A friend said there has to be one place, eventually, that you don’t run away from. What if there isn’t? I think, every day now, of Portland and of New York and I wonder if going back I would be running to or from. What if it’s a surrender? What if that’s ok? What if I can’t ever be happy anywhere, because I’ve been happy too many places?
Every time I know that I need to go back home, if only so I can leave it again, something reminds of the life I have here. This is the first life I’ve made all on my own, from scratch, and that will make it the hardest goodbye yet.
When I was younger, even as recently as a year or two ago, I thought I would live as many places as possible. Now I find that the weight of all the people I can’t pretend I’ll ever see again is breaking my heart and I’m not sure I can bear to make any more places home. Still, desperation tends to strike all of a sudden, with an all-but-irresistible urge to cut off all my hair, to get a tattoo, to get on an airplane, to join the Marines, to do something drastic because this stasis is not in my DNA.
Am I explaining this right?
The only thing that I want more than to stay here is to be as far away as I can get with a single plane ride.
