Bleeding Smile

ONE

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The moving boxes were leaned methodically in the hallway by my bedroom door when I arrived at the apartment that evening.

I could spot them from the doorway as I entered and closed the door behind me, hanging my coat up on the rack and slipping out of my boots.

The space was unusually quiet, the small but airy living room and kitchen neatly organized and curtains drawn. The routine blare of the flatscreen and Maddie's heavy breathing as she worked out after rearranging the furniture didn't greet me, and I wasn't sure if the promise of another quiet night made me feel sad or grateful.

As I made my way inside, that uncertainty quickly subsided and I mentally embraced the stillness, the uninterrupted decompression of a lengthy and rather busy day.

My roommate and closest friend from college was gone for the week to attend her sister's wedding; a plan that I had initially been a part of prior to learning of Dad's passing while at my company dinner days before. Maddie had volunteered to stay with me, but I wasn't someone who processed grief and hurt in the company of others, so while the knowledge that she was only one door away would be somewhat reassuring, it wasn't enough to take her up on her offer, it wasn't enough for me to assent to Maddie missing her sister's wedding on my behalf.

Even while away in Vancouver, she'd somehow managed to get Cassandra, our next door neighbor who possessed our spare key on account of some less-than-responsible drunk nights out, to deliver moving boxes to the apartment while I got everything at Mode Maven and the animal shelter sorted out. The fridge was stocked, last week's mail and packages collected, and she'd even left a thoughtful care package with my favorite comfort items on hand; reminding me, once again, that I'd gotten really lucky when I'd entered my dorm and saw Madeline Harris plastering her Rihanna and Britney Spears posters on the wall those four and a half years ago.

She was my first friend when I arrived to Chicago for college; a true, bubbly native with a bewildering fondness of hair dyes and all things pop culture, and if we were being fully candid, I wasn't sure how well I would've fared in the big city without her mentoring me through the inevitably untamed years that became an initiation to adjusting to life outside of Elk Point; the only place I'd ever known prior to Chicago.

At times, particularly on those whirlwind weekends that were spent too inebriated and too loud and too busy for the taut strings of the past to seep through, I'd often convince myself that this was my new home, my new life and destined future, but that notion was verifiably short-lived, an infrequent pipe dream as the events of this past year reaffirmed that this would never be the case, that I would always be tethered and bound to Elk Point; like a stray bird always migrating home, never quite assimilating anywhere else.

Never quite escaping.

It was an inexorable attribute that presented itself in every phone call home, in every habitual refresh of the Elk Point Bulletin and subconscious note of the exact hour it'd be in Colorado whenever I checked the local time. It was apparent in how difficult it was for me to trust people I hadn't known most of my life, in my hesitance at letting my hair down as easily and carelessly as Maddie and my colleagues at Mode Maven.

A part of me was perpetually on guard, vaguely superstitious and comparably naive to the world, and while I could accredit my emerging will for having made it this far, I couldn't stop torturing myself for my inability to forget, for my inability to ever truly move on and piece together the salvaged remnants of who I once was, and so, Chicago, and my cherished life away from Elk Point, had gradually and distinctly become a sort of purgatory in lieu of the escape I had so desperately hoped for.