Austin

I have a love/hate relationship with Austin, Texas at the moment.

It's crazy how a town you only lived in for a year can affect such a sea change in your life. On one hand, I was totally on my own down there as far as not having the support system that I'd had for the first 29 years of my life in Michigan. As a result, I made a whole new life for myself, a new group of friends and family. I've always been self-reliant, independent to a fault, and two things I've never been in shortage of are passion and determination. I have so much fire raging inside me that it threatens to consume me at times. I fling myself headlong into walls that may never crumble, might not give way before five feet of redhaired Irish fury, but who's to say that they won't? That faint hope that they will is what keeps me going.

Austin is almost like a different planet. You meet someone once, and every time you see them after that it's as though you've known them for years. It's an open town, a friendly town. It forced me to let down my guard, to let people in, to open up, at first a little bit, and then a lot. I spread my wings and started truly soaring. I met my big brother there. I had moments of abject terror, crouched in a walk-in closet, clutching my phone, hiding and sending out an appeal to the universe that I'd be all right. I had moments of such sublime joy that it hurts to think about them. I've packed a lot of living into the past almost-31 years, and so much of it was done in the year I was there.

And now? Now I find myself back in Michigan. I miss Austin. I miss the warm weather, the way I could be alone without being lonely. I miss the friends, the family, the job I left behind. I miss being able to be myself without anyone hissing "freak" at me, or acting like I was some exotic unknown entity. I miss the spirit of love and acceptance that Austin prides itself on maintaining.

And I hate it at the same time. I hate that it stripped me of my ability to be self-sufficient. To need no company, to thrive in solitude and rely on no one but myself to achieve the goals I've set forth. I hate being dependent.

You see, there's a guy. (There's always a guy, isn't there?) There's a guy who made promises to me, cracked into the part of my heart I was so well-versed in protecting that no one had ever gotten in there before. He promised me a happily ever after, all of the things some sentimental part of me had always wanted and been overruled by the go-it-alone fighter part of me, what used to be my dominant nature. And I bought into it hardcore, believed it, tried going with the whole trust other people thing that Austin had convinced me was all right to do.

So here I am. The warmest it's been in two months is 45 degrees. Mostly, it's been cold and snowy. It gets dark early. I have a job, but at a severe paycut. I love most of my coworkers, but I'm working far harder than most of them. I look in the mirror every morning and can see the stress and labor etching into my face. My body protests every time I drag it out of bed, and my hands and forearms are covered with a cross-hatching of burns and scars and stippled with fresh bruises. In an ideal work environment, I have maybe 15 years left of peak performance in my industry. With the way I'm working now, I give it maybe 7 years, tops. I throw myself into it full force, partly because that's what I do. Mostly because I'm trying to distract myself from the fact that every night I come home to a narrow bed in a cold, dark room, to lie awake for hours, doze off, and then wake and do it all over again. To hope to see my kids on my day off, only to be disappointed on even that small request on more than a couple occasions.

I'm trying so hard to get hard again, to get that diamond shell back, the one that lets me shine at what I do without giving a shit what anyone else thinks, to stop seeking approval, to cease with needing affection so badly that I'm slamming headlong into my coworkers just to get a hug. To convince myself that scar tissue is stronger than the original skin, that yet another start-over is an opportunity to do things better, to rip my stupid heart from the sleeve of my hoodie and plant it back in my chest where it belongs, and to never hand it over again.

But I can't. Because in some way, the moment I released all the guards and walls and barriers growing up poor in a rich white town caused me to develop, they vanished and I can't get them back.

Fuck you, Austin, Texas. I miss you so.