They say you can never go back home. I think that was before cars, though.
Yeah, I'm a smartass. The point of that saying, of course, is that you'll have changed so much in the time that you were gone, that home would have transformed into "Home" through homesickness and personal growth. You change so much being away, that your home doesn't affect you the same. Being gone, you think about your home and compare your new place to it, which magnifies and intensifies your memory-experience of home into Home.
Example: nothin tastes like mama's barbecue. You grew up on it; it became your framework for all barbecue you've ever tasted. Then you move from home. You get homesick, so you start eating (it'll happen), and you eat specifically things that remind you of home: barbecue. But none are mama's recipe, so none satisfy your homesickness. Nonetheless, you keep searching for something to scratch that itch. Over time, you've tasted all your new area has to offer for barbecue. Because of this, you become a connoisseur of all things barbecue. None taste like mama's barbecue, but merely because you're searching so hard for that specific flavor, you learn all about the subtleties of each and every barbecue you sample. There are traits you find in each sauce you experience, traits which you learn to love. So you get along, day after day, loving the life you made. Until one day, you go home. And of course, your first time Home, you get mama's barbecue. You expect it to be everything you were searching for all those years. But you find that its just not the same as you remembered.
You grew:
Your search for mama's barbecue over the years has transformed it into the ideal Mama's Barbecue. It became this mysterious and perfect thing that beat all competition so long as it never entered the ring (your memory of it overwhelmed all other barbecue sauces and rubs, so to speak). So when you get home, and actually have it again, it's not the thing you built it up to be. And because of that, it fails, and you're left with a haunting memory to reconcile with reality.
Now that hasn't been my own experience so far with my return home (for the most part). I remembered it and lived where I was for the past two years without comparing too much, apparently. On returning, it was as if I had traveled back in time to where I was two years ago, with nothing different except that I lost a few years of my own life. And that's kinda horrifying.
Kinda really horrifying.
The idea that two years can go by and nothing has to change scares me. I'm not entirely sure why, though. Perhaps it's the implication that I, therefor, have not changed much over my absence. But I have plenty of evidence to the contrary, so I don't think so. It's more that it indicates how short life is, and how you can sleep through it all, if you just have your eyes closed long enough. And my fear, I suppose, comes from who I grew into while I was away. I liked that guy, and I'm afraid that I'll lose him, being away from that place and in this old one. That act would therefor wipe out two years' time of my own life, and I will have accomplished nothing but accumulating Stuff and wasting a chunk of my own life.
Now that is something worth fearing. Every year matters when you're approaching thirty.
Don't waste your life: click the ads and know that you accomplished something!
Yeah, I'm a smartass. The point of that saying, of course, is that you'll have changed so much in the time that you were gone, that home would have transformed into "Home" through homesickness and personal growth. You change so much being away, that your home doesn't affect you the same. Being gone, you think about your home and compare your new place to it, which magnifies and intensifies your memory-experience of home into Home.
Example: nothin tastes like mama's barbecue. You grew up on it; it became your framework for all barbecue you've ever tasted. Then you move from home. You get homesick, so you start eating (it'll happen), and you eat specifically things that remind you of home: barbecue. But none are mama's recipe, so none satisfy your homesickness. Nonetheless, you keep searching for something to scratch that itch. Over time, you've tasted all your new area has to offer for barbecue. Because of this, you become a connoisseur of all things barbecue. None taste like mama's barbecue, but merely because you're searching so hard for that specific flavor, you learn all about the subtleties of each and every barbecue you sample. There are traits you find in each sauce you experience, traits which you learn to love. So you get along, day after day, loving the life you made. Until one day, you go home. And of course, your first time Home, you get mama's barbecue. You expect it to be everything you were searching for all those years. But you find that its just not the same as you remembered.
You grew:
Your search for mama's barbecue over the years has transformed it into the ideal Mama's Barbecue. It became this mysterious and perfect thing that beat all competition so long as it never entered the ring (your memory of it overwhelmed all other barbecue sauces and rubs, so to speak). So when you get home, and actually have it again, it's not the thing you built it up to be. And because of that, it fails, and you're left with a haunting memory to reconcile with reality.
Now that hasn't been my own experience so far with my return home (for the most part). I remembered it and lived where I was for the past two years without comparing too much, apparently. On returning, it was as if I had traveled back in time to where I was two years ago, with nothing different except that I lost a few years of my own life. And that's kinda horrifying.
Kinda really horrifying.
The idea that two years can go by and nothing has to change scares me. I'm not entirely sure why, though. Perhaps it's the implication that I, therefor, have not changed much over my absence. But I have plenty of evidence to the contrary, so I don't think so. It's more that it indicates how short life is, and how you can sleep through it all, if you just have your eyes closed long enough. And my fear, I suppose, comes from who I grew into while I was away. I liked that guy, and I'm afraid that I'll lose him, being away from that place and in this old one. That act would therefor wipe out two years' time of my own life, and I will have accomplished nothing but accumulating Stuff and wasting a chunk of my own life.
Now that is something worth fearing. Every year matters when you're approaching thirty.
Don't waste your life: click the ads and know that you accomplished something!
