May 6th
“Remember how we used to text each other pictures of rainbows? I don't even remember how that started, but it always made my day.
We really get along most of the time, don't we?
I'm sorry, I'm just not ready to speak of it in the past tense.
I saw a rainbow today. The end nearest me dipped down into a valley in New Mexico. The adobe seems to soak up the colors and exude them into the culture.
I've never been in a place that felt so alive and yet left me so far from the life they're living.
I sat in a little cantina and ordered the best Mexican food I've ever had. I could smell the pork sizzling from the kitchen, and taste the hint of Pico de Gallo before the waiter set it in front of me.
The air is hot and dry here, and I heard they're doing a anniversary celebration of when the town was first founded this weekend.
I think I'll stay.
Not for a long time, but for a while. Irma, the woman who owns the campground is really nice and she offered me a cheaper rate if I stay a full week, so I think I will. She probably knows my little teardrop won't use much electricity anyway.
It's the weirdest thing being in a place no one knows me. I could be anyone here. I could be a completely different person and there would be no one to tell me I couldn't be exactly who I want to be.
I miss you. I miss the look in your eyes when you lectured me, and the way your lips curved up when I surprised you with a visit.
I see that same smile in the mirror, but it's foreign somehow. Not the smile I'm looking for.
Aunt Janet messaged me today asking if I'm coming home from school for summer break. It somehow didn't occur to me to let everyone know I was leaving.
How have I lived twenty-two years and I still leave trails of people hurting in my wake.
I did it to you.
Do you suppose I can keep from doing this for however long I'm gone? Am I just going to leave a wave of devastation across the country as I go?
There's only one way to find out.
The sky is really clear here in New Mexico. The air smells like petrichor from the rainstorm earlier and I feel that wanderlust stirring in me. It used to frustrate me so much to have that thirst for adventure tamped down by my job or the next class I needed to take.
Even though this freedom comes at such a cost, I can't help but be grateful for it. I'm frightened what I would be doing if I wasn't sitting on the step of my camper staring up at the stars and missing you.
I miss you.
I love you.
Bo”
I'm actually still sitting on the step of my camper even though I finished the letter thirty minutes ago. I can see to write in this journal by the camp space light overhead, but my writing may not be legible.
I never saw this coming. The stark loneliness of a spring night in New Mexico. I've already torn up the letter I just wrote. The last few lines are burned into my conscience. I can't be grateful for the freedom to drive away from the pain when the freedom comes at the cost of losing her.
I can't believe I actually wrote that. I can't stop imagining the pain in her eyes thinking I might actually mean that.
But she would know, wouldn't she? Know I could never be happy that she's gone. Know that even in the strange beauty of this otherworldly place, I can hardly feel anything for the numb hollow in my chest spreading it's tentacles throughout my body.
She wouldn't mistake that for anything other than the crushing grief it is, and it would break her heart. Because in spite of everything we've been through, the screaming matches, the days when we weren't talking, the misunderstandings and selfish decisions of life, she loved me very much. She would hate this for me.