Infinite Repeat

My decision to go home wasn’t planned. There was no major crisis going on. No one was sick, no one was dead or dying, and no one was getting married. It was a random, spontaneous decision. In fact, it was so spontaneous, that I booked my flight five hours before it left. Of course it was more expensive, causing my bank account to only have twelve dollars left in it. My step father would add money to it, though, so it didn't matter too much.

So in the three hours I had before I had to leave for the airport, I packed as much shit as I could in my bag and told my roommate that I’d be back… well that I’d be back whenever. I’d still send her my half for the rent, of course, until I decided whatever the hell I was doing.

The thing about going back to the place you left, was that you didn’t know whether the place changed or if you, yourself changed. In my own opinion, I figured that it was both. Everyone changes, whether they like it or not. And of course no place is going to stay the same. A restaurant is going to go up here and a store will shut down there. It’ll all change eventually.

The other side to the theory is that the people change. Well duh. That one is obvious. The people are going to grow up, get married, and have children. Everything will change between the time you were there and the time you go back. I never planned on going back, but for some reason, I did.

It wasn’t that I was bitter towards the people at home, because I wasn’t at all. I just didn’t want to stay there. I hoped to God that they all understood that.

Well no, I take that back. I didn’t hope to God. Ever since what happened, I stopped really believing in God and his powers. I didn’t want to offend anyone who did believe in him, because that’s their own choice. I however, just didn’t. It was stupid, of course. People always said that God wouldn’t throw you anything you could catch, but he did just that to me and of course, I said it was bullshit. All he did was throw things at me I couldn’t catch and it was starting to piss me off.

My life was never some cliché storybook. I didn’t fall in love with my best friend, I didn’t get pregnant as a teen, I wasn’t addicted to any drugs, and no one I loved died. I had the typical life as a child and teen. My parents divorced when I was six and I switched off with them. During the school year, I’d live with my mother in Providence, Rhode Island and during the summer and Christmas break, I lived with my father in Tempe, Arizona.

When I was sixteen, though, I stopped going to my dad’s. When I was eighteen, just a week after I graduated, I left Providence and moved to Austin, Texas. I got a job at B.D. Riley’s on Sixth Street as a bartender and waitress, depending on the night. On my first day there, I was hired on the spot and that same night, I met my best friend and roommate, Tina McDonald. She was hilarious, loud, obnoxious, and crazy.

So when I told Tina that I was going home, she immediately thought that I meant home to Providence, since I never mentioned my father in Tempe. I didn’t bother explaining any further what I really meant because I didn’t feel the need. Instead, I went along with it and told her that I’d call her when I landed.

I always considered my father’s house more of a home than I did my mother’s. I spent more time at my mom’s, but I liked my dad’s more. I had fun there. I had a lot of friends there. Almost every night of summer, there was a party that involved heavily drinking and lots of drugs. Usually, I didn’t participate in the intake of drugs, but every now and then I did.

So that was how I ended up here, unpacking all my shit at my dad’s house.