Letter Composed on an Eastbound Bus
Another bad Creative Writing story...blah. Lol.
--
Dear Mom,
I miss home so badly. I've been able to think of nothing else lately.
Home...a tiny, cramped apartment in a huge, cramped city. A place of noise, chaos, passion, heat...but also smog, dreariness and intense coldness - and I don't mean just the winters. Everything was always changing there, but it was something I left myself out of. I shut myself in my room and ignored the world, buried in my books. I passed the same sights on my unchanging route to school every day. I believed there was no adventure for me there. I believed it, and it never bothered me...until my senior year in high school. For the first time, it seemed, I had the absolute power to change the road in front of me. I could go to college in the city, live near home and visit you whenever I wanted.
Or I could leave the city - exchange my building-clouded sky for a wide, clear blue one, pavement for dirt, city fumes for clean country air.
I thought it over for months, left the decision as late as I could. I spent my days lost in thought, agonizing over it. The scales in my heart were never in equilibrium during those months; I vacillated between safety in the same boring life I'd always lived and adventure at the risk of
mistakes, even unhappiness. Finally, I did the most courageous thing I'd ever done: I left home.
I only mention this because this is the only problem of mine I've never told you about. I mean, sure, I mentioned that I was having a hard time, but I never told you how difficult that decision was for me. And really, it was all for nothing, because it turns out I made the wrong choice. Life without you, Mom, is terrible. You were always my best friend as well as my protector, comforter, confidant. You were there throughout all my disappointments in childhood and the dreaded high school years. Even when I longed for the kind of friends I read about - unrelated ones who were closer than any family could possibly be - you were there for me. Now that I can only speak to you over the phone and sometimes e-mail, it seems like there's this huge hole in my life where you used to be. I even miss the annoying things, like the way you tap your fingernails on any available surface when you're thinking.
It was finally too much to handle, so I jumped on a bus headed for the city this morning. Yes, I know I was supposed to get on a place with Kaitlin later today to go to her family's place for break. I'm sure she'll have enough fun without me. Megan was invited too, and Kaitlin's going to be seeing her sister, and supposedly they're pretty close.
So here I was, watching Kansas pass by outside the window, smelling the distinctive smell of eau de bus, and I kept thinking:
God what a dumb mistake I made coming out here. I thought just living here, so far from home, would change me. I wanted to be a true and proper American: self-sufficient, enterprising. I wanted to be an interesting person - the sort of girl who could be the heroine of a book.
I remember the dreams I had. I saw myself sitting outside in the grass with a group of friends, the sun shining golden, everyone laughing and leaning on one another. Someone would tease me, and I'd tease back - something witty, not the kind of weak stuff I'd always been apt to come up with. Everything would be effortless.
* * *
Something amazing just happened: My cell phone rang. I didn't check the caller ID before I answered it, which was why I was taken aback to hear Kaitlin saying frantically, "Cece, where are you? We've looked everywhere, and if you don't come now we're going to miss our flight!
You're not already at the airport, are you?"
"Didn't you get my text?" I asked her, confused.
"No, I didn't, now where are you?" Kaitlin said.
"I'm not coming," was my reply.
"What?" Kaitlin shrieked into the phone. "But we had it all planned!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to find out so last minute. But Megan's still going to be there, right? So you'll be fine."
"I didn't ask Megan to come, she asked me. You're the one I really wanted to come!" Kaitlin actually sounded hurt, which was no less amazing to me than the idea of her preferring my company to Megan's.
"But I'm boring," I protested. "You'd just be bored if I came and Megan didn't."
Kaitlin sighed in a way that I knew meant she was impatient with me. "You are not boring. What you are is an idiot, but I won't get into that right now. Just because you don't spend your life, I don't know, haring off to get yourself in trouble with crazy schemes or having very dramatic love affairs doesn't mean you're boring. It means you have sense, something Megan sadly lacks. And you're fun to talk to. So get your butt over here and we'll catch that plane."
"Um. I can't. I'm on a Greyhound, headed east. I left this morning."
"And you say you're boring," Kaitlin said with a laugh. "What are you trying to do anyway?"
"Go home," I said.
"Then turn around, silly," Kaitlin said. "Home's here."
So you see, I won't be at your doorstep anytime soon. Seems I was at home all along and I didn't see it - just as I was too blind to see a good friendship when it didn't take exactly the form I expected.
