So I said I was going to start updating the blog more and I went out and took a month hiatus. Even more disturbing is that nobody seemed to notice. Oh well.
So what have I been up to the last month? If you don’t know then you aren’t up to date! I moved back to Georgia (yay) and now I’m living with my parents again (boo). I turned twenty-five which makes the whole living with mom and dad thing about three hundred times worse, but it is shelter and they are good parents so I don’t suppose I have too much room to complain.
Florence was a great place for the last three years. For the first time in my life I was able to live in a place where I felt like I actually belonged. Until of course I didn’t anymore.
The times change and people change with them and our “homes” can change in the process. I started feeling that Alabama was wearing thin on me and I’m sure there were plenty of people in The Shoals who were ready to see my leave. So we had our drinks, told our (mostly dirty) jokes, and said our goodbyes.
Thomas Wolfe wrote this really amazing novel that was published after he died called “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I’d have to say I agree with him. Home changes and the people who were there change. When I left Douglasville, Georgia in August of 2008 I was dating a girl I was about 30% sure I was going to marry (that’s a lot for me) and moving to a town in north-west Alabama that I had never been to in my life. Suffice it to say I’m different.
I’ve grown. And I do mean physically. If you knew me in those days I was still relatively thin. These days with my super distorted self image I view myself as the size of a house. And all my hair is falling out so there is no doubt that I have aged something opposite of gracefully.
But I have grown spiritually, emotionally, and mentally as well. The things that once bothered me don’t anymore and the things I once enjoyed spending money on seem frivolous these days. I still have to ask myself the same questions every day and I do get largely the same answers but now my reasoning behind why I feel the way I do is so much deeper. And I have so many great friends to thank for all of that.
So here I am. Back at “home,” whatever that is. My parents are older and not used to have people in the house. I’m older and not used to having to live with other people. The neighborhood has changed. People have come and gone and even those that stay aren’t the same people they were back in the summer of 2008. A POS economy will have that effect. So really I haven’t come back home at all. The world is different and the people I love and care about are different. Some of them are dead. Some of the ones I used to love are out of my life. And some of the people I love now weren’t in it back then. So I look forward to this next chapter in life and I don’t see it as a step backwards or laterally but rather as one moving forward. Because places and people change and life moves on. The sun rises and sets and our world spins and babies are born and people die. The only constants are death. And taxes. And me rambling.
“You Can’t Go Home Again" is one of my all time favorite books. Often, when thinking about living in Clay County again...thinking of how wonderful it would all be... I hear that line whispering itself in my ear and I remember the book and I remember that I cannot go home again. Mostly because it is no longer there and of course my memories are a tad bit distorted. It was not really that great. What made it great was family and my family is all over the place now.
ReplyDeleteSomething you pointed out on F/B about the holiday is that you enjoyed most the time with family. True dat (yes, I heard that line in an old movie and use it too often now)Family is home.