when the fair is over
on knowing when it's time to leave
tl;dr: sometimes we linger in places we've outgrown, scared of what comes next. we stay at the fair long after the lights dim. we've all been there - clutching fistfuls of expired ride tickets, pretending the ferris wheel isn't rusted shut, telling ourselves this carnival still has some magic leftβ¦
hola mis bellezas,
if there's anything i can tell you that i am now is that i am a leaver.
it took years, it took so much - therapy sessions unpacking my fear of abandonment, nights spent staring at packed boxes wondering if i was making a mistake, relationships that died slow deaths while i convinced myself they were just sleeping.
i've learned that staying isn't always loyalty; sometimes it's surrender. staying can be fear dressed up in a fur coat as hope.
i left a political party, career paths, three cities, situationships, and even some real relationships that nearly left me bereft and broken. every time though, it got a little easier. but itβs like sara bareilles sings in βbottle it upβ - βskin has gotten thicker / but it burns the sameβ.
i think that now i recognize the signs earlier. you know, that moment the lights start to dim and the music begins to fade. the moment that the proverbial cotton candy turns stale on my tongue. maybe itβs hypervigilance. maybe itβs my instinct. but iβll leave before the carnival becomes a ghost town.
i was probably seven when i went to my first fair in puerto rico. las fiestas patronales transformed the little town of moca into something ethereal. think of them as a form of a county fair, where the best of a county (in this case a municipio) meets to party and drown in joy. my grandfather - a musician who plays these festivals with his trio los cancioneros - would lead me through crowds that smelled of coquito and fried food. he'd point out the piragΓΌeros with their rainbow-colored syrups, the old men playing dominoes under string lights, the balloon vendors whose wares looked like confused stars caught in nets.
"mira, edgard," he'd say, gesturing at the whirling rides, the squealing children, the lovers sharing cotton candy, the people dressed in vejigante masks. it was magical. itβs still magical to me.
but what sticks with me most isn't the height of the festivities - it's the ending of it.
the way the lights flicker out one by one, like stars giving up. the mechanical whir of rides powering down. vendors packing up their stalls, counting their coins as their faces tire beneath the remaining bulbs.
i never wanted to leave. turns outβ¦ that's a pattern iβd find very hard to break.
thirty years later, i still struggle with endings, even if iβve become a leaver, a detacher.
i stayed in the republican party long after my values diverged from theirs.
i lingered in dc years after the city stopped feeling like home.
iβve tried twice with some of my past relationships, hoping the second time would rewrite the ending of the first.
we humans are creatures of habit, even when those habits hurt us. we build fortresses of familiarity and then call them safety. we mistake comfort for happiness. we contort and rationalize and convince ourselves that good enough is enough.
in washington, dc, i spent seven years building a life with someone. we shared everything: an apartment and the common dreams that stretched into someday. but somewhere, the lights started dimming. the music grew fainter. i noticed it in small moments - the silence over dinner becoming louder than any argument, the separate weekend plans that felt like relief, the way "i love you" started sounding like something we'd rehearsed too many times.
still, i stayed. one more ride. one more game. one more chance to win back what we'd lost.
my apartment in dc grew smaller each year, like alice after drinking the shrinking potion. the walls absorbed our arguments, our silences, our resigned acceptance of mediocrity. i knew every crack in the sidewalk between my front door and the crystal city metro.
it was fine until it wasn't.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
the worst part about staying too long isn't just the big things - the relationships, the cities, the careers that no longer fit. it's the small heartbreaks too. those situationships where someone figures out exactly how many breadcrumbs to drop to keep you coming back. they text just enough to maintain interest, show just enough vulnerability to give you hope, offer just enough warmth to keep you from freezing completely.
july 2021: my dad and i drove a u-haul from dc to grand rapids, michigan overnight. my things - eight years of accumulated life, hopes, disappointments - rattled in the back like loose teeth. my dad didn't ask questions, just kept driving through the dark, stopping only for coffee and gas. i was a mess.
somewhere in ohio, around 3am, i broke down crying at a rest stop. not the pretty kind of crying - the ugly, snotty, gasping-for-air kind that makes strangers avoid eye contact. my dad just stood there, keys jingling in his pocket, waiting it out.
i wasn't just leaving a relationship. i wasn't just leaving dc. i was leaving a version of myself - the one who settled for less, who confused longevity with love, who thought staying was the same as belonging. the one who'd spent years perfecting the art of making himself smaller to fit into spaces that were never meant to hold him. san diego wasn't just a new city for me. it was the permission i needed to stop waiting for the fair to get better.
last night, a someone i'd been seeing casually sent the equivalent of an 11pm "you up?" text. it was a dirty meme, hinting at their desire. you have no idea how much i love that - yes, tell me you want me. at any time of the day. it strokes my ego. it really does a number on me⦠but i know better. once upon a time, i'd have read depth into that shallow pool. i would have spun elaborate fantasies about what they really meant, convinced myself that late-night breadcrumbs could somehow add up to a feast. instead, i turned my phone off and fell asleep. i felt real peace.
maybe that's the real growth - not just learning when to leave the fair, but recognizing when something isn't even a fair to begin with. when it's just an empty lot with twinkle lights, promising magic it never intends to deliver. when the house of mirrors shows you exactly who someone is but you keep looking for a better reflection.
i played that streisand song again today, sitting on in my room. i looked out the window to see the sun painting the sky in shades of pink and orange. a hummingbird hovered near, paused, then darted away - knowing instinctively when to move on. the neighbor's wind chimes sang in the breeze.
this time, the song felt different. not like a question, but an answer.
if you're sitting somewhere right now, clutching expired ride tickets and calling them possibilities - maybe this is your sign.
if you're telling yourself the carnival isn't over while standing in an empty lot - maybe it's time to trust that voice inside you. the one that whispers: the fair is over.
it's okay to go home. or better yet - it's okay to find a new home altogether.
hasta la prΓ³xima, mis amores! π
edgardβπ½π
p.s. what's the longest you've stayed at a fair that was clearly closing? drop it in the comments - your story might help someone else find their way to the exit. πͺ
It was the moving-uhaul-breakdown mid-trip that had me in a chokehold. This was truly everything.
This was eerily right on time