Steps.

With every step that I take forward, I go back five.

I’ve met my new friends, a handsome group of twenty. Seven years with them I can do.

They seem nice; they welcome me into their cohort with big smiles and open hugs and eager laughs.

But in their faces, I don’t see them; I don’t see their stories or their hopes or their souls. I see the people back home.

I see Jer’s colorful word choice and Dana’s dumb jokes and Nidhi’s snide remarks.

The twenty of them remind me of a group of twenty back home.

With every step that I take forward, I go back five.

Then there’s this big new city- exciting, filled with promises of memories and experiences.

New things to do, new people to meet, a new life to live.

I’m excited as I think of all of the possibilities. The possibilities of being this brand new person that I am or am not. Even I don’t know.

But the stars in this city are the same that shine over my own.

The same stars that I played tag under as a tiny kid; one hand on my nerf gun, the other firmly gripping my favorite teddy bear.

With every step that I take forward, I go back five.

And then, there are the loose ends.

I get the arguments; long distance isn’t for everyone and I never thought it would be for me, either, but when was giving up an option?

We’ve been taught all of our lives to keep trying despite roadblocks or brick walls and here we are, faced with just that- and we don’t even try.

Regrets taste worse when they come out of someone else’s mouth.

With every step that I take forward, I go back five.

This over-romanticized ideal of running away from home isn’t for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited.

But the newness of it all scares me senseless.

With every step that I take forward, I go back five.

- a poem by me -