Draft: Leaving home

You're alone because your right.

There's nothing over there but the left.

Everything that matters is here, in the center.

In the heart. In the stomach.

A place not so far away from where we came from, too.

I'm a compulsive liar by birth - the one undeniable biological connection to my father.

It drives my mother crazy.

I'm here for two weeks to help her pack up the house. She used to live in two places at once, but now she's old and only wants to live in one. I'm old too, but it's the first time I've been back, to this house, since I left.

I enter through the front door, hearing the familiar creaks of the floor. The count 1right,2left,1 right still blazed into my head from the 6 times I tried (and failed) to sneak out.

My bedroom is at the end of the hall. It sits untouched. I try not to linger. There's a sadness that comes from leaving a place that hurt you. There's a sadness in coming back. There's a sadness in the fact that I'm back just to see it gone. But when it's gone for good, I don't know why I would miss it.

The walls of my mother's house are covered with my senior photos. I avoid her eyes, all 14 pairs, staring down at me - all of them daring me. Daring me to leave, to stay, to get rid of the long con and disappear forever.

I don't like her. She expects too much - I've done too little.

The door to my bathroom is slightly ajar. My bathroom is still exactly the same - of course. This whole house is a monument to my existence. I am the bedrock of someone else's life.

My mother hasn't realized I'm home yet, so I creep out.

I feel creeped out.

I thought I had left, and yet here I am. No further than I've been the entire time. I sit down on the stoop like always, but this time, the door hasn't been slammed. There hasn't been any yelling, and I am 30.

"Jess?" my mother calls.

Her face is outlined in the mesh of the door, and my heart sinks.

"yea - I'm here mom."

"You came!" she throws the door open, and her show of excitement is so pure that my memories start to fade.

And all at once, I'm 6 again, desperately happy to see my mother again after a 1/2 day of preschool.

We hug, and it's stiff, awkward. The years are thrust back in between us, and I'm me again. Back home at 30, 13 years after leaving, getting ready to pack the place up to leave for the rest of my life.