2/28/2022
Wondering if I'll ever run out of things to miss. Or ways to say it. But right now, it feels like I have enough nostalgia to last my lifetime. The aching desire to feel the cold cement of your driveway under my barefoot feet just one more time. To stand there in your doorway again while you beg me not to leave. To kiss you through rolled down windows in front of all your friends and feel your weight on my chest one last time before I leave it all behind. Will this nostalgia ever fade? Will I ever think about your foggy morning eyes and not miss the way they looked into mine? Will I ever park by the chain link and not think about your arms around me? Will I ever forget the smell of your cologne or the way your voice changes over the phone? I am so homesick for couches I've never owned, and beds I've only slept in once, and hotel rooms that I'll never see again. Craving quick fixes and finding safety in arms that will never be able to hold me again.
Whenever the missing becomes too much, and I feel like I can't hold it in any longer, I visit my old town. Driving down the worn down concrete streets that my barefoot feet used to call their home. Only now, this city feels like a graveyard- and this love is carved into the headstone... and for some reason, I treat every day like it's the wake. Climbing the stairs of the mausoleum. Standing over the gravestone of my old life. Reminiscing on all the good and being unwilling to acknowledge the bad. I keep coming back. Like I'm always looking for a way to memorialize the life I used to live. Leaving flowers on the plaque and lighting a candle in remembrance. Every time I visit, I leave feeling exactly how I did the time before, but I can't stop coming back for more. Longing for a life that's gone and passed. Remembering hurts sometimes.
I didn’t think it was possible to regret recording every second of my life in some old journal of mine, or on my phone to be displayed along with the other 64,000 pictures in my camera roll. I did everything I could to capture these moments in time so I would never have to forget them. But now, sometimes I wish I could. I can’t keep watching the tribute reel to my prior existence each night, but I can't find it in me to get rid of it either. Some days I want to rip every picture off my wall and start a fire. Anything to dull the cold. Anything to distract myself before I drive to my old city just because I can't handle being away from the red front doors that once held me back and the dug up backyards that I buried my heart in. Anything to make me forget how badly I'd like to show up on the porch of my old friend’s homes, begging to be let in. Aching for the warmth that I've only felt within those dim lit living rooms, hiding from the echo of last winter's rain. But I can't convince myself to light the match. It's like I need to keep replaying this tape again and again and hang on to every second of it in case my mind lets me forget somehow. Like I need to drive these streets just once more. Like I need to keep retelling this story to everyone I meet. Like repeating it over and over keeps it all alive.
January was hard and February is even worse. I want to stop opening this casket but I’m so scared to leave it behind. But March will be better, and someday this nostalgia will fade.
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