Haunted House

I used to be terrified at the prospect of leaving. To leave something, someone, anything that I knew and grew close to, was always a thought I avoided having. I try not to get attached to people, places, or things, but it’s hard not to fall in love when my existence kisses the existence of something else. The beach town upstate that feels like it’s all my own, the man I fell in love with nearly two years ago and with whom I want to spend my life, every letter I’ve ever received from my cross-continental penpal. Places, people, things. I hate to imagine leaving, but to leave is an inevitable part of living.

Having a complicated relationship with one’s home, family, and past is something that can make leaving even more complex. I hate it here. I hate to live in this place. I hate to exist with people who exist as wretched mirrors of everything I could be, and I hate to exist as a wretched mirror of everything they could’ve been. I imagine leaving every opportunity I have, so why does it feel so hard to commit to the act itself?

There’s so much that feels painful to leave behind. To refer to a portion of my existence as my “past life” makes me feel immortal, but the reality is that it’s just a reminder of what I’m leaving behind. My youngest brother who, despite his 15 years of life, is still a baby in my mind, gives me reason to stay; to think that perhaps things aren’t as bad as I feel. I know that they are. I know I have to go, but the pain of leaving soaks into my heart, my mind, my body, like blood into cotton.

When I get to my new place, I close my eyes. I take in the scent of something unfamiliar and I picture where I used to be; a place of mourning for my happiness every day, a place of screaming silence, a place of perpetual discomfort and inevitable disagreement. I miss that place the way ex-lovers miss each other; I put that place on a pedestal in my mind. I downplay the turmoil and torment. I wish that I could be home in three clicks of my heels, but I open my eyes and I’m here.

I’ll go back and I’ll visit. I’ll explore my old room like a bystander in a museum, carefully reviewing the artifacts of a life I left behind. I’ll say hi to my brother who, despite having grown a couple years in my absence, is still a baby in my mind. I’ll exist humbly in a place that taught me how to feel emotions encompassing the strength of a tidal wave against a bluff. I’ll spend a night in this haunted house, crying myself to sleep at the thought of how much has changed, and yet how nothing has changed at all. I’ve always hated not knowing, I’ve always hated to be unsure, and how can I not feel those things when I’m living a new life?

To leave one life behind and begin anew somewhere else is a greatly complex thing to do. You forfeit comfort, security, the peace of knowing how your next day will play out, and nosedive into an existence of uncertainty and deliberation. It’s important to experience change, fresh starts, new feelings, but the sheer terror of stepping away from everything we know is what stops us. It’s easier to step away for some than it is for others. To take one step in any direction away from what I know feels like taking a step out of hiding. It feels like the first breath of spring air after a tumultuous winter, like the first sip of water upon waking up in the morning. It feels fresh and new and bright, and yet for some reason I find it hard to be happy.

I wake up and take a moment to remember where I am. I feel like Schrodinger’s Wanderer, existing in a place I’ve always known so well but failing to recognize it at the same time. Maybe I don’t know this place as well as I thought I did. I know it for what it’s done to me, I know it for how it’s shaped me, but this place continues on without me when I leave. This place fettles the people in it even once I move on.

This must be why I feel an attachment to my lover, or to my letters, or to my favorite city. My lover and I change and grow alongside each other. I’m not afraid of the person he becomes. My letters are the same each time I read them, as if they frame the past and preserve it as it was; as if time can’t change the scene that’s been set in the postcards. I know that small old town I visit on occasion is always changing, but somehow it’s always the same.

I’ve left one place and moved on to a new one. I have a new past to create in this place, one I can reflect on the next time I leave. I suppose I’m always leaving one past and living another. It’s frightening to know that every moment I live is over as soon as it began, but I frame and revisit these moments when I want to exist there again.

As I look back on that place, at the haunted house occupied by ghosts of my dearly departed memories, I understand that I can’t always be there to witness it change. I can look back at my memorabilia of the past, and I can keep taking steps into new moments that will also become nothing but distant recollections. I will move on from my old life, and my old life will move on from me.

I used to think that I wasn’t afraid of change, but leaving has proven me wrong. I’m afraid of the people I knew and loved becoming unrecognizable. I’m worried about returning to my old place only to be met with a precarious shell of what it once was. I know that life moves on without me, but I’m afraid of it leaving me behind. I suppose I’m on a train, and eventually I’ll meet my stop. I’ll get off and go about my way, but not without glancing back and watching the train depart and move on towards its other destinations.