The Past, The Present?

Back in college, I had the worst reaction to wax. Roughly thirty minutes after, I was sitting on my bed, staring at my hands the whole time, couldn't see anything but a labyrinth. Matrix after matrix, I began to feel better at the same time, still trapped in the middle of psychedelic madness. I knew it would pass eventually, but during the long hours when reality became unattainable, I was praying and begging for it to stop.

The traumatic aftermath never truly left my spirit. It re-emerged every once a blue moon and haunted me to the very core. Like a bad drug reaction, the past craves attention, continues to alter the future. Although we were taught to believe that there is an end to every nightmare, will we ever be free from our past?

Being an artist was never a part of the plan. I was born and raised in a typical northern city, cold and dry in the winter, hot and humid in the summer. An ordinary privileged city girl living in a noisy, overpopulated metropolitan consistently crowded with out-of-towners, willingly squeezing themselves into tiny, moldy basements, persistent in finding a footstone.

I couldn't comprehend their lifetime or generations' worth of effort. To me, the city was cold and stubborn. Despite its convenience, a vast range of venues, tourists' attractions, and fabulous late-night food, I was bored and tired of everything.

I have always been orbiting on the right track of normality. Living a life I was supposed to live in the city I was born and raised. It was everything I knew, but it was also the aftereffect of choice made by the previous generation in my family.

But what if I fell off? What if one day you woke up and discovered you were just living in a dream bubble? What if the bubble was popped?

Unfortunately, it did. It was an insignificant, tiny little error, leading to a series of butterfly effects that eventually drove me away from the life I once knew. Despite my efforts trying to catch up with the train that has already left the station, I found myself alone, lost in disappointment.

For a very long time, I was a blindfolded bird, flying aimlessly in the city of walls.

I've been jumping from one place to another across the country for the past eight months. There was only one place I couldn't go, and that was my city. I knew something has gone badly wrong between us, but in the end, you'd always come back home.

So I did after eight months.

The moment I stepped out of the train, breathing the familiar cold, dry air of mid-August, I felt really happy to be back, but that feeling only lasted a second till reality began to fill me in. Everything I was running away from was still there, glaring at me to the bones.

It took me roughly an hour and longer to get out of the train station and another to get back to my old apartment by subway. There was no seat at all during rush hour. The whole time I was being squeezed like a meatball, at the same time trying my best to guard my suitcase.

Rick has been calling me since the moment I entered the city limit. Seven unanswered phone calls. I still didn't know what to say to him.

Rick and I went way back to first grade. Like me, he was born and raised here. We grew up in the same district and went to the same school until I gradually drifted away from our shared path.

For the best and the worst, we've always stayed together.

Sitting in my old apartment, I looked around. Everything smelled and felt like Rick. Even when I was away, he would still come and clean up the place every once in a while. He would bring a freshly assorted mix-colored daisy and smoke a cigarette, looking outside the window. I glanced down, finding those cigarette butts he left quietly sitting in my ashtray.

I always loved tracing his footsteps.

When the familiar knock broke the silence, I knew I could no longer hide from the devil.

"Daisy!" dripping rain off of his curly hair, Rick was holding a bunch of mix-colored daisies with a big, infectious smile that could melt winter.

That was the thing about Rick Miller. He had the warmest smile in the world and crystal blue eyes that sparkled in the dark, casting away the pain with hope and happiness.

"Hey" In his joyous gaze, I felt guilty.

Rick came forth and hugged me real tight against his chest. It began to hurt a little bit, but I knew he was missing me the whole time.

I knew he had a lot of questions, but he didn't ask any. Instead, he just looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes and gave me another hug.

I couldn't bring myself to look at him in the eyes. In his gaze, I felt small and broken.

I didn't know how to explain to him or anyone else, or even to myself. I just simply did what I did, hiding away from everything I knew.

When I finally had the courage to look at his face, he has already looked away.

Rick looked more mature than the way he did when I left. He cut his hair and started saving his beard. For the first time in my life, Rick looked upset and awfully quiet.

It was the moment of awkwardness after the initial reunion.

"Where have you been?" he handed me a cigarette and lit it for me.

"Everywhere. I've been to the south, the further north, the west, and the east. I was just hopping on trains, from one place to another," I smiled.

"It sounded like fun."

"It was pretty fun," I had so many crazy stories and wonderful encounters. They were on the tip of my tongue. I opened my mouth, but there was no word.

Then we returned to smoking cigarettes in silence, looking at the rain and the gloomy city through the window.

I sighed.

"How have you been?"

"Not bad. Just been thinking about you the whole time," Rick turned his face towards me, but this time, he didn't look up.

"I'm sorry." I knew I meant it at the moment, but for all the time I avoided him, I wasn't sorry at all.

"Don't be."

We again returned to silence.

Something has changed. A giant, silent gap has separated us into two worlds. The inevitable was staring right at us like a giant monster emerged from the underworld. I found myself awkward and speechless in front of the person with whom I used to share everything.

It was so awful.

I reached his arm and traced it down to his hand, but he instead avoided me with another hug.

I felt his chin pressed against the top of my head.

"Are you gonna leave again?" he whispered, lighter than a feather.

I didn't respond, but we both knew the answer.

We stayed hugging as long as we could until Rick had to leave. He left the daisies on the counter.

"Bye, Daisy." that was the last words I heard from him, followed by a long pause.

I stared at the stores from across the street and heard of Rick closing the door eventually. Tears were circling in my eyes, but I tried my best not to cry.

Without Rick, my apartment felt cold and empty.

I stood in front of the window, smoking cigarettes after cigarettes until the room was filled with smoke.

It was the end of an era.

Later on, I found his key to my apartment underneath the daisies.

I could barely move or eat for an entire week, nor could I stop thinking about Rick, but eventually, I got better. It was nothing I didn't already know. In the end, it wasn't about running. It was everything that made us who we are. The hundreds and thousands of lingering flakes rushing to the unreachable finish time.