The glitch

making room

She appears to be the same. But she isn’t. There is a glitch here that I can plainly see. Not because I hadn’t been with her for so long. It is because I see her differently now.

How does one get back with someone with whom one never broke up with?

Well, first, you break up.

Yes, I did leave three and half years ago. But leaving isn’t the same as calling it quits. And coming back doesn’t mean that I never left. I am becoming more aware of how I have changed. The last time when I visited here I experienced a sense of neutrality about her. But being neutral is deceivingly painful. Now that I am back with no plans for immediate departure, I hate to be neutral. And so would she.

Right from the time I drove back from the airport rattling on the Michigan interstates to a huge hotel room, I was sure that I would be bound by the heavy shackles of familiarity. My wife meanwhile was doing a superb job of documenting here first time experiences with her European tainted eyes. My eyes though were seeing similar objects in rapidly different contexts. And my brain lumbered through perceiving of what I already knew.

I have always vouched for resetting when times were tough. I dramatized restarts. I loved being back at square one as if that were enough to power me through. But this time, it couldn’t be clearer. Now that I am here with her, I need to first decouple the memories and unload the baggage. There is no merit in resetting. I have to use my energy to just set instead. To find a new address and finally call it home.

This has to be a clean break. I can’t pretend not to know her. But I can certainly start with a different set of assumptions. Our past is a blur of some amazing memories and some terrible uncertainties. From that I have to walk away to have any chance of overcoming her expanse, to be unafraid and full of unabashed adult youth.

My coming back can’t be a continuation of vagueness. For it to be substantial, it has to be an adventure of another sort. This time I am here with a purpose that I didn’t have the first time around. The dream is the same. But I come equipped with a Kashmiri heart of gold. It is not just a pursuit of happiness but rather an honest and sincere attempt at filling the blanks of a sentence that began with four wheels and a heart.