New York, State of Mine

As I go through this process of settling into my new state I’m surprised to feel grief. Part of this process required I surrender my Maryland driver’s license and plates. I’ve had that driver’s license since 1994, the plates since 1996. With all my moves, I kept them depending on the location out of a sense of loyalty or as an exit strategy.

When I saw my Maryland driver’s license on the clerk’s side of the counter I had a strong desire to touch it. But I would have seriously breached the personal and social boundary set up by the counter. I would have been seen at best weird or rude, at worst a threatening person in a government building.

As business concluded I was looking at my driver’s license, the clerk is looking at me. I realized with some embarrassment that I just made our pleasant yet banal interaction awkward. To save face, I asked the clerk if I could say goodbye to my driver’s license, which shifted the awkward to funny and sympathetic.

As I left the DMV, pun intended, I felt something shift and resettle inside me. I felt a similar shift at the beginning of summer when I embarked on a huge purge of my stuff. As I discarded progressively more personal items I felt I was discarding the parts of me that I loved but no longer served me: I didn’t need them or I loved the memory they represented or I carried them out of obligation. I felt my identity reshaping as I sorted through my things. I felt that same reshaping as I held the temporary New York State license. I realized that I no longer had anything that identified my Maryland origin, which made me sad to see that part of me go. But I was also intrigued. This is the first place I’ve moved where I chose to let my Maryland identity go.