Episode LXXXVII-An empty row of seats and pressured silence leads to introspection.

The howl of the plane’s engines blanketed my body as I snuggled against the flimsy plastic window. My eyes fluttered open and shut. My heart raced faster than the rotating earth below me. I had a history final to write. I had new classes to attend. I had unresolved romantic issues at both college and my hometown. I was leaving the all seeing eyes of my parents and the confines of their totalitarian house. I felt like crap because I hadn’t slept properly in the last ten days. But I was happy. I was ecstatic that every passing second dragged my slumped form miles further from my hometown. I was happy to be far, far away from people who had formed an identity for me that fit like an oversized shadow.

Home had not felt like home. There was no question about it. There had been a large, dark emptiness in place of where I thought I would find comfort and solace. I shifted uneasily and wondered where things had gone wrong. Part of the problem was easy. I had spent so much time idealizing my hometown both internally and externally that there had been no real way for it to live up to my imagined standards. In retrospect, it had been silly to idle away so many hours building a construct that didn’t exist. I had set myself up for that simple disappointment. I absently kneaded my bruised shoulder. The other parts of the problem were worse. At some point, between shouted curses and threats, I had lost the ability to communicate with my parents. The best we could manage was a grudging formality. Even with that, I couldn’t escape the relentless pressure of their expectations, or their suspicions that my choices were ruining my life.

As I darkly considered the hostile status of our relationship, I wondered momentarily, if their contentions were right, and I was ruining my life and heading for destruction. My mind coiled and shifted angrily. It was easy to summarily dismiss their idea as they had no idea about my identity because we didn’t even communicate. Nevertheless, the idea was resilient, and clung to the back of my skull. The idea smoldered away in the flames of my anger; anger that was fueled by the conversations I had had during last week. I thrashed under the frayed airplane blanket and tried to mentally move forward. Again, like the obvious transparency of dreams, I should have known that returning to the place that I had anxiously left was likely to ignite long forgotten conflicts. No, the real problem was my friends.

There had been the incident at the bonfire. Then there had been climbing with Mysterious and its near fatal results. Afterward, bruised and battered, he had confessed in a moment of lucidity that one of the reasons he had wanted to go climbing with me was because he wanted to “outdo my exploits”. This had come out with a skull-like grin, and a bark of unhappy laughter. His revelation was like a live grenade. I wasn’t sure whether to fall on it, and possibly damage myself, or lob it back. I opted for the latter, and cavalierly quipped something about everyone “wanting to be me”, a phrase I deeply regretted later.