Between You & Me,  

I can’t wait to leave El Paso. I write that with no resentment for this city, but with the pure, unadulterated fact: despite the large population, I keep bumping into everyone (& their mother). El Paso has a funny way of never saying goodbye to the past, because everyone seems interconnected with a familiar web that hooks people in. 

Now, it’s not like I’m tiptoeing out of my house, muttering prayers to avoid ghosts of past lives (that could’ve, easily, happened) or sour friendships. Every street corner I turn, every doorway I open, is a lingering reminder of what spectacularly failed. Oh, look who just stumbled into the same aisle as me at Walmart: my ex best friend. We act like we’re strangers, now. It shows on my face—the icy chip of my shoulder, especially when I see someone that did good friends of mine wrong.  

It’s always the people that you don’t necessarily need or want to see.  

Is El Paso its own little universe?  Perhaps it’s like some twisted form of exposure therapy. The more you see them, the easier it gets? Is this the El Paso way to “move on?” If I’m understanding correctly: I must be constantly surrounded by my past regrets, mistakes, jaded friendships, ex passions, what could’ve been to realize how far I’ve gotten? To remind myself: life still happened even after they left.  

Maybe I’ll laugh about these cringe-worthy encounters a month from now, but right now, they’re just there; waiting to be lived in, begging to be watched and witnessed like stale rerun episodes of a daytime sitcom. It feels like a sick joke, and I’m the punchline.  

If El Paso is designed this way—for our “benefit”—what about the Last Meeting theory? This theory suggests that two people have fulfilled their purpose in each other’s lives, and the universe ensures they’ll never meet again. Even if they attend the same college or share mutual friends. So, what exactly is the lesson I keep getting served here? 

Is this city, I want to call home, a defective exception to this cosmic rule? Stubbornly stuck like gum on my lips while I blow a bubble too big and pops on dry skin. 

After many collar-shock-inducing exposure sessions, it finally hit me: what if my hometown has nothing more to offer me anymore.  

It seems like it’s been the only constant in my long-winded life.  

That’s why I keep running into barricades, at full force! Because I’m meant for more. Why would the universe dangle a reason to stay here when I’m supposed to leave!   

But riddle me this: I’m actively living in a space where the absorbent walls of my childhood house, if they could talk, would be my greatest witness! A reliable bystander that oversaw the 2 a.m. talks, my mother’s Catholic tears, my father’s belly laughs, the cousin sleepovers, my teenage rage secrets—all of it.  

 So, how am I supposed to move out of this city, nonetheless, my parents’ house, to embrace that fabled “life after graduation,” if past me is still sleeping next to me in the same childhood room? 

That’s another thing: memorabilia; the good old nostalgia trap. If I still have that one “dopamine box” filled with happy reminders hidden in my closet; does that mean that part of me is still in my system? Just holstered on my hip; open carried on my person—a (wise) weapon of my choice—very Texan of me.  

Even if I swore by this mantra: out of sight, out of mind.  

Is that why I don’t feel present in my active and waking life, sometimes? God knows, I’m trying to sprint headfirst into the arms of my future! Yet I keep feeling like I’m snagged on something, somewhere behind me; perpetually holding me back.  

I’m pretty sure my Last Meeting won’t be with one person in particular but will be with the city that helped raise me. I’ll run into it on the next street corner I turn, eventually. I think it would help me shed any debris that I might still be caught in. Something else that would help is going to my next therapy appointment; after avoiding the cost, and after thinking I was “healed.” Because clearly, El Paso has a unique way of proving me wrong.