How is it that going home can be both exhilarating and
excruciating at the same time?
The old friends, the old hangouts, the old memories
– after being away, time magically takes what used to be mundane
and injects it with a refreshing sense of promise.
At least for a little while.
How is it that going home can be both exhilarating and excruciating at the same time?
The old friends, the old hangouts, the old memories – after being away, time magically takes what used to be mundane and injects it with a refreshing sense of promise.
At least for a little while.
After a day or two you remember why you left in the first place and realize that no matter how much changes in your life, when you go home, nothing has really changed at all.
I hail from the little town of Chico with the big reputation of being known for its party scene.
Since I moved to Hollister, I have been having a rough time transitioning from a life that revolved around long nights and 50 cent drinks, to long days and 50 cent-sized circles under my eyes from work-related stress and lack of sleep.
So to combat the grown-up blues I got in my car and zipped up to Chico for a long weekend of carousing, dancing on bar tops and just a little hell-raising.
The surprising thing about the trip was that by the time Sunday rolled around I was just as ready to leave as I was to get there.
On the way back to Hollister, feeling tired and still slightly queasy from a little too much of just about everything, I had four very long hours to ponder why it is that I feel such a need to revisit my past when for so long I couldn’t wait to get away from it.
When I graduated and left home I couldn’t drive fast enough to get out of that town. It was boring, it was tired, it was the same thing day after day and I was finished with it.
I’ve been gone for almost a year, and while the changes that have occurred in my life in that short time have been monumental, it seems like those changes become obsolete when I’m a couple hundred miles away from my life here.
The aesthetic differences I notice when I go home are immediately apparent, but a new restaurant or shop has an old memory attached to it somewhere in the mix that catapults me into my past.
While driving around town I could still see myself sitting shotgun in my Dad’s little 240Z on my way to grammar school – knobby knees pulled up tight in the baby-blue bucket seat to ward off the chill on a frosty morning.
The car was old, the heater didn’t work and to get out I had to roll down the window and open the door from the outside because the handle was broken; but because it was the first car he had ever purchased on his own he loved it with a teenager’s passion, so I did, too.
Sometimes we would leave a little early so we could go to a coffee shop and have donuts and hot chocolate for breakfast.
Looking back on those precious and seemingly inconsequential car rides, I wouldn’t have traded a dozen Ferraris with heated seats and voice-automated door handles for those early mornings in that car – going to eat sugar donuts with my Dad.
When I stood at the window of my old bedroom at my parent’s house, while my hairstyle has changed and my clothes have a more expensive brand name on them, I look out and I can still see my high school boyfriend leaning against his car in the driveway on a hot summer night.
Standing there in shorts and flip-flops, with one eyebrow cocked and a lopsided grin on his face, a smile pulled at the corners of my mouth as I heard his voice waft up to my second-story room, assuring me he wanted me to come down just so we could talk.
I went home this past weekend to act like a carefree college student again and remind myself of what I left behind.
Amazingly, as I pulled into my driveway back in Hollister and stepped foot into my own house, with my own things and my own new life, I realized I was glad to be here.
I realized for the first time, I was glad to be home.
