On being home kind of permanently

I remember coming back to Oklahoma City for breaks from my metropolitan life in New York. I even dared to think of myself foreign to my home state. The last Christmas that I galloped around in long, red hair and androgyne fashion was the last time I could be in that mindset. Flying back to New York that winter, I had no idea I would enter my undergraduate golden age... Spring of 2023.

I visualize the year like the laminated calendar hanging on the back of the classroom door in second grade: vertically. We had just gone back to America in 2009, and winter months were a reality again. December is Baby Jesus swaddled in blue and January is white with snow. An email sent by the Dean said I've been in law school three-and-a-half months. Just three-and-a-half months? Beachfront and popsicles July seems like it was ages ago.

I've recently turned twenty-four, and since then I've come home for good. I'm a little ashamed to say I've acclimated just fine to being home. There is little to see by foot. I don't listen to music anymore. After a grueling day hitting the books, we coalesce in the living room to look at more screens for more hours. And to think my respite from that, my girlfriend, is only accessible by screen. I can feel my eyesight waning. What if I become unable to see her smile?

I have made a home in the line in the sand. I'm overly kind and sometimes apolitical and fatter and I'm strangely complacent. I have willingly eaten Chick-Fil-A thrice and imagined the swipe of my card sending an electrical pulse through someone somewhere in Utah in an attempt to make them straight or cisgender. And I was so sorry for it— I started declining casual lunches there again, since there'll always be something else to eat. I am the middle-most child, expensive with the least returns, and I can barely drive a car without having a heart attack. I fear I wouldn't be able to drive my sister to the hospital if her water suddenly broke. I lie in bed sometimes as if a sword has pinned me down to it, like a taxidermy insect on display or Joaquin Phoenix at the end of Gladiator. Only one of those things has to repent.

And still, by-and-large, the days are fine. I feel like a boy being raised properly when I talk to my brother in law. And I telepathically communicate with my older sister. We spend more time laughing than talking. I talk to Zoe every night, and I have seen her every month. I doubt I'd be doing as well as I have been if she weren't around. When the sirens went off for the unusually severe November tornadoes, I had every keepsake she gave me in my arms.

That weight is happy weight— I am well fed and the food is bigger and I'm spending all my downtime resting. I'm grateful for millions of little things. I have all of my beloved highschool friends here, and we have resumed growing up in tandem. I have made two great friends in law school. I recently felt proud I knew them well enough to see a gift and know it was perfect for them. I'll know them forever, I know it. And I hate to say it, but law school is actually fantastic and I like it a lot. 

So there's that. I'm here another few months and maybe I'll be elsewhere later.