Baltimore

I don’t want to believe, when we’re older
That you won’t remember my name anymore.
And I don’t want to believe when we’re sober,
That the love we found ran out the night before.
And I don’t want to believe this is over,
So I send my heart to Baltimore.
-Hodera

I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear.
-Jospeh Broadsky

Accept your past without regrets. Handle your present with confidence. Face your future without fear.
-Unknown

Baltimore will always hold a special place in my heart. I know next to nothing of the city and have only been there once, but the impact of visiting will forever shape my view of the world. 

I still remember that night, driving for hours in the worst storm of the year. The rain was so thick that it was coming down in sheets across my windshield and my headlights were next to useless. My heart was beating in my chest. Excitement, mixed with uncertainty had clouded the better part of my judgment. I hesitate to say that I “braved” the storm that night but I was fighting for something that I thought would be life changing. 

In a way I wasn’t expecting and wasn’t hoping for, I guess it would be. 

It’s funny, isn’t it? The way that our minds and our hearts can play tricks on us. There’s that age old adage of “hindsight is 20/20” and I think it comes from a place in life where we have to make sense of all the bad decisions we have made over the years. After all, we were only doing what we thought was right in those moments, right? Baltimore is probably the biggest hindsight decision of my life. A decision to brave the storm over something (and someone) who now I can reflect on and try to learn from, but in the moment was a disaster in the making. I mean, good Lord, how many times can you make the same mistake over and over again? I’m reminded of Helen of Troy in a sense. “The face that launched a thousand ships”, was the term I think was thrown around a lot in grade school. A surface value evaluation, of course. We all have those in our lives that we threw everything to the wind for. For better or worse, those are the faces that launched our ships. I think, in my case, it was for the worse. 

Getting back to my odyssey, the trip to Baltimore was trying at its best and catastrophic at its worst. I wasn’t lying when I stated how hard my heart was beating. Even now it’s difficult to put into words as I type away. Like trying to explain the color red to a blind person. All the passion it is associated with loses the meaning when your audience can’t even begin to comprehend everything associated with it. This is what I had always wanted in my life. It was a fresh start, a truly incomprehensive feeling that everything was going to be ok. From the recent loss I had experienced to the terminal loss I had yet to experience, it was that guiding ray of sunshine that I needed. My northern star. 

I think it’s perhaps fitting that it was storming so badly that night. A portent of what was to come. 

It’s also funny how the heart works. From one minute you can feel elated and on top of the world and the next it can be destroyed, utterly and completely. That’s how it works. Minute by minute your entire world can change. I still remember approaching Baltimore and receiving that call. How things weren’t going to be the grand reunion they were supposed to be. She was scared and rightfully so of the storm. Maybe it was an omen in her own right, telling her to turn back now. That this was all a mistake. At least she listened to it more than I ever did. 

Maybe the storm was trying to tell me the same thing. 

 So I drove on. Through the sheets of rain and the incessant pounding of hail against my car. Thumping in that “clink clink clink” that hail sometimes does. Not in any of the dangerous ways but more in a naturalistic morse code telling me to turn around now. To learn from my experiences. I didn’t listen to nature that night and kept trudging along. Through the traffic and the rain and the hail and muck I somehow found my way. And I remember that phone call. 

She was scared, rightfully so. Maybe the hail had been telling her the same thing, to turn back now while she still had the chance. Maybe she was listening more to mother nature than I had the good grace to. 

I still remember getting that call, in the parking lot of some god awful place where I took refuge for a couple minutes. She was scared. She wanted to go back to him. Her safe place. This was all a mistake that she couldn’t take back, or could she? She could turn around now, safe and certain knowing that she would go back to his arms instead of mine. That safe haven and that cute little death so many of us could fall victim to. 

Somehow I convinced her to stay in Baltimore. Nothing would change and the trip would be a wash, but at least she would be safe tonight. Her omens and her portents were pointing at her back, while I managed to convince her to move forward. So that night we finally managed to meet. The first time in… forever it felt like. Much like the first night we met, nothing had really changed. I remember a bar game on a bar napkin where we learned more about each other, but knew that nothing had really changed. She was committed to someone else and torn about her decision, about her betrayal. 

I probably should have respected that, in that hindsight we find ourselves so often immersed in. I should have just said goodbye and sayonara. Peace out, girl scout. It was nice meeting you and having this moment again, but this just isn’t the time or place. Not now. Not Baltimore. But we did. 

The next morning the clouds parted and the sun shone through in a way I feel as a writer I still can’t fully describe. It was like mother nature had decided she was wrong with her morse code hail the night before and was fully embracing every moment we shared afterwards. Now, in hindsight, I think she was just tired of constantly giving me the warning signs and had given up on me. She was content to see how things played out, because it was my choice to ignore her warnings, after all. 

I felt elated. Everything seemed to be going so amazingly. Of course I know now, that was incorrect. It takes a studied master to divine what the tarot cards read. To the uninitiated, every card holds in itself a future that you can make your own. In the same way that a fortune teller can divine everything about you by being vague enough, I was being too vague myself. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The warning signs for the encouragement. I couldn’t see the shimmer in the air. That sense of everything was being given up. The storm had passed. What I thought was an obstacle was actually a warning and I had chosen in my ignorance to not see the writing on the walls. 

There was a morning spent in that early daylight at a park. A park to this day I can see in my memory clear as crystal. Those Rocky steps leading upwards to the greenery shining after a full nights’ shower. The waves lapping against a port that, unlike myself, had weathered the storm successfully. The cool air on my neck reminded me that not everything was like I was visualizing it. That beneath everything lied a subtext I was missing or too willful to see in the first place. 

That’s when we left Baltimore. More confused for having gone. More certain for having survived through it. 

I still look back to this moment as when everything changed in my life. For the sake of my writing and everyone involved, there’s no way I can spell out just how much this city and this specific couple of days influenced the trajectory of my entire life. It comes down to those moments in your life where the writing is on the walls, where everything is trying to tell you what to do otherwise, but that you do it anyway. 

If I could go back to that boy driving in the rain, I would have a certain amount to say to him:

“It’s ok, bud. You can turn back now, you know? I know you won’t listen to me, and that’s ok too. In the end, you gave it so much. You gave so much of yourself in that moment that it’s honestly amazing the amount of love you can expend and receive. I think it’s truly a gift of yours. Everyone says that it seems like you don’t express emotions, but this? This was the culmination of every emotion you had to give. You braved this dumb little storm and loved so hard that you ignored every warning sign. Every red flag was just another obstacle in the way of you being happy for once. I know nothing I say now will make you turn around. But for whatever it’s worth I’m proud of you for going down this path. For saying ‘screw you’ to mother nature and all her premonitions and warnings. It takes bravery and it takes balls, that’s for sure. You’re misguided and that will only show itself in the years to come. Even with this misguided attempt at love and trying to forge your path to that, I’ll say that it will come to you. You will love so hard that choices feel impossible. You will love so hard that you will question yourself and who you are. Your love extends to reaches that so many might never be able to see. And you will lose. You will lose more than most people ever feel like they do in their life. From that loss, will come something else. I hope that you can learn from me, yourself, that you shouldn’t lose yourself among all that. That it’s ok to feel and to experience. It’s ok that it takes time. You will have regrets and you will have dreams. Dreams so vivid that you question whether or not to stay asleep the rest of the day. But in the end, you did it your way. And that’s ok. 

You’re enough, just as you are.”