This old town's too small for you now, baby girl.

When I travel back to my parent’s house, it is no longer like time travel. The Metro North upstate is no longer a Dolorean ride. Instead, it is train tracks across towns that pass my window in a lulling blur. It is two hours of escape, when my mind empties into the pages of Chronic City, and the children in the seat to my right speculate what Santa will bring them this year.

My old bedroom is a museum. There are snowglobes that you can shake and watch flakes of white cover Jack Skellington’s bones. My old bedroom is bones. The photos in heart shaped frames are Technicolor movie stills. I stare at the narrative on the storyboard and say:

“That scene was before the car crash. She was beautiful, but too skinny, too scared.”

“That scene was when she was engaged to be married. Her eyes looked like puppies first discovering snow. Without understanding that it falls from the clouds.”

The tension that used to travel through the floorboards of our home is replaced by warmth and balance. My mother whispers family secrets as she cooks me a vegetable dish in a separate pan, ignoring my protests that salad is fine. I speak of oysters and strangers, parties with martinis, and words that get lost in translation between French and English. She tells me that I’m living better than her and dances with my father in the living room.

I tell them that I will never get married unless I find my George Bailey. That all I really want is for a man to knock the phone from my hands, shake me until I cry and say that he doesn’t want any plastics or ground floors. My parents laugh and we all wash the dishes and sing Christmas Carols out of tune.

I can hear my brother upstairs, speaking to an invisible human. It hurts that I don’t understand. But there’s also acceptance. I spent my childhood understanding that my brother was autistic, that he was different and I loved him. Now, he is also schizophrenic and autistic, and he is different and I love him. He thinks that people are out to get him, invisible people with real names. I tell him that no one is out to get him and that we all love him, us and the invisible people and everyone. Then I escape to my museum room and watch a A Christmas Carol before I get sad. I end up feeling surprised by how calmly the blood flows under my skin.

The day after Christmas, I sleep until I wake and dress in a daze, unsure of where I am. I drive to the shopping mall where I worked in high school. I do this for the purpose of listening to radio in the rain and fulfilling my annual tradition of buying my New Year’s gown. It used to feel like a "fuck you" to the past. Now it's just tradition and a dress to spill champagne on.

 In front of the Macy’s mirror, I remember how insecure I once felt. I pick the dress that hugs the small of my stomach, giving way too hips. “A Joan Halloway dress.” I'm walking on clouds.

In the food court, the clouds start to evaporate around me as I wait on line to pay for a Diet Coke. I feel eyes brush my skin from all directions and realize that I do not fit into this frame. My body feels photoshopped into the crowd of teenagers in Abercrombie,  mall workers and overweight moms with strollers. The man at the deli counter is the same man who used to make my coffee before I clocked into work at the bookstore. He doesn’t recognize me at all. Instead, he tells me I must not be from around here. “You look like you’re from those old movies,” he says. I put a tip in his jar for the compliment, but the words make my stomach feel strange.

Walking towards the exit, I pass by familiar faces I don’t wish to speak to. I don’t want to hear bad news that I’m already aware of. Don’t want to say the words “full time job” or be the visualization of someone else’s dream.

My old manager from the Toy Store, the one that got fired for being mean, passes me on the escaltor, frowning. He is wearing a Brookstone uniform and nametag, 100 lbs more overweight than he was 6 years ago.

 I think of saying hi to him, or even buying him lunch. But he would know that he was mean to me, and he would know that I only felt bad for him, and he would hate me.  I keep walking and feel guilty. The guilt forms static on my skin as I button my coat. Guilt for escaping without baggage. Guilt for being alone and having keys on my keychain. Guilt for standing at the beginning of the road, so very far from the end. Guilt for everything that makes me who I am.

I drink my Diet Coke in the car as the rain drops dance to the radio.

I want to be the lion. Everybody wants to pass as cats. We all want to be big, big stars, but we got different reasons for that.

 Believe in me. Cause I don’t believe in anything. And I want to be someone to believe.