I'll call you soon. But in the meantime, I'm going home.
- Cecelia
--
Dear Mom,
I miss home so badly. I've been able to think of nothing else lately.
Home...a tiny, cramped apartment in a huge, cramped city. A place of noise, chaos, passion, heat...but also smog, dreariness and intense coldness - and I don't mean just the winters. Everything was always changing there, but it was something I left myself out of. I shut myself in my room and ignored the world, buried in my books. I passed the same sights on my unchanging route to school every day. I believed there was no adventure for me there. I believed it, and it never bothered me...until my senior year in high school. For the first time, it seemed, I had the absolute power to change the road in front of me. I could go to college in the city, live near home and visit you whenever I wanted.
Or I could leave the city - exchange my building-clouded sky for a wide, clear blue one, pavement for dirt, city fumes for clean country air.
I thought it over for months, left the decision as late as I could. I spent my days lost in thought, agonizing over it. The scales in my heart were never in equilibrium during those months; I vacillated between safety in the same boring life I'd always lived and adventure at the risk of
mistakes, even unhappiness. Finally, I did the most courageous thing I'd ever done: I left home.
I only mention this because this is the only problem of mine I've never told you about. I mean, sure, I mentioned that I was having a hard time, but I never told you how difficult that decision was for me. And really, it was all for nothing, because it turns out I made the wrong choice. Life without you, Mom, is terrible. You were always my best friend as well as my protector, comforter, confidant. You were there throughout all my disappointments in childhood and the dreaded high school years. Even when I longed for the kind of friends I read about - unrelated ones who were closer than any family could possibly be - you were there for me. Now that I can only speak to you over the phone and sometimes e-mail, it seems like there's this huge hole in my life where you used to be. I even miss the annoying things, like the way you tap your fingernails on any available surface when you're thinking.
It was finally too much to handle, so I jumped on a bus headed for the city this morning. Yes, I know I was supposed to get on a place with Kaitlin later today to go to her family's place for break. I'm sure she'll have enough fun without me. Megan was invited too, and Kaitlin's going to be seeing her sister, and supposedly they're pretty close.
So here I was, watching Kansas pass by outside the window, smelling the distinctive smell of eau de bus, and I kept thinking:
God what a dumb mistake I made coming out here. I thought just living here, so far from home, would change me. I wanted to be a true and proper American: self-sufficient, enterprising. I wanted to be an interesting person - the sort of girl who could be the heroine of a book.
I remember the dreams I had. I saw myself sitting outside in the grass with a group of friends, the sun shining golden, everyone laughing and leaning on one another. Someone would tease me, and I'd tease back - something witty, not the kind of weak stuff I'd always been apt to come up with. Everything would be effortless.
* * *
Something amazing just happened: My cell phone rang. I didn't check the caller ID before I answered it, which was why I was taken aback to hear Kaitlin saying frantically, "Cece, where are you? We've looked everywhere, and if you don't come now we're going to miss our flight!
You're not already at the airport, are you?"
"Didn't you get my text?" I asked her, confused.
"No, I didn't, now where are you?" Kaitlin said.
"I'm not coming," was my reply.
"What?" Kaitlin shrieked into the phone. "But we had it all planned!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to find out so last minute. But Megan's still going to be there, right? So you'll be fine."
"I didn't ask Megan to come, she asked me. You're the one I really wanted to come!" Kaitlin actually sounded hurt, which was no less amazing to me than the idea of her preferring my company to Megan's.
"But I'm boring," I protested. "You'd just be bored if I came and Megan didn't."
Kaitlin sighed in a way that I knew meant she was impatient with me. "You are not boring. What you are is an idiot, but I won't get into that right now. Just because you don't spend your life, I don't know, haring off to get yourself in trouble with crazy schemes or having very dramatic love affairs doesn't mean you're boring. It means you have sense, something Megan sadly lacks. And you're fun to talk to. So get your butt over here and we'll catch that plane."
"Um. I can't. I'm on a Greyhound, headed east. I left this morning."
"And you say you're boring," Kaitlin said with a laugh. "What are you trying to do anyway?"
"Go home," I said.
"Then turn around, silly," Kaitlin said. "Home's here."
So you see, I won't be at your doorstep anytime soon. Seems I was at home all along and I didn't see it - just as I was too blind to see a good friendship when it didn't take exactly the form I expected.
I'll call you soon. But in the meantime, I'm going home.
- Cecelia