| duvet | jimi hendex |
[25 Jul 2020|09:04pm] |
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[22 Jul 2020|11:17am] |
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OOC / SCENE REQUESTS / ETC
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[15 Nov 2019|11:13pm] |
I went back home not long ago as I do every year. Participating in the apple harvest with my family has been and always will be important to me. Something this year was different though. For the first time, I felt like I didn't belong there. More and more I realize that I'm not actively part of my family's life, nor my old friends' lives, and no longer am I just missing out, I'm not picking up subtle references to their personal histories. I don't know who this person is anymore, I don't know why so-and-so broke up with such-and-such, I don't know who has had kids and gotten married and who has divorced and had deaths in the family. My old friends were still stuck in their ways thus I found them more annoying than anything else, the people I used to dislike were now somewhat more agreeable, and all of my surroundings seemed unfamiliar in that long lost, prodigal son sort of way.
Then I realize it's me and not them. I've changed. I'm the one who has left the community in search of something else while they've found all that they could ever want and need right where they grew up. And more than ever I realize that I still have not even come close to what I've been looking for. More than ever, I see that I don't really have that comfortable retreat to call home, so lately when people ask where I'm from, I'm tempted to just respond with, nowhere. I've lost my Boston accent, I've been engaged, I've been pressured to get married, I don't deliver pizza anymore, I don't perform on street corners anymore, I've withdrawn into myself and haven't been making as many connections as I used to. I've been almost everywhere in between life and death, continentally east and west, so what's left?
2011 passed in the blink of an eye. At least it feels that way to me. Earlier last year, I hung around New England, sort of floating around among New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston thinking I was on the route to finding out what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go in life, and all that self-awareness jazz. And then it happened. People happened. People always happen. But this people happening derailed me. Instead of leaving the east coast with my usual prior bouts of confidence that I could achieve anything, it felt like I drove back to California with my tail between my legs. Like I was going back to some place I had left before in effort to try regaining whatever it was that I had lost. And recently I realized I hadn't lost anything at all. I just had a quarter-life crisis. I'm twenty-five this year. I've been on the road for seven years. Seven years without a solid home, seven years of wandering from place to place barely staying anywhere for more than a year long stretch. But after tallying up all the places I've been, I've lived in California the most. In continuous stretches and in returning. I feel like I'm just drawn back to it. When I was elsewhere, I'd hear a mention of California, see a photograph, and be caught aback by a heart-wrenching twinge of nostalgia. It's true what some people say: you live in California enough and it becomes some sort of drug itself. Once you leave it, you'll always want to come back.
And so I'm back. I've made it a sort of new year's resolution thing to be here. I'm tired of being derailed. I'm tired of hiding myself away because I feel inadequate for the world in whatever way. Life is always moving, like a speeding train on a trans-universal railroad across galaxies. It's time for me to make that leap again, like Coco, Cheryl, and I did three summers ago.
I got a new tattoo this week on my outer forearm. It's something I've been repeating to myself since this summer and I think it will always be relevant to my life. My witness is the empty sky.
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