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How Twenty Starts: September 2, 1997
Okay, so it's hot.
It's the night before classes start. I returned from my road trip a week ago tonight.
Justin isn't here. Meredith is far away in Nebraska. And I left my heart somewhere on the road between.
On a brighter note, New York is closer to Nebraska and other such points of Road Trip Interests than Connecticut is.
But no Council Bluffs, Iowa. No Village Inn. No Black Angel. No Cemetery. No Weeping Fountain.
God, I miss it.
I want so much to go back to Nebraska.
Meredith. Now there's a story that's another story altogether. How she ditched me six hundred miles away from home for Justin, my road-trippin'-buddy-best-friend. How she kissed him on the bridge over the Missouri River just like she promised to kiss me just a few weeks ago. While I watched like a chained-up dog in the back seat of her SUV. Too smart to alienate my ride back home. Too scared to break out and show my teeth.
There's something quite unfinished about that whole, well, whatever you can call it. There will always be some stupid empty little space in my empty stupid little heart that can only be occupied by...
Stupidness. It can only be filled with stupidness. But that Stupidness is Meredith.
In time, though, that space will shrink smaller. And one day it will scab over as if nothing ever filled its cut in the first place.
I know this from experience.
But dammit if I don't miss Papillion, Nebraska. And Omaha. And Council Bluffs. And Decorah, Iowa. And Dayton, Ohio.
I can't say why. I don't know. I just miss it. The whole damned thing.
Wish I was there, Wish You Were Here. Etcetera.
And Justin? Well, it's like when I left him behind, there in Papillion, Nebraska, I left an old, dying, cancerous piece of myself behind as well.
Let it rot. Remove it if I can. And hope it doesn't spread to the rest of my vital organs.
We'll be friends again. But not like we were. It will be different.
Better? Worse? Neither? Can't say. Only time will tell. But it will be different.
It's funny. It only hurts when I'm not busy. So far I've been able to keep my mind off it pretty well. With the Village Idiot in full effect. The parties Friday night. Drinks with John on Saturday. Movies with J and Jared's party last night. Rockin' good times in my home away from home, wherever home might be.
Big City Nights are fun and all. But once you've loved among the cornfields of Big Sky Country, skyscrapers and polluted river views can't hold a candle to burning shacks and rotting cash crops.
That's just the way it is.
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