In the summer of 2022, I had little notion of who I was as a person. I spent every other evening in someone else’s bed, nitpicking the individuals they belonged to. The sheets irritated my skin and the tender and innocent touch of someone else made me want to cry. Then again, my own sheets made sleep an impossible chore and the touch of my right hand on my stomach made me want to be sick. Intimacy beyond the anonymity of a meaningless sexual encounter was to be avoided. I jumped out of their beds before I dared to fall asleep. I simply never slept in my own, tossing and turning and looking for the next person to be made sick by.
The issue with being twenty-three is that one is never truly self-effacing. Yes, I could acknowledge that I had commitment issues but I could also make them sound quirky and fun. These personality flaws became a large part of my identity; they made me an “enigma” and fun to be around. I clung to this truth about myself as if my entire life depended on it. I feared that letting it go meant losing so many of the people I surrounded myself with or worse–losing myself entirely.
Trying to live up to an image you have created for yourself is not fun. It is grueling work. I spent the summer teaching for 10 hours a day Monday-Friday and then sacrificing myself for the weekend. I was clutching everything I felt and pulling it to my chest. I was holding it all so tightly that I was becoming the worst of it.
I was not a good person that summer. I was an awful friend, unfair lover–if a lover at all, and unkind woman. I cared only for myself, every action a plea for survival. I was in the thick of something but being that I was unsure of what, all I could do was try to come out the other side. To keep moving meant I would eventually see it end.
If I moved fast enough, no one could see the tears rolling down my cheeks. If I stayed in constant motion then I was likely to never cry again. Avoidance has always been my weapon of choice and summer in Chicago provided sufficient distractions. I provided myself no solitude for introspection fearing that if I began to cry I might never stop.
The issue with my avoidance was that no matter how quickly I ran, I could never really hide–my problems followed me everywhere I went. Instead of confronting any, I was being consumed by them. I was restless inside the belly of the beast. I wanted nothing more than to burst out immediately, unaware that the only way out was through. I felt that I could never really confront myself in that environment, in Chicago, being as I was, being as it were.
Knowing when to leave was maybe the only redeemable trait I possessed in my twenty-third year. When my co-teacher told me that she had given her month’s notice, I knew it was my time too. I made arrangements in Europe, albeit hastily, and handed in my resignation. I was leaving, I was going away, this would all be over. Or, rather, I could finally confront myself outside of my comfort zone.
In the month before my departure, my friends rotated through my apartment, helping me pack up my things or saying goodbye. On Sundays, my recycling would overflow with wine bottles and takeout boxes, remnants of the week prior, and I would take it out with flushed cheeks. How can I be embarrassed to be loved so much? Or perhaps I felt an underlying guilt for having to leave. I had to go, it was the right choice and I knew that even when I was in it. I gave away my things, left my keys on the counter, walked through each room that held two years of my life and memories within its grasp and said goodbye.
When I was leaving, I was convinced I would never return. Regardless of how right it felt, I cried in the car as my father switched on his blinker to exit the city. Everything that happened to me there mattered. As much as I wished to be able to, I could not release my grip even a little. I needed to hold on so that I could leave safely. I thought that remembering meant never letting go, my memories would escape if I did not always feel the emotions they gave me.
Airports are not a place to release and yet, my mother’s tears stained my sweater and my father hugged me tighter than usual. I moved through security quickly and once through, I made space to acknowledge that I was on my own then. I tried to write about it on the plane but there are no words to explain how I felt. It was everything from the entirety of my life all at once.
France would not save me, this was apparent immediately upon my landing. Being there did not immediately fix everything. The solitude of the mountains led to more introspection–making all of my problems more apparent. I wandered around the small mountain roads and passed bulls wearily, afraid that the flimsy fence surrounding their fields wouldn’t protect me against their force. Sometimes, at night, I would imagine having to confront one and how the adrenaline coursing through my body would have me behave. I hoped I could avoid them just as I had everything else my entire life.
On a hike up a mountain with a mother and her two young daughters, we enjoyed a picnic on a grassy mound. I noticed a pile of cow shit near us but, too afraid to know the truth, did not ask if they were living in the field. Later, as the girls complained of exhaustion, their mother decided to cut through a field full of bulls, following the worn path in the dirt. I needed to confront this now. Having no other choice, I blindly followed them into it. And it didn’t immediately harm me.