Are you tired of hearing about my home yet? My undecided feelings about it all? My intense fluctuations from one extreme of missing-it-so-much-it-hurts, to abhorring everything in this town and never wanting to see it again?

I had such a stress headache after Bro’s graduation. I took the car, my first time driving in over a year, and just drove. I stopped to visit an aunt and put my head on the steering wheel for a moment. The roar of history is overwhelming.

I stepped foot into that school for the first time in 6 years, and the teachers recognized me. There’s still a shitty sketch of mine hanging on the wall, framed. I listened to the principal deliver his speech to the grads about how success doesn’t necessarily mean money, and was proud when I told him I had become a writer like I had intended.

When I first got home, I went searching for a notepad to write my to-do list on. I opened the old wicker trunk in my bedroom, and found my grandmother’s pink, suede jewelry box. She was the only grandparent I ever had a relationship with, and she died 16 years ago. The jewelry box still smells like her, like talcum powder and perfume. I found a pair of earrings in there, beige and round, and I wore them to the grad. They’re fashion again.

Tonight, I finally forced myself to go for a walk. I hate walking here. I can’t look at the cars passing me on the road. I know that inside they’re wondering who I am, or what I’m doing home, or some snot-nosed kid is making a rude comment about me. I boast my life to the world but as soon as I make it home, I’m reduced to jangled nerves and darting eyes.

There’s no relevancy between any of these things, but I think that’s the point.

I made note of the house we used to visit to buy cigarettes, and my friend Pam’s house where we drank every weekend. And everything smells clean and green, and there’s no noise anywhere.

Walking up Long Path, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” started playing on my MP3 player. I felt like my gut caved in, it was a funny thing. Because six years ago, during my very own graduation party, this was the song of the era and I was granted that young teenage wish of dangerous flirtation with a high school crush. You know the one, right? The one you follow around school like a heartsick puppy, the one you doodle cute private notes about in your textbooks? Except I gave them nicknames, because the AD + LM = TLA never really happened for me. That event might have been the catalyst, the epoch to everything that has happened thereafter. The slow unravelling of naivety, the painful lesson that some people just ain’t good, the unnerving first two years of university, the constant cycle of trust-and-break, trust-and-break. Right up to now.

And I had the very distinct feeling that another end of era is nigh.

(Photo by Swami Stream.)

This post is tagged high school, home, life, Reflection