04 May 2009

not yet

I am not a leaver. I am a goer, but I am not a leaver. I hate leaving. I even hate leaving when the only leaving I'm doing is crossing the country to a place where I am happier than I have been in my adult life.

And so I drive through this town, where my parents were born and where I learned to drive, and I think about this drive that used to be my way to school and this road that used to lead to my friend's house and this street that used to bring me to church, and I wonder if I could live here again. I watch the wannabe gangsters on the corner on the North Side and the guys in their big cars on the West Side and the mothers pushing strollers on the East Side and I wonder if I could live here again. A part of me thinks yes, this is where I come from, this is where my family is, even if the guy in the wifebeater is not quite my people, even if there are too many country stations and only two really good coffee shops in the whole town.

Another part of me says maybe, maybe someday, but not yet. Not yet...

There are two country stations programed into the radio in my sister's car, and when there are commercials or annoying songs on the good stations, I listen to the country singers who celebrate leaving behind heartbreak and the life they've been living, getting in a train or on a bus or in a car and heading west, changing themselves into someone who dances in the rain and laughs with strangers, but no one ever mentions that you have to fly four hours back to cuddle your nephew or to hug your momma.

Maybe. Maybe someday. But not yet. Not yet...

Come now, my sister says, and I think of packing and driving in the dark, of this headache that is pulsing behind my forehead, of not hugging my momma one more time in the morning, and I want to cry. Living here would be so much simpler.

My family is here, but my people are not. Who would be my friend? I wonder, and where would I find anyone who could understand how I long to travel?

Not yet.

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