The hands of change touch everything in my life these days—pushing, pulling, prodding, stopping. What can sometimes be sensuous is now a bully—what egged me on now forces me into submission. I’m learning choke holds in Jiu-Jitsu right now. Is that why I feel like life has me by the throat? If life is a highway, then where am I going? If all my exes live in Texas, then why am I still here?
At the risk of being existential, I put all my eggs in the basket of “I’m moving on”. But I lament. Today my boss broke down at my cubicle about his stepmom passing away. He didn’t have to use words. I know how he feels. It’s the same way I feel when I hear “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, the same tears in the spare office, the same simple twist of fate. The chapter of cancer in my life closed long ago, but I still feel like the 17-year-old kid who just watched her mom die—who tried to help her brother—who didn’t know what to do. Now, people come to me with their problems. I may be 24, I may be planning my out-of-country move, I may be intelligent, but a part of me still feels like that kid. That’s where my elevator stopped. Some things don’t change, even when it seems like they do.
There’s so much I hate about this goddamn country. But I love David, I love my Jiu-Jitsu coaches, and I love my family. There’s much I want for myself that goes beyond Texas—so much life to live. Things are changing. My worldview, my habits, everything. I’m bleeding out in front of everyone I know and love (or don’t). Writing is funny because it is healing but it also rips me to shreds. I bare myself on this blog—still 17—still scribbling. But I’m stronger now.
When the wine runs out, what is left for me here? In the absence of love, in the absence of passion, why can’t I follow my bleeding heart somewhere else?
Somewhere, somewhere in Northeast Texas there is a red-brick house I grew up in. There is a dog, now dead, who barks at the neighbors. There are kids’ handprints on the patio cement. Endless home improvement projects. Everyone knows everyone. As far as I am concerned, this is Texas. And here I am, leaning in a doorway that isn’t mine anymore. It smells like Italian food. My brother is yelling at me.
Home isn’t finished with you even when you leave.