Frank Goes Walkabout
You asked
when I’m
coming back
I’m not.
For years I carried other people’s dramas.
Then I admitted my own and left.
The 8th of March 2022 was my birthday, and I was sitting on a sofa. One of those furniture-store sofas that look uncomfortable until you lie down. Then you wonder how a grey lump can be so kind.
What happened on that sofa that afternoon, I won’t write down here. Other people would appear in it, and they didn’t ask to. I’ll tell you what I thought, and meant:
This will never get better
I have to leave
“Darling, I’m driving to India.”
“Yes. Dinner’s at six.”
I told the woman I loved that I’d be back in six weeks. On paper, it added up. After six weeks I was in Bosnia.
In Georgia the car stopped. I flew the rest of the way to India, and came back to Sakartvelo.
The man on that sofa thought happiness was something you drive towards. It caught up with me when I stopped.
Before it could, I had to go back into my own dark. I had looked in once before, as a student. Psychologists call it shadow work. This time I took a damn bright torch and looked at everything I had spent a lifetime walking past.
I am happier than I have ever been.
Somewhere between Bosnia and Georgia I stopped holding the facade of my old life between me and the world. Things come closer now. Some of them stay.
How this ends, I don’t know.
Frank
From the journal
Letters from a Parked Car. About once a month. Leave me your address.
A list kept by hand. One word, “remove”, and your address is gone.