home, 2012
“Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’Twas grace that brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.”
I want to go home. I don’t think I’m ready for this: the preposterous paradox of ponderous persuasions associated with online dating (or any kind of dating, really), the perturbing deadlines for papers and projects, the pertinacious importunity of employment, the pathetic placidity of coming home to an empty apartment, and perpetual psychological and physical prostration. I’m not ready for real life.
I want to go home. Home is where I can find the people I love and the people who love me. These people have my back.
I want to go home. Home is where I was born. It is where my parents live, and work, and sleep. It is the place of my citizenship.
I want to go home. Home is the life I have built: my work, my church, my cell phone bills, my signed apartment lease, my credit card debt, my chiropractor, my favorite frozen yogurt. It is a token of my independence.
I am torn between two worlds like a rope in a game of tug-o-war. Pulled and yanked. At the end, I lay on the ground. Abused and spent. Alone. Both sides of the tug-o-war have left, each to their own lives – dinner with family or movie date night with their significant others.
(Why are these people called significant others? They are either significant, or they fall under the classification of “other people I don’t deem important in my life.” This term to me seems like a denial of some sort, the attempt to desensitize a relationship’s label. To me, it screams, “I want to share my life with someone, but please don’t get too close. I am my own self!” Can people have more than one significant other in their lives at one particular time? Are we capable of placing significance to only one person? That’s overly limiting, don’t you think?)
I want to go home. People say home is where your heart is. Where is my heart? I don’t know. I think I lost it a few years back. No. I didn’t really lose it. I just played catch with it, threw it to a jerk who should have caught it. But he didn’t. It might still be there, under the rose bushes in the park. Maybe a dog had sauntered by and decided it was a toy to play with. This would happen to me.
I want to go home. Where ever the hell home ends up being. (I hope it’s not in hell.) A room, maybe. Or an old green couch in the corner of a college writing center. I just need enough space to be.
I want to go home. Where is home? I think I’m homeless.
Tirza Magdiel - Seattle, February 2012