I closed the door at 12:15am. I watched it slide shut from left to right and the unexpected dimming effect it caused was shocking in a way. It was almost as if the unfamiliar lack of furniture somehow changed the way light moved around the house. I wondered how after a year of struggle with that door I managed to get it over the screw with ease this time. I had even tried to close it earlier after I had carried the last box out but one of the screws holding the track to the floor was partially up and stripped beyond repair. Usually it required the right leverage on the top of the inverted handle that would cause the bottom of the door to slide smoothly over, but I always seemed to forget and would get frustrated when it jammed. I was thinking about how lucky I was for a little while but it was probably only a moment. Time is pretty irrelevant in general, especially when you are nowhere, doing nothing.
I lay there for a while just thinking about nothing. Memories began flooding into my head but were capped off as usual. I have developed this skill where I can subconsciously block out anything possibly emotional before it ever surfaces into the forefront of my mind. This is what I did instead of actually thinking about my day, which is what I suppose most people do at night as they lay in the dark while there eyes adjust to the shadows and shapes. Not me though, I don’t let it in. I just jump from one rambling thing to another, never letting it slip past the first layer of consciousness. That usually works to induce sleep because it can become very tiring trying to think of new things to ponder every ten seconds or so.
On normal occasions my brain would have just worked itself to sleep and then the dreams would come and then the morning. Not this night though. Something profound happened. Something that I still don’t fully understand but 4 years later at least can try to dissect little bits at a time. What happened was my head exploded. Or at least that is what it felt like. I rambled to myself so fast that like an eclipse of the brain, everything went black. My thoughts just stopped running. I had reached the end of the line. I felt a bubble in my chest. It started subtly but picking up speed it settled just at the top of my throat. I held my breath to keep it in. Then, with pressure building, it burst forth into the world. 22 years of anxiety and emotion burst forth into the night, most likely filling all of Oregon with its soft sobbing song.
I cried for a good twenty minutes. Blurting out half sentences in utter despair. I did that kind of crying that children often do when they are actually upset, as apposed to that fake crying they do when they can tell you noticed they fell down and they want the attention. The sort of crying that makes your breathing come out in short, wheezing bursts. I did this and was surprised at how much my nose ran. I thought to myself “Is this what happens? How do people deal with all of this? Do regular people just carry tissues around all the time in case this happens?” I was reluctant to go get toilet paper from the bathroom for my nose because I was afraid the echoing of my pathetic sobbing would wake up the neighbors. I know they would have knocked on my door and comforted me, but I didn’t want to put them in an awkward position. Here I was alone in an empty house, sobbing like a baby. Instead I just used the bath towel that I had folded up next to my mattress on the floor for my final shower. I would just have to wash it in the morning.
I cried myself to sleep that last night. I can’t believe I actually fell asleep. I was tired for sure, but I had taken the curtains down and I usually can’t sleep with so much light coming in the room. The moon was in full view and it would have normally driven me insane, but I was just too tired now.
I had not cried since I was 19 years old and was ending a 6-month trip abroad, my tears rolled down my face and made mud on the sandy north shore of Norwich, England. Before that I was 8 years old and my father told me he was divorcing my mom over by the red caboose in Suwanee, Georgia. I don’t remember why I cried then, I guess because he was crying. I thought it a funny thing that the only time I have cried since that night in England was when my father was also crying. Eventually the tears subsided and I lay panting with my face so close to the floor. I listened to the new echoes the apartment made and thought about my father. I wondered if he had felt the same nostalgic terror when he spent his last night in our home back when I was 8.
That night in the empty house in Southeast Portland I looked out the 2nd story window at the cars on Burnside St. and then beyond I imagined myself floating slowly over the bungalow homes, swirling up the Willammett river and across the dense wilderness of the Hood National Forest. I joined the circles of black birds that swirl and swoop around the Columbia Gorge in late spring. I saw my self alight on a park bench atop Mt. Tabor and looked down at the city asleep at Midnight and as it yawned and closed its eyes, so did I. This was one of the greatest nights of my life. I was reborn that night. I wanted to take detailed notes on how I pulled this whole thing off because such emotional release, at that time, seemed like the answer to all of my problems.
