on love and leaving

I’m not sure why I associate the two.  Actually I am, I just default to saying that because it’s easy.  I like to move when my heart is broken, but I’ve also left when it’s not.  Sometimes by my own admission, sometimes because it was just the way things were going that year.  I do have a home.  I didn’t realize it (more like admit to myself) until over christmas this past year.  We’d moved so much when I was a kid and I moved a few times during college that I forgot how long my mom had kept still.

Sitting at the kitchen table, worn down and holding on.  Just looking around.  Remembering raiding the pantry for food, friends coming and going after school.  Fighting, loving, talking.  Just lost in thought.  She said to me, “Nothing ever changes here does it?”.  That crack in the wall above the pantry was still there.  Same size, same shape.  Every dish arranged.  I’d stared at it a million times in a thousand different ways.  It was the same.  Except now the siding on the house is worn out, the trees cleared in the back.  The barns get older.  Time slowly wearing it all down.

But there was my kitchen table and there was my mom.  And there was my food and there was the floor I’d walked on.  It’s not mine, or hers.  But it’s ours while we’re there.  One day when I have the money I’ll buy the house.  Until then it’s my home.  

When I worked during school I would wake up early to have coffee with my mom on weekends.  We rarely had time to sit down and talk, but we tried anyways.  I still miss it.  10 am on Sundays (I always told my job I went to church and couldn’t work until the afternoons).  We stopped actually going to church years before on Easter Eve.  I had already threw a fit and quit sunday school the year before that.  My mom still insisted we go to church on Sunday mornings (being the ‘good’ Roman Catholics that we were), which slowly moved to Saturday evening when she started dating again, which moved to never again after a 3 hour marathon of blessing everything in god’s creation while holding cheap candles set in paper cups with a hole poked in the bottom.  

Organized religion is so weird sometimes.  

I’m going to be leaving my residence in a month or so and I realized it’s been a while since I moved last.  Quite possibly I’ve spent more time here than anywhere else in my life.  For the first time I’ve felt a twinge of nervous.  Not too much though.  But enough to make me second guess myself and enough to make it hard to keep trying.

But I’m tired of this town, I don’t know the people and it reminds me that I’ve been sad for quite a while.  There’s nothing to do, nothing to see and I’m bored beyond what I am capable of handling.

I’m fighting with my sisters which wears me down endlessly.  I’m currently trying to convince one not to get married and the other that $80 a week for groceries is not overspending because even milk and bread are expensive.  No one takes advice when they need it, but sometimes they remember it later.  And I’m the oldest….so I have to.

At least I’m getting all my federal taxes back in a refund this year!  Plus the $600 “Sorry we’ve been fucking you” poor people stimulus package bonus prize.  Which makes me feel really secure about the future of the economy.  No one has gotten anything worthwhile since that other shitty poor people tax stimulus package that bought off the country through a terrorist attack, two wars and a hurricane.  Now all of a sudden they’re handing out money again?  How much worse is it going to get exactly?

In the meanwhile I now have enough to buy a dress I may or may not wear in a color and style that is not appropriate for anything other than a wedding I don’t want to go to.  And I’ll also have enough leftover to get myself out of this stagnant town.  If I could afford it I would donate it all to MoveOn.org out of spite.  It feels a little like blood money to me.  But isn’t it all I guess?

My best friend wrote me an email the other day freaking out about owing money in on her taxes this year.  Her day culminated with verbally berating a homeless guy about the shitty state of the country while pumping gas at $3.25 a gallon.  Very, very unlike her.  But things have been strange lately.  

I did buy myself a little red dress the other weekend because I haven’t had something nice in a while and it’s almost my birthday 🙂  For christmas I got a record collection and a breakup.  New Years I was scrubbing down the walls and bemoaning the loss of my cable tv.  Valentines day I got a small salvation army couch from a friend and lent out my Eddie Izzard collection.  I quit smoking (2 ½ months now!) and have job opportunities lining up.  It seems as if I’ve been living some sort of life.  Hmm… interesting.

I thought it would be different.

I’ve already sifted through all my memories and paperwork.  Everything is sitting here waiting to leave in boxes and I have this knot inside of my stomach that’s slowly growing.  Every time the future seems about right something changes.  So far I’ve been keeping up, but one wrong bump and it could all go tumbling again.  I’d pick up the pieces of course, but it’d be nice to skip that part for once.  I’m getting tired of chasing a dangling carrot and building character.  Actual results would be nice.

But I’m impatient, or I guess better yet I’m anxious.  Not just about the job and moving but about a lot of things.  I can barely read the news anymore, but I do just because I have this compulsion to check and make sure everything didn’t totally implode while I wasn’t looking.  I blame “9-11 changing everything”.

Every time I leave though I’ve moved up one little step.  One small step closer to the life I wish I had.  Better apartment, better town, better school, better job, better me.  I’ve left some things behind, but try not to burn bridges unless I have to.  I’ve gotten used to having my past call me up later and apologize.  Lucky me.  I’m amazing when I’m gone.

This time though I’m hoping to stick around where I’m going.  I really like the view so far and I can’t just wonder around forever…. Yeah, maybe this time.