June 26, 2013

The truth is that I'm lost. There is nowhere on earth that is home. As always, happiness is fleeting and I love what cannot ever love me back. Never mind it -- I should be content anyway. And I am.

America is a large mansion, full of drafty rooms, filled with space and things that decay after not so long. We scream and speak loudly to fill the space between us. Somehow, I don't think all of that sound will ever be enough. But a tight space is claustrophobic. There is no place for those of us who search. We are pulled back and forth between large and small.

Being back here is a soft reminder that I was right to leave. It is hard to leave my family and harder to stay with them. I am a ghost to them, someone they don't know anymore and someone who was always a step apart. I try to make a family elsewhere but the only real family I'll ever have is the voice inside my head - the vision of that certain, inevitable future that awaits me at the end of any road I'll choose.

It is good to write again. I have missed it. I have missed the steadfast companion of words that run down my arm and drip onto a page like water. I have missed the companion of traveling alone, of the open road, of transience.

Should I ask if love is a word or a compilation of actions? Or a feeling that burns once and then goes out? - Or a feeling that settles and takes root to spread across the continent of time that is a lifespan?

If it is a word, I never received it. If it is a fire, I burned it out. And if it is a continent, I require a flight across it to see it from above.

But if it is not any of those, if it is merely a convenience to postpone the guilt of destroying a friend, then I require the truth.

The truth is that I am lost. I grew up in this house. It is as if I never left. Is the way I miss the people i love a waste of energy? Have I burnt them all out either way by coming and going?

Should I ask if love is a song instead? If it is a missing note, or the melody played too many times on repeat?

If it is a song, then I am the voice that sings it to an empty room. I know they think they've lost me. That I'm a memory that didn't grow into the life they imagined for me. I'd rather fill a room than a drafty mansion.

I'd rather contract the walls and disappear. It's the opposite of what I used to want.

I wanted to be remember, but memory is painful. I wanted to be understood but some things are impossible.

Now I go home to a place far away from the one where I was born. But it isn't home. Because the truth is that I am lost.

Will there ever be someone who loves me completely the way I love? It seems to be the one important thing I am unable to do. I am incapable of making someone happy. And I want to so much - but I can't fix the world.

If I can do anything, though, I suppose I can let things go. Maybe nothing and no one can make him happy. The one thing that is certain is that I cannot make him happy - but that he deserves to be.

Even if nothing and no one can make him happy, the fact that I can't is a certainty. If there is someone out there, he deserves to meet her...So I will go. The longer I stay just postpones the inevitable.

I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.

Perspective from a distance is always a help - aids in showing what joys I can survive living without. But I love him and he will be free of the chains I am. He is happiest alone, at least until he meets his match.

I reacquaint myself with my own bed and my own sheets, with my hands and my loneliness that only stood off in the corner for a little while. Still I know I'll ask the empty room I sing an endless love song to if there is anyone out there for me. I will send a futile request into the air hoping that somehow, someone will feel it and come to me.

     Let me be the love of your life,
     the battle and not the field,
     the stab and not the sword,
     the hand and not the dagger --
     Let me be the cornerstone that breathes in the bend of the arch.

I wish it could be you, my darling, and because I love you, you are free.