Homecoming

I call it my traveling shirt. It’s plaid and button down and the sleeves pool around my wrists and the hem falls past my mid thigh. I stole it from your closet the first time I took off in the middle of the night without warning, and I’ve worn it every single time since.

My fingers were shaky when I stuffed it in my suitcase that first night, unable to be sure what I was packing through my tears, just blindly grabbing random things in my path. It was cold on the train that night, and when I pulled out your shirt I had every intention of never going back. But when I draped it around my shoulders and buttoned it over the camisole I’d worn to bed your smell enveloped me, and I knew that someday I had to go back.

You called me the next morning and left frantic messages, but I never picked up. I threw my cell phone over the Brooklyn bridge by the second day.

Two weeks later I appeared on your front porch with sun kissed highlights and a tan. You didn’t say a word, but let me in. There were circles under your eyes and it looked like you hadn’t shaved since I left. I heard you crying in bed that night and the next morning your eyes were red and swollen. I wasn’t sure if it was from lack of sleep or the tears or a combination of the two.

I stayed for two months before the feeling of imprisonment began to loom over me again. I found myself lying in bed with you as you slept, your arm like a vise around my waist, just like the first night I left. I slipped out of bed at four in the morning and drove until even coffee couldn’t keep my eyelids from drooping.

I called you from a payphone a week later in San Francisco, and the exhaustion in your voice was evident. I was waiting for you when you get off from work six days later with a new haircut, new wardrobe, and new zest for life. Your bitter resentment is palpable in the way you hold your mouth, but your hug is full of everything I like about home. It is the only thing that keeps me coming back.

You always keep diet coke and strawberry poptarts around the house, since I drop in so spontaneously. The way you look at me on the first night of my visit breaks my heart every single time. You stare at me over your nightly glass of wine with such longing and affection that it makes me wish I had never met you. We both know that you’ll never have me, not in the way that you deserve. You get better at hiding these feelings from me the longer I stay.

Once again, I come back to you, and once again, the familiar itching for freedom returns. I can’t escape the imprisonment I feel when I’m with you. It weighs me down, growing heavier with each day. It’s like a disease. I am addicted to hurting you; addicted to hurting myself.

I know that if it weren’t for this stupid, masochistic obsession of mine, we could be happy together. I could love you. I could let you love me. We could love each other and live happily ever after. But something in me won’t allow it. Something deep within is hesitant to trust you; reluctant to love you, to let in your love. I’m not sure what it is. You’re wonderful and safe and good. You’re everything that I’m not.

I think you’ve known all along that I would never be completely yours, never be completely anyone’s. I think maybe I did too.

And I think you always knew that I would hurt you. So maybe in a way, we are alike. We both set ourselves up for heartache. Both emotional masochists. Maybe that’s why we keep each other around. You know that I will be forever breaking your heart; forever breaking my own.

Or maybe you just love me, and you always have. Maybe you were too far gone by the time you realized how much pain I would cause you. Maybe you just had the misfortune of falling in love with me.

I don’t love you, and you deserve someone who isn‘t constantly making you hurt, but you always welcome me home with those damned loving hugs that break my heart. So for now, I’m staying.