The road to adulthood is dotted with false starts, not least of which may be a quiet night in a friend's dorm half an hour away from home.
Moments before hopping into Esmira's car, I sat in a Taco Bell watching Jay play 五子其 against my dad, waves of melancholy and fear churning relentlessly in my gut. I've flown across the Pacific Ocean and lived for a month without my family and taken an overnight train to San Francisco with little notice to my parents, but in the hours leading up to these escapades I turn into a little girl on the first day of school who wants nothing more than her blankie and for her mom to reemerge from the door.
I tried to peer a few months into the future, to the as yet imaginary night when I would force myself through the motions of sleep, my room collected into a couple of fraying trunks at the foot of my bed, as I waited for the alarm to go off that would set the frenzy of relocation in motion. I sent my terror into the future, trying it on.
This weekend wasn't an escape. My worries nagged me as I painted my face in a department store, danced in the waning sunlight beneath a ferris wheel, took the recommendations of a stranger while unaware of his attempts at charm, eyed pregnant prom queens having dinner in a food court with their friends in pink mullet dresses, watched four pixelated men stumble about with tinny voices, slathered colors onto my nails, and made pancakes for the first time in a kitchen overflowing with pots.
Here I am wishing for a safety net or a peek down the two paths before me. But when has this been anything but go big or go home, all or nothing?
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