smileyjess

So what happens if you don’t plan on coming back? Then there is no need for a goodbye.

At least, this was her thought process. She did not want to – absolutely could not – remain a moment longer. This place was no longer inviting or welcoming, and hadn’t been for too long. Longer than she cared to remember. And so she was leaving without bidding an adieu. Why bother? Instead, she left a note with three words of vast magnitude. Three words so often uttered without meaning, without significance, without merit. Said to simply satisfy the listener. But she meant them. “I am sorry.” And she truly was sorry.

The stairs she often leapt two, sometimes three, at a time now seemed an insurmountable obstacle. Here, on the rug, a stain from her childhood sippy cup, and there, from her first house party. The scratches on the floor by her desk from the chair, the bottles of mind numbing medications in the vanity. The bathroom closet brimming with hair care products for a small third world nation. Volumes of personal journals, reduced to ashes, miniscule remnants – the too small pieces that escaped the dustpan – had been swept under the bureaus by quick pacing footsteps as she packed. The bookshelves remained stuffed to the brim with novels – fiction and non – the colorful bindings of each somewhat daunting, the disorder of it all devastating. Sort by author? By title? Size? It was odd, really. She had spent many a set aside Sunday afternoon for this task alone, desperately attempting to order them in a satisfactory manner. At first she used to be able to – finish, that is. But later, when the littlest of things upset her balance, tipping the scale towards the unfavorable, the menial task was simply too much. The books were too much. (She was too much.) Her inability to cope with even the most mundane scared her, scared them all. Once they found her, walled in by a fortress of tomes, balled up into a heap, ashamed of her imperfections. Over books.

“It’s quite silly, really.” She heard the whispers.

Hence, the meds. Order and structure defined her life. Without it, there was nothing, and therefore, she was nothing. She couldn’t wait to not say goodbye to them – the books. Not that it mattered much anyway, anymore. The letters had the strange tendency to jump around on the page, often exhausting her fanatical efforts by the end of the first paragraph. She grew dizzy so easily now.

Perfectly aligned nail polished spanning most of the color spectrum, never used. Overstuffed couch with mismatched pillows and old knitted afghans. Dog-eared fashion magazines with emaciated models and hidden dreams. Not goodbye, not goodbye, not goodbye.

She didn’t feel bad about leaving the house. She hated it because it hadn’t changed, but she had. It was the same, but she certainly was not. It wasn’t hard to say goodbye (or not say goodbye) because she had never really said hello. She just slept here. She could sleep anywhere.

She hated change.