I sat there staring right into space, tirelessly going through the list
of countless things I do before bed to make my insomniatic mind calm
down at least a little. I couldn't talk, my sister was gladly traversing
the land between awake and sleeping. I didn't want to read, to listen
to music. I didn't want to explore the strange world called YouTube.
Most of all-- and this is when you know it's serious. I couldn't even
convince myself to write. Nothing appealed to me, not even sleep. This
was the beginning of the oncoming nightmare I always work so hard to avoid.
I hate nights like this. I've experienced them enough to know they never
end well. In fact, it's worse than that. I fear them. Because after I
finally relent and switch off the light. While I'm lying there beneath
the thin shield of my blankets, my eyes shut tight in hopes it'll help
anything. That's when it happens. My mind starts to wander. And there he
is.
It's without fail for a few months now. This strange face that
represents the past, cast with the dreamy orange glow that denotes the
sense of rueful nostalgia. It's fascinating and frightening, expected
yet completely unwelcome. These nights. The ones with little sleep and
bursting mind with no fruitful thoughts. These nights I would've talked
to him. Back before everything. So long ago now, it feels like a
lifetime. So now he sits there, staring. As if waiting for me to break
the news that no, I haven't invented time travel yet. And no, I will
never see him again.
He's not real. Then again, he is. It's rather complicated. And it would
take take too much time and pain to explain. But this boy, this silent
soul who follows me everywhere... He's trapped in the past. A reflection
of young days, spent laughing and gazing and running and playing. Of
being special. He's still there making a little blond girl smile,
despite the braces she hides. It's just for that reason that I can't
speak to the boy. Because he's there. A few years back and happily
innocent. And I'm here. With the broken pieces that are in his future.
And there's this man. This grown man who the boy doesn't know he'll be.
This man who probably doesn't know how many oceans of tears belong to
him. Tears that have sunk silently into the pillow while I beg God for
sleep to rescue me. A man who didn't sew up the now-patchworked heart he
probably doesn't know he shattered. He's real. And so am I. And so is
everything else. Almost too real.
That one moment when the innocence was shattered. When the little girl
ran away into the night and the boy hid himself in the past for safety.
Sometimes I stand there apart from the two of us, relishing that moment
right before it all turned black. Sometimes I'll catch sight of pictures
I took that very night, or I'll find myself staring out of the window
on car rides, remembering the smallest details of roads where we
traveled. And I almost see those two little hearts, so dear and distant.
Laughing together. Because life was simple then. Life was strawberries
and coca-cola. Life was bits of string and quiet singing. Life was
holding hands in a yellow mustang, all dolled up. Life was growing up.
Together.
In one of our last few conversations-- though I didn't realize it at the time-- we spoke of our strange story. We discussed what it would be called and what would be in it. Would it be a love story? A story of just that, growing up? Would it ever have a happy ending? That day, I promised myself that I would write it all down, from the very beginning when I spotted a teenage boy sitting on my living room couch, to the very end. The end that no one could guess would ever actually happen. Simply because it was so unexpected, so very real life it almost felt fake. And occasionally I will allow my childish mind to take over and make up scenarios in which I wake up from an awful nightmare and we two laugh about it together over coffee in that same ol' Starbucks. At that same table. I think about that place too. I've been in it a few times since, but it still feels like that cafe is stuck back in time. Where everything is safe.
"Oh, what a story we'd make," he had said. "How would it end?" I inquired, playing with the string on my wrist. And he looked at me, shrugged, and that smile I remembered for good. "That's the fun part. Nobody knows."
Nobody knows because it's the story of our lives. It could end a hundred years from now, or tomorrow. That's life. But our story-- oh that story. I could say it's all over, but that's just the thing. It's not. We never see each other anymore, we only talk in memories. But the ghosts are still following us. They guide our every actions, whether we know it or not. This boy, this man was there when we grew up. Those odd important years where everything seems so much worse than it is. We became adults together, joined the world together, suffered together but stuck together. For so long. Fate intervened but somehow I still feel like we are together, just in spirit. A shadow of each other following us because those experiences-- though painful and difficult for me to dwell on with dry eyes, were strange little tests to see how we'd grow. Like one road can branch off into several pathways, we are meant to choose our direction on this confusing journey. I chose and I kept walking, but perhaps I should've left the rear-view mirror behind.
I'm leaving this city in just a few days. I'm leaving the place in which I grew the most. I'm leaving ghosts behind, back roads behind, picnic tables, cafes, fields, swing-sets, everything. No matter how frightening that notion is, maybe it's just what I need. So my eyes don't rest on things that dig up my memories for me to go over for the countless time. Good memories laid atop horrible ones because I've tried to bury the demons. I'll be back to this town, if only for a little while. But perhaps every time I return, I'll be a little older, a little wiser, a little more free. I'm growing up. And that doesn't mean releasing the child in me. I'm learning who I am, where I belong. And I don't know how long that'll take. But I'm willing to wait, and willing to try.
I need to move on, it's so long overdue now. This'll be the hard chapter in the story that's mine, possibly one of many. But here's me, trying. This is the end, as well as a beginning.
