Wish Me Home
The past two weeks have been so lonely.
They had been interesting, but lonely. The familiar places seem drained of color without some familiar faces. This used to be home and I still feel like this is a homecoming of sorts but without the people, it's like coming home and finding the house dusty and empty.
I think of you as I feel my body ache and creak from too much sitting. I reach down to pick up the pen I dropped and I feel my shoulder slightly slide out from its socket. Pain shoots down from my shoulder to my back. It's been a year and a half since I injured that shoulder and it never fully healed. I remember the automatic concerned look on your face when you see me hold on to it when it gets sore. You feel - because you are, literally - so far away. You're home for the weekend and I'm in a cold classroom two and a half hours away. We're the kind of people who belong in both of these cities. We're the kind of people who knows every mile of the way to and from. The distance has become part of who we are.
We've spent years here together as we adopted this city as our own. Our shared hometown is what brought us together and our experience in this bright, overstimulating city is what kept us together. I left as soon as I can to work close to home while you chose to stay. For the past months, it has been me who waits for you to come home. Sometimes you don't and that's okay because if there's one thing I learned from you, it's that you gotta do what you gotta do and the best thing is to just let you do it. But because you weren't home often, you missed a lot of things I would have loved to share with you. And in those times, in my heart of hearts, I wished you home. I look out of the door and into the busy street and I wished hard for you to come home and walk through that door. You rarely did. I never asked why because I understood. I gotta let you do what you gotta do.
These past weeks, we find ourselves on the reverse sides of the equation and cities. I am away and you are home. You are the only person who knows what I am doing here in this big, bad, city and I know you understand that I gotta do what I gotta do and you'd just have to let me do it. You did not show signs that you would be sad not to see me, just encouragement and support written all over your face. But maybe it wouldn't be too long of a stretch to imagine that maybe you wish me home too; that maybe you'd come along something that you would have wished to share with me and it'll make you wish that I was home. When this happens to you, you'd finally know what it feels for a moment to be half as precious because you don't have someone to share it with.
These past weeks, we did not share the geographical space of any of our cities. I arrive as you leave and I leave as you arrive. We are currently preoccupied with the things we have to do for ourselves. But one thing is for certain. We both wish to be home as soon as we can. We like to be home for as often and as long as we can. I don't know about you but you're now part of the place I call home. Home means spending time with you and our friends. You can't make homes out of human beings - I know. But home is where the heart is and it would seem that I left some part of mine with you.
