The Last Weekend

I got into the Gypsy cab, late for the airport and zoomed to an immediate halt in Saturday afternoon traffic on Atlantic Ave. I noticed a sinking feeling, draping the black leather seats along with the heat. I shifted, leaned forward, unsticking my back from the hot leather, sat back again and sighed.

Now Missie was gone. In the next 48hrs she'd be packing her studio apartment into a uhaul and driving to the beaches of Charleston SC to start her new life. In the next five or six, I'd be back on my couch in Chicago.

Already this flight had become tiresome, monotonous. Three of the four past weekends I'd spent on a plane back and forth between what felt like my home and the place I now lived. I'd switched modes and cities all told six times in the twenty or so days just behind me. I justified it, I said to myself, by knowing that Missie was leaving for good. And while I may be back someday, I told anyone who would listen, she never would. We would never be here again.

So we'd decided to drink and get dressed up and take cabs gratuitously and spend every dollar and minute remaining to be sure we had as many breathless finale seconds to remember as possible. It was alarmingly lackluster. The SoHo Grand, which seemed like a dream come true as we ascended the stairs, turned out to be another room where we had drinks in the final hours of a year that was over. The incredibly rushed breakfast of mate tea, soy yogurt and granola on 5th ave came and went with speedy updates from Jerry's tenure on the unemployment list and Missie's recent weeks of wedding planning (which have yet hailed no actual wedding plans). We hugged and kissed and I was gone. And I felt like it was right to leave. And I didn't know where all the time had gone.

Leaving anywhere I've ever left has allowed me to see the place and my time there in a kinder, gentler light. It has allowed me to genuinely accept and understand the places and their faults and beauties in kind. Leaving New York, as you well know, only simply broke my heart. Maybe Missie leaving is having that same grim impact. For whatever reason, I changed a little when I left this weekend. Everyone and everything seems farther away than ever. And as a result, so do I.

I can’t pinpoint my emotional fatigue or the cause for the sudden distance between me and my usual self. But whether it’s a result of a sudden perceived cosmic departure from the place that I love, or my best friend, it all feels a little strange to be saying goodbye again.