(Not) Running

But if I weren't leaving you, I don't know what I would do. But the more I go, the less I know- will the fire still burn on my return? Keep the path lit on the only road I know. Honey, all I know to do is go.

I have hazy memories of either singing this to you, sending you the lyrics, or at least thinking it in reference to us during a period when I was moving so we could be together, ending the year we'd spent in a long-distance relationship. I remember wanting to express to you, a young man with no desires to live anywhere other than the metro area where you grew up, the restlessness I had always felt.

Coming back from our whirlwind Vegas wedding trip, I played this for BT, feeling like I'd finally found someone who understood that desire to go.

Looking back at it all now, I'm not sure if what I thought was a desire to go wasn't really just the impulse to run away. But, as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are.

I'm not sure if it's age or experience or the therapy, but I feel that desire receding. I still want to see so much more of the world than I have at this point. I still want to live in other, bigger cities, not just visit them on rushed tourist-y vacations. But if I got offered the chance to live in the city I was born in again, even if I knew I'd never live in a different city again, I'd jump at that chance in a heartbeat. But because I love it, not because I'm running to or away from anything.

I'm about a month into a new job and I don't feel like running yet. Don't get me wrong. I don't see myself doing this job forever and I'm already looking to what the next goals I might set for myself could be. But I'm not frustratingly wondering when I'll be able to move on to a different, better career. Hell, when I'm on the job, unless I have something really special planned, I'm not counting down the minutes. I feel good about being there, in the moment, and doing this job, right now.

Yesterday, things kinda blew up between us. There was a part of me that screamed that I should just toss you out on your ass, "ok, it's done. He fucked up in the one way you said that you wouldn't abide. That's his last chance. It's over. Wash your hands of this." And I've said that maybe we should stop working so hard on being friends, that maybe it shouldn't be this hard, numerous times in the past year and a half, over much less serious issues than this. But this time, I just couldn't bring myself to say those words, with really bringing up the possibility that this should be over.

Maybe it was because that seems to let you off too easily. Maybe it was because you seemed so...broken and genuinely sorry. But maybe it's just that I don't want to run anymore. I'm not sure when it happened or how it happened, but I want to face my life. Open arms and open eyes.

None of this is to say that it doesn't hurt, because it really fucking does, or that there shouldn't be consequences and rebuilding after something like this. It isn't even to say that we'll be able to be the kind of friends that we want to be to each other, because I just can't promise that that is possible. I've said numerous times in this blog and in real life that I consider you family, someone that you are there for when they need you, even if the everyday relationship is too fucked up to do. But there have been many rather benign times in the past when being there for family was something I forced myself to do, when what I really wanted to do, what I did as soon as I got the chance to do, was run. Things don't feel like that anymore.

My heart's in pieces so please understand, I'm trying to jump, but I've nowhere to land. So give me your heart and I'll give you my hand and try as goddamn hard as I can. The hill I'm walking up is getting good and steep but I'm still looking for a promise even I [can] keep.