A Return

I am sitting at my old desk, in my old office, in that old building where I started and ended my, career?, at the university. It's strange to be here today. I am all alone. I had for the first time had to disarm the alarm. I never arrive here early enough or leave late enough to do that. But today, there was no one here.

It was the worst blizzard I can recall having lived in Southern New England for more than eight years. "Worst" as in the most snow. I was going to stay home but the internet was too slow for the work I needed to do for my new job, new life. So I put on my winter socks, my ski jacket, hat and gloves, and with this laptop still grumpy about the chai incident, I trekked all the way to my work.

I realized that since I had left for Argentina I haven't been in New Haven. Not in the sense of seeing it. I was always in my house or on the way somewhere outside. Of course, I walked around the block for groceries, or meet a friend for dinner, but never more than walking a block or two, and always in company. Today, in the mid afternoon, when the sun had just pierced through the snowy clouds at a slant as it prepared to abandon us once more, I walked through downtown alone. There was the Indian restaurant, the corner cafe, the banks, the "Green" where college students who had just returned were playing football. And on the two-foot thick snow were drawn-in graffiti of smileys. When the wind gently caressed the content bed of snow, silver dusting whirled around me, almost frolicking. I felt it was sweet. I felt the snow was beautiful. I felt the sound of the football players soothing. But then, everything else seemed more complicated.

There was the corner vegetarian restaurant restaurant, and the many more familiar restaurants and shops I have known. Many have been around shorter than I have. And in their place are not only memories I have of them, but also of the ones they have superseded, and in some cases, even those the dead ones have replaced. The frolicking of the snow dust, the joyful screams of the students, disappeared. And the memories that came up from this walk cast a dark cloud over me as the sun's rays began to retreat into the fiery red.

I thought not about the accomplishments I have made in the eight and a half years here, personal as well as professional. Those accomplishments I have great friends to remind me of. But instead, I remembered the thread that each place I walked by, each object I identified, that connected them to a bitter piece of memory. The memories of rejections, of hopes unfulfilled, of desperation, of the feeling of lost. This unexpected reconnection with the city revealed an unsettling realization: I don't miss it. Walking through this familiar route that have brought me to and from work for more than four of the years I have been here did not bring me any sentimental, teary feelings. I was walking alone, that, in itself, was a reminder of my struggle to escape loneliness that have only succeeded in the sense that I have come to find some peace internally. And in all these stores, restaurants, and other meeting places where people of one sort or another have in the end failed to fulfill my need to be accompanied, I found a dark void staring straight at me, nodding, as if I have failed.

And so I entered the familiar building, into the familiar office, and sat at the familiar seat where I needed to work for the rest of the day. I hadn't planned on coming in today. Today the city was again nearly paralyzed by another blizzard. I couldn't go into work and was given permission to work from home, where I couldn't get enough speed from my Internet. So I was here. I also took the opportunity to come here to retrieve a few more things because I don't get to come here much, not at all,actually, during the day.

And being here I didn't find myself remembering anything from the past. I didn't care and it didn't take much effort. I am ready to leave. Leave this building, this city, this life that I have vowed to end when the new year started. I am a little relieved that there is no sentimentality. That here there's nothing holding me back. I thought about the few friends I still have left, the sister who still lives here, at least for a little bit more. But if they are my real friends, we will continue to connect.

Yet, the most obvious reason is that I am still alone, even as I write this. I didn't have anyone to meet, anyone to walk with, anyone to share a final sentimental few sentences from the old chapter. That realization is enough for me to move on.

It's dark already. On a dark evening like this one, after a blizzard nearly comparable to this one, I was walking with a woman I did not want to call my friend, but as it always had happened in the past eight and a half years, I had no other choice. We were talking quietly, walking in the dead silence of the residential neighborhood where most university graduate students lived. One couldn't resist feeling the romance in it, but I didn't dare to assume she felt it. The yellow streetlights have taken over the dark blue of the night, and the silent monochrome of our surroundings felt slightly warmer. The snow blanketed not only the city, but, as it seemed, also muffled all the sounds. Save our occasional words to each other. I had always wanted to walk among the snow with someone special. It was a fantasy too simple for this complicated world, and the problem was that it was a fantasy. But for a moment, I could hear that fantasy in the silence of the night, in the blanket that covered us, as if we were huddling in the warmth of a bed surrounded by the cold of the world. I don't remember what we were talking about. Nothing romantic. She then took some snow in her hand, and as I hoped, playfully threw at me. I saw it as an opportunity. Frolicking in the snow, in the blanket. Predictably, I threw some back at her, and the silence of the night was broken temporarily by the laughter of two friends. Then I did what I had always wanted: I pushed her gently onto an untouched bed of snow. She fell without much resistance or worry.

What next? I didn't fall next to her as I wanted, fantasized. Something held me back, and so instead, I simply pulled her back on her feet. After brushing off the snow on her back, she said, almost coquettishly, "You always fantasized doing that, I bet." That's the trouble with friends; they know you too well.

And that was the end of that. I think about the infinite blanket outside waiting for me, I think about walking through it alone, as I have done most of the time the city was blanketed. Fantasies would have to wait, perhaps indefinitely. The reality is that I am here, disconnected from everything, everyone, and hopefully, the memories that were dogging me on my way here.

Like I said, it's dark already. The sun has hurried past the horizon behind the huge glass buildings of this little town. I thought about other people who have left, trying to recall their sentimentality upon departing this little town where they had to call home for about as many years. And on the dark path that I am to retreat on back to my home, perhaps never to have the opportunity to return here, I wonder if any of my love for this city will arise, from the snow, perhaps, from the quiet elm trees that now bear the heavy puffy white coats from heaven, from the subdued ambiance painted in dark blue by twilight. I don't know. But I am ready to leave.

Tomorrow I repeat my work-week routine. Today was a sudden return to the old way, the old way of working, of cooking and baking in between lines of programming code. Today was a strange but interesting throwback to a few paragraphs of a past chapter. Tomorrow the road continues, and a new sun returns.