It takes me thirteen days, a ten-hour bus ride, and one long, soft goodbye to finally make it out of Nashville alive.
Is this seat free? a strange man's voice asks me as the bus pulls off. No, it's definitely not, I say, without looking up.
Where is Macy when I need her? Sit down next to me, Macy, let's have a drink. I feel kind of empty, somehow. I know I should have stayed. But the movie isn't over and I need to reach Louisiana before my character dies. You understand me, right?
Right.
Is it harder to leave somebody, Macy, or is it harder to be the one left behind?
But when I look round she's gone again. I think she gets irritated when I ask her really stupid questions like that.
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I'd go for harder to be left behind Annie.
ReplyDeleteHard choice though...But there's always a sequel...
Much worse the one being left behind.
ReplyDeleteI want to believe that Macy is Macy Grey, and that you are travelling about having imaginary conversations with a very tall gravelly-voiced black woman.
ReplyDeleteactually she does exist in the form of a chicago bartender only i've got a feeling i named her after a department store by mistake
ReplyDeleteI read that post with Macy Grey singing 'I try to say goodbye and I choke' in my head. Sort of fitting really!
ReplyDeleteYep, definitely harder to be the one left behind. After all, the other person has the choice in the situation, the one left just has to accept it.
ReplyDeleteI also it's harder for the one left behind. Despite the sorrow one might feel for leaving someone dear to one's heart, there is something, new adventures to look forward to at least. The other is going to just keep doing what they have been doing the last however long.
ReplyDeleteI think it's harder to be the one that leaves. But then again I've never been the one left behind.
ReplyDeleteI still wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in Nice with my australian surfer boy in 1998, I still wonder what would have happened if I would have stayed on in Nashville a few years later.
The one that stays behind knows how sweet it could have been. The one that leaves only has the certainty that he can never return to things the way they were.
It is harder to be the one left behind. Unnur, you are an alien.
ReplyDeletemmm, i did that once, left a traveling companion after a falling out to go home. Took a bus from Toronto all the way to New Orleans where my plane ticket was from. Ended up sitting beside a man who was filthy and stunk of BO whom I judged until I started speaking to him and discovered the airline had lost his baggage, his construction company worked him all day and then put him on a bus home to get new clothes.
ReplyDeleteah the american greyhound, terrible buses, actually worse than irish ones! :)
I'm not an alien. I'm just from the countryside!
ReplyDeleteIt's easier to leave than to be left behind (R.E.M., Leaving New York).
ReplyDelete