much of my time. I suppose more than that I haven't felt I had something that was meaningful enough to contribute to the Michigan blogosphere. I'm not sure I do now either, but the urge to write was overwhelming. I'm sure Brian won't agree with much of the following, but that's okay. We've always disagreed.

I haven't missed a Michigan game since The Horror. I'm sure I've neglected to catch a few plays here or there, but not many and always regretfully. I was in Boston for Appalachian State, and with no broadcast to be found, glued to ESPN's game tracker. I'm not sure if it would have been more painful to watched the game or not, but I still haven't seen it. I don't think I ever will. But, I was away from home and it was easy to escape from everything and forget.

This summer I left Michigan for grad school and won't be back home until Bowl Season. I certainly miss it, but the distance would be so much more bearable if on Saturday afternoons I could just be happy. In a lot of ways football feels like my one true bond with my roots. That may seem melodramatic, or insane, but I know it's true. I talk to my parents and my friends, see my dog through Skype, but in so many ways those fleeting moments are just a reminder of the distance. They only make the homesickness worse. Watching Michigan is different. Everything else washes away in the glow of the TV and all I'm left with is a beautiful tunnel vision. Every Saturday I get lost in something larger than myself; something that invokes happiness from as far back as I can remember. In so many ways Michigan is home, even if I can't be in Ann Arbor.

Yet, instead clutching that contact as long as I can, all I want to do is forget. It's so easy to become disconnected from it all; to slip away. No one is obsessed with Michigan here. No one asks me about the game. The chatter isn't in the air. I can forget. I can hole myself away from it all.

I don't have any thoughts on the game right now, they fled away with the last fleeting image of riotous white as the television faded to black. I don't have any comments about the angry villagers that are surely storming the castle back home right now. All I can do is sit here and write.

I know next week I'll be right back in front of that television, on the edge of my seat, working on that same ulcer. It's not something that I could ever give up on, I know that with every fiber of my being. I'll wait and hope and grimace and cheer and hopefully things will turn out all right in the end.

Because I need it to. Goddamn do I need it. In so many ways, I feel as if it's the most important thing in the world. Because I'm obsessed, because I cannot help but wallow in nostalgia, because I need something, anything to look forward to, but most of all, for the simple reason that at the end of the day everything is still the same. Because when all is said and done nothing has changed except for the position of some padded men on a chalk-marked field. I don't say this to make light of the game, no... I say it for exactly the opposite reason. The truth is: it's so damn important because it doesn't matter. I know that's a paradox and you probably all think I'm insane, but I believe that wholeheartedly. With football I can pour everything I have into it, and lose myself completely, exactly for that reason. I know most of you are out for blood, and I understand that, but I'll be right here waiting, offering no judgments and reaching out for that connection for the rest of my life. It's all that I can do.