New Year
This is a hard realization to come by. While visiting El Paso, it seemed as if Time moved a bit too mercilessly. I came home and hugged my youngest brother only to realize he was my height. My once healthy grandfather suddenly developed a form of dementia. My cousin had a daughter while I was away, and here I was playing in our grandmother's backyard with her and another young cousin, drawing on the cement with colored chalk. My dad and brother had built a large shed made from scrap parts he scavenged from the construction sites he worked on. Friends have graduated, moved in and out of the city, received and lost jobs, gained weight, had kids, accumulated debt. We're all slowly realizing what we got ourselves into.
Back in Virginia, it was as if Time moved at my pace. It was more forgiving, retrospectively. One of the few upsides of living an isolated life is Time becoming malleable. Once a rigid structure, Time bends over the heat of a mind left to its own devices. I could spend hours thinking, not really caring about anyone or anything. Chores eventually get done. Work has become a sort of second nature. Everything in my space flowed and aged alongside me. Nothing came as a surprise.
So of course, being back home where Time moved strangely and feeling more constricted with my stay at home coming to an end, I made a quick decision. No sprawling mind maps of what-ifs. No usual second guessing. I kissed her in her car parked in front of the place we celebrated the new year. The first time I kissed her, I didn't say anything. It had been during a break in the conversation and I had leaned over into her face and gave her a small one right on her lips and she didn't pull away so we stayed there pecking a bit. Then we pulled away and talked about the repercussions of what we just did and about relationships and love in general. I loved how she was touching me. Could she understand what a decade-long crush evokes? She was stroking my hair, playing with my curls, and scratching my head. She said she liked hands and that mine were soft. She put my hands on her face, on her lips. She told me to touch her thigh. I pulled on her nose, poked her dimples, stroked her cheeks. She asked to see my stomach, so I lifted my shirt up and she rubbed my belly, laughing. She slid her finger underneath the collar of my shirt and asked if it was ok for her to see. We were acting as if neither of us had been in love before, which couldn't be further from the truth, by prodding each other's bodies, as people do, when they encounter something they can't believe is real. She said I kept looking at her lips and I told her its because I wanted to kiss her again and we kissed once more with meaning; holding each others faces and pulling closer with me squeezing her bare thigh and with our noses rubbing and her moaning and sighing softly and our small kissing sounds, oh those glorious sounds orchestrated to go along with this movie happening, now a fuzzy memory; isn't that too bad, how you already know the details will be lost in an intimate moment and all that's left is a colorless and haptic memory in the dark.
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I have decided to visit home each month in 2020. The original plan was to quit my job and move back home, but this plan caused me a huge amount of anxiety. I was struggling to find a reason to stay in El Paso; besides family and friends, there would be a significant salary reduction, and my opportunities would be limited compared to living near DC. My best friend was able to land a good job after getting a Masters degree. Another good friend stopped replying to messages and requests to spend time together. It's hard to admit other people can have such a big impact on what was considered to be a life you had complete control over. But with a friend landing a job and another good friend floating out of my life, I realized moving back was not the best move for me. At least not this year.
It's normal for people to move out of each other's lives. Galaxies, measuring thousands of light years across, are moving away from each other at increasing speeds. Planets align sometimes, and moons say hi. Allow people to ebb in and out like tides at sea.