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Title: Going Home
Author: Lizzie
E-Mail: [email protected]
Rating: Well, I think I cursed a couple of times, so maybe PG.
Content: A little bad language, angst depending on your point of view. Nothing too bad. Just maybe a little depressing.
Disclaimer: Don�t own �em, never will, not saying this happened.
Distribution: I have a very simple philosophy - want, take, have. Just let me know where it is.
Summary: Jeff takes a look at his life after he�s moved on.
Notes: I was sincerely trying to write something happy when my Jeff-muse descended and caught me completely off-guard. This isn�t the sort of thing I usually write. No sex, no violence and no death. Weird, right? Written in forty-five minutes if that tells you anything.

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Going Home
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I want to go home.

I�ve been here longer than I can or want to remember, but sometimes, just something, the dates start to creep in and I realise I�ve been here for a year. A whole damn year. I haven�t been home. I haven�t seen my brother�s perma-scowl with that weird underlying smile like he�s trying to pretend he�s never happy, I haven�t seen his boyfriend�s ever-deepening frown lines and green tattoo and too-long hair he�s forgotten to cut, I haven�t seen my ex-lover�s infectious grin or heard his singsong nonsense words that I almost always understand. I didn�t think I�d miss them. I never had before so why should I now? I convinced myself I was better without them because I�m better then them. I didn�t think I�d miss them. I was wrong.

And now I want to go home.

It�s not like I�m homesick or anything, �cause I don�t get homesick. It�s not like I can�t get my mind off my old room with the tatty posters still stuck in depressingly anal order and the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling or the absence of Christmas lights in the window. I don�t hate my life or this place so much that I just have to get away and escape back into my childhood. I like my life. I may not be ecstatically happy and jumping for joy, but who is? Certainly no one I know. I like my life. There�s nothing fundamentally wrong with it. I�m not in debt, I�m not wanted for murder, I�m not bored, I�m not miserable. I�m alive and that�s good.

But I want to go home.

I came here over a year ago trying to escape. I wasn�t running but it wasn�t exactly well thought out, either. I have no idea what I was trying to escape except maybe it was mundanity if that�s even a word, maybe that feeling I had playing around my jaw, tight and insidious and tasting like metal. I just needed to do something, but I wasn�t exactly restless. Yearning, craving, perhaps. I wanted something more than I had. Aching inside and ready to lash out at the slightest provocation, some inexplicable anger eating at my insides and confusing the hell out of me, I just had to get out f there before I snapped. And I might have, though I doubt it. That doesn�t happen really, does it. If I�d stayed I wouldn�t have killed anyone and I wouldn�t have killed myself. I used to like to think I might, but I don�t have it in me.

I left. The people who loved me let me go and I�d expected them to. They could see I needed to go, and I did. They saw me off with tears and hugs and kisses and I went to the biggest city I could think of, trying to get lost. I went to New York, got lost in the buildings and the people and the atmosphere while I tried to find myself. It was too easy to blend in. I�d sit behind the counter in the store where I too easily found a job and I�d just resent the hell out of it. It was supposed to take time. I�d got everything in an instant.

Working doesn�t suit me. It�s far too much like, well, work. So I didn�t exactly work my ass off and I got by. I was bored and started to find other things to occupy my time - I read, I wrote, I watched too much TV to be healthy, I spent too much money on clothes and books and videos and hardly ever went out. Because I didn�t need friends. No one seems to believe it but I don�t mind being by myself. I like it, in fact. So I didn�t need friends. I told myself that so often I actually believed it. I could get by just fine alone with no contact with anyone outside of work. I was in love with the idea.

But I wanted. Dear God, I wanted. I�ll never know and I�ve never known what it was I wanted, but whatever it was, I wanted it bad. I needed it, deep down. So I tried religion. It made sense to a na�ve and lonely guy, except I never truly believed and social contact was a stretch. For a time I felt righteous, justified. Except I think maybe that had more to do with Gabriel Byrne playing a priest, the crisp winter air and a penchant for solitude and wearing nothing but black that did it to me than any sort of outside intervention. Give me a few movies and no distractions and I�ll make an obsession out of what I see. I�m easily guided and sickeningly weak-minded.

