Death is just leaving a place
Death is just leaving a place. And we’ve all left so many places in our lives. Travelling from one to the next, loving who we will and hating those we can. I remember leaving the first place I worked at, the love that poured from my colleagues’ hearts. I’d made an impact, and people genuinely liked me. It was a revolutionary moment for me. It’s no wonder that I went back a few months later (on invitation) to see everyone again, the young and the old, those I loved and the people who’d made transphobic comments around me in passing. I passed from room to room, greeting everyone I saw. Some of the children noticed me, recognised me, came to hug me. “To feel myself beloved upon the earth”. Many didn’t, expectedly so. Children don’t notice when people leave, and memories fade like bruises. After I had received the allotted hugs from colleagues and kids, I faded too. I was still there, watching, listening, just a bruise on the world for that moment, the people who knew each other so well wishing each other a Very Merry Christmas while I snuck off in silence.
Death is just leaving a place. But leaving home to go to university made me feel like I was living for the first time in as long as I could remember. There was so much I was leaving behind, and no one mourned me. I didn’t mourn them either, as they passed from me like bruises. Leaving a place is such a very freeing thing, with no security and infinite possibilities. At least, it certainly felt that way, at points. But I’ve been here a few months and I want to leave now. I’m tired, there’s nothing here for me anymore. There’s no reason for me to be here, so I feel the need to leave. After all, leaving a place is just death, and we’ve all experienced death in our lives. I wonder if when I leave here I will be mourned for long. Or if I will be mourned, and then fade like friendly laughter overheard through a wall.
Perhaps the only difference between death and leaving a place is that leaving implies going somewhere. There’s always a next location, and the inevitable returning that comes with leaving has started to become unthinkable to me. Death doesn’t force you to go back, or to witness how people stop mourning. I will leave this place and find the only place I was ever meant for — a no-place, where I am as free as I could ever be, with far more security than leaving tends to bring. As I leave through the great dark cave, my footsteps echo.