Horseface Steve: Cog

Cog:  An unimportant individual in a greater system.

I'm trying to settle into a new town.  This is my 7th so it isn't like I've never done this before but it's still a challenge.

One thing I have learned is that you live somewhere or you don't.  Once you're gone, you . . . are . . . gone.  I'm definitely a visitor here even though I've only been gone a month.  I should have known this was going to happen.  I always think that relationships won't change but they always do.  It's different when you don't see someone on a regular basis.  I was a cog in a big piece of machinery and I was taken out and put in another big piece of machinery.  The machine here readjusted and is running fine without me. 

I don't mean to suggest that I'm no longer welcome or loved, just that I'm no longer part of the scene.  I can't pretend that I am.  It's a new machine now.  Part of me thought that the world would stop and realign itself to my schedule.  Part of me thought that.

Silly, silly man, but consistent.  I have always believed that I'm the center of the universe and I think that I always will.

I'm going to ship home the car I left behind and fill the trunk full of all the clothes and trinkets and geegaws that didn't make it on the big moving truck.  I thought that I was going to stock the larder here so to speak, have a little auxiliary life that I could pick up and put on whenever I wanted; a new identity or an alternate reality.  I guess I'll bring what I need in a suitcase when I come back, like any visitor.

I have been telling people I don't know that I'm from the new place, pretending I don't know the old place.  I feel like I'm trying on a new personality.