This town is embedded with so many damn memories from the past
and with each of those memories,
a long ago abandoned identity
and with that identity,
a mirage of feelings.
Feelings I had long ago forgotten
in the capacity which I felt them last night.
Mostly flavored by hopelessness, despair, not-good-enough-ness.
Each random street I drove down
surfaced a memory from the nearly 34 years I spent here,
and I began to wonder:
what’s the point of this whole damn thing?
(in the same way I used to wonder, back then)
Which makes me curious...
did those stories I used to tell
even go away when I left four years ago?
or did I just bury them deep in my subconscious
as I attempted to flee the scene of my melancholy?
I already know the answer to this question:
Wherever you go, there you are.
I suppose now that I’m no longer numbing my feelings with alcohol and men,
and now that I’m actually making choices in my life that are
the biggest fattest Fuck Yeah’s I’ve chosen to date…
all the old stories I buried in the backyard of my mind
must be excavated and thrown out for good.
Back in the day,
I wanted to blame this place
for my inner turmoil.
Perhaps I still was on some level, because every time I come home to visit
I notice a vague underlying fear that I will somehow get ‘stuck’ here.
Last night as I was driving to dinner,
and all those old memories
and self concepts
and feelings
were surfacing...
I found myself hating this place all over again.
These days though,
I know better than to identify
with anything that feels like shit
and so I simply observed
all that was coming up and out
By the end of the night
I was having a blast
watching a little Rock-a-Billy band play live
at an underground coffee shop
where I was giddy as I noticed my thoughts
manifesting at a rapid pace
right before my very eyes and ears,
drinking the chai latte my daughter bought me
and nibbling on a piece of carrot cake
in honor of a recently deceased old lady,
who’s birth and life is still celebrated
by those who adore her.
By the time the night came to a close,
as I waited to pick my mom up from her 40th high school reunion -
I gazed up at a million midwestern stars,
listening to the silence of this city encased in corn,
and I thought to myself,
“you know, this place isn’t so bad afterall”
Until next time...
No Limits. Just Love.
~ Chandra Nicole