On being lost

Perhaps the only time I was truly lost was when I was seven. It was my first day of school in a new town. My mom put me on the bus in the morning, and I got off with all the other kids and found my way to my classroom. In the afternoon, I made it back to the bus somehow, but wasn't familiar enough with my new neighborhood to know where to get off. The bus was empty, and the driver had finished her route, and I was still on it. I don't remember how I got home that day.

As a child, I remembered places I had never been before. I blurred real and imaginative spaces. On a tour through an 18th century farmhouse, I felt I knew the place. That credenza, that drawer full of flatware. I knew them.

My friends have always called me the "normal one," because, I imagine, I have never appeared lost to them. I think the truth is that I have never tried to anchor myself too securely. I take comfort in knowing I can live anywhere, pick myself up, meet new people, make a new life. I have done it a dozen times.

In seventh grade, I cast myself off from my three best friends with a dramatic note:

Dear Libby, Amy and Sarah,
Goodbye.

I spent the summer in exile: babysitting, going to tennis lessons, watching television. I would do anything but play a part in the girl dynamics that had developed.

In tenth grade, my best friend forced me out. I had no choice. I remember coming home one night and spotting a party going on at her house. A dozen or so people we knew in common were hanging out on her back deck acting stupid. They were making jokes about getting high on oregano, rolling oregano joints from from the spice rack and stiff cardboard and lighting them on
fire. Perhaps they really were stoned, but it's not the cue I picked up. What I felt was their icy stares and unwelcoming recognition of my presence.

We are kept in place by the people who surround us. When we are cut off from them, we become someone else.

Both times, I found new groups of friends, neither as satisfying as the old. My new skin did not fit right.

I will return home in two weeks. I worry about seeing someone I know who will force me to locate myself. Their "hello, aren't you...?" will make my body flesh and tie me to that place again instead of allowing me to remain an observer in a parallel dimension. I also worry about not feeling tied. That the bricks and wood beams of buildings, the maple and oak trees won't talk to me. They'll refuse to play my remembering game.