she's leaving home

I'm presently sitting in a hotel room in Statesville, North Carolina with a broken toe and a flat tire and rodeo dust all over me and my camera. But that comes later.

Last night Patrick took me to downtown Knoxville. We drove down by the University of Tennessee, where all the college students hang out, then went downtown to Gay Street and Market Square. The neighborhood was great. It wasn't big, but it was bright and crowded (on a Thursday night) and sultry and humid and beautiful. Everyone wanted to stop and talk to Blake and the parks were all full of grass. (I guess that last thing isn't so unusual, but after living in the desert for six years, you would freak out too.)

I saw a lot of stuff I wish I'd had my camera to take pictures of, but naturally I left it in the car because it was humid and I was (am) a little sunburned from Bristol, so carrying things by straps was bound to be uncomfortable. But I'll be back in Knoxville soon enough - I got Patrick and me tickets to see Neil Young on May 27. I'll do everything then.

I miss cities. I miss that musty dirty city smell that comes out from under cars and up between the cracks in the sidewalk. I miss being with someone you love in a city. There are few better things than being awash in this sea of people but knowing there's one person there who only cares about you, who only wants to be with you, and for whom all these extra people are just that - extra.

I've tried to keep the puke-worthy adolescent babblings to a minimum here because I'm an adult and adults don't do that kind of thing. But seriously, whatever. Later that night, back at the hotel room we got so that we'd both be well-rested (him for a job interview, me for the drive out), he looked right at me and said, "I want you here." And I knew I wanted to be there. I don't want to leave Madrid, I love Santa Fe, I love New Mexico, but I need to be where he is.

I know that's terribly un-feminazi of me. But there's nothing wrong with love, and admitting you're in love, and believing in love to the exclusion of anything adverse to love. I have always been the type to leap and to trust that the net will appear; and my life, the way I have lived my life, so far has provided those nets. Whether it was moving to New Mexico at age 18 or adopting a death-row dog when I had no idea how I'd be able to afford or keep a dog or whether it was quitting my job and subletting my house and falling head-over-heels for someone with a ten-ton anchor in Knoxville, Tennessee, I just do things and think about the consequences later.

But you know what? It has always worked out. I have always been blessed. I came to love Santa Fe, that same troublesome little dog is currently curled up next to me on these slithery hotel sheets, and I know that I will find a way to be with Patrick and that I will be happy however I do it... Because that is just how my life goes.

All night we left our computers to download stuff, and I finally uploaded all my blog entries. The joys of internet are such that when I have them, they're great, but when I am without them, I breathe just as easy. I figure - everyone who knows me well enough to know what I would consider an emergency has my phone number.

So after a great night's sleep, Patrick and I packed our own things into our own cars (we'd combined some stuff in my car to go camping and got rid of my superfluous stuff in his car, which we left in Strawberry Plains). All was well until I was rushing around, trying to put things in their proper place, and I didn't see the big concrete curb. Or maybe I did, and decided to give it a big healthy kick with my flip-flopped foot.

Holy shit. You know how, when you stub your toe really hard, you feel like you're gonna puke? That was me. Oh man. It hurt so fucking bad. I could hardly breathe. My whole leg was full of stabbing pains. But we had a lot of crap to do, so I slapped a band-aid on it and kept going. For the record, my toe is now all kinds of pretty purple and red colors, and is quite shiny to boot. I'm thinking it's broken. I've had broken toes and this looks like it.

Edit: See photos related to this part of this entry here (Woe is Toe).

The hotel was right next to a Waffle House, and, in case you didn't know, I freaking love Waffle House. So we went to Waffle House. I got us brunch and did really great, even though I knew I would be leaving after we ate.

Everything fell apart once I got outside. Leaving... Leaving sucks. So much. But I don't know how to not do it. I left New Jersey at 18, I left New Jersey again and again until I finally left at age 20 and knew it wasn't the same kind of home as it used to be. And I felt the same way leaving Santa Fe this time; not like I wanted to stay after all, because I'd made it impossible to back out of my plans - so instead that feeling which would otherwise be wishy-washy just translated to an intense, dull sadness - not a cut, but a bruise, a seeping just under the skin.

And this morning I found myself leaving Knoxville. I know I'm going back in less than two weeks (more on that later), but leaving... ugh. Leaving. I hate leaving. I especially hate leaving a person. And this morning I was leaving Patrick again.

But I knew I needed to get home. I knew I needed to get back to New Jersey. I need to go home.

I want to write about everything else that happened today - the Blue Ridge Parkway, the wrong turn, the Christian family rodeo, the flat tire, and how I'm now in a hotel run by Jehovah's Witnesses in Statesville, North Carolina - but I need to sleep. Letterman is telling me to sleep. Sleep.

More tomorrow.

Ouch, my toe.