Home Again

Tomorrow I am going home to Michigan for a long weekend. I have mixed feelings about this. In fact, I am feeling rather like I did last September, when I wrote this post about feeling homesick. I don't know what it is exactly to feel homesick - it is something I imagine - I imagine what it must feel like to have a place that evokes a feeling of comfort unlike any other. I don't actually have such a place. It exists only in my imagination.

It is really with a pretty deep sense of sadness that I go to this place called "home" tomorrow. I haven't been there in three months - it was something that sounded like a good idea when I planned it. It sounded like a good idea in the same way that picking up the telephone and calling my mother sometimes sounds like a good idea - because you have this moment of so desperately wanting the person who picks up the phone to be someone other than they are - that for a second, you fool yourself into thinking maybe just maybe, maybe just this one time, she will be who you want her to be. Maybe just once going home will be what I imagine going home is supposed to be. I am disappointed before I get there.

Much of what exits there, which isn't much, I would prefer to leave behind. The memories, most of the people, most of the experiences. Most of it I would like to forget. There are days when I appreciate my story for just exactly what it is - just a story, with a lot of parts - just a story, not good or bad, just a fact. But there are moments when I so desperately wish my story were something other than it is. There are moments when I would trade in my strength, resiliency, independence - all of the things that I am, for another story, a happy story. I think of home as a place where there was a lot of lying, a lot of pretending, a lot of trying to live up to other peoples' real and imagined expectations, and consistently failing, among other things. My trips home feel like they are all about pretending. Pretending to be something other than I am - to be accepted and to be loved. Only sometimes do I ever have the thought that I would rather not be loved than be who you want me to be.

For some reason going home this time doesn't feel the same as it has in the past though. I have no illusions about it, hence the sadness I guess because I have given up the hope of ever having different memories. Even when it is painful, the memories, the experiences, it is sometimes, just briefly, more painful when you let go of them. I feel much more myself these days - something I never felt I was when I was in that town, ever. I don't really know how to go there and be me. I feel like I am going home as a different person this time. I can't explain how, I just know it isn't the same and it won't be the same experience. Some of the hope is lost, and with it, some of the possibilities. I don't feel like pretending and the only thing I know about not pretending, about being honest, about being true to who you are - is that pain follows.

I don't think I've ever felt such sadness before going home, such a feeling of loss, such an intense need for that feeling of comfort that I have only ever been able to imagine.