lie no. 32 | 12.09.19
It wasn’t that I didn’t miss Matt when I traveled—I did.
It was that I missed this version of me when I got back home more.
If Hong Kong handed me the box holding the pieces of my life, and The Bahamas violently turned it upside down, dumping it all out on the table, then Mexico held my hand and helped me start putting the pieces back together.
Never one to start a puzzle and willingly leave it unfinished, I was terrified life would get in the way back home, preventing progress.
Mostly, I knew it was me, not life, I was afraid would get in the way. What I was really afraid of was that if I wavered, got distracted or showed any signs of slowing down on solving this puzzle, I’d have too much time to start imagining how it should look in the end. I’d have too much time to envision how the pieces would come together—or worse, how they wouldn’t.
With the sun officially up and my time in Mexico starting to set, I headed back down to street level and wandered in search of an open coffee shop.
“You’ll be happy to know DC’s airports aren’t on American Air’s weather waiver list,” I texted Matt. “I checked.”
A few hours later I was in a car heading to the airport.
“I’m not ready to leave,” I texted him again.
“Least surprising news ever 😂,” he replied. I cried wolf about this on every trip, with or without him, without fail. Clearly my threats could stand to be less empty.
Barely outside of town, the driver I’d hired to take me to the airport several towns away started toggling between radio stations at a seizure-inducing pace.
I reached for my headphones, my patience wearing thin on just about everything, when he stopped on a station as Stevie was going on and on about white-winged doves again.
Because, of course.
I listened to the lyrics more closely this time.
It’s funny how easy it is to know the lyrics to a song without actually knowing what the song is saying. (Don’t get me started on The Piña Colada Song—want to know how little people are paying attention?! Watch the dance floor at a wedding when that one comes on as everyone seems to forget the song’s storyline and actual title, Escape.)
I pulled up the lyrics on my phone to read along with the music, ready to prevent any meaning from slipping through the cracks. The more I read and heard, the more weirded out I got.
Then I got to the last verse:
“Well then suddenly...
There was no one... left standing
In the hall... yeah yeah...
In a flood of tears
That no one really ever heard fall at all
Oh I went searchin' for an answer...
Up the stairs... and down the hall
Not to find an answer...
Just to hear the call
Of a nightbird... singing...
Come away... come away.”
The loneliness, the tears, the searching, the call, the stairs, the hall, the bird’s song. It was all there.
What. The. Hell.
...
I texted Matt a couple hours later to prove I’d gotten on my first flight, the one out of Mexico. I didn’t want him to worry despite my being several tabs deep into planning my own escape—ideally by figuring out where exactly this “away” is that Stevie sings of.
“I wasn’t worried!” he replied. My threat apparently more closely resembling an inside joke I didn’t find funny at this point.
When I landed in Dallas I had a text from him making sure I knew there was an earlier flight to DC I could get on.
“I’ll try,” I replied.
I didn’t try.
Well, to borrow a favorite expression of his, I didn’t not try, either.
I went through customs as quickly as Global Entry allowed and changed terminals as quickly as Skylink could move me.
I got to the gate of the earlier flight with time to spare. It was oversold and they were paying people to get off.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman behind the counter told me, as she saw tears start to stream down my face. “Let’s see what else I can do.”
I didn’t know if the tears were from disappointment, joy or relief, but I had a sneaking suspicion it was relief—which caused them to fall with even greater frequency.
“Oh! Well, I could get you on the next flight to Bali!” she said with a wink, my desperation must’ve been palpable. “It leaves in a couple hours.”
I couldn’t tell if she, or maybe the universe at this point, was helping me or mocking me. I fake smiled, thanked her and walked away.
An hour later I texted Matt.
“I don’t know if I can come home.”
He proceeded to describe the bitter 16-degrees he’d just commuted home in and reminded me of all the menial mundanities happening with or without me the next day.
“Should I fly to Bali to avoid?” I replied, making slight headway in bulking up my empty threat with some specifics. “I don’t have even have socks or a winter coat!”
He responded with a selfie. I reciprocated. We both looked exasperated, neither sure how serious I was, but for wildly different reasons.
“Matt, I can’t breathe.”
That didn’t even generate a response, only the question mark iMessage Reaction. He was calling my bluff.
A few hours later I folded, but promised myself I’d take the next out that arose, like I was negotiating with a toddler.
Maybe I’d finally realized I’d still be carrying all the same baggage regardless of where I ran away to next.
The agent who scanned my ticket was the same woman who’d suggested I go to Bali earlier. The look I shot her must’ve reeked of resignation and regret.
“Oh honey! You’ll get there when you get there!” she said with a smile as I walked down the plank, I mean, ramp.
Optimistic people seriously say the dumbest shit.
...
The next day I was sitting in my office watching YouTube videos of birds—I wasn’t even pretending to work anymore—when Matt got home.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as if this was the craziest thing I could possibly be doing in that moment. (I assure you, it was not.)
“I’m trying to figure out what kind of birds were on my patio in San Miguel,” I said, not even bothering to look up. I didn’t need to, I knew the expression on his face by his tone.
“Well, you’re driving the dog crazy,” he said as he walked out and headed into the bedroom to change.
I kept searching, not stopping to consider he was actually talking about himself.
Twenty-something minutes later I went downstairs and found him in the kitchen.
“DUDE! You’re not going to believe this!”
It was his turn to not bother looking up.
“So, apparently San Miguel is this huge birdwatching destination!” I said. “I had no idea! Are you listening?”
He looked up at me and then back down at whatever he was doing.
“Are you ready for this?!” I knew he wasn’t ready so I continued. “THEY. WERE. WHITE. FREAKING. WINGED. DOVES!!!!! I even reached out to the hotel to confirm. I’m not totally sure they understood my question but, can you believe it?! How insane is that?”
He looked at me and proposed we get out of the house and go for a walk.
How this wasn’t the most exciting thing he’d heard all day—it sure as shit was for me—I did not know. I did know my train of thought runs on a totally different schedule and set of tracks than his so I connected the dots for him as I grabbed my coat.
“Just like in the song!” I said, my mind blown. “The one I kept hearing! Stevie Nicks! Edge of Seventeen!!!”
Perhaps sensing my head might actually explode, he finally obliged with a response.
“Wow,” he said. “Crazy.”
I knew I couldn’t make him care about this as much as I did, which was fine.
I actually didn’t expect him to, so it was—truly, oddly, honestly—fine. We talked about something else the rest of the walk.
The next night he threw me a surprise birthday party, or, rather, a rescheduled surprise birthday party—its original date closer to my birthday, pre-Mexico, mid-flu.
I was completely surprised. The night was an absolute, albeit unexpected, blast. If I’m being honest, it was also a little jarring.
I hadn’t seen most of the friends in attendance since before the holidays, some not even since my trip to Hong Kong. (Boy, did they have a lot to catch up on.)
In many ways, it felt more like a welcome home party than a birthday.
As I looked around the room after the initial shock of walking in the door wore off, I was so grateful for everyone who’d come out, and especially for Matt, for putting it together.
But that was just it—how could it be that while one of us was planning a celebration, the other was plotting an escape? At least in The Piña Colada Song the disconnected couple was on the same page about that much.
We woke up the next morning—I shit you not, on Groundhog Day—and cleaned up all signs of the good times had the night before, putting everything back in its place, back where it belonged.
What if I was the piece that didn’t fit in this puzzle, not the other way around? If this wasn’t my place, where did I belong?