The Old Expression is True; I Can't...

I want to go back to a red house on 12th street and open the garage with Grandpa’s magic word, and sleep in that room down the steps from the kitchen, on the floor, wrapped in blankets that smell like cedar.

There are windows I miss sitting in and tables I miss eating at.

I want to go home.

The feeling hasn’t changed since the second day of kindergarten, not the first when the parents stayed but the second when they left. It’s the feeling that I had at night at summer camp when I still had a full week left, and all the nurse gave me was a pumice for the yellow jacket sting and not a single hug. It’s standing next to the bush frozen with fear on the first day of high school, afraid that the motion of looking for the gym might shake out the tears I had precariously suppressed. It was no different when I waved goodbye to my mother from a driveway in this state, and watched her drive back to her own knowing she would never be my home again.

I am awake way to late (and I don’t want to be) in an apartment that fits me well, but it’s still a stranger. I know there are a million people who would listen to me cry now if I were to wake them up. But I can wipe my own tears and fold my own tissue, it isn’t really that I need. I don't need someplace to cry. I need some place to be.

I haven’t said much for a while because when you are at a funeral it isn’t polite to let the mourners hear you talk about your neighbors’ goats, and what else can I muster if not small talk? No one knows what I have in that coffin too.

I know all you want is your home back. But didn’t you take it for granted? More than that, didn’t you only live half in it, even when I cried, and even when I begged? And now you say all you want is the truth, and openness, and honesty, and compassion for how much this hurts, but how could you compare me to a monster that murders its own family? For how many years did I beg you for the things you are asking of me now? Maybe your lies were small and deceptions were not the same, but don’t think they didn’t scar me too, that I didn’t suffer. I wanted to be loved as a girl, not defeated as a game. I wanted to be real to you and not a puzzle. I wanted your moves toward me to be from your heart and not for strategy’s sake. And when you forgot your strategy and made the moves you liked and wanted, they were not toward me.

You don’t think I believe in your changes but I do. When you handed that little sack of secrets to me today, I laughed and blushed but later I thought about your reasons. And I could think you put them together and gave them back to me because you wanted to make sure I know you don’t feel what I once felt, that I am no longer your shatze. But I think it’s because you mean it, you get it, every thing I begged you for and pounded my fists and beat the walls and ground screaming at you that I needed. You are preparing, in case you should fall for (or have you already fallen) for some choir girl with long raven hair, you know what it does to have a closet full of secrets and you will give someone all the things you didn’t realize were so important to give till now, she’ll get all the things you didn’t have for me.

Please be happy. I want that for you and I hope you want it for me. For a long time, a long time, it was you and me putting up a fence, painting a room, fighting back the world. For a long time, we were home. Even when it got ugly, alone in out kitchen we were safe. Thank you for those times.

I am a little scared right now because I am alone, and it’s late, and my childish mind is making me hear a heavy breath and tapping outside my window. I don’t know what’s really out there. I am trying to grow up enough to be cautious of it, but not too afraid to sit where I want to.

I hope I am done with secrets too. Here's to our next lives.

I think, I hope, I am on the right road