I had never seen that much mist before on an late winter morning. Or at least, I must never have paid much attention before then. This particular morning, though, it spoke for what had happened the night before. The new sun sought to slice through, but failed and instead scattered it’s clarity amidst the haze. It was as overcast as my thoughts, and I could not shake either no matter how hard I tried.
We walked down the road, the other two a full twenty paces in front of me. As we crossed the railroad tracks, I shoved my cold hands into my pockets for some relief. I had no idea where we were going, but was content to follow nonetheless. I wondered if they too felt what hung heavily in the air this morning.
The scene thirty minutes prior had been quite different. Claire and I sat perched on the counter top (as we usually were), watching the sun rise out the tiny kitchen window. In the adjoining rooms, the other two lay motionless, sleeping off the shame and excitement of last night’s alcohol. We sat without speaking. I did not press for conversation, as I felt truly at peace in her silence. Looking back, I wonder if she was as curious as I was. I wanted to know how the world would look to the other three upon waking.
The night before had seemed surreal, endless and confusing as only teenage hours could. I remembered that I had fought with my parents, though could not accurately recall what it concerned. In retrospect, this truly was an isolated event, but at the time it was just another notch in my belt of seemingly perpetual, afflicted pain. I had been restless and anxious. I needed to escape. I sought refuge in my friends company, but instead found indifference that I did not know existed.
This was a sequence of firsts for us all. Well, it was for me at the very least. I had watched three of my closest friends arrive drunk to Mandy’s house after the hockey game in Detroit, unsure of how to interface with them in this capacity. Our friendship, after all, had been almost singley built around this frank, open, realness with one another. Their intoxicated breath seemed to mock our hushed promise, betraying it with an air of almost “we don’t care, we’re growing up without you.” I had never touched a drop, for reasons that made sense to me during those years. And while I paid lip service to not caring about another’s choice on the matter, on this particular morning I was hurt. I felt betrayed by the handful of people I thought I could trust to do the same. They had chosen to lose themselves, and I felt they had instead decided to throw away our friendship.
Whomever decided to take a sunrise stroll, I can’t recall. Since Claire and I had never attempted to sleep, we welcomed the movement to relieve our cramped muscles. And as the three of us left the front porch, still bleary-eyed and silent and leaving the other two to sleep, I suddenly became aware of my limbs, my breath and the clammy touch of the dew-laden air on my skin. Everything seemed to have shifted, but with the least amount of grandeur or circumstance. It was as if the needle had simply slipped off the record when no one was paying attention. The further we walked, the more alienated I felt.
The door of my Reliant clicked shut behind me, and I paused and sighed. I recall thinking that I was leaving everything, and I struggled with both the desire and the remorse. Five months before departing for college, I had just abandoned my curfew, lied to my parents, spent the night at a female friend’s empty house and watched as my friends reveled in their inhibriation. The wound of a strained, formerly romantic relationship between two of us still fresh, and only worsened by the distance the evening’s events had placed between us. I was detached from every person in my life. Indeed, everything was shifting, and what was worse is that I had no control.
As I drove away, wiping the condensation off my windshield with my black rollneck sweater, I turned on the music. The song that I will forever associate with this memory slowly started. It was the first time I had heard it. What matters to me today is not how misguided or narrow-minded I may have been at age 17, but rather how befitting this moment really was, whether I knew it then or not.
