Tonight I head back to Memphis. It’s been an enlightening few days. As I drove back to South Philly , the Philly skyline was stunning. If you were to scroll through the pics on my phone from the past year, you would see lots of these photos. Every evening, I made the trip from Bucks County to Philly to see my babes. Every morning, I went back to Bucks County to do the work thing. Sometimes, the drive really sucked – full of traffic and shitty drivers. More than once I almost got in to an accident…. but there were many many days where nature and city conspired to awe me. A crappy commute was also always tempered by the end result – seeing my love, holding her hand, being home. I don’t think I showed her many of the pics I took. All she ever got was “the drive was ehhh.” It had it’s moments of beauty, and I was always happy to be seeing her. I should have told her those things more.
This morning my friend from Omaha gave me a call – she wanted to tell me a bout a dream she had (about me). She thought it was really strange that we haven’t even met, and she’s dreaming about me. We were in an airport, she was saying goodbye, and when I saw her I turned and ran the other way. She catches up, and we kiss, but suddenly she learns that I’m paralyzed from the waist down (she couldn’t explain the running part). She told me I don’t ever have to hide anything from her… She’s gonna think about the meaning of the dream – obviously there’s a bit that could be read in to it. After we talked, I thought about the sound of her voice, registered it – it was pleasant. It was then that I realized I haven’t heard my ex-,fiancee, B’s voice in many months – I missed it. I couldn’t remember it. I tried hard to bring it back, hold it in my mind. It was gone. This made me sad. I’ve already lost a part of her… the things we forget about the people we love. There were nights that hearing it brought me such joy.
There are still lots of moments when I think about how easy it would be for me to reunite with B. I know it doesn’t work that way. With her, I believed anything was possible. It’s such a weird feeling, I can’t put words to it. I don’t mean to suggest that we wouldn’t have to work our way back, there’s trust that has been broken, and damage that would need fixing, but I still think I could be the goofy, lovable guy that she knew and loved – in some respects better. I could easily drop everything. “If you call me I’d come running…” I have a comic that I cut out for B when she quit her job – last spring I photoshopped it for me… It’s a picture of one guy throwing a pie in another guy’s face. I was the one throwing the pie, the other guy was my boss, and the speech bubble was photoshopped to read I guess B asked you to come to …. (She’s asked me not to use her name or where she lives). Last summer my boss asked if I was planning on sticking around, and I told her if B calls, I’m going, other than that I have no idea. I think back on that now and chuckle at how brutally honest I was.
I went and visited my mom and stepdad today. I complained about work, it’s not a great situation – I may have to leave. That scares the crap out of me. I moved my entire life for this – to not have it work out is a big deal. I showed them a picture of of my friend from Omaha and joked with them about moving there. There’s actually a certain appeal to throwing myself out there like that. More and more, I see myself willing to risk what little I have for something more fulfilling, something easier. Not that love is easy, it just seems to soften the blow of an unrelenting world. I’m realizing more and more, that I really don’t need much. It was always my approach with B. I didn’t care what we had as long as we had each other. As I joked about moving again, I realized how easy it is to leave when you have nothing keeping you. I like Memphis, but I don’t have any roots here. I could pack up this weekend, find a new city and start over.
I spent a lot of this trip thinking about San Diego and thinking about home. I think B and I would have done well to move somewhere new together. Then we could have had our home, our Philly home, and our San Diego home. To me that speaks volumes about what it means to feel at home with someone – suddenly the whole world becomes your home…. And now, I’m thinking about what it means to leave to not be at home anywhere.
I miss a lot of things.