Started out Good & then Went to Hell

It’s the end of the year and everyone is rushing around trying to fix their lives by midnight. We’re all checking off to-do lists and trying to lose 10 pounds before the ball drops, marking the end of another year and asking what we have to show for the last 365 days.

Between old resolutions and new the hours in a day don’t seem worth it anymore. The year feels tight and by December most of us are feeling so claustrophobic we’re afraid to go to bed.  We regret the most particular things; a cupcake we ate on St. Patrick’s Day, spending $20 on a shall we only wore twice {but looked so good in}, 2 tickets to a Bills game we never went to - the list goes on until our regrets have become this year’s resolutions and we’re reciting them in front of the mirror on the last Thursday in December.  We’re talking to ourselves and driving down one ways, the wrong way, tweezing our eyebrows in traffic.

In my old apartment I would sit on the floor in-between the coffee table and couch and write the same way I do here, in this new apartment that is now mine. But here the walls are smaller except there are more of them, and the hallways feel wider and I feel smaller but my legs are cramping and my arms still can’t stretch out fully. 

My memories are different here.  You’ve been here but I don’t like to remember it. We’ve slept in my bedroom but after you left, I had to paint the walls and move the furniture to try and forget you. It got so bad that I started leaving my window open at night and shiver beneath blankets so your smell will be pushed out. I wake up and am greeted by the door you walked out of. The door I let you walk out of. I'm constantly reminded that there will never be a you & I: it’s just a you and then a me. Separate entities.

I’m choking on my coffee and that brings me back to reality. With only a few days left of the year, this is how I’ll go – death by my pumpkin spice.  Everything I was just dwelling on seems less important as I gasp. Elaina is laughing and I’m signaling for help but she doesn’t move.  It is moments like this that I wonder if she’d let me die if I was choking on a chicken bone and not a liquid. 

I’m writing prose on my walls, on my bathroom mirror and my dashboard. This year I’m going to change, I’m going to fix my shitty posture and paint my nails every day. I’m going to forget all about your soft expression. This time I am writing declarations not resolutions. And this time, I'm telling Elaina they will stick. I tell her that they say desperation leaves us empty and hollow. He told me it made him crazy, it left his soul in his gut and his pockets empty. Elaina says it was Global Warming that sent us all up a wall this year. I say it was the fact that I wore the wrong shoes on our first date.

The Truth

In New Jersey just outside Paramus, three people were trampled outside of a JC Penny midnight madness sale, the woman who’s son was taken to the hospital,  told reporters “ I got this sweater for 14.00, originally 47.50…. what a steal!”

She only held it up for the cameras after offering to try it on.

Rest Stops

The same way the roads unite us, they pull you away from me. I head south, you head east- when we almost could cross paths again along Route 83 in Pennsylvania I move through the night slowly and you wake up to wonder where have you been and where I have gone.

On 95 heading north, you stop at a rest stop near Norfolk, it's dark but it feels like morning. A man is drinking coffee and reading a newspaper as he stretches his back from left to right, to left to right. His beard looks dirty, it's graying in spots so vividly that you can not decide if its the shade growing in or the shade being consumed. Watching him, time passes but the sun doesn't come up.

Heal, Toe

Everything has never been this exciting and this terrible at the same time. My tongue is numb but so is my head and the empty hollowness echoes while I try to sleep keeping me awake until dawn. I drift off only to wake up groggy in cold sweats, clutching pillows as if they were life vests- as if feathers and cotton could save my life the way the perfect shade of Perfectly Pink has saved so many first dates.

Distraction is the best medicine for a shattered soul. I tell her that staying busy is the only option. Elaina counters that rest will keep me alive. That my body is literally crying for it. I tell her to grab a brush, I’m painting my room, I’m pulling up carpeting and paining over old picture frames. Boy Meets World is playing in the back ground and it’s the season Topanga and Corey break up, he's saying true love conquers all. I’m slopping paint against walls as tears drip into the bucket.

A heaviness has taken over that I can not shake. From across the room Elaina is telling me that my expression gives me away immediately. My face is so drawn she has to stop herself from coming over and hugging me to make sure I am warm.

I run along East Avenue in the evenings, making a left on Goodman and I head towards Monroe Avenue and jog past the Park Bench, past Church Street Pub, the wind whips against my thighs and it stings. My heart is pumping against my chest and I'm still alive. I can feel the life in my bones.

642 Miles Later

It’s not July but the road is familiar and the air is warm. I find myself with the windows down, counting mile markers along route 15 and thinking about the winters that have past and the winters that are waiting for me. I am wondering about the people in Massena and if they are happy and if I will ever be happy in the simple way I saw them that day.

At mile 200 my breathing has caught up with my heart beat and I have a faint curiosity about if you’ve woken up yet and who you are next to. I still see you sitting across from me retelling a rehearsed story, as honest as I'd accept you to be but still completely exposed.

I once said, “I want to know you in a way I would never let you know me.”  As true as my words were then, they are more so true as I cross state lines and it begins to snow. The silence of snow brings about a foreign calmness that I have not felt since I stood on the steps of Adams Street in a sea of black and white and pink.  

I listen to talk radio and pretend I am in the studio, driving past small towns, I am being interviewed and hear myself telling strangers through the airwaves “I thought he had actually killed me, but I just kept driving”.

The End

It was cold for the middle of October and I didn’t wear a coat. I had forgotten how unforgiving the wind can be when you live by the water. You tried to fix everything before you left; the sign on top of the window that I couldn’t reach, the parking lot that wasn’t big enough for my car, the leaky faucet in my bathroom that flooded my tub. You suggested two cheap, but decent, bottles of wine that I will never drink.

I called to tell you thank you and I know this voice-mail will be listened but I also know  you will never hear me. Thank you for the color yellow, wind in my hair & blueberry wheat beer and for reminding me I truly am flawed if not free. I’m sorry all you learned was how to make a decent mimosa and that wet leaves are just as dangerous as black ice.

Eastward

It's Tuesday and we're drinking a Bloody Mary at a bar in Denver International Airport waiting to board our flight home. She says, as we're watching the tarmac for incoming planes, "Man, this state is flat."

And I say, "I can drink to that." And we do.

You can go Back

I've watched him dance his way through crowded bars with strangers who became friends, who turned into best friends. All before dawn, I have become enthralled and grown tired of these very same people. He's promising a lifetime of passion and adventure, all the while knowing there's nothing he enjoys more than falling asleep with an entire bed to himself.

My legs have been dragged across 365 miles of highway that I don’t remember until I’m back with my foot against the accelerator.

 I still don't know where the journey and destination came into question- but it's clear that one would not survive without the other.

I went because I was invited, because I was scared more of going back than going anywhere else. The same feeling that five years early pushed me west had pushed me south. And when I think back now at the options I agonized over then, I take comfort in knowing that so far, all decisions have led to a good life- to the good life.