the choices and homes we make

While I was home for the holiday weekend, I got news that a man I once dated was getting ready to propose to his girlfriend. Everyone reassured me that she was very nice and he was happy, and so I was happy for him. He’s an incredibly decent person. He’s a man who so unexpectedly came into my life after we hadn’t known each other for a decade. He couldn’t believe the woman he thought I had grown into. He had supreme confidence that I would fulfill all of my dreams and I would do it all with a smile. He asked me if he could be along for the ride, even saying that he would put up with city living if my life determined that I needed to be here. I fled. I came back to DC. We stayed tentative friends through phone calls and the occasional e-mail and last Christmas he joined my family for the day, walking me home to wish me a safe trip back here and tell me that he still thought of me, still cared for me. In February he came to visit and got a very different picture of the woman I had become. Suddenly he saw me drinking and obsessed with work and very integrated into what has become my life since leaving our small town five years ago. He saw the ruthless politician in me, he saw my heart broken by someone who was supposed to be my friend and he saw me reacting very badly to such a situation. He flew home and e-mailed, asking why I put up with all, why I welcomed such an existence. I wasn’t sure what to say; nobody had ever questioned my path before. I wrote back simply enough: This is my life now. I chose it. I am just as terrible as everyone else here and I am just as good at it. He realized that the woman who had walked the beaches with him a year before was not the woman whom he had visited. He realized that who I am surrounded by family and warmth and old stories and good drinks is not who I am everyday. I know his fiancé, she and I were friends in high school, and everyone’s right. She is very nice and I am so happy for both of them. He proposed on Thanksgiving in front of his entire family and she cried and they are both ecstatic. Their wedding will be in August and I don’t know if I’ll be invited, I probably won’t be, but I sent him a quick message today saying congratulations and I hope he knows how truly I mean it.

This past week has had me thinking so much about what the meaning of home really is, and how I’ve spent so many years flouting the concept. My ex-fiancé now says that travel is his girlfriend; Delta gets jealous easily and that’s all he wants. He’s happy like that, and for a long time I had been the same sort of person. But seeing him at drinks last night put into sharp contrast the sort of person I strive to be compared to the life that I have lead in DC.

I remember one night in particular. I was seeing a man back home, sort of a summer fling that unfortunately became much more than that. I used to call him Peter Pan. So cocky and so infuriatingly good at everything he tried. When he was 14 he met me and said “I’m going to marry you someday.” And then here we were four years later and I was so wrapped up in him. But the world called, and I kissed my Peter-Pan-With-A-Mohawk goodbye at the airport and I flew to Europe. We decided before I left that he should enjoy college fully here in the states and that I needed to not worry about home while I studied art and literature in ancient capitols. That lasted for roughly three weeks, when I called him drunkenly from Naples, Italy and told him how much I missed him. We decided to give the distance a try, though with an open mind so that neither of us would be hurt if things didn’t work out. Oceans can do that to the best of us. I came back for the holidays and spent every waking moment with him and his family, even Christmas shopping with his mother.

One night we offered to baby-sit for my brother’s two kids, and when my brother and his girl got back they suggested we chill out and watch a movie. Peter Pan even offered to drive my bucket of a car home so that I could have a drink with my brother (who makes the best amaretto sours in the world). There we were, all curled up on each couch, my brother and his girl on one, Pan and I on another. The blankets were so warm and we were watching a ridiculous movie (“Bang Bang, You’re Dead”) and he and my brother (who’s older and so opposite from me but still protective and one of my best friends and closest allies) are going back and forth joking and getting along. The two little boys (my nephews) wanted to stay up and keep talking to Pan, he put them to bed and did it perfectly. Here I was watching exactly how wonderful someone can be. I was comfortable and myself and with people who had always known both versions of me (city and home) and so in love with the world for one evening. It seemed like I could have the cake and eat it too. The city life but the love of my family and my boyfriend and that it really could work out. I hadn’t been happier since I don’t even know when.

Two weeks later I called him from DC and told him I was seeing someone else. Someone with a good name and a lot of connections and someone who fit this city version of me much better than someone from home could ever attempt to. That man later became my ex-fiancé and it has taken Pan and I since then to be on civil terms again. Two years. When I go home, like this weekend, I still always stop in to say hi to his mom, who still hugs me tight and says she misses me. She says he misses me too, even if he won’t admit it. And my family asks how he’s doing. I’m not sure if I was simply delusional, or being a little girl afraid to take the plunge, but the decision was made either way and now when I look back I think of that night at my brother’s house and I seem myself home. Really home.

“These days everything’s all business; never in one place for too long. There’s no lack of arms around me, but I still wonder if somewhere I went wrong. Maybe I was much too selfish but baby you’re still on my mind. And now I’m grown and all alone and wishing I was with you tonight, ‘cause I can guarantee things are sweeter in Tennessee.” [of course, the wreckers may be from tennesse, but while i love his plays, i'm not. i don't know that things are 'sweeter' back home, but i like the idea of it, the simplicity of it. too bad things aren't so simple, eh?]