Far From Home

When they came around the corner my feet were glued to the ground. I couldn’t run toward them or away from them; I just watched. They had plastic bags full of groceries weighing down their arms. I knew I should have helped them, but I also felt like I should have stayed away. They looked around, as if they could detect my presence. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I stayed hidden behind the shrubs. The calm suburban neighborhood was still in the sweet splendor of morning. Nobody was around but them, my parents. They looked worried, and hastened in all their menial tasks, slowly making their way to the front door. 

Once they were inside their old house, and seemed to drop their suspicion, I walked down the road. I had no particular destination in mind, but I knew I wanted to leave the suburbs as fast as possible; they remind me too much of where I should have been.

Walking down the streets of my origin was a quiet and uneventful journey. Once and a while I encountered an acorn, or a stray cat, but there was never any homeless men, car crashes, or passed out intoxicated women from the night before on the streets like where I grew up. Just being on the streets of suburbia made me feel like I missed out on a clean and safe place to live.

Once I got into the city my mind swirled with sensory overload as I got used to the glaring consumerism. Posted everywhere were ads, and posters and street art. My eyes felt like they would retract back into my head. I swear, every time a person crosses the border into the city they’re robbed of their sanity. It’s like a toll that you pay involuntarily. No matter how many years I lived in this cesspool of meaninglessness I would never get used to coming back to it. After I had walked three blocks the pain subsided and numbness set back in.

I thought of my childhood. I thought about how my parents decided to raise another couple’s child, and how that other couple never knew who they were. I thought about where I grew up, and the contrast of that to where I came from. I grew up in city lights, but I came from lights-out-at-ten. I grew up in a house with drugs, but I came from a home with money. I thought about what my life should have been, and how much I hated my parents for squandering that for welfare. I thought about how my parents kicked me out and found a new kid to corrupt when I turned eighteen. But mostly, I thought about how much better I should be, and how my real parents would spit on me if they knew who I was. 

Now that I was eighteen my “adopted” (they never legally adopted me, they just pretended I was their biological kid to get money from the government) parents had no use for me, so they kicked me out. They said they don’t support freeloaders. I don’t blame them, what good was a dead weight kid when you have a drug addiction and no money? I wanted to leave them anyways. They were verbally abusive and evil. Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t turn out worse. 

I had no place to live in the first few months, and had to sleep on park benches, and bathe in gas station sinks. It was an awful way to live, but in many ways better than I had been before. I decided to get a job, and sent out applications everywhere. I found one that had decent pay and I dropped out of high school. My job was at some wishy-washy drug store in a sketchy neighborhood, but it payed well. I finally saved enough money to make rent on a grimy apartment in another sketchy neighborhood. I didn’t mind living in the sketchy neighborhood because I felt like I belonged there. I felt like I was among my own people. Then my whole perspective changed.

One day my adopted mom came into the store, not knowing that I worked there. She ignored me at first, but then I had to check her vodka and peanuts out and she started a conversation. 

“I thought ya woulda found ya real family by now.”

“I didn’t think I could’ve.”

“Well don’t blame me for ya crummy life. I’m not ya mom, I took ya in, remember? I made ya life betta! You coulda been an orphan, but no, I saved ya. They didn’t want ya. They just handed ya over like a flyer. Ya didn’t mean nothin’ to ‘em.”

She left without her purchases, or another word. I didn’t know what to do. Before thinking, I ran after her, but she was a ways down the street when I saw her. I just watched her as she rounded the corner. That was the last time I saw her. 

I found the street where my apartment was, and passed it. I glanced down the street to the sketchy drug store I worked at, and fled. I had nowhere else to go. I don’t know where I could’ve gone that was right for how I was feeling other then my real parent’s house, but I didn’t want to go back there, because it felt too rich, too indulgent to ever hold me. I figured if I stayed in suburbia too long it would physically purge me from it’s pure streets, seeing how grimy and crummy I was. The people would form a mob and chase me with torches and pitchforks. I was just that different from them. I could never see them accepting me as part of their life. 

For them, I’m probably just a baby shaped stain on their existence. They probably don’t tell anyone they know about me. They probably hid it from everyone when it happened. I was a mistake. I was an unwanted child, and I can’t help but think that maybe I’m an unwanted person, too. 

I finally ended up at the park that I used to escape to as a kid. It felt like home, although I knew my real home was in suburbia, with people I had never met. I was always there when I was a kid, I don’t think that there was ever a day when I didn’t go to the park and pretend my life was better. I would pretend that I lived in a big house that smelled of roses, with pristine white carpets. I would pretend when I got home my mother would be baking gooey chocolate chip cookies and ask me about my day. I would pretend that on the inside I wasn’t yearning every single second for something more than I had. 

Now that I knew I belonged somewhere else, the park felt like old jeans that just don’t seem to fit the same way. It didn’t comfort me to sit under the willow tree, and watch the swings sway back and forth in the wind. It didn’t cheer me up to see the clouds through the holes in the foliage. The most horrid part was that I couldn’t connect a single feeling to this same place. 

I didn’t fit into the place I belonged, and I didn’t fit into the place I always knew I was from. I was like a puzzle piece whose parts had been turned inside out, except I didn’t fit into a new puzzle. I just was. 

All of the sudden I felt like I might spontaneously combust if I didn’t fit somewhere. It felt as if all the air in the world would become unbreathable unless I fit in somewhere. 

The next thing I knew, I saw a familiar car. It was white with a gleaming chrome bumper and a custom license plate. A curious middle-aged couple stepped out and looked at the park, and then each other. I glanced at them once or twice, and then I saw they were looking directly at me. I looked back at them so they could see my face clearly, without obstruction from the tendrils of the willow tree. They walked towards me, but they didn’t look as sure as I wanted them to. Once their feet stood just outside the curtain of branches they stopped and looked in at me. At first I thought they were disappointed in what they saw. I thought they might walk away, and never look at me again. I hoped they wouldn’t. 

I lifted myself up from the dirt and carefully brushed off my jeans. We stood for what seemed like hours just staring into each other’s eyes. I wanted the moment to never end. I wanted to stand at this crossroads for the rest of time.

“So you’ve received my letter,” I choked.