In and out

There is no good way to say this. So I shall just say it and hope that you can let me explain myself before you reply. The truth is that I am no longer in love with you.

And it is not easy for me to say that. We have been through so much. I grew up with you. I broke my heart and my knee with you. Yet, together we surmounted each tragedy with hope and never ever faltered in our search for truth, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We took a few winters before we fell in love. And just when we were getting comfortable watching movies alone in our living rooms, I left. In love, but I left.

During these past three years, there were just muddled waters. This time when I re-visited there was clarity of the tragic kind. At the airport, before I boarded the return flight I finally past saw myself and saw through you. And it isn’t really your fault. There is isn’t anything better either. But I used to think you were above them all. A land like no other, un-paralleled, pristine, full of hope and clear air. An incubator of dreams and a provider of acute realities! You are still that land. But I am no longer that devotee.

Be assured that there isn’t someone else. It is just that this time I struggled when I shouldn’t. While I still relished your empty spaces and pacifying interstate driving experiences, I felt terribly alone. All around me your people couldn’t get off their phones. They were all there but lost; in huge expansive malls with plenty of available parking spaces, in franchise restaurants with limitless ice filled glasses, in bars with terrifyingly large number of LCD screens. I wanted to connect with your citizens but in the mid-west there were all mid-gone.

I earned to explore your empty flat spaces that glistened in the fall hue. But as I ran along your streets, your pavements ended abruptly and forced me on to a sub division of suburban nightmares. A house, a yard, a non-descript American sedan and a fluttering flag repeated itself in various manifestations, block after block. Why did this not bother me before? Was I now expecting castles and deer everywhere I ran?

I am certain that it is time that made us drift apart. But to be honest, you haven’t changed at all. Your rampant capitalism, your love for individualism and your disregard for other lands continue to be strongest traits. And weirdly that is my favorite part about you. You are young, brash and still full of opportunities. You are beautiful only in parts but functional in whole. You don’t come with triple layered windows but you give me the choice to install them if I want.

New found neutrality is dangerous. It lets to evaluate older matters without bias. You are able to judge the pros and cons and look calmly at the tilted weighing scale. I know that I don’t love you anymore and am finally seeing you without a melodramatic filter. You aren’t vanilla but you aren’t butter scotch either. You aren’t the best I have ever seen but you certainly aren’t just average. You are what you always said you were. A union of states, one of which I still call mine. 

And if despite that I were to choose you, it wouldn’t be with regret. It would be with knowledge; with an account of your deficiencies and adoration of your efficiencies. It would be the easiest decision because I now know that choosing you for emotional reasons would have been just plan inaccurate.