Solitude does funny things to your mind. There�s no one to check your overactive imagination and it can run away with you. You lose all sense of proportion. And little by little your world dissolves into this tiny little egocentric microcosm where they only thing that matters is yourself. You don�t have to be possess of any particularly strong character or personality for this to happen, believe me. And you don�t need to think particularly highly of yourself, either, despite what �egocentric� may imply. It�s a natural phenomenon and I really do think it could happen to anyone. It happened to me. I wound up believing the only things that really mattered were things concerning me. If there was a train crash I wondered how my schedule would be affected. When family died I wondered if there was a will. The news didn�t interest me because how did countries that far away affect me? I was an appalling person. A very lonely, selfish, blinkered person. Strange I could care so much about myself when I didn�t even like who I was.

Except, in some ways, I always liked myself. I know this isn�t my line, I think it�s from some movie or other, and I�ve seen thousands - the Talented Mr. Ripley? - but no one ever thinks they�re a bad person.

The idea of hating yourself if very attractive. Well, to some of us it is. It�s romantic. You can romanticise almost anything. Self-loathing, self-injury - they romanticise well. Dress in black, listen to Nine Inch Nails and hate yourself. Cut your arms. Learn to love blood. Learn that no one else will ever like you either. Obsess over murderers and vampires and death. Think about killing yourself. Then everyone will love you. Right? Maybe. Except I never managed it. I liked myself too much. I couldn�t kill myself, ever. I know it like I know my own name. I can�t even cut myself really. I don�t hate myself. I�d like to believe I do or did, but that�s not true. I was always a fake. I�m a phoney. A poor imitation of the real thing.

And in this pathetic little psychosis there is lurking an even deeper realisation. Because all that egocentricity made me believe I was special. All those years of shining and people chanting my name made me believe it. All that Gothic idiocy made me believe it even deeper. I could be some beautiful, scarred and broken human being, I could have personality disorders the size of the fucking Grand Canyon, I could be so hideous that it made me beautiful inside. It�s take this year to realise what a complete fucking delusion that is.

Now I want to go home.

There�s this girl here in the station reading some movie magazine with the page on a Star Wars featurette and I�m sitting here wondering if she�s even reading because I swear in the last half hour she hasn�t turned the page and she�s barely even moved a muscle except to brush her fingertips over Ewan McGregor�s face in print. Maybe she�s daydreaming, lost in some twisted Phantom Menace fantasy playing Jedi Knight with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Maybe that�s it. I hope it is. Except maybe she�s, in some insane way, expecting someone to notice the page she�s on and the movements of her hands and magically realise she�s this incredible person and fall madly in love with her. It looks like that. I know �cause I�ve done it, thought it. Like what you�re reading or wearing or doing with your hands will make anyone look twice. She looks about nineteen. She�s dressed all in black and she�s trying to look like she�s not uncomfortable sitting there like that. She�s hoping quietly. All I want to do is find the courage to walk over there and tell her that�s not the way the world works. But I won�t. She�ll have to find it out herself. If she�s lucky it�ll be sooner rather than later.

If she�s lucky she won�t screw things up the way I have. Maybe she could still go home, like I want to.

You see, the sad truth is I�m no more or less special than anyone else, and I�m certainly no better. No one�s going to fall from the sky, see inside me and just need me forever. I�m not the centre of the universe; I�m just here, I�m just me, and one day I won�t be, and no one will care. No one but the family and friends and the lover I alienated, who I didn�t need and so desperately do. I�m not great, I�m not remarkable, I�m not immortal and I�m not even particularly good. I can�t even begin to explain how deeply, unbearably sad that makes me.

So now I�m going home.

I left a guy who loved me there, a beautiful man, good man, who loved me for who I was and not who I was trying to be. I miss him so much. I miss feeling that warmth as he held me in his arms and as he kissed me, as we�d lie in bed together and watch Sunday morning cartoons, as we�d make love. I miss his hands, the way I could lie there for hours with my head resting on his chest and feel his heart beat as I traced the lines on his palms with my fingertips. I miss the way he smiled at me, hazel eyes smiling too. I miss the way he�d hold me, the way he�d take my hand in public and not care who knew we were together. I miss Hunter.

I left Matt, my brother who loved me and always tried to do the best for me. I miss him too, the way he�d try to protect me, the way he�d look out for me and worry about me. I left friends like Adam and Jay and Chris and Shane and Amy who meant more to me than I ever realised, the ones we�d spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with, joke with, travel with. I left behind a life I should�ve realised was worth more to me than I gave it credit for, a life that was mine. I want all that back, if there�s even a small chance that I can have it.

So now I�m going home. I just have to hope there�ll be a home to go to when I get there.

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