Deja Vu Homecoming

This song. Plus the exact taste and feel of this cranberry juice. And then throw in the exact blood sugar in milligrams per deciliter and I am right back where I was--walking across Whitnall Field listening to another completely random song that no one I have ever met has ever heard of but that I've listened to over a hundred times and at least eleven times crossing that field. In snow. In rain. In darkness. Under fireworks.

Almost always alone.

Why can't he text me? Why won't she notice me? Why couldn't I have been another person? Or just a better me? Why do I always hate myself? Why do I never realize that I've been through a lot? And by a lot, I mean hardly nothing because all my experiences seem worthless with anything more critical than passive reflection.

It's not easy to not cry when I think of all the sadness I felt in such a small space for all of the world. For all of the world... and my most human moments happened when I was stuck in the middle of a man-maintained field with short, non-exotic grass. In sprinted desperation it took thirty seconds. Under four feet of snow it took seven minutes and muscle strain I'd feel for days. In past-midnight-melancholy, it took fifteen minutes, dragging my feet, spinning in slow, unreasonable circles, before falling down to cry the best way I knew how--without knowing. In anger, in confusion, it was a staging ground for my mind to work itself into jealousy or break into sadness, both ultimately melting into self-hatred that would stain me for weeks. On that field were my feelings without my idiotic reasoning. On that field my consciousness muted itself to give my body room to breathe. On that field, with headphones pressed into my ears, I was asked and told, over and over, the only question that mattered with the only acceptable answer, "Is my heart beating? Yea."

I have no field now. When I want to cry, I have no place to go. And when I want to look up at the sky and remind myself that I am insignificant and so are my tribulations, I see no stars. I have memories I can't change but they won't leave. So somewhere in central New York, I am laying down in a field and watching clouds move slowly past the milky way, asking myself life's only question, and falling asleep.