I am back home and just like I thought, this city had open arms for me. Just waiting for my return. All of my favorite faces met my own today, eager to hear about the last six days of my life. When the journey matters to them really, you'll see it in their eagerness and it'll touch you every time. When the the plane clumsily nudged through impervious clouds to uncover views of the city lights, I was met with a confirmative feeling I've felt before. A feeling that this is my home. How special that I got to choose it.
For fun sometimes, I imagine visions of the future in which I no longer reside here and I reflect on the memories behind me. The layout, the gluttony of flowers in Spring, the feeling feeling feeling. When I do this bit, I often experience genuine, visceral homesickness. All from a daydream. That's how I know this place is my own.
When I embarked on my morning walk to work today, the aloneness of my life here gushed against my face, paralleling the brisk wind that got there first. I took it all back in. Like I had been gone for much longer. The trip was emotional and compact. This felt like the initial inkling of coming home to myself. I meditated...
Parts of my trip were precious, unforgettable. Etched forever into corners of remembrance. Moments like my mother and I sitting on the kitchen counters, feet hanging, talking until midnight. I felt an intense love for my mother that I have never truly felt before. For the entirety of my life, it seemed that she was invisible to me. Seeing her now was like seeing her for the first time. She appeared aged and confident. Comfortable in who she was. Like a spiritual seasoning had taken place. She's dorky and generous. She loves me so much I think it pains her deeply that I am not five years old playing with horses on my bedroom carpet anymore (if only she knew how close I am to that version of myself these days).
My mother told me countless times during my stay how proud she was of me. I have never heard her say this to me so often. Seeing my dad was healing in its own way. My relationship with him was a monster of its own back then and now it has morphed into something very casual but real. I can see how much he also deeply cares for our family. How hard he tries to be good and provide. He's a good man and I'm a good man's daughter.
It makes me want to cry just thinking about all the alchemy that's gone on. Some things time heals, other things require intention. I wish I could tell past angrier versions of myself to not have my mind made up so concretely. To leave room for more empathy. It was never hard for me to grant strangers immediate compassion but this wasn't the case with my family. I'm starting to really witness the humanity in them. They exist as people, inside and outside of being my parents. They're just someone's coworker or customer in the grocery checkout. If only that cashier knew.
My brother. He is so intelligent. He reads often and has a general distaste for letting his phone distract him. When he speaks casually he uses words I do not understand. I want to ask him to pause his story and explain the meanings of all the words drawing blanks in my mind, words I want to comprehend on my own accord but can't. I hold my tongue instead of inquiring because sometimes I struggle with pride. And he isn't afraid to just be funny and do strange things for the sake of making people laugh. When a joke doesn't land, he often admits the defeat retroactively which then leads me to laugh anyway. So he wins regardless. I found that I missed him. We are so different and always have been. It didn't stand in the way of us enjoying each other this time.
He sees me as something very sensitive and strong but will openly chalk me up to being a "liberal eclectic barista". I know he actually sees me though. He looks like a good husband to his wife. That's always nice to see.
Seeing everyone was so up and down. It felt like I went to another planet and blinked, transporting me home; not knowing if all of it happened or not. It's a fogged up review mirror. It was the first time in a while that I felt like I was apart of that kind of family collective dynamic thing. I am the middle child and I live in the most contrasting environment compared to my family. I am broke and young and feeling excruciatingly confused and yet everyone is telling me how grown up I seem. I suppose it feels that way for me, too (not because I was recently interested in a fifty-one year old English/guitar teacher) (he looked much younger than he was) (and had very good taste in books so I don't know what to tell you).
The feeling now, after all that traveling and fitting into a box that's never quite felt so suited to me... I get to be home now.
When I returned, I flipped my place upside down, put all of my energy back into it, and now am writing in my self-fashioned lump of space. Writing here is what shifts it from a studio apartment to a wizard's mountain. This year was the most eventful year of my life. I mean it this time. It started with me moving in with someone I loved (love) and it is concluding with me living alone with someone I love (me).
Bliss and Pain.
I am a few pages shy of finishing Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart and if I had one genie's wish, it would be to never see the end of it. For it to go on infinitely so that I could steep into the yearning for eons. I will leave this entry with the sentence that has settled substantially into the part of my heart that exhales in knowing...
You'll never forget this...
Sumire is in love with Miu and is falling apart keeping it all to herself. She knows she must confess no matter the outcome. Whether it be all hopes manifest or destruction in the face of transparency.
"DID YOU EVER SEE ANYONE SHOT BY A GUN WITHOUT BLEEDING?"
That's what I'm asking myself after a hurricane of a year, after a cyclone of love. Did you think you'd feel all that love and not bleed, too? I'm left applying the bandages and proper treatment, in agony but smiling. You know how it goes.
