Sometimes I feel so close to home, I can barely stand it. The loveliest tangled roots made of familial habits I've been honing since birth; the sticky gumbo breeze wafting downwind from an open screened window above the kitchen sink; the drunken awe of watching cigarette smoke fall to the ground, drowning in humidity.
Other times, I feel like I've been gone for six months already. I feel broken roots and habits with no history; I do not crave gumbo; I have forgotten what it's like to enjoy cigarette smoke. There are times when I'm happy about this; excited and eager to set sail, full-speed ahead, into the mountain skyline that looms in my future. There are times when I'm not happy about it at all, though; I feel the loss of home's proximity like a hole in my heart, an injury I can't recall getting -- that terrible nausea of emptiness wraps around me like a starched white shirt and a belt that's too tight. At those times I am connected to nothing and no one, drifting like an off-course satellite gone dark; there is so much to communicate but my processor is dead, the linkup is off-line, and neither are coming back.
I think I'm going to write a lot of words about loneliness in the next few months, but not in a way that only longs for certain important human beings. It's a lonely that ties geography to family, familiarity, comfort, in a way that the people alone can't quench. The word could be "homesick," but it seems so much deeper than that connotation -- "homesick" sounds like a papercut; this feels more like an amputation. Maybe I just never understood that word because I've never left home before, or not in such a permanent way as I will in three months.
I don't think I'm scared. I think I'm just walking into the punch.
Other times, I feel like I've been gone for six months already. I feel broken roots and habits with no history; I do not crave gumbo; I have forgotten what it's like to enjoy cigarette smoke. There are times when I'm happy about this; excited and eager to set sail, full-speed ahead, into the mountain skyline that looms in my future. There are times when I'm not happy about it at all, though; I feel the loss of home's proximity like a hole in my heart, an injury I can't recall getting -- that terrible nausea of emptiness wraps around me like a starched white shirt and a belt that's too tight. At those times I am connected to nothing and no one, drifting like an off-course satellite gone dark; there is so much to communicate but my processor is dead, the linkup is off-line, and neither are coming back.
I think I'm going to write a lot of words about loneliness in the next few months, but not in a way that only longs for certain important human beings. It's a lonely that ties geography to family, familiarity, comfort, in a way that the people alone can't quench. The word could be "homesick," but it seems so much deeper than that connotation -- "homesick" sounds like a papercut; this feels more like an amputation. Maybe I just never understood that word because I've never left home before, or not in such a permanent way as I will in three months.
I don't think I'm scared. I think I'm just walking into the punch.
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