First Long Drive of Many
November 13, 2013I was filled with sorrow as I drove, making it very difficult to pay attention to the road and other drivers. The ordeal of saying goodbye and the fight with Chris had taken their toll on me, and as the clock grew closer to the dawn, it was becoming harder and hard to stay awake. Music, no matter the volume or type, seemed to begin to lull me to sleep; exhaustion was overtaking me. My phone vibrated and sang to me, and checking the road, now shocked awake, I quickly answered it, tucking the phone in between my shoulder and muzzle. "You OK?" my mother's voice boomed through the speaker, pulling me again from my near-slumber, "You are nearly driving off the road.""Yeah.. sorry yawn I... uh.. am getting tired and almost fell asleep." I replied with as much emotion and energy as I could muster, "Don't worry, just need to concentrate and try to stay fo* yawn *cused""We will take a break when we stop for gas outside of Atlanta, and we will be there in about an hour and a half, alright?" she said, "And we are going to stay on the phone til we get there. I can't have you falling asleep and causing a wreck.""Fine..." I grumbled out.We stayed on the phone til we stopped for gas, just as she said, talking about the move, Kim, and some other things, but mainly about my dream.Maybe I'm just superstitious, but I believe sometimes a person can see the future in a dream. Sometimes I think I'm crazy, but I will make some of my most important decisions off of these dreams, and this event had been no exception. This specific dream, however, was strange and short, and I had experienced it while I was sleeping Sunday night. When I woke the next morning, I was overcome with grief because I felt as though I had already left, like I had decided to leave already. The next day, I broke down before my first period class in front of my English instructor, telling him that I had no choice and I was already gone. When I took Kim home after school, I told her that I had decided that I had to leave earlier, and she said that she wanted to spend my last night in Kansas together because we wouldn't see each other for a long time. With my other best friends, Steven and Amy, we went to dinner with Steven's family who had been like a second family to me and had allowed me to hide from Chris's abuse and my mother's neglect for so many years. It was a long sorrowful night, and for the first time since I was a child, I cried in front of people who weren't directly related to me. Steven's mother, Patty, was like my second mother, and maybe in some cases, she was more of a mother to me than my own. As I fought my tears, she hugged me, and it was the first time that I genuinely felt the love of a mother to her child. I cried that I didn't want to go, but that I had to, that I would miss her so much as my word jumbled together. With tears in her eyes, she
shushed me like mother shushes her crying child.I eventually regained my composure, and we talked about why I was moving and about the drama between Steven and Amy in recent weeks that had also been a factor (though not a very big one). After Kim and I left, I took her home, and I told her that I loved her. I told her the truth; that though I am gay, I love her and that she means more to me than anything and I didn't know how I was going to live without her. We cried as we hugged; it wasn't our last goodbye, but it was second to it.The following day was a blur, and like a repeat of the day before except I was numb, and I did not cry until I said goodbye to Steven's family, Steven, Amy, and finally Kim. I always wondered what losing a loved one felt like; though I wasn't foreign to the feeling, no one really close to me had passed before. This wasn't death, but I couldn't imagine something more painful to experience.Sorry for the tangent... Anyway, the dream that caused all of that:I laid in a bed with my back to someone, only stealing a small glimpse of his face. I noted the window of the near wall, the long waist-height dresser with a tv setting on top, the moonlight drifting over the door from another window that I couldn't see. He rubbed my back as I shivered when his light fingertips passed over my side. I slid closer to him, leaning my head back to lightly kiss his lips. I whispered, "I think... I love you.." He stopped and pulled me closer wrapping his arms around my abdomen. Softly, he whispered back into my ear, "I think I love you too." His warmth engulf my body; I could feel heart beat softly on my back and his breaths grow longer and longer as he dozed off. As my dream began to end and reality slipped into my mind, the warm disappeared, and the depression set in.It wasn't a lot, but the dream lasted all night. Minutes in hours like they say I suppose. When I awoke, I knew I was already gone.We pulled off the highway at a gas station in southern Georgia, where I passed out in my car waiting for my mom to buy somethings. She woke me a couple of hours later, allowing me some sleep. The rest of the trip was rather boring and uneventful, not counting the Atlanta rush hour traffic in which some asshole almost hit me. Literally INCHES from my vehicle, just to cut me off. We arrived at my aunt Judy's house soon after that. Her husband, Uncle John, a scruffy old coyote, was surprisingly pleased to see me which is weird because he always hated me. Always told me not to call him Uncle because he says, "I ain't your damn uncle..." Sorta true... My mother and Judy aren't blood-related, but were so close that they were often mistaken for siblings back when we lived here almost a decade ago. Somehow, I thought things were going to be different between now,
even though they have been in frequent contact for years.A few hours later, my cousin Jason arrived home from work. He's 26 and lives with Judy and John, why I'm really not sure. Jason, though I didn't really see much of him for several years, except for this super awkward weird thing my mom set up for me to go see them one summer when I was visiting my dad's... I was an awkward tween and wasn't really sure what I was doing: It was just bad, kind of embarrassing to take about, became sort of a role model for me when I realized I wasn't straight and a guideline for attractive. Half-coyote and half-wolf, Jason has a killer body and is gay, a little flamboyant, but no where near "fairy". For tween me, he was my quintessential man sort of. My version of him was skewed because the time-lapse. Memory can change the past.The next few days were just house searching, Jason insulting/teasing me during the day and tempting flirtations at night, and growing anxiety about starting at a new school when we had a house.