A new life appreciating the old

The 14 hour drive to DC was invigorating and terrible. I usually stop after 12 hours but the thought of a financial writing job—I could uncover something big, become a celebrity journalist along the lines of Thompson and then binge self medicate on any kind of drug I could name—the friends I’d meet—wearing suits during the day in a 20 story office, then by night smoking cigarettes in the seediest bar in town and carrying out their every fetish—and the man—intelligent but strange, handsome and dark, meeting me on the metro and being my tour guide among other inelegant things—pushed me on.

All of its silly I know. But I have such high expectations for my travels. So those thoughts pushed me on, while there were plenty of times my foot grazed the break pedal and my hands twitched as the memories of the words said to me in Missouri slithered from one ear to the other.

None of those things have happened… yet… of course.  

Before I left, after a double, I was sitting at the bar tables with two friends from the kitchen, drinking Norton and filling the bistro with smoke. I had decided to hang around later than usual and the guy—who reminds me so much of my brother—said, “I’m going to miss you. You don’t let things get under your skin.”

Well it was something along those lines. And although I don’t know if those were just the erratic word to sentence formations of a drunk man, it made me realize that the people I met in Columbia will always be comparable to family. Whenever I decide to visit home, I’ll always have two places to stop now—Cape and Columbia. The friends I found during my 10 months in the hipster hellhole are extraordinary people that enjoyed me for the person I am.

But I think he was onto something. My ability to shake things off, to not get to upset about the things presented, to not care is maybe my best quality. It allows me to get over being stood up by a girlfriend, to be cheated on by a boyfriend, to move across the country with no one and nothing to call home.

It allows me to pack up my life and move without a care in the world, in a month, a week, a day. I feel like I didn’t have time to say good-bye and although there’s a regretful sense I should be sad about it, I’m not. You can decide whether you think this is amiable or malignant.

Every morning I wake up to police sirens, in a small room with another woman. I walk to the metro and there are so many people around, so many beautiful people, but no one even speaks to each other. There have been several times I have missed the opportunity of a handsome man, but today I decided it would be my last day for that. If I don’t ask him I’ll never see him again and if I do, well I still might not. Embarrassment only lasts approximately 15 minutes. People are always in a hurry, running up and down the escalators for Christ’s sake.

I got home from work and looking at a house where a 40-something-year-old pedophiliac looking banker and an old woman who shares a room with another man live, and was tempted to cry. Lately I’ve been feeling on the verge of crying almost every second, but then when I finally give in the tears never come. It’s quite exhausting to feel such different emotions at the same time. It’s quite exhausting to be in a three bedroom house with ten people.

I feel so many different things. I’ll call it, nomadic bipolar disorder.

I love it here; absolutely love it here. There’s so much potential, for whatever I decide to dabble in next.

But I do miss home as well. It seems I’ve spent 22-years trying to get out of Misery, only to realize when I dug my roots into the top soil of a new land, Missouri has made me who I am, and I love and appreciate who I am, so I love and appreciate Missouri. It will always be my home. It will always hold a place in my mind as a god forsaken state that sometimes creates strong independent woman that will adventure around the world to make it a better place.