Can’t Turn Back Now

I'm Haunted...

“Come on, come on, don't leave me like this.

I thought I had you figured out.

Can't breathe whenever you're gone.

Can't turn back now, I'm haunted.”

                          – Taylor Swift, “Haunted”

The first time I see you, a shiver of knowing runs through my body.

You’re here, I whisper, my breath catching, like I’m surprised. I shouldn’t be. Of course you would be here. This is your neighborhood, your home. It used to be mine, too, years before—an entire life ago—before wedding rings and mortgages and school drop–offs. And now, seeing you on this corner I know–but don’t, it’s like coming home—but not.

I’m just here for a quick visit to look around the old hood. I’m not even sure what possessed me to come in the first place. But now I wonder if it was you all along I hoped to see.

You move towards me up Carmen Avenue away from our apartment—your apartment—and I notice how happy you seem. So happy. So young. So free. 

Yes, free. That’s the word. So free you practically float down the street. I want to float, too. 

Where are we headed? I want to ask. Yoga at the Cheetah Gym? Thrift shopping at Brown Elephant? Ooh, can we stop into Kopi Coffee for that hummus we love so much? 

Your freedom—I can feel it. I feel it like it’s my own. Or like I want it to be mine, again. 

What’s it like being back?

This question has come up a lot since we moved this summer back to Chicago after spending the last ten years wandering to new places. It’s good, I say. Different but good. Different because I’m different. Good because it feels like home, because it was. It is.

What I don’t tell them is how this home is haunted. 

I see you everywhere now—jogging along Lake Shore Drive, picnicking in Millennium Park, sitting in the Wrigley Field bleachers, hot dog in one hand, pint of Old Style in the other. I knew I would. You live here. You always have. But what I didn’t anticipate was how it would make me feel. It’s not so much a recognition as it is a longing for home. 

Nostalgia I think is the word. But in its truest definition. 

Nostos–Return Home. Algos–Pain. 

But I have returned home. Why the pain?

One afternoon I head into the Red Line Subway Station at Grand and we nearly collide. You march up the stairs headphones on your ears, book bag over one shoulder. You move with purpose, curiosity, drive. 

There it is again—the eerie sense of familiarity, of knowing. Like seeing your reflection in a mirror. I stand there on the stairs, watch you walk passed me then walk away and something comes over me, like I’ve made a big mistake.

I know that purpose, that curiosity, that drive—that was mine once, too. I carried it every time I walked out of this very station and around the corner to the classrooms inside the red brick building. I was studying for my Masters, with dreams bigger than the buildings that surrounded me.  I had it all figured out. We were going places, you and I. Do you remember? Leadership, awards, credentials—you name it. Those dreams were all I wanted.

Somehow, though, along the fragile lines, I let them go. Not all at once, and maybe not forever, but released all the same. And in their place I found new dreams. Different, but good.

But now I’m left wondering…when I let the dreams go, did I let you down with them?

I want to turn back, go after you, ask you this. But I can’t. You’re gone as quickly as you showed up. Anyway, something is keeping me here on these steps, keeping me holding on to…nothing. 

No, not nothing—them. I look down now and I’m holding on to them—their hands, my two boys and Caroline by their side. That is something after all.

No, not something—everything.

You’re here, I whisper.

And I take them home.

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This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Haunted.”
PS. If you like my music inspired words, then will you consider subscribing to my regular Raise & Shine Letter, right here on Substack? Taylor always seems to make an appearance, plus links and fun and GIFs, oh my. You won’t want to miss it!