06/22/2001 - “Epilogue, Version I (Anecdotal)”

Anyone who's ever left their hometown in order to escape the weight and destiny their natal geography commands knows what it feels like to have a story they never want to tell again, but occasionally need to. Although the saying goes "you can never go home," family obligations, weddings, funerals and occasionally morbid curiosity will take you back.

You're easy to spot because you're wearing all black in a town where almost all the collars are blue. Across a crowded Veteran's Hall, in a church basement, at the Union 76 station, in the drugstore parking lot, someone will call your name in a cadence that feels ill fitting, waving their arms frantically and smiling in a way you're not sure you'll reciprocate when they finally reach you where you stand frozen, equally excited and mortified.

After confirming that you still live where they heard you ran away to, you assure them you're well, being careful not to seem too enthusiastic or relieved to have gone, lest you be perceived as bragging. They will reach for the only things left they are sure still hold you together. "Remember the time you..." the voice raises in pitch, and the sentence finishes with something that you don't entirely regret, but sounds very out of place in the landscape you now consider your own.

You nod, humming a confirmation, and their eyes widen. You may know what they want already, but will make them ask for it anyway, while you decide whether you will indulge them or beg off, claiming there is something else you must do immediately. Finally they will ask outright if you will confirm a rumor they have heard about you. "How did that happen? Is it true?" Eventually you begin the tale they requested, because these few seconds of interaction pulled a chord you can't name. The name of the chord is need. There is part of you that occasionally needs to tell the story, even if it reminds you of unpleasant things.

Later that day, in another location, you may run into someone who did not know you left, or does not know you at all, but wants to know why there's something subtlety different. You tell an abbreviated, maybe slightly fictionalized account of events past, trying to take the shortest explanatory path from your origin to your destination and back.

You know who you are and what you're capable of, even if others can't see it. You're confident you get things they don't even know exist, and they see things in ways you can only guess. Best of all, now that you're a grown up, it's all okay, and you just take things at face value, and appreciate you lived to tell the story.

That's how it sits with me most days. There are three lingering gifts to help balance the inconveniences and discomfort. First, that my family, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers were there for me in ways I could never have imagined. Kindness rained on my head so conspicuously that I still can not comprehend my gratitude much less express it. I learned that I am loved in a way that has seeped into my marrow making my bones stronger. Secondly, at some point, even the doctors are adamant that I chose to live. I was that close. I'm encouraged that my optimism passed that kind of a test. The third thing no words can illuminate for anyone who is not me: I'm glad I feel like me again.

I refuse to let this be the defining event of the rest of my life. I will work, play, love, make mistakes, spill things, wrap presents, write thank you notes, publish, work on web pages, travel to exotic lands, buy a house, get a dog. I'll still be good at art and bad at math. I will do everything I had planned to do. and hopefully in a couple of years instead of seeing this as a terrible thing that happened to me, I will remember it as the time I learned that people loved me as much as I loved them.

Posted by Nicole @ 07/03/2001 11:35 AM EST