On Why I'm Going, and Where.
I’ve got ten minutes on the clock. I set a timer because I need to get out of the office and on the road, yet feel compelled to tell you about why I’m going before I leave.
The where doesn’t really matter, but it’s Las Vegas, and it does matter. Mostly because my relationship with Vegas is complicated.
It was a place I once went when I needed to get out of town, but couldn’t really afford to get away. It was a place I went to forget. It was a place I lost $20K in two days when I wasn’t old enough to gamble, and liked to play with money that wasn’t mine, a place entire weekends disappeared in a matter of drinks. A place I met one of the guys from Kool And The Gang in a pawnshop and was less worried about where I would sleep that night. A place where I would once be pass out in a hotel room while my friend stole my money, my drugs, and abandoned me to make my own way and I soon found myself kicked out onto the streets in the rain, having been checked into my hotel under a fake ID. The police were merciful. I was barely 20.
By the time I turned 21, I didn’t want anything to do with Vegas anymore, and that was before my brother died in a car accident, thrown from the vehicle on the long, unforgiving, empty road that stretches itself between the lights and the ocean.
In about 30 minutes, I will leave the office and get in my car. I will face that road alone, trying not to stare too hard and lose myself as I pass that particular place. I will avoid the lights, the sounds, the everything people love about Las Vegas that soured for me long before I had any business being there. It’s not the why I used to go that’s important, it’s the why I’m going.
I’m going to see my Uncle. It feels like I should say “meet” my uncle since I haven’t seen him since I was 7. He was my mother’s only brother and didn’t even come to her funeral when I was 13. I don’t know why. I’ve been waiting years to talk to him and thought it would never happen until one day last April when he found me online. He is simultaneous family and stranger. I still hold the love for him I had as a little girl, and intend to ask him all the things I’ve been waiting to all of these years.
I will try to say:
Where did you go?
What was she like?
Am I like her?
I will try not to say “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”
*Mark is flying in to meet me tonight. We are staying with my stepfather. I still call him that even though my mother has been gone for so long. I’m excited to introduce them. It’s the closest I will ever come to being able to introduce him to my mom.
Please pardon my ineloquence; there is no time for editing. Like I said, 10 minutes on the clock.
