Those 5 nights in Miami were definitely too short. I could have stayed longer enjoying more beach, more sun, more beer, more fun. Sisco as usual was a great host, Sophia is awesome, and Slu was…well Slu. We had some conflicts with her since she was the fifth wheel and her boyfriend was back home, but overall it was pretty awesome. Way cool to have had a group reunion a year after we all left France.
Now I’m back home in Nicaragua with Him. It feels strange, being back after 9 months of having been in mostly France. Strange in an eerily familiar way. Eerie might sound out of place in this context since I lived here for 17 years of my life, but having spent most of the last three years out of the motherland does strange things to a person.
First of all there are the little things. It’s always a strange feeling when you leave a place and usually, in my experience, the things you expect to not change have and vice versa. My circle of friends now changes constantly depending on who comes back for the summer, who doesn’t, and who has stayed and made new friends. Some streets change, some buildings change or disappear or appear. Home is familiar but it isn’t, and people have been living their lives without you and forming new memories that don’t include you. So even though your memories form a still life of the place you left, the experiences people have had without you will make it so it can never truly be the same again.
Then there are the big things.
I hadn’t touched a car in 9 months. Had a couple of very minor slip ups that didn’t really mean anything, and then it happened. I left the car lights on when we went to the mall to watch a movie/grab a beer and five hours later when we came out (Him, my best friend and I), the battery was obviously dead. so I had no choice to call my father.
“Melissa, siempre todo es un desastre con vos.”
Jesus. I think it’s a bit of an exageration to say that with me everything is a disaster. Yeah, I fuck up. But you know what? Everyone does. I had started to get along with my parents, I had started to have better communication, to try and be more patient, less temperamental. But this incident reminded me of one of the reasons why there is so much conflict between us. Yes, it is true, I was the first one to fuck up by having left the car lights on. But it was an honest mistake, and a fairly easy one to fix. All he had to do was come with the car (it wasn’t even that late it was 9 pm) and some jumper cables, hook up his car battery to mine, jump start it, and leave.
Instead, he came first WITHOUT jumper cables to verify that the battery was dead even though I had already told him so over the phone. then, he came back with a random man (I still have no idea who it was and doubt I’ll ever ask) who brought the ghettoest cables ever. They looked like the first ever, original, jumper cables made by man. When they didn’t work, he tried to cut the head off and then hook them up again. My dad’s car actually started to have smoke coming out…
This is when my BFF (this for the sake of abbreviations)’s dad came to pick her up, in pj’s because he had been asleep since I was supposed to drop her off. He was the only nice one of all 5 men that it took to jumpstart the car. That is right, 5. Because afterwards my dad left and then came back with working jumper cables and my brother and a guard got in on it too.
On the whole it took 5 men, 2 sets of jumper cables, and 4 cars to jumpstart the thing. Which is, I think everyone will concur, absolutely ridiculous. It was a real life version of one of the “how many — does it take to change a lightbulb” jokes.
My dad didn’t once turn to me to talk or say anything. I am much more likely than not going to get one of the huge lectures tomorrow from both parents. Everything in my household is made to be 10 times worse than it should be, every mistake the biggest mistake a person can make. Not only does this diminish the gravity of big mistakes because they’re all big, life-altering mistakes, it’s no freaking wonder I never come to my parents with a problem, that I never feel like I’m free to talk to them. I remember my dad asking me once a long time ago why I don’t feel free to come to him.
Well, dad, even though you always bail me out of stuff and I know I can always call you and you’ll physically be there, it doesn’t feel like you’re emotionally there for me. And when the consequences I have to deal with are way out of proportion with the actual fuck up, most of the time, I’d rather solve it myself without your help, without even letting you know. You and my mother were the ones who taught me that showing any sign of emotion is the biggest mistake a person can make, the biggest weakness a person can have. And even though in the long run I prefer it that way because the rest of the world is a cruel, fuck-you-in-the-ass bitch for the most part, this is what our relationship has come to be because of it.
I don’t belong in France. But I don’t belong here anymore, either. And it’s a strange feeling, not belonging. Floating around in the world not having a place to fully call one’s own, where you feel fully comfortable. This isn’t home anymore and to be honest it stopped being home a long time ago. It’s home, but it’s not home. I call it home when I’m away, but when I’m back…I remember why I left. And it’s tough, and it makes me feel alone. And moments like these I value him more than ever because he doesn’t belong either.
I guess I feel that, no matter how much shit has gone down between the both of us (and here in Nica I remember more clearly than before that I really haven’t been a saint at all, far from it, and that he really does have more good qualities than bad, and that we really are good together), if he doesn’t belong anywhere and I don’t belong anywhere, maybe we can at least belong to each other. Because I have a feeling it’s going to be a really long time before I ever feel like I belong somewhere again. Which is something that I’m not sure is even possible. Because even if nica isn’t home anymore, it’ll always be the mesure by which I compare home.
I’m not sure this is going to make any sense, but it doesn’t really feel like I’m the one that’s growing farther apart from Nicaragua, it feels like it’s Nicaragua that’s growing farther apart from me. It keeps pushing me away. I’ll always always have ties here, I’ll always want to come back, I’ll always miss it, I’ll always remember. But the lives of the people here, especially my familia, have already been settled into a rythm that simply doesn’t include me anymore.
