“Write me a letter.”
If you had to leave home in a hurry… What would you take with you? What would you save in a fire or a hurricane? When you don’t have enough time to think and your body starts to move before you tell it. What would you reach for?
Even before I left your apartment I had run out of ways to tell you that I missed you. So when my flight got cancelled, I was excited for just a minute. You said, ‘oh wow.’ And I knew that was you telling me not to come back. You know… Watching 90s comedy on your couch felt a lot like home.
In retrospect, I know how stupid that sounds. I hate myself for feeling that way.
Home has always been a strange thing to me. I can’t remember what home used to look like. I don’t remember the way I decorated my room or the way my parents set up dinner on Sunday evenings. No. I just remember how lonely it was.
So when I left home, that lonely was the only thing I had learned to take with me. Over the years, that lonely became a feeling of just being alone. It’s hard to be lonely in a world with over 108 billion people. Binders full of people really. I learned not to mind it. I learned that it was enough. In my life of infinite privilege, maybe just being alone wasn’t so bad.
So, when we listened to Passing Through A Screen door, I pointed out my favorite line.
“The first thing that I do when I walk in, is find a way out for when shit gets bad.”
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You smiled and I saw your eyes turn into the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t tell you then but that really isn’t my favorite line in the song. It was just what I was feeling. Home wasn’t on your couch. Home was a lonely place. I’d have to go back and I counted the way your smile slowly turned into… Whatever the opposite of a smile is. But you know, not really like a frown. A neutral face I mean. It was a neutral face.
Is it weird if I tell you that you have a beautiful neutral face??
It’s a cycle you know. The same way you were waiting for the song to end and for me to leave, I was waiting too. I’m still waiting.
I’m waiting for my mom to come home. I’m waiting to tell her all the things she never got to see. Like how I learned to drive or she has grandkids now. I’d tell her about Mr. Digby’s and promise we’d go sometime. I’d tell her that I am a software engineer because lying is so much easier than explaining that I am just a software engineering student.
I was never good at explaining things to my mother.
Once I tried to tell her how I sometimes I think my life is something happening to someone else. It’s like watching a movie in a language I do not speak. The room is dark and quiet and sometimes I talk to the characters on screen even though I know they cannot hear me. Sometimes I see a glowing exit sign out of the corner of my eye. Some days it is brighter than the movie. Some days I can only see it if I look.
I wonder if my mother saw it too. The day that she left home. She must have been in a hurry because she forgot to take me with her. Some days I think that once this movie is over I’ll go and look for her. Some days I can’t tell if I’m overstaying my welcome. Maybe I don’t need to see the ending. Maybe I should beat the traffic.
