“We’d like to welcome you to San Antonio, if that’s your final destination” the flight attendant intones as the plane taxis on the runway, seeking a berth. Final destination, you think, as in for the rest of my life?  You shudder. San Antonio is not your favorite city by a long shot. It reminds you of parts of your hometown Albuquerque: it’s very very flat, it’s the color of concrete and adobe and not much else, it’s largely conservative (on your last trip, your pale pink shirt made headlines for weeks after your visit), it’s only navigable by car, it’s a military city. This city is like the anti-Portland, and yet it has some of your favorite humans in it. One of them, your mom, texts you now: “Do you have any baggage with you?” “Only the baggage in my heart!” you cheerfully reply and wait. She does not reply. You then text, “No, just my carry on” and head to the arrivals curb.

Your niece is there too, and holy crap she is 18 now. How do I have a niece that is 18? you wonder as she makes room and clambers into the back seat. Uh oh: your mom is driving. “Awww!” she exclaims, “You look so great, sweetie!” she barely pauses: “…except for that haircut,” The two of you exchange an awkward front-seat-of-the-car hug and she zooms off. Well, not zooms exactly, the car putters off slowly. Maybe it’s actually in neutral and the earth is just rotating slowly beneath it. “You know mom, these automatic cars can go faster than 30 miles per hour now.” She shoots you a look and creeps slowly onto the freeway, the other cars passing in fast forward as if you’re in a Koyaanisqatsi time lapse.

There is something about cities where you have to travel so far to get anywhere only by freeway, that makes you automatically suspicious. You got rid of your car two, maybe three years ago, and it was wildly liberating: you ride your bike to work two seasons out of the year, you have a monthly pass in the winter with Portland’s impressive transit system. You have OPINIONS about this, you sneer in your superior knowledge that cities work better without being clogged by freeways. You realize on about the third day in San Antonio that you haven’t seen a single cyclist on the road. They were perhaps all run down by motorists in large trucks that have Trump bumper stickers and truknuts? Maybe you’re projecting too much. Anyway, San Antonio is a trash city.

Later that night, you and your mom and your niece all pile onto the bed and she catches the two elders up on this season of RuPaul’s Drag Race which you haven’t had time to watch. It’s a particularly modern Normal Rockwell pastiche. You get the couch ready for bed and it is spectacularly lumpy. Luckily you are still Xanaxing from the plane ride (LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY AIRPLANE ANXIETY) and you pass out to your mom calling out from her bedroom, “Your cousin Philip’s little boy is so handsome! When are you going to give me a grandkid? His little boy won third place in the science fair!” It’s like a familiar lullaby and you pass out shortly after, a smile on your face. You may not have grown up here, but you are definitely home.

The next morning you wake up to Chris’ “good morning” text. This is the best, by the way. It’s hard enough dating someone 2,400 miles away, but the time difference leads to a lot of missed connections. If the “goodnight” text is the reminder that you’re someone’s last thought of the day, that someone is reminding you that they’re in bed alone and thinking of only you, then the good morning text is their sendoff for your day, their hand on the small of your back, it’s the lunch they packed for you, it’s the towel they warmed in the dryer for you while you were in the shower. Although the plans fell through for a February trip, the two of you have requested time off together for a March trip. Dating someone long distance is sometimes like being alone on a ship at sea, scanning a horizon for the next island paradise.

You go to Austin for a half day with your sister, come back and your mom is napping. She is basically Nap Goals to you: you are such a light sleeper, you never sleep as well as you do in a hotel with blackout curtains. The story of The Princess and the Pea? You’re the princess. While your mom naps, you raid the fridge: yay there are tortillas! There are flour tortillas and then you see the corn tortillas and throw them in the trash because those are not real tortillas. There are 18 containers of half consumed spreadable butter. There are three containers of eggs in styrofoam containers. There are deli meats and cheeses opened not at their resealable openings but instead cut open on the side (to be fair, this is very likely the work of my niece and nephew who are literal MONSTERS). You are staring at the choices and then your gaze is pulled to the left, on the counter, and that is when you see it. You call out “Hey mom! The cooked bacon was left out overnight, I’ll throw it away!” “No”, comes the groggy response from the other room, “It’s still okay.”

“Mom. It’s room temperature meat.”

“It’s still good.”

“Mom, no.”

“It’s cooked bacon. It’s. Fine.”

You look at the ziploc full of cooked bacon, back at the fridge, back at the bacon. You pick up the bacon, put it slooowwwly into the fridge, close the fridge gingerly. Later, you go to Wal-Mart to get an air mattress: you cannot spend another night on the couch voted San Antonio’s Lumpiest Couch 2016, 2017, 2018.

The text from Chris comes that night as you’re tucking in for bed: “Let’s talk in the next few days.” Your heart sinks. This again, you think. I know what this means. You are being let go, this person has decided they cannot have you in their life anymore. It’s a delicate cruel epiphany when someone decides that being alone is better than missing you from a distance, when your love that once fueled their poetry and their muttered grunts of affection in bed now sours, you’ve poured sugar in their gas tank. You wonder what it is in you that makes you so compatible for long distance romances, is it your trust? Your loyalty? Is it the loneliness you feel when you are alone, than thin yellow chalkline of anxiety you follow with your hand?

“Let’s talk tomorrow” you message Chris, then gently put your phone down, sit silently and wait for the emotions to come over you. You wait a long time in the dark, you do not let yourself sleep, you are afraid if they don’t come tonight they may never come, you are scared you may not be able to feel anything anymore if you don’t cry this night. You hold space to honor the love the two of you had, and finally, finally it comes. I’m getting too old to be disappointed this way, you think. This is how the night finally dies, with your mother’s 44 year old son crying over a three month relationship on an air mattress in the middle of the Lone Star State.

You talk to Chris the next day with a clear head and loving heart, and it is as you suspected: the distance is killing him. He tried his best to make it work; it was new for him and he thought the intensity of the times the two of you were together would make up for the deserts in between. This man, this brave man tried to love you the best he could from 2,400 miles away and he succeeded for a time. For the first time in awhile your heart stirred, it shook off the dust and gave a few rusty beats. Chris had such a beautiful soul and was so so kind, and as much as it hurts you to let him go, as much as you want to fight for him, it is harder to see him hurting. What’s worse, he wants to stay friends while you are grieving; you have been on this earth long enough to know that’s a road to more heartache. You say goodbye for now with the hope the two of you can be in each others’ lives again soon.

A few days later the plane back to Portland takes off, clears the city. Your mom cried when you said goodbye at the curb; I guess you did too. You look outside the window as the plane rises higher and higher, you whisper prayers to keep Chris safe and for him to find lasting love, the plane clears the cloud layer, you miss your sister, your mom, your niece and nephew already. Still the plane goes higher, the sky turning bright, then darker as stars appear. You hear clicks: passengers are unlocking their seatbelts, they float up into the cabin laughing, weightless as the plane goes higher and higher. The moon slowly passes by the window, bright and huge, as you unlock your own seatbelt too, you start laughing as you float up, you cannot stop laughing.