Crying in Your Car

For the first time ever, I witnessed someone bawling in their car in a fit of hysterics. It felt ironic, because just one week earlier, I was that person. Does everyone witness this at some point?

The moment is ingrained in my mind. I pulled up to the stoplight, glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the woman in the car behind me sobbing. I couldn't hear her, but I could tell that her crying was loud. I felt a mixture of compassion and comfort from seeing her. It was a kind of "aha!" moment, because I felt connected to her, and I thought "I know just what that feels like". Now I know what it looks like. I wished I could be with her, or say something, but there's a good chance she'd want to be alone. If nothing else, I could tell her that I know what it feels like to scream in your car.

Home is Where the Hurt Is

"You are so out of this house. By the end of the month," my mom, who I love so much, said to me. Because of a jacket on the stairs. Don't confuse this with some cute mother-daughter bickering. This isn't the first time she's threatened me like this. When I was a teenager my mother once threatened to call the police to remove me from the house because I wasn't cleaning my room.

However, I don't feel threatened. There's really not much to lose. I stick around because I love the house. I can't let go of the house. My whole life has been here. It has the short ledge where, as a kid, I once repeatedly tried to fly. I'd run at it and leap off the end over and over. And once, I was convinced that I had experienced a brief moment of actual flight. I excitedly told my parents, and they cheered with me.

This is the house where I lived with my best friend. Our dog, who died in 2008 due to a tumor in her shoulder that was causing her too much pain. This is the house where I've celebrated birthdays and holidays. A few years ago when my sister and I woke up on Easter, we found that there were, yet again, chocolate eggs around the house for us to find. We're both in our 20s, and my sister was just visiting.

"How long are you going to keep on doing this?" I asked my mom, thinking that it would've stopped when we became adults.

"Forever," she said.

This is the house where I lived with my family. My sister is absent because she moved out several years ago. My dad is absent because he was kicked out earlier this year. Don't go thinking he was the one with problems. He did everything for my mom.

If I had to leave, I'd have no loss with my mom to regret.

"Is that how you want to live your life? Eliminating the people who get in the way of your otherwise perfect life?" I was surprised at how quickly I was able to toss this out there. The fact that it didn't seem untrue made it pretty easy to conjure. I didn't have to manipulate anything for all the dots to connect. My parents are going through a divorce. My dad was also a burden to my mom's perfect system of life. Bootcamp, work, bootcamp, sleep. My mom is more concerned with fighting off age than she is with having good relationships with her family. If only she could realize that you can't have a perfect life and also have relationships, at the same time. She continues to go for the perfect life, while her family becomes something like a symptom of unnecessary inconvenience.

I love my mom like I love the sandy shards of glass that embed themselves in someone's skin after the window explodes in a collision. I'd have no loss with her to regret because even if we once found some loving connections between us, they've been lost by now. As for the house...well, even though I still live here, it's kind of been lost already, too.

To Absent Friends

She would be happy to know that all four glasses were being used then. Poured merriment, each one sitting in a socially ritualistic manner, equal distance from the next.

The glasses were a birthday present from her. When I said so, Chris rose his glass and said, "to absent friends."

"To absent friends," we chimed, and the glasses all met in the middle of the circular table.

Through years of every stage a friendship can find, she's given me much; she's given me me. And then she left. She made me a stronger person, and now that she is not near, my soul feels starved.

As long as I've known her, she's always lived in the same yellow house.

Changes, changes, changes.

Inner demons of my past are resurfacing. I'd shoved them away for so many years, I thought that I had succeeded in deluding myself of their existence. But they appear now as trenches that I need to either climb deeply into, or leap across, if I think there's a chance I can jump so far.

I want to talk to her, to tell her about all the things that she knows about me that are not true anymore. I need her to know. I need someone to know.

But, I do not even know.

It's night, and I'm driving, and I pass the road that leads to her house. As long as I have known her, this road has led to her.

I feel I am about to burst, I am so tired of second-guessing myself. I feel I am about to find the nearest stranger and ask them if they want to run away to Portland and sleep in a hotel. Drink a lot, and tell secrets. I feel this so strongly, that the idea does not seem weird, and I do not feel as though someone could even pass up such an offer.

I feel I am about to burst. I know that such a proposal would have most people concerned, and scared of me in my frantic desperation.

As long as I have known her, this road has led to her. A part of me wonders if the paved street could somehow recognize the spirit of its function; if it could somehow take me to her now. But I don't have that kind of faith, so I pass it by.