Sitting on the couch that separates a narrow excuse for a living from a dining room, eyes tired from one hell of a day, I couldn't tell you. I can't tell you what I've been doing with myself for the last three years or really any of them for that matter. Because, what do I have to show?
This is a lie. Everything. From the photographs fighting for space on coffee tables, down to the thread bare coats lining the hall closet. This home isn't mine, nor has she been since I stepped out of her front door in Novato, California in 2005. And although I've tried to sit beside her, to reach out on those nights of desperation and take her hand in mine during some misguided attempt at consolation, it's clear how alone I am. Her skin cold to the touch, face turned south bound in search of where she may flee next knowing that I will follow like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Only, it seems, there is no pill to make me larger again.
I should have prepared myself better, I'm ashamed to say. When I came back to the states from my previous trips to Europe, I slipped into this...this hollowed state, for lack of a better explanation. Its easiest to blame it on missing Europe's general state of mind or architecture or nightlife, but really its the isolation. It didn't make sense that after years of searching of where I wished to find my people, that what I would miss the most was not existing. Walking through the streets of Barcelona, standing on the beaches of Normandy, sitting in the dirty light of Temple Bar, carving holes through the underground belly of Prague, who I was held no weight. I was given permission to be my most disgusting and beautiful self to date, and so I was. I was a child discovering herself in the mirror only moments after learning she was not her mother, but another thing all together. And my god, what a thing to behold!
Staring out the gratified glass of the yellow line, I stepped onto the Můstek platform and braced for the January wind slipping from the streets above like some unforgotten thought lingering at the base of your neck. I was in that moment, completely and utterly in control of my entity. It didn't matter that I spoke no Czech or that I failed to memorize the stop's countless entrances. All that mattered was that I remembered my pass, and, most importantly, that I stood to the right of the escalator lest I wished to be pushed aside by the afternoon rush. In those few hours, I could disappear into a curtain of snow and wander, if I decided I was not in the mood to be lost. I could trace a chapped hand over the front doors of the apartment where Kafka was born and with that same hand make a wish on the St. Charles Bridge without so much as a second glance, because it had been done before and it would be done again. I was unoriginal and yet found solace knowing this. There was no struggle to be anything more than a 23-year-old woman desperate to find herself in that moment, and so I let myself be just that.
I couldn't describe the loneliness and empowerment I felt during those 30 days. I had never in my life fought so blindly for a goal as I did that certificate nor had I ever wanted something so more than to stay within that struggle. I fought daily with myself and as a result bloomed a bruised flower wrought with anger and a self-awareness only possible within such an environment. And as a result, as tired as I was, as frustrated and overwhelmed, I had finally been liberated of a stagnant cycle best described as apathetic. I had purpose again, and as terrified as I am to pursue it in fear of failing, I am more afraid of staying here....locked in this narrow passage growing more bitter and resentful with each day that passes.
So what do I do? Do I stay on the platform, watching as each worm-train eats its way into the darkness before it ripe with possibility? Or do I dare take hold of her pocket watch, and follow her into that rabbit hole once again?
