"somewhere other than inside the out there" -- part seven.

--if you had one night, just one more night, would that change everything?--

oh man, i know you don't want to hear all the sorted and sordid little details from my "summer o' bitterness" but somethings need to get told.

nevermind, we'll get into that later.

anyway, before i get back into the whole business and chronology, let me just say this.

it's true what they say about knowing. "when harry met sally"- "i knew like i know a good melon." and it's true. that ripe scent with not the least amount of rot, and firm, nice shape to add to it.

and it's true what the first lady says in the first season of the west wing, "never go for the geniuses, they never want to sleep."

it's true what a lot of people say.

and so on and so forth.

we have our fair share of heartbreak, and miscommunication, and jealousy, and scars to show for all of it. i won't trust a person who has no scars.

those are lessons that they should have learned from some other girl a long time ago.

that whole summer, i had alkaline trio's "enjoy your day" running through my head. like a tweaker. like a rabid hare.

i had no idea what to do with my mind all made up without me.

spent the summer locked in my room, barrelling down on the keyboard, trying to work it all out with words i hadn't learned to spell.

i was homesick.

i know you did not grow up in a military household, where the house does not hold, and where home is a romantic word not thrown around lightly. in fact, it requires a month of packing and a three day trip in a tired old dodge caravan. it requires dad waving around a yellow envelope and talking about "orders" and trying to explain the next city we're living in. it requires a bike broken by movers and taking the tattered immunization record to another new school office. it requires mom exclaiming to the principal that she knows her daughter is young but she's already been through three months of this grade at her last school.

home sweet home.

no one should have to worry about the weight of all of their possessions put into one big truck and if it is under the maximum requirement.

so, "home" was this non-entity for me. it was whereever my family was and whereever the government told us it was. i had no resentment to this fact, and as far as i knew, this is the way everyone lived. i was very shocked when i met someone who had lived in the same house their entire life.

but i go on.

this was my first summer in a long time away from my friends, and frankly, i had gotten spoiled by the security of it all. my family had spent such an extended period of time (a whole six years) in one place, that i had ignorantly expected it to stay that way. long nights spent in my friend's basement, smoking cigarettes and playing word games. knowing where to find someone without having to call them first. a regular summer job at the hospital. i was really homesick.

i think by august, my parents were thrilled with the idea of me actually leaving the house for something besides work, and so they sent me back to denver for a week.

and it was like i never left.

they threw a party, and by midnight, i was singing my improvisational drinking songs while swinging in the hammock. these had truly become known.

the next morning, with a headache and someone else in the bed, i snuck away unnoticed to go ask someone what had happened.

i returned to the northeast the next day, shaking my head, and floating over civilization, i recalled the past week. i wasn't really sure what had come over me. i suppose it was an easy copout to feeling neglected and unwanted and rejected, so much so that i became easy takes. i didn't know his last name or if he had any brothers, but he put me at ease and fed into that terrifying tug of war i'd been having with my self-confidence since that boy chose her over me. i just wanted to sleep. lose it all in sleep. i don't feel guilty when i sleep.

my dad said i looked tired.

my mom said i wasn't eating right.

truly, i wasn't eating at all.

i just nodded and mumbled a thank you for picking me up at the airport.

embarassment somehow detracted from who i had become, and i ate it slowly, cutting it into tiny pieces and chewing twenty three times.

because i couldn't stop thinking about some boy from kentucky who really liked mineral.