Homecoming

There was something so easy about friends leaving. Before, this was meant in the sense of someone physically leaving after a meeting, for vacation, to go home. Leaving was best felt in that final goodbye when waving off a friend for the final time.

When someone leaves you, you are the receiver of a tremendous gift. No longer will you have to hold on to scribbled generic birthday cards from them, look amused at their dog photos, bring hummus to whatever celebration they have deemed you worthy of inviting you to. You do not have to ask about their relationship or how the dating platforms are working out. You do not have to keep in mind which allergies to pets or foods your friend has to avoid at all costs. Never again must you sit with a plastered smile as this friend mechanically angles their arm outward to take a dinner selfie, then needing to retake because someone’s blinked.

In a way, it will feel like that time when you were young, around 7 or 8, and the teacher sat everyone down on the bean bags for reading but instead announced that a fellow classmate had died the day before. Why was that a problem? You had more space to spread out, more time to talk in class, more playground to climb. Why didn’t anyone understand that less was more? That disappearing was an act of kindness to others?

This wish slowly circled your thoughts almost constantly. Before you know it, friends did begin to leave, never quite saying where to. At first this was an odd occurrence, but then it became so frequent that you found it normal when your counterpart would abruptly rise and leave without explanation. These friends faded away so quickly that you sometimes forget that you were ever involved with them. Doesn’t it feel like you can breathe easier now?

Neighbors began to disappear as well. It was as if everyone had their vacations planned at the same time. When weeks passed and no one returned, you felt another sigh of relief. There was newfound peace left in the space left by those around you. You enjoyed entering their apartment, door left ajar, and exploring rooms frozen in time, framed photos unexplained. You paged through scrapbooks but quickly grew bored. You tried smashing porcelain tea cups against eggshell white walls but that also proved dull. It always eventually became dull.

There are even fewer squirrels in the trees, fewer birds making their yearly migrations. Even fewer of those slobbering golden retrievers that hopped cheerily along with their Athleisure-clad owners. On a particularly lovely day, you set out on a mission to find an ant colony in the local park and find that it takes you the better part of the afternoon to find one measly mound of an anthill with a small crew of ants remaining.

One day you wake up not in a fit of anger as usual at the local kindergarten for the abhorrent high pitch screams and laughter, but you find it nearly silent. There is only a single swing in use with a child that looks nearly translucent in the morning light. The public services stop soon after. You don’t bother recycling anymore since trash is no longer picked up. You threw a kombucha can out the window and surprised yourself when you felt nothing as it hit the sidewalk. You make a new routine of exploring the abandoned shopping centers and offices. One day you go over to the nacho place in the mall food court to finally unplug the swirling lemonade machine that has turned an eerie shade of deep ocean. You expected some grand sign that it was over, like unplugging someone from life support, but only the humming of the machine quieted.

Once everyone fully disappeared, the infrastructures that felt so indestructible, began to crumble bit by bit. The buildings caved in as if they also felt no purpose without the buzz of organic life around them. Nature reclaimed rusting guardrails and splintered fenced properties. No longer will you be blinded by too bright street lamps in the evening or harassed by the drilling of construction workers or disturbed by crying babies in waiting rooms. Things have finally come to a halt, just as you always wanted.

Not a whisper of a breath is left. All around is peace and quiet. Freedom. After a while, there’s no need to leave the apartment anymore since the walks around the city always feel the same. The trips to other apartments or shopping centers now feel like work. There’s no desire to cook anything more complicated than a peanut butter sandwich anymore since it’s just you. Drinking water seems to be the most you can manage when you aren’t gazing out your window.

All the books that you once so desperately wanted to read on your shelf continue to gather new layers of dust. Instead, you find yourself captivated by the changing cloud patterns. Was this the peak of being truly present that meditation practitioners aspired to achieve? The days blur into each other until you realize that you’ve missed your birthday. Actually, you’ve missed several. You pull down the box of birthday cards in hopes of finding a date to put you on the timeline. You find one with a strange brown animal with the words, “Capy Birthday.” For reasons you cannot explain, the corners of your mouth take an unfamiliar turn upwards. There are many more cards with equally delightful images and greetings. Yet even though your body seems to enjoy sifting through them, you feel your brain become more confused. Seeing “August” stamped on a paper feels so neutral you begin to wonder what “August” is. The name of a season? A status? A greeting?

One day you try to think back to your childhood and realize that you’ve forgotten your best friend’s name, a blank face when you try to think back. You question what was the name of the town where you came from and remember a faint smell of cut grass before a headache begins. Still you press on and wonder if you had siblings or not. It starts to feel like your head might explode and all you can do is close your eyelids. You decide that lying horizontal consumes the least energy and this becomes your prime position as the days carry on.

Like a candle flame burning its wick to the end, you feel a strange sense of lethargic emptiness. You stand up, grabbing your chest, feeling a steady ache that won’t go away. You’re no longer sure if there were even others besides you at some point, but you have a firm feeling that there were. You decide to give up your freedom and attempt to join them, wherever they are. The broken porcelain scattered around the apartment must have been whole once too.

The clouds swim in the hues of the blue sky when you walk outside. Each step dissolves a layer until you are fully invisible. There they are, you say. Welcome home, they reply.