distance over depth

(So I boarded the plane.)

Christmas break after my first semester of college meant trembling with fear when I received the flight confirmation via email, not knowing what the hell I was getting myself into when I agreed to let your mother buy my plane ticket because it's all you asked for as a gift. It meant packing up everything I owned that would keep me warm, stepping onto that flight to Nashville with an open yet completely unsure mind but vowing to be fearless and free.

Tennessee was eerie and cold and I never felt like I was sitting comfortably. Your hands didn’t feel the same, we didn’t laugh like we used to. You weren’t sober anymore; you no longer gave me the parts of yourself that I so longed for. You couldn't.

But there were those handful of moments—when you got defensive in the grocery store because of the way another boy looked at me, and how all of your family on your dad’s side knew every detail of my life because of the stories you told them. There was that day in downtown Franklin when we walked through the antique shops and hiked up the mountain in Pinkerton, then walked down the train tracks to the creek where a stranger took pictures of us. I remember when we drove to your cousin’s apartment in Nashville that overlooked the skyline, hopped the fence so we could walk along the river, snuck into the Renaissance hotel and took the elevator to the 25th floor so we could see the city, drove up to that peak and star-gazed.

But this happened two years ago. And trying to remember some of the good things has been clouded by all of the time that has passed, all the life that's been lived. According to "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin would say that these memories are lacking an element: their presence in time and space, their unique existence at the place where they happened to be. And it's true. From a distance, the "good" times don't hold as much meaning anymore.

  Remember when you caught me crying in the back of the pizza joint where you work because I realized things just didn’t feel the same as they did before? And when we drove through the mountains the last morning and things seemed almost okay for a couple of minutes? How you gave me the ring when we got to the airport but it was too late? Remember when I kissed you goodbye and walked through security without turning back?