How much force would be behind a pebble falling 3000 miles? Well, with a negligible mass, it would come out to about 150,000 Newtons of force. And I’ve felt it slam into my soul. Have you ever heard a voice that brings you home? A laugh that brings a smile to your face? When I hear your voice it’s like I could take a step and make it the 3000 miles to your doorstep before your car pulled in. Like tomorrow I’ll be curled up next to you as we watch a movie; or I’m in your car traversing a coast I’ve never seen. And then the line cuts out and it all comes crashing into me like a pebble kicked from you to me. It’s a persistent weight of missing you like that pebble from your driveway grew to a boulder that sits on my chest. I’ve thought this feeling of something missing would go away after awhile; that it was a symptom of my depression; that it meant there was something wrong with the way I loved other people. But I was wrong each time. This is what it feels like to have 150,000 pounds on your chest or a 3,000 mile pole pressed on your lungs. This is what it feels like to be kept from someone who [beyond any imagination or thought], somehow, became your home. This is what homesickness, [a phenomena I’ve never felt before], feels like. And now I understand why those kids at sleep away camp would cry their ways home. Because it feels wrong to be away.
But no matter. Because every day is one day closer to when I will get to see you in real life. To go on crazy adventures no matter how much that terrifies me (to be honest, I’m nearly positive that’s the point of them), to breathe and be together. To do everything and nothing and anything we think of just because we can. I know that’s a little outlandish and I doubt it’ll be the “perfect post high school” movie moment but who wants that anyways? I want to have something real, a tangible moment that I can hold onto when I’m 97 and telling my story because I don’t want to tell the “bonfires on a beach with old bottles of vodka and bad sex” stories. I want to tell the “we got kicked out of Disney because you smacked a minion as a joke” or the “we got lost in Seattle because I followed a stray cat down an alleyway” or the “we slept in your broken down car because we just plum forgot to get gas and I made you listen to bad music for five hours straight.” or the “we spent three days doing nothing but smoking weed, eating ice cream, and watching tv and then got up at 3am to go to San Fransisco because why not” kind of story. And there are days that I can picture these adventures so clearly it’s like I’m watching them happen live. Then, like a pebble bouncing across a reflection in a pond, distance and time shatter the moments that felt so real two minutes before. And it’s then that I can really feel every mile between us and I ache. I ache and I wait. And I can hear you laughing ever so slightly at me as you remind me: “At least it’s not raining.” And that, my dear friend, is truest truth – because even when it is raining, it’s not so bad because I get to know you.
Musings on Force, Home, and Adventures or An Open Letter To My Best Friend or Notes on Missing Someone
