A flight out of my city’s giant airport at midnight was not where I wanted to be but nevertheless there I was, attempting to drown out the overstimulating environment with my noise-cancelling headphones and a soft jazz playlist. Despite the overnight hours, I felt peace when the sun began to rise from above the earth. The clouds around the planet were orange and the atmosphere felt heavenly even though I don’t believe in heaven anymore.
Being in my hometown is always a little sad. I always get a bit triggered. The rebellious teen I was is no longer quite as loud. I am who I am now, and do not need to constantly assert it against those who tried to define me otherwise. I sleep in my childhood room and remember the nights I spent there being an insomniac child. Trying so hard to fall asleep but getting lost in my own mind. Fearing some of the thoughts I had because I knew God was listening and judging. Now I see my nephew on the baby monitor, tossing and turning and looking all around the room. Being a kid is so hard. No autonomy, people not understanding you, not being able to make them understand. I wish I could go back to little me and tell her that there is not a giant man in the sky who decides where you spend eternity. That it is just a tale that grown-ups tell. It is their boogey-man.
The unhappy person I’d be if I’d never left kind of haunts me when I’m in my hometown. I wish I could just be here and be present but this place fills me with the compulsion to run. Even my fond memories are lined with an undercurrent of discontent. It makes me wonder if that’s just who I am. That it’s not this town, it’s me. Because even in the lives I’ve lived in other places, there is still something in the back of my head telling me that I am capable of more. That I should be living bigger and wilder.
I crave contentment but am unsure of the ingredients. I am content with my lover, but he ran away. I am content when I am doing my art, but it is not always possible to practice it, for a myriad of reasons.
One of my hometown friends has a golden retriever that just had 8 puppies. I went over to hers to meet the litter and it was like serotonin straight to the brain. Little angels running all over the grass and falling asleep in my lap and playing tug-of-war with my sleeves.
I make breakfast for my sisters almost every morning when we are all together. Sisters share a common language as it is, but food feels like another layer to that given that we are members of the Abercrombie generation. Our young brains were stamped with images of skinny models, size double zero was an actual thing, girls in our high school regularly went to rehab for bulimia. And we made it out. And now I feed them and we all enjoy food together and shame can go fuck itself.
Whenever I go to the area of the country one side of my family was raised in, it feels as if everything is in decay. Faded American flags posted on houses with rotting wood, abandoned buildings on main street, billboards on the freeway exit warning the drivers of the hell that awaits them if they do not believe. I forget about it sometimes when I am on the other side of the country in my giant city. I am currently watching the show 1883, and it reminds me that living in this nation was a struggle since its inception. I do not think any peace can be found in a place that began with genocide. And it did not have to be that way. It never does.
I look at all the photos hung in my parents’ home of deceased relatives, my sisters and me as children, old land the family used to own, and I think of the phrase my dad often says; the passage of time continues to confound me. Seeing my nephews in my childhood home, seeing my parents get older, it all confounds me too. I guess this is just what being a person is sometimes. Being in disbelief about everything happening around you. Feeling powerless in the face of it all sometimes.
Maybe that is why I cultivate risk. I put myself in risky situations and go on ridiculous adventures so that I feel some sense of control of the powerlessness that is inherent to being alive. If that makes sense.
My childhood best friend and I sat in the grass in my parents’ backyard like we have done our entire lives. We looked for four leaf clovers and talked about everything. How we know that watching our parents get older is a normal part of life but that doesn’t stop it from being as excruciating as it’s been. How we wish that that generation would just process their pasts so their bodies aren’t forced to do it for them.
I hope I have children one day and they get to make special memories with their grandparents. That they will get ice cream by the canal in the evenings in the Summer. That my parents will show them how to water the gardens, how to refill the bird feeders. Right now I am having trouble believing. In a lot of things.
The whole family went to bed but the sun was still setting so I went to the deck to ruminate. The evening was loud with trees and crickets, and the humidity felt like it was hugging me more than the desert ever does.