I left home. I won’t tell where. Yet. I was born there. Parents, grandparents, too. I never left home. Not even for school. I raised family, worked hard, planned to die there. I had no reason to leave home. Until the day I heard the words, “You won’t like this.”
I did not imagine leaving home to feel like Velcro. The stubborn slow riiiiiip. The plastic-nestled peg in peg yanked apart, one by one, to the very end of the strip. I did not imagine leaving home to feel like chin hair. Like prying roots. Some pop out, some get dug, some draw blood.
I imagined leaving home to consist of frosty awakenings, last room gazes, neighbors with mugs in hand waving. I imagined cubicle hugs and hands pressed to dewy rear windows. I thought the sun would wink. Yeah. Leaving home’s nothing like that.
I just… disappeared.
As a child, all I wanted was a Jeep. Most girls played with dolls. I played with Jeeps. Any Jeep. A Moldarama Wagoneer. Matchbox Laredo. GI-Joe Cherokee. At sixteen, I begged for a Jeep. Didn’t get one. Got a Geo Tracker instead.
My first Jeep did not arrive until a Friday in March. Easy to remember. I was told on that infamous Friday to pack up my stuff and prepare not to return for the rest of the semester. Earlier that day, I happened to ask a student about his Liberty.
“Do you ever find yourself missing your Jeep?”
“Uh, no?”
“Really? I stand here teaching, but I’m really thinking about my Jeep in the parking lot. I feel a burning knot because I miss it so much. That doesn’t happen to you?”
“No.”
I didn’t foresee packing up my life when I put a red bin of files in the back of a brand new Jeep on that Friday in March of 2020. I didn’t know, down the road, I’d end up stuck in the metaphorical “Geo Tracker” of the United States. I didn’t know the love for that Jeep (and damn I love that Jeep) would be incomparable to what burns inside me now.
Had I known. Had I known.
I didn’t. And now I can’t, so I write letters to those I left.
There’s my introduction. Read the letters. Suspend disbelief. If you experience a nagging sensation, an unknown familiarity, the quickening of the heart: pay attention.
You might recognize me.
No Real Balance 