And the next thing I knew, I was up in the bedroom, finishing unpacking the barest essentials, and I lay back in bedand stared up at the ceiling like I had when I was a kid who didn’t even have the will to wish for things to change.
I shouldn’t have left Vermont. It haunted me into the sleepless hours of the first night back, feeling how empty the bed was next to me and how much I wished Jade were there. Wishing I could see Daniela in the morning and listen to her gush about the project she was working on while we all had breakfast together, wishing I could go to work and see Linda there and share gossip about our coworkers and make small talk in the break room, that Cat would come randomly interrupt me in the middle of the workday to bring me a snack and a conversation just to show me she cared, that I could go visit Charlie’s house for dinner or go to a party at the Birdhouse or hit up a trail with the hiking group, and then go exhausted back to Jade’s house at the end of the day, or have her come to a cute little house in Vermont where I lived, and she’d ask my opinion on the candle she was working on, or we’d put on a movie together, or go out for cake and ice cream, or just sit together with our hands tangled in my lap, and then we’d drag out for hours talking aboutI really do need to get home nowuntil we gave up and went to bed together to figure it out in the morning.
It would have been worth it, if I’d only known what to do to make it better. I just knew every time I tried, I only ever made it worse, but god, I wished I’d tried. I wished I’d tried.
It was only once I broke down crying at three in the morning that I was finally able to sleep, somewhere between the pounding headache and the ugly tears, and morning found me right back to my childhood, specifically the dull filter over everything that made it feel like I was seeing the world through thick, cold glass. I tried to make conversation with my mother over breakfast, but she didn’t care about my life—just wanted to talk about her own life and her own problems, like her estranged daughter wasn’t here sitting in her kitchen at last. She talkedabout this job she’d started recently and about my brother, who was in regular contact but was all the way in California and so wasn’t ever home either, talked about the house and all the repairs it had needed lately, talked about my father and the newest woman he was seeing. They’d been divorced almost ten years now, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the urge to still follow who he was dating and check in on—his social media? It must have been, because he lived in St. Louis these days. And I really hoped she wasn’t driving to St. Louis to stalk her ex-husband’s new partner.
I dwelled on everything, letting myself sink deeper, and even though I tried to look through job listings, I felt like I’d lose my mind thinking about it. Was I supposed to find workhere?Where my mother would be constantly on my back, constantly telling me to do this or that for her, probably complaining to other people about me? And I’d have to see all the faces from my childhood again around town, and…
The thought lurked constantly just at the edges of my mind, where I kept it held back, pushed at bay. I couldn’t think about going back to Sawyer—I knew where that would lead—but what else was I supposed to think when everything else in life was a dead end? Some awful part of me worked hard to rationalize it, saying I’d just go back to him for a few weeks, just enough to find work, find my own place. I tried to ignore it, but the voice drilled into the back of my head, and it took everything I had to keep it away. My second night back at the house, those thoughts were the only thing keeping me company in the small hours of the night, and I choked on them.
It wasn’t long before I broke. It was at the familiar fake-wood kitchen table, my mom pouring coffee from the pot out into her ruby-red mug she was still using as her default all these years later, and she’d been talking about this drama at her workplace that was drilling into my skull until I felt like my headwould explode. The thought of that being the most important thing, when I was spiraling, when I was sinking so deep I couldn’t see light anywhere anymore—finally, I broke, and when she looked at me to confirm she wasdefinitelyright about whatever it was she’d just said, I gave her the wrong answer.
“Mom, I was dating a woman.”
She blinked quickly at me, almost overflowing her coffee cup, She caught herself and set it down, looking at me like I’d grown a second head. “What?”
“In Vermont. Before everything fell apart and I had to come here. I just thought you should know, I’m… well, I’m attracted to women.”
She blinked slowly this time, screwing her eyes shut and opening them again, like if she just blinked hard enough it would wipe away the nonsense and I’d be replaced by her normal daughter. “I… okay.”
“I really, really,reallyliked her. I mean, I still do. I didn’t want things to end the way they did, but I screwed everything up, and I made everyone hate me. Just like I did in Boston. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I said, my voice crumpling now as I did, too, sinking into my hands to find my face hot. “I think you would have liked her. She’s very intelligent, hardworking, and she can be serious, but she’s creative and gentle and she was so good to me.”
She sounded—I wasn’t sure. Annoyed, a little. Flustered, more like. Didn’t know how to respond and was embarrassed about it. “Well, I couldn’t really have thought anything about it, because you didn’t want to talk to me or even let me know that you’d left Boston, gone all the way up to Vermont…”
“You never reached out tome. And even now that I’m back, you haven’t actually asked me anything about Boston, about Vermont, about me, about my life. What was supposed to make me think you cared to know?”
“Alyssa, you’re being ridiculous. I’m your mother. Of course I want to know. I don’t appreciate you taking this time to attack me instead of just telling me what you want to tell me anyway.”
Jesus, what was I even doing right now? Was I trying to alienate my own mother, too? I came out to her, and it didn’t make her angry, so I kept poking until I found a way to make her upset? “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, and she sighed, a thick and frustrated thing.
“I’ve been worried for you. You come back talking about how your partner didn’t let you go anywhere or do anything, and apparently you ran off from there to go have a relationship with a woman in Vermont, and now you’re back here being depressed about it.”
Well, of course I was. Wasn’t I always going to be depressed about it? About coming back to a place like this? About having a conversation like this with a woman who clearly didn’t want me here?
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m just… it’s just… a lot right now. I’m sorry.”
“Is there something you want me to do for you right now?” she said, sounding irritable, and I shrank further into myself.
“No. I just wanted to tell you. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, please stop apologizing.”
“Right. Okay.” Same thing everyone else had said. I really did have problems.
She left before long, thankfully—had to get to work, and it already dragged out too long, having to figure out how to defuse the situation. Got back to my bedroom before long to spiral, where I sat with my laptop open in front of me, and I moved in a trance to look through job openings in Boston.
I knew I couldn’t stay here. I’d already been here too long. I guess one upside of being around somebody who secretly hated you was that you couldn’t do anything to make them hate you.
I’d wasted a lot of time trying to be selective and intelligent with it, and ironically making a damn fool of myself in the process. I did better this time: went through job openings and mechanically applied to every one that looked like I could theoretically do it, copy-pasting as much information as possible to get it done faster. Anything to keep me moving.
It was like I was in a dream. The night passed heavier still than the others, and the next morning found me on the phone with a sushi place in Dorchester that was urgently hiring. I told them I’d be happy to come in for an interview, but that I’d be a bit, because I was out of town, but that I could arrive tomorrow if that was okay.
It was lucky that I hadn’t had the time to unpack anything more. It was simple enough to throw all my stuff back into my suitcases, and I hauled my things out to my car, where I sat in the driver’s seat staring blankly out the windshield.
Was I really doing this again? Running away? Burning my bridges and heading on like a plague to the next place?
Maybe it was a good thing I was going back somewhere. Regressing. Wasn’t that nice for me? Like a tree that had grown too big and gotten cut down, a broken stump rotting back into the earth.
