Leaving

Leaving

I knew the minute I woke up that morning that I was going to leave. I just knew.
Nothing happened last night or days before that made me make my decision. I just woke up with it. I sat straight up like I had awakened from a nightmare, clutching my chest.
Jake didn’t move a muscle. He could sleep like that all day. Lying still in the
same spot. Sometimes it seemed as if he was barely breathing but every other minute or so I’d hear this little whistle coming from his nose. I used to tease him about that whistle when we first started sleeping together but now it’s like a part of everything else around here…normal.
Now don’t go getting all upset; there’s nothing wrong with normal. Most people have so much drama in their lives that they crave normal. Jake always talks about how his family loves drama so much that they are perfect candidates for Jerry Springer or even Judge Judy. He threatens to call all the talk shows and sign them up. I find his family’s dramas very interesting and at times when I’m around them and “observing,” I can’t help but think, there's never a dull moment here.
Jake’s sister Karen has twin boys (eight years old) who are budding psychopaths. No living thing, animal or insect, is safe around those two. They are fascinated with death and seeing things die and I guess they feel that if they get to kill them, even better. Karen is trying some kind of therapy where she tries to distract their bad thoughts with other things. Jake says that a good couple of swats on their behinds would distract them. And I know you can imagine the debates that follow.
Normal. I guess normal is relative but growing up, I didn't know normal. I knew chaotic and discord but not normal. Growing up in a family of four kids all pretty close in age, to parents that seemed to try their best to satisfy all our needs but still came up lacking.
We all went our separate ways when we hit eighteen and although I get the
occasional card, phone call or email from my brothers and sister, basically we only see each other at funerals.
There wasn’t any rift between us. No big blow-outs or family scandals. I think that it’s just a matter of being under the same roof growing up and having our fill of each other. My parents are still living in Michigan during the summer and Florida during the winter. I try and see them (besides the funerals) a couple of times a year.
I guess when you think about it, that all sounds pretty normal. So what happened to me? My sister Rita once saidthat I am searching for something that I will never find because I'm always running away from it. She says that I give up on things too quickly and that I need to just settle down and get married. I love it when other people have the solutions to what I should do with my life and how it will make me happy.
I guess I just get restless sometimes. Some women change their hair. Some start their own business, or god forbid,hire a personal trainer. Those things don’t work for me. I leave.
It’s hard to explain that to most people. I don’t understand it myself. All I know is that I start getting this feeling that lets me know it’s time to go. And I go.
Most people don’t like being left and fortunately I haven’t had to leave too many people behind. I like to stick to myself so I don’t let people get too close.
Jake was different. When we met he looked me in the eye and held my gaze for a lot longer than he should have. I liked the directness of that. I was working at a used book store and he came in looking for something by Langston Hughes and was impressed with my knowledge of poetry. By the time he left, with my phone number, he was grinning from ear to ear and promising to call me. And he did.
From that point we kind of just hung out with each other. We weren't always in each other's pockets (as my grandmother would say) but we had found something good and enjoyed our time together. There was something about Jake that I’d never seen in another man and at thirty-three years of age, I’ve known a few men, not a lot but enough to make me a “semi-expert” on them. Men have it hard in our society today. They don’t know if they have to be macho or sensitive, passive or aggressive, most of them don’t even know how to approach a woman today.
So Jake was definitely different. He was just himself with no pretenses. He and I did this wonderful “slow dance” with each other with our words and feelings, for weeks. Our words tumbled out of our mouths so fast and at the same time that we had to repeat ourselves.
It was the newness of it all. That initial feeling of hope at the beginning of a
relationship. When we shared our past he told me that my “wildness” reminded him of a man. As if men had the monopoly on growing restless and picking up and leaving.
Leaving. I guess that’s always my first instinct when I start feeling “closed in.” It’s more than just eating dinner at the same time every night or Tuesday night always being taco night. It’s the routine of it all. It had only been a few months and I knew the exact moment Jake would walk in the door from work. I knew how he would sit down at the table and read the newspaper, moving his lips as he read. I knew the exact moment when he would ask me how my day was. All normal things that people who care for each other, talk to each other about. I would miss that.
It wouldn’t stop me from going though. I wouldn’t leave like a coward in the night or say that I was going out for a pack of cigarettes (I don’t even smoke.) I’ll sit down with him and try to explain about wanderlust and my feelings of not being able to stay in one place for too long. I’ll try to get him to see how it couldn’t have worked between us anyway.
He won’t understand. I won’t expect him to either. I guess we’ll both sit there
silently, me wondering what it is that I’m running to or away from, and him wondering how he could have thought he knew me…when he didn’t. He’ll have all those ugly words in his head that he won’t say out loud, but I’ll hear them anyway. I’ve heard them before. And as hollow as the words, “It’s not you, it’s me,” sound, it truly does speak volumes.