Holidays, Privacy, Death, Moving Forward

I’m writing this on an airplane while people read over my shoulder. 

I figure if I’m going to post it on the Internet, a couple of strangers can preview the free-flow gibberish as it comes. 

I have no commitment to this writing thing.

No one asks me for a made up time sheet or a 5 year plan.

I don’t even post half of the things that come out because they read like crazy talk a week later. 

Plus, once I commit to something, I’ve been known to go too far.

And then people walk at me sideways.

I’ve been closing out the year in such a positive mental space that I didn’t even think about the impending warfare that is the holidays.

So it was in this state, in my synth-consumed naivety, that I received a call from my sobbing mother. 

She asked me if I could go pick my father up from work. 

My uncle had shot himself.

It’s not the call you expect.

It’s not the holiday I would have been preparing myself for, had I thought to do so. 

I would have been psyching myself up to put on my uniform of matching pajamas and sit out the auditory weaponry that is Christmas music. To piece together meals from someone else’s interrupted shopping habits. 

I’m not ready to talk about my uncle.

Not really.

I can state the facts. And knowing the facts is enough to know that it’s going to take some sifting through. 

The good news is that the strangers next to me are minding their own business now.

One has moved on to policing the old man across the way for not using “earplugs” or a “headset” for his blaring cell phone videos (It’s interrupting her smut reading).

The other is now sleeping through a football game on his iPad.

This is the first time I’ve been alone in a week. 

I’m going somewhere that I’m keeping private. Not secret.

If you know, you know. 

If you don’t, you don’t. 

I wonder if my uncle had anyone that he told, in private. 

I hope they listened.

I hope they were kind.

I’m moving away from a place that I’ve called home for 33 years.

Mentally. And physically. 

I have no real fondness for Houston, but as far as the story of my life goes, it’s been the “place”. It has been home. 

So it has significance. 

I’m trying to respect that, while also trying to enjoy the wonder of newness that accompanies a big change.

I wrote about mourning once. Accepting something for what it was and wasn’t. 

Houston wasn’t me. 

It will be Houston without me. 

If it weren’t for the people, I don’t think I would return. 

Maybe out of nostalgia.

I am human. I have 33 years of memories in the city. A part of my mind will probably live there for a while longer.

But I’m ready to move on. 

After all, my memories are only part of the story. There’s plenty that went down in Houston that I wasn’t aware of. 

Plenty I chose not to see.

It’s not that I think I have some understanding of it... some sage-ist folklore to share. 

I don’t.

More than anything, I want to love the people who I care about.

As a stranger reminded me today, you’re lucky if you have 10. 

So that makes me really lucky.