On a train

So trying to breathe is a struggle. It brings tears and heart palpitations. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go back. In not wanting to go back I feel so bereft. The grief is sucked in with every breath like dust particles – choking, coating my throat and eyes and lungs.

All I have to do is go and pick up the ute to borrow for 2 days. The keys should be in the mailbox.

But.

I can picture the front of what was my home so clearly – the small fence where I’d stretch after running, the gravel I shoveled onto the driveway. The front yard where I read and slept and fucked and had drinks with friends. The side gate behind which my dogs bark at the posty and sit waiting impatiently for walks. They will be there. I will hear them sniffing and scratching and puffing and I don’t think I can open the gate or my world will implode and suck me into the world of Everything Fucked Up Big Time. There are dragonflies on the front of the house that the ex put up for me because I love them. The plants along the side that replaced the crazy overgrown bushes, the mailbox that let everything get wet. The bins in the corner – the recycling one was always fuller than the normal one due to grog bottles. The front door that I loved – I walked in and out of it to al the bits of my life and the sun shone hottest on it so even if it was cool everywhere else it would be warmer in that spot. Where my car sat in front of the front door – taking me anywhere.

So real and so gone. I love the island for all the weird and whacky ways it has. And I love it because it is so removed from that life. It’s easy there to not think about my old home and friends and work and life and hopes. Because what’s the use in thinking about it? It’s not avoidance it’s just not useful in the slightest. It’s sad and hurtful and pointless. It makes me feel hopeless. It makes me feel alone and lost.

I don’t want to go back.