to the place i belong
take me home, down country roads
I swirl the remnants of my second martini around. The second always gives me the most courage. Tilting my head to the side, I pause before asking, “And are you happy?”
He looks at me for a long time before answering.
“I’m happy when I don’t think about who I used to be.”
“What do you think the most important thing in a relationship is?”
The man at the front asks me. The second full moon of August is in full swing. The humidity is gone. My hair is finally in loose, frizz free waves. I’m leaned up against that white brick wall, wearing a black leather strapless top, a pair of old, blue jeans, and my latest Zara obsession: pointed snakeskin sling-back flats.
People are lining up at the door, and I’m having fun guessing who is going to be let in and who isn’t.
“I used to think: trust. Now, I think, respect. They go hand-in-hand. But I think it comes down to respect for a person. And respect in the sense of understanding and accepting a person for who they are, and not trying to change them, or mould them, into who you want them to be.”
Understanding is I see you, and acceptance is I see you, and I love you.
He is silent.
“Does that make sense?”
“Yes. I’m trying to be more like your friend inside.” He nods to Past Newsletters. “He only speaks when he has something meaningful to respond back with.”
-
“When are you leaving?”
“Next week. I’m nervous. It’s my first time leaving a city for a small town. I’m scared I’ll get bored.”
“Emmy, you won’t get bored. Trust me. You’ll look at the sunset. There’s no gradiance, the colours don’t blend into each other like they do here. Instead, it’s just blocks. Blocks of colour that are stacked on top of each other. Orange and yellow and pink. But the colour of the sea, it turns…help me with the name of this colour.”
He passes me his phone. Indaco.
“Indigo. It’s beautiful.”
“The sunsets at the end of summer.” He shakes his head. “They always do something to me.”
“You know I went to that same town years ago and watched that sunset. And I thought to myself - I don’t know if I believe in heaven. But if I did -”
“This would be it.” He smiles.
-
Almost heaven. West Virginia.
It is 2017. My boyfriend and I are sitting side by side. At a cliffside restaurant in a small, fisherman town on the water. Watching those blocks of colour hit the indigo sea.
We both look at each other.
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye
Her favourite song starts to play on the radio. In this sleepy and small, rural Italian town. It had been 4 exactly months since the date.
Country roads. Take me home. To the place, I belong.
My boyfriend wipes a few tears from his eyes. I squeeze his hand.
“I feel her here. She has to be.”
-
“I’ve been thinking about melancholy lately. It’s never about the pursuit of happiness. But it’s about the pursuit of beauty. And I can talk to you about this, because I know you see the world like this, too.”
“Happiness is fleeting.” I tell him. “My best friend told me once - everything that’s beautiful is also sad. There’s always an ending.”
“It’s a blessing and a curse to be like us, isn’t it? The empaths. We always feel like we’re missing something.”
“I feel like…I’m on this continual search for home. Home to me, is understanding. And I have it. I have it for brief moments in time, but I feel like it’s never mine to hold on to. Remember What Isn’t Ours ?
He nods.
“That’s what that piece is really about. That feeling that’s missing. It’s either at an apartment that isn’t mine, or it’s with someone who…”
He looks down.
“I understand. I understand why you’re scared now. Of leaving. But Emmy? You’re going to carve out those pieces of home, that feeling, wherever you are and wherever you go. It won’t look like home did when we were younger. That home we had growing up. With our mom, with our dad, with our sister. But that understanding. You’ll feel it everywhere.”
My eyes start to water.
“I promise you, I would never tell you to go somewhere if I thought it would make you sad.”
It’s the martinis and the full moon again. “You’re going to make me cry.”
“Emmy, don’t. Please, don’t.”
He’s right. We can’t afford another public scene.
I take a breath.
“Ok?” He asks.
I nod.
“Can I tell you what home means to me?”
I smile. “Yes.”
“Acceptance. You say it’s understanding. But to me, there’s still a wall with understanding. Understanding is …okay, I see you. That’s who you are. But acceptance. Acceptance is…I see you, and I love you for it.”
“Do you have that? That acceptance.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “And I don’t think I ever will.”
-
I lean back up against the wall outside. I take it all in. The tower in the centre of the parking lot. The stars. The trees. The dim streetlights. My second summer here. It always calls me back. It’s always here.
The wind blows, and the smell of his cigarette circles around me. Home.
“Where’d you get that?” The man at the front smiles.
I start to laugh.
“I hope he never asks me about you. I don’t think I can hide how I feel.”
I ignore that last part. This is all is fleeting, I want to tell him.
“He won’t.”
-
“You said something that really stuck to me last year.”
“I say a lot of things to you, Emmy. What was it?”
“It was your day off. And you told me you spent an hour playing the guitar. And how it was the first time you felt like yourself in a long time. And it made me sad. It made me sad to think how you didn’t feel like yourself, all the time. Isn’t that the beauty of life?”
“You want to know what I realized? When our lives change, we’re going to blame it on another person. Why we’re not happy. We’re going to say - you’re not giving me enough time to be myself. But I’m the only one who can make myself happy. So instead, I try to focus on what I’m doing in the moment. If I’m at work, then that’s what I focus on. And I’m good when I do that.”
I swirl the remnants of my second martini around. The second always gives me the most courage. Tilting my head to the side, I pause before asking another question. “And are you happy?”
He looks at me for a long time before answering. “I’m happy when I don’t think about who I used to be.”
-
“I think you need to tell him.” My friend texts me.
“I leave next week. There’s no point.”
“Something in my gut, Emily. Something in my gut is telling you to say something. I think it’ll change everything.”
-
I hear her voice in the morning hour, she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
Driving down the road, I get a feeling
That I should've been home yesterday, yesterday