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June 10, 2008
Going Home
I am going home at the end of the week, and I feel crazy.
I am so full of thoughts and feelings and worries and I just can't believe our first year here is over. I am excited to see the people at home who I love so much. I am completely terrified to feel all of the things I will feel when I go home.
I wish I could just live in the moment, but without consciously trying to do so, I visit these little visions in the future. In my mind I am driving up 273 from Newark and passing my house. I feel a physical pain in my heart and throat. The air is suffocating... so humid... and it is closing in all around me. My piano is in there. The porch swing. The stone fireplace. I ache for my home. There it is, but I cannot go in. Even if I could, it would hurt too much.
Out here in the Pacific Palisades, it is 68 degrees and the air is clear... and I run three miles, much of it uphill. The sun beats down on the top of my head, but I don't mind. It is dry here, but not too dry. Sweat drips into my eyes and my lips are salty. I keep running. I have always hated to run. But now I am able to breathe in deeply and slowly enough as I go. I am not gasping for my next breath. That makes all the difference. I can't believe that I, the one who hates to run, am actually running. I am doing it.
When I reach the top of my route, I turn and see the ocean. There is a part of me that doesn't want to leave here. I have carved out a place for myself, finally. I am so afraid to lose it. I am finally not miserable and lonely. I am afraid to lose the security I have started to feel out here.
I'm different now than I was when I left home. I'm afraid to lose that, too. I'm afraid to lose myself entirely, as I often do. I have started to develop some kind of a consistent self out here, and I fear to go back ... that I will unravel and leave the new pieces of this girl in dead brown grass and sweltering summer heat.
Posted by darby on 12:44 AM | Comments (17)