By Ciera Terry
Breathe.
“Be where your feet are,” I tell myself.
As unusual as it is, the smoke of a cigarette brings me comfort. When that sharp scent hits my nose my lungs welcome it, embracing it as if it were a lost lover returning home. My muscles relax as an overwhelming sense of awareness takes over me.
Everyone around me expresses disgust, picking up their pace.
I pause instead, slowing my walk into a stroll. I inhale deeply as the flashes of my childhood take shape around me. The small town bridges, run-down parks and flourishing trees, but then the screaming, the anxiety. the fear of my past—of what’s coming.
Everyone’s asking me, “What’s waiting for you after college?”
I never know what to say. I certainly don’t have an answer that will please them. I’ve had few life goals, and those goals were created when I hit my pre-teens. The goals were: graduate high school, get into college and leave Oklahoma.
My future ended there.
I never connected the dots or sought how to get from point A to point B, only that these things were fixed, the only constant in my life and the only thing I had to look forward to.
Even though I held those goals so close to me, they felt distant — a dream I might never live. My only hope was to get through life day by day.
I spent my childhood hearing unlived dreams and hopes that turned into tiny souvenirs made up of want and desire – but never having or action. Places that my family never got to see but places they begged me to envision for myself.
But I was only able to go as far as my hand could reach … and that wasn’t very far.
These dreams and a better future felt like a fantasy. I still question, still look inside and think: “Can I do this? Can I have this future of a life so far from the engraved roots of my upbringing. Can I carry centuries of generations’ hopes and dreams?”
My family’s old house was renovated after we moved. The owners replaced the stained orange bricks with white polish paint. The irony of it, the color of purity and perfection so unaware of the sorrow that would always cling to it. The porch transformed into simple steps. A stump sat in the middle of the lawn, once a tree now cut down and reduced to dust. The houses next door bore the past darker shades.
They looked out of place.
I imagine myself on my knees. My hands consumed by the earth tearing my way to its core desperately trying to rip my soul from that sacred ground I called home. It was wishful thinking , hoping it could change something, anything.
I’ve driven down that dead-end road staring down that house countless times. Every time I feel a sense of longing despite the memories and pain that are attached to it. I find I wanted to walk through that front door with a purpose standing on the same ground where my tears stained the murky carpet, now replaced with shiny wooden floors. I wanted to declare myself anew, be reborn in a sense. I’d scream, taking my pain and frustration out at the one entity in my childhood which didn’t harm me. Which simply couldn’t. It’s only fault, it’s only penance that I was raised in it.
Then and now the only thing I ever truly craved was freedom, freedom from myself, from my trauma. My own desperation for it chaining me to the very grounds I beg to fly away from. I desire it so much that I become its lackey, going my whole life searching for meaning waiting for someone to tell me I’m doing life the “right” way. But growing up is learning there is no right way. There is no perfect path.
It’s scary stepping into the unknown, instead of looking back, perhaps it’s time to look forward. Where I end up, and how it goes still seem to escape me, for I don’t know exactly what awaits me in the future, only that I am ready for it and perhaps that’s all I need to be.