Highway Lines Are the Rhythm of my Song

Hello dream weavers! I’m back in Portland, Oregon safe and sound after a whirlwind Missoula adventure. These monthly treks will either drive me crazy or keep me sane, I haven’t quite decided yet. My road trip weekends have taken on surreal predictability, unfolding as follows:

Friday: Anxiously bounce around the office. Consume an obscene amount of coffee. Bribe co-workers with fictional baked goods and promises of eternal affection, hoping they’ll let you leave early. When kindness fails, become increasingly obnoxious until you are forcibly ejected from the building. Bound to your waiting car without looking back, discarding your work uniform as you run. Commence over-caffeinated driving. Chatter merrily to yourself for the first five minutes. Spend the next 9 hours in autopilot, mouth open, eyes glazed. Arrive at sundown. Attempt to overcome isolation-induced zombification.

Saturday: Lounge about entirely too late, reading smutty books and recovering from the drive. Get coffee, eat delicious lunch. Waddle about aimlessly downtown. Make tentative plans with approximately every person you’ve ever met. Eat delicious dinner, watch the sunset. Listen to good music, dance like a weirdo, settle in for a night of movies and sweatpants. Talk until you fall asleep.

Sunday & Monday: Repeat Saturday ad infinitum. Browse the Import Market, quadruple caffeine intake. Leave phone under a pile of clothes to avoid guilt-induced deterrence from shameless dawdling. Browse Hastings without buying anything. Quadruple sugar intake. Browse the Book Exchange. Consider buying things just because they’re so cheap and you’re on vacation. Realize too late that if you still want to have friends in two days you’ll need to log some face time. Retrieve phone from under pile of clothes. Attempt to placate all the people by helplessly overcommitting. Don sweatpants, listen to music, watch mindless television. Talk until you fall asleep.

Tuesday: Wake up early. Hastily shove scattered belongings into backpack. Linger just long enough. Hastily shove scattered thoughts to the back of your mind. Don dark sunglasses to hide the fact that you always cry when it’s time to leave. Meet for coffee. Meet for breakfast. Meet for second coffee. Grab a quick sandwich. At this point you’ll be reduced to the fundamentals of Catching Up: who, where, when? Wish it was socially acceptable to take notes on small talk, since 90% of the information you attempt to absorb will be lost. Leave town later than anticipated. Spend the next 9 hours in autopilot, mouth open, eyes glazed. Arrive home at sundown. Succumb to isolation-induced zombification. Eat a can of black beans in bed. Pass out fully clothed while staring at your open computer screen.

So there you have it! Glamorous, I know. I’d say I don’t know why I do it, but that would be a lie. We all know I can’t stay away from Big Dipper Ice Cream.

Seriously though, going home produces such a strange cocktail of emotions. Every time I go back to Missoula I remember that I left for a reason. The old insecurities swell up. Old hostilities simmer just below the surface of so many interactions. Sometimes I feel like that swirling vortex of drama and confusion wants to swallow me again. The comfort of the familiar is a double-edged sword. We end up stuck in this strange limbo. Back home you aren’t who you were, but you also can’t be who you are. You’re left with this empty shadow legacy, like an outline that everybody fills in with their memories of you. Unfortunately, in my case, a lot of those memories are distinctly horrific.


I’m being hyperbolic, I know. Bear with me, please? Obvs it isn’t all bad or I wouldn’t wake up once every month to a packed bag, a full gas tank and 582 miles of driving.

True, going back home reaffirms all the reasons I left. But it also reminds me why it took so many years to do so. Reminds me why it was so hard to say goodbye when I did. Sprawling on Lucy’s couch. Catching up with Ju-bot. Hanging Morg’s welcome home sign so she knows she was missed and will always be loved. Lesbian Movie Night. Cramming four people comfortably onto a couch to eat pizza and watch documentaries about the two big G’s: Gay and God. Surprising my mom in the church aisle, realizing how much The Littles have grown since May. Smug pug puppies. A sun-drenched porch swing and chickens pecking senselessly in empty plastic pools. The Velvet Fog’s stunning displays of athleticism. Seriously you guys, I never thought a kickball game could cause so much of an uproar. [Note: No Means No, you stole third base and also my heart] Paul’s Pancake Parlor breakfast with Lo: veggie browns and hot coffee and finally having a chance to really talk. Coffee with C, verbally vomiting two months of comings and goings in her direction before packing up, hitting the road.

So I keep going back. I will keep going back, not propelled by nostalgia but something that seems somehow deeper. Like a longing for something I almost had, or something I had once in a dream. Trying to recapture an emotion I never quite possessed. 

Everything keeps changing, realities shifting and overlapping. Like a kaleidoscope, the image always snaps into focus the instant before it changes again. Some days it's all a jumbled mess. All I can do is remember the promise of Home. All I can do is keep chasing the sunshine.

Many miles of love.


-b

Tornado hopes you sleep well tonight.